Qualcomm and Amobee Media Systems are working together to offer mobile advertising on Qualcomm’s Plaza solution.
The two companies said they completed an integration of Amobee’s ad-serving platform with Plaza so it now enables advertising to be fed into Plaza’s ecosystem of widgets.
The offer is targeted at operators worldwide, said Noam Raffaelli, managing director of Plaza for Qualcomm Internet Services. The relationship with Amobee is not exclusive, but its market share leadership is significant, he said. Amobee’s mobile ad-serving solution has been deployed by more operators than any other solution to date.
The Plaza platform is agnostic and will support both BREW and non-BREW operators, he said. The intent is to reach as many mass-market phones as possible. Plaza can be deployed at whatever stage in the handset cycle the operator wants to incorporate it. It also can be deployed over-the-air to existing handsets in the market. The Plaza platform sits on top of whatever operating system happens to be on the phone.
Plaza is designed to allow end-users to personalize their phones more than they currently are able to do – and effectively allow them to get to the “long tail” of the content they want, he explained. For example, if a fan wanted to create a widget on a phone related to a weekend concert, he or she could do so and delete it at the end of the weekend. “It’s about helping end-users get their online information that matters to them on their phone,” he said, adding it’s also about unlocking the potential of Web developers.
Qualcomm managed to create an ecosystem for BREW developers, and it wants to do the same for Plaza developers. It has not announced customers for Plaza, but it is in discussions and gaining traction, he said.