Mobile Groove

Mobile has the unique capabilities to deliver the right ad to the right person in the right place/context. But it’s a new pilot in the U.S. — bringing together Coca-Cola and pretzel seller Auntie Anne’s — that will go one step further to show how brands can close the loop by using mobile to trigger real-world purchases and track the results all the way down to the item level.

This pilot — which concludes this week —is built from the ground up to provide brands (in this case Coke and Au…

ARPU FIGURES DON’T GIVE AN ACCURATE PICTURE OF INDIVIDUAL SPENDING, says a new report from Wireless Intelligence, because of the proliferation of multiple connections per user. For instance, in North America, the reported penetration rate is 92 percent, but when you take out multiple connections with the same user, the real rate is just 71 percent. Consequently, spending per user is $64 per month, rather than the reported $51. In Western Europe, the per user figure is €33 per month, while the per connection rate is €23. Source

The bottom line: The ARPU metric has been under fire for some time, not least because it only looks at revenues, and says nothing about profitability. Consumers having multiple connections is a trend that will proliferate, as more users get 3G dongles, e-book readers and other types of connected devices. This trend could accelerate the move towards another key metric in the industry.

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MOBILE MAPPING GROWING, BUT PC SITES STILL RULE, according to ABI Research. The firm says that internet mapping sites will get 440 million monthly visitors next year. ABI has also noted that while big names like Google, Mapquest, Sohu and Baidu currently dominate the mapping space, more and more players, such as navigation vendors like TomTom and NAVTEQ, and even mobile companies like Nokia, are launching their own navigation sites. Source

The bottom line: Expect mobile use to fuel the next stage of growth in mapping services, as more and more devices get GPS functionality, making maps so much easier to use, and mobile mapping applications improve. PC mapping isn’t going anywhere, but mapping on the mobile makes much more sense in many scenarios. This calls into question the need for standalone GPS units – which is why GPS vendors are pushing hard into the mobile space.

In brief: An analysis of what Blyk’s partnership with Vodafone Netherlands really means, an exclusive Q&A with Blyk co-founder and CEO, Pekka Ala-Pietilä, and some big questions mobile operators can’t ignore: Why is advertising the major revenue source for every mass media except mobile? And how do operators plan to compete with media and Internet companies to capture the most value in mobile media?

It’s been a bit quiet at MSG as I finalize the plans and partnerships that will transform MSG into a media company and lay the groundwork for an ambitious mobile marketing publishing project that has already earned the endorsement of several major industry organizations. (More in a press release soon via RealWire, a global news release distribution service and MSG partner that, like the online media industry that is its focus, is always-on, always-connected and always professional, which is why I can recommend them so highly.)

But I couldn’t end the week without posting an analysis of the exciting (but not unexpected) news from Blyk, combination mobile engagement media company, mobile advertising startup and MVNO, that it had signed an deal with to roll out its branded service in partnership with Vodafone Netherlands and to share revenues with the operator.

Connect the dots, and Blyk has executed on the game-changing strategy that Antti Öhling, Blyk co-founder and CEO U.K., outlined in May in this exclusive Q&A. In it he provides solid logic for “making the switch” from MVNO (a model he called a “proof of concept”) to youth engagement media. The reasons range from scale and speed (both accelerated through partnership with operators) to the ones that matter most to advertisers: reach and engagement.

Today marks the end of a long week of mobile advertising webinars (including this one organized by Mobixell – password adit123) and interviews, activities which for me drove home the pivotal importance of relevancy in all we do. Like a pop song you keep hearing in your head, my ears are ringing with how many times I have heard executives at brands, agencies, and operators echo the increasing importance of relevancy. In fact, Andy Bovingdon, Bango, VP Marketing, in yesterday’s interview for the Mobile Advertising Research U.K. project, was by far the most adamant to date.

In his view, mobile advertising is a form of mobile marketing that has many forms – all of which must be relevant to us. “The key across all platforms and forms of advertising – search, SMS, banners, and barcodes – is the relevance and the ability to target. Is mobile another screen, or the fourth screen, as some say? I would say it is the first screen. It’s always-on and always with us, and that means we can learn a lot more about the visitors [but not individual visitor] to a site or an ad campaign. We can know more about the people who interact with advertising, and we must use this to give them advertising to interact with.”

Put simply, relevancy rules (!) The message isn’t lost on MSG. Almost five years ago, I wrote the first report on mobile search and content discovery, where I preached the importance of delivering the right content to the right person – better yet in the right context. And that has been my message ever since. (Also reflected in the MSG strapline: At the intersection of content and context.) It’s where the action is!

And if you think it only applied to mobile content portals, then I have one word for you: App stores. This well-written and thoughtful column from Mark Lowenstein speaks volumes. He makes a plea for more personalization in application storefronts, and companies would do well to listen.

“I think the most important way to differentiate in this growing but increasingly crowded market is to deliver a more personalized, contextual applications experience. In most cases, all users launching an app store are presented with the same menu. There have been some early stage attempts to enable users to do some content configuration on operator or third party portals, sort of a wireless version of My Yahoo. But if we’re dealing with tens of thousands of apps and a small screen device with limited input capability, we have to get a lot smarter about what is presented to the user, with the magic being done in the background rather than relying on the user to self-configure.”

Where’s the connection with Blyk? The answer is evident when we consider (in my view) a milestone quote/observation (below)from Antti Öhling, Blyk co-founder and CEO U.K.