[mertle]

Originally Posted by popper

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/12/mobile_phom/
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Qualcomm buys into Phorm-alike firm

Data gathering on the hoof

By Bill Ray → More by this author
Published Wednesday 12th March 2008 13:14 GMT

The ad-fatigued may groan at the news that Qualcomm has splashed out $32m on data-gathering outfit Xiam. The Irish company specialises in analysing the habits of mobile phone users in order to target advertising at them, and has customers including Orange UK.

Targeted advertising is all the rage these days, but the ways in which the necessary data is gathered is still the subject of hot debate. Xiam makes great play of its ability to profile users just by watching what they do without requiring configuration, and Orange UK apparently "supplies Xiam with data including billing information, mobile browsing logs and purchase history".

Orange assured us that the "browsing logs" only refers to on-portal usage (within Orange World), and "billing information" relates to purchases made from the operator. However, ...."

Whats next targeted TV ads via VM cable.

How far will this all go. If they are now looking into mobile.