Murdoch wants piece of mobile marketing pie

Maria Nguyen In another sign that Rupert Murdoch is putting his money where his mouth is and embracing all things digital, News Interactive is making its first serious foray into mobile marketing on December 12 to capture a slice of the $380m mobile marketing industry.
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News Interactive, the digital arm of Murdoch’s media empire, has teamed up with Legion Interactive, Dialect and Telstra’s 3G iMode network, to launch a mobile service that will leverage News Limited’s massive newspaper, Internet and broadcast content. The “Mobile Club” concept is being described as the “jewel in the crown” of News Interactive’s strategy to mobilise its content and brands across the handsets of more than 18million Australian mobile users. On December 12, the company will launch Mobile Club on its news portal, www.news.com.au, which will deliver personalised news and entertainment content to mobile phones. News Interactive business manager of digital and premium services, Rick Gleave, said the service was still being developed but is expected to launch with mobile ringtones, games and wallpaper downloads on December 12 through Telstra’s 3G network iMode. News, sport, entertainment and classifieds content will be rolled out in the new year, with horoscopes, racing tips and stock market information also slated as potential services.Virgin Mobile will offer News Interactive’s content from December and Hutchison from March 2006. Optus and Vodafone are still in talks to come onboard. But aren’t most of these news services already offered by other media groups? Yes, but noone has taken an “integrated approach” Gleave said.“No other media company is really doing mobile marketing from a fully integrated prospect. We have a massive print and online presence and the mobile phone is really a tool to drive traffic around all our business properties—to our offline products as well, for example through mobile phone promotions that direct them back to the newspapers or into the retail stores of our advertisers,” he explained. Gleave said News Interactive would be taking a careful approach to mobile marketing and this was only the first step. “We won’t rush into this. We only get one shot with these guys and if we bugger it up they won’t come back to us so we want to ensure we engage them properly, so it’s going to take a bit of time, it’s not happening straight away. We’re the biggest news player on the block, there are more than 18 million SMS enabled phones in this country and the mobile marketing industry is worth $380m, but we don’t have any of that action at the moment”.For advertisers, Gleave said there were opportunities to get involved in more sophisticated and “sexier” mobile promotions that integrate News Limited’s offline and online reach. “For example we might have a promotion with a massive FMCG or retail client where we get our customers to go into the store with the client’s logo that they’ve downloaded from our website…we have some promotions launching before Christmas which we can’t reveal but it will involved print, online and mobile elements. This is the sexier stuff where we have truly integrated promotions.” Late news: Ninemsn today announced the full acquisition of Australian mobile marketing company 5th Finger Pty Ltd. According to Ninemsn CEO Martin Hoffman, the purchase of 5th Finger acknowledges a key trend in Australian media and technology. “Convergence is real for media and marketers. The mobile phone has become a critical distribution tool for content, rich communications and advertising. Combining the knowledge of Ninemsn and 5th Finger will deliver a broad range of innovative and effective mobile marketing solutions for clients,” he said.Financial terms for the acquisition were not disclosed.
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