Helsinki, Finland, 12 April 2011 - Xtract, a leading provider of advanced analytical solutions powered by Social Intelligence, today announced that the Turkish operator Avea has signed an agreement to use Xtract’s industry leading Social Links solution.

Social Links will not only help Avea to reduce subscriber churn with proactive retention campaigns, but it also provides valuable insight regarding the social interactions within the subscriber base.  Operators can use this insight to create and deliver propositions that are highly relevant to their customer base.

Social Links provides mobile operators with the opportunity to identify and reach out to likely “churners” with personalised marketing messages.  This can be done in timely manner, even before the customer has even made the decision to leave the network and can still be reached. This is a key element of any churn reduction strategy and is possible due to the application of sophisticated, advanced analytics. Ultimately enabling the operator to predict the future behaviour of subscribers with a far higher degree of accuracy than ever before.

“Xtract’s solution is an integral complement to our in-house tools preventing churn at the very early stages, as well as identifying the social behaviours of our subscribers” commented Bulent Velioglu, CRM Director of Avea.

Mika Lindholm, CEO of Xtract added: “We are confident that the combination of our industry proven advanced analytics which are powered by Social Intelligence and  Avea’s innovative marketing campaigns will ensure that Avea achieves superior results and realises their business objectives related to customer lifecycle and value management.”

About Xtract and Social Links

Xtract is the leading provider of advanced analytic solutions powered by Social Intelligence, dramatically improving the mobile operator’s customer lifecycle and value management processes.  This is achieved by enabling mobile operators to approach the right customers, with the right offer at the right time.

Xtract’s tools analyse the wealth of customer profile and service usage data to predict the propensity of subscribers, and those in their social network to either churn or increase spend.

Social Links provides operators with new insights into how customers communicate with each other, and who are the most influential within their network and context, opening new and exciting opportunities for operator marketing teams. Xtract also provides advanced analytics solutions to other verticals, such as retail and finance.

About Avea

Avea, the sole GSM 1800 mobile operator of Turkey, was founded in 2004. Being driven by a spirit of innovation, Avea, the youngest operator of Turkey, has a nationwide customer base of 11.4 million as of third quarter of 2010. Offering services to 96.61% of Turkey’s population through its next generation network, the company is growing fast both in the corporate and individual services with the brand “Avea” and constantly investing in technology and infrastructure as well as in its management and more than 2,700 employees.

Helsinki, Finland – 17 December 2010 – Xtract, a leading provider of social intelligence powered advanced analytics solutions, today announced that a leading Russian operator, the Metropolitan Branch of OJSC MegaFon has signed an agreement to use Xtract’s market leadingSocial Links solution. This solution will help MegaFon to analyze the behavior and interaction of mobile subscribers on its network, allowing them to identify key segments for effective marketing campaigns for improved customer retention.

Social Links provides mobile operators, such as MegaFon, with a comprehensive opportunity to define segments, allowing them to maximize the effectiveness of campaigns for the retention of subscribers. The platform also allows operators to view and manage the activity on their desktop, giving them a deeper understanding of subscriber behavior. This in turn helps operators to make more informed decisions when choosing and creating marketing campaigns.

“We hope that implementation of Xtract’s Social Links solution will open up new opportunities for us – helping us to better engage with our customers and ensure our marketing campaigns are both focused and effective” commented Natalia Spitsyna, Commercial Director of the Metropolitan Branch of OJSC “MegaFon”.

Mika Lindholm, CEO of Xtract added: “We are pleased to work with MegaFon to offer them the advanced analytics capabilities powered by Social Links. We are confident that the combination of our technologies and expertise along with our innovative service offerings will help MegaFon to obtain a competitive advantage. ”
About Xtract Social Links and decision
Xtract is the leading provider of social intelligence powered advanced analytic solutions and services to mobile operators. Its tools analyze the wealth of customer profile and service usage data to predict the propensity of subscribers and those in their social network to either churn or increase spend, and influence others to do likewise. Consumer behavior is analyzed on a far deeper level than by using historical data alone. Its tools help operators gain insight into how customers communicate with each other, and who are the most influential on their network. Xtract also provides custom analytics solutions to other verticals, such as retail and finance, especially in the Nordic market.

MegaFon
MegaFon is a nationwide universal telecom operator, working across all segments of the telecommunications market. MegaFon was established in May 2002 and is the first and only operator that has deployed its own network across all regions of Russia. The Company and its subsidiaries have all necessary licenses and operate in all regions of Russia and the republics of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Tajikistan. MegaFon was the first operator in Russia to roll out the full commercial operation of a 3G network and is today the Russian leader in providing mobile Internet. It also ranks second in Russia as the operator with the highest number of active subscribers.
With the acquisition in June 2010 of one of the leading Russian backbone operators – Group Synterra – MegaFon entered the fixed line market for large government and corporate clients as well as fixed broadband services. Joint infrastructure MegaFon and Synterra are present in all regions of Russia and are associated with all members of the telecoms market particularly those involved with GSM 900/1800, 3G, VSAT, IP / MPLS, data centers and call centers..

In 2009, MegaFon became the general partner of the XXII Olympic Winter Games 2014 and XI Paralympic Winter Games 2014 in Sochi.

As of June 30, 2010, the major shareholders of MegaFon are the group companies of “AF Telecom Holding”, TeliaSonera and telecommunications holding, Altimo.

Xtract press contact:
Mikko Kestilä
Email: mikko.kestila@xtract.com
Tel:+358 20 749 8765
Elena Davidson
Email: edavidson@miliberty.com
Tel: +44 207 751 4444

MegaFon press contact:
Tatyana Ivanova, Press-secretary of “MegaFon” OJSC
Tel..: +7 495 980 1970; +7 926 442 5246,
Email: pr@megafon.ru
www.megafon.ru

The combined forces of eServGlobal’s PromoMax solution and Xtract’s Social Links service will provide
mobile network operators with the ultimate weapon to target socially profiled customers with real time
promotions, maximising investment and minimising churn.

PromoMax empowers operators to deploy individually targeted, diversified and timely promotions
quickly to market. Social Links integrates seamlessly with the PromoMax platform to provide
sophisticated advanced analytics, including social aspects of subscribers.

The 3D analytical profiling offered by Social Links provides the capability to not only predict the
behaviour of subscribers for a given campaign but also the potential to influence those around them.
Likely churners can be retained with a wide array of rewards, delivered in real time and for any type of
top‐up or usage.

PromoMax has been benchmarked for 50+ million subscribers and 300+ million daily service events; the
solution is currently running 20+ simultaneous active promotions at one of eServGlobal’s customers,
reaching peaks of 1.8 million rewards per day granted on a human real time mode.

“PromoMax and Social Links are a natural fit,” commented Craig Halliday, CEO, eServGlobal, “Both
solutions offer industry leading technology to empower the mobile network operator. We are excited to
develop a strong partnership with Xtract which will, in turn, bring our customers even greater value.”
“PromoMax and Social Links provide an end‐to‐end solution to mobile operators for implementing
successful customer value management strategies,” commented Mika Lindholm, CEO, Xtract, “Xtract
Social Links brings best‐in‐class advanced analytics for predicting behaviour of subscribers so that mobile
operators can approach subscribers proactively, while PromoMax brings the capability to deliver the
promotions real time and create dialogue with subscribers”.

Social Links exports the customer profiles to the PromoMax platform, tagged with the appropriate
promotion ID, allowing PromoMax to dynamically update the eligible customers for the relevant
promotion.

eServGlobal and Xtract have the flexibility and agility to offer customised solutions which best meet the
needs of the local market. With various licensing alternatives, including a SaaS based delivery model,
operators have the freedom to tailor a total solution to suit their needs.

About eServGlobal

eServGlobal specializes in Mobile Money solutions and Value‐Added Services (VAS), to help Telco Service
Providers increase their revenue and gain and maintain customer ownership.

eServGlobal invests heavily in product development, using carrier‐grade, next‐generation technology
aligned with the requirements of more than 60 customers in over 45 countries. For 24 years, mobile,
fixed, Internet and multiplay telco providers have used our capabilities to lead and innovate in their local
markets, leveraging their core assets and their trusted agent and subscriber relationships.

With 13 offices globally, eServGlobal provides full “end‐to‐end” and “any account to any account”
Mobile Financial Services and International Money Transfers. Our Value Added Services in promotions,
loyalty, messaging, and multiplay are focused around the transaction and enable service providers to
engage with the subscriber in a personalized and dynamic manner.

To reduce time‐to market and manage exposure to CAPEX, we now offer multiple licensing alternatives,
including SaaS‐based flexible, revenue‐share pricing. eServGlobal is listed on the Australian Securities
Exchange (ESV) and the London Stock Exchange AIM (ESG). More information at: www.eservglobal.com

For further information, please contact:

eServGlobal                        www.eservglobal.com
Alison Cheek, Communication Manager
alison.cheek@eservglobal.com
T: +33 6 87 96 77 46

Xtract                             www.xtract.com
Mikko Kestilä, VP of Customer Operations
mikko.kestila@xtract.com
T: +358 20 749 8765

FINLAND, 16 February, 2010 – Xtract, the leading provider of social intelligence-based analytics solutions, announced today an upgrade to its flagship social intelligence platform, Social Links. Social Links enables network operators to analyse the behaviours and interactions of mobile subscribers within the network, helping them to monitor and identify the best targets for revenue generating targeted messaging campaigns. Key benefits of the new platform include product launch capabilities for totally new kinds of products, increased personalisation features and new dashboard reporting functionality, allowing operators to effectively monitor churn virality across the mobile network. Social Links is already helping operators worldwide and in one recent case gave the selected operator a percentage product take-up almost 4 times that of the competition.

Mobile subscribers increasingly seek to engage with more applications and enriched services. Industry analysts predict the app download market to generate revenue of up to $4.2 billion by 2013[1] and research predicts that mobile application store users will quadruple to more than 100 million in five years[2]. This presents a major revenue-generation opportunity for operators. On the other hand, churn continues to be a major threat, especially in volatile prepaid markets. Randomly or poorly targeted marketing will result in a lost opportunity in both cases. Xtract has seen several examples in prepaid markets, where incentivising subscribers, who were not going to churn, with campaign offers actually destroys secured revenue. Another recent phenomenon has been to launch new services to subscribers with SNA, but relying only on non-contextual influencers to drive the launch virally – leading to failure.

Xtract believes that successful targeting relies on the operator’s ability to analyse a combination of a mobile subscribers’ propensity to do something, combined with their influence within the fabric of the network. The analysis of mobile subscribers’ social context aware propensity to do something, combined with their influence has proven itself in Xtract’s Social Links platform. It allows operators to effectively harness key influencing factors of customer pull and target even subscriber groups that have traditionally been more challenging to reach, particularly the pre-paid market which makes up 77% of global subscriber share. Social Links also allows operators to benefit from the value of demographic prediction capabilities in targeting pre-paid subscribers, as well as the power of predictive social network analytics (SNA) in churn prevention, new product launches and the top-up marketing required for operators to retain a loyal pre-paid subscriber base.

“Over the past twelve months, we have witnessed a shift in industry perception in the value of social network analytics, as the idea has evolved from initial hype and buzz of conception through to a mature, valuable network asset. As a result, many operators are beginning to recognise the business benefits of analytics as a solution to unlocking the gates to previously untapped revenue y,” said Mika Lindholm, CEO, Xtract. “As leader in this continually developing space, Xtract is ideally placed to forge the way in driving increased awareness of its value and benefits. Our platform allows us to build further on the success of our pioneering technology, enabling mobile operators to expose and harness the value of subscriber network interactions and drive valuable revenue opportunities through a combination of greater understanding, sophisticated product marketing and targeted, personalised campaigns.”

The key benefits of Social Links 3.5 include:
• Product launch capability: Operators are able to use analytics for the launch of more targeted, novel kinds of products
• Tagging targets: The predictive analytics of Social Links produces a scoring list for campaign targeting. Social Links analyses subscribers in the target list, and targets with specific features can be tagged to further personalise messages, media and offers for smaller subgroups. New dashboard reporting on churn virality in the operator’s network.

1) Yankee Group, ‘Forecasting The U.S. Mobile App Gold Rush’, www.yankeegroup.com
2) In Stat, ‘The Apps Store is Born: Smartphones Enable New Marketing and Advertising Opportunities Worldwide’, www.instat.com

About Xtract and Social Links
Xtract is the leading provider of Social Intelligence based analytic solutions and services to mobile operators. Its tools analyse the wealth of customer profile and service usage data to predict the propensity of subscribers and those in their social network to either churn or increase spend, and influence others to do likewise. Consumer behavior is analysed on a far deeper level than by using historical data alone, also gaining insight into and understanding how customers communicate with each other, and who are the most influential in the network. Xtract also provides custom analytics to other verticals especially in the Finnish market. The core offering is dynamic segmentation based on rich data feeds, with other applications include optimization and fraud detection.

Xtract Contact:
Sari Aapola
Email: Sari.Aapola@xtract.com

PR Agency Contacts:
Chrissie McGoldrick
Email: cmcgoldrick@miliberty.com
Tel: 00 44 207 751 4444

Elena Dunn
Email: edunn@miliberty.com
Tel: 00 44 207 751 4444

Jarkko Utriainen, head of business intelligence at DNA says: “This is a revolutionary solution for customer insight. It helps us increase our marketing efficiency by harnessing the viral effects within social networks. At the same time, deploying the solution as an on-demand service that is hosted by Xtract saves us cost, resources and time in implementation.”

Xtract CEO Timo Laaksonen says: “Operators need to make their marketing messages and methods less about ‘them’ and more about the subscriber. With Xtract, campaigns become more engaging, spreading through the operator’s subscriber base virally. Offering social intelligence as a service means lower initial costs for the operator, getting it up and running more quickly, and enables using the service flexibly wherever marketers are based.”

Social Links On-Demand is a new delivery channel for Xtract’s flagship solution Social Links. It helps operators gain a unique three-dimensional picture of its subscribers for use in more targeted marketing. Social Links analyses behavioural, demographic and social network data from subscribers in an anonymized form thus protecting privacy.

Social Links On-Demand key components include: social network analytics, data warehouse/data storage, database maintenance/filing, and infrastructure services (virus protection and firewall). Operators can revolutionise strategies such as churn management based upon the service’s three-dimensional subscriber profiling.

Xtract press contact
Emily McDaid
emily@hatch-pr.com
+44 7748 6333 55

DNA press contact
Helena Melamies
Helena.Melamies@dna.fi

Helsinki, Finland and London, England — 20 May 2009 – From today, Xtract will offer its flagship social intelligence product, Social Links, as a service, while the software licensing model still remains fully supported. Called Social Links On-Demand, it enables mobile operators to cash in on the social networking phenomenon for targeted, viral marketing on a pay-as-you-go service model.

The On-Demand model means minimum upfront investment and no operational hassle. Xtract estimates that Social Links On-Demand is 74 per cent faster to set up than traditional in-house implementations and offers 39 per cent faster payback time.

Julien Theys, mobile industry analyst at Screen Digest, said: “Efficient analysis is key to leveraging the power of social networks and eventually monetising them through relevant content and advertising. An on-demand solution can provide access to social network intelligence that is light, flexible and financially less cumbersome than traditional software licenses. It is therefore ideally suited for operators who prefer not to invest heavily in in-house analytics and database marketing solutions and resources, especially in the current economic climate.”

Social Links On-Demand combines software, hardware, implementation, customer support, operations and maintenance in a bundled service, hosted by Xtract. This means operators don’t need to invest upfront in software licenses or hardware platforms. Social Links On-Demand is delivered via a service level agreement that best suits each operator’s business needs, e.g. dependent on the number of subscribers served, amount of data or level of security required. All data is processed anonymously and customer transaction results are processed in a way that complies with data security and privacy regulations.

Business users such as marketing and campaign managers are provided with a secure browser-based graphical user interface which they use to: view social intelligence dashboard reports and graphs; create Social Links analytics runs; define campaign targeting; configure and export target lists; and, view their community dynamics.

About Xtract Social Links
Social Links is the first commercial software that uses social network analytics to enable companies to leverage social intelligence in marketing. Social Links utilises anonymised subscriber transaction data to generate customer insight based on social intelligence, predict the behaviour of subscribers (e.g. for churn management and product up-sell/cross-sell) and to understand the network of influence between subscribers. Social Links is based on advanced analytics that dig deep into the granular communication patterns between subscribers to draw highly accurate profiles and targeting. Social Links has won several industry awards for being successfully deployed by top-tier mobile operators worldwide.

Social Links offers benefits for mobile operators’ marketers, campaign designers, product managers, analysts and CRM managers. The information provided is used in highly accurate targeting, and gaining customer insight for campaign and product planning. Social Links also supports subscriber lifetime valuation and campaign design.

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.

Xtract’s Social Links provides Flirtomatic with a dashboard-style view containing 3D profiles of its members. The 3D profiles comprise basic demographic data, behavioural data and social networking influence information. Influential community members can be targeted with campaigns, resulting in viral take-up throughout the community via crucial word-of-mouth marketing. This approach works two-fold, because influential members have both direct pull over purchasing decisions (by recommending products to their friends) as well as indirect pull (by friends’ desire to imitate or mimic their friends’ purchases).

Having gained this new level of customer insight, Flirtomatic plans to expand usage of Social Links later in 2009 to build a third-party advertising revenue stream. The attraction for third-party advertisers is the strength of the community, as well as the ability to pinpoint accurately described segments and influential members with relevant ads.

“The early results from customer segmentation are very insightful and exciting. We can now see considerable potential, as the business scales, to directly improve our revenues through a sophisticated view of our customers, their behaviour and the pattern of their relationships,” said Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic. “Xtract’s tool hands us an effective, powerful CRM solution. We’ll be expanding use of the tool following the completion of our US launch.”

Timo Laaksonen, CEO of Xtract said: “We ensure that Flirtomatic takes full advantage of its unique capability to understand better who their members are, what drives them and who are the most influential members for viral campaigning. The use of this intelligence for highly targeted promotions allows Flirtomatic to immediately boost sales of its value-added services.”

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 accurate targets for their campaigns. Xtract works with over 50 blue-chip companies with intensive customer data. Headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.

London: February 17th, 2009 – Gigafone, the leading mobile marketing solutions group, has announced that it has formed a partnership with Xtract, leader in social intelligence solutions for online and mobile applications, to provide a targeted and comprehensive mobile marketing platform for mobile operators, publishers, agencies and advertisers. Gigafone will utilise Xtract’s unique Social Links solution to provide marketers with a better view of whom, how and when their marketing is being consumed and to track campaign performance.

The new partnership promises to revolutionise the way advertisers traditionally target audiences. Xtract’s Social Links application identifies the social network structures within the customer base and finds the most influential people for marketers to target. When incorporated into Gigafone’s targeted mobile marketing solution, where consumers can choose the type of ads they want to receive in return for incentives such as discount vouchers or free mobile minutes, the result is a completely new level of customer experience and a tangible tool for increasing the effectiveness of targeted marketing activities and measuring return on investment.

Jouko Ahvenainen, vice president and co-founder of Xtract, said: “We wanted a partner that offered a solution that overcomes the last mile delivery problem of mobile marketing. Mobile marketing simply falls short at the last mile without the ability to capture user preferences and profiles in an engaging way. Gigafone’s full service mobile marketing solution fulfils this need and its established links in the mobile advertising ecosystem places us in a great position to take this proposition to market.”

Gregory Khaldey, President of Gigafone commented: “Xtract’s powerful offering greatly enhances our mobile marketing solution. Operators and marketers have been demanding clear metrics on advertising campaigns along with the ability to ‘add social’ to the mix for some time now. Our partnership with Xtract delivers on this and will provide real benefits to mobile operators and advertisers who are now able to evaluate return on investment and optimise future campaigns.”

Both Gigafone and Xtract will be exhibiting at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Gigafone at stand AV 16 and Xtract at IZ31 in Hall 7) from February 16 – 19.

About Gigafone

Gigafone, the mobile marketing solutions group, enables operators to monetise mobile marketing.

Gigafone’s RingMate platform enables operators to deliver targeted mobile content to end users on an opt-in basis. Ads are non intrusive and are displayed on the mobile screen when a voice call, text or multimedia message is received.

Gigafone employs more than 100 mobile technology and marketing experts around the world with offices in Russia, Asia-Pacific and Europe. It is a member of the Mobile Marketing Association and an Associate Member of GSMA.

For further information, please see: www.gigafone.com .

About Xtract
Xtract 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 marketing 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.
For further information, please see: www.xtract.com

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain — 16 February 2009 – Xtract announced today the newest version of its flagship social intelligence solution, Social Links 3.0. Social Links 3.0 comes with a new comprehensive graphical interface for operators to view and understand their subscribers’ social behaviour and utilise this intelligence for effective targeting of marketing and to support strategic business decisions.

Xtract Social Links analyses social interactions, behaviour and demographic data that mobile operators and online companies have on their customers and members, to create accurate, automated consumer profiles. These profiles are used for effective and personalised marketing which is a necessity in today’s business environment.

“Digital data is one of the most powerful assets mobile operators have and Xtract helps to monetise it. Social Links can revolutionise operator marketing and CRM operations with insightful customer intelligence that takes the social dimension into account. Leveraging this intelligence, operators can deliver marketing that is personal, relevant and compelling to their subscribers,” says Timo Laaksonen, CEO of Xtract.

Social Links is a unique customer intelligence solution that sharpens targets for effective marketing campaigns to prevent churn, launch and cross-sell new products and acquire new customers. With the new dashboard style interface, in an easy and visual way, mobile operators will benefit the following:

• Understand and utilise social intelligence on subscriber groups to get more relevant support for strategic business decisions

• Find out how influential subscribers, the Alphas, differ from other subscribers and utilise that information for churn, cross-sell and up-sell campaigns

• Calculate the social monetary value of your subscribers to support the subscriber valuation with individual’s monetary influence on others

• Measure the actual effect of your viral marketing campaign including the viral effect

• Get social intelligence enabled insight on prepaid customers’ demographics for targeting them with more relevant offers

• View and predict churn and its viral effect – for taking action early to prevent churn before it actually happens.

The Social Links 3.0 graphical interface is easily customisable and offers vast possibilities for customer insight. The new version will be available for first customer deliveries at the end of March 2009.

End user data privacy in Social Links
Data privacy is an integral part of Xtract’s working practices. The Social Links with its standard modules complies with the strictest data privacy policies. A stand-alone module makes sure that all individual level information is made anonyms and all the results are categorised into groups relevant for marketing.


About Xtract – showcasing at the Mobile Innovations Zone at Mobile World Congress

Xtract delivers solutions 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 solutions are automated, self-learning and capable of analysing billions of customer transactions. They make complexity simple with easy to use and actionable interface for marketers and advertisers to define accurate targets for their campaigns. Xtract works with over 50 blue-chip companies with intensive customer data. Headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.

Providing Mobile Subscriber Privacy Today
Xtract Social Links is the first commercial software that enables users to leverage social intelligence in their marketing actions. By default, all customer data is automatically anonymised when imported to Social Links, thereby all data used in analytics is always anonymous.

Xtract’s methodology, defined as ’3D user profiling’, maps users against categories of interest, rather than making individual data visible to third parties, thus ensuring the highest levels of privacy. The cornerstone of Xtract’s approach is that there is no need to link the results back to subscriber data that contains sensitive information, such as what number has been called. All subscribers are linked to profiles, classes, and score levels based on predictive models and profile characters.

Initiative for Industry Standards for Privacy in Mobile Marketing
To highlight the opportunity that the mobile channel can provide for highly personal and relevant advertising, Xtract has decided to set up a forum on privacy for the mobile marketing industry. This group will promote the adoption of industry-wide standards that ensure the highest levels of subscriber privacy.

Jouko Ahvenainen, Vice President and Co-founder of Xtract, said: “Using analytics tools, mobile operators do not need to mine data directly from individual accounts and so analytics tools provide the very foundation for privacy that users demand. Customer details are kept hidden, with the data always anonymised. Without using analytics tools such as Xtract, one could imagine a world where all mobile subscribers are blanketed with irrelevant ads and promotions that are useless to most of the recipients.”

Timo Laaksonen, CEO of Xtract said: “Aggregate data is a key asset that is underutilised in mobile today, and can unlock the next, more sophisticated, iteration of mobile advertising. We don’t support methods that use subscriber data directly for targeted marketing, as some social network operators in mobile and internet have tested. We recommend that mobile operators and social internet communities use data aggregates and behavioural data patterns to gain a better understanding of their customer base, instead of making user data visible coming from the network level. ”

Xtract also addresses six points for mobile marketing privacy in its ‘Brands Need People, People Need Brands’ whitepaper, available on www.xtract.com.