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Celltick, China Unicom partner for Olympics content on mobile

Celltick Technologies Ltd. has launched a new mobile media service over China Unicom's network for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Designed and implemented through Celltick's LiveScreen Media platform, the new service provides official Olympics-related content directly from Xinhua News, the official news agency in China, including the latest news, results and anecdotes and accompanied by topical games and applications. The service, available in both Chinese and English, will continue after the Olympics and include content relating to general news, lifestyle, business and entertainment.

"The Olympics is the ideal launchpad for China Unicom to introduce LiveScreen Media, because it's something quite prestigious to build up interest," said Stephen Dunford, CEO of Celltick, London. "Ultimately this presents them with the tremendous opportunity to roll out one of the largest mobile advertising and marketing platforms in the world.

"While initially it will be launched in Beijing only, beyond the Olympics the intention is to expand this platform to 15 of China's most-populated markets," he said.

In addition to Chinese-speaking consumers, China Intercom will target the significant number of English-speaking visitors who have arrived to experience the Olympic Games in person.

"China Unicom's aim will be to target tourists, any English-speaking people interested in attending the games and who want to take advantage of mobile services during their stay in Beijing," Mr. Dunford said. "There are obviously cost benefits to having a Chinese SIM if they're going to be in contact with anyone in China or overseas."

Olympics-branded SIM cards embedded with Celltick's smart-client applet will be distributed at China Unicom booths at airports, shops around Beijing and via its Web portal.

"The SIM card is compatible with every phone," Mr. Dunford said. "This is a unique service because we can reach any device."

Once the SIM card is inserted into a handset, the LiveScreen Media service is immediately activated, delivering Olympics news and results via a ticker message running along bottom of the mobile screen or, for more basic phones, a pop-up window.

With LiveScreen Media, mobile operators can non-intrusively deliver segmented content, rich media and advertising to a virtually unlimited number of users.

Unlocking a new revenue source via targeted teasers delivered to the idle screen, LiveScreen Media expands the offerings of operators, helping them make the most of today's burgeoning mobile marketing opportunities.

Celltick's LiveScreen Media application will be embedded on SIM cards that are being distributed in China Unicom retail outlets around Beijing.

The launch of the LiveScreen Media service in Beijing will be the first in a series of deployments across China.

"China has a very high prepaid subscriber base, and people will often pick up new SIM cards if the rates are better," Mr. Dunford said.

China Unicom is an integrated telecommunications service provider with more than 180 million mobile subscribers nationwide.

"China Unicom is very competitive with China Mobile, the other big operator in China," Mr. Dunford said. "They want to compete with them on all levels and they see launching LiveScreen Media as a unique way of doing that."

Celltick's flagship product is LiveScreen Media, which lets content providers and advertisers broadcast targeted content and marketing messages to millions of mobile idle screens, turning them into a network of interactive billboards and creating a strong revenue stream for operators. The company calls this model active mobile marketing.

Celltick cooperates with mobile operators to turn the mobile idle screen into a revenue driver. The company has close relations with all network infrastructure companies, SIM vendors, handset manufacturers, industry standard organizations, global content providers and media agents.

"You have to hit people at the right time with the right sort of messaging, and we have analytics capability to monitor the behavior of subscribers to figure out what's interesting to them as far as the results and different types of sports," Mr. Dunford said.

"This will help China Unicom promote their content more effectively and increase their interactive data services," he said.

"A lot of the data services in China have been SMS based, and this takes them to the next level as far as being able to offer downloads, quizzes, trivia, real-time news and all the things we see in the developed world. This also represents the launch of a significant mobile advertising and marketing platform."