By Tricia Duryee
MocoNews - September 25, 2008

McLean, Va.-based Mobile Posse said it has launched a pilot for its idle-screen advertising service with a wireless carrier in Portland, Ore. called LCW Wireless, which is a joint venture with Cricket Communications. Called “Cricket Perks,” users can download the free application. Then, from the phone’s idle screen, where a wall paper would normally appear, an advertisement similar to a banner appears, offering coupons, but also content, such as sports scores, or weather updates. Cricket Perks displays information based on a customer’s ZIP code, age, gender, time of day or day of the week. The ad can be dismissed, or users can go into an application to see ones that they missed from earlier. The idea is for restaurants to offer lunchtime coupons and retailers to provide specials for shops nearby. In Portland, Game Crazy, Jiffy Lube, Global Spectrum and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) have already providing offers to LCW’s customers. Release.

In an interview I had last month with Mobile Posse’s CEO Jon Jackson, he said part of the beauty of the program is that about two offers are mixed in with content, like weather, sports, horoscopes everyday. And, the offers are seeing good results, too. He said 78 percent of people said they want more. In the pilot with LCW, Jiffy Lube, an oil-changing service, offered $10 off a service. During the four-week campaign, the click-through rate averaged 22.8 percent and the average unique subscriber engagement was 56.28 percent.

Mobile Posse, which was founded in 2005, has raised $12.5 million in two rounds from investors including SoftBank Capital, Court Square Ventures and Columbia Capital. Typically, the company has a revenue-share agreement. They handle the ad sales, and then they kick a percentage back to the carrier, which also covers any data usage since end-users don’t need to pay for any associated data with the application.