Vodafone takes a big step towards personalised content

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 | By Alex Farber

It’s a big (beta) step for an operator that has traditionally focused its online strategy on customer acquisition and service. The global portal forms part of the vision set out by Vodafone’s consumer business director Ian Shepherd to new media age in September 2008 to position the operator as a leading online player (nma 4 September 2008).

Subsequently its now-departed head of mobile advertising Shan Henderson stated its desire to offer its huge amount of integrated inventory to advertisers.     

And now it has designed a portal which works exactly like (new) rivals My Yahoo and iGoogle.

Of course, these existing sites are also bidding to capture eyeballs on mobile by offering their existing services cross platform. There’s a huge land-grab shaping up once again for ownership of the mobile audience. The operators have the current, albeit shortlived, advantage because they have the history of running the space. But people are more familiar with accessing content via the online portals. Both sides can rightly claim tens of millions of loyal subscribers but each is slightly outside of its comfort zone on the new platform.

It’s a tough call to decide who will ultimately win as the battle heats up. But a real opportunity awaits for someone to become the Google of mobile and dominate the space.

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name

I have read and agree to the terms and conditions