CS8803: A I A
Project Proposal
Lucky Mobile Advertisements
Muhammad Usman Haider
902289633
Motivation
Mobile advertising is an industry that is about to explode. However, there is still
some caution due to the fear of invoking adverse reactions from the subscriber
resulting from receiving advertisements. Our 'Lucky Mobile Advertising'
application aims to address this concern by creating a win-win situation between
the subscriber, carrier and advertiser.
Subscriber
(Lucky)
win
Carrier
(Luck coordinator)
win
win
Advertiser
(Luck sponsor)
Advertising on mobile devices is the area that is being expected by marketing
wizards and telecom/internet giants to play a key role in future marketing
strategies and provide additional huge revenue sources for the carriers. Informa
Telecoms & Media, a research firm forecasts that annual expenditure on mobile
ads will reach $11.4 billion by 2011. Other analysts predict the market will be as
big as $20 billion by then.
However, there are mixed opinions about the future of mobile advertisements,
with cellular operators moving cautiously for the fear of annoying customers.
Recent studies are now showing that subscribers are willing to tolerate
advertising if they are able to get something in return. Today roughly 75 percent
of all mobile subscribers in the U.S. and Western Europe can access the mobile
Internet from their mobile devices. And of those people with access, about onethird say they would watch advertising in exchange for free mobile content,
according to a study called "Going Mobile" from the Online Publishers
Association. This has now laid a healthy foundation for the mobile advertising
market.
Objective
In contrast to the current rigid 'view and get rewarded' approaches offered by
Blyk in UK and Virgin Mobile in US, we propose that carriers let the users
experience incentives in a controlled and 'lucky' fashion, creating a 'wait-for'
attitude amongst them. Surprising the subscriber, that she was lucky to have the
call sponsored by XYZ, will be welcomed by her rather than annoy her. Ads from
the sponsor will also be conscious of subscriber's preferences and sponsors will
be allowed to customize their target customer base. The carriers benefit from
obtaining an additional source of revenue and increased network usage.
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
Having subscribed to the application, subscribers randomly and
luckily begin to receive announcements (short message / data) after
disconnecting a normal call (dialed/ received/ sms/ voice/ content) or
any charged session from the Lucky-Mobile-Ad application announcing
that the call was free and was sponsored by XYZ along with the
advertisement message (chosen from the preferences of the
subscriber about the luck-sponsor).
A subscriber doesn’t know when, how, where she will be experiencing
‘luck’, but this is for sure that she will receive her favorite ads only
when the current call was sponsored from anyone within her favorite
luck-sponsoring categories.
The frequency and relevance of ads varies with each subscriber and
initially the frequency is set to minimum threshold and increases only
with the behavior, profile and feedback of the subscriber towards the
maximum threshold.
Subscribers are encouraged to increase their chances of hunting luck
by luck enhancement factors like
i. Replying to advertisement.
ii. Purchasing advertised products or services
iii. Choosing diversified luck sponsors.
v)
But even if the subscriber doesn’t use any of the luck enhancement
method, she continues to receive her minimum luck share for the
service subscription based on her service plan, subscription age,
selected luck-sponsor categories, network utilization, call duration and
similar behaviors.
The advertisers are also provided with the option of customizing their
own preferences regarding the customer base or location that they
wish to target. For eg: XYZ advertiser would only wish to advertise to
subscribers between the ages of 18-30 or subscribers only within their
vicinity. They also have the option to sponsor specific timings in a day
or specific days in a week etc.
Related work
Currently two significant mobile advertising approaches exist that rely on giving
subscribers something in return to their agreement to receive or view
advertisements. These include Blyk in UK and Sugar Mama by Virgin Mobile in
US. Apparently this seems quite natural because without any evident motivation
for the subscriber, any form of advertisement on her personal mobile device will
be considered spam and therefore rejected. What only can make mobile
advertising a success is the interest of mobile subscriber, if it gradually gets
developed, with the mild frequency of personalized advertisements. Otherwise
the factors like large graphic screen displays or reduction in services cost are
less likely to play any important role in boom of mobile marketing.
Launch of Blyk in UK and Sugar Mama by Virgin Mobile in US demonstrates,
attempts to reveal the hidden potential in giving some incentives to subscribers in
return of their acceptance of advertisements. Pitching itself as the world's first
advertising-supported phone company, Blyk launched a service last year in
Britain that offers subscribers 217 free text messages and 43 free minutes of
voice calls per month as long as they agree to receive six advertisements by text
message every day.
In 2006 America's Virgin Mobile tried something similar with its “Sugar Mama”
program, which offers subscribers the choice between receiving an ad via text
message or viewing a 45-second advertisement when browsing the internet in
exchange for one free minute of talk time. Those who spend five minutes filling
out a questionnaire online get five more minutes. Sugar Mama is proving
popular: at the end of August 06, the company that manages the scheme
reported that Virgin Mobile had given away more than 10m free minutes.
Vodafone, a big mobile operator based in Britain, sees mobile advertising as a
potentially lucrative source of additional income. For the time being, most of the
ads on its network are still text messages, although it has begun displaying ads
on Vodafone live!, its mobile internet homepage, through which subscribers
access the internet and download videos and music. Sprint launched targeted
mobile advertising in 2006 fall. Other similar operators also have initiated or have
strong plans to take major steps in this area. AT&T also have launched 1-800YellowPages which has quite a lot potential for mobile advertisements. David
Huntley, Senior Vice President for Diversified Businesses at AT&T marks the
service as “instrumental in helping us design a world-class business solution,
which will enable AT&T to deliver a state-of-the-art, ad-sponsored directory
assistance service to our customers." The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a
new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge
revolution," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on January 25, 2008.
This LUCK idea is quite different from existing mobile marketing ways in many
psychological, business and implementation prospects. Any Advertisement
should be fine until it is not disturbing the customer and rather involving the user
in the LUCK game. The key to the success of the idea is the “wisely controlled
distribution and randomness” of the luck. The already existing ideas present so
far do address the concept of free calls/air-time in return of mobile
advertisements but they differ in very nature of capturing the user’s interest and
revenue generating behavior.
Proposed work
The Lucky Mobile Application server is to be developed using IP Multimedia
Subsystems (IMS) technology. The beautiful thing about IMS is its ability to
interconnect with existing networks like PSTN, circuit switched wireless etc.
Obviously, the carriers are not going to replace traditional circuit switched
networks within a day after having spent billions of dollars on them. The Lucky
Mobile Ad application is to reside on traditional SIP application server. Just like
regular IMS applications it can be deployed in All-VOIP networks as well as
interfaced with circuit switched networks. The LUCKY AD application is not same
as traditional client/server based applications. The application passively receives
call information from the network elements and generates luck alerts only to the
lucky subscribers.
Call Flow
The call flow for a subscriber dialing/ receiving calls is exactly the same as a
normal call except that after few lucky calls she will receive a text message/data
announcing the luck with advertisement.
Wannabe-lucky
profiles
database
Luck
sponsor ‘s
profiles
database
Subscriber
’s Luck
history
database
INPUT
OUTPUT
LUCKY AD
APPLICATION SERVER
event + details about
disconnection of any
active session (call)
involving the
subscriber
Luck decision + Luck
announcement (if
lucky)
Luck Call
Data
Records
for billing
General Description
Wanna-be-lucky profile
This constitutes all the subscribers to the luck application. This profile
includes all the preferences that subscriber can even think in terms of
customizing the luck game.
Luck-Sponsor profile
The profile gives all the choices to sponsors to fully customize the luck
sponsorship to meet their business needs.
Luck History
This includes luck history for both the subscribers and the luck sponsors. On
any call involving the subscriber the history is updated, whether the luck was
awarded or not. The history helps in luck decision for the subscriber as well
as for picking up the sponsor for the lucky call. This includes other records
like overall network utilization and average call durations for the subscriber to
help the decision.
Billing Call Data Records
Lucky Server records the Lucky calls in CDRs (call data records) for the
billing system to process and make adjustments to let the lucky calls reflected
in subscriber billing.
Application Input
The application takes as input any ‘disconnect’ events for a session within the
network that involves the lucky application subscribers along with the location
information of the subscriber.
Application Output
Output of the application depends on the decision of the luck application. If
the call was not lucky only the luck history is updated with the details,
otherwise if the call was lucky, call data record is logged for billing system and
announcement to the subscriber is triggered apart from updating the luck
history.
Lucky AD Application Server
This is the heart of the application. Based on various inputs and preferences
of both the subscriber and advertiser, the luck decision decides about the luck
of disconnected active sessions. The main components of the application
server include
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
Luck Logic module.
Advertisement Relevance module.
Luck History Maintenance module.
Billing Information module.
Grabbing the subscriber’s interest is the key to success in mobile advertising
future. The Luck Game is devised to achieve the same passion. Everybody
loves ‘for-free’ and desires to be lucky. The LUCK factor is going to give this
simple mobile advertising idea a successful dimension.
Plan of action
Resources
Since the Lucky application server is proposed to be developed in SIP
application server and integrated with IP Multimedia Subsystem core, IMS
emulator will be used to provide the IMS core functionality. For the location
information GT ‘where am I’ service will be used.
TimeLine
1. Web Interface (with supporting databases)
a. Subscriber profile interface
b. Advertiser profile interface
Time estimate: 2 weeks
2. SIP application server
Time estimate:2-3 weeks
3. Luck Logic
Time estimate: 1 week
4. Advertisement Relevancy module
Time estimate: 1 week
5. Charging and billing module
Time estimate: 1 week
6. Location aware capability
Time estimate: 1-3 weeks
7. Mobile Interface of basic user settings for Luck Game
Time estimate: 2-3 weeks
Evaluation and Testing Method
Lucky calls using IMS core will be demonstrated to evaluate the project. Although
a lot much functionality and intelligence can be incorporated in the ‘Luck’
decision process but a basic proof of the concept will be completed for
demonstration purpose. The subscriber and advertiser correlation based on the
profiles from both will be highlighted.
Bibliography
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.html
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