As Rory sees it: The real power of mobile is context. It allows brands to interact with people during  target moments (I need something now), target moods (I want something now) and target mindsets (I am considering a purchase, for example). Another reason brands need to focus on this: Google can’t.

Google may have sewn up the market when it comes to influencing our decisions when forward planning is concerned, but mobile is about immediacy.

Marketing is just the start

Rory’s message to brands: Address your audience correctly and in the correct context, and you can clinch a sale, build customer loyalty, offer enhanced services — and much more. “Communicate to people in way that is timely, but also ‘placely.’ “

But mobile doesn’t just allow brands to engage with people.

It also opens up entirely new business models, allowing companies to apply the principles of yield management to products and services we are just beginning to imagine.

Case in point: travel.

A railway company that wants to encourage people not to travel during the rush hour on a specific day might use mobile to offer people a significant discount or refund of the journey cost, if they choose a less busy time of the day to travel. Similarly, the same company could impose an extra charge, applicable to those people who insist traveling during the rush hour.

Put simply, businesses can harness mobile to “create interventions at decisive moments.” With this comes the lucrative opportunity to “actually modify behavior in real-time as it happens.”

Interview with Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland

What is the impact of timely and ‘placely’ on mobile marketing strategies and approaches? Who are the big spenders? And why might it all be very different in mobile than any other medium?

Rory deep dives into the pivotal importance of the ‘moment’ in mobile and gives his take on the companies (verticals) that truly get mobile. Two groups of companies stand out: companies that serve people on the go, and people that serve the “time-poor and the time-pressured.”

My take:

An insightful and funny interview — and well work a listen. Rory is, of course, an expert ad man, but he is also the original advocate of Ogilvy’s 360 Degree Branding approach, which is all about focusing the optimum combination of disciplines on the brand and its needs, avoiding any bias towards a particular channel. Interestingly, Rory points out that mobile’s USP is context. It allows brands to deliver marketing that is timely, ‘placely’ — and therefore relevant to us. Smart brands that harness mobile can take advantage of opportunities linked to their business’ target moments, moods and mindsets. Engage with people at this decisive moment and the outcome is likely to be positive. The circle is likely to be even more virtuous if marketers ask people permission first, and then use this permission to inquire about preferences and ultimately deliver marketing people will genuinely appreciate.

Listen to the podcast here. [12:20]

Editor’s note: Check back for Part 2 in the three-part series next week. My personal thanks to Rory Sutherland for the interview, and to Denise Birch for arranging it. Thanks also to Paul Skeldon, who assisted in podcast production. Paul runs Videobaby Media – a one-stop-shop for high-quality, entry-level video and audio recording, editing and production for media companies looking to get a foot on the multimedia ladder.

MobileGroove theme music courtesy of the inimitable Dan-O, who offers an awesome selection of free royalty free music for production purposes.

Disclaimer: News and views across the mobile marketing ecosystem is sponsored by Optism, an MG client and supporter.

These are just a few of the questions examined in the new report Fighting Smart: Using Value-Added Services To Create Lasting Customer Loyalty. The report  – written by MobileGroove  and commissioned by Amdocs Interactive — is based on a survey of 120 telecom executives at major mobile operators across Asia Pacific conducted by market research firm Coleman Parkes.

The findings show that mobile operators are not just waking up to the opportunities to generate revenues through mobile marketing, mobile payments and personalization; they are grasping it with both hands.

Value-add through loyalty

Specifically, the survey found that the majority of respondents (62 percent) believe these value-added services are critical to their business. However,  the survey also revealed that revenue generation is not the top motivation for developing and delivering value-added services to mobile subscribers. Instead, respondents report the end-game is about increasing customer loyalty.

Mobile operators in Asia Pacific — more than in other regions such as North America and Europe — pursue a value-added services strategy to deliver a compelling customer experience, one that will allow them to boost individual loyalty and the lifetime value of their existing customer base. In fact, respondents identified stickiness and improving customer experience as their top two business drivers.

Mobile payments pay-off

Mobile operators in Asia Pacific are also advanced in their strategies to compete against banks, credit cards and middlemen in mobile payments and commerce. Interestingly, Asian mobile operators are not only gearing up for a fight (with 95 percent of respondents claiming to have a mobile payments strategy). They are confident they will win through operator billing, a strategy that stresses billing on behalf of third parties including app stores and providers of virtual goods.

In addition, 84 percent of respondents said they are pursuing bill payment services, 79 percent are investigating peer-to-peer money transfers and 76 percent are working to offer point-of-sale or similar services to enable the purchase of products using NFC.

Why are mobile operators bullish about the outlook for mobile payments and what do they expect to gain? The three top reasons for pursuing this strategy are:  new revenue streams, customer retention and enhanced customer experience.

Personalization and portals

Most Asian mobile operators are confident that their portals and applications storefronts are and will continue to be crowd pleasers. This is a very different picture from other regions where mobile operator portals, destinations that once dominated the landscape, are in serious decline. What’s more, 66 percent of respondents predict that their portals will grow in importance in the next three years, attracting and retaining a loyal audience of mobile users, in  part thanks to portal personalization approaches that emphasize content discovery and contextual relevance.

Among the findings:

• 75 percent of respondents are pursuing mobile advertising and search strategies — and for good reason! The majority (65 percent) report that their subscribers would be willing to view mobile advertising in return for free content such as mobile apps or entertainment

• 55 percent of respondents believe that personalization is the key to improving the value of content (and advertising) they deliver as part of the VAS offer

• 50 percent of respondents believe that at least half of their subscribers will purchase smart phones over the next three years; Blackberry is the most popular platform followed by Android and Apple

Who’s afraid of Google?

Granted, respondents are well aware of the threat from over the top (OTT) players (players including Google, Apple and Facebook that deliver services via operator networks but bypass them completely in the value chain). However, it is interesting to note that mobile operators in this region are also not intimidated by OTT rivals. On the contrary, they are confident that the threat from these players will diminish over time.

My take:

Why the positive outlook? No doubt mobile operators across Asia Pacific are confident that the value added services they have baked into their offers will allow them to deliver a superior customer experience and beat the competition at its own game. In addition to developing their mobile payment strategies, mobile operators are also sharpening their focus on mobile advertising, mobile search, and personalization — an approach that will allow them to super-charge their value-added services for maximum impact.

* * *

TWEETCHAT

The new report is also the topic of this week’s Tweetchat — organized by Amdocs Interactive and hosted by MobileGroove — on Wednesday, August 10. To ensure everyone across Europe and Asia Pacific can join in the discussion, the Tweetchat will take place at 9 am GMT/ 10 am CET/ 1:30 pm IST. Check here to see the time zone in your region, and please spread the word!

Fighting Smart: Using Value-Added Services To Create Lasting Customer Loyalty, available from today for free download from the Amdocs Interactive website.

Disclaimer: News and views across the mobile payments & personalization ecosystem is sponsored by Amdocs Interactive, an MG client and supporter.

The advance of mobile takes this all to  a new level, taking natives’ natural inclinations to interact to a new extreme. Mobile enables instant self-expression and turns up the pressure on companies and brands to deliver their marketing message via a two-way conversation within the context of what matters most to digital natives: their lives, their experiences, their networks, and their worlds. But delivering a message doesn’t make for a conversation; marketers also have listen to what digital natives have to say. Connect the dots, and it’s clear that permission marketing has earned a central spot in the mobile marketing mix.

Personal mobility and personalized advertising

This is the main message in my contribution to the new book Dancing With Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That is Transforming the Way Business is Done (May 2011). I am proud to have worked with Michelle Manafy on this project and feature her own takeaways in this guest column on MobileGroove.

In my chapter on personal mobility I draw from primary research and  interviews with industry influencers including best-selling author and consultant Tomi Ahonen; futurist Alan Moore, Antti Öhrling (Blyk co-founder),  Rosemary Tan (SPTI Asia’s Executive Director of Mobile Entertainment –a woman whom I regard as a visionary); Graham Brown (Mobile Youth); Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman); Nigel Shanahan (Rapide Communications); and Mark Curtis (Flirtomatic) – to name (and thank) a few.

I also summarize the key takeaways of ongoing research into digital natives’ attitudes toward mobile advertising conducted by the Global Youth Lab, an innovative primary research program managed by Alcatel-Lucent.

The insights offered by Connie Torres, Global Youth Lab director, provide us with five basic rules for effective mobile advertising. Among these: Natives expect (and will come to demand) control of their advertising. So strap in for a massive shift in how brands and mobile operators do business.

Digital native insights

The new book brings together research, opinions, and business advice on digital natives, a term coined by author Marc Prensky to describe a generation of young people who have “spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.” Flawed stereotypes of digital natives abound, but not in dispute is that, globally, an increasingly mobile, socially networked consumer base and workforce is creating fundamental changes in the way business is done.

“Generational differences have always influenced how business is done, but in the case of digital natives we are witnessing a tectonic shift,” Michelle Manafy said in a press statement.

Marketing and more

Understanding the impact of their lifelong immersion is key to creating and delivering effective advertising. But it doesn’t stop there.

In Dancing With Digital Natives, Michelle, co-editor Heidi Gautschi and twenty contributors explore a wide range of business issues and impacts. The result is a collection of thought-provoking chapters organized in four major parts: “The Digital Native Goes to Work,” “Marketing and Selling to the Digital Native,” “Entertaining the Digital Native,” and “Educating the Digital Native.”

Just released this week Dancing With Digital Natives has garnered strong pre-publication praise from a number of leading writers and researchers who have studied the phenomenon.

• Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital, said, “The wide array of fresh insights offered gives educators, employers and marketers the techniques and tools to better understand this challenging generation.”
• John Palfrey, co-author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, said, “This remarkable group of editors and authors present a range of opinions about the challenges and opportunities of business life in a digital era. … No matter what, this book will make you think.”
• Lou Frillman, Chairman of the Unity Fund who held multiple leadership roles in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, said, “The digital native generation doesn’t want to be talked to; young people want to interact, engage, and effect change. … Dancing With Digital Natives shows you how to make that real connection happen.”

Disclaimer: News and views across the mobile marketing ecosystem is sponsored by Optism, a MobileGroove client and supporter.

The deadline for entries was extended to MAY 6 due to popular demand, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to showcase your service and have it viewed by the top journalists and analysts who sit on the judges panel.

If your company is shortlisted, then you can count on being center stage at the annual gala event (and top of mind with the hundreds of leading industry execs and  decision-makers who attend the ceremony each year). TV personality, comedienne and author Ruby Wax will host the 2011 Meffys Gala Awards Dinner (July 7) at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London’s Covent Garden.

Be there, be noticed

MobileGroove is a media partner and I am honored that the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) has asked me to join the panel of judges for the fourth consecutive year.

I am also proud of my collaboration with MEF, which last year resulted in the introduction of the exciting Content Discovery & Personalization category. This year we are encouraged by the number (and caliber) of personalization companies that have submitted entries — proof that this space is where the action is. (After all, the proliferation of app stores and our growing appetite for connected (and relevant) content across devices and platforms turns up the pressure on media companies and mobile operators to deliver us what we want (before we ask for it).

So get working on your entry now

It’s a really simple process – and only costs GBP350 (GBP159 for MEF members). This year, MEF is also offering a special developer rate of GBP75 per entry Just make sure you have a visual demo of your service as the judges will need this in order to understand exactly how it works.

This award highlights the latest tools and techniques helping to drive more personalized mobile content discovery and content sharing based on common interests and profiles. Judges will be looking for entries which make it easy to find, purchase and popularize mobile content, with particular focus on:

• Clear navigation and ease of use
• Innovation – technical, creative or commercial
• Use of mobility
• Usability & interactivity
• UI design & quality of experience
• M-Commerce features
• Quantifiable business benefits
• Proof of driving traffic to destination mobile content sites

Who should enter:  Social networks, app stores, content aggregators, personalization and profiling solutions providers, mobile advertising platforms.

Enter the awards at www.meffys.com

Other Meffys Categories for 2011

• Best Game
• Best Music Service
• Best TV & Video Service
• Best Content
• Best Content Discovery & Personalization Service
• Best Social Media Service
• Best Ad Campaign
• Best Brand on Mobile
• Best Mobile Website
• Best Blockbuster App
• Best Innovative App
• Best Technology Innovation
• Best Innovative Business Model
• Best Innovation in a Mobile First Market
• Best M-Commerce Service
• Best Business Intelligence
• Best Mobile Connected Device
• Outstanding Contribution Award

See the full list of Meffys 2010 winners here.

Hope to see you there there!

There’s a sea change underway shaping the way we all communicate. No longer limited to a specific device, people enjoy the freedom to seamlessly network with friends and co-workers, watch videos, share photos, or generally wander the Net 24×7 – wherever and whenever they choose.  NewBay’s Steve French maps out the new landscape and impact on all the players — particularly mobile operators and device makers.

Today’s rich communication experience doesn’t just transform how we connect and communicate with our friends, families and social networks. It also encourages us to create and share content, including user- generated content (UGC) and premium content. At the other end of the spectrum, content delivery and social networking have converged with developments in cloud-based storage, device innovation and the advance of ubiquitous broadband to enable new experiences that were not possible in the past.

The result: We have a new appetite for content (including photos, videos, music, documents, messages and contacts in our digital devices) and we have little patience with providers that fail to deliver us what we want (on our terms) and securely store what we hold dear.

Against this backdrop, a new User Content Ecosystem is evolving to support the development (and variety) of our digital content experiences. It’s a seismic shift that will rock the industry landscape and result in new opportunities (and issues) for mobile operators and device makers.

What does this new ecosystem look like and who sits where?

Allow me to guide you through my view of the players — and what’s at stake.

Old players, new rules

As with all diagrams that depict our evolving business ecosystems, the individual is the focus. In this case, user content is at the heart of this new paradigm. By user content I mean both UGC and premium content. But it’s not so much about what people make and consume; it’s how they interact with content that changes all the rules. Specifically, people want access (entirely on their terms) to this store of digital content. To achieve this they upload their content to a digital vault, where it can be stored, managed, enriched and shared with friends and family or with their favorite social communities. And it’s not just about mobile phones. People demand this capability from any connected device.

Social communities have similar requirements. There are as many kinds of communities as there are members. In fact, we are witnessing the proliferation of social networks, not unlike the legendary Long Tail of content we know from the Internet. From local social networks (such as Renren in China) to groups of people looking for dating fun (such as Flirtomatic), each community differs in the content they generate. But they all have a common objective: to encourage and enjoy socializing, networking and entertainment.

Content for sale & storage

Premium content is also moving to the fore as storefronts like Amazon.com, Netflix, iTunes and hulu expand to feed our growing appetite for mobile entertainment. In addition, 100+ mobile app stores have opened their doors, offering us a fantastic variety of applications and turning up the pressure on mobile operators and device makers to help us store our pick of apps so we can access them when (and how) we want.

In fact, a new study from ABI Research reveals that the worldwide app industry is well on its way to achieving 44 billion cumulative downloads by 2016. The mobile app ecosystem and market model is also expected to evolve with the increasing pool of smartphone and tablet users.

Whether it’s storefronts or apps, consumers are using them to get the content they want – the way they want it. They rent premium content (movies, TV shows, games, music and apps) and stream it to their devices. Or they purchase the content, move it into their digital vault for safe keeping, or download it to their device for offline viewing.

Big Business (Enablers)

And then there are the business enablers, the underlying systems and processes that help support and monetize digital content.  They bring important capabilities to the mix, providing ecosystem partners with deep insights into the key numbers, metrics and concrete results that are the lifeblood of the content business. These range from advertising and analytics, to business intelligence (BI) and billing.

Next in line is infrastructure and network resources. These gateways enable consumers to upload, download, store, stream, share, and manage content from different devices and screens. In other words, access entirely on the consumer’s terms – the way it has to be.

This choice — what I also call Access Independence — is critical to the success of the ecosystem. The movement to network technologies including 3G, long term evolution (LTE) and WiMAX provides speed and reliability. These are mission-critical when the end-game is about ensuring a consistent and gratifying user experience across all screens.

Screens everywhere

The issues around content storage and access are further complicated by a proliferation of connected devices. From smartphones to tablets, and from games consoles to Kindles, users have (and have come to demand)  many more choices for accessing, sharing and organizing their content. In fact, our requirement for multi-screen (and consistent) content access and distribution is one of the main drivers for the Cloud. Consumers want to put their content in the cloud — and the ecosystem is emerging to make this possible.

How? In part through application programming interfaces (APIs). These are the glue that hold our new content ecosystem together, enabling systems to speak and interact with each other and give way to new forms of entertainment and a lifetime of digital content user experiences.

Change happens

Where does this leave mobile operators and device makers? How can they take advantage of the new digital content experiences and secure their own role in this new User Content Ecosystem?

Before we can discuss the opportunities we have to accept that command-and-control models belong in the past. They are not sustainable, and they do not cultivate the community needed to make this new ecosystem thrive and flourish.

Put simply, the walled-garden business model that flourished before (in which telecom operators tightly controlled voice, data services and our access to content) is no longer viable.

In this new landscape, operators have to accept some harsh truths in order to grasp the business opportunities around them.

Out of control: Operators have less control over subscribers, services, content and devices. Their historical dominance of the value chain is under attack, and their previously exclusive relationship with subscribers is eroding.

People go where the content is: Users are now taking their dollars and turning to new storefronts like iTunes, Android, Netflix, and Amazon to satisfy their appetite for games, music, movies, TV and more. Their mobile experience is also no longer limited to the mobile phone and operator. Readers, tablets, gaming consoles, connected laptops, and TVs all serve as portals for accessing, uploading, sharing, and managing personal and business content.

Networks are the destination: The popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is exploding, forming the heart of many users’ online experience. The business enablers of the new paradigm like advertising, analytics and third-party applications are largely evolving outside of the operators’ province.

Granted, operators can no longer dominate the telecom landscape, but they can still play a significant role (and not just be relegated to the role of a “dumb pipe”). In fact, they can even sit at the center of this new User Content Ecosystem, provided they build the capabilities that allow them to act as the central hub between the users (devices), social networks and premium storefronts.

From this position operators and device makers alike can leverage metadata, analytics, notifications and developer communities to create new revenue streams from subscription fees, advertising, premium content sales and extending lifetime value.

It’s a new business model that will separate the winners from the also-rans, and I will explore the options available to all the ecosystem players (and more!) in upcoming articles.

Steve French is VP Global Marketing, NewBay.  NewBay enables operators and device makers to deliver a lifetime of digital content experiences across any connected device such as mobile, PC, tablets and TV. To find out more about this and other related topics check out the NewBay Blog at www.newbay.com/blog.

Editor’s note: Learn more about increasing the service adoption, usage, longevity, profitability and lifetime value of services by joining NewBay’s upcoming webinar on real-time push notifications.

“Discover Real-Time Push Notifications for Any Service, Any Device and Any Delivery Mechanism” will be held on Tuesday, 3rd May at 5 pm GMT (London) / 9 am PST (San Francisco).

Specifically, the survey of 1,100 users ages 18+ in Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. found that 65 percent of respondents in Asia and 32 percent of respondents in the U.S. and Europe would “welcome receiving personalized mobile phone ads when within a few steps of the promoted product or service.”

We want what we want

A similar split (59 percent in Asia and 32 percent) would “welcome receiving phone ads based on past purchases.” Connect the dots, and we have yet another data point that supports a much larger trend: a willingness to receive relevant mobile advertising.

Commerce and theft

Ironically, the focus of our fear may be shifting from the message (communication) to the transaction. While a significant percentage of respondents said they would like to be able to pay for goods and services using their mobile phones, the vast majority (73 percent) revealed they had significant privacy and identity theft concerns. Against this backdrop, companies now have responsibility to be transparent about how people’s purchase and payment data is collected and maintained.

Vanilla Plus expert opinion piece

Meantime, I am pleased that an in-depth analysis of the requirement for personalization over at Vanilla Plus continues to chalk up interest and downloads. In fact, the editors report in an email just last week that the Expert Opinion piece I co-authored with Matt Anderson, head of Product Marketing at Amdocs Interactive, has consistently been “top of the tree with regard to unique visitors” with nearly 900 downloads — and counting (!)

Matt and I outline the opportunities for personalized mobile marketing and targeted advertising. We conclude that mobile operators have a center role to play if they choose to do so. “First, it allows them to capitalize on the growing mobile advertising market by selling ad inventory on their portals and delivering ads via their messaging networks. Second, it enables them to sell more premium content and apps on their storefronts and capitalize on off-portal commerce by enabling personalized ads, recommendations and searches.”

The article continues with an analysis of a study in relevance in mobile advertising that measures of the effectiveness of personalized ads conducted by Amdocs Interactive. Vendor spin aside, the findings show that people will click on advertising that matches their interests and demographics.

My take:

Not rocket science really. People want what they want and they want marketers to get to the point. In a world where our measure of relevance is ourselves (recommendations and advice from our peers or just people like us, for example), it makes sense that we are not so interested in listening to messages we feel are not in tune with our lifestyles or life stages.

I invite you to download the article by clicking the icon below and share your feedback.

Disclaimer: Amdocs interactive is an MSG client and supporter.

A recent poll conducted by research firm Ovum (and commissioned by Amdocs) reveals the vast majority of service providers and operators can read the writing on the wall.

A whopping 73 percent of respondents said they plan to expand their prepaid offerings to include services that are traditionally offered only to postpaid customers.

In addition, nearly half of the service providers polled said they needed to make moderate to large changes to their business and operational support systems in order to answer the technical challenges involved in expanding prepaid services.

The research is based on qualitative interviews of senior executives from 19 service providers in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, collectively serving hundreds of millions of subscribers. Interviews were conducted between August and November 2010.

As Ovum sees it: “Greater availability of high-end devices such as smartphones, along with services like messaging, mobile broadband and applications, are increasing customer expectations from prepaid wireless services.” Ovum forecasts prepaid will grow from 75 percent of total connections worldwide in 2010 to 77 percent by 2015.

MetroPCS boosts usage with personalization

But it’s not just about a need for payment choice, convergent charging and innovative offers that effectively move pay-as-you-go prepaid customers to monthly plans. This shift also turns up the pressure on operators to think of new ways to maximize revenues from value-added services (VAS) and encourage prepaid users to explore (and purchase) content and apps on offer.

MetroPCS is using personalization to drive prepaid customers to use more services (thus creating the conditions that will allow the operator to increase stickiness and spend).

Specifically, MetroPCS is rolling out a new portal that leverages artificial intelligence to dynamically adapt the content displayed to users on their mobile devices to their individual tastes.

For more on how MetroPCS’ is using personalization to get more mileage out of its prepaid customer base, check out my post over at the Amdocs Interactive blog.

Read the rest of the post here.

Matt Anderson is Head of product marketing for Amdocs Interactive, a distinct business within Amdocs focused on Value Added Services, which is the world’s leading provider of digital commerce, Mobile Internet and personalization solutions. Matt has over 13 years experience bringing products to market in the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Amdocs in 2008, he directed marketing for Nuance’s mobile business unit, focused on market development of speech activation applications in the mobile, navigation and automotive industries. Previously he launched the next generation of T9 at AOL Wireless and was responsible for managing mobile VAS offers at AT&T. Matt also founded a start-up in the telematics business and managed marketing and sales for one of the first wireless data networking companies. Matt has an MBA from the University of Washington. You can follow Matt on Twitter (@matt6156).

Disclaimer: Amdocs Interactive is an MSG client and supporter.

Read between the lines and Amazon is out to take on Android Marketplace and cut out mobile operators (by copying Apple’s payment approach that allows consumers to purchase apps using a credit card stored on file, and so removes mobile operators from the revenue split altogether).

However, the real capabilities that make Amazon a formidable competitor are its complete control over pricing and it’s keen focus on personalization. After all, it’s Amazon’s recommendations that have helped the online retail giant cross-sell and up-sell consumers on bundles of related content (such as books, films and music). And its this successful approach that could solve the biggest issue facing app stores everywhere:  content discovery.

What can we expect from Amazon and what lessons can mobile operators learn? My post over at the new Amdocs Interactive blog highlights the problems and solutions that should be top of mind.

Read the rest of the post here.

Matt Anderson is Head of product marketing for Amdocs Interactive, a distinct business within Amdocs focused on Value Added Services, which is the world’s leading provider of digital commerce, Mobile Internet and personalization solutions.  Matt has over 13 years experience bringing products to market in the telecommunications industry.  Prior to joining Amdocs in 2008, he directed marketing for Nuance’s mobile business unit, focused on market development of speech activation applications in the mobile, navigation and automotive industries.  Previously he launched the next generation of T9 at AOL Wireless and was responsible for managing mobile VAS offers at AT&T.  Matt also founded a start-up in the telematics business and managed marketing and sales for one of the first wireless data networking companies.  Matt has an MBA from the University of Washington. You can follow Matt on Twitter (@matt6156).

Disclaimer: Amdocs Interactive is an MSG client and supporter.

One mobile operator that “gets” the strategic importance of personalization (if only to satisfy our own requirement for convenience and reduce the heavy-lifting when it comes to choosing our entertainment) is CSL, the leading mobile operator in Hong Kong with 2.6 million subscribers.

CSL strategy

CSL has made its mark with several mobile Internet offers that tailor the mobile Internet experience to subscribers. Specifically, CSL has implemented personalization solutions provided by Amdocs Interactive to present users with content choices and suggestions based on their preferences and past browsing patterns. Chief among these is the MyNet portal. Check of the flash demo here.

CSL “pre-populates” the mobile device screen with destinations and suggestions the user is likely to appreciate. It also showcases services (customer services, for example) and applications (a tab that takes people to the operator app store).

I caught up with Han Kotterman, CSL Chief Strategy Officer, to discuss the place of personalization in the carrier’s mobile Internet offer and usage trends to date.

As Han sees it: the ability to personalize the portal – and thus the user’s mobile Internet experience – combined with the capability to deliver data services over a high-speed LTE network has led to a “50- fold increase” in the use of mobile data.

“Personalization is extremely important,” Han observes. “It creates stickiness, which is what operators need to win in a market that is mature and where growth comes from additional services and products tailored to the customer, and not necessarily from more new customers.”

Mobile Internet experiences

Now that mobile operator portals and walled garden schemes have to get with the times, the pressure is on operators to focus on improving usability and making the mobile Internet simple. At CSL this means laying the groundwork to provide a good Internet experience. “This has really become the most important feature that customers would like to use.”

To this end CSL has developed a portal that does not only allow people to access to the CSL services as they were before, but also provide a “true portal to the Internet.” As a result, people have choice. “If they want to have information on their bill, they can go to that part of the portal, if they want to have more information on the content and services that CSL provides, that’s available too through the app store on that portal. And if they want to go to the Internet, they can do that too.  All this is delivered with a sense of personalization to it so that the system learns from the items the customer is interested in and will subsequently recommend [similar items] going forward as the customer returns on that portal.”

As this is key to CSL’s service strategy it has also invested in technologies such as LTE. “We believe that this fast browsing experience with a good access point to the Internet is absolute key,” Han notes.

Local is king

As Han sees it: personalization is more than part of a service; it is becoming core to differentiation. “I believe … the need for personalization has only become stronger over time, particularly now customers have very few barriers to switch.  If you look at customers’ behavior, it’s apparent that customers nowadays are more loyal to mobile phones than they are to the mobile operator….So the differentiation truly has to come from customer service. It has to come from usability of products and services and [from]  the personalization of those products and services.”

And then there is the advance of app stores by OEMS and by the Googles/apples of the world.

Interestingly, Han echoes the sentiment of several mobile operators and industry authorities who point out that the real battlefield is LOCAL. Put another way, OEMs and global players such as Google and Apple have precisely that: global focus and reach.

Mobile operators (such as CSL) have an ace in their hand (should they choose to play it): familiarity with the local culture and customer base. As Han put it: “The key for wireless operators to stand out is to provide applications and services that are localized.”

CSL has cleverly chosen to stock its music service with local Hong Kong singers and talent. “Community is part of the personalisation strategy.” And CSL is driving that home through applications (including its mobile TV offer) that showcase local content and entertainment.

My take:

In a market that is mature (such as mobile) growth will come from additional services (not so much additional customers). Personalization therefore becomes a must-have capability in the battle to delight the (existing) customer base. Combine that strategics focus with local content and community and mobile operators can succeed in delivering a mobile Internet experience that keeps people coming back. (CSL has certainly reported a significant uptick in mobile data use. Put simply, it’s not a matter of generating revenues from personalization; it’s about developing a communications package that is effective, impressive and – above all – sticky.

Listen to the podcast here.

Disclaimer: Amdocs Interactive is an MSG client and supporter.

Indeed, 2010 has turned out to be the year for multi-screen content services and – more importantly – for multi-purpose applications and solutions that allow consumers to call the shots. Nielsen Three Screen Report – a regular analysis from Nielsen’s Cross-Platform Audience Measurement initiative to analyze consumer behavior –reveals a steady climb in the number of Americans that use the Internet (in many cases accessing the Web on their smartphones) and their TV simultaneously.  As Nielsen observes: “New mobile devices and enhanced TV quality allow viewers to engage in more content than ever before.”

This increase in multi-screen services is enabled by the growing consumer adoption of fixed line and mobile broadband services.  High-speed broadband Internet access, now in over 60 percent of American homes, has created a better user experience for watching online videos. Nearly a quarter of households have smartphones, enabling consumers to “place shift” and watch video wherever they are.

While the growth in mobile online video viewing has increased over 50 percent year over year, the real story is the avalanche of applications and business models sharply aimed at bringing online video control and content to smartphones and tablets.

Center stage

The last months have seen a slew of apps from companies across the ecosystem. Media companies and content providers — including TV Guide, the one-stop destination for television listings — have released applications for iPhone, Android and iPad platforms.

At the other end of the spectrum, service providers and telcos are pursuing models to put them back in the center of our online viewing experience. Established players (such as carriers and cable TV companies) are extending their turf, while providers that focus on place-shifting products are just beginning to flex their muscles in mobile.

Satellite TV provider DirecTV has an app for its subscribers that lets them use their mobile phones to purchase pay-per-view programming and schedule how and when they record their favorite shows. Comcast, one of the leading cable providers in the U.S., has taken the wraps off their Xfinity TV app for the iPad, that allows digital subscribers to watch movies and TV shows on the tablet device, as well as program their digital video recorders, browse content by keyword or title, create a watch list of favorite shows, and share viewing choices with others via social networks. Additionally, traditional wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon are leveraging their “triple-play” bundles to deliver video content across screens and devices. And the list goes on.

Sensing a business opportunity online video service providers are also lining up to get in on the action. Hulu, a service that offers users online access to hit TV shows, has launched Hulu Plus, a premium-level subscription service that allows users to stream video to connected TVs, Blu-ray players, gaming consoles, set-top boxes, iPads, iPhones, and other devices. Not to be outdone, Sling Media, a provider of video place-shifting products, just announced the availability of the SlingPlayer Mobile player for the Apple iPad. This will allows Slingbox owners with iPads to change channels, control their DVRs and watch their favorite shows anywhere they have an Internet connection.

Granted, many of these companies are currently only active on two of the three screens. But their future objective is to be present across all three screens – and every other connected device their customers interact with as part of their daily routine.

Hypercompetition for the customer

These apps, services and enhancements don’t just encourage consumers to watch more video (in many cases outside traditional broadcast and cable TV airing times and places); they turn up the pressure on providers to deliver content users appreciate to the platforms they prefer.

As a result, the relationship between the users, the content they view, and the devices they view it on have become increasingly complex. Traditional viewing habits no longer apply to these new devices and consumers, already struggling to cope with hundreds of cable TV channels, thousands of movies, hundreds of thousands of apps, and millions of songs now must navigate these content choices against an ever more complex set of services and devices.

Part of the solution is simpler interfaces and easier access. However, consumers also expect more flexibility, greater convenience and less hassle. In this converged digital environment providers are forced to compete on how well they really know their customers, insights they obtain by harnessing information and data about their customers across multiple touch points.

Fortunately, service providers already have a handle on what is needed to construct a new and unified view of the customer across all three screens. Their arsenal of capabilities includes the ability to offer users a single sign on experience across devices, to collect and analyze customer data and anonymized data sets, and to wield complex content management systems that match content to context and interface with external APIs.

Service providers are also accustomed to following the clues we leave behind, such as browsing patterns and purchase records, to determine (and deliver) us content and services we are likely to appreciate.

However, delivering personalized recommendations for a multi-platform experience demands services providers master much more than content tagging and customer profiling. And it calls for approaches that go far beyond plain-vanilla personalization schemes that merely gather information during the interaction with the user to construct a TV guide matched to expressed viewing tastes, for example.

The convergence of TV, Web and mobile platforms demands providers harness a multi-platform approach that enables them to create a persistent and personalized experience across (and between) the screens to which they distribute their content.

Specifically, providers must enlarge their arsenal of capabilities to enable real-time learning (following the digital bread crumb trails we leave across platforms and devices to consistently deliver us content we’ll appreciate), device specific recommendations (understanding what content we access on what devices and then serving us content in ways that suits the device we are on at that moment) and situational methodologies (wielding all the approaches and algorithms available to deliver the right content to the right subscriber at the right time and consistently across the content delivery ecosystem).

Real-time rules

It’s a new game with new rules. Success requires customer-centricity and a personalization approach that get the right content in front of the right users. To achieve this, providers must create different and relevant experiences for each subscriber. They must also deliver timely recommendations based on users’ real-time behavior. It’s not enough to have a personalization system that updates every few days or even hours. We’re talking about minutes.

Why? Because delivering multi-platform personalization is a new paradigm that requires providers to accommodate changing relationships that involve both the content they offer and the customer segments they serve. Content, like produce on the shelf, must be fresh. Moreover, its delivery much be perfectly aligned with the viewing preferences of the individual.

Viewing habits are by no means static, nor are they always logical. In fact, they can change dramatically and unexpectedly as timeslots shift, shows ratings move and events happen. Excellent examples of these are live events such as sports tournaments, music concerts and political elections. They are hot when they happen and stale when they’re over. Recommending these programs to consumers after the buzz is has dissipated delivers more than a poor experience; it can cost you customers.

It’s equally bad practice to read too much into these mega-events. During the World Cup just about everyone is glued to a screen of some kind (TV, mobile, PC) to watch their team. But assuming that an individual is a die-hard soccer fan simply because they – like millions of other people – watched the games last summer is patently false.

Predictably, a plain-vanilla recommendation system will do just that. It will connect the dots to conclude that the individual is a loyal soccer fan. It will also recommend more soccer related content and possibly even suggest the individual download a World Cup-themed mobile game. Talk about overkill.

The correct approach – provided the recommendation systems understands and can accommodate changing relationships – is to track dynamic user behavior over time. The aim is not to suggest more of the same content; it must have the ability to learn and recognize that viewing a soccer game in the soccer season doesn’t mean the individual is a soccer fan.

It’s even better if the system learns so much that it can introduce some randomness into the equation, delivering users recommendations outside of what they would normally receive. This opens the door to machine-created serendipity and encourages consumers to fully explore content in the catalog, allowing providers to broaden and deepen our understanding of what users want and appreciate.

Powerful personalization

It’s also important that a system understands people generally access content on their own terms and using the device they prefer. A user may access content on a mobile phone during the daily commute, but prefer to watch online video on a laptop if the trip is longer. Or the user may watch all content on a tablet except sports, which the individual watches on TV as a rule – period.

One can imagine an infinite number of combinations because viewing habits and preferences are as individual as the users themselves. Delivering multi-platform personalization requires a system that analyzes user behavior across all these devices and uses these observations to ensure an optimal user experience every time and on every device.

In addition, content should not only be accessible and simple to navigate across the three screens (or how ever many screens the provider distributes their content to). The provider’s catalog should be effectively revamped in real-time to make every item shown relevant and personal.

Finally, a multi-platform personalization approach should not require providers to choose one model over another. Reams have been written about recommenders and the models providers can choose from. From collaborative filtering, to market basket analysis, and from social network analysis to Bayesian modeling, each approach has its merits.

But why should a provider have to choose just one? The best approach is the one that encompasses all the approaches. And the one a provider employs should depend only on the situation.

A good analogy is baseball. There each team has a bullpen of pitchers, and each has their talent. One pitcher might throw a killer curveball and the other might serve up an amazing fastball. The point is: the manager decides the right pitcher for the right job depending on what’s needed to strike out the player from the opposing team. The final decision depends on the situation.

In effective multi-platform personalization the winning approach is the one that uses the right combination of algorithms and methodologies to determine the best content for the user, processing the individual’s unique behavior, consumption patterns and preferences for each of their devices.

This is the ideal user experience. It’s also the vision that has guided our company, Sidebar, in the development of a new breed of personalization technology, one that takes a smart, modular, and multi-platform approach. Specifically, it breaks down the device and platform silos, leveraging mobile, PC and Web usage to create a global understanding of each customer.  It then uses this insight to deliver each user the best recommendation for every unique situation.

Content & conversations

But it’s not only about presenting people with recommendations based on preferences, opt-in interests, observed behaviors and demographics. It’s also about empowering people to participate in the provider’s ecosystem.

This is critical (and common sense) because people trust people, not machines. In fact, our requirement for human input and judgment is driving search engine giants to adopt new approaches and make way for new people-powered search schemes that effectively infuse human preferences into computer algorithms to deliver truly relevant results, not just search-optimized web destinations.

The importance of trust is even greater in a multi-platform environment, where people are  allowing providers to access their personal data and insights into what content they access on which device (information that is anonymized and cannot be linked back to a specific individual) in order to deliver relevant and useful content across three screens.

People must feel that they are in control of the data they volunteer, and they must feel empowered to contribute their feedback to the process. To this end recommendations systems must offer people the opportunity to become partners in their personalized experiences.

And these systems must show the tangible benefits that come from this participation, namely accurate recommendations that reflect a deep understanding of the individual, not the ability to group people into cut-and-dried categories. After all, there’s nothing more disappointing than a wrong recommendation, or having to navigate scores of inappropriate recommendations for horror films just because you’re hooked on Twilight and enjoy vampire-themed, romance movies.

Getting social

Moving forward, personalization is not just a feature of what providers offer. Soon it will sit at the center of everything they do.

A key driver will be Social TV – the extension of social media into the discovery, viewing, and interaction around television. Social TV is more than a pastime; it’s fast gaining traction to be the next megatrend.

In May 2010, Social TV was named one of the 10 most important emerging technologies by the MIT Technology Review. It harnesses the relationships we already have in social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to inspire people to connect with entertainment, like movies and TV. It also allows people to share their feelings about what they watch – while they watch it.

Social TV also enables social exchange, allowing friends and followers to read updates posted on social networks such as Twitter and draw from these to decide what programs they themselves might also enjoy. Think of it as a new kind of content recommendation that people will consider because it comes directly from people they know or whose taste they respect.

And let’s not forget the ability of social media to make TV viewing social again. It used to be that families and friends sat down in front of the TV set at the same time every week to enjoy a popular sitcom and then spend hours talking about the best scenes or what made them laugh most. The advent of the Internet, the rise of the DVR and the advance of connected devices – platforms that allow people to place shift their viewing and schedule their content consumption — have changed this routine forever.

Thus, Social TV puts the tools in our hands to contribute to the discussion around TV programs – any time it suits us. We can also connect with friends, followers and people we trust to find out what shows they watch or record as a means of discovering new content we’re sure to like.

Against this backdrop, it’s easy to imagine new business models that will deliver new levels of interaction across screens and across the ecosystem.  We have already seen consumers move away from buying DVDs to renting movies instead (both in physical and digital forms).  Riding this wave Netflix already provides its library to subscribers across a variety of devices including connected TVs, Blu-Ray players, game consoles, and iPads.  With players including Hulu, Sling Media and Sony jumping on the bandwagon, it’s a given that 2011 will see multi-platform content services break on to the mainstream where people will harness Social TV to spread the word.

* * *

Editor’s note: Patrick Kennedy is the CEO of Sidebar, Inc., a company providing multi-platform personalization and recommendation.  Sidebar’s Smart Menu platform acts as a cloud-based brain that analyzes behaviors to learn how each user consumes content differently on each of their devices and makes  recommendations contextual to those devices. In addition, Sidebar offers a Smart Messaging tool that harnesses text messaging to create (and continue) interaction between the provider and subscriber.

The excitement in mobile may be relatively new, but players in the online space are well aware of the business benefits personalization delivers. In the online space personalized recommendations (similar to Amazon model) – once a source of competitive advantage – are fact becoming table stakes. The real edge is in strategies that personalize the whole experience, from advertising to purchase.

New consumers and new demands

As the August 2010 report from global consulting firm Accenture points out: the current economic slowdown turns up the pressure on marketers to work harder and smarter than ever before. It surveyed 400 senior marketing exec worldwide to find out how companies plan to grow profits (and satisfy consumers’ increased demand for value and service) after a brutal recession that has seen marketing budgets slashed and resources reduced.

Business got a lot tougher. In fact, the majority of marketers believe their customers will need more convincing and customization to clinch the deal. As one respondent put it: “Marketing will have to become more focused on the individual customer and with more personal information available, the individual can be targeted more effectively.”

Connect the dots, and the economy has changed customers’ perception of what is good value and a good use of their time. These consumers expect to spend less and get more. More importantly, they want their interactions with providers to be efficient and convenient.

How can marketers achieve this?

Accenture concludes that mastering analytics capabilities to bring tailored experiences to customers through a variety of channels and in ways that are most relevant to customers will be critical.

Little wonder that companies such as Criteo, a provider of pay per click (PPC) personalized retargeting solutions for online environments, are lining up to streamline the user experience by presenting people with relevant ads that feature the brands and products where they’ve previously expressed interest.

The company, which was profiled in a post (via BizReport), is predictably bullish about the outlook for personalized ads on websites and expects most brands to integrate retargeted ads into their online arsenal over the next two to five years.

Vendor spin aside, personalization is poised to play a much larger role in online advertising. There the approach is to retarget ads, tailoring what people see based on a variety of factors, including the time spent on product pages, where they clicked from and the price points they seemed most interested in.

Amdocs mobile advertising and relevance report

People want what they want – and they want marketers to get to the point.

It’s even more important not to waste our time when we are on our mobile phones.

Mobile advertising should therefore be closely aligned with our preferences. This is where permission-based marketing (asking people straight out if they want to receive advertising and interact with marketers) has obvious advantages.

However, personalization technologies can also significantly increase the relevance of mobile advertising.

This is the key takeaway of a recent report from Amdocs Interactive based on an analysis of over 200,000 users over a four month period.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE.

By way of background, Amdocs Interactive has developed a suite of solutions in areas such as content recommendation, mobile search and mobile advertising. Sitting at the core of this platform is a profiling and personalization engine that is capable of capturing subscriber intelligence by automatically monitoring the implicit behavior of how users use and navigate the mobile Web. The solution has been deployed by 50+ mobile operators around the world.

The personalization engine leverages subscriber intelligence to develop a comprehensive model of a user’s interests and those of other like-minded people (known as UCP – User Community Profile). This model is also harnessed by the Amdocs Interactive Ad Personalizer, a solution that combines the learned preferences of mobile users to identify, select and deliver more relevant advertising.

By looking at individual profiles and profiles of like-minded people the Ad Personalizer builds up an Ad Signature. In simple terms this signature is what users (UCPs) find interesting about a specific ad and which characteristics drive users to click on a given ad.

Because the system learns in real-time, it can change the ads shown people on the fly. It can also pick up on important clues regarding what people like/dislike to determine which audience is right for the message.

Better than demographic targeting

The Amdocs Interactive study compared the user response to Ad Personalizer Ads (ads shown because they match the UCP) and ads targeted according to ordinary demographics (age group, for example).

The findings: Ad Personalizer targeted adverts were, on average, almost twice as effective as the other adverts.

The bottom line: targeting according to demographics does not significantly improve user click-thru. In fact, ads that matched the UCP Ad Signature achieved 5 times the improvement in click-thru.

My take:

People have come to expect (demand) that their interactions with marketers are efficient and convenient. This trend is driving companies to revamp their online approaches to deliver consumers relevant advertising and retail experiences. On mobile – the fiercely personal device we take with us everywhere – the requirement for relevancy is even greater. Marketers can glean a lot from user demographics. However, personalization and solutions such as Ad Personalizer go a huge step further. They pave the way for marketers/mobile operators to be potentially more effective by arming them with the analytics and insights to determine (even predict) what audience is right for a marketing message.

Disclaimer: Amdocs Interactive is an MSG client and supporter.

In fact, evidence is mounting that personalization is going to be table stakes for a wide and growing range of content companies, brands and service providers. Personally, I have been convinced of the business value of personalization (and recommendation) since 2005, when I wrote the definitive industry report on the topic. (Since then other analyst firms and industry players  have picked up on the pivotal role of  personalization in business models and approaches sharply aimed at connecting the dots in our digital behavior, catapulting what was a niche topic into the mainstream.

When personalization was in the chasm, it was all about making finding, buying and enjoying what we want a no-brainer. Today the avalanche of content (and apps) , the advance of connected devices (beyond mobile) and the realization that bubbling up more content is the last thing we need (what we really need is better filters) has moved personalization into the bowling alley.

Blame game

Personalization (with clear opt-in or delivered via anonymized datasets that belong to mobile operators) is a central topic at the majority conferences I have attended. App developers blame a lack of it for their inability to sell apps and get discovered by their target audience; marketers muse that better personalization (through opt-in) would boost the effectiveness of campaigns and allow them to cultivate brand advocates (people who love the brand because it delivers them what they want); and service providers discuss how they can/must harness personalization to become a valued guide (rather than a mere gatekeeper) as the mobile Web becomes a beautiful (and dangerous) place for us all.

Cross-media

Predictably, personalization – in all its forms and across all media – was the hot topic at a string of recent advertising industry events.

In September, for example Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made a strong case for personalization in the online space. In her view, personalized content (and marketing) will be the norm in the next three- to five years. As she put it: “People don’t want something targeted to the whole world—they want something that reflects what they want to see and know.”

Little wonder that the weeks ahead will see more companies enter the market with solutions that personalize online information, advertising, experiences – the works.

The challenges (and opportunities) for mobile companies is even greater. (Although the personal relationship we already have with our mobile phones makes this the perfect medium for the delivery of personalized stuff.) But it’s not easy.

With the explosion in growth in the open mobile Internet, service providers are hard pressed to stay relevant, add value and maximize revenue (all at the same time). To get their view on the challenges and options, I have an exciting line-up of  briefings and audio interviews in the pipeline.

First up is CSL, a leading Hong Kong mobile operator whose MyNet mobile service I had the pleasure of reviewing as a member of the judging panel for the prestigious Meffys award. (The CSL case study was among finalists for the award.) By way of background, the service delivers people content (recommendations) based on pages the user has visited recently. It also arranges app store icons for easy access and use, a display that is personalized based on what people would likely appreciate.

Amdocs interview

My take: There are many ways to achieve personalization. The next weeks and months will see a variety of columns and contributions on MSG that expertly identify the options, opportunities and challenges ahead. One key element is to take full advantage of the data gathered while subscribers are browsing on or off portal, looking at content or making purchases by building an intelligent subscriber profile. But this has to be done non-intrusively.

This message comes through loud and clear in this brief interview with Mike Lurye, an Amdocs Interactive executive whom I have interviewed several times on MSG about personalization, app stores and the role of the operator in the scheme of things. His views are more pertinent today than ever as more mobile (digital) industry executives wake up to the core importance of personalization in all they do.

Listen to the podcast here. [4:58]

Disclaimer: MSG has reported on personalization companies, including Amdocs Interactive, since its launch. This month Amdocs Interactive formally joins the roster of MSG clients and supporters. MSG has also published a series of Thought Leadership columns/contributions from Xiam, a Qualcomm company and company focused on personalization and recommendation.

Where are the growth opportunities and how will data drive the market? I caught up with James Lamberti, InMobi’s VP of Research and Marketing, to discuss the company roadmap and deep-dive (in a separate podcast) into the key findings from A Global View Of Mobile Advertising – July 2010. The comprehensive report consists of two parts. Part one (111 pages!) was released this week and draws from InMobi’s proprietary network stats to identify global mobile advertising trends across 125 countries and six regions. Part two is based on conversations with 20,000 consumers in 14 countries. The survey, done in partnership with comScore, has the goal of bringing a consumer perspective to the discussion, a view the industry needs to hear.

Today sees the return of MAD Movers, an in-depth series on MSG profiling key players and showcasing mobile advertising startups that deserve a closer look. InMobi makes the grade on both counts. The young company (launched 2007) started out in Asia with a sharp focus on local mobile search and monetization. But it quickly switched gears (and it’s name – MKhoj is Indian for search) to mobile advertising.

Two years ago the company was serving just 500 million ads a month. Today it counts roughly 21 billion ad impressions across its network a month, up from half a billion in January 2009. Little wonder that InMobi, currently billed as the world’s largest independent ad network, is pitching itself (and, I might add, successfully) as an alternative to Google/AdMob and compliment to Apple/iAds.

InMobi progress & data points

Ramping up to compete against giant mobile ad networks is top of the list since the company won an additional $8 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures in June 2010. InMobi promptly soft-launched its mobile ad network in the U.S. (which counts 3.4 billion impressions already), added staff and upped investments into its mobile ad serving platform and Advertiser ROI Tracking tool (aptly named AdROIt).

• Presence: The company, headquartered in Bangalore India, is operational in 125 countries, with 150 employees, and offices in India, South Africa, Singapore, Tokyo, The U.K. and the U.S.

• Publishers: InMobi counts over 4,000 publishers and 2,000 advertisers, including, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Yamaha, Quaker, Reebok, and Sony Ericsson.

• Reach: It serves ads (all standard formats for display and text banners – no adult ads) to more than 9,000 device makes and models and has a reach of approximately 185 million mobile phone users. Rich Media includes expandables and interstitials, and calls to action include video, search, call, SMS text, viral, and survey.

• Monthly impressions: As of August 2010 the network served 21.4 billion impressions, with 86 countries receiving over 10 million impressions. By comparison, Google’s AdMob reports roughly 18 million impressions per month. A breakdown of InMobi impressions reveals that Europe accounts for 1.8 billion, followed by Asia Pacific at 11 billion, North America at 3.4 billion, Africa at 2.6 Billion, and the Middle East at 600 million.

• Opportunities: The biggest growth markets for InMobi are the U.S., Japan and South America. The strategy is to go after the higher value – lower volume markets (specifically the U.S.) and watch for opportunities in developing markets as they mature. Thus, Asia and Africa are long-term bets that could pay off as technology advances there continue.

• eCPMs: James tells me that development of mobile advertising eCPMs is highest in Europe, one major reason why InMobi’s July 2010 report ranks Europe the healthiest mobile advertising market – period. InMobi analyzed its network eCPMs and indexed every region to the global average. The result: Europe is a 129 index (or 30 percent higher than the global average). It is followed by North America (125), Asia (101), Middle East (90) and Africa (70).

Data-driven customer discovery

InMobi has had to learn business the hard way, initially serving ads to Asian and Africa consumers across a myriad of devices (mostly featurephones). As a result, the company already knows (and has effectively solved) many of the fragmentation challenges facing mobile ad networks moving in the other direction (from developed to developing markets). It is also accustomed to serving ads in regions where mobile is the ONLY screen and where iPhone and Android have not yet reached a significant market share.

It has also made substantial investments in the infrastructure to cut the time it takes to get the ads on the devices. As James puts it: “We can serve an ad 30 -40 milliseconds faster and that is a core competitive advantage as we move into developed markets.”

But the real story is AdROIt – InMobi’s advertiser analytics technology – and the investments the company has made to super-charge its targeting capabilities. As James puts it: “It’s a lot like look-alike modeling, but we do it at scale and in real-time.”

• The objective: enable advertisers discover customers and segments they might not otherwise have been able to identify.
• The approach: harnesses real-time data feedback and intelligence to achieve better ad matching, ad optimization and feed this information back to the advertisers.

To be clear, this is all about targeting after the click. Before the click, advertisers tailor their campaigns to list of parameters that are now more or less a standard across ad networks: handset type, operator, operating system, geography, and so on. (For more background and a helpful how-to please download my road tests of mobile analytics and mobile ad networks I wrote on behalf of Bango.)

But it’s after the click that InMobi’s emphasis on data-crunching makes the difference.

How? Think of new hybrid approach that combines collaborative filtering and profiling with self-learning systems.

InMobi starts by tracking click-thru activity on the ads on the network. In other words, InMobi effectively monitors behavior of users across its network over time (for example, how they interacted with campaigns, responded to a call to action, or reacted to a free download offer).

It then feeds this activity into its self-learning, intelligent analytics engine. The technology (InMobi IP) has been architected to “understand” patterns that lead to performance and alter its ad serving in an automated real-time manner. Thus, the capabilities are in place to identify new prospects who are likely to be interested in the advertising message – and even respond to the offer in a similar way. “Rather than treat the information [it collects] as disconnected feature sets, [it takes] all the data inputs and feeds that in what we call a self-learning loop,” James says. “That allows us to discover other segments that look just the customers you just targeted.”

But the key here is similarity, not micro-segmentation. “I think you can actually over-target to the point where you cut yourself off from the possibility to discover other customers that are very similar but not on your radar…. It could be more of the same type of customer or it could be an evolution of what you thought was your customer base.” Either way, InMobi has the capabilities to expose these customers across its network because it has inventory and a massive reach. The result: A way to maintain tight targeting and potentially reach a high volume of customers (as opposed to targeting can result in the exact opposite outcome).

Where did the data come from? To start, InMobi clients integrate a server code for tracking purposes into their site. (InMobi provides an API as well as an SDK.) Alternatively, InMobi can build the landing page and insert it on behalf of the client. As a rule, it’s up to the publisher how they want to integrate InMobi advertising on their site.

InMobi roadmap

James promises to provide MSG an exclusive in two areas. First, an inside view into some of these campaigns and the results once they are ready for primetime. Second, market level data sourced from the company’s global research. So, stay tuned for these exciting stats.

Meantime, InMobi, which started testing AdROIt with clients months prior to announcing it in late April 2010, has its first proof points. As James puts it: “Early clients did see significant improvements to back-end conversion rates by as much as 40 percent.” He also notes that these advertisers maintained or even increased volume.

In the next few months InMobi says it will come to market with tools that will help discover the lifetime value of the customer. As James puts it: “It’s about knowing which customers are just viewing my ad and which customers are really taking time to engage with my brand.”

MY TAKE:

InMobi has several key factors playing in its favor. It has a broad, independent mobile advertising platform with global reach and – more importantly — a global perspective on the market. And global is going to become increasingly important as the app economy expands and developers and advertisers fine-tune marketing to generate revenues from countries around the world where users are downloading apps. [For a valuable perspective on this shift, check out Sizing Up The Global Apps Market (March 2010), a milestone report commissioned by independent app store GetJar and research and written by Chetan Sharma Consulting. It estimates that the overall mobile apps downloads will increase from over 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion by 2012, growing at the rate of 92 percent CAGR. Asia – a region where the vast majority of downloads are ad-funded – accounted for 37 percent of total downloads in 2009.

This dovetails well with InMobi’s own corporate DNA (roots in India and vast experience serving ads to mobile users in the developing world). And investments in AdROIt mean InMobi has cleverly and quietly built up impressive analytics capabilities to potentially improve targeting after the click. In practice these analytics can show which ads are delivering the best results by exposing precisely how users interacted with the ad in the first place. (I’ll reserve judgment until the case studies are public, or until I do a road test.) Granted, the mobile ad market is crowded, and InMobi is one of a number of independent mobile ad networks gaining mindshare and traction. But mobile advertising is fast becoming a space where good analytics engines can make great companies. InMobi “gets” this and has focused on technologies that go beyond targeting. The ability to discover new mobile customers and segments (look-alike modeling with scale and in real-time) can certainly pave the way for more effective mobile advertising and – more importantly – an approach that is more engaging and driven by hard data.

Editor’s note: Interestingly, James tells me that InMobi is “working with other parties and mobile operators” to improve targeting capabilities before that first click as well. More on that later…

The MAD Movers series continues with profiles of major players, including Millennial Media, Amobee and BuzzCity. If you want your mobile advertising company to be considered, then please contact me directly via email peggy@msearchgroove.com .

Personalization – being able to present individuals with mobile content, services, apps and experiences that are in tune with their profiles and preferences – is shaping up to be the factor that separates a successful sales/marketing pitch from a FAIL.

Granted, people can use mobile search to find what they want. But standard (universal) key word mobile search is not personal. No matter if you’re a scientist, a student or a silver surfer, mobile search delivers the same results to everyone – period. There are some exciting companies offering search services that inject personalization into the equation (and I will cover them here on MSG in the next weeks), but much of the burden is still on people to know what they want. And knowing what you want (a specific piece of content as opposed to a “cool game”) is no easy task.

PERSONAL SHORTCUT

A much smarter approach is to harness personalization technologies to expose people to what they are likely to appreciate. Bubbling up stuff (content, apps, marketing offers) that is perfectly aligned with people’s profiles, preferences, past purchases) is a great way to making finding and buying stuff a no-brainer.

I began tracking and analyzing personalization technologies and the companies that offer them in the industry-first report on the topic (Mobile Search & Content Discovery) I wrote in 2006. I have always considered personalization core to competitive advantage (deploying these technologies either alone or in combination with a mobile search service). However, personalization is only today taking a top-notch spot on the business agenda, driven the recent explosion of content and apps across a maze of app emporiums and handset maker-managed app stores.

Indeed, the new paradigm is personalized content-push based on a deep understanding of the individual’s purchases, passions and past click-behavior. It’s even more compelling if the technology can learn users’ likes and dislikes over time to dynamically and consistently deliver the right content mix.

ASK FIRST?

A number of players – both long established market leaders and nimble newcomer start-ups – “get” it. They range from content companies with personalization (and recommendation) capabilities “built-in” to their offer (Gracenote); to companies powering content discovery on behalf of mobile operators and media brands (Aggregate Knowledge, AMDOCS Interactive, Qualcomm’s Xiam Technologies).

Much of the profiling is based on keen observation and excellent numbers crunching capabilities. Put simply, these technologies use implicit personalization to make sense of the digital bread crumb trail we leave behind. What we do on the Web, what we do with our mobile phones, and, in some cases, how interact with advertisers – all these interactions become variables in the algorithms these companies use to present us what we are likely to appreciate (even before we think to ask for it!).

Implicit personalization has clear advantages, but is it enough to get the 360-degree holistic picture of what we are and what we want? Wouldn’t a hybrid approach that asks people – even if only for a reality-check – be potentially more effective? It certainly works in permission-based mobile marketing, where companies (operators, brands, agencies) achieve impressive results by harnessing opt-in to ask people directly about the advertising they are willing to accept.

SIDEBAR SMART MENU

Which brings me to Sidebar, a California-based start-up that recently reached out for inclusion in the reports I am currently researching and writing on behalf of GigaOM Pro. The series of reports (soon to be released) focuses on topics ranging from permission-based marketing to the future of mobile search. Personalization naturally plays a central role in both. (My personal thanks to Caroline Diaz and the team at Brew Media Relations for introducing me to Patrick Kennedy, Sidebar CEO, and Kieran Hannon, Sidebar COO.)

To date the coverage about Sidebar focuses primarily on the company’s Android and BlackBerry apps, which enable content discovery based on people’s answers to questions aimed at determining demographic data and individual preferences. It’s a great story, and timely since content discovery is a hot item in the industry.

But the real story is the company’s shift away from D2C to B2B, and the unique focus on what I like to call participation marketing (a term Patrick and I came up with during our in-depth briefing).

Participation marketing sits at the sweet spot between determining what people want/will accept by following and analyzing their digital bread crumb trail and knowing what they want/will accept by asking them straight out. Sidebar calls this intelligent mobile merchandising because it uses personalization and robust analytics to make storefronts (the current focus) smarter.

I used my briefing with Patrick and Kieran to get the inside track on the company’s Smart Menu and Smart Messaging solutions and progress to date in Brazil and India, where content companies have implemented it to super-charge their content storefronts.

What is Smart Menu?

It’s the capability mix that allows Sidebar to take any WAP or app-based content and present it in a way that we are likely to appreciate. Think dynamic clustering and personalized presentation. Put simply, Sidebar’s engine learns from user behavior and dynamically clusters users into groups. But it also lets people input their personal preferences and rate content – additional information that can help hone personal content recommendations. The menu also has slots that can also be “programmed” by storefront managers to showcase specific content or fulfill partnership obligations with third-party developers/content owners.

How do they work?

Patrick is predictably tight-lipped on the nuts & bolts, but it’s enough to say that Sidebar collects partner metadata (via APIs) about the content/apps and any other information that has been collected about the people using the service. It combines this with what people volunteer about themselves and their interests (what they like and what they don’t), information they input while they interact with the portal on their mobile phone. Sidebar then uses its own technology to analyze the data and determine what users will want and appreciate (before they ask for it).

Interestingly, Sidebar can use this to optimize/personalize the complete storefront, or it can simply create a “Just For You” section category that exposes stuff that is aligned with what the user would likely want and appreciate. Moreover, the algorithm can be tweaked to optimize/personalize content and app suggestions based on ROI goals. Thus, people are presented with recommendations ranked by both purchase probability and how much each purchase would contribute to ROI. Put the two together and the highest ROI opportunity takes the top-notch spot in the recommendations.

And the list of options and combinations goes on. Personalized recommendations can also accommodate other variables such as price sensitivity (the price at which people will likely buy, or the level at which the service provider wants to sell), location (local recommendations) and even social network (what your peers and significant others on Twitter and Facebook like).

DRIVING (RETURN) VISITS

But dynamic personalization is just part of the picture; Sidebar also brings text messaging into the mix to reality-check user segmentation, gauge customer satisfaction and facilitate a conversation between the company (storefront owner) and the individual. As Patrick puts it: “It’s all about leveraging all the data captured for each user to deliver highly targeted promotional messages.”

The combination covers all the consumer touchpoints – and can also pull in data from other channels/platforms including PCs, games consoles, iPads/Kindles and set-top boxes. This might be why mobile operators are showing a particular interest in the solution. In the case of one operator, the strategy is to use personalization of WAP and website portals as a “launch pad to transition consumers, as they inevitably move from featurephones to smartphones.” The logic here: By providing users a personalized offers carriers can “come to be seen by the consumer as a provider of entertainment content they like.”

Another plus: a significant uplift in content consumption. Patrick reports that Sidebar’s own tests show personalization resulted in “a remarkable uplift that surprised even ourselves and more.” As Patrick puts it: The core value here is harnessing participation marketing to create a personalized merchandising experience, but the driver is the “realization by operators and storefront owners that they have a limited amount of time before people start to see app stores and other destinations as the place to get their digital stuff.”

Names and negotiations are under strict NDA (Patrick will share this news with MSG first), but one client Patrick can discuss is Indiagames, a leading Indian games publisher using Sidebar to offer personalized recommendations via its portal. Billed as the number one Indian mobile game publisher, Indiagames offers both mobile and online games. Its products are developed and published across all major technology platforms and are distributed through partnerships with mobile operators in over 75 countries.

MY TAKE

When it comes merchandising personalization is important – which is why companies in this space are in a good place. But it’s also important to get information about what people want/appreciate from the people. It’s not just about choosing the right content, although that is a BIG part of it. However, combining personalization with conversation is a powerful (and potentially lucrative) algorithm for success. Sidebar encourages this exchange, inviting people to participate and actually tell retailers what they like. Connect the dots, and participation marketing shows people what is appropriate and relevant for them. But this approach can do more than potentially allow storefront owners and mobile operators to cross-sell, up-sell and encourage the all-important impulse buy. It’s easy to imagine combinations of Sidebar’s smart messaging and menus that enable mobile commerce in the physical store, enhance mobile advertising campaigns or just give us a segment of the hundreds of channels on cable TV that we will really enjoy.

Editor’s note:

Some five years ago, Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist at Keio University in Japan, burst on the scene with what was back then an amazing observation.

By watching how people interacted with their mobile phones in Japan she concluded that mobile shaped every aspect of our everyday lives. Based on this revelation she co-authored Personal, Portable, Pedestrian, a milestone book whose revolutionary views on mobile and its impact on our relationships, identities, and communications with people, companies and brands, are more pertinent than ever.

In this work, Ito and her colleagues outline the pivotal importance of the mobile phone, based on the fact that it is personal (we customize and personalize mobile devices and consider them an extension of our personal identity); portable (even the Japanese name for mobile, keitai, – roughly translated “something you carry with you” – stresses the relation between the user and the device and not between the technology and function); and pedestrian (because it is portable it’s a perfect fit with life as it happens on-the-street, melding with activities that require partial or sporadic attention such as waiting for a bus, shopping, or – in the case of children – riding a bike).

Fast forward, and we have mounting evidence of just how fiercely personal our relationship to our mobile phones really is. Ito suggested it was intimate, but I’m not sure if that description goes far enough.

FEELING NAKED

Take the 2008 study conducted by the wireless trade association CTIA and Harris Interactive, a market research firm. This survey of some 2,000 teens across the U.S. revealed that respondents feel that mobile phones have become a vital part of their lives and their identities.

Just how vital comes through loud and clear in this comment from a 17-year old who participated in the study:

“Leaving home without my phone almost feels like leaving the house naked.”

A more recent quote, this time from a must-read article in the Guardian, drives this point home – full-force (!)

“I’d rather give up, like, a kidney than my phone.”

Philippa Grogan, the 16-year old interviewed for the piece, can’t imagine how anyone could function without a mobile phone. The article goes on to outline the personal relationship youth have with their mobile phones and their singular focus on communicating with their friends (via text and Facebook update, for example). Connect the dots, and any disturbance in this communications flow – such as uninvited and irrelevant advertising – will correctly be dismissed as annoying spam.

PERSONAL SPACE

Indeed, the mobile phone – essential to most, and akin to an appendage for youth — provides brands and advertisers a tremendous marketing opportunity provided they play by the rules.

These rules, which define what I call engagement marketing, center on asking permission in order to deliver people brand messages they will accept and appreciate. This approach makes perfect business sense in view of the intensely personal relationship people have with their mobile phones. Put simply, it’s their personal device and their personal space – and intruders beware!

An interview with Coca-Cola, which appeared in the Netsize Guide 2009, underlines the importance of permission and preferences.

As Prinz Pinakatt, Manager of Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola in Europe,  put at the time: “We describe the digital space as the dining table. [When you deliver an ad] you are invited to the dining table of the consumer. The mobile phone is even more personal, so it’s sort of the bedroom. Given that this space is so intensely personal brands like us have to be really careful about what we do. A homepage takeover on the mobile phone, for example, might end up immediately in a lawsuit. We have to seek a balance and that’s why we are experimenting a lot…. In some cases, and regions such as Africa, it’s as simple as having a conversation using SMS.”

Whatever approach brands and advertisers take, it’s clear that they must be based on permission, preference and a deep respect for people’s privacy. As mobile becomes even more integrated in our lives and more central to our psyche, companies that attempt to barge in on our personal space will see the door slammed in their face.

Editor’s note: Starting next month a virtual round table on MSG will explore the views of youth around the world, delving into their views on mobile, advertising and their likes/dislikes. How personal is mobile really? Check back and find out! You can also follow MSearchGroove (@msearchgroove) or Optism (@optismww) for updates.

* * *

Lisa Ciangiulli, Director of Marketing for Alcatel-Lucent Global Advertising Solutions, where she has been instrumental in the development and marketing of Optism™, Alcatel-Lucent’s powerful permission-based mobile advertising solution. In this role, and throughout her career, Ciangiulli has spearheaded efforts to encourage cooperation between players across the ecosystem with the ultimate goal of enabling closer communication with the consumer. In May she was named to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) North America Board of Directors. You can follow her on Twitter (@LisaCiangiulli).

Disclaimer: Optism is an MSG supporter.

For mobile operators, getting peoples’ permission before introducing a mobile advertising service is mandatory in ensuring a non-intrusive experience. Operators can’t just assume that their customers are interested in receiving ads on the most personal device that they own. Mobile operators enjoy an advantage over others in the ecosystem and that is their direct relationship with customers. These customers must be able to trust a mobile operator to protect their privacy and respect their right to determine what appears on their mobile; otherwise the risk is that they will move on to an operator they can trust. From deep insight into this mindset, we see there is an overwhelming attitude of “If you show us that we can trust you, we’ll be more inclined to share additional information with you and to be receptive to other service offers you might have”.

Unlike earlier generations, consumers are now extremely empowered. Technology and innovation provides us with tools, platforms and channels that make it possible for us to bring our opinions and concerns to the widest possible audience. We’ve already talked about how, as individuals, we expect to be asked permission as a matter of respect. We wouldn’t accept someone intruding into our other personal spaces — our homes or cars for example — without asking permission. And we won’t accept that kind of behaviour on our mobiles, which are an extension of our personal space.

We also need to be able to control the situation for which we give permission. With mobile advertising, this means that we must understand exactly what it is that we are giving permission for, and that we know how to retract that permission, should we want to do so. Of course, in addition to control and trust, we need to be offered something that is of value to us, something that makes it worth our while to invite advertisers into our world.

For advertisers, having our permission to begin the conversation increases the likelihood that we’ll listen to you.

Read the rest of this post here.

A raft of announcements and events from the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) signals a new level of excitement and activity in the global mobile media industry. From the advance of smartphones and app stores to the widespread recognition that service enablers (offered by mobile operators and handset makers) are essential to the health and wealth of the entire business ecosystem, the industry is in a new phase of development and mindset. As Rimma Perelmuter, MEF Executive Director, puts it: “There’s a real sense in this $36 billion global industry that we are at a new stage of innovation. We’re seeing consumers around the world using their mobile phones as their key point of access to content and media, and the industry is evolving to make that user experience one that is more engaging and more holistic.”

PERSONALIZATION PLAYERS & VODAFONE 360

Against this backdrop, this year’s Meffy award is much more than a recognition of excellence and innovation. It’s a welcome confirmation that the industry is experiencing a true coming of age, striking out in new directions and defining new areas of opportunity around mobile apps, mobile commerce and cross-platform content and technology.

In fact, this year’s awards saw the introduction of seven new categories that reflect key industry trends and point the way to where the action is. A particularly important one this time around was content discovery and personalization, a category I developed together with Kim Arazi, Member Relations Director, and judged as part of my duties for the third consecutive year.

The decision was a tough one as always, and the range and calibre of companies focused on technology to unlock the value in profile data (demographics, browsing patterns, purchases) to generate real revenues was impressive.

One entry that underlines the tangible business value of personalization was Vodafone 360, the Vodafone app store. Here a personalization engine (powered by Xiam, a Qualcomm company), which provides recommendations based on user behavior, was at the center of the mobile operator’s strategy to deliver a richer retailing experience. The impact of personalization was measurable and Vodafone later revealed anayltics to Mobile Entertainment that show four times more customers buy on the basis of recommendation than on promotion.

Other entries included CSL MyNet Personalized Mobile Internet Service (powered by AMDOCS Interactive), another exceptional example of how personalization technologies are allowing operators to offer value in the off-portal space, and Taptu, a mobile search and discovery company making its mark by indexing the Mobile Touch Web to expose touch-friendly content people can enjoy on their touch devices.

MEFFY WINNERS & FANCHARGE

Another category that shows the coming of age of consumer engagement was mobile advertising. I also judged the category and was struck by the shift in mobile marketing approaches away from sales pitches to enhanced experiences. Indeed, agencies and brands are correctly embracing mobile as a mass media and focusing their efforts on innovative ways to place mobile at the center of a 360-degree experience.

An excellent example of this was the winning entry. Go! Go! Lions, an integrated mobile campaign carried out with the Seibu Lions, a Japanese major-league professional baseball team, used the Fancharge platform, an integrated suite of mobile marketing and fan engagement applications for live sports and entertainment, to deliver everything from content to coupons to commerce. (Click on the image below to see this impressive campaign — and thanks to Fancharge for sharing and hosting this video.)

Other Meffy 2010 Winners:

• App Store Blockbuster
  CBS Mobile for ‘NCAA March Madness on Demand’ [Check it out here]
• Business Intelligence
  Motally for ‘Motally’
• Consumer Experience
  FindaProperty.com for FindaProperty
• Content Discovery & Personalization
  Taptu for ‘Touch Search’
• Cross Platform Content
  Zed Group for ‘Planet 51’
• Cross-Platform Technology
  MTS for ‘Omlet.ru’
• Games
  PopCap for ‘Plants vs Zombies’
• Innovative App
  CBS Mobile for ‘CW City-Wize iPhone App’ [Check it out here.]
• Innovative Business Model
  Mob4Hire for ‘Crowd Sourced Mobile Testing’
• M-Commerce
  Wau Movil for ‘First Gateway Service Offer in Latin America’
• Mobile Connected Device
  Novatel Wireless for ‘MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot’
• Mobile First Innovation
  Tata Teleservices for ‘English Seekho’
• Music Service
  Shazam for ‘Shazam Encore’
• Social Media
  Handmade Mobile for ‘Flirtomatic’
• Technology Innovation
  Layar for ‘Layar Reality Browser’
• TV & Video Service
  CBS Mobile for ‘TV.com Android & iPhone Mobile’

The MEF Outstanding Contribution award went this year to Dr. Andrew Hsu, the inventor of modern touchscreen technology for mobile handsets. Thanks to Rimma, Kim and the excellent team at Hotwire PR (especially Morgan Evans) for arranging a briefing with Andrew.

Andrew and I discussed how touchscreen has revolutionized the device landscape and explore progress and learnings around the Fuse, a prototype device that brings together captive touch with tilt-sensing, squeeze-sensing and haptics. An awesome experience and more in the podcast next week!

PODCAST WITH RIMMA PERELMUTER

Meantime, I caught up with Rimma Perelmuter, MEF Executive Director, to connect the dots in a long string of MEF announcements and releases.

While the Meffys are certainly a good way to gauge what’s hot and what’s on the horizon, the Business Confidence Index (BCI), based on survey of MEF members, is an even better measure of revenue and business trends in the now $36 billion mobile media market – up from $32 billion in 2009. Rimma walks through the results and discusses the opportunities for growth around smartphones, apps, payments and commerce. She also discusses the top three challenges: consumer awareness and trust, fragmentation and operating systems.

Based on the survey it’s clear that the industry must collaborate to create the business models that will allow everyone to make money on mobile media. To provide companies a roadmap to navigate this new terrain the MEF released a Smart Enablers Guide that builds on the organization’s existing initiative to show how access to service enablers (such as location information) can provide business benefits.

It’s a meaty document chock full of case studies and member survey results on topics including the role of the mobile operator, the spectrum of smart enablers, and the battle looming ahead in the value chain.

Contributions and columns I will be writing for the MEF publications and newsletters will go into more depth, but Rimma starts us off with a high-level overview of why this initiative deserves the support of all the stakeholders.

And finally, Rimma discusses the global agenda and progress in the MENA region. In mid-June MEF celebrated the co-founding of its first office in the Middle East. The office,  based at the  Qatar Science & Technology Park, an innovation hub, will be responsible for localizing strategic MEF initiatives. The Middle east was identified in surveys as a key growth market for the mobile media sector.

MEF grows its global presence

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST [17:30]

The advance of the app store changes all the rules. But who would have thought that the arrival of this new business ecosystem would shift the balance so blatantly in favor of new platforms (primarily Android and Apple) and new players (Google)?

The must-read report from VisionMobile – the first to document developer attitudes and gripes – indicates that mobile app developers are breaking out in new directions after years of struggling with established platforms (such as Java and Symbian) and established players (mobile operators and OEMs).

ANDROID MINDSHARE

This key finding that should alarm bells ringing in boardrooms across the mobile industry.

“In the last two years, a mindshare migration has taken place, with mobile developers moving away from “incumbent” platforms, namely Symbian, Java ME and Windows Phone. The large minority (20-25 percent) of Symbian respondents who sell their apps via iPhone and Android app stores reveals the brain-drain that is taking place towards these newer platforms. The vast majority of Java ME respondents have lost faith in the write-once-run-anywhere vision. Moreover, anecdotal developer testimonials suggest that half of Windows Phone MVP developers (valued for their commitment to the platform) carry an iPhone, and would think twice before re-investing in Windows Phone.”

So, is Android the mindshare leader?

It sure looks it. The survey suggests that nearly 60 percent of all mobile developers recently developed on Android, with iOS (Apple iPhone) coming in a second. Both outrank Symbian and Java ME, which held the pole position in 2008.

Why the overall shift from platform incumbents (such as Symbian) to platform newcomers (Apple and Android)? VisionMobile points out that developers are trying to make money with their apps, so market penetration (addressable market) and monetization models (paid apps) are deciding factors.

Another reason could be platform complexity. VisionMobile’s benchmarks show that a Symbian developer needs to write almost three times more code than an Android developer, and twice as much code as an iPhone developer.

Combine that hassle with the significant differences in time-to-shelf for apps (24 days for Apple, 33 for Android and over 54 days for Symbian) and it’s easy to see why mobile app developers are voting with their feet.

Time-to-payment also plays in favor of the app store model and the platform owners that run them. And no wonder! Developers that choose to sell their apps via an app store generally get paid within a month of the application. On average it takes 55 days to get paid via an operator channel, 69 days to get paid when the app is preloaded by the operator an incredible 168 days (5.5 months) to get paid when the developer preloads the app via a handset maker.

Interestingly, the pay-per-download monetization model is the first pick for most developers (used by two-thirds of respondents). Despite the hype ad-funded apps are very distant second.

MOBILE OPERATOR OBSTACLE

Only 20 percent of respondents are using the mobile operators as a channel to market. Realistically, what role can the mobile operator possibly play in the emerging app economy?

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of developers feel operators are bit-pipes that should clear the way for other ecosystem players. As one opinionated developer put it: “Operators should get out of the way of developers.” It may sound harsh, but it’s easy to understand this sentiment if we recall the miserable track record most mobile operators have in supporting their developers.

Kudos to VisionMobile for retracing this history and correctly observing that there are serious differences in the core ecosystems. The Internet/PC ecosystem has been about enabling developers to differentiate. Apple and Android take this to the next level. Meantime, the embedded software ecosystem has been about allowing handset makers differentiate. Mobile operators and handset makers continue to put their own differentiation first. Against this backdrop, mobile developers are taking matters (and marketing) into their own hands.

Indeed, the rise of the app stores has also impacted go-to-market strategies. Operator portals and on-device preloading through OEM or operator deals, once the preferred and popular channel to the consumer, are used by less than five percent of developers surveyed.

In fact, the vast majority of developers now uses native app stores (run by the handset maker) or offers their apps via a direct download from their own websites. Interestingly, Apple and Android app stores are the crowd-pleasers, with only 5 percent of Java and just over 10 percent of Windows Phone developers using app stores as a primary distribution channel. Java ME developers also use independent app store GetJar as a channel, followed by Nokia’s Ovi Store.

But it’s not easy money. VisionMobile finds that a minority of developers (five percent) reported very good revenues for their work. 24 percent said their revenues were poor and 27 percent said their revenues were as projected. (This dovetails with the recent post/rant from mobile authority Tomi Ahonen. He did the math and concludes the average developers will break even in about ten years.)

VisionMobile explains this could be due to platform-specific issues such as payment and refund policy. Android Market supports paid apps in only 13 of the 46 countries where it is available to users. What’s more, Android allows users to return an app for refund after 24 hours, a policy that Bango CEO Ray Anderson says spells trouble for developers wanting to track customers and calculate sales. [Listen to this no-holds-barred podcast here.]

POOR OPINION, RICH OPPORTUNITY

While developers may have a low opinion of mobile operators, their biggest business challenges (payment and content discovery through improved personalization and premium placement) could actually be solved by working more closely with mobile operators.

Sure, most developers think operators are a hindrance instead of a help. But ask them what support they need – or would be willing to pay for – and the answers place the mobile operator back in the center of the action.

Developers want – and would pay for – access to APIs. The same goes for marketing support. Specifically, half of respondents would be willing to pay for premium app store placement. And we have another confirmation that personalization and recommendation would go a long way toward helping app developers tackle the content discovery dilemma, allowing them to rise above the noise and expose their applications to the right customer segments.

MY TAKE

Connect the dots in this milestone report and it’s clear there are business models and approaches that would pay dividends for everyone in the ecosystem. It’s up to mobile operators to rebuild developer trust, abandon their command-and-control strategies and adopt a coordinate-and-cultivate approach. Payment, personalization and placement are sure-fire ways mobile operators can create value and keep their place at the table.

What’s at stake? I leave you with a quote from the report (via Peter-Paul Koch at www.quiksmode.org) that says it best: “The first mobile company to TRULY reach out to web developers will have an edge over the competition, but right now I don’t see any candidates. Except for Google, obviously. (And Apple, but they’re playing their own game.) If Google became an operator our problems would be solved.”

Disclaimer: Peggy Anne Salz is a VisionMobile Associate.

Mobile isn’t about just mobile anymore! To drive this point home I must borrow an observation from Alan Moore, consultant, pundit, friend, colleague and a brave voice I am proud to showcase on MSG soon. Put simply, mobile has become the “remote control of our lives.” It sits at the center of all we do – and it forces us to start thinking of mobile as much more than just a phone.

It’s time for a revolution and Jerome Nadel, Executive Vice President of Marketing & User Experience at Sagem Wireless, has the fresh mindset to lead it. He understands that mobile is not about technology, it’s about people. But it’s also not about warm and fuzzy ideas about hard-nosed business models and strategies that will help companies stand out by delivering an excellent experience (device AND content) to a sharply targeted customer segment.

That’s where the new Puma phone comes in – a segmented phone that brings together information service, social connectedness and brand pizzazz into a single lifestyle device that sets the bar.

No wonder Jerome is a keynote at MLOVE – the multidisciplinary event that promises to give us all a view of what’s next now. His vision of sharply segmented mobile phones covers the bases to be the next BIG THING in mobile.There are still some places left – so register soon to connect, communicate and brainstorm with 30+ speakers renowned for their original thinking and path-breaking activities across a range of disciplines — from commerce and advertising to fashion and finance.

Register at www.mlove.com/register . You simply have to enter the code:VIP-MSG to receive an instant 20% discount.

Among the podcast highlights

NEW MINDSET: “I’m leading a cultural and organizational revolution: This is a classical shift from the techno-centric to a user-centric or a market-centric approach.  This is a company that historically developed phones and it’s transitioning to a company that’s creating what we refer to as “category breaking devices and services” that – from the user-centric perspective – are built on customer insight, innovation and packaged with impeccable product design.”

USABILITY: In Jerome’s view the experience – specifically, the holistic experience that a branded and brand-linked device can offer – is THE differentiator. “Clearly, there are remarkable trends occurring around what a mobile device is….We see advances in technology where more and more everything is a smart phone, and we shift from a model of…heterogeneous capability to a divergent model …where everything works equally well. [The question is:] How do I differentiate by either brand or lifestyle affinity to connect to this services that are relevant for me?”

BRAND MEETS MOBILE: “The brand of Puma is much more than a reflection of the products that they make and sell. They’ve spanned from retail to e-tail and have really been extremely effective in the digital below-the-line gorilla viral space….They are arguably a veritable content aggregator and distributor. They spend a lot of their almost half a billion euros a year in marketing spend on things that are digital and viral.” But Puma isn’t just launching a branded device. It has focused on “services that connect not only to the rich media content that Puma aggregates and distributes primarily through the Web.” The next step: it could extend its connection by enabling people to download branded applications and even engage in mobile commerce.

PUMA PREVIEW: Jerome will be bringing Puma phones to MLOVE (and giving them away!), so it’s a great opportunity to see this new device and get the inside track on the services it connects to. A highlight is the Puma World Portal. More about that in the podcast…

MY TAKE

This is an interview that should make brands think – hard. I leave you with a key observation from Jerome. For brands the question is: “not only how do I – through targeted affinity – touch more closely my brand advocate; but how do I actually transact and exchange with them? How can I monetize the value of this digital and mobile connection?” This is not a return of the branded devices (remember the Spiderman phone?). This is the start of a new business ecosystem that puts brands at the core of a crusade to deliver new kind of a mobile experience, enhanced by content (from media companies) and connectivity (from mobile operators).

Listen to the podcast here. [15:20]

Give the people what they want? On traditional media – such as TV – it’s a guessing game. But on a fiercely personal device such as the mobile phone, brands can start a conversation (using SMS or MMS – or both, for example) with people to just ask. Research shows people will volunteer personal information if they perceive that they are getting value in return – and part of that value is getting advertising that is relevant. Even better if that advertising is also life-simplifying.

A prime example of this is Amazon, which cleverly includes recommendations (translated: advice about what you could/should buy) in its conversations with customers online. As Dan puts it: “That is where advertising has crossed a line at that point in time. It’s now become a service that I appreciate rather than an intrusion that I do not.” The challenge – and the opportunity – is all around harnessing “to communicate to people things that they’re really genuinely interested in. That’s when that advertising starts to become a service for people in helping making their life more convenient and connect[ing] them with the things they want, when they want them.”

Dan – who also hosted the global launch of Optism, a permission-based mobile marketing solution from Alcatel-Lucent that bridges gaps between operators and advertisers – also speaks frankly about what he calls the “relationship gulf” that separates brands/agencies from mobile operators. As he sees it: The key question is how well the network operators embrace their data. “While they offer an ability to communicate with people, they’re just really a pipe at the end of the day. The moment they open up their data and their understanding of the customers… allowing brands to utilize that understanding to communicate more effectively, they [mobile operators] suddenly become a very rich media partner.”

Among the highlights

ASKING PERMISSION: It’s imperative. Dan believes brands should ask people for permission to communicate with them. The customer information a brand gains as a result is “richer and more detailed.” Understanding it and linking it to relevant brand messages allows brands to “actually developing things that are going to be very, very powerful for both the consumer and the brand.” Dan also shares an excellent case study of a campaign his company did for Birds Eye foods that recorded a whopping 11 percent response rate (!).

By way of background, the Birds Eye campaign started off as a fairly straightforward text to win campaign – with the short code details printed on the package. Sponge used the information (it knew the food people bought because they were texting in the short code printed on the pack in the first place) to deliver a product related text. The agency created three different databases, each relevant to a product group.

The first was generic nutritional information. So, Sponge sent text messages such as: Did you realize that five chicken dippers have less fat than a pork sausage? The second was recipe information. So, Sponge sent a product-related recipe idea by text. The third and most interesting offer was product suggestions. Dan tells me that cross-selling technique dramatically increased sales of specific product ranges within the Birds Eye food categories. In the end, the database of people who opted in to receive ongoing communications from Birds Eye was well over 100,000 (!).

MOBILE BUDGETS: What Dan sees tells him the conditions are perfect for significant growth following a recession that saw brands put the brakes on mobile spending. “We’re certainly seeing a trend this year that says that the foot is coming off the brake….We’re seeing an immense amount of interest and we’re seeing people talk more seriously about their budgets and having proper goals and expectations of what they might be able to achieve with the medium.”

WHAT WE NEED?: “Results. I don’t think there’s anything more complicated than that, is that we need to show tangible results that says if you spend X, then you make Y because that’s the way of the world economy these days. I don’t think mobile is ever going to be able to offer quite the sort of exciting brand pizzazz that you get from a big glossy TV advert, but what it can do is put more people in your store, more people buying your product, or more people enquiring about your services. So, great case studies that show good results is what we need above all else in this industry.”

WHAT’S NEXT: brands have to get better at engagement marketing. It’s about using permission and context to deliver campaigns such as the Bird’s Eye campaign to continue the conversation with consumes long after the campaign is over. Re-marketing is therefore on the top of the agenda. Dan also sees excitement around apps and location- linked advertising – as long as it makes life easier for the consumer.

MY TAKE:

A welcome look at the issues from an agency passionate about the business imperative to deliver helpful information instead of annoying advertising. Mobile marketing is on the march again – and with that momentum comes the realization that the best way to deliver people advertising they will accept and appreciate may be to ask them first.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE. [14:36]

Editor’s note: The series continues in two weeks with the views of other companies in the engagement ecosystem. We’ll here from brands and agencies and delve into research that captures the view of the youth consumer.

Disclaimer: Optism is an MSG client and supporter.

Fragmentation, distribution, monetization. These are the headaches that plague developers everywhere. It’s all about reaching an audience of people who are mostly likely to appreciate and buy their apps. Or, if the model is ad-funded, it’s about an approach linked to advertising that people will accept. In both scenarios, the ability to bubble up apps we appreciate – or encourage us to discover the wealth of apps at our finger tips – is at the foundation of a sound and scalable business model.

This is the view of an increasing number of companies focused on connecting the dots in our browsing and purchasing patterns to enhance customer profiles and – ultimately – suggest apps and stuff we will likely download, buy and recommend to our friends.

In this podcast Colm Healy — Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services, General Manager of Xiam Technologies, and a frequent columnist/contributor on MSG – talks about the link between personalization and app stores. We also discuss a range of related topics including the outlook for HTML5, the challenges to the emerging app ecosystem and the potential role of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) in the scheme of things. By way of background, WAC brings together 24 mobile operators in a community to create an eco system for the development and distribution of mobile and internet applications irrespective of hardware device or software technology.

Among the highlights:

FRAGMENTATION & FRUSTRATION: Colm doesn’t have all the apps he wants on his device. They’re just not available for his Android phone – and that’s a shortcoming that tries his patience. His view: it’s annoying to him and to all users everywhere. “End-users want to be able to get the content they love, to engage the brands that they really find useful. If the industry fails to be able to allow them to get to that, then that’s a real missed opportunity by the industry.” The root problem is fragmentation – but HTML5 is shaping up to solve this. The new standard “brings the experience of a Web page closer to the experience of running a native application.” Overall the technology will “make the browser, which is effectively ubiquitous platform that everybody supports, more powerful and more like the kind of experience that people want on their phones.”

LIGHTWEIGHT APPS: Where HTML5 and other developments come together to pay off the most is what Colm calls lightweight apps. “If you’re trying to run a high-end game, you’re absolutely going to want to run it natively on the phone and frankly it’s very difficult for you to get away from the fragmentation there. Just as in the console game world, there’s a range of platforms you have to address, in the mobile game world the same is going to apply.” The solution – and the excitement – is around lightweight apps. “HTML5 offers the promise of being able to run all of these across multiple different devices with a single code base.”

WAC: There is a great deal of potential. But there are also challenges. “The key people, the people who ultimately decide what technologies end up on the handset, are the handset manufacturers and the WAC is clearly an operator-driven initiative. So, success will be down (1) to their ability to work together for a standard, which I think is something very achievable and (2), to quickly have that adopted by handset – supported widely by handset manufacturers, which I think is more of a challenge.

RETAIL & ADVERTISING: Personalization sits at the heart of a good mobile retail experience. “In my view is there’s a bit of a nuclear arms race going on in terms of the number of applications that a particular platform has. Frankly, for most end users, there are a finite number of applications. There’s a fixed or finite size as to what an application developer eco system needs to be for it to be found useful and enriching….So, once you get to a couple of thousand apps, you absolutely need personalization.” It matches people with apps they want and oils the whole retail experience. “This whole nuclear arms race will come to a bit of an end and it will become much more about how engaged are users with the particular retail experience.” Advertising is also a fit. “Instead of you having to advertise to 2 million people to get the 10,000 that you are likely to respond to you, you can get to those 10,000 people. It directly lowers the barriers to entry, the barriers to profit. The real issue here is [about] the barriers to a sustainable business model for the content developer.”

Editor’s note: Colm and I will be back on June 30th. The topic of the third and final part of this podcast series: Is discovery the new search?

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.[11:04]

Disclaimer: Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm company, is an MSG supporter.