Digicel is preparing to intensify its focus on mobile phone advertising.
The telecommunications and information and communications technology provider’s chief executive officer Mark Linehan made the announcement last week as the company celebrated ten years of service to Barbados.
Speaking at Digicel’s Warrens, St Michael office, the official said among the initiatives that would see his organisation spending millions of dollars this mobile advertising would be a major focus, via a project called DigicelMore.
“Another major focus for us going forward is the introduction of new and exciting products, an example of this being our latest product DigicelMore, a mobile advertising platform developed to help businesses and promoters advertise directly to their customers through mobile phones,” he said.
“Research has shown that across the globe 98 per cent of all text messages are read by mobile phone users, which means that there is a great chance that 98 per cent of the persons targeted by mobile advertising would be reached by those persons who subscribe to this service.
“With a large portion of our customer base being prepaid, we are also opening up this service to include balance inquiry, thereby when prepaid customers check the credit balance on their devices they would also be given information about deals and specials from advertisers,” he added.
Linehan also noted: “In a market full of advertising clutter, cut-through is something which all businesses must focus on in order to maximise returns on advertising investment. We believe that DigicelMore will provide this cut-through to our customers, particularly given our ever increasing mobile customer base.”
“The point must be made that not only would businesses benefit from increased traffic and revenue as a result of advertising through DigicelMore; . . . but our mobile customers would also benefit, who would be privy to daily specials and deals.
“Of course, we will continue to enhance our consumer product, introducing services and promotions designed specifically to meet the needs of our mobile customers.”
The CEO said Digicel had a number of projects on its radar “for the year ahead”, including “continuing our push in 4G with significant investment focused on the upgrade of our network”.
“The additional $20 million . . . over the next ten months, which I spoke to earlier, will be sure to improve the experience of our customers and allow them to fully utilise their devices and our services,” he said. (SC)
