IPO-headed mobile value added services company One97 Communications and Capital18 funded advertising sales house and network NetworkPlay have inked an exclusive partnership to offer mobile advertising solutions to advertisers, covering Pre-calls, Incomplete Call Announcement, Post Call Notification, SMS, Voice Portals, Interactive Voice Response Out-bound Dialers, On Device Clients (Applications), Enterprise Solutions, Mobile Internet and WAP sites, among others, in India. Speaking with MediaNama, Rammohan Sundaram, CEO of Networkplay said that the partnership will hit the market with advertiser solutions on October 1st, looking to monetize properties created managed by One97 Communications with advertising. Now questions have been raised in the past about whether the time is right for mobile advertising, and previous efforts by mobile services companies haven't really taken off in India: Zenga struggled with advertising on their mobile video products, InMobi had to look international for mobile Internet advertising, and OnMobile's much touted AdRBT has struggled to gain traction. (Also read: You’ll Have To Wait For 5-8 Years For Mobile Advertising In India To Mature: Ravi Kiran, Starcom) What will One97 And NetworkPlay do differently? Vijay Shekhar Sharma, MD of One97 Communications, told MediaNama that just like IT firms couldn't really do a VAS business, so is the case with selling advertising on Telecom: one needs to understand advertising as a business, and telecom as a media, and this partnership tries to do just that. "Every medium has to find its own space for advertising. We're trying to find the best fit, and discover niche use cases. It will…
