The analytics capabilities and more general mobile advertising expertise of digital wallet service
providers varies considerably, with some being notably more advanced and better positioned than
others in this area. Online retailer Amazon has more than a decade of experience in mining customer
data to offer increasingly more personalized, targeted product recommendations. Diversified OTT
players such as Google and Facebook that are active in the payments space have a wealth of mobile
advertising expertise to draw on. Retailers with strong loyalty programs are likewise adept at
leveraging customer insights for upselling, cross-selling, and rewards.
The majority of mobile network operators are novices by comparison. Operators making a play in
mobile advertising often point to the rich data assets at their disposal, but Ovum’s impression is that
for most the breadth, depth, and quality of data insights held is variable. Operator data is not typically
integrated, but instead scattered across operational units in information silos.
Digital wallet providers will also need to offer good scale and reach to attract brands, and many wallet
services are not in a position to do so. The ability to scale is one of the key reasons why UK mobile
operators EE, Vodafone, and Telefonica/O2 formed Weve. They aim to offer brands and agencies a
single-source “one-stop shop” for payments and advertising that covers 89% of the