Mobile Groove

STUDY: Common sense tells us click-through rates (CTRs) on personalized advertising should exceed CTRs on more random [translated: less relevant] mobile advertising, but here is an important data point direct from Telenor R & I, the research arm of the Telenor Group, and Mobile Content Networks, a provider of mobile search management, search merchandising, and PPC content promotion solutions, to back it up.

The companies teamed up in Norway along with MADS, a European mobile advertising technology provider, and Aspiro, a Scandinavian mobile content provider, to evaluate the effectiveness of federated mobile search – an approach that blends results from a variety of content sources and search engines – and personalized advertising.  Findings from the pilot tell us that CTRs for personalized ads “exceeded those for random ads by a 3:1 ratio.” What’s more, CTRs on ads also “increase in proportion to the degree of humor, context, and targeting associated with specific search queries.” Finally, nearly half of the users surveyed reported they were “satisfied or very satisfied” with the service, and 54 percent said they got the results they wanted. (Both results were more than double pre-study satisfaction levels.)

The takeaway: MCN CEO Marc Bookman is quoted as saying that the Telenor pilot has “confirmed the effectiveness of federated search to promote content availability, to rank and place relevant content, and to support the delivery of highly relevant and valuable advertising.” This conclusion dovetails well with my own work in this space, which I present in a white paper on federated mobile search, the first of its kind in the industry, sponsored by Motricity and slated (I’m told) to be released in the next weeks. I reserve judgment on the specific findings of the Telenor pilot until I know more about the methodology. (The press release is quite thin on this.) However, I’ll have a chance to get the inside track from the source soon. Andrea tells me I have a bnetTV interview scheduled with MCN co-founder Kimmo Paaso during Mobile World Congress (MWC), so please check for the video interview (on the MSG player) shortly after the event.

XIAM: A giant step forward for location-based advertising, content, and services. Xiam Technologies – a Qualcomm subsidiary providing discovery and recommendations solutions to mobile operators, and a company MSG has covered from the star – has added location to the mix, beefing up its platform to deliver “recommendations ranging from helping subscribers find their way around new cities, to locating products and services they need quickly, wherever they are.” According to a press statement, the addition of two new algorithms now allows Xiam to make location-based recommendations and assisted mobile Internet discovery available to its global customer base.

The platform’s open APIs pave the way for operators, publishers, and third-party brands (!) to make “geographically specific offers of content and services to subscribers.” How precise are these location-specific recommendations? The company says they are “accurate to the latitude and longitude of the device, providing relevant results in real-time for anything from local hotspots to retail outlets.”

The takeaway: This enhancement – plus the addition of an assisted mobile Internet browsing discovery service (allowing users to receive individual recommendations for mobile sites and widgets) – significantly strengthens Xiam’s (and Qualcomm’s) strategy to target publishers and brands. (Think Plaza and you’ll get where this is going. Add a multi-platform approach, which Xiam talked about here, and you’ll know why I’m excited to find out more.) Fortunately, Martin Clancy, Xiam Marketing Manager, has just reached out to offer me a briefing during MWC, so I’ll have a much more detailed take on this soon.

TOP KEYWORDS: A valuable post from Bryson Meunier, Associate Director of SEO at Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group, and leading SEO expert (my opinion). In this recent post, Bryson does the heavy-lifting for us all, compiling a must-read list of the top mobile search queries entered in 2008, as reported by Yahoo Mobile, AOL Mobile, and Google Mobile India.

Yahoo! Top Mobile Searches 2008

1. MySpace
2. Facebook
3. Craigslist
4. Movies
5. Weather
6. Olympics
7. The Dark Knight
8. Kim Kardashian
9. eBay
10. AIG

AOL Mobile Search Top Mobile Searches 2008

1. MySpace
2. AIM
3. iPhone
4. MocoSpace
5. Facebook
6. Craigslist
7. Weather
8. Free Ringtones
9. MapQuest
10. Match.com

Google Mobile Top Mobile Searches 2008 – Google India

1. orkut
2. yahoo
3. waptrick
4. gmail
5. games
6. katrina kaif
7. rediffmail
8. yahoomail
9. namitha
10. google

But Bryson doesn’t stop there. He also conducts an interesting experiment, assigning each keyword a volume according to Google’s new mobile keywords tool. His takeaway: “If you or your clients were selling anything in 2008 that related to any one of these things and you didn’t target mobile users, you missed out on millions of impressions and possible conversions.” The mobile opportunity is significant, and Bryson’s must-read blog gives us the context we need to understand and take advantage of it.

Disclaimer: Motricity is an MSG supporter; MCN has been an MSG supporter.