As Reported By ElectricNews.Net - The Content Zone Teams Up With MobileAware | Cookies Are Good For You

The Content Zone teams up with MobileAware: Companies intent on using mobile phones for advertising, marketing or direct sales will be interested to learn that MobileAware has signed a partnership with content aggregator The Content Zone. Together the two companies offer a means of delivering a wide range of wireless services to mobile customers.

The Content Zone will use MobileAware technology to perform real-time, device-aware content adaptation for existing web content and deliver it in the most visually appealing format to any mobile device.

Organisations, particularly in the media and entertainment sector, are realising the need to extend their internet presence to mobile customers as a means of increasing customer loyalty and creating new revenue streams, particularly with the under-30s age group. However, delivering mobile services in an easy and cost-effective manner is a challenge. The partnership between The Content Zone and MobileAware should reduce the complexity of deploying such services by offering a solution that provides companies with pre-packaged localised mobile content -- from games and ringtones to psychic channels and comedy strips.

Edward Nugent, commercial director at The Content Zone, said customers can range from media companies to corporates. "As the need to have a mobile presence is becoming as important as a web presence for online marketing, our off-the-shelf solution meets this demand head-on."

Cookies are good for you: A recent report from WebTrends confirms an earlier JupiterResearch finding that users are increasingly blocking cookies. Between January 2004 and April 2005, the cookie rejection rate rose from 2.84 percent to 12.4 percent. An earlier report from JupiterResearch found that 28 percent of internet users claim they reject cookies from third parties.

Still, cookies can be good for you, claims Generator MD Mark Tarbatt. "From an online advertising perspective, cookies can actually benefit website users because they are often used to restrict the amount of times that users are exposed to a particular advert."

Known as 'frequency caps' in the online advertising business, they are felt to benefit both the advertiser and the site user. "If a user hasn't responded to an ad, after say three ad views (a frequency cap of three), then the advertiser will not show the ad to that user any more and will move on to the next and perhaps more receptive prospect," Tarbatt explains. He adds that cookies are not programs but simply small text files which cannot harm a computer or the user.

"Like store loyalty cards, cookies are used for reasons of efficiency and customer benefit and it is unfortunate that some people are misinformed by suggestions that they are being spied on or that their privacy is being invaded in some way. Cookies are intended to enhance and improve the user's web experience and sites like Amazon or eBay wouldn't be able to offer book selections etc without them," adds Tarbatt.

Software that blocks cookies contributed to the overall rise in rejection rates. For marketers, this presents an extra challenge as to how to legitimately track people during purchases or when reacting to advertising messages.