SingTel launches initiative for advertisers

The initiatives were driven by SingTel’s new head of ad sales, Magdalene Tan, who recently took over.

According to sources SingTel plans to offer an integration bundle package to advertisers, which will make use of its IPTV platform, mio TV; mobile platform SingTel mobile through location-based advertising (LBA) and SingTel Online, which includes the homepages of Wireless@SG and Mio TV.

Sources also suggest that SingTel will be pushing its recently launched LBA services more aggressively. The company is targeting to attract more subscribers to mio TV by enhancing its programming. It recently won the rights for broadcasting Italian League for next year. There are also plans to launch interactive advertising options on mio TV, which will allow viewers to interact with advertising content, a service that has not been launched in Singapore yet.

According to industry experts SingTel’s new offerings have come late as competitors StarHub, SPH and MediaCorp launched their packages much earlier. SingTel’s push on LBA also follows rivals StarHub and M1 in Singapore. Most experts, however, agree that SingTel’s new service is a step in the right direction as it will offer better value to advertisers.

Desh BalaKrishnan, media director at MPG, said: “As the biggest telco in Singapore, SingTel’s location-based advertising options are no doubt attractive but the same cannot be said about mio TV and the online channels. It will need to strengthen these further to make them attractive to advertisers.”

Arun Kumar, CEO of Carat Singapore, added: “Is definitely sounds like a great initiative but I am going to hold my comments until I see how well it is integrated across the media. There has always been a lot of talk in the market about integration by media owners but we haven’t really seen it happening till now.”

In Singapore, SingTel currently has 2.9 million mobile customers and 46,000 subscribers of mio TV. The group’s combined mobile customer base is 216.7 million.