In November of last year, RIM announced the Blackberry Advertising Service which would help app developers connect their apps with an array of ad networks to better monetize their applications.
The company has today applied for two patents related to the advertising segment. One patent titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INCORPORATING MULTIMEDIA CONTENT INTO A MESSAGE HANDLED BY A MOBILE DEVICE” delves completely into what the Blackberry Advertising Service is supposed to do. The inventors write
This (advertising) may be done by examining content in the message handled by a mobile device and matching portions of the message with predetermined criteria such as keywords or phrases. Upon finding matches, corresponding multimedia content is associated with a respective portion of the message content and access to the multimedia content is enabled through selection of a linking mechanism that is visually identifiable with the respective portion of the message. The message is modified to include such linking mechanisms such that upon viewing the modified message, a user may reveal the multimedia content by selecting the linking mechanism. It has also been recognized that multiple layers of multimedia content can be provided such that different types of user interaction can reveal different forms of multimedia content.
In another patent, RIM has described a technology that will minimize occurrences of ad impression-inflation on part of app developers. The patent says this will be done by “A method of evaluating advertising metrics may include, but does not require, receiving advertising metrics from an application handling advertisements, augmenting the advertising metrics with data from an advertising client, and validating the advertising metrics”
The strategy for RIM is clear – Make the environment as developer-friendly as possible in order to attract more of them which the company sees is the way to take on Apple’s App Store.