Cricinfo hopes mobile advertising will become a good source of revenue for it in the future.
To draw advertisers onto its WAP site (wap.cricinfo.com), Cricinfo has tied up with leading US-based mobile advertising network AdMob. (A WAP [wireless application protocol] site can be browsed on any mobile handset with GPRS connectivity.)
AdMob, an agency which brings together publishers and advertisers, gives Cricinfo access to its huge network of advertisers globally.
It “delivers ads globally for Cricinfo, and also allows advertisers to reach users in local markets.”
Till now, all of Cricinfo’s mobile content was consumer paid – through SMS requests for scores or downloading of games onto handsets. But with cricinfo’s WAP site doing very well (it has about 2 million page views a month across the world), they thought it was the right time to explore other models of revenue apart from SMS and mobile games. According to them the WAP site will generate revenues from advertisers and sponsors and contribute about 15 percent to Cricinfo Mobile’s worldwide revenues this year.”
Mobile advertising is the wave of the future with the mobile phone already overtaking the online medium in “click through rate” globally. (Click through rate is the ratio between number of ads served and the number of people actually clicking through it.)
Although in India advertisers have not really exploited the medium, he sees this changing in the days to come.
Source: Hindu Business Line
![View Sidhartha Bezbora (sidhartha[at]bezbora.com)'s profile on LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/img/webpromo/btn_viewmy_120x33.gif){kind=small}
