September » 2009 » mobilegroove

In brief: Regular columnist and contributor Jim Levey looks at the battle brewing in the living room. Cable companies, telcos or Internet giants – who will control (and monetize) our content experiences? Look for companies that successfully wield personalization and recommendation technologies to deliver content we appreciate and advertising we accept to be in the winner's circle. Imagine a living room where a large flat screen wirelessly attached to a set top box hangs from the wall. You enter a personal code into the set top box that recognizes your profile; the screen welcomes you to a portal where there are no channels only menus with links to personalized content and apps that range from social networking to commerce to premium content and entertainment. A blinking icon reminds to you to record Wimbledon while an ad from Wilson invites you to view their latest rackets. As you click the record button, you slide out the keypad on your remote and navigate to the Wilson site where you purchase a new tennis racket. Payment for the racket is included in your monthly cable invoice. Sounds like science fiction? Hardly. We are on the cusp of next generation iTV (interactive television), services that will elevate our viewing experience. Advertising will also be transformed, paving the way for two-way communications that enable brands to target households according to key demographics and other information collected by the set top box (STBs). Mobile devices, widely regarded to be the remote control of our digital lives, will surely play an important role in this scenario. (Mobile already has a central spot if we consider how people reach to their phones to cast their vote for talent shows, follow sports and read the gossip during soap operas.) The promise of being able to access the wide open Internet and everything in between on your TV may be a while away, but the battle for the living room, the one that will decide who monetizes our content consumption and who cashes in on the commercial messages we consume, is being fought now. Best positioned in my view are the cable companies, who have the trump because they own the signal into the home and have a trusted relationship with subscribers. They also benefit from established business partnerships with broadcast and cable network programmers, that receive billion-dollar fees for entertainment content. But there are other players lining up to stake their turf.

In brief: Inma Martinez - a leading digital media strategist, "free radical" and advisor to venture capitalists - is back for the second in the series. Following her last take on Blyk she comes back from lunch with Antti Öhrling, Blyk Co-Founder, with deep insights into the Blyk model. Other topics/companies include: VouChaCha and other startups high on the radar; social media buzz and Vodafone 360; a review of Mobilize and Mobile Marketing Forum Europe; the new mobile brain drain; and why developers need to tune into women. We salute Mark Curtis, founder of Flirtomatic; Dagmara Brylack (for innovative and thoughtful mobile campaigns at P&G); and Mark "Mr. Mobile" Wächter, for his work to take the partnership between the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and the German Federal Association for the Digital Economy’s mobile division, the BVDW Section Mobile, to a new level. Mobile Groove, the monthly podcast that focuses on the news and companies that matter most in mobile -- is back with a great line-up of topics and the usual mix of insights and outspoken observations from co-host Inma Martinez, my über-connected and always professional partner in crime. (We missed posting on Friday, but the reason for the delay will be clear when I take the wraps off an all-new MSearchGroove, so watch this space.) Mobilize, the conference Inma attended in September, left a lasting impression. Her SWOT analysis: a great line-up of startups and a high level of energy and VC activity in the Valley. Where does this leave Europe? Inma (also based in London) connects the dots in some recent investor reports and concludes Europe may see its best and brightest in mobile "defect." Is the U.S. the place to be if you are a mobile entrepreneur? Listen in and let us know what you think. Speaking of startups, Inma also outlines the highlights from Seedcamp, a program created to jumpstart the entrepreneurial community in Europe by connecting next generation developers and entrepreneurs with over 400 mentors from a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR and PR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists. One company that stood out: VouChaCha, a U.K. startup that delivers vouchers to your mobile phone. Where is the hold up in Europe and why aren't coupons a de facto part of our daily mobile routines (as they are in the U.S.)? You tell us! Other success stories Inma shares: Flirtomatic, iScoot and eBuddy. CONTEXT MATTERS? Will location-based services excite women? Well, we beg to disagree.

GOOGLE'S NEW KEYWORD TOOL SHARES SEARCH VOLUMES for the first time. AcuraCast road tests the tool (currently in beta), which provides mobile website owners and mobile search marketing agencies the ability to estimate PPC costs and traffic volumes they can expect from mobile search. A quick review of mobile search volumes shows even the most popular keywords we know from the Web aren't crowd-pleasers in mobile. For categories such as local information and gaming, the post says, the volume of mobile searches is "a mere fraction – as low as 0.3% – 0.6% of traditional Web searches for the same 1-word keyword queries." Source The bottom line: Finally Google reveals the terms that deliver results in mobile search. But mobile search usage is still lagging, no doubt due to a laundry-list of universal shortcomings MSearchGroove has analyzed in this recent post. The new Google Keywords Tool is good news for marketers and publishers, but another proof that mobile search as a service has a way to go. Peggy adds: Or does it simply underline the pivotal importance of content discovery – not mobile search - as a primary means to explore the wealth of content at our finger tips and find what we are likely to appreciate? *** MORE THAN HALF OF INDIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS USE THE MOBILE WEB, says a new survey from Indian mobile ad firm InMobi, and a third of the students engage with brands that advertise online. The students' favorite sites to visit on their mobile devices are search engines, news sites and social networks, and the company says that mobile internet usage is spread across a multitude of income groups. Source The bottom line: More evidence pointing to the popularity of the mobile internet in emerging markets, and the ability of mobile ads to reach consumers there.

In brief: A summary of October thought leadership events and a preview of the cool companies (AmbiSense & GeoVector, to name a few) you can look for soon on MSearchGroove. While MSG prepares to unveil a string of new projects and media solutions for our growing roster of clients, I am wrapping up my own presentations for two exciting industry events. First on the agenda: a half-day session on Tuesday (September 29th) with Deutsche Telekom executives to discuss the challenges and opportunities of converged services and the implications this has for the consumer portal experience. My contribution to this exclusive thought leadership event, organized by Amdocs Interactive, will look at the trend to hyper-connectedness and our increasing requirements for personalized and relevant content experiences. I will be joined by esteemed friend and colleague Andreas Constantinou, Research Director of VisionMobile, a market analysis and strategic advisory firm. Andreas' thoughts on the new mobile services and applications value chain – and the impact of the likes of Google, Nokia and Apple – is beyond thought-provoking. I look forward to capturing his ideas in the opening chapter of the Netsize Guide 2010, the must-read mobile industry almanac I write (for the third consecutive year!) on behalf of Netsize, a mobile commerce and communications enabler. More details on the Guide in future posts. In the meantime, I encourage companies across the ecosystems to contact me directly with case studies and great ideas. After that it's off to Edinburgh to speak at the 2009 118tracker Information Innovation Conference & Awards aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. Where is the value in location? My presentation -- the outcome of a new collaboration with Matthew Snyder, Founder & CEO of ADObjects, a strategic cross-media consultancy – offers some surprising answers. We also draw from some exciting new services (such as AmbiSense's innovative destination guide solutions for mobile phones, GeoVector's new directional search and pointing app and Colibria's Network Address Book, an offer that builds on our increasing interest in context-aware social address books – a requirement that sits at the core of Vodafone's path-breaking 360 offer.

In brief: A review of buzz at the recent Mobile Marketing Forum (MMF) event in Berlin and a closer look at clever campaigns (Coke, P&G, BMW, Lufthansa) suggest pent-up demand for advertising approaches (services) that make our lives more livable. Mobile advertising must deliver value. It's the key takeaway that has run through each of the 20+ industry events I have attended/chaired over the past year like a leitmotiv. However, the value of mobile advertising is changing. At first, many brands/agencies were convinced that their value proposition was inextricably linked to their level of cool. In line with this mindset, they focused on fun campaigns around free content such as branded games, ringtones and images, as well as some viral elements people could pass around to their friends. The strategy has paid dividends for brands such as Coca-Cola. A textbook example is the Fanta Stealth Sound System, which harnessed high-pitched frequencies that are audible only to youth thus providing young people a new way to communicate with each other without adults listening in. Another campaign that generated buzz (and impressive results) was Fanta Virtual Tennis. The world's first 3D augmented reality tennis game let players use their mobile devices as tennis racquets to hit a virtual ball. COKE MOBILE MILESTONES At Mobile Marketing Forum (MMF) Europe, Hinde Pagani, Coca-Cola Senior Mobile Marketing Manager, Global Interactive Marketing, treated attendees to a string of case studies that included these gems. But the real excitement was about simple SMS campaigns that employed a mechanism known as UTC, or under the cap (unique codes inserted under each soft drink bottle cap) to engage people and increase brand trust. Coke still offers its demographic fun, free content. (It boasts three iPhone apps, including a runaway success that has been downloaded 500,000 times in two months – without promotion!) But it's campaigns that combine free content with free airtime that are the real crowd-pleasers. In fact, this winning combination has allowed Coke in India to count a whopping 5 million responses in just four months. Coke in Germany has also run a similar campaign, offering customers three minutes or three SMS free of charge. Read between the lines, and value has new meaning. It's still about delivering cool content, but it's also about delivering a service that teens (and their parents) appreciate. As Hinde put it: "(With these campaigns) we gain teens' trust and please their moms."

ARPU FIGURES DON’T GIVE AN ACCURATE PICTURE OF INDIVIDUAL SPENDING, says a new report from Wireless Intelligence, because of the proliferation of multiple connections per user. For instance, in North America, the reported penetration rate is 92 percent, but when you take out multiple connections with the same user, the real rate is just 71 percent. Consequently, spending per user is $64 per month, rather than the reported $51. In Western Europe, the per user figure is €33 per month, while the per connection rate is €23. Source The bottom line: The ARPU metric has been under fire for some time, not least because it only looks at revenues, and says nothing about profitability. Consumers having multiple connections is a trend that will proliferate, as more users get 3G dongles, e-book readers and other types of connected devices. This trend could accelerate the move towards another key metric in the industry. *** MOBILE MAPPING GROWING, BUT PC SITES STILL RULE, according to ABI Research. The firm says that internet mapping sites will get 440 million monthly visitors next year. ABI has also noted that while big names like Google, Mapquest, Sohu and Baidu currently dominate the mapping space, more and more players, such as navigation vendors like TomTom and NAVTEQ, and even mobile companies like Nokia, are launching their own navigation sites. Source The bottom line: Expect mobile use to fuel the next stage of growth in mapping services, as more and more devices get GPS functionality, making maps so much easier to use, and mobile mapping applications improve. PC mapping isn’t going anywhere, but mapping on the mobile makes much more sense in many scenarios. This calls into question the need for standalone GPS units – which is why GPS vendors are pushing hard into the mobile space.