RocketBux, ViVOtech Announce Mobile Marketing Alliance

“With over 200 million mobile phones in the hands of US consumers it is the natural evolution for marketers to reach out to this audience, and RocketBux SMS products are an easy way for them to quickly deliver valuable and targeted offers to their customers,” said Fred Boos, RocketBux CEO and Co-Founder.

Under terms of the agreement, RocketBux will be utilizing ViVOtech’s ViVOplatform version 3.1 to deliver mobile advertising services to consumers. RocketBux has three products that deliver value for advertisers including:

• RocketEngine, a service for credit card, gift card or loyalty card issuers to deliver offers to their cardholders’ mobile phones immediately upon swiping their cards at the cash register;
• RocketPower, a closed-loop LBS (Location Based Service) product for shopping mall operators or retail associations; and,
• RocketLaunch, perhaps the most exciting product of all. RocketLaunchsm leverages existing advertising (television, print, radio, online or outdoor) by integrating a “text to short code” message turning each advertisement into a “direct response medium”.

RocketBux also offers a patent pending "RocketPayload" shared revenue system that links participating merchants to an innovative business service that automates delivery, collection and payment of a financial "bounty" for utilizing the service.

“ViVOtech is excited to work with RocketBux to deliver relevant and targeted coupons and location-based promotions directly to consumers’ mobile phones,” said Michael Mullagh, ViVOtech CEO. “We have developed ViVOplatform software to enable the next-generation of mobile services that retailers and card issuers are using to better reach their customers.”

ViVOplatform is the next-generation transaction processing software platform for mobile consumers and fully supports RocketBux’s product offerings. ViVOplatform software is designed to work with the magnetic and contactless payment cards, as well as to integrate with ViVOtech’s contactless readers, Near Field Communication (NFC) and Over-the-Air (OTA) payment provisioning technologies.

“The ViVOplatform transaction engine gives us the ultimate flexibility to dynamically generate and change messages according to customer response and location, allowing advertisers to quickly respond to marketing opportunities and the changing retail landscape on demand,” added Tony Westerberg, RocketBux Managing Director and Co-Founder.

With unique advantages such as personalization, interactivity and immediacy, the mobile phone has emerged as an attractive advertising tool for advertisers and brands to reach new customers and target audiences according to their activities and connected lifestyle. Mobile advertising is experiencing rapid adoption with Adweek.com recently reporting that the data group eMarketer predicts global spending on mobile advertising at over $900 million in 2007.