Alcatel-Lucent’s continues in ad broker mode with Optism

Alcatel-Lucent is continuing its concept of being a broker in connection with next-gen services with an offering in advertising. Optism is the name of the solution, and like the Open API Program we’ve talked about before, it’s hosted by Alcatel-Lucent and offered as a service to operators.

With Optism, Alcatel-Lucent can build an inventory of ads for mobile use and deliver ads as needed based on a variety of demographics and permissions. Alcatel-Lucent will also act as a broker to collect advertisers and add them to the inventory to simplify operator relationships and accelerate deployment.

This seems to us to be a good approach, and we’re hearing that the whole notion of hosting that Alcatel-Lucent is promoting is getting some traction. We’d like to see more about the underlying software and also would like to see that software offered to operators directly. A pure hosting strategy may be a bit risky at this stage in the market, though operator views on the matter are rapidly becoming more accommodating.