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Several leading research organisations including the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) and Juniper Research have recently released reports on the current mobile advertising market and its future.

This year represents the first time truly quantitative research has become available on mobile advertising, and the numbers indicate conflicting trends in this nascent market, points out Xtract, providers of social intelligence software.

For example,
• The first expenditure study on mobile advertising in the UK, taken by the IAB and PWC, showed that the mobile ads market is growing 99.2% year on year, even when advertising in other forms of media dramatically decreased in the same period
• The huge growth in mobile advertising has been attributed to its exceptional targeting, immediacy and return on investment, says the IAB
• It also showed an impressive 44% of 16 - 24 year olds have checked social networking profiles on their mobile phones, suggesting younger generations are at the ready for mobile web and advertising
• Source: [http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/mobileadvertisingexpenditure120509.html]
However,
• Juniper Research’s study released in June indicates that by 2014, mobile advertising would still only account for up to 1.5% of total global adspend, despite mobile advertising offering ’substantially higher’ response rates than advertising in other media

“There is clearly a conflicting trend at present,” said Jouko Ahvenainen, co-founder and VP at Xtract. “Mobile ads are the most interactive, compelling forms of advertising for many brands, and offer far better response and click through rates when they are done well. And usage of the mobile web is growing rapidly. Other forms of media are struggling to sell advertising, in particular newspapers, and are shutting down. Yet even in five years time, leading industry bodies predict that mobile advertising will remain a mere drop in the ocean in terms of overall global ad spend.”

“This is leaving the industry scratching its head about how to cash in on the promise of mobile advertising. One thing that we constantly hear from advertisers and marketers, who hold the purse strings, is that they need far more intricate levels of targeting than are generally available today; measurability; accountability; and clearly defined ROI, in order to choose mobile over other media platforms. Clearly, highly-targeted forms of advertising that can be measured back are the way to continue the upwards trend in mobile ads. If marketers can’t see exactly who they are targeting, and understand the likely behaviours of these customers socially, they can’t trust the most personal advertising channel available today, and mobile will continue to be insignificant in the overall global ads picture.”

More information about Xtract’s social intelligence approach, on the frontiers of targeting in the mobile advertising market, can be found at www.xtract.com.

Press contact:
Emily McDaid (emily(at)hatch-pr.com | +44 7748 6333 55)

Helsinki, Finland and London, England — 8 June 2009 - Xtract marketing director Arlinda Sipila will be chairing and speaking at the IIR Business & Telecoms Business Intelligence event this week in Amsterdam.

Today, Sipila will chair the pre-conference workshop, “Subscriber data – A goldmine of opportunity for mobile operator marketing.” The agenda for the session includes the following talks:

10.00 Subscriber social networks, social Influence and 3D customer profiling
10.30 Making it easy for the operator to utilise social intelligence for business
11.30 Monetising with social intelligence

In addition, on day two of the conference, Wednesday 10 June, Sipila will deliver a presentation titled “Social network intelligence: Utilising customer data effectively in marketing,” at 10:20am. The presentation will discuss topics including:

• The ‘active’ footprints that users leave behind in social media and how they can be analysed for improved, more individually relevant, marketing and advertising
• Mining the stories that customer data can tell an advertiser, and the sometimes-competing goal of maintaining user privacy

To schedule a one-to-one briefing with Xtract, or to obtain a copy of the presentations, please use the press contact details below.

About IIR Business Intelligence Conference
Held in the Hotel Okura, Amsterdam, Netherlands from Monday 8 June to Thursday 11 June, the conference will include speakers from companies including O2, Orange, Amdocs, Vodafone and Xtract. The programme will focus on practical strategies currently being deployed worldwide to optimise the planning, building and improvement of business intelligence.

About Xtract
Xtract (www.xtract.com) refines social interaction, behaviour and demographic data to create accurate 3D user profiles. These profiles for the first time utilise data as a dynamic tool in the day-to-day marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of campaigns and advertising. Xtract’s Social Links is an automated, self-learning solution capable of analysing billions of mobile transactions with easy to use and actionable tools for operators to define accurate target groups for their marketing campaigns.

Press contact
Emily McDaid
emily(at)hatch-pr.com

Helsinki, Finland and London, England — 29 May 2009 - Xtract co-founder Jouko Ahvenainen will deliver the opening speech at London’s Mobile Web 2.0 Summit on 3rd June, at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge. In his presentation, titled “Mobile 2.0 Business - how to fund and monetise the new ecosystem,” Jouko will discuss how mobile and web operators can make money from social media and the 2.0 revolution, while steering clear of strategies that don’t work such as contextual advertising on social media platforms.

Jouko’s presentation will discuss:
- Delivering advertising over ‘hot’ media that users get involved with, including Wikipedia and Facebook, versus ‘cold’ media such as one-way broadcasting
- Social networkingis about people, not content. Social sites are places to make connections with others, and advertisers must understand the people behind the networks to best leverage the opportunities they provide
- The ‘active’ footprints that users leave behind in social media and how they can be analysed for improved, more individually relevant, marketing and advertising
- 2.0 monetisation and the sometimes-competing goal of maintaining user privacy

About Mobile Web 2.0 Summit
Speakers from companies including Xtract, Orange, Microsoft, Admob, Flirtomatic, Symbian and Telefonica will help lead the two-day conference, focusing on monetising the next generation of the mobile web, via a roundtable format.

About Xtract
Xtract (www.xtract.com) refines social interaction, behaviour and demographic data to create accurate 3D user profiles. These profiles for the first time utilise data as a dynamic tool in the day-to-day marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of campaigns and advertising. Xtract’s Social Links is an automated, self-learning solution capable of analysing billions of mobile transactions with easy to use and actionable tools for operators to define accurate target groups for their marketing campaigns.

Press contact
Emily McDaid
Hatch PR
emily(at)hatch-pr.com

With less than three week’s experience at Xtract I can already say that this company is working in an incredibly exciting area – especially for anyone involved in marketing. For years I’ve listened to discussions and read about customer insight, and working to delight customers through real understanding. Yet, marketing has not changed dramatically. Now the emergence of social media is actually forcing a turnaround – consumers are really becoming subjects instead of objects, and the Importance of word-of-mouth is becoming clear to all marketers. I feel privileged to work as part of this.

I’m Sari Aapola, and I was recently appointed VP for Product Management at Xtract. My background is in BtoB marketing and product marketing, and mostly in telecoms and software companies such as Tecnomen and Basware. I’ve recently spent two years in Germany, and one of my projects there was writing a book called “Sustainable Thought Leadership – how to build awareness and credibility to support business”. In it I present a model especially for growth companies with great innovations on becoming thought leaders in their category and target group. I’m now thrilled to work in a thought leader company, promoting its ambition to take its innovative solutions to benefit customers. The book will be out in a few weeks’ time…

A new version of Xtract Social Links was introduced at the Mobile World Congress in February. It includes great improvements, especially as its new interface helps marketers to take full advantage of the product. For the further development of our offering, I’m looking forward to a dialogue with our customers, real insight that will help us delight our customer over and over again.

Helsinki, Finland – 30 October, 2008 – Xtract announced today that the GSM Association (GSMA) selected its Social Links solution as a top finalist for the 2009 Mobile Innovation Global Awards Competition – APAC Tournament. The Mobile Innovation Global Awards Competition encourages breakthrough technology, applications and services in the mobile industry by bringing together innovative mobile products, industry investors and mobile operators. Xtract with its Social Links solution, a social marketing intelligence product, has been selected as one of three finalists in the ‘Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform’ category.

Timo Laaksonen, CEO of Xtract said, “We are very proud to be recognised by the GSMA for the second time this year. This shows again that the operator community is starting to utilise their rich user data for marketing, making it more flexible, cost efficient, accurate and relevant to their customers. With Social Links, mobile operators can utilise their marketing budgets more effectively to tackle churn, acquire new customers and launch new products to the market. Operators that have already adopted Social Links are gaining tangible returns on their marketing investment right from the start of taking the solution into use.”

Xtract was a finalist for the 2008 Mobile Innovation Global Award Competition at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last February, and has now been recognised for the second time for the APAC tournament.

About Xtract Social Links
Xtract Social Links is the first carrier-grade product that analyzes customers’ real social networks from massive amounts of calls and messaging data. It utilizes this information to better predict the behaviour of customers in operators’ networks. Social Links can be extended with its add-on modules that are designed for specific business applications including: customer insight, customer acquisition, product marketing and customer loyalty. Social Links has already been successfully deployed by several top-tier mobile operators worldwide with very positive results. Xtract’s customers range from top-tier operators such as T-Mobile to innovating challengers such as Blyk.

About Xtract
Xtract delivers software products for social marketing and advertising intelligence. The company refines social interaction, personal behaviour and demographic data to create accurate 3D user profiles. These profiles for the first time enable companies to utilise data as a dynamic tool in the day to day business of marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of digital advertising, viral campaigns and predictive churn management. Xtract’s products and solutions are automated, self-learning and capable of analysing billions of customer transactions. They make complexity simple with easy to use and actionable tools for marketers and advertisers to define and manage their campaigns. Xtract works with over 50 blue-chip companies with intensive customer data. Headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.

Meet us at GSMA Mobile Asia Congress Mobile Innovations Zone

Benoît Méli fait un reportage sur les tendance du marketing digital au salon Online Marketing Düsseldorf, où il y interview trois “acteurs européens innovants”, l’un des trois étant Xtract. Sa traduction décrit clairement notre approche:

“Notre approche est différence de l’approche traditionnelle du marketing digital, car nous ne nous basons pas sur les contenus d’une page Web ou des résultats de recherche, mais sur les comportements des internautes sur les sites du Web social.”

En effet, notre solution analyse les comportements sociaux des internautes pour trouver les utilisateurs Alpha, qui sont les influenceurs des sites en question. Ca fait plaisir de lire news sur Xtract en francais!

London, UK and Helsinki, Finland – July 8, 2008: Xtract, the leader and innovator in social advertising intelligence today announced that it has closed its series B round of funding with EUR 7,5 Million ($11.74M) from leading early-stage technology investors Creandum, ETF III advised by Eqvitec Partners and InnovationsKapital.

Xtract enables mobile and online companies to refine their customer data creating highly accurate 3 Dimensional profiles combining social interactions, behaviour and demographic information. It answers a crucial need in the advertising industry by making the advertising in social media and mobile effective. By using Xtract, customers have seen the average ad income increase with as much as 82% and in mobile campaigns response rates have increased, on an average, with 30%.

Staffan Ingeborn, Managing Investment Director of InnovationsKapital comments: “Xtract is a very exciting company with a unique proposition for targeting of digital advertising. Its solutions have been shown to create substantial value for its customers, and we believe that Xtract is very well positioned to become a winner and a leader in this space.”

Xtract works with over 50 companies with intensive customer data ranging from global leaders such as Nokia, T-Mobile and Vodafone to innovative challengers such as BLYK and Flirtomatic. Xtract makes complexity simple and actionable via a unique and patented set of products that based upon social interactions, behaviour data and other dataflow can create accurate and dynamic real-time customer profiles. Xtract can ensure delivery of the right audience to the right commercial message at the right time and accurately report on the effectiveness of any campaign. Something which up until now was not possible.

Xtract board member Juha Mikkola of Eqvitec Partners said: “This investment opportunity had a lot of demand and clearly marks the very interesting market and expansion opportunity that Xtract represents in the fast growing social intelligence market.”

“We are delighted to have added two new prominent investors, InnovationsKapital and Creandum in addition to our original investor ETF III advised by Eqvitec Partners. This investment round combined with an exceptional organic growth enables us to expand to new markets outside Europe,” says Kimmo Kiviluoto, CEO of Xtract.

About Creandum
Creandum is a Nordic venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology companies. The firm has 120 million Euros under management and is today the fastest growing independent partnership of its kind in the Nordic region. Creandum invests in innovative companies in high growth markets led by outstanding entrepreneurs. All investment professionals at Creandum have started companies or been part of successful startups. For more information, please visit www.creandum.com.

About Eqvitec Partners Oy
Eqvitec Partners Oy is one of the largest technology focused venture capital and private equity firms in Northern Europe. The company was founded in 1997 and employs 15 investments professionals in Helsinki and Stockholm. Eqvitec Partners currently advises 6 funds with the total capital base of 500 million Euros. The funds invest in technology companies in all phases from start-up to buyouts. At the moment the funds have investments in 40 companies and have carried out 35 exits. More information can be found at www.eqvitec.com.

About InnovationsKapital
InnovationsKapital is a leading independent venture capital firm in the Nordic region with capital commitments of EUR 317 million in four funds. Years of experience and a strong network within academia and industry enable InnovationsKapital to invest in successful early stage and growth companies. InnovationsKapital supports talented entrepreneurs to help them create successful high growth businesses. Since 1994, InnovationsKapital has made over 60 investments and a number of successful exits in the life sciences and technology sectors. For more information, please visit www.innkap.se.

About Xtract
Xtract is the global trusted partner and innovator in Social Advertising Intelligence.
We have the technology and competence to turn large user data into cash flow. Our solutions create accurate and automated consumer profiles for mobile and online advertisers based on social interactions, behavioural and demographic data.
Xtract operates across Europe and Asia, working with over 50 companies with intensive customer data ranging from global leaders such as Nokia, T-Mobile and Vodafone to innovative challengers such as BLYK and Fonecta. Headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland and London, UK. www.xtract.com