Alcatel-Lucent to offer new mobile ad service jointly with 1020 Placecast

Alcatel-Lucent and cross-platform location-based advertising solution provider, 1020 Placecast, today announced that they would jointly provide mobile service providers and brands with a unique, location-based service -- hosted by Alcatel-Lucent -- to deliver relevant messaging and advertising to mobile consumers who opt into the service.

Together, 1020 Placecast and Alcatel-Lucent will offer an end-to-end service that enables service providers to support brands in reaching their target audiences wherever they are in innovative new ways.

As part of this service, 1020 Placecast leverages its unique ad engine to weave location information into highly relevant messages -- enabling brands and advertising agencies with scalable, proximity marketing campaigns that will be pushed to consumers' mobile devices in SMS and MMS formats.

Using its Geographic Messaging Services Platform (GMSP) as a hosted service, Alcatel-Lucent will track opt-in subscribers' locations on behalf of the service provider and push mobile content to the subscriber when and where is appropriate -- based on the advertising campaign developed and managed by the 1020 Placecast platform.

The network service can support millions of subscribers -- far more than any competing product on the market today -- making proximity marketing campaigns for service providers and marketers a reality.

It creates an environment where service providers and advertisers can partner in developing and delivering a new generation of revenue-generating mobile advertising services to customers -- a market that is expected to reach nearly $5 billion in U.S. service provider revenue by 2011 according to the report "Mobile Advertising: The Service Provider Revenue Opportunity" published by Heavy Reading Research.