Bytemobile’s Web Fidelity™ Service enables mobile network operators to serve advertisements in off-portal web pages on feature phones and smartphones. Mobile advertising works with handset optimization and web adaptation, which provides intelligent transcoding for open internet browsing on mobile devices. Operators can determine which content-adapted web pages receive advertisements, define where those advertisements are placed and set targeting criteria for each campaign.
Key Mobile Advertising Features
Mobile advertising is part of Bytemobile’s Web Fidelity Service (WFS), implemented on the Unison™ platform in the core data path of the network. It supports common advertisement specifications, as defined by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), and provides functionality for the network operator to serve and manage advertising campaigns from within the Unison architecture. Key features include:
- An in-network ad server for insertion of ads in the headers and footers of content-adapted web pages
- Click-through to content-adapted PC websites, obviating the need for advertisers to invest in the development of mobile landing pages or websites
- Optional integration with media sales engines or third-party ad networks that currently serve on-portal advertising
How Mobile Advertising Works
Integrated with web adaptation, mobile advertising sits inline in the core network, where it can serve ads within the header and footer of PC web pages adapted by WFS. When the site is adapted, navigation bars are applied at the top (header) and the bottom (footer) of each web page. As the pages are adapted in real time, a call is made to the ad server to retrieve the most relevant ad campaign and insert the specified ad either above the navigational header or below the footer. Campaigns are preconfigured in WFS based on criteria set by the operator or advertiser.
Service Selection
Web Fidelity Service (WFS) enables fine-grained control of advertising insertions by the operator on a per-request basis. Currently, it can target by MSISDN, APN, advertisement plan ID, SGSN-IP, time (year/month/day/hour/minute), operator ID, device ID, source IP, interface ID, and page URL.
Advertisement Placement
WFS allows two advertisement placements within content-adapted web pages. Advertisements can be placed in the header or the footer of the content-adapted web page and also on either the first sub-page or all sub-pages.
Campaign Management
WFS provides campaign management functionality, enabling operators to run multiple campaigns with different advertisements and display criteria. Campaign attributes include the list of ads, the campaign dates, the weight, enable/disable, and random or round-robin selection type. Operators can configure rules to trigger a particular campaign based on device type, domain or time of day.
Advertisement Selection
When servicing a request for an advertisement, WFS first determines which campaigns meet the criteria for the given request based on the criteria of each configured campaign. If there are multiple eligible campaigns, then it can employ a selection mechanism that uses predefined weights for campaigns.
Advertisement Specifications
WFS supports display advertisement specifications as defined by the MMA.
Advertisement Tracking
Drawing on handset optimization web proxy access logs, WFS records the number of times, for a select campaign, that specific advertisements are served to — and also clicked through by — individual subscribers. Log files must be parsed to retrieve these campaign performance metrics.
Integration and Support
WFS is fully integrated within the Unison architecture and works seamlessly with web adaptation. Each web adaptation module can have a collocated Mobile Advertising Module that serves advertisements.
Integration with third-party advertising platforms and networks. WFS can be integrated with third-party advertising platforms or networks to retrieve advertisements for display. Bytemobile’s solutions engineering team is available to plan and execute WFS integration projects.
Integration with open source platforms. WFS supports the entire spectrum of devices (WAP 1.0, WAP 2.0 and smartphones), mobile browsers and operating systems. Thus, it will work on both Google’s Android and Verizon’s open source platforms.
Support for on-portal advertising. Operators can choose to run all of their data traffic through WFS, thereby including navigational headers, footers and ad spaces on all portal pages.
Support for WAP and other mobile websites. Mobile advertising benefits from the “mobile site awareness” feature of WFS, which detects a content provider’s redirection of mobile users to a mobile-optimized (WAP) site. In this case, WFS bypasses transcoding and directs users to the WAP site without serving advertising on that site.
Hardware Requirements
Due to the tight integration of mobile advertising with web adaptation, the hardware specifications for the two modules are identical.
