Sprint Receives Frost & Sullivan Award for Value Enhancement in Mobile Advertising

Award recognizes Sprint’s new opt-out service, allowing customers a choice in the use of their anonymized data to provide relevant ads

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Sprint (NYSE:S) continues to receive accolades for the value and service it provides customers. Now Frost & Sullivan has awarded Sprint the 2010 North American Customer Value Enhancement of the Year Award in On-deck Mobile Advertising.

Based on Frost & Sullivan’s independent analysis of the Mobile Advertising market, the award recognizes the strategic advantages of Sprint’s mobile advertising service:

– Customer relevancy and privacy, including an opt-out service, in which customers are given clear choices around receiving targeted ads
– Open approach
– Strategic roadmap

“Sprint has been a pioneer in mobile advertising, delivering effective advertising options for brands while protecting our customers’ privacy,” said Mathew Oommen, vice president-Product and Technology Development for Sprint. “Our opt-out service for customers and our ad-mediation platform, which allows us to partner with additional ad networks, are two of our latest examples of that. We’re pleased to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan for the value our mobile advertising service provides.”

“Sprint has clearly demonstrated its ability to add value to the mobile advertising experience to help deliver the right ads to the right user at the right time,” said Vikrant Gandhi, senior industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan. “Sprint recently introduced an opt-out service for mobile advertising, which Frost & Sullivan feels is a highly differentiating approach that will continue to support Sprint’s industry-leading, on-deck mobile advertising performance. This award recognizes Sprint’s continued focus on both ends of the spectrum: maintaining customer privacy and relevancy and expanding its mobile advertising offerings to deliver tangible value to advertising customers, publisher partners and, ultimately, Sprint customers.”

Customer Relevancy

Ad relevancy and customer privacy have been the core focus of Sprint’s mobile advertising service. As part of its ongoing efforts to work closely with its customer base and serve the most relevant ads, Sprint recently introduced an opt-out service for mobile advertising that enables customers easy access to provide their choice in delivering any sort of targeted ads. In addition, Sprint customers can specify their interests as well as convey their preference for “family-friendly” ads.

Open Approach

Sprint has established several strategic relationships with mobile advertising solution providers. Sprint has implemented a robust ad-mediation platform, which enables a more open approach in partnering with additional ad networks and enhances the ability to provide relevant ad content. This allows the “best” ad to be served to Sprint’s customers in real time. As a result, advertisers on Sprint’s mobile advertising network consistently achieve higher than average performance for their mobile advertising and mobile marketing campaigns.

Strategic Roadmap

Sprint has helped define and develop the on-deck mobile advertising ecosystem in the United States and continues to evolve its offerings. On-deck advertising refers to the mobile ads displayed at the top and bottom of Sprint-branded mobile Web pages. Sprint’s mobile advertising service enables marketers and advertisers to reach millions of wireless data subscribers through strategically targeted mobile Web-based advertising programs while protecting customer privacy. It offers several interactive ad mechanics, including click to call, click to promotion, and click to locate, that encourage effective user engagement and provide quantifiable results. Several innovative and high-performance mobile advertising campaigns have been completed with leading brands and mobile application partners across Sprint’s on-deck mobile advertising inventory.

Advantages of Sprint’s mobile advertising service include:

Scale – Sprint’s mobile advertising network offers the industry’s best reach and frequency, with one of the highest metrics for impressions and unique visitors.
Large inventory – Sprint is a market leader in mobile data services, and wireless Internet usage among Sprint subscribers is one of the highest in the United States. This ensures a sizeable, marketable subscriber base for advertisers.

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel served more than 48.8 million customers at the end of the third quarter of 2010 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; offering industry-leading mobile data services, leading prepaid brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, Common Cents Mobile and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Newsweek ranked Sprint No. 6 in its 2010 Green Rankings, listing it as one of the nation’s greenest companies, the highest of any telecommunications company. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.