14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo! is making a forceful push in the domain of mobile Internet advertising after having lost the similar battle with Google over the regular ads served next to web search. The rate at which it is adding partners (and has been doing that for quite a while now) is clearly making it one of the most serious competitors in the field, if not the most serious one so far.
Britain's T-Mobile and Yahoo! have joined forces today to provide cell phone users with an array of services that will benefit everybody in this love triangle. Having added this second operator to its UK partner list gives the Sunnyvale-based company access to two out of the top four mobile companies on the island.
Somewhat similar to Sergey Brin's approach to Google's future, as he said two years ago that the way to go was "features, not products," Yahoo! is not trying to enter the competition by creating its own software like Google, but by trying to avoid the whole uncertainty of managing to cope with meeting those requirements or not, by providing Internet services on already existing phones.
Reuters reports that under the T-Mobile deal, the two parts involved will put together an effort to enable advertisers to send targeted adverts to consumers who can then interact and respond as quickly as possible: "Banner advertising through the Internet on your mobile creates many opportunities for potential advertisers to adopt innovative marketing campaigns" said Phil Chapman, the director of marketing at T-Mobile in a statement to the source cited.
Yahoo's Vice President of Connected Life, Geraldine Wilson addressed the issue and said that "Key to bringing brands to mobile is being able to offer them the audience. [?] We already have an agreement with Vodafone and [?] what that means is we're building now the kind of interesting scale of audience for advertisers to start considering this medium seriously," as reported by Reuters.