Mobiya, which specialises in mobile classified advertising, has signed an agreement to provide an SMS classified ads service for Belgiums free daily newspaper, Metro.
Metro readers will be able to place classified ads in the paper by sending a text message to a shortcode. If they have a cameraphone, they can also send a picture. Their ad appears in the paper with a unique ad code, and is also immediately published on Metros website. Anyone interested in the ad simply sends an SMS reply, quoting the ad code. The reply triggers the exchange of mobile numbers between the two parties who are then free to contact each other.
Mobiyas application suite has been developed specifically to manage offline and online mobile classified advertising. Mobile user-generated content is sent to the Mobiya Classified Gateway application which aggregates, formats and publishes the content for the media publisher. Mobiya offers a fully-managed, user-generated mobile content service, that includes billing, technology infrastructure, messaging customisation and management control for cross-platform classified advertising, in print, online, television and mobile.
Mobiya believes the explosion of mobile user-generated content, combined with the expansion of mobile advertising, will disrupt the business model of traditional classified advertising. The Anglo-Belgian technology start-up recently received 250,000 (170,000) funding from an international group of private investors.
We want to capture new classified revenue streams but dont have enough knowledge of the mobile industry,” says Metro Belgium General Manager, Monique Raaffels. We want to offer a self-service environment for our users, and automate the back-office internally, but dont have the time to develop a classified advertising platform. Thats why we are collaborating with Mobiya. The interaction between online and offline services fits perfectly with our progressive image and the reader profile of our paper.
Mobiya CEO Martin Davis adds:
We are transforming the business model of traditional classified advertising and capturing the explosion of mobile user-generated content, combined with the introduction of mobile advertising. We expect the mobile classifieds industry to be worth $4.2 billion (2.1 billion) in 2010. The traditional classifieds market is saturated. New business models built around SMS and MMS are the future.