Last April 1, the Cambridge, Mass.-based mobile search and advertising provider, JumpTap (www.jumptap.com), closed a deal with NBC Universal to be their ad solutions provider for delivering advertising inventory for multiple NBC Universal WAP sites (including NBC Entertainment, NBC Sports, Universal Pictures, USA Network, SCI FI Channel and Bravo).

JumpTap will sell available NBC Universal WAP ad inventory as part of its mobile-specific advertising network, while NBC Universal’s ad sales team continues to focus on selling integrated media campaigns, which include TV and web advertising.

With JumpTap’s network of carrier portal and publisher sites, NBC advertisers get access to the widest range of high quality mobile websites. They also helps advertisers understand and meet objectives for their respective campaigns by offering complete solutions exclusive sponsorship opportunities for banner ads, SMS campaigns, and text ads which they need to manage the highly effective, targeted campaigns.

Incidentally, JumpTap also signed a deal a similar deal with Fox Mobile Entertainment, handling their mobile-specific campaigns. How does this work exactly? You might ask. A user who has searched for “Lexus” through a JumpTap-powered mobile search engine with a carrier partner like Virgin Mobile could see a luxury car ad on NBC and Fox content properties.

Fox and NBC will continue to sell mobile ads as part of integrated deals, while JumpTap handles mobile-specific campaigns.

The mobile phone is universally regarded as a personal device. For NBC and Fox, that means targeting ads in the medium based on prior search behavior and other user data.
To help them achieve that goal, NBC Universal and Fox Mobile Entertainment have inked deals with Cambridge, Mass.-based ad network JumpTap to show ads on their mobile sites based, in part, on their prior JumpTap search activity. The ads will run on sites for properties such as NBC Sports, Universal Pictures, USA Network, and Fox programming like 24, The Simpsons and Prison Break.
Thus, the phone begins to resemble the Web, where behavioral targeting has surged as a way to show users more relevant ads based on their prior Web behavior, wrote Brian Morrissey of AdWeek. JumpTap also combines search behavior with some demographic information provided by carriers. JumpTap is one of many companies looking to crack into the small but growing mobile ad market. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and specialists like AdMob and Third Screen Media are also building mobile ad networks.

Mobile sites are starting to generate sizable traffic. But for the market to truly take off, players need to offer more than typical banner placements, said Paran Johar, CEO of JumpTap. “You’ve got to have a targeted experience for a mobile phone [rather] than a dancing mortgage ad,” he said.

JumpTap is currently building off its search base. The company has deals in place with such carriers as Virgin and Boost Mobile to power their searches. And it is complementing such on-deck deals with an ad network of mobile sites.

Multi-media file sharing over the web has just become way simpler. Like a Dummies Guide for Media Sharing, EnjoyMyMedia turns your Windows folders into vehicles for private file-sharing across the Internet. It’s been likened to having your own broadcast media channel.

Many of the existing, similar sites such as SplashCast, Vizrea, Veodia, Bubbleshare, MixerCast, Flektor, Stickam, Ustream, blip.tv, Vpod.tv, Kyte.tv, and Cozmo.tv suffer from a so-called high geek quotient.They’re not exactly user-friendly to the average, computer-illiterate Web user, therby limiting their adoption. (Knowing the basics of creating, formatting, and uploading media files is a prerequisite, plus you have some miniscule undertanding of HTML and blogging tools.)
Then here comes along the brain dead easy solution of EnjoyMyMedia a small, self-funded startup based in Concord, MA which offers a media-sharing system that mainstream netizens can use to broadcast their photos, videos, audio files, and other files to friends and family members without learning a line of code.

Keith Loris, EnjoyMyMedia’s president and CEO, and Bill Oncay, the company’s chief technology officer, set out to build EnjoyMyMedia two years ago. The two business partners designed a PC program would monitor a hard drive for new content, then send the content automatically to another PC with RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds at the heart of groundbreaking system.
Loris and Oncay took devised a way to create an RSS feed for an individual Windows folder on a user’s computer. Here’s how it works, in the words of Wade Roush of www.xeconomy.com:

To begin netcasting on EnjoyMyMedia, a user simply has to designate a folder on their hard drive as the channel for the data to be transmitted, then send invitations through the EnjoyMyMedia website to friends or family members. Subscribers can add channels to the free RSS receiver pages provided by iGoogle, Firefox, Internet Explorer, My Yahoo, Facebook, and the like. Every time the netcaster adds a file to the designated folder, a thumbnail representation of it shows up immediately in every subscriber’s RSS feed. But only when a subscriber clicks on a thumbnail is the file actually transmitted.

By making media-sharing so simple, Loris, Oncay, and partner Warner Jones (the company’s vice president of website products) hope to attract a user base of average families the kind of people who exchange birthday-party photo prints as a matter of course, but wouldn’t be likely to sit down and spend several hours uploading digital photos to a site like Flickr, Roush adds in his post.

EnjoyMyMedia’s basic service is free, and includes a 200-megabyte online locker where frequently viewed files can be stored so that others can download them on demand, i.e., even if the netcaster’s PC is off. The company plans to earn revenue by offering larger on-demand lockers$4.99 a month for 10 gigabytes and $9.99 for 40 gigabytes. Paying users will have advertising-free channels, while people on the receiving end of media posted by free netcasters may see targeted ads.’

On April 1, AT&T and Microsoft Corp. announced a collaborative alliance that will transform the way consumers shop for mobile devices. AT&T will become the first company in the world to bring Microsoft Surface to life in a retail environment, giving customers the ability to explore their mobile worlds using touch and device recognition technology. Microsoft Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft.

Starting next week, April 17, customers can experience Microsoft Surface in select AT&T retail locations, including stores in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco. Based on the success and learning from these initial pilot deployments, plans for further expansion across AT&T’s 2,200 U.S. retail stores will be determined.

Microsoft Surface is a 30-inch table-like display that gives individuals or multiple people the opportunity to interact with devices and content by using touch, gestures and placement of devices on the display. In essence, it’s a surface come to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, and buying.

AT&T plans to harness the power of Surface to provide its retail store visitors with unique opportunities to learn about the growing universe of mobile applications and devices. The interactive touch displays, which will work without a traditional mouse or keyboard, will allow customers to do the following:

Learn. Customers can review features of a particular mobile device by simply placing it on the display. Surface will recognize the device and provide a graphical overview of its capabilities. Customers will be able to place two devices side by side on the unit and easily compare their features.
Explore. Customers view interactive coverage maps at the national, state, local or street level, using simple touch and hand movement to scale and move the maps, determining their coverage area.

Customize. In the future, customers will be able to drag and drop ring tones, graphics, video and more by grabbing content with their hands from a menu on the display and dropping it into the phone.

In addition to these features, AT&T and Microsoft will continue to collaborate on new and innovative ways to expand Surface capabilities in AT&T stores. We are thrilled to bring this groundbreaking new technology to our stores so we can introduce customers to their mobile worlds in a very personal and easy way,  said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility. We look forward to working with Microsoft to continue developing new ways for our customers to learn about the ever-growing lineup of mobile devices and applications.

Microsoft Surface transforms the retail environment from a transaction destination to a customer engagement destination, said Robbie Bach, president, Entertainment & Devices Division, Microsoft. With innovative and intuitive ways of accessing information and digital content on Microsoft Surface, consumers now have an entirely new, unique and personalized shopping experience. We re excited to have AT&T bring this to life and be the first company showcasing Surface in its retail locations.

AT&T also plans to unveil the new displays in stores located in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and the San Francisco area on April 17, followed by additional stores in other markets based on the success of the first phase of deployments.

The Yellow Pages are definitely not dead in Egypt and the same goes for Portugal, apparently. According to Armando Alves of the A Source of Inspiration blog (www.asourceofinspiration.com), they better not be.

Craigslist has just opened their Portuguese version and Google is starting to take local search and location based services more seriously in Portugal.

PAI (Portuguese Internet Yellow Pages) visit www.yellowpages.pai.pt released a new set of features that are so Web 2.0 that they even have round corners and gradients. Here’s what you can do with PAI at the moment, according to Alves:

1. Comments
Now users can leave their ratings and comments, supposedly to improve the service quality. I wonder how long will it take until spammers and ruthless SEOs start flooding the system.

2. Maps
Nice one. Not Google maps, but at least they know the local market, so a tailored experience might be enough to convince portuguese users. The service is provided by Local Matters.

3. Search Widget
You can take the search service and embed it in your site as a widget. Unlike Google custom search, no revenue is distributed to publishers.

Things are definitely heating up with this European IYP version, and after Web 1.5, it seems that some Portuguese services are entering the 2.0 bandgwagon. Better late than never, I suppose.

While Sensis is based in Australia you can no longer say they are down-under. Their brilliant turn around had over 650 Yellow Pages industry executives gathered in LasVegas April 6-9 for the YPA Association Annual Conference, captivated. How did Sensis revitalize the print yellow pages and see up to 10% usage growth in urban centres?

Sensis publishes over 88 yellow pages and 55 white pages directories in Australia. They are the 6^th largest publisher in the world and part of Telstra. They also operate the primary online directory in Australia www.yellowpages.com.au

With so much negative press circulating against the yellow pages, Sensis had bought in to the myth that the yellow pages print was dead and that the world was moving online. This resulted in cut backs in areas that hurt their customers, employees, distribution, and the brand. The information pages were removed and the product reduced. They set up discounting programs. The more their sales people talked about price, the more the customer became price conscious. 14% of their revenue was discounted. Everyone throughout their organization had lost belief in the product.

Then one day, this all female management team, said: Wait a minute! Look at the usage research and the ROI. It is strong. They gathered to scrutinize the data further. Australia, they discovered was similar to the US in that the larger markets  in this case Sydney and Melbourne – were the biggest challenges. But the research showed quite distinctly that life events result in heavy usage of the print yellow pages and the users don’t even think of the yellow pages as advertising. They are looking for information rich ads and lots of choices. From these great moments great opportunity was born.

The Sensis management team became agents of change and they were vigilant. They identified the key things that would make the biggest difference. They recognized that their front line was their bottom line and that their sales people were heroes. This meant revamping the sales compensation plan and implementing one that had buy-in from sales staff. Flawless execution was also very important and made all the difference. They eliminated discounts in one-year and focused on training and selling the value story. In essence they grew customer and employee satisfaction proving the adage that its not just about revenue but about people. They achieved 10% growth in the metro areas and overall growth of 2.5%. They are positioned for 4.8% growth for 2008.

Print is not dead. There is great opportunity to extend the directory category and for continued growth in the yellow pages print product. As Carol Johnson , COO of Sensis said:  We owe it to our consumers, communities, advertisers, and to the 60,000 people who work in this global industry to embrace these opportunities”.

Will other publishers follow Sensis  example? It is not everyone who can let go of ego and shed their skin in public for the greater good. Innovation, while invigorating is also painful. Hats off to Sensis for sharing their story and proving that Believing is Succeeding.