Bharti Airtel has outsourced its advertising inventory management to Mogae Media, allowing the company to sell advertising space on mobile, DTH and broadband services, as well as manage special offers, discounts and freebies for its mobile commerce business, reports The Economic Times. The deal has been confirmed to the paper by Mogae Media founder Sandeep Goyal, though Airtel hasn't confirmed it. Now, outsourcing advertising inventory is not new to Airtel: in the past, the company has had deals for outsourcing ad sales to multiple niche companies: for example, there was a deal with Nokia/NAVTEQ Media Solutions to manage WAP banner sales on its platform; there was also a deal with NetworkPlay to sell advertising on DTH, and another deal to sell advertising inventory on voice services, SMS services, and even bills with Affle. We're not sure of how long these deals lasted, but the current report suggests that advertising sales has been consolidated with Mogae Media. It also indicates that special offers and discounts on Airtel Money, Airtel's prepaid payment services, is being viewed as an advertising opportunity. Do note that the TRAI SMS guidelines have potentially restricted the opportunity of ad sales in text messages, with transactional messages not allowed to have footer ads, and promotional messages restricted to non-NDNC customers. It'll be interesting to see how this deal pans out, if it does become operationalized, since the agency will probably try to sell a consolidated plan to large advertisers. Our advertising coverage is brought to you by Indiatimes
