3ple Upgrades Mercury with Mobile Video Ads

Mobile Multimedia company 3ple-Media has enhanced its award winning Mercury mobile multimedia platform to include the embedding of advertising into mobile video clips and video streams.
The new functionality enables the insertion of pre-roll, post-roll and in-stream advertising, all customizable according to the requirements of the advertiser and the type of inventory in use. Moreover, the embedded advertising is interactive; for example a post-roll call to action can be clicked on to take the participant to a follow-on mobile multimedia experience, such as a mobile site, a new video stream, or an SMS/MMS push of information to the handset. This integrates mobile video advertising into the wider digital marketing mix, while providing immediate metrics to the advertiser, content provider and mobile operator.
3ple-media notes that Internet video advertising is now the fastest-growing online advertising sector. In 2007, the US Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC reported the US online video market at $324 million. They expect this to rise to $505m in 2008 and annual growth to reach 78.9% in 2012. Concurrently, most new mobile phones are mobile data-capable and broadband on mobile has finally arrived. Recent research carried out by Kelsey Group shows that 1 in 5 people in the US & Western Europe now own a Smartphone.   
The richer and more engaging the user experience, the higher the acquisition and conversion potential for mobile advertising, says 3ple-Media CCO, StJohn Deakins. Consumption of video online has become mass market and consumers are increasingly taking this behaviour to the mobile screen. Interestingly the current economic climate may actually accelerate the trend, as in past downturns, consumers have increased spend on entertainment like movies while reducing big ticket expenditure. When subsidized with advertising, mobile video is the ultimate in affordable, personal entertainment. 
The Mercury mobile multimedia platform provides an intuitive interface for mobile multimedia service creation, compilation, advertising management, distribution, tracking and billing. User accounts are customized for third parties, who then distribute content and advertising via a variety of mobile data channels such as SMS, MMS, WAP, USSD and video, all of which are included on the modular platform. 
Multimedia content is automatically formatted and can be dynamically routed according to the capabilities of the receiving device. The Mercury DataTrack and ViralTrack modules provide real- time reporting of content and advertising consumption as it is received, acted on and forwarded around a network. The SubProfile database provides aggregated profiling information based on preferences and behaviour for accurate profiling and efficient targeting. Mercury applications such as SMS2MMS and MyTV, a user-generated video content portal, provide additional rich media advertising inventory to the Mobile Operator.
The Mercury mobile multimedia platform is a winner of the GSMA innovation award.