Verve Wireless makes room for ads on mobile

By Jordan Crook

June 25, 2009

WFAA local TV station out of Dallas, TX

Big-name local newspapers are going mobile with the help of Verve Wireless, a mobile publishing technology provider.

Verve Wireless announced new partnerships with Media News Group, A.H. Belo Corp., Hearst Corp. and Cox Newspapers, meaning big opportunities for advertisers in this mobile space. The company is now set to mobilize local media properties such as the Denver Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Palm Beach Post and Examiner.com.

"Mobile is key in the evolution of local media companies," said Greg Hallinan, chief marketing officer for Verve Wireless, Encinitas, CA. "Whether you are local TV or a local newspaper, you want to be able to give your consumers anytime, anywhere access to trusted news and information.

"And to be able to deliver this content in a rich multimedia format - text, pictures or video - to the consumer," he said. "We provide the most efficient way for media companies to mobilize and deliver their content regardless of the device their consumers use."

Verve Wireless is expanding rapidly, now mobilizing more than 450 local media properties and taking its technology into a partnership with the Khaleej Times of the United Arab Emirates.

Within three months, Verve Wireless has increased the number of local media companies it has taken mobile by 85 percent, reaching more than three million consumers in all of the top 200 designated market areas in the U.S.

Verve is serving more than 47.5 million page views and delivered more than a million mobile video streams each month.

The main purpose behind Verve's proprietary publishing and mobile advertising system is to extend readership and communities for local media publishers such as Media General's Richmond Times Dispatch.

Local media publishers are also using the knowledge and experience of their local advertising sales teams and the relationships they have cultivated with local businesses to offer mobile advertising opportunities, as the mobile fad sweeps the nation.

"News as a category, and in particular news on a mobile platform, has both the ‘reach' and ‘frequency' desired by brand advertisers," Mr. Hallinan said. "Combine this with the overwhelming consumption patterns of local news on mobile, and the ability to efficiently target ads down into these local markets creates a compelling opportunity for brand marketers.

"Realizing that news as a category is fairly broad, and brands are understandably reluctant to align themselves with certain sub-categories of hard news such as a tragic events and breaking news alerts, there are substantial opportunities in local news, where the content is more community-based and focused on sports, entertainment and events," he said.

Shoe Station, a brand that worked with Media General and Verve, claims that the mobile campaign it launched using the Verve advertising network produced results within minutes.

Verve Wireless claims that its main focus is to make it easy for local media partners to bring their content to mobile, whether it is news, content or advertising.

The company also claims to have the largest local mobile ad network nationwide.

Verve's AdCel advertising platform is certainly laying the foundation for national brand advertisers to reach mobile consumers, as there were more than two million mobile page views a month in the Dallas/Fort Worth area alone.

Brand advertisers are launching initiatives based on a range of targeting parameters, which vary from regional to the hyper-local neighborhood level. This generates additional revenue streams for the brand's partners while still supplying scalable media placements for the national brands themselves.

Verve suggests that the number of page views in smaller markets is growing because no matter the location, people want up-to-date news in their area and mobile is now taking over as the preferred method.

Verve is also implementing enhancements to its platform to automatically generate an optimized version of the publisher's site for the new Safari browser on the iPhone.

In addition, the company is now providing mobile video delivery across a variety of smartphones.

The iPhone module uses elements of the design used for the Mobile News Network iPhone app from The Associated Press and allows all types of publishers to be a part of the fastest growing smartphone segment.

Publishers have the ability to create a specialized version of their mobile site to fully utilize the special capabilities of the new Safari browser such as location awareness, an automatic short cut feature that puts an app icon on the iPhone screen and top-of-the-line layout and navigational elements.

Verve realized the demand for the module when it noticed publications such as The Orange County Register, which sees more than 40 percent of its mobile Web traffic coming from iPhones.

"Consumers look to their hometown media, be it newspapers or local TV station as a trusted source of content," Mr. Hallinan said. "For a brand, aligning with this type of trusted source for consumers has been something they have always done.

"What mobile brings to the table is the ability for that brand to really zero in on local level with targeted brand advertising, as well as direct promotions and offers," he said.