Finland’s DNA has become the latest operator to back mobile advertising, announcing a low-cost service package partly financed by advertisements. In a statement, the country’s third-largest mobile operator announced that the ‘DNA Mainio’ subscription plan sees users charged €0.067 per minute for voice and video calls, “without a call start-up fee,” whilst the charge for sending SMS and MMS is also €0.067 each. As a launch offer, the operator has cut costs to €0.049 for all services until the end of February. The fixed monthly fee for DNA Mainio is €0.65 per month. DNA did not reveal its marketing partners for the advertising service or details on the quantity of advertisements users are likely to receive.

The mobile operator most associated with mobile advertising business models is European MVNO Blyk. Last week, Blyk announced it has raised an additional €40 million to support its ongoing operations and planned expansion outside the UK. The company also announced a new marketing strategy based upon partnering with major operators and local media companies, as against operating as a vanilla MVNO. This has resulted in the need to make unspecified job cuts. Blyk offers completely free calls and text messages to users, in exchange for receipt of a set number of marketing messages from advertisers.