Mobile advertising takes off in Egypt with Mobinil using Alcatel-Lucent's technology

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it had entered into an agreement with Mobinil – Egypt’s operator – to provide Egyptian mobile users with access to interactive marketing campaigns tailored to their personal interests, based on the Optism mobile marketing solution. Today, Mobinil has well over one million subscribers opted in to its ‘Mobinil Ads’ service.
Leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism mobile marketing solution, Mobinil’s customers are in the driving seat and can share their interests and preferences with Mobinil to receive ads and offers from their favourite products, thus getting interesting and relevant news, offers and discounts from brands they really care about. Brand communications are delivered via interactive text (SMS) and rich (MMS) dialogues that use question-and-answer exchanges, literally putting the brand in the hands of mobile subscribers. This is a gold mine for advertisers – who are now able to set up true conversations with a highly-targeted, receptive audience – leading to higher response rates and less wastage of advertising spend.
Clearly, the Egyptian people recognize the value of receiving relevant content from the brands they like – right on the mobile phones in their pockets. Next to the one million subscribers milestone, figures that were released at today’s Cairo Cristal Club Seminar show that-
• 41{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10} of the opted-in subscriber base is between 15-24 years old; 22{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10} between 25-34 years
• The top categories that show the highest interest rates include: sports (30{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10}), music (23{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10}), fashion (23{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10}) and technology (14{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10})
• Response rates to advertising campaigns run on Mobinil’s “Mobile Ads” service ranged from 12{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10} to as high as 54{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10}
Ahmed Saber, Head of Mobile Advertising, Mobinil, “Since the introduction of our Mobile Advertising service, we have been able to further increase our relevance to end-users, brands and advertising agencies. Thanks to the Optism advanced dialogue mechanism – over text and rich messages – we are effectively able to literally put brands in the hands of our mobile subscribers; brands they want to receive information about. On the other side of the spectrum, we are in a unique position to provide brands and advertising access to – and a better understanding of – their potential customer base.”
Hani Ramzi, Director, Alcatel-Lucent Optism, “We look forward to extending Mobinil’s mobile marketing service to millions of other customers in the coming months. Together, we will make Egypt a showcase of how mobile marketing is changing the way in which brands and their end-customers communicate, leveraging the proven strengths and capabilities of mobile service providers.”