Telecom network operator Digicel is deploying ad control technology — that will damage advt business of Google, Yahoo and Facebook — at the network level to ensure a better experience to mobile customers.
Advertisements use as much as 10 percent of a customers’ data plan allowance. The Digicel strategy will allow mobile customers to browse the Internet and apps without interruption from advertising messages. The strategy will create challenges to several social media websites.
Digicel will be starting the service — running on an ad control technology — in Jamaica and rolling out to its other markets in the Caribbean and South Pacific in the coming months.
Digicel has tied up with Israeli start-up, Shine Technologies, to deploy Shine’s mobile ad control technology at the network level. Shine’s technology blocks display and video ads inserted by ad networks in both mobile browsers and apps.
Digicel is looking to tech companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook to enter into revenue sharing agreements in order to reinvest funds in network deployment. Currently, these companies do not pay to make use of the network and their services.
Latest figures from the ITU state that 43 percent of the global population has some form of regular access to the internet, but 4.2 billion people do not.
“Companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook talk a great game and take a lot of credit when it comes to pushing the idea of broadband for all – but they put no money in. Instead they unashamedly trade off the efforts and investments of network operators like Digicel to make money for themselves,” said Denis O’Brien, chairman of Digicel Group.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
