Alcatel-Lucent is entering the mobile advertising space with a hosted service that matches advertising inventory with targeted mobile audiences. 
The new Alcatel-Lucent “Optism” solution is designed to help mobile operators rapidly introduce an opt-in program that delivers SMS and MMS ads from leading global brands to specific mobile users.
Alcatel-Lucent will broker relationships between mobile operators and advertisers, greatly simplifying the media selling process for aggregated operator inventory. Its new “Optism” media arm will build commercial relationships with global brands and agencies, creating an ecosystem to facilitate the sale of aggregated media inventory across multiple mobile operators. To create this media agency and hosted advertising platform, Alcatel-Lucent has hired talent from global advertising agencies.
Alcatel-Lucent said its model will use permission-based messaging, where the subscriber specifically enables advertising messages to be sent, most likely in return for a discount, a free download or other incentive.The advertising would be tailored to their specific interests and lifestyles, such as discount offers on products and services. Advertising would come in the form of an SMS or MMS and could be tied into location-based systems, although not necessarily. By sharing this platform across multiple operators and making it available to all devices and mobile operating systems, Alcatel-Lucent believes it can scale to service to reach a huge audience.
Orange Austria is already planning to use this system and Alcatel-Lucent confirmed that other operators are also evaluating.
“Mobile operators have a huge role to play in the growth of mobile advertising,” said Thomas Labarthe, Vice President of Mobile Advertising at Alcatel-Lucent. “Our solution unlocks that potential and finally creates a compelling proposition for operators, advertisers and, importantly, subscribers.”http://www.alcatel-lucent.com
