Mobile Groove

In brief: A look at value chain confusion, the impact on mobile advertising and Hardee’s blueprint that brings some order to the value chain and benefits to people, PLUS Jumptap’s CMO Paran Johar talks about targeting and how to leverage it – and I can’t resist connecting the dots in Jumptap’s recent announcements.

The mobile advertising value chain is riddled with questions and shortcomings at this early stage of the game. Uncertainty over who has what place at t…

Several weeks into MSG’S exciting line-up of mobile industry projects (mobile advertising and mobile search), and I am impressed by the pivotal importance the majority of interviewees place on context. Whether it’s advertising or contextual search, the new business mantra is personalization. It’s all about delivering the right advertising/content/app/results to the right person in the right context.

But this time it’s more than warm-and-fuzzy lip-service. This time it’s hard-nosed business. Two developments – flat sales of more traditional mobile entertainment offers such as games and ringtones (albeit at a high level), and the phenomenal popularity of apps and app stores – exacerbate the content discovery dilemma, forcing companies and operators alike to admit that better personalization is a must if higher revenues are the goal.

Last week I directed your attention to this excellent column from Mark Lowenstein, who drives home a point the significance of which I cannot overstate: “The most important way to differentiate in this growing but increasingly crowded market is to deliver a more personalized, contextual applications experience.” He was referring to app stores, where we are forced to sift through thousands of apps. (Déjà vu! It was our frustration with scrolling up and down mobile operator portals and hierarchical menus that opened the door for a variety of mobile search and content discovery solutions and providers that promised to take the pain out of finding and buying content.)

Put simply, personalization is not just central to app store schemes. It is critical to the delivery of content and advertising we will likely appreciate because it is in tune with our lifestyles (through profiling) as well as the important clues we leave behind though our browsing behavior, purchase patterns, and download history. (JumpTap, for example, has built a business connecting the dots between these data points to match relevant advertising to relevant consumer segments. As this MSG post recounts, the company first released tapLink, a platform that builds targeting intelligence from multiple sources including search queries, browsing history, demographic and location data, and then followed up with the recent launch of tapMatch, its pay-per-click (PPC) performance mobile ad marketplace.)

As I have written many times on MSG, the new paradigm is personalized content-push based on a deep understanding of the individual. 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.

One company making its mark is Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm company that I have tracked from the start. I recently caught up with Colm Healy, Xiam CEO, in a video interview to discuss the role of recommendation and personalized discovery techniques. Xiam worked with Stuart Willett, who heads up MSG Media Solutions, and the film crew we assembled for the project to co-create the video I am proud to showcase in the MSG video player. (My personal thanks to Martin Clancy, Xiam Marketing Manager, for arranging the interview, and to Curtis Shmigelsky and the rest of the great people at bnetTV for including it in MSG video jukebox!)

I encourage you to check out the video interview in the sidebar. A highlight: Colm’s comments on the opportunities in personalization for mobile operators. As he puts it: “Mobile is a uniquely personal device and if you [operator/service provider] aren’t taking advantage of that by building in recommendations and personalized discovery techniques, you’re missing a beat.”

What do you get when you bring together the intellectual resources of Rudy De Waele/ mTrends and dotopen, an open innovation consulting firm known for its insights into the emerging mobile Web 2.0 ecosystem, and MSearchGroove, a knowledge resource dedicated to the analysis of mobile search (and all things mobile at the intersection of context and content)? In a word, impact!

Since teaming up with Rudy De Waele, blogger at mTrends and dotopen founder, to develop mobile search case studies in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), and seeing the positive response to our work to date, I’m convinced mobile search is back again at the top of the industry agenda. And with good reason: Search is the de facto interface to all things digital in the online space, and there is every indication that it will be the same in mobile.

From mobile advertising, where our queries trigger the delivery of related advertising (in the best case scenario, we’re not there yet), to social media, where the content we appreciate and discuss across destinations ranging from MySpace to Twitter allows us to restore balance in an otherwise purely algorithmic approach that tends to promote search engine optimized websites over what we find genuinely relevant and useful, mobile search is where the action is.

But as Rudy and I have both pointed out in our recent presentations, mobile search is not about the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft). Rudy spoke at Next09, and you can find his slides further on in this post; I spoke at the European Mobile Media Conference, and my deck can likewise be found after the jump.

Indeed, context and personalization change all the rules (!)

A highlight of our recent presentations: A comprehensive overview of the market and (thanks to Rudy) a SWOT analysis of the players that stand out in their category such as Google (universal search with a poor mobile offer and an even weaker grasp of social search), and Twitter (a case of mobile search + social media = real-time results that really reflect what we discuss/share).

In my own mobile search research – an on-going project that began back in 2004/2005 when I wrote the first report on mobile search and content discovery, a 220+ page report published by Informa Telecoms & Media – I have recently identified some 60+ companies and 10+ categories of mobile search I would like to share with you (below) for your feedback.

Regular readers will know I rave about EContent magazine, where I am a Contributing Editor and regular columnist. I am proud to say some of my best work has been for EContent, inspired by the vision and dedication of Michelle Manafy, EContent editor-in-chief and expert commentator on a range of issues impacting the content industry at all levels.

I encourage you to add the site to your list of must-read destinations. Why? Many of the business models and businesses driving revenues in the Internet are coming soon to mobile. (Search engines and collaborative software companies lead the pack of companies moving out of stealth mode to make some serious waves.) Amidst this change I know of no better source than EContent to stay that extra-important step ahead of the game.

(I will therefore give EContent a top-notch spot in the new-look Knowledge Sharing Zone I wrote about in this earlier post. The goal is to create a comprehensive list of valuable resources and destinations. If you would like your site or blog to be considered, please email it to me (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

As part of the recent Buying and Selling eContent conference, Michelle invited experts and contributors who judged the EContent 100, to give their views on the companies and trends that matter. Michelle reports that the series of video interviews got good reviews, and the content in them was “extremely well received.”

This first in a series of exclusive interviews with mobile ad networks, profiles JumpTap and details what today’s announcement means for advertisers, publishers and market rivals. Look for more interviews/podcasts with ad networks you need to know better including Greystripe (CEO Michael Chang tells how his company made the move from advertising enable to ad network); Mojiva (CEO Dave Gwozdz walks us through a new white-label platform for publishers), and itsmy.com (CEO Vince Staybl talks about targeting options in itsmy.biz, the mobile social network’s ad network). If you are an ad network with a story to tell, then contact me directly or arrange a briefing with Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

On the heels of JumpTap’s announcement of tapMatch, its pay-per-click (PPC) performance mobile ad marketplace, I can finally post this exclusive Q&A with Paran Johar, JumpTap CMO. During the pre-briefing we went through the nuts and bolts of the offer (unlike Google, which offers keyword bidding and MCN – a provider of mobile search management, search merchandising, and PPC content promotion solutions offering category bidding- Jumptap offers both), and took a closer look at how the search technology potentially maximizes performance by delivering contextually relevant advertising.

Q: Let’s start with the landscape. When I read the draft press release I thought it competes with Google at one level and MCN at another. What is the differentiation?

Regular readers will recall that MSG has partnered with bnetTV to cover industry events such as CTIA and, more recently, Mobile World Congress (MWC). The team did an awesome job, producing 200+ interviews. I focused on analysis, and conducted some 20 interviews with senior executives at companies including abphone, BuzzCity, Movius, Gracenote, Mob4Hire, GyPSii, AdMob, BuddyMob, Gigafone, BubbleMotion, Visto, JumpTap, and SurfKitchen (in no particular order). From JumpTap’s mobile advertising strategy, to Gracenote’s new music search and share features, to SurfKitchen’s widget launch, the video interviews are a valuable knowledge resource.

Today marks the debut of these new segments on the MSG video jukebox (located in the right-hand sidebar). This week’s focus, and feature video in the player, is my interview with Shane Lennon, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development at GyPSii, a must-watch company leading in the race to deliver connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks, and location/navigation. In our interview we connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers.

Indeed, it’s the raft of announcements over the last weeks — including a partnership to embed GyPSii’s app on a range of LG mobile phones; the tie-up with Nokia and RIM (blackberry) to make the app available on a wide variety of their devices; and a wise decision launch an open API (allowing partners to call the shots on how they integrate GyPSii into their mobile strategy and devices) – that speaks volumes about the company’s new and stronger focus. My take: GyPSii has both the ideas and the impetus to impact our mobile lifestyles.

In addition to the interview and my analysis (below), I also encourage you to read more about GyPSii in my regular column for the bnetTV newsletter, which counts some 10,000 readers. For all my coverage and columns in one place, check out this page on the bnetTV site dedicated to MSG news and views. Thanks again to bnetTV’s Michelle and Tony Sklar for promoting MSG to their growing audience of industry executives and professionals, and to Nicole Scott for bringing it all together in some great brainstorming sessions!