Mobile advertising includes any message, offer, promotion or incentive provided to mobile customers by a third-party brand. It can take the form of banner advertisements on Vodafone live!, opt-in SMS and MMS messages, alerts or sponsored messages, mobile TV or video advertising, or in-game advertising.
Vodafone continues to carefully develop its media business from third-party advertising on our networks. Our relationship with our customers enables us to offer brands the ability to reach particular audiences more effectively and accurately than is possible with conventional media. Advertising via mobile is already showing great promise with much higher click through rates compared with the internet – typically around 2-3% for mobile and only 0.12-0.18% for internet.
Some aspects of mobile advertising are new to Vodafone and new to our customers. As a result, we are adopting a conservative approach, to gauge customer reaction as the service is introduced and extended by our operating companies.
We have launched mobile advertising services in 11 markets. The type of mobile advertising we offer varies from market to market. Currently, the most common format is advertising on mobile internet and search facilities. Our advertisers are predominantly major brands, from the automotive and finance industries in particular, as well as many other categories.
Our customer research shows that people are generally accepting of mobile advertising – especially if they receive a benefit in return. See performance 2007/08 for more details on the research findings. For example, in some emerging markets, such as Egypt and South Africa, we offer a service that enables mobile users to send a free text with the message 'Please call me' even when they run out of credit. The message arrives accompanied by a short advertisement, which pays for the cost of running the service. See access in emerging markets. These services have proved to be very popular.
Protecting privacy
The Vodafone Group Privacy Policy states that Vodafone will retain control of customer information at all times, apart from in exceptional and limited circumstances approved by an operating company's Privacy Officer.
Vodafone does not enter into arrangements where control of customer information is lost by selling or renting customer lists to third parties for use under their control.
This policy protects our customers as well as Vodafone's commercial interest in having exclusive access to information that can be used to target advertising.
Obtaining consent
We understand the sensitivity of using customer information for marketing and have put safeguards in place to ensure our customers are asked for informed consent.
We have defined two categories of data targeting:
- Advertising targeted by contextual data (non-personal information such as time, the web page visited and the functionality of the phone)
- Advertising targeted using personal data (personal demographic information such as age, gender, address and personal behaviour information such as download history, and webpage history or physical location).
Context-based targeting does not raise privacy issues or invoke the requirements set out in the Vodafone Group Privacy Policy and applicable data protection and privacy laws. Therefore we do not believe there is a need to obtain customer consent to use this approach.
Under our Group Privacy Policy, customer consent must be obtained before personal information (demographic and behavioural) can be used to target advertising to individual customers. Customers must be able to make an informed choice about the use of their data for advertising. We ensure customers give additional consent for any kind of ‘intrusive’ advertising communication, such as MMS or SMS advertisements. Giving customers control and acting according to local legislative requirements are key components of our approach.
For example, in Vodafone Australia, before customers are asked to make a decision about whether or not to give consent, we provide them with information about the types of personal data in question, and the ways in which it would be used. We provide a screen showing a summary of terms and conditions, and a link to the full list on our website.
Opting out
Customers must be able to withdraw their consent for use of their personal information at any time. Advertisers must comply with a request to opt out and confirm this has been received, and must not send additional messages to the customer. Customers can opt out of SMS or MMS advertising by replying to any message with the word 'stop'.
In addition to developing our own guidelines, Vodafone is part of the GSM Association's working group to define a common code of practice on mobile advertising across the industry.