The invention relates to communications systems, and particularly to a method and a system for providing mobile communications services.
Mobile marketing is considered by advertisers as the next new channel to reach direct to the user by utilizing the core assets and characteristics of the mobile media: it being personal, “always on”, mobile and naturally forming groups of people who communicate actively with each other. These characteristics combined with social networks—based marketing approach of the Internet could form a very powerful base to execute marketing strategies.
In general, mobile marketing and advertising can be divided into the following four categories:
Today's mobile marketing is usually mostly based on push campaigns to opt-in consumer mobile number database, or pull campaigns that acquire mobile phone numbers from consumers. The most typical example of the pull campaign is the “text-to-win” campaign were, e.g., a soft drink bottle contains a short code to be sent via text message to the certain number. In return, the consumer receives a notification if they have won with the selected marketing message or series of messages being broadcasted to their mobile phones. Another popular method is direct advertisement done using text and picture messaging.
Consumers' willingness to receive and respond to advertisements or marketing messages in mobile environment is limited due to fact that they are already paying for the mobile service. In many situations the receiving of marketing information via a mobile channel is considered as a burden by these consumers leading to a dilution of the mobile marketing channel in respect to the brand owners.
There have been attempts to provide marketing messages in conjunction with extra benefits to consumers. Typically these are offered on the top of an existing mobile service thus generating extra complexity to the consumers by requiring to sign up to a separate service. Some of the mobile advertisement services, such as a banner advertisement in the WAP pages, are technically arranged in such a way that those actually generate more cost for the consumers in form of increased data cost than benefit of marketing message causing customer dissatisfaction.
In accordance with the aspects of the invention, there is provided a method and a system for providing mobile communications services.
According to an aspect of the invention, a method for providing mobile communications services comprises
According to another aspect of the invention, a mobile communications service provider system comprises
According to a further aspect of the invention, a computer readable storage medium, comprising program code which, when run on a computer system, causes execution of a procedure comprising
In the following the invention will be described in greater detail by means of exemplary embodiments with reference to the attached drawings, in which
In the Figures, same references symbols refer to similar structures or functions.
In the exemplary concept, the mobile communications service provider or operator is referred to as a Commercial Virtual Operator (CVO) 402 and the service concept is referred to as a Commercial Virtual Operator Network (CVON). The CVO is a virtual operator in a sense that while the users experience the CVO as a normal network operator, the CVO may not necessarily have got any mobile communications network of its own but it may lease or hire part or all of the required mobile network resources from a mobile communications network of another network operator 404 for business purposes of building a virtual operator which offers free or subsidized mobile communications services. As another approach, the example concept according to the invention may be run as a non-virtual operator model as well, so that all or some of the mobile communications network are owned by a party interested in offering free or subsidized mobile services for consumers. Example of such party could be a cellular operator/carrier who wants to build a sub-brand (a virtual network) or a special subscription model focusing on advertisement offerings. As another approach for CVO could be usage of any carrier (404) network as transport for the data, messaging and calls. In this type of arrangement CVO could offer services for any user of any network. As used herein the terms Commercial Virtual Operator (CVO) and Commercial Virtual Operator Network (CVON) are intended to refer any mobile communications service provider or operator providing free or subsidized mobile communications services, regardless of the ownership of various networks and network elements involved or regardless of the relations of various operators involved.
Referring to the exemplary concept shown in
A subscription agreement 414 may be made between the CVO 404 and a plurality of users or consumers 406 on free or subsidized mobile communications services in return of receiving marketing messages. The agreement 414 may include terms and conditions defining how many advertisements per time period the consumers have to receive, which messages they have to respond to, etc. An example of the number of advertisements per day may be 4 short messages (SMS) or multimedia messages (MMS) per day 7 days per week. An example of mobile communications services offered in return to consumer may be 100 minutes of voice service and 200 text messages and some data services. Technically the mobile communication services may be provided and the advertising messages delivered (416) via network operator's 404 network to consumers.
The free or subsidized mobile communications services offered as a reward to the users or consumers may be provided before, during and/or after said target users receive and/or react to the advertisement messages. The reward may be provided to the user in a single action or in a plurality of actions. Rewards given before receiving/reacting to advertisements may be different than rewards given after receiving/reacting to advertisements. A first reward may be a reward for joining/completing a subscription agreement. A reward given during receiving/reacting to advertisements may a free or subsidized communication or service relating to an advertisement, for example. The CVON may cancel (bill/charge afterwards) free or subsidized mobile communications services given beforehand if a user fails to meet the terms and conditions, e.g. receive or react to a predetermined number of advertisement messages.
Advertisers and brand owners 408 may make agreements 418 directly or via agent with the CVO. The agreement 418 is to deliver marketing messages to target consumers.
Advertisers 408 may pay (420) for the services of message delivery to the CVO. Payment fees 420 may include delivery cost of the actual message, profiling cost of the messages, monthly payments, profit margin of the CVO, etc.
Typically the rationale of advertiser or brand owner 408 to advertise to consumers 406 is that there is possibility that the consumers will purchase goods or services (422) that are marketed to the consumers, and that there is a possibility to get feedback on the advertised products using the interactive nature of the mobile channel.
There may be a set of different type of advertisement types offered by the CVON 402 to advertisers 408. These may include but are not limited to
The above list describes only in high level the functionality of exemplary advertisement possibilities that may be offered with the CVON concept to advertisers 408. There may also be, for example, video, audio, etc. type of advertisements provided by the CVON. From the business point of view, it must be noted that typically more than one of the advertisement types are offered to advertisers in order to offer a comprehensive enough portfolio of tools for the advertisers 408 to create innovative advertisement campaigns, and for the CVO 402 to attract sufficient revenues from the advertisers 408 to be able to offer free mobile service for consumers 406.
The CVON type of system is preferably run in a day-to-day manner in such a way that the revenues from advertisers 408 is sufficient to cover cost of operations and cost of leasing or running the cellular network. Typically this may require a set of direct sales force but the advertisement system of the CVO may also have a self-service interface for the advertisers 408 to define and modify the advertisements and make order of the campaign without any or with only a limited amount of direct sales force. There may also be a method of limiting the number of members (customer 406) which are allowed to join the free service, in order to control the business risk of offering free services if there is not sufficient amount of advertisements in.
An advertiser 1 (corresponds to the advertiser 408 in
The advertisement system 2 manages advertising campaigns and may comprise an advertisement database that may contain all relevant information for the advertisement campaign to be run. The advertisement management system 2 may also have tools for the advertiser 1 to define a campaign so that all or some of campaign parameters and the rules may be set, cancelled, modified, updated, or otherwise processed by the advertiser 1. The advertisement management system 2 may be used to keep and maintain rules of the sponsoring of access to web services for the users.
The advertisement is delivered to users 6A and/or 6B via communication network 4. The communication network 4 can be any cellular, broadcast, wide area, local area network or the Internet. Examples of cellular network technologies include but are not limited to GSM (Global System for Mobile communication), WCDMA (Wideband CDMA), CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), UTRAN (UMTS Radio Access Network), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), MBMS (Multicast Broadcast Multimedia System). Examples of other network technologies include but are not limited to local area networks, such as Wireless Local area networks (WLAN), BlueTooth (BT), and other technologies, such as WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), Broadcasting over cellular, Broadcasting over DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handhelds), ISDB-T (Terrestrial Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting), DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting). The communication network 4 may also be provided by any generic Internet access using any transport methods. The communication network 4 can be also a combination of different communication network technologies.
In the example of
There may also be provided a value added service gateway (VAS GIN) 3 that connects the communication network 4 or some of the elements thereof to the advertisement management system 2. The VAS gateway 3 may also be connected to a billing system 5. The VAS gateway 3 may include a message delivery component for sending advertisement messages to the customers through the communications network 4. The VAS gateway 3 may also include a database and an action-tracking component for monitoring user actions regarding the advertisements.
A billing system 5 represents any real-time billing system or close-to-real-time billing system that may be employed for monitoring the usage of the communication services in the communications network 4. Services, i.e. communication events, may include but are not limited to voice, messaging services (Short Message Service, Multimedia Message Service, Instant Message Service, Electronic mail services), video telephony services, push to talk services, data services such as Internet or Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browsing services, content usage (television, radio, video) services, download services. The billing system 5 may also refer to any 3rd party offered service running in a server or a computer system, such as a proxy server or a web server that offers services to mobile users. The billing system 5 may receive charging records from other network elements, each charging record comprising all or some of the information required for the billing of a given communication by a user in the communications network, possibly excluding price information. A charging record may specify the content and format of the file that is delivered to the billing system 5. Charging records are often referred to as call detail records (CDRs) or charging data records, or service detail records (SDRs) in value added services. The charging records may include not only the user's calling or originating number/address or similar identity but also a destination of the communication, for example, a called telephone number of a communication, an Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or similar network address accessed via the communication network 4, a telephone number or network address number to which a message is sent, etc. The information can be delivered to the billing system 5 from any communication network element handling a given communication, such as via a short message service center (SMSC) handling SMS messages of a user, a multimedia message service center (MMSC) handling MMS messages of a user, Wireless application protocol gateway (WAP-GW) handling a WAP communications of a user, and an Internet access point (Internet AP), a serving GPRS support node (SGSN), a gateway GPRS support node (GGSN), etc.
In an embodiment of the invention, the billing-system 5 may be used to meter usage of the services. The metered usage of the services may be compared with a free/subsidized balance allocated to each consumer in the communication network. In embodiments of the invention, typically no invoices are sent to consumers but the metered usage may be compared with the business rules associated with customer and metered cost may be invoiced directly or indirectly from advertisers, such the advertiser 1.
The type and format of an advertisement message as well as the delivery method used may be selected among those available in the communication network 4 employed. Such message formats and delivery methods may include but are not limited to messaging services, such as short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS), Instant Message Service (IMS), electronic mail, file downloading or browsing services, such as Wireless application protocol (WAP), Word Wide Web (WWW), audio streaming, video streaming or other data services, etc.
In the exemplary architecture shown in
In the exemplary architecture shown in
The advertisement system 2 may comprise of databases, computer programs and related hardware which can be used to offer a tool and an interface for the advertisers to reserve, program and define advertisement campaigns, there is also typically an interface to the communication network 4, e.g. via a value added service node, which may be connected to the RAN 10 or the core network 11 or to the Internet 7. The advertisement system 2 may be connected to the RAN 10 or the core network 11 also or alternatively via the Internet 7. A content server 9 may be a web server in the Internet, for example. An example of the advertisement system will be described below with reference to
One possible business arrangement when building a commercial virtual operator network (CVON) in the system architecture shown in
As one of the core business drivers for the CVON type of business is the information related to consumers, the CVO may preferably lease or hire only the resources of the RAN 10 and the core network 11 from a host operator and operate the back end system 12 and the advertisement system 2 as core parts of the business. In some arrangements, it may be beneficial to lease also the back end system 12 but from a different party than the operator of networks 10 and 11. The advertisement system 2 may preferably be always controlled by the CVO.
The system architecture shown in
As noted above, one part of the CVON operations may include the advertisement management system 2. An exemplary configuration of an advertisement management system 2 and some related entities are shown in
The consumers (users) of the mobile services offered by the CVON may be referred as members, subscribers, users, or consumers. As the CVON operator offers free or subsidized mobile services for the members, the advertisement management system may comprise a database that contains required information on the members, such as profile information that profiles users or members for marketing purposes. In the exemplary system illustrated in
In the member information, at least one of the profiles may comprise one or more of the following pieces of information: a sociological background of a user; age; sex; a target telephone type; an income level; status of a user; a location of a user; historical data of a user's behavior; information of sent direct advertisement to a user; information of content vouchers or coupons sent to a user; codes of vouchers or coupons sent to a user; lifestyle and interest related; behavior; demographics; education; marital status; zip code; preferred times for advertisements.
The advertisement system 2 manages advertising campaigns and its databases may contain all relevant information for the advertisement campaign to be run. For example, the databases may store campaign parameters, such as advertisement messages, a user profile; preferences of when to send messages; to which target group an advertisement is sent; on which format an advertisement is sent; a target price level of an advertisement; a target feedback level of the advertisement; a target audience; demographics of a target audience; a duration of a advertisement campaign, cost per an advertisement; type of an advertisement; a sociological background of a target audience; age; sex; a target telephone type; an income level; status of a user; a location of a user; historical data of a user's behavior; historical data on a behavior of a profile of users; information of sent direct advertisement to a user; information of content vouchers or coupons sent to a user; codes of vouchers or coupons sent to a user; a time of a day or a week or a month or a date, etc. The advertisement system 2 may also be used to maintain rules of the sponsoring communications and/or service access.
The BSS 200 may also include interfaces to software and server systems providing added value information on the profiling of the consumers, such as social links software 210. The social links software may be comprise a copy 212 of the member (consumer) database 202 in the advertisement engine 220. The social links software 210 may be used to analyze relationships between mobile users in order to determine the most attractive consumers for certain messages. There may also be an interface or software module 206 which may offer an interface for advertisers, an advertisement engine or other parties to look, modify, add, extract reports, etc. of the databases in the BSS 200.
The advertisers may be able to connect to the advertisement management system 2 via a web interface using personal computers with a web browser so as to define marketing campaigns and set up the delivery parameters or by a special application. For example, the advertisement engine 220 can provide a web type of interface to advertisers to plan and manage (Planner and manager block 224), design (Designer block 226), make and receiver reports (Reporter block 228) of the advertisements and campaigns which they have or will have running in the advertisement system. The advertisement engine may also contain other interfaces, such as an interface to the BSS 200 and an Integrator interface 230 to add more function blocks in the future. There may also be a copy 222 of the member (consumer) database 202 in the advertisement engine 220.
The advertisement engine 202 may be configured for programming the advertisement gateway 240 (such as VAS GW 3 in
The techniques described herein may be implemented by various means. For example, these techniques may be implemented in hardware (one or more devices), firmware (one or more devices), software (one or more modules), or combinations thereof. For a firmware or software, implementation can be through modules (e.g., procedures, functions, and so on) that perform the functions described herein. The software codes may be stored in any suitable, processor/computer-readable data storage medium(s) or memory unit(s) and executed by one or more processors/computers. The data storage medium or the memory unit may be implemented within the processor/computer or external to the processor/computer, in which case it can be communicatively coupled to the processor/computer via various means as is known in the art. Additionally, components of systems described herein may be rearranged and/or complimented by additional components in order to facilitate achieving the various aspects, goals, advantages, etc., described with regard thereto, and are not limited to the precise configurations set forth in a given figure, as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art.
It will be obvious to a person skilled in the art that the inventive concept can be implemented in various ways. The invention and its embodiments are not limited to the examples described above but modifications and changes can be made without departing from the scope of the attached claims.
This application claims the benefit of the filing date of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/931,336 filed May 23, 2007, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IB08/02897 | 3/27/2008 | WO | 00 | 7/13/2010 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60931336 | May 2007 | US |