Yahoo! offers mobile blueprint to advertisers and publishers

The Internet giant has rolled out its global mobile content development platform called Blueprint in India. It is targeting content owners and advertisers who are looking to build their mobile destinations

Yahoo! India has introduced its global mobile content development platform called Blueprint in India. The platform will enable publishers, content owners, advertisers and small and medium sized enterprises to create their mobile presence in the form of mobile sites and branded applications.

Under the Blueprint platform, the Internet giant will provide a free software package to brands and content owners, which, once installed on the computer, will help them develop the mobile sites or applications and also help them to host these on the mobile network.

The company claims that mobile sites and applications developed on the Blueprint platform will run on any GPRS enabled mobile handset in India. Around 70 million of the total 310 million mobile subscribers in India own GPRS enabled mobiles. It is estimated that only seven-11 million subscribers are active mobile Internet users.

How will the Blueprint platform help publishers and Yahoo monetise the mobile content? Yahoo will help the content owners to monetise their mobile sites or applications by inserting ads inside them.

Speaking to afaqs!, Vishal Maheshwari, senior director, connected life, Yahoo! India, says, “The content owner can decide to do the ad sales of the mobile content on his own or rope in our mobile ad network to get advertisers for it. For instance, we are responsible for the ad sales of the mobile site of Idea Cellular.” If a publisher uses the Yahoo mobile ad network, then he has to share the revenue earned through the ads served by the mobile ad network with Yahoo.

Advertisers will be offered the option of display and text advertising and they can purchase ad inventory on cost per thousand ad impressions (CPM) and cost per click (CPC) basis to carry out pure brand building or lead generation campaigns. Advertisers who route their ads through the Yahoo mobile ad network will be allowed to target their consumers based on age, sex, location and mobile handset.

Talking of the effectiveness of the mobile ads served on sites created through the Blueprint platform, Matthias Kunze, director, mobile monetisation, connected life, Yahoo! Asia, tells afaqs!, “Globally, we receive a click through rate (CTR) of around 6-8 per cent on mobile ads served on sites.” This CTR is much higher than the average CTR of 0.5 per cent received by ads displayed on the online medium.

Although the Internet company is not ready to divulge any details on the type of advertisers it will be targeting for the mobile platform in India, Kunze says, “Globally, companies such as DBS Bank, Malaysian Airlines and Kellogg’s have advertised on the mobile content created through the Blueprint platform.”