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Mobile Internet service provider Avantgo (a division of Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere Solutions) officially launched a Cadillac sponsored travel application, which has been in beta since May 2005, today. Originally meant for launch last July, the new Travel Guide is available as an additional "tab" within AvantGo, enabling users to access flight itineraries, weather, directions, maps and city guides.

Since the beta was announced last year, Avantgo added United Airlines to its travel partner lineup, as well as a currency conversion tool, 100 additional city guides, and 1000 more metro areas for weather forecasts. Other partners besides United include Expedia Corporate Travel, Northwest Airlines, Sabre Virtually There, and Travelocity Business. MapPoint points you in the right direction.

Avantgo senior director Neil Versen told PDAStreet the Travel Guide offers subscribers a convenient one-stop shop for all their mobile travel application needs, while content partners like Travelocity benefited by having their brands more available to consumers: After a user chooses a primary provider, its logo becomes a fixture on every page of the service for that individual.

"AvantGo's travel application gives our users the ability to access their travel itineraries, weather, maps, directions and city guides anytime, anywhere on the go. It also enables major online travel services, airline, hotel, and car rental companies to increase the value of their brand to their customers," Versen said.

The travel application is the opening salvo towards more interactive content from Avantgo. Whereas traditional channels update information during a sync to the Avantgo server, the travel service leverages Dynamic HTML to deliver on-device applications right to a user's PDA and smartphone. With these programs, subscribers manipulate information without syncing.

When converting currency in the past you would need to enter a dollar amount before synchronization to have it converted to euros upon connecting to the Avantgo server, for example. With the currency converter in the travel application, you convert currency on your mobile device without server synchronization. Avantgo updates exchange rates on the handheld when syncing, of course.

The Ad Game
Versen said the addition of interactive content offers greater value to consumers, while getting them to use Avantgo more than they normally would've, making advertisers happy.

Speaking to Versen recently, he told us about the success Avantgo has experienced with ad applications that let users 'build' a car by selecting specific features and accessories to determine the cost of buying or leasing an automobile right from a handheld—just like you can today on many car makers Web sites—with or without a wireless connection.

A user can take the stored information about a specific car on their handheld to a dealership. Normally, they would print that data out from the automaker's Web site. The advantage to marketers is it gives them greater control over the user experience. Consumers can even find local dealerships by plugging in their zip code.

"The Internet is the number one consumer touch point for companies, and a key research tool when making purchasing decisions. We've heard from AvantGo users that offering them mobile Web sites with all the product and company info they need—right in the palm of their hands, while they're on the lot of a car dealership, for instance—is something they're very interested in," Versen explained to PDAStreet.

Avantgo launched their first mobile "brochures" or model-specific car Web sites back in Q3 2005 for a few BMW models (click here for an example). The average person who downloaded the ad through a channel looked at an impressive 28 pages of each mobile brochure.

There's even a color selector in the brochure, so users can change how the car in question looks. In addition to some BMW models, Avantgo has created mobile brochures for Mercedes and Cadillac, of course, and is now in the process of rolling out mobile Web sites for some consumer electronics products as well.


Cadillac Mobile Web Site
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Avantgo just inked a deal to mobilize Cadillac's entire product line as well. These mobile Web sites can be used as part of sponsorships (ala the travel channel) or as adjuncts to Cadillac's regular Web site.

Versen continued, "Not only is it extremely useful to consumers, but the mobile Web sites also help companies facilitate in-market buying and exercise greater control over the sales funnel and their messaging."

The mobile Internet provider's car revolution started two years ago with the Chrysler Pacifica SUV. While it wasn't a full mobile Web site, the ad set them off in what turned out to be a profitable direction.

Versen told PDAStret mobile brochures are economical for marketers as well. The average cost to create one is six to seven thousand dollars. And once you build a brochure for a particular Mercedes E class automobile, for example, the rest fall into place; as the original can be used as a template for the other Mercedes cars.

Future Directions
"Mobile marketing is certainly the buzz-word right now among advertisers, but there are a few advances in technology that are going to make this ad channel even more attractive to companies," according to Versen.

In the future, Versen said Avantgo could become the RIM of mobile content and advertising, pushing information all the time to a device - like BlackBerry handhelds with push e-mail - via trickle sync technology instead of users actively having to pull channel pages down to their PDAs and smartphones.

"Synching wirelessly or through a 'trickle sync' will offer consumers greater flexibility, enabling them to access crucial information anywhere and anytime, and it will also provide more opportunities for interaction between advertisers and consumers," he added

Avantgo also has a possible future as a white label portal strategy for carriers. There's a succesful model and track record that a lot of the current portals don't have, Versen asserts - including support from nearly every major media brand. So Avantgo may one day find itself becoming a third-party portal provider for wireless operators once techinical hurdles are overcome.

These techincal hurdles most likely include Avantgo's current limit to (a strength right now, true) PDAs and smartphones. While smart device platforms are growing in popularity, they are going to be dwarfed by standard feature phones for the foreseeable future. If Avantgo wants carriers to take it seriously as a mass market portal solution, then it’ll have to extend itself beyond the Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and RIM BlackBerry platforms at some point.