In brief:

It’s encouraging to see a much sharper focus on mobile search and a growing realization among mobile operators, content providers and publishers/developers that there is a lot more to mobile search than the universal model we know from the online Internet. Mobile phone form factors push companies to develop new mobile search services that deliver us relevant results in tune with our intent and context. All the better if these services make use of features and functions such as voice recognition, image recognition, location-awareness and Augmented Reality.

Another development that makes search essential is the avalanche of apps and app stores, and the drive by all the players in the ecosystem to make these content and services storefronts a commercial success. Case in point: Apple’s decision to snap up Siri, a voice-activated digital personal assist that takes the concept of search to a new level (allowing us to find not search!)

OPEN CALL FOR MOBILE SEARCH FIRMS

Regular readers will recall that I have tracked mobile search from the start (hence, the name MSearchGroove, following on the popularity of my industry-first report on the mobile search and content discovery space).

My background and passion also allow me to connect with cool companies in the space such as Taptu, the first mobile search company to index the Mobile Touch Web; Expertmaker, a mobile search company in stealth mode that allows us to refine our search parameters in real-time; GetFugu, a company that combines search and image recognition to help people find local businesses and navigate to their website; and Aisle 411, a company at the sweet spot between mobile search and inventory management. (Check out the bnetTV video interviews I conducted with Carl Freer, GetFugu founder, and Nathan Pettyjohn, Aisle 411 Chairman & CEO.)

I look forward to including these and more cool companies in my keynote presentation to the European Commission. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, has organized an exploratory expert workshop titled “Exploring the Future of Mobile Search” to discuss the innovation potential in mobile search. The workshop will take place in Ghent, Belgium (June 9), during the 9th Conference of Telecommunication, Media and Internet Techno-Economics.

Timed to this event I will also kick off a new series on MSG profiling mobile search newcomers and innovators. If you are a mobile search company and want to be included in my ongoing work and upcoming series, then please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

DATA POINTS

With search at the top of the business agenda, the timing is excellent to recount the key takeaways of several recent mobile search reports.

MOBILE COMMERCE & MOBILE SEARCH: Mobile Commerce (MC) – which handles over 25 percent of the searches coming from U.K. mobile operator portals and other sources – recently released a report summarizing the trends it observes based on the search queries it “sees” per year.

Among the findings:

• The volume of searches has more than doubled over the last 12 months. MC reports an increase in mobile search usage from 125 million queries to 250 million, in part due to the jump in the number of people signing up for flat-rate data bundles to surf the mobile Web. The number of searches per unique user also shows an increase. The total has grown from 8 per month to 13. (Granted this is not the frequency of use we know from the online Internet, but it is an indication that users are gravitating to the search box on portals as they become more familiar with the mobile Web.)
• The position of the search box is critical. MC’s data confirms that the higher the search box is placed on the portal, the more people use it. It’s not rocket science, but it does show that there are very simple ways to significantly increase the use of search. Even stating that search is free of charge (as Orange has done on its Orange World Portal) can boost usage.
• Tag clouds are useful shortcuts. Many use search instead of bookmarks to reach sites and destinations quickly (which is why Facebook was the single most searched term of 2009). MC tells us that displaying tag clouds containing the most popular search terms is another way to increase searches and drive results.
• Date, time and current events drive searches. No surprise here – but you can follow Steve Page, MC founder, who shares the top search terms and trends via his Twitter feed (@sjspage).
• Internet destinations and giants (Google, Facebook, YouTube) are top search terms. In addition to this information and analysis (summarized in this earlier post on MSG) MC shares how subjects are searched, reminding advertisers that they must bid on many related terms and tag their mobile pages correctly to ensure their results are high up in the natural search results for the terms.
• Are local terms also local searches? Google may have recently claimed that 33 percent of all searches on mobile have a local context, but MC is less convinced. It shows that searches such as “Manchester” are more about local soccer teams (Manchester United) than the city. Of all location searches, 55 percent include either a city or area name, 17 percent have a point-of-interest, 15 percent use a full zip code and 13 percent have a partial zip code.
• Search shortcomings can be avoided. Transcoding is not the only way to mobilize sites. Advertisers should build versions optimized for device types. (Taptu indexes sites that are touch-friendly and built from the ground up for access via touchscreen devices, for example.) The intelligence behind the search boxes could also be better. MC’s road test of search on Nokia Ovi reveals that it delivers games results for pac man – but not for pacman. Android Market suffers the “same shortcoming.” (BTW: This could be solved with a simple “Did You Mean” response to clarify the search term and the searcher’s intent.)

Source

The bottom line: MC has brought together a lot of insights about what people search for and how they search for it. Mobile search isn’t perfect, but volumes are increasing, and so is the pressure on providers to deliver a better experience. And it’s not just about mobile operators any more. The rise of the app stores means publishers and the 75 app stores are well-advised to develop mobile search strategies to deliver people the apps they want – or at least relevant results.

* * *
ARE APPS BEATING SEARCH?: This insightful post from GigaOM draws from a Broadpoint AmTech note and asks if apps are poised to disrupt the standard online search model. The Broadpoint report says search engines derive significant revenues from commerce-related queries (searching for “Amazon” or “eBay”) and suggests that warns that the growth in the usage of mobile apps that take people directly to destinations could be bad news for Google & Co. “If users get in the habit of simply using the Amazon app to search for products or a Fandango app for movies, then Google would be seriously impacted,” the report concludes.

Source

The bottom line: Mobile apps cover the bases to bypass search engines when the purpose of the search is navigational (using the search box as a shortcut) and commercial (looking for a product on Amazon by searching for Amazon first, for example). Sebastian Rupley, who wrote the post, reminds us that Google can likely read the writing on the wall, which is why the search giant is so interested in the “spread of Android-based phones, many of which emphasize its tools and applications, and steer users into its search/ad ecosystem.” It will be interesting to see how all search engines react to the onslaught of mobile apps that make finding and buying stuff with our phones a no-brainer.

* * *

FACEBOOK DOMINATES: We all know that social networking is the number one activity on mobile. A recent ComScore report reveals that search queries on the social networking site (online) grew by a whopping 48 percent between February and March 2010. In its study, which is based on 15.4 billion core searches in the U.S., ComScore also found Google leads with 65.1 percent of the market, down 0.4 percent from February. It was followed by Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask and AOL. Microsoft showed a 7 percent increase after adding mapping and other features.

Source

The bottom line: Read between the lines and this bodes well for social sites and social search via mobile. Facebook, which has more than 400 million active users, is exploding when it comes to search (up 48 percent) on the Internet. Only a matter of time before this trend spreads to mobile, our preferred way to connect with our social networks and information about people who matter most to us on the fly. Meantime, Tech Crunch points out that search growth is slowing. The post concludes: the slowdown “may also be an indication that the search industry is maturing, and the next leg of growth may not kick in until people start searching on their mobile phones in a significant way or something else gives people a reason to search even more than they already do.”

* * *

TAPTU TOUCH WEB REPORTS: This week Taptu releases the fourth in its series of reports analyzing the Mobile Touch Web. To make sure we are all on the same page and to set the stage for the next report findings, here’s a summary of the key takeaways.

• The January Report defined the Touch Web (and the ecosystem emerging around it) and concluded that the Mobile Touch Web had arrived full force. According to the company, which indexes touch-friendly sites and destinations, there were around 326,000 touch-friendly sites in January compared with a total of 180,000 apps across all app stores.
• The February Report takes this a step further, offering a breakdown of the sites that make up the Mobile Touch Web. The report emphasized shopping and services, a major subset of this new Web. In total Taptu counts approx. 83,000 Mobile Touch websites devoted to shopping and services. Why is this significant? Shopping and services accounts for about 26 percent of all sites. The same category accounts for less than 4 percent of apps in app stores. Taptu concludes that commerce is a chief focus on the Mobile Touch Web and will play an important role in its evolution.
• The March Report takes an in-depth look at the Government and Non-Profit sector and its growing presence on the Touch Web. The report highlights some of the leading services from Education institutions such as MIT, the Haiti disaster relief effort from the Charity sector and various local and federal government agencies that are using the Touch Web to reach a mass audience. A surprise: a large number of religious organizations embracing the Mobile Touch Web (a whopping 72 percent of all sites in the Government & Non-Profit segment are faith-based services).

Source: You can download all Taptu reports here: http://taptu.com/metrics/

* * *

AUSTRALIA STATS: This post draws from new Nielsen research to provide numbers on mobile search usage in Australia.

• 73 percent of mobile Internet users conduct searches, compared to 38 percent accessing email and 14 percent checking social media sites
• The figure (73 percent) of people using mobile search was just 30 percent a year ago
• 43 percent of total Australian mobile phone owners have Internet-enabled handsets, though just 29 percent use their mobiles to access the Internet
• Search came out on top of activities conducted on mobile Internet; checking the news and weather, emails, maps and directories, and social networking were also cited as common mobile activities

The report also includes some insights into mobile social networking and the top handsets.

Source

The bottom line: Great to have country-specific stats. Although mobile Internet usage has a way to go, there is a tendency among users to use mobile search to explore all the exciting content at their finger tips. Makes sense that we start off by transferring our online experience to mobile.

Disclaimer: Taptu is an MSG supporter and client.

This is the first of a series of post in which we’ll review mobile advertising and search networks to give you a heads up on what you are going to find when you decide to run a mobile advertising or mobile search marketing campaign. We’ll review the same points in all of them, so you can quickly get an overview on how much effort and money you have to put in.

Can I set up my campaign online? Yes

How long does it take to set up? Less than 10 minutes.

Payment options: Credit and debit cards, but not those with chip and pin security

Minimum payment: There is no minimum; it will depend on how your campaign performs

Bidding options: CPC, with either a monthly budget or a daily budget so you can adjust for heavier traffic during a promotion.

Targeting:
• Day of Week
• Hours of Day
• Demographic : gender and age

But there is a tricky bit — read the FULL MOBISLIM BLOG POST HERE >>

In brief:

The avalanche of apps and app stores (nearly 70, according to WIP Connector) turns up the pressure on developers and other ecosystem parties to find ways to make money selling apps. How are apps discovered and promoted? And more importantly, how are these app emporiums and boutiques going to handle the simple CRM to encourage the all-important return purchase?

After all, it wasn’t so long ago that a study from Pinch Media, which analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple’s App Store, reported that just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it.

A lot of open questions. But one thing for certain: competitive differentiation is in the business model. And we know from the findings of a recent Netsize Mobile Trends Survey of +1,000 professionals and practitioners that the 4-Cs (Convenience, Compatibility, Choice and Charging) are key requirements for a winning app store (and so for the developers that hope to make a living selling their apps). Netsize is gearing up to release new (unpublished) survey results and a new report that reveals attitudes toward business models and what will enable real and significant app sales. Watch this space!

MAXIS, ONDEEGO & AMDOCS

What is the app store landscape and what are the monetization models?

This was also the topic at Mobile Web & Apps World Forum, a CTIA partner event organized by my esteemed colleague Ajit Jaokar. (Again, I congratulate Ajit on organizing a standing-room-only event dedicated to answering the tough questions around app fragmentation, monetization and how to make it all work. Thanks also for inviting me to speak during the SuperSession looking at mobile advertising and in-app opportunity moderated by mobile authority Chetan Sharma. It was an excellent session with Joe Lally from MTV Networks and Jerry Rocha from Nielsen and Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile, and one that provides a great deal of material for future MSG analysis and follow-up.)

However, it was the session on personalization and content discovery, presented by Mike Lurye, Amdocs Interactive, Director of Product Marketing, that got people thinking about the business value of granular subscriber intelligence (anonymized) and ways it can be used to get consumers to the content they will appreciate and without making them search for it. To drive home the point Mike didn’t use marketing-speak. He used case studies from mobile operators in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. (You can download all the speaker presentations here.)

I used the opportunity of our in-person meeting to discuss the larger issues around app store marketing and pick up on a fascinating conversation we had weeks earlier (in preparation for Mobile Monday Austria) delving into the tough choices facing developers.

Certainly, developers can jockey for position in the Apple App Store (and others), where getting featured (placed where people can find you easily) is the only way to build a business. But developers can also align themselves with retailers/operators that seek differentiation through innovative business models emphasizing customer service, easy discovery or local culture.

The latter works for Malaysian mobile operator Maxis. I am a great admirer of the carrier’s app store focus and mission: “to nurture and foster interesting developer applications for our community.” (This and more in this must-see video interview with Nava Wathan, Director 1Maxis, Maxis Communications.) Maxis has become the place to go for “something that is Malaysian.” Surely, many more mobile operators can pursue a similar strategy to stand out from the crowd (and build a successful business for their business ecosystems of developers and customers).

At the other end of the spectrum, Ondeego also “gets” it. It launched AppCentral, a mobile app store for the enterprise last fall becoming the first mobile application store meeting the unique needs of the enterprise workers and their IT departments. For enterprise employees a one-stop shop means that they can select what they need (serious apps) to do their job. For developers it means a channel to a difficult to access market and a chance to sell their productivity and enterprise apps direct to professionals who will likely buy.

PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH MIKE LURYE

First, credit where credit is due here. Although people have tweeted about the simplicity and originality of my views on the evolution of the app landscape and the marketing strategies that will help everyone make money, it was Mike who came up with the popular Supermarkets/Farmers Markets analogy.

I caught up with Mike in-person following the Web & Apps World Forum event to talk about marketplaces and ideal models for making money – now.

Here an excerpt:

APP STORES & STOREFRONTS: “The main difference between an app store and a traditional digital commerce storefront is actually not that it sells apps, but that it is based on a certain business model that’s been pioneered by Apple. Stores selling apps have been around for a very long time but Apple changed the game because they set up a business model that opened up the opportunity to get to market for a much broader range of developers and they did so by establishing very straightforward business terms that are the same for everybody.” But not all app stores must sell apps. China Mobile, for example, sells traditional digital merchandise (ringtones and wallpapers and so on) on the storefront they call their app store.

MAXIS MODEL: This mobile operator has cleverly defined the segment it will go after: the local population and local developers. “So, their store is never going to be very big, they acknowledge that. They are not trying to compete, they are trying to co-exist….This is a good strategy because when you know your customer and when you know what you want to offer to your customer that is valuable to them, and you know who is going to build it which is a local developer community, you are poised for success.”

FARMERS MARKETS: The close customer relationship is what makes a farmers market special. And mobile operators have a close customer relationship they can build on – if they recognize their real role. “The owner of the farmers’ market doesn’t get in between [the] transaction…There is a direct [customer] relationship and the owner of the farmers’ market acts as a facilitator. They make it work.” How? Through payment services, personalization insights and scale.

CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH: If you are about to pack, think again because it may have peaked. Apple found gold in apps and now everybody is moving to California (literally). “Now, guess what, not everybody who came to California at the time of gold rush became rich, some people did, but most actually didn’t, so that is what is going on right now. Everybody and their brother wants to have an app store; some people have a well thought out strategy. Maxis is an example of that. Some people are doing essentially a ‘me-too’ kind of a thing, and there is actually nothing wrong with that in principle as long as you realize that that’s what you’re doing.”

WHITE LABEL: Mike says it’s a low-risk model. The not-so-good news: it’s unlikely to build subscriber loyalty. “There is no leverage of the operator’s unique capabilities, there is no more value for the subscriber to purchase an application in that app store versus the original app store from the white label supplier themselves. There might be some cost advantage…but fundamentally it’s not a model that will differentiate the operator.

TAKE A PAGE FROM AMAZON: Personalization has made Amazon a success. “This is the business they are in: the business of personalization. They are offering it now as a platform to others. You do that search, you bring results not only from Amazon, but [also] from Amazon’s competitors and that’s OK by Amazon because they build such a sophisticated platform that now empowers [the] ecosystem.
***
MY TAKE: Are we on the brink of new business models or is history repeating itself? And — even if it is very much a repeat of the mobile portals – what will guarantee success for the developers and retailers this time around? At the moment, developers have a handful of choices: boost word-of-mouth promotion (tough and tedious, which is why Mob4Hire’s peer app recommendation is an interesting one to watch), mobile advertising (complicated and unpredictable, which is why we are all searching for better ways to deliver the right advertising to the right demographic) and placement (tricky and transient, which is why GetJar has cleverly created a model where developers pay for shelf space). What role will personalization play (even in a pre-paid environment)? My ongoing research into recommenders brings me together with mobile operators already wringing value out of granular analytics to help people discover content they’ll likely appreciate. A prime example is Hong Kong’s CSL, an operator I showcase in my upcoming report, that has harnessed personalization to support My Net, its own (branded) mobile Internet service. Clearly, personalization is moving up the business agenda (as it should) because it’s a way mobile operators can generate revenues (helping people find and buy what they want) and stay in the game.

* * *

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE: [13:00]

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Amdocs is not an MSG supporter.  However, ChangingWorlds, a company acquired by Amdocs, has published a by-lined thought leadership column series on  MSG. Peggy Anne Salz has also spoken at invitation-only  thought leadership events organized by Amdocs for its operator clients.

In brief:

After months of researching my chapter contribution to an upcoming book on marketing to Digital Natives, it’s increasingly clear that mobile advertising companies – and their view of “consumers” needs — must evolve.

Mobile is a fiercely personal device and people – particularly empowered Digital Natives – want content and advertising on their terms. (I purposely mix content and advertising here because they are becoming one and the same thing.)

Another shift in the marketplace: our requirement to have a say in the content/advertising we are willing to receive. This came through loud and clear in the research/interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K. 2009 project, a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.

Among the findings (based on 1,000+ consumer online responses and 20+ interviews with operators, enablers, agencies, and brands): only 32 percent of the 1,000+ consumers surveyed had a positive attitude toward receiving advertising messages on their mobile phone. However, that number rose to 64 percent, provided people were properly “incentivized,” and 70 percent if they were incentivized and “in control” of their mobile advertising experience.

Connect the dots, as an increasing number of mobile advertising companies and ecosystem companies have begun to do, and it’s clear that the capability to provide permission-based mobile advertising (with an easy opt-in/opt-out option) could become table stakes.

MOBILE PIONEERS

Companies such as BuzzCity’s myGamma and gofresh’s itsmy.com, mobile social networks turned mobile social ad networks, need little convincing. They made the strategic decision in 2007-08 to allow their verified members to choose the channel of advertising they would accept. Of course, this wasn’t just out of respect for the individual member. Opt-in also allows advertisers to better target their key demographic (example: sports enthusiasts with sports ads) and ensure members who receive a marketing message actually listen.

In my own mobile advertising road test/white paper (PDF) on behalf road test on behalf of Bango, a provider of mobile analytics solutions and MSG supporter, showed that this was indeed a plus for my own campaigns. In fact, I gave BuzzCity the highest marks overall because its opt-in allowed me to deliver effective mobile advertising. (Happy coincidence — I have an interview with BuzzCity CEO KF Lai next week and gofresh’s Vince Staybl has also just reached out to me from his NY trip to offer me a pre-briefing on some significant news, so watch this space.)

JUMPTAP CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE

Jumptap, a provider of mobile advertising solutions that also operates a major mobile ad network, aims to tackle these shortcomings. The company announced this week that is will implement a new feature in mid-year (translated: by end-June) that “enables mobile consumers to manage their own profiles for a more personalized brand experience.”

The focus is on permission-based advertising and on putting the consumer (individual) at the center of their advertising experience. In a nutshell, the feature will enable visitors to participating websites in Jumptap’s ad network to chose the mobile advertising content that interest them – and the choice to opt-out of the process altogether. (Specifically, all publishers in the network will be able to participate. Participating publishers will need to include a link to Jumptap’s profile manager.)

What’s the user experience?

People can choose from a variety of some 29 advertising content categories, including automotive, careers, chat & email, entertainment, finance, fitness, food & drink and games, as the slide below illustrates.

What’s at work (and how) in the background? And how does Jumptap avoid potentially presenting the same people with the same ads?

JumpTap operates a premium mobile advertising network with a penetration of approx. 50 million unique visits a month in the U.S. alone.

Predictably, Jumptap’s IP, which includes patented technology, mobile search algorithms and proprietary know-how around targeting and relevancy (which I have analyzed in this post), plays a huge role in delivering people mobile advertising they will likely find relevant and useful. The company counts unique visitors based on “distinct IDs we get from carriers, cookies, request headers and device IDs.” This can vary across network. “In instances where we don’t have a unique ID, we estimate the number of unique visitors based on page views/unique user that we see elsewhere in the network.”

INTERVIEW WITH PARAN JOHAR

Armed with this background I caught up with Jumptap CMO to learn still more about the nuts & bolts of this ambitious solution and what is says about the company’s wider mobile advertising strategy.

Q: Jumptap is one of a growing group of companies sharply focused on putting the consumer at the center of the mobile advertising ecosystem? Why is this important and what do you offer people?

A: What we’re now seeing is a new wave of mobile advertising right, with the focus on customer intelligence and really putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Many companies got lost and focused on other constituents: operators, publishers and advertisers. They are all important people, but we are putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem, and the way we’re doing that is allowing them to manage their own profiles in a really simple format. This also drives the relevancy of ads.

The concept of is revolutionary but because everyone else has been trying to satisfy other constituents. By driving customer intelligence you’re going to see a higher engagement rate. If you see a higher engagement rate, you’re going to see advertisers who are getting better ROI. If they’re getting a better ROI, you’re going to be able to charge them more. If you can charge them more, by default, you get a better publishing yield so you’re really taking care of all these other constituents by focusing on your core audience, which is the customer, and driving the customer intelligence.

Q: Other companies have a similar approach. And just last week Alcatel-Lucent broke on the scene with a mobile advertising solution that is the subject of a larger report I am currently writing. In it I argue that permission-based advertising is a good fit with messaging because you build a conversation that – in turn – can improve the customer data. But your focus is display….

A: Yes, it’s only about display and it’s not about behavioural targeting. What this is about is empowering consumers to choose their category of interest. That’s one component of the data that will drive the delivery of relevant advertising. It goes into the user profile. And then there might be a component related to context, a component related to carrier data, a component related to publishers’ data – or a keyword from a search. All these are components and the ultimate goal is to drive consumer relevancy through this focus on consumer intelligence– and the better we can understand our mobile ad network, the better we can serve relevant ads to consumers.

Throughout this process three things are critical. One is full-transparency. Two is respecting their privacy and making sure all this data is completely anonymous. And third is preference. We’re allowing them to tell advertisers ‘these are my categories of preference.’

Q: What’s the roll out and what are plans beyond the iPhone?

A: That’s a great question. We’re rolling this out at the end of Q2, and you’re going to get a link to a Beta site where you can go in on your iPhone – or any device – and just scroll through and change categories of interest to suit you. It’s incredibly simple. The idea was to keep it as simple as possible.

Q: It it’s for all handsets from the get-go?

A: It is for all handsets and all advertisers. It’s on iPhone and on mobile Internet, so it’s going to be limited at first. But, as it rolls out, it’s going to obviously develop [momentum]. The goal is ultimately to drive more relevant advertising to everyone on all handsets.

Q: I mentioned that other companies have placed some form of permission-based advertising at the core of what they do. Take BuzzCity. BuzzCity even surveys its members and shares this anonymized information with advertisers to help them target their audience. From an initial look at Jumptap is different because it offers the data to third-party publishers. This would perhaps be the differentiating factor. At the other end of the spectrum there is Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism solution, [a solution that harnesses permission-based advertising – specifically, text messaging – to improve targeting.] So, there are other flavors out there…

A: No one else is doing this the way we are. It is absolutely one of our key differentiators. We also have 80 percent of the carrier business in the U.S. AT&T works with two sales partners, right? One is Jumptap and the other is Yahoo. Needless to say, we’re in good company.

We also have the broadest IP portfolio of any mobile ad network. And we have our pay-per-lick performance marketplace that allows users to bid at a keyword level, category, handset or carrier. We’re the only ones who have all of that.

You bring up the mobile social networks such as BuzzCity. I think it’s a little bit different within a social media construct. That is one component that can be added to the user profile, certainly. But remember we are not taking a siloed approach. It’s not just contextual, not just consumer category information, not just behavioural, not just carrier information. It is all of these components aggregated across multiple forms of data to drive relevancy. That’s our consumer intelligence.

Q: Another part of this might be that you are a neutral network. You belong to a group of ad networks – including the likes of Millennial Media and inMobi – that is not in the Google or Apple camp…

A: I think that’s a great way to break out the marketplace now and there are three groups, so to speak. There’s a lot coming from Apple that I agree with — and there’s a lot that I don’t. On the one hand, Steve Jobs came out publicly and said that mobile advertising sucks and that he has this goal of driving relevancy right to his network. That’s something we applaud. It’s very much in line with our strategy of customer intelligence, so that I think is dead-on.

The piece I don’t think is dead-on is his approach. He’s almost creating a walled garden for himself, almost an AOL of the mobile Internet. Advertisers really don’t care where their ad runs. They care about reaching their audience, not the device. iPhone happens to be the sexy thing right now, but Android will be the next sexy thing – and it [Android] is already is starting to catch a lot of that limelight.

Imagine you were a TV buyer and you had to buy a 30 second TV spot and you had to be cognisant of whether your audience is watching television on a Samsung, Sony or Pioneer TV set. And then you had to worry about whether they were watching it over cable, satellite or a dish network. And then you had to customize your creative accordingly. And so on. It doesn’t make for an efficient marketplace and that’s where I think Apple is missing the boat a little bit. They’re becoming a walled garden in advertising, which I think is not good for the mobile advertising ecosystem in the long term.

Q: Finally, where is the excitement?

A: We’re doing a lot in rich media. Our Unified Rich Media Platform [which I detail further down] delivers the industry’s broadest set of rich media units – for both mobile Web and in apps – all from one network. And our rich media platform is completely open. So, if you’re a rich media buyer for you plug right into our system. We work with iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry. We’re an open system and we help advertisers reach their target audience.

***

MY TAKE: Permission-based advertising sits at the core of a variety of approaches and solutions I analyze in my upcoming report for GigaOM PRO, a project that has evolved from a SWOT analysis of mobile advertising solutions (including Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism and JumpTap’s solution powered by “consumer intelligence”) into a wider discussion of the business value of permission-based (opt-in).

We have ample evidence that permission-based messaging delivers positive results and response rates. A messaging approach also allows brands and other companies in the ecosystem to build on this personal profiling data (with the individual’s permission) by adding questions to refine the profile. This way, an individual who has signed up for car ads (a broad topic) might divulge that they are more into Audi than BMW and even say why they prefer one over the other. All voluntary information an advertiser would no doubt value.

Display is a different. It’s more one-way than two-way, and there is a danger of “spamming” people with repeat advertising because there aren’t enough ads in a category – or because the ad networks can’t identify unique users (and therefore gauge whether an individual user has seen the same ad already, or not). Jumptap claims to have addressed the latter with its IP, technology and techniques that allow the ad network to identify 50 million uniques per month in the U.S. alone.

This week’s announcement builds on that foundation. The focus is to increase the value and relevancy of mobile display ads. (Thus, Jumptap does not compete with companies that focus on mobile messaging and direct marketing.) To achieve this Jumptap inputs the advertising categories chosen by the individual into a much larger, more sophisticated equation that includes data from carriers, searches and some context. This covers the bases to provide people a better user experience (provided there is a good supply of ads in each category), and that should certainly lead to high advertiser ROI and publisher yields. Of course, the proof is in the numbers. We’ll have to wait a while for those. In the meantime, Jumptap’s move can be read as an important confirmation that all advertising – not just messaging – is correctly evolving to provide people more of a say in what they get.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter with a branded thought leadership presence on this website; Jumptap has been an MSG supporter and sponsored a series of podcasts.

I outline the key data points and takeaways further down in this post.

But the real story is the insights the report gives us into winning players and strategies (that is, who will be selling the most and how).

APP DISTRIBUTION AND APP STORE PROLIFERATION

Chetan documents a real and gradual shift from on-deck stores (translated: mobile operator offerings) to off-deck plays that are primarily DD2C (Developer Direct 2 Consumer) – potentially the toughest kind of sales pitch for developers more adept in tech than marketing.

Indeed, developers are going to need some help with that. Little wonder that Patrick Mork, GetJar VP Marketing, singles out app payment and in-app advertising and reveals these are the next features/functionality in the GetJar pipeline. (Smart! It’s all about making it easier for developers to make money from their apps).

And then there are the regional differences that Chetan has expertly uncovered.

Particularly in emerging markets, the mobile apps- mobile advertising business ecosystem has become robust enough to provide developers added revenue. It’s a big business if we consider that Asia, with the lowest pre-paid subscriber rates, also accounted for 37 percent of global downloads.

Overall, Chetan estimates advertising based revenue accounted for about 12 percent of the overall revenue, but that figure is projected to rise to 28 percent by 2012.

Finally, the report confirms two observations that run through my own research and writing like a leit motif: the business imperative to improve content discovery and the potential for a Long Tail of app stores (not just an “app for that” – but an app store for that!).

Farmers Markets and Supermarkets? I’ll have more on that scenario later this week when I catch up with Mike Lurye, Director, Product Marketing, Amdocs Interactive, to explore the characteristics (choice, convenience, payment, personalization) that can potentially separate the leaders from the also-rans.

GETJAR PODCAST

But first the highlights from my podcast with GetJar’s Patrick Mork, who was instrumental in guiding the research project from the start. We discussed the report numbers that really stand out and the business model strategies they support.

HYPERLOCAL: Developers will need to adapt their business models to the regions. Direct sale of apps in developing markets versus ad-supported schemes in emerging markets. This divide spells fantastic opportunities in mobile advertising for companies that can tap them. (One reason why GetJar is gearing up to launch a partnership with a major advertising company to enable this scenario everywhere.)

THERE CAN BE ONLY A FEW?: GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs is bullish about the outlook for a fortunate few stores that have the right capabilities mix (GetJar among them. Of course). In his view: “There is no way that this many app stores will survive in the long term and while the value of the global app economy is set to be astoundingly high by 2012, we think only a few app stores will share this revenue.” Why? Patrick puts it down to the virtual nature of commerce in an app store. “In a virtual economy such as the app economy retail is different and you don’t need that many players.” The selling point is relevant content and app stores that have this – and consumer traffic – are in the winners’ circle. Another reason why only a few may survive: “Developers have finite resources…. They are resource-starved and will therefore only work with a few app stores because they won’t have the time or energy to work with many of them.” (After all, he adds, it can be a pain and drain to open accounts with multiple stores, connect to the back-end systems and upload the content. “Our value proposition continues to be that GetJar is a one-stop to upload it in one place.)

APP SHORTCUTS PAY-OFF: Patrick and I finally got the chance to discuss the runaway success of app shortcuts, literally shortcuts to mobile websites. Put simply, brands and content companies can promote their mobile website as if it was an app(!) Before you dismiss it, consider this: Facebook counts a whopping 45 million downloads of site shortcuts via GetJar. That number beats their iPhone app downloads by a mile!

Listen to the podcast here. [15:32]

My take: The app economy has officially arrived. In 2009, app downloads worldwide were approx. 7 billion with Asia accounting for a whopping 37 percent of the total. Total downloads are forecast to skyrocket to almost 50 billion in 2012 – a year on year growth rate of 92 percent. This would mean that the value of apps sold would be greater than the value of CDs sold in 2012 ($13.83 billion). But we shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet. The business models are unclear, the market is fragmented and real success is linked inextricably to local and regional market conditions. The hard truth: It’s not a single market and one-size-fits all app schemes won’t deliver. Will app stores be on-deck (operator managed) or off-deck (direct-2-consumer)? Or will there be hybrids? Will the prevailing model be paid apps or ad-supported apps? Or will it be a mix? I’m not avoiding the question when I say ‘all of the above’ and everything in-between. Chetan’s report paints a buoyant picture of a young market (“the proliferation of apps in many directions”) and hints at the key capabilities that will clinch the deal for app stores and there developers.

The bottom line: We need more engaging and creative approaches to mobile advertising in those markets where this model will rule (emerging markets). And we need the various channels of mobile advertising (messaging, Web, search and coupons/barcodes) to work together more tightly. Finally, content discovery is an issue the industry must recognize and solve.

In closing a positive – and possible –scenario (from Chetan) if we get this right: “Connectivity breeds apps. It is a given that as consumer electronic devices become wirelessly connected, consumers are looking to download apps on those platforms. Apps download on the iPod have been every bit of a success as they have been on the iPhone. Similarly, we will see a significant uptick in the apps for devices such as the iPad, telematics platforms in vehicles, digital cameras, navigation devices, picture frames, weight scales, and the list goes on and on. These apps will entertain and amuse consumers, analyze data on the devices, connect users with content and friends, and will interconnect various end-points in the pervasive mobile ecosystem in a much more profound manner.” It’s shaping up to be a great space indeed!

And what better event than M-Days to provide a preview of the first (exclusive) results of Mobile Trends Survey 2010?

Drawing from an online survey of 1,000+ professionals and practitioners, the survey – conducted by MSG partner Netsize – provides insights into key trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the pivotal importance of mobile as a means to bridge our virtual and physical worlds.

During the session aptly titled “Mobile Trends 2020, Mobile Research and App-Commerce: What Comes Next in Europe?” I will provide conference attendees, industry influencers and key bloggers a sneak peek into the controversial survey results, starting with respondents’ views on app store leaders and the enablers that give them and their offers the competitive edge.

Follow the  event on Twitter (#mdays).

I look forward to an exciting panel with futurist and trend scout Monty Metzger (best known for his work with MOCOM2020, an open think tank about mobile media worldwide), Peter Broekroelofs (who heads up Service2Media and has valuable insights into the future of mobile commerce), and Karin Du Rietz from Rubberduck Media Lab (with some cool ideas about the future of mobile TV).

Another trend I will include in my presentation/discussion is the impact of smartphones on the fabric of the mobile Web.

The advance of touchscreen devices, app stores and new advertising approaches/formats are all coming together in a new kind of interactive mobile Internet, a brave new place where new content, new experiences and even new mobile search services will set the bar.
This brings me to Taptu, a mobile search company that understands this seismic shift. It lays out its views on this new Touch Web in a thought-provoking series of white papers.  (Available for download on MSG – see the right-hand sidebar for more details.)

The Touch Web throws up as many issues as it does opportunities.

•    What does it do to usability?
•    What does it mean for mobile advertising and how do we make it easy and inviting for people to interact with company sites and ads?
•    What is the impact on mobile search?

Tough questions I will address in my presentation.

Taptu doesn’t have all the answers either – but its plan of action (and thought leadership) is impressive. For a start, Taptu has crawled, indexed and graded websites (assessing factors such as their suitability for touch devices and their page weights –key since it impacts the speed of browsing on mobile network and the end-user experience) to create an index of Touch Web-friendly sites.

To make sure Touch Web-friendly sites also figure highly in mobile search results Taptu has also fine-tuned its algorithms to “decide whether to return results from the Touch Web, the mobile Web or the wider Web” depending on factors such as the searcher’s device and what they would likely appreciate.

More about this next week when Taptu releases the first-ever Touch Web report. MSG will delve deeper into the results in a series of articles and sponsored podcasts. And more on the Netsize survey results tomorrow (once they are public).

If you plan to be in Munich, please feel free to reach out!

Disclaimer: Netsize and Taptu are MSG partners and supporters and have committed to presenting exclusive thought leadership via a branded presence on MSG.

In the first of a series of quest columns Colm Healy – Vice President of EMEA services and General Manager of Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm company – dissects the discovery dilemma.

Search, recommendation and discovery tools are commonplace on the web. We are used to having an intermediary between us and the content that we will eventually consume.

There are many ways in which that intermediary can appear, how we access it, and how it can go about its business, but its role is the same – to enable us to find content. Content that we are looking for; content that we might be looking for; and content that providers want us to see.

The reason that these tools exist is, quite simply, because there is too much content available to do without them. We need some service in place to help us find what we want.

The same now applies to mobile content, be it content designed specifically for mobile, or web content accessed via the mobile. The amount of content available has exploded in recent years to the point where the search, recommendation and discovery tools essential on the web are equally important in our mobile experience.

Key drivers for this explosion in content creation and availability have been led, first and foremost, by the adoption of mobile as an ever-present attachment to our lives, and, in turn, the reliance on the mobile device as a device for more than simply communications.

Evolving from this is the increasing sophistication of mobile handsets – from now so-called ‘Vanilla’ phones, to feature phones, to the emergence and unremitting growth of the smartphone category – users now have mobile handsets that are capable of processing any of the content out there on the web, including HD video. Enabled by the network developments to support increased bandwidth capacity and faster peak data rates, users are now capable of consuming almost any content through their mobile handset.

The user behaviour that this creates represents an incredible opportunity for content developers and publishers. And for the retailers that provide access to that content.

Yet the challenge for all players in the mobile ecosystem is centred on enabling users – buyers – to find the content that they want.

User Research

At Xiam, we recently commissioned TNS Global to carry out transnational – UK and US – research into the experiences of mobile content users which found clear evidence that discovery was standing in the way of a satisfactory mobile user experience. More importantly for the players in the mobile ecosystem, discovery of content is standing in the way of significant revenue opportunities, and creating a user experience that deters customers and will, ultimately, lead to increased customer churn.

The study, which began with a representative sample of 2,666 mobile content users and derived quantitative and qualitative research by focussing more closely on the most active users, revealed an enthusiastic but frustrated demand for easy to use content and applications.

A key finding of the research highlighted that content discoverability was a significant issue, with eight out of ten users reporting a problem obtaining content on their mobile handsets. When it came to finally finding the content for which they were searching, mobile Internet users were, on average, unsuccessful 27% of the time.

Users were frustrated by the time required to find the information they were searching for, and access the specific content that they wanted. Slow page loads, too many layers on websites, and too much irrelevant information are frequent annoyances for mobile content users.

Yet the opportunity presented by mobile content was reiterated by the fact that almost two-thirds (63%) of consumers surveyed indicated that they would spend more time browsing and purchase more content if it was personalized and easier to find.

How We Search

Though mobile content is a relatively new arrival on our plate of entertainment and services for consumption, users are already set in their ways, accessing the same types of content and doing so via the same search tools. Both, more often than not, an extension of their traditional, online content and search habits from their laptop or PC.

Mobile web browsers tend to use search engines (with Google the most frequently referenced), bookmarked sites or to enter URLs directly.

This reflects, very clearly, that there is no significant, regular influence on users as to the content for which they search:
• Search engines are a powerful tool for giving you specifically what you were looking for, though they are far from flawless
• Bookmarked sites are sites that the user has previously visited and had a productive experience of using
• Directly entered URLs indicate that the user knew precisely where on the mobile they wanted to go

Using the mobile network operator’s content portal is one of the less often used methods for accessing content, and was rated in our survey as least effective for finding desired content. Respondents reported that the service provider’s portal was often poorly organised, and that relevant content was not easily and directly accessible.

Those same users reported that they would increase the time and money spent on mobile web browsing if relevant content was easier to find. 59 percent said they would spend more time accessing content – translating to, on average, 65 minutes more per month. And 37 percent said they would spend more money on content purchases – translating to, on average, £5 more per month.

A further criticism of service provider portals was focusing too much on content downloads (i.e. sales) rather than on providing information and a service. Information on events and special promotions, as well as relevant recommendations based upon previous choices of the individual user would enhance the operator’s value to end users significantly.

This element – recommendation enabling discovery – is primary to any mobile content service as it cuts through the time consuming search procedure, and improves the experience of the user. The model adopted and made famous by Amazon – ‘if you liked this, you might also like this’ – is a simple and effective one. The more sophisticated this can be, the more effective the results will be.

And with the myriad different types of content and applications available, a tool to enable the discovery of content that is highly relevant but might otherwise go unnoticed can be especially valuable. Valuable to the user; valuable to the manager of the portal or store; and valuable to developers and publishers of the content, who will focus their efforts towards a provider that can enable their offering to be discovered.

One of Qualcomm’s key messages to the industry is that the mobile experience has to evolve beyond simple search and move toward personal discovery, making the user’s experience more intuitive. These results point to a huge opportunity for operators to increase mobile data usage and sales by providing personalized mobile apps, content and services.

Colm Healy is vice president of EMEA services and general manager of Xiam Technologies for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS).  QIS helps accelerate consumer adoption and consumption of mobile content across all networks and devices by delivering a more engaging mobile experience that is contextual and relevant to consumers’ personal interests. In his current role, Healy manages all business relationship and deployments of Qualcomm’s services solutions within the EMEA region. As general manager of Xiam Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary acquired by Qualcomm in March 2008, he continues to lead the team’s efforts in selling and deploying Xiam’s discovery and recommendations products to a worldwide network of mobile operators including Vodafone, Orange, O2, AIS and Globe.

Disclaimer: Xiam is an MSG supporter.

ANDROID AND APPLE NOW ACCOUNT FOR 75 PERCENT OF US MOBILE WEB TRAFFIC, a stat noticed by TechCrunch in the latest installment of AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Report. The iPhone OS (which also includes iPod Touches) leads the way, generating 55 percent of smartphone requests on AdMob’s network in the US, with Android pulling in 20 percent. RIM follows with just 12 percent, then webOS with 5 percent, and Windows Mobile with 4 percent.

Worldwide, iPhone leads the way in smartphone traffic, accounting for half of it, followed by Symbian with 25 percent. Android pulls in just 11 percent of global smartphone traffic. Admob also looked at results within the RIM and Android platforms. On Android, the HTC Dream (known also as the T-Mobile G1), the oldest Android handset accounts for a little more than a third of the platform’s total, but the newly released Motorola Droid already claims a quarter of the traffic. Source

The bottom line: In case you hadn’t figured it out, mobile platforms with better browsers and web UI get used to access the web more often than those with poor browsers and experiences.

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60 PERCENT OF MOBILE-ENABLED DEVICES WILL BE SOLD THROUGH OPERATORS BY 2013, says research firm In-Stat. Based on their success selling subsidized netbooks, the firm says operators are gearing up to sell more notebook computers, and will sell nearly a third of all notebooks in 2013. In addition, In-Stat says the market for Internet-connected devices will grow at a health CAGR of 22.3 percent over the next four years. Source

The bottom line: Two key trends to note here: the growing market for connected devices like e-book readers, GPS units and netbooks; and the growing data use of these devices. Will operators’ networks be able to cope?

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TEXT ADS AND WEB BANNERS ARE THE MOST NOTICEABLE FORMS OF MOBILE ADS, BUT CLICK TO CALL AND MOBILE VIDEO GET THE BEST RESPONSE, says new research from Parks & Associates. The report says that text ads garnered the highest recall rate of 11 different mobile formats, with click-to-call (CTC) faring the worst. Interestingly, the CTC ads had the second highest response rate (35 percent), behind video movie trailers (38 percent). Text ads elicited a response from just 26 percent of users, and web banners 30 percent. Source

The bottom line: Mobile marketers need a deep bag of tricks to lure in eyeballs and responses as consumers still feel their way through mobile ads.

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MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY SERVICES WILL BE WORTH $732 MILLION BY 2014, says Juniper Research. AR apps, which overlay content onto maps or images of a user’s surroundings, are starting to emerge, but the company says they’ll be supported by a variety of business models within a few years, including paid downloads, ad support and subscriptions. Juniper says adoption will be driven by AR-based local search services, but the real revenues will first come from AR-enabled games. It adds that AR advertising will also be a viable market. Source

The bottom line: It’s still very early days for AR, even though there have been some pretty cool apps (like Layar) emerge already. This is definitely an optimistic projection, but it seems like some familiar issues, like device fragmentation for developers, will need to get worked out first.

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THE TOP TEN PROJECTED MOBILE APPS FOR 2012 LOOK PRETTY FAMILIAR, at least according to research firm Gartner’s list: money transfer, location-based services, mobile search, mobile browsing, mobile health monitoring, mobile payment, NFC, mobile advertising, mobile IM and mobile music. Most of that list encompasses services that are already popular (i.e. mobile search, mobile browing, mobile advertising); most of the rest of it appears to be services that have been hyped as the next big mobile thing for several years already (i.e. NFC, mobile payment, mobile music). Source

The bottom line: Gartner’s list isn’t too creative – which reflects the staying power of apps like web browsers. But it also reflects some of the endless hype of the mobile industry, where services get pumped up well before their time, then linger and linger on.

Naturally, the news that Web giant Google was getting in on the action in mobile by acquiring AdMob created an atmosphere of excitement and optimism at the Global Mobile Marketing Forum last week in L.A. But it was more than a mood; it was a quantifiable trend. Mike Wehrs, President & Chief Executive Officer, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), reported that mobile marketing shows an increase of 40 percent over last year.

What’s more, mobile is a line item in more budgets. Mike gave us the example of German carmaker Volkswagen, which is “doing things exclusively with iPhone Apps independent of other media channels”.

Another sure sign that mobile marketing has arrived full-force was the announcement by Microsoft (just prior to the event) that it had decided to join the MMA. In fact, Microsoft became the organization’s inaugural Premier Member, reflecting Microsoft’s commitment to both the association and the mobile marketing industry. As Charles Johnson, General Manager, Microsoft Mobile Advertising, put it in a press statement: “As mobile advertising has grown in significance, the time is now for carriers, OEMs, publishers and advertisers to join forces to capitalize on that growth.”

REAL RESEARCH

Peter Johnson, VP Research, Mobile Marketing Association, provided us the latest findings from the Research and Metrics Committee.  A highlight: leveraging coupons and loyalty programs are winning customers. It is found to be the most successful of all the mobile marketing approaches (!).

Another surprise is spending. To date the average media spend by agencies on mobile is still only 1.8 percent of the total spend.  However, those agencies that have experienced successful mobile marketing have already moved mobile up to account for 2~3 percent of their overall spend.

In 2009 spending on mobile marketing was $1.7 billion in total. But there was a potential for $2.5 billion, if we think back to the boost in spending shown by companies successful in mobile marketing.

Success breeds success – and encourages more spending. To get there from here the industry needs more education and a sharing of best practices. To this end the MMA is working to encourage knowledge sharing worldwide and making sure best practices are better evangelized.

BRAND SUCCESS

But the real proof that mobile is at the top of the agenda comes from the major players pushing the envelope.

COCA-COLA COMPANY: Tom Daly, Group Manager, Strategy and Planning, Coca-Cola Company, revealed what it looks for in mobile agencies. It may not be easy to get into Coca-Cola, but it’s worth it. According to Tom, Coca-Cola is “working with over 400 brands in 200 countries with a minimum of $8K per brand per country, and it is growing and we are looking for new partners.” His checklist for agencies: The company looks for three things.

1) Talent and environment
2) Thought leadership
3) Account management process.

As he summed it up: “We look for best in class to take Coca-Cola to the world leaders in creative mobile marketing and transparency is key.”

AT&T INTERACTIVE: Matt Crowley, CMO, AT&T Interactive, argued local and search are the real drivers for mobile advertising. As he put it: Today the total of mobile ad spend is about 70 percent (display and SMS) compared to 30 percent search. But he expects this will change to 25 percent (display and SMS) and 70 percent search in 2013. In fact, local search is the driver.  “We have seen over 250% YOY mobile search network growth and our goal is to pre-load the YP mobile app with local search on every device.” Matt added that AT&T counts 79 million subs and 22 million on Medianet, AT&T’s mobile portal. “There is over 22 percent access of Medianet daily.”

CNN: Louis Gump, VP of Mobile, CNN, talked about the future of news on mobile. He asked the audience how many look at news on their mobile before they get out of bed in the morning and about 30 percent answered they did. No wonder mobile is at the center of their strategy. CNN has a freemium model (offering the mobile website free and a paid CNN app).

The company debated the pricing for this, but decided on the $1.99 price as a way to keep mobile moving forward as a profit center to propel initiatives across all the mobile strategies of CNN. As Louis put it: “We wanted a dual revenue stream, and at $1.99, yes, there was debate over prices from $0.99~9.99. But we chose that price as we doing this for marketing. We want mobile as a sustainable business platform.  He continued: “We need not only the one-way free route, but a way to sustainability 3.5 and 10 years down the road.” To date 34 percent of users access CNN news only on their mobile phones. This means over one-third of users are only getting their news from CNN and only via mobile. Connect the dots, and “mobile is now the channel for CNN to reach a different demographic of people.”

Interesting to note: CNN doesn’t limit its focus to the iPhone. Instead the mobile strategy is holistic and covers four platforms:

1)    Mobile website (with 11~12 million users  per month – free and ad-supported)
2)    Text messaging (breaking news alerts)
3)    Video- on-demand and streaming (to distribute clips much more widely)
4)    Apps (and here the news is the September 27th  release that has changed the way news is consumed on the iPhone)

FUTURE OF MOBILE

Charles Johnson, Head of Mobile Advertising for Microsoft led an engaging panel on the future of mobile advertising. Ken Wilner, CEO,  Zumobi, stated that that key to mobile is “engagement”. Yes, acquisition is important, but once you obtain a consumer, the on-going engagement is second to none as mobile is with the consumer all the time, everywhere. Frank Babieri, CEO,  Transpera, was particularly bullish about the outlook for video. In his view, of the users that access online video that also access mobile video, “more then 62 percent of the time they will access it from mobile.” Another data point to keep in mind (from Charles): We replace our phones every 12~18months and we’re due to make those purchases soon. Smartphones will likely be the ones we chose, attracted by all their cool features and the great mobile Internet experience. Thus, 2010 will be the year of mass-device transition, and that will accelerate our industry even further.

BANKING: Bruce Withers, Head of Mobile, Wells Fargo, shared his mobile banking vision. He should know. Wells Fargo has been nominated as one of the top mobile banking solutions in North America and part of that success is linked to their sharp focus on youth (Gen Y and Millennials) that are part of the larger group of mobile professionals that need banking services on the go. Some key stats illustrate the success of a multi-approach mobile strategy.

•    Text messaging alerts: the user averages about 19 requests per month
•    Mobile website and iPhone application: users engage in about six sessions per month.
•    Location: Wells Fargo has added unique features in their iPhone App, including an ATM finder and direct links to wellsfargo.com.

CROSS-MEDIA: Mike Carter, CEO, MyThum and Tiffany Gerhard, Sr. Manager, Marketing- Emerging Capabilities, BestBuy, had a great session on the success of cross-media marketing for a retail brand.  For me it was one of the highlights of the day – particularly if we consider that BestBuy was doing NOTHING in mobile two years ago. Now, they have holistic strategy and results that speak volumes (literally). The strategy includes mobile as part of the marketing mix, but it is also core strategy to the company’s CRM strategy. Tiffany pointed out that mobile is a key link in clinching the sale – and everything that follows. “The use case quite good for us is when many of our customers come into the store that find when a product is out of stock. They can just go to their BestBuy application and click-to-buy in one action and then have the product delivered right to their home” But it doesn’t stop there. Mobile allows the company to support the buying process with information and interaction with customers. “Everyday now is a learning process for us to get better with mobile.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Throughout the event execs and speakers raised a variety of interesting points and challenges.

•    Zaw Thet, CEO, 4Info, brought our attention to the need for an industry-wide initiative to establish a mobile cookie.  Today the next best thing is the user’s telephone number or UID on the iPhone.  By using this we can recognize and build cross-media campaigns for targeting users from platform to platform.
•     Chetan Sharma, Chetan Sharma Consulting, stated we are finally seeing the growth of the networks. Now, mobile has surpassed the data card (!).
•    Michael Shim, Head of Mobile Sales, Yahoo, reported that Yahoo’s growth of 54.8 percent is greater then the average for the industry of 45.4 percent with the mobile Internet.  Yahoo is doing unique ad solutions for apps and working on a slew of cross-media campaigns (with clients such as Subway) that link the Web to mobile.

INSIDE INNOVATION

The MMF event also recognized companies and campaigns pushing the envelope and spearheading mobile adoption. The MMA received hundreds of submissions in 12 categories from companies across the globe and winners for the Fifth Annual Global Mobile Marketing Awards were selected by the MMA Awards Selection Committee, a body comprised of global industry leaders from wireless carriers, technology and content providers, agencies and industry publications.

I had the honor of sitting on the panel of judges, a privilege that gave me a first-hand look at the campaigns. The campaigns that were real eye-openers for me in terms of real ROI and creative excellence came from agencies such as: Mobile Dreams Factory (Mini Mobile Dealer), AKQA (Gap Style Mixer), F.biz (Trident Fresh) MyThum (Rogers/Live Nation live ticketing solution) and the Pizza Hut iPhone App from Pizza Hut.

My takeaway: We kicked off the MMF event asking ourselves if 2009 was the “year of mobile” – again. Maybe not. But 2010 is going to be an adventure.  With budgets coming back, mobile showing up on marketing budgets and the advance of smartphones, the stars are aligned for 2010 to (finally) be the year of mobile is 2010. With the stars aligned it’s up to the industry to deliver – with solutions that scale and turnkey cross-media strategies with mobile at their core.

Editor’s note: Matthew Snyder is CEO and Founder of ADObjects-Inc, a cross-media strategic consultancy focused on revenue-generating, customer acquisition, brand building and business development solutions for clients determined to make the most out of mobile. Clients/Partners include: Bing, CBS Radio, Canadian Music Week, Nokia and Mobility Ventures, as well as a variety of media companies and major brands. During his career at Nokia, where he held a number of positions including Device Program Manager and Global Director of Strategy in the Multimedia Group, he architected Nokia location-based services strategy and mobile search application. MSearchGroove is proud to be an associate of ADObjects, joining a vibrant team of professionals including Chetan Sharma, Founder and President of Chetan Sharma Consulting, a management consulting and strategic advisory firm, and Roman Kikta, a renowned venture capitalist, wireless pioneer, seasoned entrepreneur and author. Feel free to contact Matthew directly (matt@adostrategies.com) or follow him on Twitter (matsnyder2001).

At first, the endgame was about boosting personalization to improve the mobile operator portals (that forced us to navigate through multiple menus) and cut the clicks to content that we genuinely appreciated. Typically, operators implemented personalization tools to bubble up cool content to the idle screen, taking the hassle out of finding and buying content on the device.

Fast forward, and on-portal is no longer where (all) the action is. The explosion in the number of app stores — software applications supermarkets run by handset makers, operators and independent players such as GetJar – increases our interest in finding stuff we like, and the sheer abundance of apps turns up the pressure on companies across the emerging ecosystem to make finding cool stuff a no-brainer.

By way of background, the content discovery dilemma was expertly outlined in a recent post by Alfred DeRose, who heads Tego Interactive, a Web and mobile product and services company specialized in integrated solutions for converged businesses determined to get more out of their digital assets. Working with clients to address a variety of issues around content discovery has allowed Tego to create a series of “cheat sheets” and white papers describing the problem and offering suggestions/solutions. So, watch this space.

PERSONALIZATION FOR THE PEOPLE

Put another way, content discovery is back at the top of the agenda and interest in personalization/recommendation technologies (to expose people to apps they are likely to appreciate) is also on the rise.

I know this from my interviews with vendors and operators, and from studying a raft of recent stats confirming (through app downloads) that we do indeed want more mobile stuff than ever. However, a disturbing hole in the argument has been (until this week) a lack of insight into what the people want.

Indeed, the underlying assumption has been that poor discovery (and even more miserable mobile search, as this in-depth post from my last mobile search master class shows) frustrates us (because we can’t find what we want) and forces mobile companies (operators/content owners and now developers) to leave money on the table.

So – how serious is the content discovery dilemma, really? Are people really frustrated? And would they buy more if it was easier?

NEW SURVEY

Thanks to a new survey of 2,666 mobile users in the U.S. and the U.K. — conducted by research firm TNS Global on behalf of Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm subsidiary providing discovery and recommendations solutions to mobile operators – we finally have some thought-provoking stats.

The key data point: 80 percent of people experience some sort of problem getting stuff. The three biggest barriers: stuff is hard to find, phone and interface issues are a pain and the content is just plain irrelevant.

MOBILE SEARCH DOESN’T CUT IT

People are relying on mobile search to discover content, with some 68 percent using search engines to find what they want. 58 percent type in the URL. But – when it comes to effectiveness – people report URLs (83 percent) and bookmarks (89 percent) are the best ways to find content. Mobile search comes in a close third. Interestingly, 67 percent said the handset manufacturer portal was an effective way to find content; 67 percent said operator/service provider portals were effective.

Overall, people complained they are unsuccessful in accessing/purchasing (!) content they want 27 percent of the time.

WOULD PERSONALIZATION HELP?

In principle, it would. Assuming it was easier to find personalized stuff, almost 60 percent would spend more time accessing content and almost 40 percent would spend more money. Would people accept customized recommendations to find stuff they like? Approximately half of people survey in both the U.S. and the U.K. would accept suggestions.

HOW MUCH MONEY CAN BE MADE

Specifically, people said they would spend over an hour a week (55 percent increase) more accessing stuff with their mobile phones and over $8 per month (148 percent increase) if finding and buying was a no-brainer.

In addition to these consumer insights, the report is chock-full with interesting stats about the type of content people download (apps lead the pack) and pay for (games); top mobile sites (service provider destinations/portal trail the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and the BBC); and the gripes people have about their providers (too pricey, too difficult to use and un-cool content).

MOBILE SOCIAL FUTURE

My personal thanks to Martin Clancy, Xiam Marketing Manager, for bringing my attention to the report (in a pre-briefing) and for arranging an interview with Colm Healy, Xiam CEO, to connect the dots. Naturally, much of this analysis is reserved for my report.

However, one exciting observation I can share is the pivotal importance of “significant others” (peers, friends, like-minded people) in the content app suggestions we can expect moving forward.

As Colm put it: The space is “in the eye of the storm.” App stores up the ante and force companies across the ecosystem to focus on personalization and recommendation as means to expose people to the stuff they are likely to appreciate and – ultimately – purchase.

App stores are the place to go – but what is going to keep us coming back for more?

Colm believes that social discovery will provide that stickiness. As he puts it: Recommendations from our friends will be the way we find apps.

But the challenge is not just in harnessing rants and raves from our peers to complement personalization and drive discovery. The real work is in creating recommendations that will work across the plethora of app stores coming on line. “There are unique challenges related to app store fragmentation. If I’ve discovered a great app on an iPhone, obviously what I want to do is let my friend know about that great app. But – if they have a different phone – then the question is how to direct them to the right app for that particular phone.”

Another trend high on Colm’s radar: apps to discover apps. As Colm sees it: Smartphones are chock-full of features and functionalities — clever technology that providers could/should harness to sell us on the wealth of apps at our finger tips. It’s all about taking advantage the interface and features such as location, the compass and the accelerometer (to name a few) to help people get to apps they would likely appreciate.

My take: Personalization has been at the center of mobile since the start. First people bought content (such as ringtones) to personalize their devices. Then companies implemented technology to deliver personalized suggestions and idle-screen takeovers as a way to help people navigate the avalanche of content and cut the clicks to content. It’s work in progress. Now the explosion of app stores pushes the content discovery issue back to the top of the agenda for operators, handset makers, developers – everyone. As this report shows, people would spend more time and money accessing stuff on their mobile phones if it were easier to do. Moving forward, people will likely not only appreciate personalized recommendations (particularly if they come from their peers). They may even come to expect them.

Disclaimer: MSG relies on Tego Interactive for the creation and integration of its online and mobile destinations/strategies. Xiam has aligned with MSG to publish a sponsored series of thought leadership columns and contributions beginning in December 2009.

Perhaps Patrick Moorhead, Director of Emerging Media at Razorfish, put it best. He was quoted saying: “(T)his is a wake-up call to clients who say mobile is not a real opportunity, because it is. Google doesn’t get involved in anything it doesn’t think has scale.”

But mobile advertising is more than big business. The fact that Google had to buy AdMob is a clear confirmation that mobile is also different.

MOBILE IS MOBILE

Mobile is a new medium (the 7^th Mass Media, actually) and squeezing online ads onto a small screen – even if that screen is a smartphone/touchscreen device – short changes advertisers and the people they hope to reach with their marketing message. SMS and display banners have their place in the marketing mix. But my own research and a recent mobile marketing survey conducted by Netsize underline the growing interest in richer advertising formats, as well as in-application advertising (in-app ads).

Connect the dots, and brands/advertisers are exploring and executing strategies that make the most of the mobile device and the range of exciting formats available.

Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO, picked up on this key aspect. His take (from an email statement): “Google validated what many companies including Millennial Media has known for years – that mobile is a different market with a huge potential for advertising, possibly a bigger opportunity than online media.”

Google, which introduced AdSense for Mobile in June, has also had to acknowledge that online and mobile are different. The program, a way to land display ads (from online advertisers) on mobile phones, ended up dumping ads on mobile devices, a modus operandi that doesn’t work if the ad landing pages are not optimized for mobile.

But don’t assume content adaptation alone solves the problem. As Rachel Pasqua, Director, Mobile Marketing, iCrossing, pointed out during a panel I moderated on SEO and mobile search: It’s not enough to optimize ads; advertisers also have to think through what people do after the click. In her view, mobile campaigns that drive results have mobile at their core.

ADMOB’S ADVANTAGE

AdMob, a company that has focused on innovative made-for-mobile advertising formats (and analytics) from the start, “gets it.”

From early 2007 (the company was founded in 2006) executives including founder Omar Hamoui caught up regularly with me to brief me on cool new ad formats and innovation coming out of the “Ad Lab” it had with Apple. This sharp focus on richer advertising formats plus the technology platform to monetize mobile inventory and the analytics capabilities to optimize the delivery, tracking and reporting of mobile ad campaigns (which I personally road tested in my mobile advertising how-to white paper) has clearly paid off.

A few other aces in AdMob’s hand:

A huge footprint in CPC (cost-per-click) performance marketing. We read in the September AdMob Mobile Metrics Report that AdMob serves ads for more than 15,000 Web sites and applications around the world. The number of monthly ad requests in the AdMob network hit 10.2 billion in September 2009 (up from 1.6 billion in 2007).  BTW: The premium space is wide open to players such as Millennial Media, the next company I profile in MSG’s Meet The Mobile Ad Networks series.

A deep understanding of the in-app advertising space. AdMob is the largest ad network for in-app ad inventory on the iPhone. AdMob kicked off 2009 with the launch of Download Tracking for iPhone applications (allowing advertisers to accurately monitor App Store conversion rates and measure their return from advertising on AdMob’s network). If quickly followed with an iPhone Advertising Exchange, a concept similar to the banner and link exchange services we know from the Internet. As Russell Buckley, AdMob VP Global Alliances, put in this MSG interview at the time: “The new-launch iPhone Download Exchange is about allowing developers with apps and ad space to serve ads that promote other apps within the Download exchange, and get traction for their own apps in the process by placing ads for free on other applications.” An excellent way to build relationships and good will in the developer community in my book.

A drive to innovate new ad formats. It’s beyond the scope of my analysis to list all the new interactive ad formats AdMob quietly and cleverly brought online in 2009. The highlights: the capability to blend graphical display (banners) with iPhone-specific actions, including maps, calls (initiating a voice call from an ad), iTunes (opening the iTunes store to purchase music or video content from the store), audio (listening to recorded or streaming audio content) and – most important – integration with the App Store to download apps. And let’s not forget the cool new iPhone ad units that went live in July.

I caught up with Thomas Schulz, Vice President & Managing Director, EMEA, at the time of the launch to talk through the nuts & bolts of these new formats, which include mobile social networking (as he put it: turning a brand message into a conversation by letting people click on the banner to access the advertiser’s content/updates on Twitter, Facebook etc…); mobile search (allowing people to search in a company’s mobile site by typing a keyword query directly into the banner); and a multi-panel banner (allowing people to answer multiple calls to action in a single rich media ad).

And the list goes on….

WAS THAT THE PRIZE?

As a loyal BlackBerry user, I am the first to side with executives such as Boris Fridman, Crisp Wireless CEO, who correctly remind us that iPhone is not the only game in town. (More in this post.)

So, did Google snap up AdMob for its impressive reach, its innovation, its grasp of iPhone/in-app ads or its mobile analytics?

Or was it — as Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, an interactive marketing agency suggests – AdMob’s stockpile of data that clinched the deal.

As he put it in this must-read post:

“With the acquisition of AdMob, Google now has access to usage data of many of the most popular mobile apps — especially the apps in the iTunes App Store. For iPhones. If Google is taking on Apple for mobile OS market share, they just scored a huge competitive advantage. Google will know more details than ever about how people are using iPhone apps, how they are engaging with advertising within those apps, and users loyalty to those apps.”

I am intrigued by Ian’s take – so much so that I have scheduled a straight-talk podcast with him next week to discuss this in more depth.

So, is it all about giving Google a leg up on understanding and segmenting app users based on how they interact with in-app ads?

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, sure leaves that impression. As he put it in this interview with Bloomberg: “One the key success points for the iPhone was this enormous development of apps, and particularly free apps, which are advertising supported. Now that we have our Android platform coming out, and really with some serious partners behind it, it will also be important to have that be true for Android as well as the others.”

The takeaway: As I have pointed out in many posts on MSG and throughout my ongoing research into content discovery, mobile search and personalization: context matters. Contextual information (what mobile operators have, by the way) is what Google lacks. The AdMob purchase covers all the bases to close this gap, paving the way for the delivery of mobile advertising everywhere – particularly on the Android platform.

TOUCH WEB RULES (?)

But what we should be asking ourselves is how this new realization that mobile is indeed different will likely impact the wider mobile Web. The advance of touchscreen devices, app stores and new advertising approaches/formats are all coming together in a new kind of interactive mobile Internet, a brave new place where new content, new experiences and even new mobile search services will set the bar.

In a September blog post AdMob referred to this Internet (the one we experience on iPhones and other touchscreen devices) as the “Middle Web.” This “space that lies between the full Web experience you find on a PC and the ad-less Web experience you remember from the first Web-enabled mobile phones.”

This new Web throws up as many issues as it does opportunities.

• What does it do to usability?
• What does it mean for mobile advertising and how do we make it easy and inviting for people to interact with company sites and ads?
• And one AdMob didn’t ask: What is the impact on mobile search?

Tough questions, but Taptu, a mobile search provider, has some of the answers in its series of white papers. Like AdMob and Google, Taptu shares the view that the advance of touchscreen devices, app stores and new advertising approaches/formats changes all the rules.

In this new Web – which Taptu calls the Touch Web – people demand optimized sites (for touchscreen devices) and specialized mobile advertising that makes the most of device functionality and all the features that make the Touch Web more interactive and potentially more exciting than the mobile Web. During my last trip to London, I caught up with Taptu CEO Steve Ives and Bob Last, Taptu SVP Business Development, to talk about the impact of everything in the middle of the Web on the future of the Internet.

This is serious business.

Taptu has crawled, indexed and graded websites (assessing factors such as their suitability for touch devices and their page weights –key since it impacts the speed of browsing on mobile network and the end-user experience) to create an index of Touch Web-friendly sites.  (Taptu counts 120,000 to date.)

To make sure Touch Web-friendly sites also figure highly in mobile search results Taptu has also fine-tuned its algorithms to “decide whether to return results from the Touch Web, the mobile Web or the wider Web” depending on factors such as the searcher’s device and what thy would likely appreciate.

To round out the experience Taptu is exploring innovative new ad formats for touch devices. In an MSG exclusive with Andreas Bernstrom, Taptu COO, treated me to a glimpse of how people might interact with ads on a touch device, a fascinating briefing I captured in this detailed post.

A highlight: Search results are displayed in a card format optimized for presentation on a touch device. I watched as Andreas not only breezed through the card results (depicting images and information in an easy-to-browse format); he could actually flip the cards over to see more details (say, the discography of a particular band or the tour dates of a group). And if you like what you see, then share it (!)  – Twitter it, post it to your personal site or just send it via email to your friends.

The bottom line: if mobile is different, then the Touch Web is a brave new world. Google (with AdMob) is well-prepared for the challenges and opportunities this new Web brings. At the other end of the spectrum, Taptu will most certainly be out of the gates first with a mobile search service (and advertising approach) that makes the most out of the Touch Web. Now the pressure is on companies across the ecosystem to do more than develop a strategy for mobile; they should also brainstorm on tactics to address/harness the unique characteristics of the Touch Web.

Look for more news from Taptu soon- Steve and Bob assure me there are some amazing things in the pipeline.

Disclaimer: MSG has contributed comments to the Taptu Touch Web white paper.

Comscore says that the iPhone represents a third of those touchscreen devices, while the top ten list is filled with a number of touchscreen featurephones. Source

The bottom line: These numbers shouldn’t be too surprising, as smartphones continue to grow in popularity, and touchscreens make their way into the featurephone segment. Peggy adds: The touch web is here and will likely require content, experiences and mobile search tools to make the most out of it. Watch MSG for more on the touch paradigm and the potential business opportunities for companies that get it right.

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THE NUMBER OF NEW APPLICATIONS STARTED FOR THE ANDROID PLATFORM NEARLY DOUBLED IN OCTOBER, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. The company, which tracks application and developer activity in app stores and across multiple platforms, says it’s seeing a lot of iPhone developers beginning to work on Android apps.

Android is gaining a lot of momentum as more devices hit the market – particularly in the US, where Verizon Wireless has made quite a splash with its marketing campaign for the Motorola Droid, and is also introducing the HTC Droid Eris. Meanwhile, T-Mobile USA recently announced it would introduce carrier billing and some other measures to try and increase its Android customers’ downloads. Source

The bottom line: Mobile developers will go to where the users are – if the developer and distribution experience is easy and rewarding. Apple and Android are leading the way, while others (notably Nokia’s Ovi and Symbian) still trail behind.

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THE VALUE OF COUPONS REDEEMED VIA MOBILE WILL HIT $6 BILLION WORLDWIDE BY 2014, says Juniper Research. In a new report about mobile coupons and NFC-enabled “smart posters”, the firm says that ARPU from offers from NFC coupons and smart posters will exceed ARPU generated by NFC payments in 5 years.

Juniper says, though, there are some potential stumbling blocks: consumer apathy, lack of willingness to change and consumers having to learn a new payment method. Source

The bottom line: Another confirmation that the mobile device is destined to be a payment device we use at the point of impulse – once we overcome the hurdles, of course. Peggy adds: Look for an in-depth look at this topic and more in the Netsize Guide 2010, a must-read mobile industry almanac available for free download beginning February 2010.

I am honored to follow Judy as the new Keeper of the Tents. It’s also a good time to consider new directions and activities to grow the Carnival and its roster of contributors. Thanks to the Mobilists who have contacted me to wish me the best in this new role, and a special thanks to Volker Hirsch and Srinivasarao Nandiwada (nsr), who have reached out to me to help guide the Carnival through this transition period.

It’s all about new energy, new idea and new horizons — and a new phase in the development of the Carnival. If you’re a member, submit your suggestions for consideration by the group. If you’re not a member, then get involved!

Now let’s get this show on the road!

Over at Volker on Mobile Volker Hirsch challenges us to rethink what we mean by “social media.” In his view, “empowered media” is a much better term since we are literally empowered to create, capture and communicate everything around us. The question is: how should we wield this power? Fortunately for us, Volker doesn’t settle for a philosophical discussion of the issue; he uses the recent incident involving Ian, the London subway worker (now unemployed) who threatened a passenger to drive an important point home. Was it Ian’s misfortune that Jonathan MacDonald – a social media authority well-known to us at the Carnival – was nearby? Or was it Jonathan’s responsibility to capture the “rant”, publish it, tweet it and tell us all? Read and decide.

But mobile is more than a social media (or empowered media) tool. Over at mobiEnthusiast.mobi Holly Kolman draws our attention to mobile’s potential as an educational tool with the example of BuckleUp.mobi. The mobile site urges people to use their seat belts and features important related for drives on the fly. Check it out and spread the word.

A truly eye-opening post from Mark Jaffe over at Mobile Mandala based on a chance meeting with a Flirtomatic executive. Mark walks us through some surprising numbers from the source and wakes us up to the wealth of opportunities around giving people who don’t own smartphones a good user experience. Are companies leaving money on the table by catering to the high-end device crowd? Read Mark’s insightful post and decide.

And while we look for answers to these questions James Coops over at mjelly reminds us that it’s the search for apps we like in the App Store (actually all applications stores) that will likely take up the lion’s share of our time (and patience). His extremely helpful and worthwhile post (which includes a list of sources and services that assist in iPhone app discovery) provides us a how-to to navigate the confusing terrain. From social discovery tools to app review sites, his post is one to bookmark. Check it out and add your suggestions.

(For another look at the issues around content discovery and some helpful stats to put the problem in perspective, you may want to check out last’s week’s submission from Tego Interactive, a company out to tackle this issue head-on.)

Another valuable resource is a must-read list of mobile marketing case studies via mobiThinking.com. The list includes many campaigns (from a who’s who of brands and agencies) that were submitted to the Mobile Marketing Association. (The winners will be announced on November 17 at the Mobile Marketing Forum in Los Angeles.) But it doesn’t stop there. Andy Favell, mobiThinking.com editor, has invited agencies to send in their case studies, an admirable outreach that will likely turn the site into a top-notch destination for what’s new in mobile advertising. Check it out and contribute to the conversation!

And finally, Enrique Ortiz at About Mobility: A Technology & Products Weblog About All Things Mobile gives us his take on the seismic shift in the Nav market. Does Google Maps Nav — now with real-time always up to date maps and nav info, turn by turn directions, live traffic information and even street view – disrupt the market and threaten the likes of TomTom? Read on and share your views.

My pick of the week? Although the resources provided by mjelly and mobithinking deserve special mention (I’ve bookmarked both for my ongoing work in content discovery and my new mobile advertising project), Mark Jaffe’s down-to-earth post speaks volumes about the biggest challenge facing the mobile industry: it’s own inability to see the pent-up demand among ordinary people – with rather ordinary devices – for extraordinary service.

Thanks to Mark for pointing this out and let’s all work to spread the word!

Next week the Carnival moves to Mobileslate. See you there…

Overall, the mobile ad market is projected to rise from $160 million to $3.1 billion by 2013. Source

The bottom line: The prediction that search will take a growing chunk of mobile ad spending is a good one, but there’s one issue with this report: it ignores the idea that some other forms of mobile ads will emerge over the next few years. We’re still very early in the evolution of mobile marketing, so it’s reasonable to think that more forms, apart from the three mentioned here, will emerge. Peggy adds: This point has come through in my own mobile advertising research project, where executives revealed that  (surprisingly)ad spend on sponsored search and related schemes were low on the agenda. t The reason: mobile search is still riddled with shortcomings. More on why mobile search is broken here.

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NORTH AMERICANS ARE TAKING OUT MULTIPLE MOBILE SUBS, says Wireless Intelligence. It says that in the US and Canada, the average consumer had 1.3 mobile connections in Q3, and that while average revenue per connection is dropping, ARPU is actually going up – it’s just spread across more than one connection. The group says that real ARPU in North America has gone from $60 in 2006 to $64. Source

The bottom line: Expect to see this trend continue as more and more consumers adopt mobile-enabled netbooks, data dongles and other connected devices.

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MORE PEOPLE ARE FINDING THEIR WAY VIA MOBILE, according to a new report from Berg Insight. The firm says that the number of mobile subscribers downloading navigation apps and routes to their mobile devices doubled to 28 million in the first half of 2009 from the year-earlier period. The firm also says that the subscriber base will see a CAGR of about 34 percent over the next six years, resulting in a 160 million users by 2015. Source

The bottom line: The ability to look up maps and routes on mobile devices is one that many consumers love, and the continued growth of GPS-enabled handsets will certainly fuel growth in usage of navigation services. But the PND market won’t remain static: more and more cars will feature built-in satnav, and the price of standalone units will continue to fall, which may explain the relatively low prediction of 160 million users by 2015.

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SYMBIAN TO SHIP 180 MILLION HANDSETS A YEAR BY 2014, says Juniper Research. Despite the emergence and growth of other smartphone platforms, the firm says that shipments of devices running the Symbian platform will more than double over the next five years. Coupled with Android and LiMo devices, Juniper estimates the market for open-source handsets will be more than 220 million per year by that time.

Juniper further contends that the market will migrate towards open-source platforms, despite the popularity of the proprietary iPhone and BlackBerry platforms.  Source

The bottom line: Any decent smartphone OS should show volume gains over the next five years as sales of smartphones skyrocket. That said, the mass market doesn’t care about open-source vs. proprietary – they want devices that meet their needs, and there are multiple ways to skin this proverbial cat. The choice of open-source vs. proprietary is less important than getting the basic OS right, and then having an open enough platform to support app and service development.

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.

***

MOBILE APP STORE SALES WILL HIT $4.2 BILLION IN 2013 in the US alone, says a new report from the Yankee Group. It calls the sales growth, along with a quadrupling of US smartphone users to 160 million, a “gold rush”. The firm also offers some advice to developers: they say those with consumer apps should focus on BlackBerry, while enterprise developers should focus on the iPhone and Android platforms, because of the lack of those types of apps for each respective platform. They also add that pricing and marketing are important considerations for success.

The company says that one out of four downloads in 2013 will be for paid apps, and predicts an average price then of $2.37. It also puts the value of this year’s US download market at $343 million. Source

The bottom line: This is a very bullish prediction, without a doubt. The 160 million smartphone figure is pretty brazen and clearly based on the belief that most devices sold over the next four years in the US will be smartphones. The advice about choosing platforms seems a little odd, considering that to drive downloads and sales, developers may be better off going where the users they want to target are.

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ONE OUT OF FOUR PEOPLE INTENDING TO MAKE A PURCHASE IN MOBILE OPERATORS’ SHOPS LEAVE WITHOUT BUYING, according to a new report from Amdocs. The company says that retailers could save half of those lost sales opportunities by improving the customer experience (and, of course, Amdocs has a solution for that — you didn’t think it was just sharing this info for fun, right?). It cites the main reasons for the lost sales as an inability to get a device right away, the inability to get the “touch and feel” of a device before buying, and a lack of experts to consult about devices’ features. Source

The bottom line: The reasons Amdocs sites as barriers to purchase all ring true — and combined with the general unpleasantness of many operator retail outlets thanks to long lines, dummy devices, and other factors, it’s not hard to see why many would-be buyers end up frustrated.

***

CONSUMERS WILL DRIVE MOBILE HEALTH SERVICES FORWARD, NOT COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS, says the analyst firm Berg Insight. Remote medical monitoring and diagnostics have been hyped for quite some time, but the applications and devices have been slow to emerge. The firm suggests instead that it’s consumer applications, such as smartphone apps and networked personal medical devices, that will lead the way. Source

The bottom line: The personal, always-on, always-with-us nature of mobile devices makes them perfect for medical applications, while their growing functionality makes them ever more useful in this area. In addition, software apps promise to deliver many of the benefits of dedicated mobile hardware at a lower price to consumers.

***

65 PERCENT OF APP DOWNLOADERS ARE MALES AGED 18-34, says GetJar. This demographic is prized by many marketers, even though they often find it difficult to reach, suggesting that apps are a great way to do so. 81 percent of all downloaders were male, while almost two-thirds of them download apps 3-4 times a week. GetJar’s research also found that 72 percent of its app downloaders use the mobile internet more than the internet on PCs — and this isn’t just limited to emerging markets, with 62 percent of US GetJar users and 69 percent of UK ones agreeing. Source

The bottom line: It’s clear that GetJar has some seriously dedicated users, who could serve as a useful bellwether for the overall apps market. It’s not too surprising to see the young male dominance — but also suggests that developers and app stores may not be doing a great job of reaching other demographics.

Regular readers will know that I work with a variety of organizations and publications, evaluating companies and candidates for awards ranging from the Meffys (awarded by the Mobile Entertainment Forum to recognize excellence and innovation in mobile entertainment and services) to the Smaato Mobile Advertising Awards (recognizing the best in mobile Web and in-app advertising) to the EContent 100 (a list of the 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry).

I am proud that EContent named me to its panel of judges to evaluate the 100+ candidates across the categories: classification & taxonomy; collaboration; content commerce; content creation, production, & digital publishing; content delivery; content management; content security; fee-based info services; intranets & portals; mobile content; search engines & technologies; and social media. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the many mobile and Internet companies that have contacted me to be considered for inclusion in the list, and issue a final call for candidates.

Round 1 of the judging wraps up on September 1, so please reach out to me this week. (Please note that your contacting me does not compel me to put any company name on the final list of contenders and, of course, in no way guarantees that any company will be named to the list.)

This year my participation in the judging team has not only introduced me to a number of new mobile industry innovators (companies you’ll see profiled on MSearchGroove in the coming weeks). It has also exposed me to new thinking about digital content creation and distribution.

The industry is at a critical crossroads. A milestone that speaks volumes: the storm brewing the media and digital industries after Rupert Murdoch’s very public announcement (after posting record losses of $203 million last quarter) that his News Corporation intends to charge for online newspaper content.

WILL WE PAY FOR CONTENT?

Artesian Solutions, a company specialized Web-based market intelligence and surveillance software (automating the process of search through machine-based surveillance), has an interesting take. Artesian CEO Andrew Yates issued a statement today arguing that Murdoch’s brave strategy may just (literally) literally pay dividends.

As Andrew puts it: Murdoch’s play is “based around ‘quality’ and this is tough call for a commodity that people are not currently prepared to pay for…. However he argues that one positive consequence of charging for content is that through targeted information and the learned behaviors of the subscribers, newspapers will be able to build a 24 hour, 7 days a week relationship (rather than once in the morning) with the subscriber and therefore tailor content to the demands of those paying for the service. The subscriber will get what they want, when they want it on whatever device they chose. Surely, this will be good for the consumer.”

Intrigued by this view I caught up with Andrew to ask why he can be so sure that we – people that have grown up accustomed to free content, search and social networking services – will change our habits and pay for news, for example. A few minutes into the call we were passionately debating the pivotal importance of personalization, relevancy and context – and the value they bring to our content experiences across platforms and devices.

CONTEXT & RELEVANCE

Artesian, for example, has built a B2B business model on providing its clients content in tune with their profiles, preferences and strategic focus. Using a variety of tools and techniques (advanced algorithms, natural language search the order and frequency of keywords, for example) Artesian effectively filters out information that we don’t want and gives us what we do.

In this scenario, the value of content is its quality – which is a function of context and relevance. Put another way, customers pay for genuinely useful content and they pay a premium for the choice of having what they need where and when they need it. With this in mind, the next deliverable on the Artesian roadmap is a service that delivers a daily dose of information to customers on their portable devices (PDA, smartphone, iPhone etc…).

My take: Artesian is one of a new breed of cool companies that makes its money by making choices for us to provide us choice content we appreciate. By spidering the indexes relevant to our interests and objectives (and not attempting to index or deliver the entire Web), companies such as Artesian are defining paid-content models that hold a great deal of promise for publishers everywhere (particularly in mobile). I would certainly pay for a daily dose of exactly what I want (gleaned from the sources I know and trust, as well the social media spaces, such as Twitter) delivered to my BlackBerry. All the more valuable if the technology employs explicit and implicit personalization (as Artesian does). Will we, as my close colleague Alan Moore suggested, pay for quality content? I vote ‘yes.’ As they say in Cologne, where I am based: What costs nothing, is nothing.

KOOABA MAKES MEDIA INTERACTIVE

Another value to focus on (because it can pave the way to effective/engaing advertising and increased revenues for publishers) is interactivity.

The merging of the digital and physical worlds is a hot topic at MSearchGroove and a big part of the Netsize Guide 2010. (Netsize has commissioned me to write it for the third year running and we just kicked off this exciting project at a meeting at Netsize HQ in Paris last week). But it’s more than a good read; it’s a great business model for the companies that can bridge those worlds.

Kooaba, a visual search and image recognition company and I have had high on my radar from the start (and that goes back almost two years), has an approach that spells good news for old media (specifically, print) anxious to get more mileage out of their content assets.

It’s hot off the presses (no pun intended!) and I caught up with Herbert Bay, Kooaba CEO and founder, to get the inside track on this new Kooaba and where it’s heading.

By way of background, Kooaba, which offers the Kooaba App for the iPhone and other devices, is strong in image recognition. It’s one of a number of companies providing the technology that allows people to interact with content and advertising using their cameraphones, paving the way for the all-important transaction.

(Little wonder why Amazon acquired visual search company Snaptell last month and this month released Amazon App for Android, an app that includes the experimental Amazon Remembers feature. With it people have two ways they can use their device camera to find and remember items available for sale on Amazon.com: they can either snap a photo of an item or scan a barcode.)

Kooaba’s new-look website is chock-full with information about the Kooaba App and case studies from clients ranging from BMW and EMI to Heineken – all a testament to the power of this technology to enable advertising and encourage commerce.

But the real news for me is Interactive print, Kooaba’s solution that effectively gives old print media a new lease on life.

In practice, people capture the content with their cameraphones and Kooaba makes the connection between the printed content and the cool interactive stuff it links to (videos, interviews, and special offers/discounts – the works). Additional functionality in the back-end lets people search, archive and even share this content. Read a job offer in the classifieds, save it for yourself in your personal library or share it on Facebook. Read an interview, get one-click access to the video and then pass it around.

Will people pay for that interactivity? Perhaps… But it’s likely the real money will come from advertisers willing to pay a premium to deliver a more interactive advertising experience and – more importantly – measure the results. (Kooaba’s solution has analytics/tracking baked in.)
Herbert is bullish about the power shift that can happen when publishers are back in charge of their content and their advertising revenues (as opposed to aggregators and search engine companies.).

But I am even more excited about the potential for interactive learning. This technology can literally make books come alive! (A wonderful boost to the quality of education in the developing world.)

The bottom line: Relevancy rules! Whether it’s built into the algorithms that allow companies such as Artesian charge for relevant content or architected into Kooaba’s solution that makes print content contextually-aware (because it can morph to match the context of the people who activate it with their cameraphones), we want what we want and will gravitate to those companies that can give it to us.

It was great to have the last few days off and even better to map out an exciting line-up of MSearchGroove projects for the next few months. One that I am particularly honored to announce: my collaboration with GigaOM Pro, the new research arm of the highly respected tech blog GigaOM. By way of background, GigaOM Pro has brought together an impressive roster of industry authorities and analysts (including my esteemed colleague Chetan Sharma) to “address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.” The GigaOM Pro solution: Make timely, highly relevant analysis and insights accessible and practical.

I’m on board to write an in-depth examination of personalization and recommendation technologies and business models, a natural next step given my long track record analyzing mobile search and my deep involvement in the recommender space. (This includes work with Strands, a major provider of recommender systems, on recommender industry events including RecSys 09 – October 22-25, NYC.)

The report is an ambitious undertaking and I am naturally interested in connecting with personalization/recommendation companies –so please contact me directly if you wish to be considered for inclusion. peggy@msearchgroove.com

Why the buzz about personalization?

The advance of Internet-specific smartphones and the spread of app store schemes turns up the pressure on mobile operators (and their content providers) to decipher data transactions (on and off the network), combine it with location and demographic data and use the results to create a 360-degree view of the individual.

Where does this shift leave mobile operators?

They are hard pushed to turn analytics into competitive advantage. Sensing this business opportunity (that execs tell me they estimate hovers in the hundreds of millions of dollars), a slew of companies (such as Amdocs, Bytemobile, Novarra and Qualcomm) are among the first out the gates with revamped offers to arm operators for the ultimate battle with Web giants for the mobile customer. This special series profiles the players jockeying for position in the marketplace.

This week we look at Openwave, which has recently productized its existing analytics capabilities and business intelligence know-how, and packaged it up as Mobile Analytics.

The solution – designed to aggregate usage data and behavioral information across a variety of sources, including on-portal surfing and open Web browsing, to generate meaningful reports –dovetails with other Openwave offers (behavioral targeting, profiling, usage pattern analysis) to lay the groundwork for the delivery of relevant content and advertising.

I caught up with Mayur Pitamber, Openwave Product Management Strategist, to discuss the role of the mobile operator, debate the value of personalization and what we can expect next in the Openwave product roadmap.

AN EXCERPT OF OUR Q&A

Q: Let’s talk about the fit with mobile advertising. You have just launched the complement to your own mobile advertising solution, which is Mobile Analytics. What’s the level of interest in mobile advertising? I’m hearing some operators get it, but many more don’t…

A: There was some hype about it at first, but operators are starting to see the value of it now and they are also beginning to understand the real value of the data they have. The last months have been marked by a surge of activity and RFIs and RFPs specifically for mobile analytics solutions, which is new in this market. We didn’t see this last year.

A lot of what happened and the initial excitement around mobile advertising industry was quite premature. It’s not just about offering targeted advertising; it’s about offering relevant products and services based on the user’s behavior. The operators can use analytics to gain profiles of these users, the sites they frequent and what they do while online. It’s when this information can be aggregated and provided to media agencies and brands that it really becomes valuable.

It’s all about helping operators to provide the mobile audience metrics that the brands are looking for. Not necessarily going through the GSMA, because they have some of that [covered in their] initiative, but doing that directly. With the solution we’re offering the operators can provide those metrics directly to the brands, to the media agencies, to the publishers, and be a vital part of that mobile advertising ecosystem. And with our solution there’s no need for us to insert tracking or cookies or JavaScript, or anything like that. Every Web page goes through our gateway and we can basically track on that. So, that’s a key differentiator.

Q: There are, of course, other solutions in this space. A long list of gateway providers: Qualcomm, Amdocs, Ericsson, Nokia, Bytemobile, Novarra. And the space is getting crowded.

A: Obviously, there are competitors out there.  All gateway providers can provide parts of this sort of solution. However, I haven’t come across a solution [similar to ours] with this [breadth] out there in the market at this point in time. Being a gateway provider for the last 10 years, we’ve been providing this type of reporting to operators. But now we’ve added more features and made it more user-friendly. So, it’s a mature business intelligence product that we’re bringing to the market.

Q: In early August, Telstra announced it had implemented your Mobile Analytics solution. The press release says it’s all about providing Telstra a “dashboard view of intelligent analytics and rich reporting capabilities across its mobile device portfolio.” To start, how many of your operator customers have this solution or perhaps the analytics solutions that preceded this?

A: We have deployed previous versions of this analytic solution to some six tier-1 operators around the world.

Q: Let’s say I’m an operator and I don’t have a solution from Openwave, but I like the analytics.  Can I just have that, or is it a package deal?

A: Previously, the solution was just built around Openwave products. But obviously, we want a bigger market share, so we’ve designed the solution such that it will work with any other gateway, any other vendor of gateway products.

Q: You said before competing on analytics is the way for operators to be “a vital part of the ecosystem.” Can operators really play this central role?

A: That’s a really good question. I think it’s quite difficult to answer as well. The operators have traditionally been sluggish. Their bread and butter has been voice revenues and SMS revenues. To really get them incentivized to offer new services such as mobile advertising, you need a compelling business case. I’ve spoken to dozens of operators around the world. Some of them are in advanced stages of creating any-time mobile advertising organizations. Others have only one or two mobile advertising product managers. For these operators, the business case – for whatever reason – is just not compelling enough for the decision makers to say okay, let’s really invest in this.

Q: This jives with what people told me while I was conducting interviews for Mobile Advertising Research UK. As one executive at a mobile infrastructure company that counts over 300 network operator clients observed: Mobile advertising only becomes interesting for an operator when “the type of revenue they can envisage is around 2 percent of their overall revenue to 5 percent, and with an opportunity to grow to 10 percent of revenue. This is the revenue that will really make them sit up and make it work.” Another figure that stands out: GBP 28.6 million, which is what the IAB reckons was the mobile ad spend in 2008. What’s your take?

A: I can believe the ad spend for the U.K. I think the hold up is the thinking about the role of the mobile operator. We have to be clear about what they can do. In my view, the role of the mobile operator will be to provide incentives for people to use new services so that additional inventory and mediums become available to insert ads. And obviously, once those mediums become available, that becomes attractive to brands and advertisers. But, right now, it’s difficult for operators to manage their inventories. They have SMS inventory, MMS inventory, on-portal, off-portal. All of these are different systems and it’s difficult to provide brands and advertisers a consolidated view of what is available out there. So, it’s when there is a clear view of the different inventories out there and the tools to manage these inventories, and make these inventories available to third-parties such as the brands and media agencies, that I think mobile advertising will really take off.

Q: Are you convinced operators can start acting like media companies? Or are there going to be a lot of carriers that focus on access over audience?

A: The tier-1s I talk with have created organizations to manage mobile advertising. They’ve created sales forces to go out and sell inventory. So, they are already acting as media agencies and helping brands identify which inventory they want to use. But again, these are just the big tier-1 operators.

Q: Advertising is messaging – and loads of it. Or it could borrow from TV and be video-centric? We don’t know. In any case, we have more data usage – both from people surfing with their smartphones and brands that want to reach them. What is the potential impact on the network side of things? What are you seeing?

A: We’re seeing huge increase in data traffic volumes. A data tsunami is going to hit operators within the next 12-24 months. And some operators are quite oblivious to this. So, [with Mobile Analytics] we’re helping the operators to identify trends on the operational front as well. We’re saying ‘Hey, you need to do capacity planning and optimize your networks because this is going to be your traffic in 6 months or 12 months.’

Q: Let’s move to the report on North American mobile Internet trends you issued that may have got lost in the CTIA shuffle. It made some interesting points, and I understand you are about to release another one soon. What were some of the key observations and what were the surprises?

A: That report was basically based on data from one of our customers in North America. Many of the trends we saw confirmed what the market was thinking. For example, everyone is doing social networking on mobile. The top sites, as you could guess, were Facebook and MySpace.

In terms of search, we were able to also track some keywords. Something that was interesting: people – when they wanted to find Google — wouldn’t enter Google on their mobile phone and go to Google. They would actually enter ‘Google’ in a Yahoo search engine. This operator had Yahoo as a search partner. Anyway, that tells us that a lot of search use may be because of usability. It’s easier to type it [a destination] in a search box than to navigate to it on the Web.

Q: Finally – what about app stores? They’re hot. What is the value-add, if any, from analytics?

A: One of the operators we’re working with is in the process of opening an app store. They know that not all users are going to go through the apps. If you figure the iPhone app store has tens of thousands of apps and growing, users would lose patience sifting through all that. This operator wants to analytics specifically on this [operator] app store to identify the top ten apps. But it goes beyond this to include how many times have the apps been downloaded; who has consumed them; and whether the users have shared apps with other people. More importantly, the operator is providing this app store data to the application developers, so they also have insight into how their apps are being used and how many people have downloaded their apps. So, Mobile Analytics can be used to identify the audiences going to these app stores – and that can be used to build the business.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Generally speaking, the value of data is not in the data itself, but in the mashups we create when we combine it with other data stores. Put another way, the way to wring the value out of analytics is to combine it with location and demographics data, which is why Openwave is keen to feature both in its Mobile Analytics solution. Mayur tells me we can expect location in the next months. (Openwave is also gearing up to announce another customer win for its analytics offer in South East Asia.)

Likewise recommendation capabilities are moving up the list to take a center spot in Openwave strategy. As Mayur put it: The next version of Mobile Analytics will come with recommenders “bolted on.” No word yet on what the recommender will allow (delivery of content or advertising – or both?), how it will achieve this (based on item-to-item or user-to user – or both?), or how it will integrate with Openwave’s underlying Integra platform. But read between the lines, and the sharpened focus on recommendation is at least a welcome testament to the timing and importance of my upcoming GigaOM report on the same topic.

Openwave, unlike some of the gateway providers I’ve examined/profiled in this series, is also bullish about mobile search. The company demo points out that Mobile Analytics potentially improves mobile search, allowing operators to deliver relevant results individuals will find useful.

I am reminded at this juncture of a related post I wrote about the potential for operator-centric, operator-powered, operator-controlled mobile search. With the right tools and technology mobile operators can follow our virtual breadcrumb trail to optimize our mobile search (and advertising) experiences, using our actual usage patterns to give us the answers/results we will most likely appreciate.

My take: Personalization is a hot topic but personalized recommendation and search are even hotter. The space is crowding with gateway providers that are using their position in the network to give their operator customers insights into what people are doing on the network (on- and off-portal). The end-game is about helping operators make business decisions based on new subscriber behaviors and trends. Openwave is one of a number of companies in this space – but it has its eye on the prize: drilling down in the data to help operators manage bandwidth allocation, deliver targeted mobile advertising AND fine-tune recommendation and mobile search. What better way for operators to compete against Internet and search engine giants, and potentially win?

Next in the series: We discuss personalization with Novarra.

Last week, we outlined the opportunities and challenges created by the proliferation of app stores. The takeaway: app stores may have turned people on to applications and whet their appetite for new content types, but they also turn up the pressure on companies across the ecosystem (operators, OS providers and handset-makers-turned-content-providers) to make finding and buying applications/content a no-brainer.

Indeed, personalization is the new business mantra, and it goes for content/apps as well as advertising. Guest columns from Barry Smyth, Chief Scientist of Changing Worlds, an Amdocs company and recognized pioneer in personalization technologies, and Jim Levey, a former Director of Product Marketing for Search and Digital Advertising at Amdocs who has joined MSG’s roster of authors and influencers, will examine the models and mindsets required to turn personalization into competitive advantage.

In the meantime, it’s productive for us all to be on the same page, starting off with an understanding of the offers and an overview of the competitive landscape.

This week the focus is Bytemobile, a company that sits between the operator and the individual, collecting the data (such as browsing behavior on- and off-portal) that – in theory – allows its operator customers to deliver individuals personalized content (and advertising) they are bound to appreciate.

What are the practical benefits of personalization? Where does Widget Bar (software that enables operators to insert a personalized toolbar on the screen of any mobile device) fit in to the scheme of things? And what’s in it for brands? I caught up with Adrian Hall, Bytemobile CMO, to get the inside track.

Listen to the podcast here. [15:30]

WHY PERSONALIZATION?: The advance of the iPhone has impacted the space on two levels: it has highlighted the continued need for content adaptation solutions (to display Flash properly, for example) and it has increased the desire of people to experience rich-media content across all devices (not just smartphones). “So, there’s still a very strong market for the content adaptation as a class of product, but clearly as devices increase in functionality and in capability, there’s a need still to influence the way the end user interacts with data, even on a device as sophisticated as the iPhone.” To allow operators to personalize data (and brand the overall value-added services experience) Bytemobile has introduced Widget Bar. (You can view the demo here.)

As Adrian puts it: The idea is to have a personalized toolbar on the screen of any mobile device (smartphone on down to mass market device), “which offers efficient user access to services like local news and weather, enhanced search, email and social networking.”

By way of background, the Widget Bar got a bit of a boost in July when Bytemobile launched a – well – starter pack for mobile operators that includes:

• The operator-configurable Inline Portal application that intelligently brings portal content to the top of every web page.
• The Search Bar application, that provides an always-present search query box (piggy-backing the search engine preferred by the mobile operator), thus facilitating content discovery and enhancing mobile browsing.
• The Share application that simplifies the sharing of mobile web content with other users directly or through popular social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter.
• The Notifications pop-up application that gives operators a way to inform subscribers of relevant updates such as promotions and operational messages on roaming and data limits.

Connect the dots, and for Bytemobile it’s all about enabling operators to own and brand the all-important interaction between people, their phones and their peers.

APP COMPARISON: “Widget Bar is basically a clientless application window, if you like, so it helps mobile users to gain access to useful applications and personalized content of their choice.  As I said, it does this using a consistent presentation format. So, what it basically offers is a series of ‘mini-apps,’ if you like, that sit across the top of the screen of your device.” What does the use case look like? Imagine people that get access (through the carrier data plan) to apps as part of a larger offer. “Hypothetically, $10 a month would get you access to the choice of 10 applications that you could populate across the top of your device….So, you can then choose little mini-apps that are basically zero-click apps of your choice that are somewhat personalized by the operator.” The result: a populated Widget Bar across the screen of any class of mobile phone that is “updated in real time, basically in the background whenever we happen to refresh a Web page that we’re searching on as part of a session on our mobile phone.”

OPERATOR PERSONALIZATION: It all starts with Bytemobile’s Unison platform, a mobile Internet platform that enables operators to deploy fully integrated, multi-service solutions from a single node in the core data path of the network. As Adrian puts it: “We actually sit in the data path and so we get access to see how users search the Web, what advertisements they click on, [and] their browsing behavior.” This insight allows Bytemobile to build up a real time user profile of that particular user.

DRIVERS: Adrian tells me the main reason operators are interested in (and currently trialling) Widget Bar is to fight back the competition coming from Web giants and handset makers. “Operators captured a lot of their data revenue through their portals.  Now, as the walls of the walled gardens break down and portal traffic and portal revenue is reducing, we’re all going to the open Internet.” As a result, carriers are looking for ways to capture “the mindshare of their consumers rather than the consumers going off to the app store and some of the other products from Google and Apple that immediately take the consumer away from the carrier, from the carrier’s brand and the carrier’s applications.”

MOBILE ADVERTISING: “The key to effective advertising and more effective click through rates clearly is the ability to analyze the browsing behavior of particular [individual] consumers.  Because we can analyse browsing behaviour in real time, it allows us to work with the carriers and their ad providers, be it the ad networks that they’ve chosen or in-house facilities that they’ve built, to much more effectively target ads to consumers.”

PROFILING: Bytemobile’s ability to personalize content goes back to the insights it gained offering products and solutions to monitor how people use services such as video in order to implement fair use policies. “Typically when we talk to carriers, they see that 2-3% of users are typically using 50-70% of bandwidth and clearly they’re not paying for that amount.” Sitting in that sweet spot between the carrier and the consumer (monitoring video use) has also allowed Bytemobile to focus on personalization. As Adrian puts it: “It’s personalisation that’s going to end up increasing either the click through of an advert…or staying with the carrier and the value-added services that particular carrier can offer versus just going straight out to a Google or an Apple [destination], and ultimately increasing the chances of making that carrier a dumb pipe.”

WHAT’S NEXT?: In a word, execution. It’s all about helping operators implement Bytemobile’s personalization solutions. Adrian tells me operator deals are in the pipeline, but no details yet. He also reports that large-scale user experience trials conducted in cooperation with operators show the vast majority of users accessed the Widget Bar application several times per week. (No numbers from Bytemobile, so it’s not possible to quantify this “vast majority.”)

Other observations from Adrian:

• Bytemobile users reported finding navigation tools such as the Search Bar application extremely useful
• The Inline Portal application effectively doubled users’ visits to the operators’ portals
• Instant user access to the latest portal services and content, the continuous presence of the operator’s brand on the web browser, and the accurate targeting of content delivered to users all resulted in increased click-through rates

My take: Hmmm – it wasn’t so long ago that mobile search was widely regarded as a silver-bullet solution that would allow content companies/developers to present their offers within an acceptable click-distance and clinch that all-important sale. However, the usability barriers outlined in this post from my last mobile search masterclass have shifted industry focus from mobile search to tools and technologies that allow content owners/developers to employ a more proactive approach. Against this backdrop, content discovery (and the solutions to present content/apps where users can see and buy them) is back in the spotlight, all the better if these solutions bubble up content/apps to the surface that are in tune with our individual preferences. (And it’s not just about content; personalization can also be harnessed to deliver people advertising that they are more likely to appreciate.) Bytemobile is one of a new breed of companies allowing operators to connect the dots in the clues people leave behind (browsing behavior, for example) to serve up content they are bound to like and – more importantly – brand it to reinforce their value-add. Will this allow operators to do battle with Google, Apple and all the other companies jumping on the content/app bandwagon? It’s too early to call that one – but solutions such as this certainly create a more level playing field and play up the importance of personalization data only the operators can access.

No matter how you look at it (or who you ask) mobile search, the model that has effectively retrofitted Internet search for mobile devices, is riddled with shortcomings This was the message that came across in the interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research UK, the presentations I and other search authorities made during the recent Mobile Search Masterclass in London, and, more recently, in the mobile search assessment white paper (Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone) I co-authored with Peggy Albright. (DOWNLOAD)

Is mobile search broken? More importantly, how can we fix it? These are the questions I put to a variety of executives representing companies from across the mobile search and advertising business ecosystem. Read between the lines, and their answers – along with my own conclusions – point to areas of improvement and opportunity in mobile search.

MOBILE ADVERTISING RESEARCH UK

Primary research and C-Level interviews with agencies, brands, operators and third parties reveal mobile search is missing the mark. Their gripe: the poor quality of mobile search (specifically universal search powered by keyword queries and PageRank algorithms) is to blame for a lack of interest and investment in paid search advertising.

As a leading executive at a global brand put it: “Just between the two of us, our spend for search is by far not in the [single] digits yet – and it won’t be….We do a lot in mobile, but the basics of search are not yet at the level of sophistication consumers would expect from us.”

At the other end of the spectrum, agencies are far from upbeat about the short-term outlook for mobile search. As one managing director at a mobile marketing agency put it: “Just the way the content is indexed prevents advertisers from creating a cohesive plan to integrate search in their [mobile] advertising strategies. There is just not the volume to get in and really do some targeted search [advertising], and that’s what brands want: to make advertising personal and relevant to every search the consumer makes.”

Against this backdrop, many sources questioned whether the U.K. adspend figures for 2008 released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) – the trade body for digital marketing – and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) didn’t overplay the importance of paid search advertising.

The study – a U.K. first – shows that mobile adspend bucked all market trends, increasing by 99.2 percent year on year to reach GBP28.6 million. Mobile display advertising – which includes banners, text links, tenancies pre/post roll and in-game – accounted for GBP14.2 million in 2008, 49.8 percent of all mobile advertising spend, while paid-for search advertising was estimated to account for GBP14.4 million, 50.2 percent of all mobile advertising spend.

As Harry Dewhirst, Co-Founder & Operations Director of RingRing Media Ltd., an independent media agency in the U.K., pointed out during the conference Mobile Advertising Research UK and again in a private briefing with MSG: the amount spent on paid search (from his vantage point) is considerably less than display. The reason: mobile search is “not up to scratch” and fails to deliver people “information in a digestible format as quickly and as conveniently as they need it.” (During the conference Harry raised eyebrows when he identified mobile search as a chief obstacle to mobile advertising – period.)

Harry further tells me the poor mobile search experience means fewer people use search, and that has resulted in a “lack of depth” in search terms. While the terms “plumber” and “London” might draw crowds of online searchers, they can’t pack them in on mobile – yet. “And until they do, search queries will continue to be focused on branded terms like ‘Facebook’ and ‘MySpace,’ and used as navigation.” Despite these issues, Harry reports conversion rates for search are higher than display. “This indicates a positive future for mobile search advertising, but the repeat usage and quality of results isn’t good enough yet.” (Ironically, this sentiment is echoed and documented in the summary analysis of the Masterclass below.)

But there are some bright spots. Harry, who knows mobile search inside out from his previous experience at Medio Systems, a mobile search provider, gives high marks to Taptu, a socially-assisted service that tackles issues such as poor quality results and even worse rendering by summarizing the content/search results in a page that allows people to pre-screen the results before clicking. He is also upbeat about other vertical solutions such as directory assistance search services that are designed from the ground up to give searchers what they need on the move.

MOBILE SEARCH MASTERCLASS

A summer highlight for me has been participating for the second successive year in the mobile search masterclass, a course delivered as part of The City University London’s Masterclass series. Once again I joined an impressive roster of industry authorities from companies, and once again Colin Bates, CTO of Mobile Commerce Ltd., presented some amazing insights into mobile search usage, trends and behavior.

It’s worth sitting up to take notice because Mobile Commerce, like an honest broker sitting between all the major U.K. mobile operators and all the mobile search engines, effectively powers customers’ search boxes. In a nutshell, Mobile Commerce takes the search terms people type into operator portal search boxes and federates them out to a variety of information retrieval sources to deliver a results set made up of  regular Internet search results (Google, Yahoo Microsoft), specialist mobile search results (local search and a variety of verticals), and paid search advertising linked to keywords. Mobile Commerce also offers an increasing number of content owners/publishers a similar service through its Monetised Mobile Search solution, a plug-in service that allows client companies to put a search box on their mobile site and generate revenues from paid search advertising.

As a result, Mobile Commerce has an invaluable insider’s view into what people search for and the results they receive. The bottom line: Nearly 12 months on from Colin’s last presentation and mobile search is still (!) broken.

VOLUME

The surprise: mobile search volume has doubled and in some cases tripled. However, part of the reason for this meteoric rise could be Mobile Commerce’s own success in signing up customers (such as major U.K. newspapers and Virgin Media). Colin put it down to growth in mobile publishing and the number of publishers that placed a search box on their pages. [Hmm - will more publishers take charge of content (and advertising) by controlling the search box?] And let’s not forget the impact of the iPhone and other cool handsets that make the Internet fun to surf on our phones.

What are people searching for? The stellar growth Colin sees – partly because Mobile Commerce powers mobile search for The Sun – is in a category he calls “Glamor,” a term that comprises all the hot half-nude models (Page 3 girls) featured on the newspaper’s third page.

More people are using mobile search. Are they getting what the want?

In a word, no.

Colin’s road test of mobile search services offered by Google and Yahoo (similar to last year) makes it clear mobile search has a way to go. While the search engines excel in Internet search on a mobile phone, their mobile-specific results are – well – “rubbish.” A search for directory assistance delivers a link to the media relations department for World Aids Day, and a simple search for nearby post offices delivers a list of locations no longer in operation. As Colin put it: “The tools (such as Google Maps) are great, the data is out of date.”

Why are mobile search results served up by Internet search engines so poor?

1)    Mobile robots can’t spider the “mobile Web.” There is no sure-fire way to identify a site by URL (for a while .mobi or m.sitename. was a help). The advance of the iPhone and multi-mode sites that adapt content and change markup to match the incoming device type also muddy the waters.

2)    Indexing mobile pages – where information is dynamic, spread across multiple pages and impacted by user input and user-generated content – is a nightmare to index.

3)    The existence of data silos (such as downloadable content) and the lack of cross-linking data make it difficult to rank results and power PageRank algorithms.

4)    People have little say in their search results. On the Internet what we click on (or don’t) is important feedback (an indication of what we find relevant) that fine-tunes rankings and results. We do this on mobile too, but relevant results are often too many clicks away to be seen, used or appreciated.

PERSPECTIVES

Despite the many shortcoming of mobile search, people are using it more than ever before.

What are the drivers?

For one, supply. More players offer mobile search this year than last.

All the U.K. operators offer mobile search on their portals and an increasing number of publishers have also implemented Mobile Commerce solutions.

(In fact, this flurry of activity prompted Mobile Commerce to launch its Monetised Search service in the U.S., where U.K.-based search engine Taptu has signed up as the first client. Bob Last, SVP of Business Development at Taptu, said in a statement: “Working closely with Mobile Commerce since last year, Mobile Commerce significantly improves the availability of relevant ads for our users. The U.S. is our busiest market for mobile searches at Taptu and we are very pleased to be extending our involvement with Mobile Commerce to monetise more of this U.S. search traffic.”)

Demand is also a factor.

People are using mobile search – but it’s not the way they use it on the PC. It’s more about snacking, snippets and quick answers than research and information retrieval. This is what Mobile Commerce concludes (and proves) after a thorough analysis of search terms, search results and what people clicked. Because it powers the complete process it can make the connection between what people query and what they consider a valuable (accurate) result.

The company has developed a system of some 20 categories, ranging from Single User Search (which comprises all the Long Tail terms that literally only came up once in 12 months) to Social Networking (which accounted for a 16 percent of searches over the last year).

Connect the dots, as Colin did, and specific categories (such as Social Networking) are about navigation. In other words, people are typing them in order to find the mobile site. This is further supported by the dramatic dip in searches for Facebook plummet right around the time the social network launched a proper mobile property.

REVENUE

Mobile search may broken but paid search advertising – at least for a few categories – is paying dividends. Specifically, the categories Adult, Games and Personalization (downloadable mobile content) received the largest ratio of clicks against paid search adverts in the results set.

Read between the lines, and we have a confirmation of the pivotal role of paid search advertising in content discovery (a trend I have tracked and documented in articles such as this one for New Media Age – subscription  required).

Why should mobile content companies harness paid search ads to promote their content? Because it works. As Colin put it: “The mobile search model is broken, and publishers have very little control over how their sites appear in the results set – if at all.” In practice, using advertising – specifically text and banner ads – enables content discovery and drives results. It’s also cheap discovery since (at least in the U.K.) CTRs for display ads have tumbled from GBP 15 per CPM to “around GBP 5.”

The avalanche of mobile content – and now mobile apps – turns up the pressure on publishers and developers to rise above the noise and make their stuff findable and buyable. Until companies fix the bugs in mobile search, display and banner ads remain the only sure-fire way to get the message out.

BETTER MOBILE SEARCH

But publishers and brands don’t have to limit their focus to the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). The real excitement is in search tools and technologies that make the most of mobile and even harness other people to improve the overall experience.

An example Colin offered is Shazam, which he described as “mobile content search without the box.” The phenomenally popular mobile music discovery provider grew from 20 million users (in September 2008) to 35 million worldwide (in February 2009), with over a million tracks now being tagged every day across the world. (Release) It has deployed by 75 carriers across 60 countries, and is a popular application in the Apple App Store, the Android Market and the BlackBerry App World.

In Colin’s view, “mobile-specific search tools” that enable made-for-mobile search (as opposed to universal Internet search) are bound to improve mobile search and make money for the companies that develop them.

In my own Masterclass presentation (and ongoing mobile search research) I have taken it a step further, identifying 10+ categories of mobile search and assembling a list of super-cool companies harnessing context, location and the wisdom of crowds to improve the precision of search results and the quality of our mobile search experiences.

A welcome addition to the list is Alabot, a mobile search provider based out of Pune, India, with offices in Kuala Lumpur and London. I first met Akshat Shrivastava, Alabot founder, at a mobile search conference, where I had the pleasure of presenting him with the Bronze in the category Best Technology Innovation – Software. Earlier this week Akshat sent me a DM via Twitter (@peggyanne) with the great news: Alabot has secured funding from a global innovation fund and sealed a deal with a Malaysian mobile operator to develop a multi-lingual (English, Bahasa, Chinese, Tamil) mobile content vertical search service.

The text search service will start off serving up ringtones and wallpapers from the operator’s online content stock, or “low hanging fruit” Akshat tells me is just the beginning. As he put it: “Content services that require a syntax or Internet access aren’t getting traction [in that region] because they are not intuitive or interactive.” Moving forward, Akshat tells me plans are to extend the service to other content verticals and expand reach via deals with several OEMs. Rock On!

SEARCH AS CONVERSATION

Strong demand for more interactive (translated: natural language search services) isn’t limited to emerging markets.

In North America, ChaCha, a people-powered search service that uses specially trained individuals ChaCha calls “guides,” has answered more than 150 million questions via mobile phones and the Internet, making it one of the leaders in SMS search.

Intrigued by the power and potential of voice search on the iconic iPhone, Peggy Albright and I recently completed Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone, a performance analysis of voice-enabled mobile search services offered by Google, ChaCha and Vlingo (a spoken interface to the Yahoo search engine). Download the free white paper here.

A chief finding: ChaCha “proved superior” to the two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone. Specifically, ChaCha proved to offer exceptional results, with its human guides interpreting the search query accurately in the majority of cases.

To be clear, the study was not a road test of speech recognition technologies. To evaluate the overall performance of voice-enabled mobile services offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo for iPhone with Yahoo!, the researchers asked a series of 18 queries representative of six typical mobile search categories (Navigational, Directions, Information Local, Information General, Social, and Long-Tail). For each query the researchers evaluated nine performance characteristics including response time, results accuracy, voice recognition accuracy, number of results received, keytaps required, relevancy of the result, location awareness, use of advertising, and presence of other value-added features.

According to the study, ChaCha interpreted natural language search queries, that is, queries asked as questions, accurately in 94.4 percent of the tests and delivered an accurate search result in 88.9 percent of cases. The Google voice recognition technology interpreted queries accurately in 16.7 percent of tests and delivered accurate search results in 22.2 percent of tests. The Vlingo for iPhone voice recognition technology correctly interpreted queries in 72.2 percent of cases and delivered accurate results (via Yahoo!) in 27.8 percent of tests.

A clear finding that emerged is the importance of people-power. As Peggy Albright pointed out: “The use of human agents [by ChaCha] to help interpret spoken queries and conduct searches makes a positive difference in the quality of results delivered when compared to traditional search engines that use algorithmic software to find requested documents or information on the basis of keyword matches.”

In the report I also identified a key advantage ChaCha has over its competitors: Its keen focus on social search, an approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint truly relevant information and potentially better answers.

Beyond tipping the scales back in favor of results that are relevant rather than search- engine optimized, social search also lays the groundwork for a conversation with people on their terms, paving the way for the delivery of mobile advertising that is relevant and more likely to be appreciated.

MY TAKE:

Universal mobile search has significant shortcomings, weaknesses that brands and agencies tell me has convinced them to put paid search on the back burner. (There are exceptions: Colin from Mobile Commerce reminds us that for some segments – specifically mobile content – paid search is a potent means to encourage content discovery.) We have a choice: we can wait for providers to improve universal mobile search, or we can harness tools and technologies to deliver a better experience NOW. An obvious and excellent alternative is social search, often called “people-powered search” because it harnesses people to deliver results tailored to searchers on the basis of who they are and what they like. The interviews and insights collected in this analysis outline where mobile search misses the mark and reveal a huge opportunity for companies (such as ChaCha) that give a personal touch to search results (a perfect fit with the mobile phone, which we’ve already established is an intensely personal device).

It’s still in the early days, but the place and the power of people in mobile search is clear. As the worlds of mobile search and mobile social networking collide, they produce opportunities for companies to tap the community – both implicitly and explicitly – for much better quality results and the delivery of much more relevant advertising.

Disclaimer: The complete report is available for free download from MSearchGroove. This white paper is published by MSearchGroove. It contains the findings of independent research and analysis carried out by Peggy Albright, Albright Communications, and Peggy Anne Salz, MSearchGroove in January 2009. The research methodology was developed by Peggy Albright. The research was sponsored by ChaCha. The opinions expressed in this white paper are those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of the organizations referenced in this paper.

Related reading:

Context, Social Media, And Cool Interfaces Rock Mobile Search; MSG Teams Up With mTrends To Map Out The Brave New Landscape

Mobile Search Masterclass: How Google & Yahoo Really Measure Up; Is Paid Search The Path To Discovery?

Mobile Social Search Makes Its Mark; Will Group Searching, Sharing & Collaboration Take Social Networking To The Next Level?

EXCLUSIVE & EXPLOSIVE: New People-Powered Mobile Search & Advertising Solution Puts Mobile Operators Back In The Driver’s Seat; Will Search Giants Have To Watch Their Backs?

Will Tapping The Wisdom Of Crowds Outsmart Mobile Search Giants?

But the real news is Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone, MSearchGroove’s new-release white paper assessing the performance of voice search on an iPhone offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo (using Yahoo!), which you can download here. The report is especially timely, coming on the heels of today’s announcement by Google that it has fine-tuned the mobile app versions of its Google Voice service for Blackberry and Android. (More on the user experience via this detailed post at GigaOm.)

The top-level findings: ChaCha, a fast-growing SMS mobile search service available in the U.S. in the industry, “proved superior” to two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone: the Google Mobile App with Voice and Vlingo for iPhone, a voice enabled application that allows users to direct their spoken queries to Google or Yahoo! (For the purposes of this study Vlingo provided a spoken interface to the Yahoo! search engine.)

ChaCha proved to offer exceptional results, with its human guides interpreting the search query accurately in the majority of cases. According to the study, ChaCha interpreted natural language search queries, that is, queries asked as questions, accurately in 94.4 percent of the tests and delivered an accurate search result in 88.9 percent of cases. The Google voice recognition technology interpreted queries accurately in 16.7 percent of tests and delivered accurate search results in 22.2 percent of tests. The Vlingo for iPhone voice recognition technology correctly interpreted queries in 72.2 percent of cases and delivered accurate results (via Yahoo!) in 27.8 percent of tests.

My personal thanks to esteemed colleague and associate Peggy Albright, the study’s lead analyst and principal author, and Bill Meisel, editor of Speech Strategy News and a leading authority on market and product opportunities created by the maturing of speech technology. Bill is also the president of president of TMA Associates and I look forward to showcasing his work and ideas on MSG soon.

Tomorrow: More report findings and surprising observations on the dismal state of mobile search.

Disclaimer: The complete report is available for free download here. This white paper is published by MSearchGroove. It contains the findings of independent research and analysis carried out by Peggy Albright, Albright Communications, and Peggy Anne Salz, MSearchGroove in January 2009. The research methodology was developed by Peggy Albright. The research was sponsored by ChaCha. The opinions expressed in this white paper are those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of the organizations referenced in this paper.

Regular readers will recall that MSG was commissioned to conduct Mobile Advertising Research UK, a project research endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K. and identify growth opportunities in the emerging mobile advertising marketplace.

The report — which combines valuable consumer insights gathered by ÆNEAS Strategy Consulting and Management (coordinated by my esteemed colleagues Tarik Fawzi and Atva van Zanten) and qualitative research based on more than 20 interviews with operators, enablers, agencies and brands contributed by MSG — marks the first in a series of region-specific reports that will include Germany (2009) and North America (2010).

During the inaugural event (Mobile Advertising Research U.K.) last week in London, Tarik and I presented an overview of key findings (documented by MSearchGroove here) and revealed the results of an online survey of over 1,000 British. consumers. Pricing is GBP 2,999 ($4,866) for the report, and a 500 GBP discount is available for MMA/IAB members, and people who attended the event. For more details, click here.

And speaking of reports, I am pleased to announce that I will provide a sneak-peak at the results of a performance analysis of voice-enabled mobile search services from search giants Google, Yahoo! & ChaCha during a special Mobile Search Masterclass in London on June 30.

By way of background, this course is part of The City University London’s Masterclass series, a collaboration between the giCentre and the Centre for Interactive Systems Research at the University. It will be run for the second year following from feedback last year and is endorsed by the Mobile Data Association (MDA). Registration is GBP295 and the organizers tell me there are still a few seats available, so email Mark Firman (mfirman@soi.city.ac.uk) to reserve your place.

The complete findings will be released in July, but I can say that ChaCha, a fast-growing SMS mobile search service available in the U.S., “proved superior” to two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone: the Google Mobile App with Voice and Vlingo for iPhone, a voice-enabled application that allows users to direct their spoken queries to Google or Yahoo! For the purposes of this study, Vlingo provided a spoken interface to the Yahoo! search engine.

To evaluate the overall performance of voice-enabled mobile services offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo for iPhone with Yahoo!, we asked a series of 18 queries representative of six typical mobile search categories (Navigational, Directions, Information Local, Information General, Social, and Long-Tail). For each query, we evaluated nine performance characteristics including response time, results accuracy, voice recognition accuracy, number of results received, keytaps required, relevancy of the result, location awareness, use of advertising and presence of other value-added features. The study further took into account that a service could deliver its search results in the form of answers (as ChaCha offers) or as links to Web pages (which Google and Vlingo deliver); for each query tested, an accurate result could be achieved in either form.

In addition to going over some high-level results, I will also present an overview of the mobile search landscape, focusing particular attention on the 10+ categories of mobile search gaining significant traction, including multimodal (voice/visual), mobile vertical search (music/games) and social search, a people-powered search approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint relevant information and better answers.

This presentation is based on the work I did with Rudy De Waele, blogger at mTrends and dotopen founder, in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission).

Other masterclass speakers and sessions will examine a range of topics and developments, including: mobile search statistics and surveys, key trends and developments, location services and search user interfaces and usability, and the range of content and advertising monetization models involving mobile search. I’m honored to join an impressive roster of industry authorities from companies including AmbieSense Ltd., a provider of ambient search services; Microsoft Research (Cambridge); g8wave Ltd., a mobile marketing company; and Mobile Commerce Ltd., a provider of location-based services that also possesses what the founders call a “piece of enablement” that gives them deep insight into the search queries passed through the operator portals in the U.K., and the results set returned to the user. This central position, combined with the company’s prowess in search advertising, makes MC a top address for the inside track on the quality of the mobile search experience offered by Google and Yahoo!, as well as their ability to deliver relevant results to users’ queries.

Last year, the case studies and analytics provided by Colin Bates, Mobile Commerce CTO, data also reported on MSearchGroove, provided invaluable insight into the most popular categories of mobile search queries and what users really want from their mobile search experience. The eye-opening observation: “Users are grazing, not researching. They are looking for time-fillers rather than facts, and they are using search boxes for site-finding rather than data-finding.”

It will be exciting to explore how mobile search has moved on and discuss where it is going. If you plan to attend and would like to meet up or catch up, please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com) or arrange an appointment with Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com). I hope to see you soon and will circle back with analysis after the event.

***

Is the global downturn for real? It may have impacted the mobile industry at all levels at the start of the year, but the message at the Mobile Marketing Forum was that mobile is bucking the trend.

Between panels and during networking breaks I learned that more brands are taking mobile more seriously. Specifically, those brands that have successfully experimented with mobile in the past are now including mobile as a key component within their marketing mix. The top-notch spot of mobile in the advertising mix – and the mix of brand success stories we heard during the sessions – are sure signs that brands are coming on board. But don’t just take my word for it. Mike Wehrs, MMA President/CEO, reported that marketers are becoming more comfortable integrating mobile within traditional campaigns. As he put it: “Mobile is moving from experimental to essential.”

Indeed, mobile advertising in North America, Europe and APAC has experienced sustained growth. While you can argue that actual growth is still marginal, the development is nonetheless a positive if we consider that budgets earmarked for traditional media have been slashed.  What do the numbers tell us? Peter Johnson, VP Market Intelligence and Strategy at MMA, reckons mobile advertising revenues will increase from $1.36 billion in 2008 to $1.7 billion by end-2009, and rise again to $2.16 billion in 2010.  Peter concluded that, based on his recent research, more consumers are accepting mobile marketing as a relevant and valuable part of their digital lifestyles.

Brands and agencies are understanding the value of mobile advertising, and becoming more adept at using mobile in innovative ways. Highlights included exciting new campaigns from Coca Cola Zero, Sunglass Hut, Kodak and Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Center, and MGM Hotel. Whether the format was text, MMS, display, rich media inside gaming, or couponing – or a combination – the point is: Mobile delivers results and a positive ROI.

A cross-media approach that stood out in my book was Coke’s campaign. The company teamed up with Nokia to emblazon Coke’s distinctive red on Nokia handsets and rounded out the offer with an assortment of Coke ringtones and wallpaper for free download.

Other campaigns illustrated how mobile can connect real world experiences with real results. Using mobile to trigger interactivity and brand interest at the point of purchase (POP) Sunglass Hut encouraged its young customers to be glamorous fashion models and capture their image with their cameraphones and upload it to the Sunglass Hut we