Qualcomm buys ad-targeting firm

$32M acquisition designed to link portal ads, services to user data

Qualcomm is throwing its hat into the mobile advertising ring, announcing on Tuesday the $32-million purchase of Irish wireless content-targeting technologist Xiam, which has developed a platform that bridges the carrier’s customer data with advertising and content delivery platforms.

Xiam’s My Personal Offers system mines operator databases and records for customer data that can be used to target both content and advertising at their customers. The acquisition not only gives Qualcomm a launch pad into the burgeoning field of mobile advertising but also a way of managing personalizing and customizing portal content for end customers.

Much has been made of how valuable carrier customer data is to mobile advertising, as carriers have access to not only vast stores of demographic info but can track customer behavior across their services in real time. Few operators have been able to leverage that information, though, for the simple reason that it is locked in their CRM systems with no outlet to an advertising network that could use it. Xiam’s platform, however, not only solves that interface problem but also contains the tools that make sense of that vast quantity of data, allowing operators to create valuable real-time advertising profiles of their customers, said Liz Gasser, director of business development for Qualcomm Internet Services.

“We’re starting to see [carriers] realizing how important that information is,” Gasser said. “There’s a valuable role they can play as the intelligent broker of information.”

Xiam’s platform doesn’t just extract standard age, gender and interest information. It can tap into real-time behavior and presence information, such as a user’s location, what mobile Web sites he or she last visited--even indications of mood depending on recent activity. Combining that info with more generic demographic data can help create very powerful targeting profiles. Both Orange and Vodafone Ireland have begun using the platform in their portals to make content recommendations for their customers, Gasser said. In Orange’s case, content uptake has increased by 20%.

While operators have been slow to leverage their data for portal and browsing advertising, third-party ad networks have begun to build up the market without access to carrier customer information. They’ve managed to turn mobile ads into a $1 billion-a-year business without the carriers. Companies like Enpocket, acquired by Nokia last year, have begun building their own databases to track customer patterns and believe that their data will ultimately be as valuable as the operators.

Gasser, however, disputes that characterization. Third-party networks are severely limited in what data they collect, she said. They can collect histories of behavior only to the degree in which customers travel between their publishers’ sites. They rely on registration and surveys to collect demographic data. Only an operator can follow the user across the network, she said.