2 Understanding Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising

This chapter provides an overview of Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising.

About Marketing and Advertising

Marketing and Advertising is a Web-based advertising management platform. It is used to create and host campaigns that insert advertising into text messages (Short Messaging Service (SMS) messages and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages) and other mobile Web advertising mediums (mobile ad spaces). Marketing and Advertising can append ads to existing messages that already contain other content, distribute ad-only messages in bulk to a list of subscribers and reply to messages sent by subscribers to a third-party application with a message containing ad content. Marketing and Advertising also can function as an Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Mob-Ad server providing ad content to external entities and inserting ad content into Websites using JSP snippet code.

The services provided through Marketing and Advertising enable service providers to collect revenue from advertisers and from the companies that provide advertising space (ad space owners). Marketing and Advertising also provides tools that help ad space owners and advertisers collaborate in order to maximize campaign effectiveness. Using Marketing and Advertising, service providers manage the interactions between ad space owners and advertisers.

Marketing and Advertising enables advertisers to target specific subscribers for campaigns based on a number of criteria including mobile applications, demographic information, network provided geographical location and subscriber preferences.

Marketing and Advertising Scenarios

Here are some sample scenarios:

• A radio station lets listeners subscribe to its SMS news updates. Using Marketing and Advertising, the radio station can offer ad space in those SMS messages. Advertisers use Marketing and Advertising to bid on the ad space and create the ads that they want to insert into the messages. When the station sends the SMS messages, Marketing and Advertising intercepts the messages, network, inserts the ad, and sends the messages to the network, which delivers them to the radio station's subscribers.

• A reality television show uses viewer SMS voting to determine the outcome of a competition. When the viewer sends the SMS vote to a short code, Marketing and Advertising intercepts it and automatically generates a personalized "thank you for voting" SMS message to the viewer. This message includes a pre-approved ad offer, such as a code that the viewer can redeem for a free beverage at a local chain restaurant. The user's vote SMS message is forwarded to the reality show application for tabulation.

• A software company wants to notify users that a new version of its application is available. The company uploads its list of user addresses to Marketing and Advertising and creates an ad containing a mobile advertisement banner based on a template. Marketing and Advertising creates a bulk MMS campaign using the template and subscriber information to customize and send personalized messages to the company's software users.

• A clothing chain creates an ad to attract women between the ages of 18-25. The ad campaign's target customers are selected from a list of subscribers managed by the service provider. Marketing and Advertising filters this list based on the demographic criteria specified by the clothing chain. Marketing and Advertising sends the ad as an MMS message to the targeted customers.

• A restaurant wants to offer a promotional meal by way of SMS message to customers entering an area within a 2 mile radius of the restaurant's location. The restaurant uploads a list of customers who have chosen to opt-in to receive such promotional advertising. When the service provider network indicates through location services that a customer has entered the designated area, Marketing and Advertising generates a text message containing the offer advertisement to be delivered to the targeted customer.

Marketing and Advertising Users and User Organizations

Marketing and Advertising hosts five types of users:

• Advertisers, who use Marketing and Advertising to create and manage ads, find and purchase ad space, upload subscriber lists, and collect statistics about their ads

• Ad space owners, who provide advertising space to advertisers and collect statistics about ad space usage

• Ad service providers, who manage the advertisers and ad space owners

  Ad service providers approve proposed ads and ad spaces, manage the ads, and collect statistics. An ad service provider can also perform all the user tasks that advertisers and ad space owners can perform.

  An ad service provider can be part of the same company that owns and manages the network over which the ads are carried. An ad service provider can also be part of a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) organization that does not manage the network.

• Network providers, who create and manage connection configurations used in the delivery of ad campaigns

  The network provider makes decisions concerning data and network usage patterns, including capacity and channel, that are made available to advertisers and ad space owners. The network provider also determines which premium features, such as location and ad personalization, are to be included in a connection configuration.

• System owners, who provide services through Marketing and Advertising and are responsible for the overall system

  The system owner can also perform all the functions of all other types of users. System Owners are typically the service providers and often act as network provider users as well.

Marketing and Advertising groups users into the following five corresponding organizations, which determine what tasks users can perform within the system:

• Advertiser organization

• Ad space owner organization

• Ad service provider organization

• Network provider organization

• System owner

There can be multiple organizations of the same type, each with one or more users. For example, Marketing and Advertising can include multiple advertiser organizations (such as clothing, restaurant, and beverage organizations). Each advertiser organization can consist of multiple individual users representing unique advertisers (for example, beverage company "A" and beverage company "B").

There is only one system owner in a Marketing and Advertising implementation.The system owner is created automatically when you install Marketing and Advertising. The system owner creates and manages network provider and ad service provider organizations.

Typically there is only one network provider organization, although it is possible to have more than one.

There can be multiple ad service provider organizations. The ad service provider creates and manages ad space owner and advertiser organizations.

There are almost always multiple ad space owner and advertiser organizations.

Marketing and Advertising Entities

To create, manage, and deliver advertisements, Marketing and Advertising users create and manipulate the following entities:

• Ad content, created by advertisers

• Campaign spaces, created by ad space owners,

  • Ad spaces: An ad space used for an ad that is inserted into a pre-existing message. The pre-existing message is generated externally to Marketing and Advertising. Advertisers must bid for the ad space in an ad space marketplace.

  • Marketing spaces: A marketing space is used for a message that contains only ads and no other content. The message originates in the Marketing ad Advertising system; it is not inserted into a pre-existing message. To use a marketing space, advertisers do not bid for the space: they simply pay the price that is set by the ad space owner.

  • Dynamic spaces: A dynamic space is used in campaigns where ad content is not statically assigned to an ad space. A dynamic space is configured with selectable subscriber information categories of interest to better target subscribers. Advertisers create a dynamic campaign selecting subscriber information categories to target. During dynamic campaign execution, Marketing and Advertising matches dynamic campaigns with dynamic ad spaces configured with matching subscriber information categories.

• Campaigns, created by advertisers, of which there are three kinds: advertising campaigns, dynamic campaigns and marketing campaigns.

• Connection configurations, created by network providers

• Subscribers

• Statistics

• Notifications

These entities are explained in more detail in Chapter 1, "Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising Entities."

Marketing and Advertising Workflow

The process for creating and delivering ad content by Marketing and Advertising typically follows this procedure:

1. The system owner creates the necessary Marketing and Advertising users.

2. The network provider creates connection configurations for ad space owners to use in their campaign spaces. If needed, the network provider can include premium features such as location and demography in the connection configuration.

3. The ad space owner creates a campaign space. If the campaign space is for a dynamic campaign the ad space owner selects the subscriber information categories to be used with the space.

4. The ad service provider approves the campaign space.

5. The advertiser creates ad content.

6. The advertiser finds a campaign space that is appropriate for the ad content. This could involve bidding on a advertising space for inserting the ad into existing messages or paying the price listed for a marketing space for bulk marketing. For a dynamic campaign, the advertiser will select the subscriber information categories to target.

7. The ad space owner approves of the ad content for the campaign.

8. The campaign starts.

9. Ads are delivered to subscribers. For dynamic campaigns, Marketing and Advertising matches ads with dynamic spaces based on subscriber information category configuration.

10. The ad space owner and advertiser monitor statistics about the campaign, such as the number of ads delivered.

11. Event detail records (EDRs) are generated for Marketing and Advertising activity for use with an external rating system to determine charges to advertisers and payments owed to ad space owners for campaigns.

About Using the Marketing and Advertising User Interface

This section describes how to log in to the Marketing and Advertising user interface (UI) and manage your personal account information.

Before you can use the Marketing and Advertising UI the System Administrator must configure Marketing and Advertising by using the WebLogic Administration Console. See System Administrator's Guide for system administration information.

Logging in to Marketing and Advertising

The exact login screen that you see depends on the kind of user you are (system owner, network provider, advertiser, and so on), but the general login procedure is the same for all users.

To log in:

1. In a Web browser, go to http://host:port/ocma, where host and port are provided by the System Administrator.

   Marketing and Advertising supports these Web browsers: Internet Explorer 7.0 and greater and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and greater.

2. In the login screen, enter your user name and password.

   The first time you log in, you use the user name and password that was created for you by the person who set up your account. See "Updating Your Personal Account Information" for more information about changing your password.

3. On successful login, the dashboard appears. The particular dashboard that you see depends on what kind of user you are.

The dashboards are described in the chapters about the specific user organizations.

Updating Your Personal Account Information

Unless you are the system owner, your Marketing and Advertising account has been set up by a user in an organization with higher privileges than your organization. However, you can update your own email address and password in the application Web client. System owners can also update their account email address and password using the following process.

To update your personal account information

1. After logging in to Marketing and Advertising, click My Account.

   A menu appears.

2. To change the email address associated with your account, click Edit Account Info.

   The Edit My Account Info page appears.

3. In the email address field, edit the email address.

4. Click Save.

5. To change your password, click Change Password.

   The Change My Password page appears.

6. Enter your current password in the Old Password field, and the new password in the New Password and Confirmed Password fields.

7. Click Save.

Privileges

Your privileges within Marketing and Advertising, as well as the screens that are displayed to you, depend on what kind of a user you are: system owner, network provider, ad service provider, ad space owner, or advertiser.

The system owner has the highest privileges and can log in and act as any other kind of user.

Ad service providers can act as ad space owners and advertisers in the ad space owner and advertising organizations that they have created.

Ad space owners can act as advertisers in the advertising organizations that they have created.

Integrating Marketing and Advertising with Other Products

You can integrate Marketing and Advertising to work with other products. These include:

• Third-party applications, by Web services

• Oracle Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite

• Oracle Fusion Middleware MapViewer

• Oracle Business Activity and Monitoring (BAM)

• Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) using Diameter Rf

• Subscriber Information (SPI)

For information about integration see Integration Guide.