Optus has announced the launch of a new media division that will sell Mobile Advertising.

Today’s article in the Australian gives us the usual launch and press release stuff but is pretty light on details.   B&T have managed to dig out a bit more information, including a name (Dawn Goh) to head up this new division and a URL from the Optus site www.optus.com.au/advertise (a search for Mobile Advertising on the Optus Home page still draws a blank).

We heard last week from Brad over at Digital Ministry that Optus will be using MIA’s AdFactory solution to serve and manage their mobile ad campaigns.

Although we’ve seen releases before from Optus talking about mobile advertising, with the appointment of a solution provider, it looks like it might finally be happening.  There is also a bona fide rate card up on their site, with CPM rates for banners and M-Site Builds.

No surprises there - rates are generally comparable to the other players in the market, if a big high (untargeted banners are $30-$40 CPM) and there’s not much info about targeting capability.

With Optus servicing a large portion of Australia’s iPhone customers it would be quite a coup if they could offer iPhone targeting early on.

Speaking of which, I recently heard of another  local carrier offering iPhone targeting, even though it’s not an advertised  service.  Anyone got any light to shed on this?   I regularly target iPhone users via AdMob for my clients and I am not yet aware of any other Aus business offering this - would love to know more if you know otherwise?