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Portada Speaks with Time Fielding, President of Buzzd Mobile

Content

We syndicate content off online and print publishers and make it searchable on buzzd. Buzzd is accessible on many tens of millions of handsets across America, so our job is to persuade all those millions of handset-owners to check out buzzd, view the content and see the ad (that we serve) on the WAP page.

We have direct deals with sponsors who block-buy the mobile inventory (eg Nokia has taken all of Flavorpill Mobile for 6 months) and we have deals with mobile ad networks to serve banner ads at random. We take the revenue from the direct sponsorship and/or the ad networks and we split it, retroactively, with the content partner who provided the reviews and listings [our business is mainly local search for entertainment, dining, bars, movies etc].  

Our platform allows us to report number of views per page, so we can aggregate content from different sources and feature it on separate pages, and remunerate advertising revenue accurately to the respective content provider based on views per page. In some cases traditional media & content owners might be reluctant to ‘lease out’ their content on a speculative basis. Some have been known to use the phrase ‘Jam today, not jam tomorrow.’

At buzzd, we make them an offer that is hard to refuse: we customize our own WAP site with a media owner’s brand, and exclusively feature their content on that site. We then serve ads on that and pay the content owner a large percentage of the revenue. So as well as getting to distribute their content onto buzzd.com/m, which has a reach going into multiple tens of millions now via mobile operators across the world, each of our content partners effectively get a state-of-the-art WAP site for free, and receive revenue from it.  

We do all the heavy lifting and they get to dip their toe in the water of this new form of digital media, without much investment required on their part at all.

We are very keen on bringing this service to the Latin American market as we feel that socially and culturally there will be a huge demand for it. We are actively looking for online and print partners, as well as regional telecom partners and local brand managers who can see the potential in this space and want to be part of a mobile network comprising the best of breed in each vertical. The main challenge we face is the question ‘Where do we get started’?

As part of our content partnerships, we require the partner to leverage their properties to drive awareness and adoption of the new service. In the case of print and online partners, this typically involves placing ads in book, dedicating space on the web site (home page and nav bar) linking to mobile landing pages, sending out eblasts, participating in incentive programs, promoting buzzd at sponsored events, and a range of other promotional activity, depending on what the partner has to leverage and how much they are committed to the program.

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