Vodafone Greece outsources entire mobile ad operation

Vodafone Greece has surprised the media by announcing a deal that will see Out There Media (OTM) become the exclusive mobile advertising partner for Vodafone Live! in Greece. OTM is now solely responsible for dealing with advertising agencies and clients, together with overseeing campaign creation and management. MADS (a European-wide mobile ad company) will remain responsible for the technical implementation and support of the campaigns.

While Vodafone Greece gave no indication to the reasons behind this move, local advertising agencies welcomed the partnership. The media director of Unilever Hellas, George Zalokostas, said the new arrangement for Vodafone Live! would bring about a fresh era for mobile advertising. "It presents us with new, targeted and effective ways to reach the right customer at anytime. Based on what I have seen, we will undoubtedly be commissioning our first mobile advertising campaign with OTM and Vodafone very soon."

Separately, AdMob, which boasts it's the world's leading mobile advertising company, has teamed up with MADS in a strategic alliance to create a global behemoth. The move is seen as significant because it extends AdMob's reach in an area where it is relatively weak, namely serving ads for high-end publishers across a multitude of mobile channels such as SMS, MMS and the mobile web.

For more on this story:
GoMo News and Venture Beat

Related stories:
Mixed results for Vodafone/Visa mobile advertising trials
Vodafone advertising ruled misleading
UK operators cooperate over mobile advertising metrics
Mobile advertising is massively overhyped, says analyst firm