Social Advertising Will Reach You on Your Cell With Itsmy.biz Network

Today Gofresh announces public launch of its social advertising network Itsmy.biz after 1 year of beta testing. Munich-based Gofresh offers various types of mobile services, including Itsmy.com, 2 million users strong mobile social network, and Itsmy.TV - personal mobile broadcasting service.

It is quite logical that when a company already has rather strong content and user base it will try to find an efficient way to monetize all this content and users. And this is exactly the mission for Itsmy.biz advertising network launched today. During the 1-year beta period the ad network served over a billion ads to users of all carriers in the US and Europe. The brands advertised on the network include Vodafone, Reebok, and Ford, for example.

Currently Itsmy.biz network reaches 4 million mobile users with half of them obviously in Itsmy social network and the other half from mobile publishing partners. For advertisers trying to achieve the US mobile users the prices are currently at $4 CPM for traditional banners and $40 CPM for advertising on video content.

In the press release CEO Antonio Vince Staybl mentioned:

The mobile phone is the only medium, that is always ON and with you and it has a wider reach than TV… Whenever and wherever they (users - S.G.) are, commercial campaigns will now reach them.

To me this statement sounds a little bit scary but it is evident that mobile ads will be pushed at cell phone users in the increasing volumes proportionally with growth of mobile internet itself. We have already seen Nokia launching an ad network of its own and there are smaller networks and marketplaces specializing in mobile advertising. It is questionable how logical it is to launch ad networks focused on mobile content only when traditional advertising networks can probably do at least the sales part better but it is also understandable that Itsmy must be in need of good conditions to monetize its existing content so the move is quite logical.

But there is still one aspect where I see a serious disadvantage of this particular network and it is in over-simplified geo-targeting. For now an advertiser can choose to target either US, UK, Europe (without UK) or World (without US and UK) with an ad of the chosen format. And while it may be perfectly enough for larger brands like Reebok, I think the future of mobile advertising should be with local advertisers where every local store of coffee shop could reach mobile users in the small areas they operate in. This type of advertising could be beneficial to both advertisers and users who could actually learn something useful from mobile ads - like where to have a cup of coffee with a friend. After all, to be useful mobile advertising should focus on advantages mobile devices could provide instead of simply copying the traditional online advertising model.