Weve - the mobile marketing and mobile wallet business launched in 2011 as a joint venture by EE, O2 and Vodafone - has launched a beta version of its mobile display advertising service.

The company says this means it’s just one of a few organisations that can use verified first-party data to deliver targeted mobile display advertising.

Tesco will be the first organisation to go live in the trial, which uses live data to test the advertising platform before a wider launch. Initial targeting will be focused on age and gender campaigns, although other groupings including TV segments and social categories will be added later.

Privacy measures will also be tested, ensuring the ads are only received by consumers who’ve consented to receive advertising from Weve. 20 million customers are currently opted-in to the scheme.

Nigel Clarkson, Commercial and Marketing Director at Weve, said “Currently mobile planning and buying for display is based on a range of data points that are built into assumptions and algorithms, our data will be informed by proper, verified first party data and is unique. This enables brands to work with more certainty on mobile display and to focus their thinking to where the audience has moved to – mobile. Our mission is to make mobile display advertising attractive to brand advertisers. We want to move the debate away from click-based measurement and because we only plan to serve display advertising to known profiles, we can tell a brand who saw their message, and who engaged with it at a much more granular level of detail. We truly believe that this has the potential to create a shift in this market.”