Bango Makes a Play for Mobile Advertising

Bango is often seen as a staple in the mobile space, yet it’s perceived as a transactional service provider and largely overlooked for advertising solutions. The company today is announcing Bango Vision, a service providing tracking and analytics to aid brands and content providers.

“Really this is a logical extension of our existing service,” said Sarah Keefe, VP of marketing operations at Bango. “It’s really a question of understanding the value that we bring to the advertising community.”

The new service positions the company to work more closely with advertisers. It uses Bango’s ability to create digital fingerprints of mobile Web users to provide data and user behavior. The digital fingerprint of a user can provide information on customer habits and trends; identify new versus repeat visitors and deliver appropriate content; personalize mobile Internet sites in real-time; track a user’s country and carrier; and serve ads based on location. The data aids advertisers looking for metrics to gauge ROI.

“Although common on the PC Internet, information on visitor location, buying habits and surfing patterns is very difficult to obtain in the mobile Internet space,” said Roger Entner, VP and industry analyst at Ovum, in a Bango company statement.

Bango already works with mobile ad providers including Third Screen Media, which earlier this week struck a deal with data company Telephia by which Telephia will provide data from its panel to TSM clients.

Adoption of the mobile Web remains slow in the U.S., though opportunities for ad-supported content are expected to increase as it grows.

Bango announced a distribution deal with Hearst in March.