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The Economist interviewed Pekka for an article in today’s print edition: Adland’s test tube: Britain provides a glimpse of the future of advertising.

Excerpt:

THE future, noted William Gibson, a science-fiction writer, is already here—it is just unevenly distributed. To see the future of mobile phones, people look to Japan; to see the impact of broadband internet connections, they look to South Korea. And for a glimpse of the future of advertising, the place to look appears to be Britain. The country is a “test bed” according to Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, which has just announced an alliance with British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), a British pay-television company…

…In addition, next year a new mobile-phone service for young people, called Blyk, will be launched in Britain before being rolled out across Europe. Users will be able to earn airtime in exchange for receiving advertisements on their handsets.

Blyk’s co-founder, Pekka Ala-Pietila, a former president of Nokia, the world’s biggest handset-maker, says the firm decided to launch in Britain first because it is the second-largest advertising market in the world after America, with sophisticated advertisers who appreciate the market segmentation that new technology makes possible. As a result, he says, Britain “is where we could learn the most”.