Read between the lines, and GyPSii goes one huge step beyond the slew of location-aware, mobile social networking services we’ve see up to this point. Sure, it allows people to instantly capture and share what they are actually doing, building a multi-media virtual diary on their world – the places they have been and the things that they have done.  But it also allows people to search (and find) these places/people/experiences with their mobile phones.

I am immediately reminded of the key theme of the Netsize Guide 2009, a milestone mobile almanac that represents an exciting (and on-going) collaboration with Stan Chesnais, Netsize CEO, who steered me in the direction of the next mega-trend in mobile: The blurring of the barriers between the virtual and physical worlds.

But it’s more than an adrenalin-driven vision of the future. As we described in the book (which I urge you to download via the MSG sidebar), it’s happening now, and examples range from Ford’s super-cool use of augmented reality in a mobile marketing campaign, to visual search/advertising schemes supported by SnapNow, to GyPSii’s little known business model, which is all about indexing the world around us for the delivery of relevant advertising and services we can’t yet imagine. (I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting with GyPSii at the time I wrote the book, but you can bet it has a top-notch spot in the 2010 Guide!)

Shortly before GyPSii launched its iPhone app, Vanessa Vigar, Head of Corporate Communications, invited me to company HQ in Amsterdam to connect with Dan Harple, GyPSii CEO. The interview was a meeting of the minds, which I have produced as a two-part podcast here on MSG. (Thanks again for reaching out, Vanessa!)

In Part 1, Dan gives me the high-level view of what GyPSii is (and isn’t), presents his no-holds-barred view of the real market for location services, and walks me through the value propositions (for people and GyPSii partners) that are intertwined with the company mission to make sure all of us are out on our bikes searching the planet, instead of on our PCs searching the Internet.

Listen to the podcast. [17:00]

For background on  GyPSii and a review of some of the recent announcements (deals with handset manufacturers, impressive traction in China, and the newly-released Open Experience API), check out my bnetTV interview with Shane Lennon, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development at GyPSii, in the MSG video jukebox (located in the right-hand sidebar).

Audio interview excerpts:

MOBILITY: Despite the fact we have mobile services, we still tend to experience life and everything around us in a sit-down, do-nothing mode. “Everyone’s connected now, but our lives are developing a kind of virtual feel to them that I think is thin.” Dan and his team (mostly ex-Netscape) developed GyPSii to “record your life in a digital way, so wherever you are you can record what you’re doing and you can share that with communities, your friends, your family.” The newly-released module, called GyPSii Connect, automatically connects people with their other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.

LOCATION: Is LBS the next big thing? Maybe – but our definition of it is limiting our ability to break new ground. A problem is our outmoded paradigm. “To create innovation you don’t look in the rear view mirror.” GyPSii does location, “but it’s not all we do.”

SEARCH: A primary function of GyPSii is PlaceMe. From the website: “PlaceMe – allows you to create a point of interest (POI) and associate a current or previous image, video, audio and text, URL and reference the POI to your current or last geo-location, categorize, tag and describe the point of interest and submit to the server in real time to a personal or publicly designated folder in your MyPlaces (your record of points of interest).” Put simply, every time you do [perform] a PlaceMe, you create a searchable place on the Internet. GyPSii has put this function at the center of a new search paradigm. It’s all about “a much deeper level of relevancy which isn’t about a virtual world, it’s about a real world.  So, when I search, I don’t want to really search what other websites people clicked on, I want to search other places and experiences that people had.”

PEOPLE-POWERED SEARCH: Google search is about PageRank, an algorithm that, like a popularity contest, pushes what the mass market says is cool. But there’s more to life than following the crowd. GyPSii relies on people to make results relevant and potentially more valuable to us. It’s all about “building an alternative global Internet search index.” As Dan puts it: “I think the only way you build that index is if you empower millions of people to build it.  So, that’s natural, it’s organic, it came from real people, I just think that’s a cooler index to have.” After all, it’s people and their opinions that matter most. “When I search, I don’t really care how many people clicked on a restaurant’s website, it doesn’t matter to me.  What matters is did my friends go there, did people in my community go there, who goes there and what do they think of it.”

MOBILE ADVERTISING: Part 2 focuses on this topic – but we do get a view into the business models Dan imagines can emerge when you combine people-powered search and real world experience. “I think the future of advertising is about a much deeper level of relevance and context and location.”

iPHONE: It’s game-changing – but the barrier to entry for that coolness may not be so high after all. “As a developer, you can make much cooler apps on the iPhone right now, but I would suggest that other companies who build browsers, [such as] Opera and Microsoft, will create a much better mobile browser. But I think the barrier to [an] enhanced user experience is more at an operating system level. (Translated: Symbian is clunky and needs to get better, for example.) As far as advertising goes, Dan isn’t jumping on the iPhone bandwagon. “I’d say the amount of ads served in the mobile market right now isn’t yet quite material.  It’s material when it’s at scale, and, for all the love of Apple and the coolness of the iPhone, it’s not a product that’s had scale.”

GYPSII iPHONE APP: (Note: This interview was conducted prior to launch, so no deep details.) What could Dan say at the time: It does more and looks cooler (because it’s an iPhone, of course!). But look under the hood and the iconography of GyPSii (the visual vocabulary), which is core to what GyPSsii is, will stay the same. “Practically, what this means is when GyPSii rolls out on the iPhone, it will reflect the next-gen – and we don’t call it UI any more, we call it UX – user experience.  So, our next-gen UX will be on the iPhone and then that’s already in build processes on all of our other device families.

OPENEXPERIENCE API (OEx):  Just call it the “window into the management of your social fabric and your interaction with people, not just on GyPSii but on other social networks.  It’s the management of all your social media, how you record it, how you share it, and how you search for it.” What does it mean for partners? In a word: Speed. “If you think what Facebook Connect has done for Facebook, it’s a similar thing for GyPSii; it allows us to get integration with other partners fast.” As Dan puts it: “The way to think about this is if we had to go and do a custom build of GyPSii on every device, no company could afford to do that, there are too many devices coming and they’re coming too quickly….So, we essentially built a core platform and an API around that platform which drives all the experiences you see in GyPSii, so then all those key functions can be called out of that API.” The OEx is at the heart of a recent deal with Samsung. “They’re launching their own social media location-based portal, and essentially it’s GyPSii, it’s using the GyPSii back-end and using our open experience API to make all that happen.”

In Part 2 – Dan and I take a look at mobile advertising, which is live in countries such as China. We also deep dive into the details of the Gypsii business model, one Dan calls the waterfall model, and we dissect the GyPSii mobile search paradigm, one based on a new concept Dan calls PlaceRank.

Special thanks to GyPSii for hosting my podcast until I can work out the details to upload my content to the cloud and make it avaiable to MSG readers via iTunes. It’s work in progress and coming soon!

To fully understand the significance of Scanbuy’s decision, it’s important to review the events and announcements that have effectively dealt companies up and down the mobile barcode business ecosystem (Scanbuy included) a new hand of cards.

First came the decision in February by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the patent claims filed by NeoMedia Technologies, a provider of barcode scanning solutions. The move prompted NeoMedia to push forward in March on a patent licensing program and tie up with other vendors (3GVision, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Tag, and NeuStar) in a pilot program based on open standards in a bid to show interoperability between the technologies out there and – more importantly – position NeuStar, a short code registry, as a central clearinghouse in the middle. More about this model and Jonathan’s own take in the podcast.

I appreciate that the barcode space is a tough one to navigate, which is why I also recommend this simple primer from Tim Green over at Mobile Entertainment.  Unfortunately, he wrote it before this flurry of activity.

So, what moved Scanbuy to open up the specs to the code that Jonathan stresses has been “labelled” proprietary (thus repeating the discussion around semantics that we began in this earlier interview on MSG)? At one level, it is a giant step toward building a viable ecosystem. But we can also read it as reaction to the pilot program (supported by players 3GVision, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Tag, NeoMedia, and NeuStar).

In response to my comment that NeuStar is clearly positioning itself to play the honest broker in a kind of hybrid model, Jonathan reminds me that Scanbuy can now also play the role of a trusted third party. “We don’t have a proprietary code or reader any more.” (Before Scanbuy’s wise decision to go open, other barcode companies could make a case that it was a closed shop with Scanbuy the only company that could both issue EZcode barcodes and decode them.) The argument from other vendors was that they didn’t have a choice because Scanbuy was the only company that could provide the technology, Jonathan explained. “But that now is off the table.”

NUTS & BOLTS: Scanbuy has committed to publishing the specifications for reading EZcodes, giving companies/developers the ability to create EZcodes. “So, a software company could create software for handsets which enables handsets to read those codes, and they could also create server side software which allows them to create the codes.” Plug-ins? They appear to be work in progress. “We’re looking at that; we made the announcement first. [As to] how we implement it, we’re looking at a lot of different tactics on how to release it and what the best way is.” De-coding? “Anybody who currently creates handset software to de-code barcodes could integrate these specifications into their current decoders.  So, 3GVision, for instance, who have software which de-codes QR and data matrix, could build in the functionality to also de-code EZcodes.

PROCEDURE & SUPPORT: For now, it’s all through Scanbuy. “Over the coming weeks they’ll be able to look at the specifications and create a platform which meets the specifications to create the codes on their own, if they want.” Meanwhile, Scanbuy is thinking through the details of offering support. “Support will probably not be free, however. So we’ll make the specifications free, support is probably going to cost.  What it’s going to cost, I’m not sure.”

OPEN STANDARD: Open is the direction the industry needs to go. While the pilot program, led by NeuStar, may be on the mark, Jonathan wonders whether it might not be too much, too soon. “Too many players, too early, can create too much competition and confusion in the market and it’s not necessarily a good thing.” As he puts it: “To have multiple players, you have to have multiple revenue opportunities for those players to be able to operate and compete, and it’s not clear right now what everybody’s revenue model is in that scenario.”

NEUSTAR: “We’ll see what happens over the next few months.  Obviously we are playing the most active role in the U.S. today as the only authorized code and the only authorized platform provider, so, we’re a major player in the space in the U.S. and we believe we’ll continue to be going forward.” (NeuStar has a strong focus on the U.S. market, thus Jonathan’s comments are limited to that geography.) Not satisfied, I put the question to him straight: What is Scanbuy’s position and will it participate in the pilot? “They [NeuStar] are positioning themselves as the clearing house which everything goes through. It’s not clear to us that they will play that role, so for us participating in the pilot at this point, we don’t know that it’s in our best interest to do that at this point [time].  We believe that if that is the final structure that the carriers decide is the best for the U.S. market, there will be a role for us to play. But it’s not clear. By no means is this the de facto structure for the U.S. market.”

DRIVERS: What is going to move barcode solutions out into mainstream mobile marketing and advertising campaigns? “This market will happen if readers are built into phones by the carriers, not by pushing downloads to consumers.” (By way of background, Scanbuy’s ScanLife handset application has already been pre-loaded on handsets from LG, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and been made compatible for mobile phones running on Google Android as well as BlackBerry, iPhone, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.) “The carriers need to decide, OK, are we bundling readers on our phones or not? Sprint in the U.S. is about to start pre-loading our software on their phones, which is great news for the industry and for us.  But we need the others to get on board, and this has to become standard in every phone just as your Internet browser is that you use on your mobile device.”

EUROPE: Spain and Italy lead the pack – mainly because operators in these countries have chosen to pre-load readers on all their handsets. “What you’re starting to see [in Spain] is widespread code use. Marketers can go to several different campaign managers and get their codes, and they [the codes] will work across multiple operator platforms and handsets in the market.  If that’s the ecosystem that evolves, codes will be everywhere and they will be completely integrated into all marketing materials at all levels for marketers and media.”

DIRECT/INDIRECT MODELS: Which models are popular where? Japan has embraced a direct model (routing the user who scans the barcode directly to a site/destination). The trend in Western Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. is toward an indirect model, where scanning the barcode takes the user to a third-party server (where the site/action linked to a specific advertising campaign can be stored but also changed on the fly to freshen the sales pitch or simply point the user to a different site). “What you’re seeing in countries like Australia …is this hybrid approach where the campaign managers create a direct code that has a URL embedded in it, but that URL goes to their platform and the platform then tells it what URL to link to. So it’s a direct code but it goes through a campaign manager’s platform, not to the person who is putting the code out.” Could the U.S. adopt a similar model to make barcodes work? It could, provided that “code readers are ubiquitous on all phones; they read direct codes but the codes go to authorized campaign manager platforms.”

OUTLOOK: Is huge (!), but not all countries are moving at the same pace. “The markets where carriers and handset manufacturers are embracing it and getting phones into the market with software on them will take off the fastest.” In 2-3 years “codes will be everywhere in Spain and Italy.” In the U.S., the timeframe is “probably 3 to 4 years, and Latin America is probably 3 years.” Are we heading for a shake-in or shake-out? “From a competitive standpoint, I think you’re going to have major players in different geographies and the players in each geography will get stronger; there won’t be a lot of competition in each geography.” There may be a couple of players, but there are not going to be ten, for example. And this goes double for clearinghouses. “There aren’t going to be ten clearing houses in Spain or Italy or the U.S.

HOT TOPICS: In the U.S., it’s about “patent-related questions” and figuring out the right structure and ecosystem to take barcodes to the next level. In Europe it’s about growth – because the market is growing – and identifying the catalysts for even stronger growth. What’s next for Scanbuy? The excitement builds as the company nears the launch of two carriers in Spain, laying the groundwork for the first cross-carrier launch in Europe. “Spain will be the first country to actually launch and be operational with an interoperable system, and therefore our other markets around the globe, Latin America, US, Denmark, will be interoperable with those platforms so we’ll have a multi-country, 5 to 7 country interoperable system up and running in the next six weeks.”

My take: As I wrote earlier, the focus on open standards changes all the rules. The Scanbuy announcement signals a new chapter in the barcode industry (and a long overdue rethink on the part of Scanbuy). It also jumpstarts an equally overdue discussion around openness. But – as we know from similar discussions elsewhere in the telecoms and IT industries – there are different degrees and definitions of openness. How open is open and which open is best? The jury is out on that one.

In the meantime, there’s no overlooking the overlap between Scanbuy’s new push toward open standards and the progress of a pilot program (in which Scanbuy currently has little interest) aimed (likewise) at establishing open standards and a viable ecosystem. From my vantage point, the laundry list of fragmentation and intellectual property issues has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. But that’s not an excuse for not moving the market forward. Scanbuy’s decision marks real progress toward openness – and there is no turning back for anyone. Now all parties will have to walk the talk (and abandon the rhetoric we read across the blogosphere) if they want mobile advertisers to embed barcodes in their marketing strategies and not just dabble with one-off experiments.

Speaking of walk the talk, today Scanbuy’s EZ codes features on the cover BrandDigital: Simple Ways Top Brands Succeed in the Digital World, a business book by branding expert Allen Adamson. The 2D barcode on the back cover connects directly to the title’s page on Amazon’s mobile website, making this the first book to be sold in North America that includes an EZcode to sell the title via the mobile device. As Jonathan put in a statement: “This is a perfect example of how a 2D code placed on any physical media can send an interested shopper directly to a purchase opportunity. The mobile commerce experience has improved substantially over the past twelve to eighteen months, and we expect to see more of these applications in the future being initiated through our technology.”

This scenario also figures prominently in the Netsize Guide 2009, a 250-page mobile industry overview I wrote and offer for free download via a link on the homepage (sidebar).

Barcodes or visual search? Which technology approach will best link our virtual and physical worlds to support commerce? What do YOU think?

(I should mention at this juncture that the MSG global mobile industry research project and publication will feature a section on barcode companies and showcase successful mobile advertising campaigns. If you are a company in this space, or would like MSG to consider a mobile advertising campaign case study for inclusion in this work, then please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

The 450+ attendees at Think Mobile that descended on NYC in March can count themselves lucky. We were treated to an excellent line-up of 60+ top-notch speakers, chosen by my esteemed colleague Matthew Snyder, Founder & CEO of ADObjects, a strategic cross-media consultancy, for their insights, ideas, and willingness to share both. Feedback from my panel on Mobile Search & SEO has been overwhelmingly positive, in part because Matthew and I brainstormed and purposely brought together an eclectic mix of individuals passionate about their work and the mobile industry at large.

I was so impressed by the caliber of speakers (Michael Slinger, Manager, Google: Rachel Pasqua, Director, Mobile Strategy, iCrossing; and David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy at 360i) that I have decided to showcase each individually on MSG. (I had the opportunity to do a video interview with David and will be back with more on that, and his views on social media and mobile search, once the bnetTV team has edited the footage and posted in the video player in the sidebar.)

Today I kick off this “mini-series” with Bob Rosenschein, Answers Corporation CEO and mobile search “guru” (my description- he’s far too modest). The company’s social search service WikiAnswers.com has seen some stellar growth, according to comScore. In March, the measurement and market research firm reported that WikiAnswers.com U.S. unique visitors reached nearly 19 million in January 2009, compared to 729,000 in December 2006. During this time period, WikiAnswers.com’s market share increased from 4 percent to nearly 35 percent, vs. Yahoo! Answers, based on U.S. unique visitors. Overall, WikiAnswers.com was identified as the fastest growing top 200 U.S. domain for all of 2008.

Another milestone: Answers Corporation counted 10 million questions in the WikiAnswers.com Q&A database. (Answers Corporation acquired the WikiAnswers.com database in 2006, and since then questions have increased over 35-fold.) As Bruce D. Smith, Chief Strategic Officer of Answers Corporation, who leads the Community Development team, put it in a recent release: The WikiAnswers community is “experiencing exciting growth,” with over 500 volunteer supervisors and millions of contributors, supported by our 12-member Community Development Team.

Social search meets mobile? Regular readers will know I am excited about this combination. (In fact, I commented on this emerging business model in recent-release white papers from mobile search companies Taptu and abphone.) In view of WikiAnswers.com’s increasing popularity, I decided to take a closer look at the company’s future roadmap. I caught up with Bob to get the inside track on his company’s mobile ambitions, discuss the key criteria for an optimal mobile search experience, and the role of mobile advertising in the scheme of things.

Listen to the podcast. [16:18]

By way of background, Answers Corporation, founded in 1998, was formerly known as GuruNet. It changed its name to Answers Corporation in 2005. The company is best known as the owner of the popular social knowledge Q&A site WikiAnswers.com, and the “encyclodictionalmanacapedia” Answers.com. Answers is a Google AdSense partner, meaning thatAnswers.com and WikiAnswers.com show Google performance ads on their pages.

WIKIANSWERS.COM: It’s a fast-mover. “On WikiAnswers, people type in the questions; other people answer them; and hopefully, over time, we get the best possible answers. Our goal is to give the best answers anywhere on the Web, for any kind of question.”

MOBILE SEARCH: Bob can’t give specifics and I respect that. But he can give us an indication of what is in the pipeline. As he put it: “I will say that the area of delivering our answers on mobile is obviously of enormous interest to us this year and next year.” While companies can tailor their services to specific platforms and devices, Bob doesn’t recommend it and hints that his company is focused on “adapting our product lines over time to work on all of the mobile devices, and of course we mean smartphones, but not only smartphones — anything with a Web browser.”

OPTIMAL USER EXPERIENCE: Quick answers in fewer clicks is the algorithm for mobile search success. “We believe that there’s too much information overload.” The problem is that search engines are really good at searching the Web, but what do they deliver? “A page of links; of links to other sites, but you know what? The mobile world still has slow browsers….If you get a list of links to pages that are mobile pages, you’re almost afraid to click on one of them. How do you know if it’s going to be a 5 second page or a 25 second page?” You don’t know. “Our goal is to give people useful information in fewer clicks. And so that’s actually a very good hint towards how we see the mobile world evolving and what we think we might be able to add to it.”

MOBILE SEO: Is the end-game about delivering answers on the go? If so, then what is the potential impact on SEO? In a word: Profound. Bob points out that Google’s introduction of a canonical element aimed at assisting SEO clearly recognizes mobile content is different from the Web. “In other words, you can now make a page that exists in different forms, give it a canonical name, and tell Google that this is the canonical page. This is the real page, and all these other things are just adaptations of it for different user experiences and phone factors, especially mobile. So, Google is being advised that this is the same page as another page in a legitimate fashion such that it doesn’t hurt SEO.

PUBLISHER TIPS: Brand is everything, which is why companies must deliver a quality user experience that begins with the basics, such as presentation. “Users will have even less patience on a small device. You have to get it right and it’s a really different ballgame in terms of presentational dynamics.” Google and Yahoo will continue to be important, and I think the challenges for the rest of us [will be] to find our place in this new world…. [It] will boil down to user experience. In the words of Tim O’Reilly; ‘How do we get users to visit our content in an age where they are free to choose content?’

MONETIZATION & MOBILE ADS: Google changed the rules when it introduced text ads on their pages that didn’t look like text ads. “Google zagged when everybody else was zigging, and they did something very brilliant.” But the real lesson we must apply to mobile is relevancy.  ”It is attractive to the user; it’s more trustworthy. But if that weren’t enough, it is informative and not interruptive.” But even relevant ads might not convince users to accept mobile advertising, according to recent research from Nielsen Mobile (via Citi Investment Research, a division of Citigroup Global markets). Bob was kind enough to share a short excerpt and some surprising stats from the client report, written by analyst Mark Mahaney. Under the heading: “There is a material consumer resistance to mobile advertising,” Mahaney states privacy concerns and users’ skepticism are holding back mobile advertising in the U.S.

Meanwhile, we learn from the Thanh Nien Daily that mobile advertising is booming in Vietnam. Quoting Aaron Cross, managing director of The Nielsen Company in Vietnam, who spoke at a two-day conference on Integrated Marketing in Vietnam which wrapped up last Friday in Ho Chi Minh City, the post reports (according to the Nielsen Mobile Insights Survey 2008) almost half of mobile owners in Vietnam receive advertisements via SMS each month.

The majority of those ads are read by consumers. The survey also said 74 percent of people in HCMC and Hanoi, the country’s two economic hubs, own a mobile phone. Over half (58 percent) of the country’s urban population, and a third (37 percent) of rural residents own cell phones. But the way isn’t clear for mass marketing yet. Cross pointed out the new anti-spam government decree, which took effect last month in Vietnam, protects consumers from receiving unwanted messages on their mobile phones. However, cost-conscious Vietnamese consumers are open to “hot deals and great value to relieve pressure from their monthly budgets.”

Mobile advertising is also gaining traction in Japan. This post, quoting Tom Bowman, BBC.com’s VP international ad sales who spoke at the Digital Symposium hosted by Habari Media last week in the Western Cape, argues consumers are “almost twice as receptive to mobile advertising as to magazine advertising, making it the highest priority for prospective advertisers.”

WHAT’S NEXT?: The industry has to sort out business models. Is it sponsorship? Is it an animated display ad? Or is it some kind of click-through only on performance ads? “But I’m going to say something very flippant now: “Who cares? …It’s a branding opportunity… and sometimes you subsidize one part of your business with another.” Bob would rather “get the service right and figure out how to monetize later.”

Special thanks to Alison Minaglia at Technology PR for the image of Bob addressing the ThinkMobile audience!

Overall, the report is a good read. It covers all the bases, from mobile ad revenue predictions to estimates for mobile search revenues, and it recounts the results of a road test (Google vs. Yahoo) to determine (literally) which provider is getting more bang for the buck when it comes to paid search.

Indeed, mobile search performance is at the top of my radar as Peggy Albright (founder of Albright Research, and MSG associate) and I have just wrapped up a white paper comparing mobile voice services available on the iPhone. More importantly, we have moved into the final phase of our Mobile Search Performance Report (MSPR), an industry-first quarterly report documenting the mobile search experience across a range of geographies, operators, and search engine providers, providing insight into the key performance metrics, such as click-distance and mobile advertising relevancy.

While I may have my issues with some of the Bernstein report findings, there’s no arguing the fact that Google controls a sizeable share of the U.S. mobile search market,  despite the fact the search giant consistently delivers a poorer user experience (an observation based on MSPR findings as well as those reported by Mobile Commerce during a recent Mobile Search Master Class).

Based on brand reach research (number of visitors to a search property divided by the estimated total of visitors ever to access the search category  in a month) and comScore estimates (as reported in September 2008), Bernstein Research reckons Google had 62 percent of the U.S. market in January 2009. Yahoo came in second with 30 percent, and Microsoft’s Windows Live finished third with 11 percent.

Listen to the podcast here. [19:21]

Against this backdrop, Bernstein estimates that mobile search revenues in the U.S. will grow from $20 million in 2008 to $910 million by end-2012. (Much lower than the numbers I’ve seen, so the truth must lie somewhere in the middle.) In contrast, mobile advertising revenues are set to skyrocket. Bernstein figures revenues will grow from $160 million in 2008 to $2.3 billion by end-2012. It further projects that global revenues will grow from $700 million in 2008 to $7.2 billion by end-2012.

But the real news is Google’s algorithm for success. Google’s strategy of “pulling through” users from its PC platform to mobile appears to be paying off big-time. Google is not only benefiting from user habit (users tend to visit the same brands and destinations they know from the PC Internet, with Google leading the pack); it’s able to keep all the cash from paid search advertising. As the report points out: “Google has not made to our knowledge any agreement to split revenues with the carriers. Google is possibly also gambling upon intensifying carrier competition and a favorable political climate to drive through de facto ‘wireless net neutrality’ and avoid splitting its revenues with the carriers altogether.” (Think it through. It’s an outspoken observation – and possible outcome – that should have alarm bells ringing in carrier boardrooms…)

At the other end of the spectrum, Yahoo and Microsoft focus on paid default placement (a strategy of negotiating to have their search engine app pre-loaded on the mobile deck so it is available as the default). Unlike Google, the search engines split their paid search advertising revenues with their mobile operator partners. (Yahoo with AT&T and T-Mobile and Microsoft with Verizon.) It’s a strategy to which I give high marks because it potentially encourages a more robust and healthier business ecosystem. However, Bernstein doesn’t seem to share my long-term view. It focuses on the here and now, concluding that Google’s strategy of winner-takes-all “will result in significantly higher margins” than Yahoo and Microsoft.

But a closer look (and an excellent podcast with Jeffrey) reveals good reasons to watch Yahoo over the next months. Vast improvements to mobile search and an exciting set of mobile apps are a boost to Yahoo’s popularity and potential for growth. (More on my take after I hear back on my request for an in-depth briefing to connect the dots in the raft of recent announcements, so watch this space.) Bernstein thinks Yahoo has “already overtaken Google.” The challenge now is to “translate this gain into superior financial performance with advertisers.”

As Jeffrey put it in the podcast:  “To Yahoo’s credit; Yahoo has improved enormously in mobile search recently. And clearly, its applications are resonating more with users. Now that may ultimately translate down the line into a more favorable share, so possibly, going with Yahoo might end up being a good strategy provided Yahoo can keep its momentum going and keep improving. Probably at this minute, it seems that the worst choice for the carriers would be to go with Microsoft, which is where Verizon has gone.”

Among the highlights:

GOOGLE WINS?: Sure seems that way. As Jeffrey puts it: “Even though competitors have preferential placement through deals, and even though competitors may have apps that consumers say they prefer, Google’s still winning.” Why? Brand reach is a big part of it. “What we’re seeing with Google is: That without compelling people in any way – you don’t have to sign up a contract to use Google, you don’t have to pay Google anything, you just use it if you prefer it -  people, in 60 percent of the cases, will just elect to use Google.”

VODAFONE & YAHOO: “After analysis and results, and we’re doing some more user surveys at the minute which we think will probably confirm [our view]: Vodafone might actually be wasting their money.” Drilling down a bit more Jeffrey says “Vodafone might not be wasting money in the sense that they’re doing a deal with Yahoo, it just that they probably could have done better with Google had they selected Google under very similar terms.” (A tall order indeed if we consider Google doesn’t split paid search revenue. (I later asked Jeffrey to look at it from the operator perspective. Does it pay to give it all to Google? Listen in and let me know what you think.)

ANDROID: It’s a fail as far as Jeffrey is concerned. The bad news: The apparent collapse of the Android Alliance and the surprisingly low brand reach of Google among G-1 users have dealt a tough blow to Android. The good news: It doesn’t seem to matter. “Android strategy doesn’t seem to have been a success, but it hasn’t hampered Google’s outcome.” The pull-though strategy – picking up users who repeat their PC behavior on their mobile phones – has paid off.  We should keep in mind Jeffrey is talking about the trend in the U.S.  No doubt users in emerging markets that have leapfrogged the PC altogether are likely to be a little harder for Google to simply “pull through.” What’s more, MCN tells me user preference in Japan and much of Asia favors content and commerce over search results.

OPENNESS & OPERATORS: “I think it boils down to the control mindset with the operators. The operators need to feel control, and it depends whether you would accept a lesser degree of control and a lot more money, or you want a higher degree of control and get nothing.”

My take: It depends on where you are in the value chain. For investors, it’s enough to know Google’s paid search pays dividends. But the mobile search road test Bernstein uses to determine the effectiveness of paid search strategies employed by Google and Yahoo also highlights an important factor that could play in Yahoo’s favor as more people do more with their mobile phones.

By way of background, Bernstein road tests Google’s approach (giving prominent placement to ads) and – based on the Google Ad Traffic Estimator – estimates what the advertiser had to pay Google for the top-notch spot. Yahoo, on the other hand, has organized its apps into a carousel that gets high marks on user experience, but makes it tougher to show ads.

Read between the lines, and this criticism may actually hold the essence of Yahoo’s longer term competitive advantage. Its paid search strategy correctly tends to emphasize the quality of the user experience over the quantity of paid search ads that could be delivered. As the report points out: Yahoo favors delivering a good user experience over “overt monetization via display ads.”

But is that really a shortcoming? Doesn’t delivering a better user experience ultimately solve the monetization issue? A better user experience means more users, more searches and more opportunities for brands and mobile advertisers.

And let’s examine the premise that the end-game is about displaying ads at the top of the results list. Many companies – including those that support Every Single One Of Us – are beginning to question the fit between PC advertising methods and our intensely personal mobile devices (and the metrics we use to measure their success/failure).

User experience or prominent placement? Which makes for a more sustainable business model over time? The jury is out on this one – so please share your ideas and insights.

Disclaimer: MSG has been chosen to undertake the Mobile Advertising U.K. research project on behalf of Every Single One Of Us; MSG is an Every Single One Of Us Collaborator. MCN has been an MSG supporter.

In the meantime, I encourage you to listen in to Tom, who offers entrepreneurs valuable advice and the inside track on the mobile companies and concepts highest on his radar. Some good news in these challenging economic times: There is plenty of money and opportunity, but it’s up to entrepreneurs to structure their good ideas so VCs get it. What pitches are getting the most traction? The Apple App Store and similar schemes from Google (Android), RIM at one end of the spectrum, and Qualcomm and Amdocs at the other (check next week for an MSG exclusive on Amdocs app store strategy), have – as Tom put it – “changed the entrepreneurial landscape.” Open systems, open storefronts and open operators. Now all we need is the apps.

Listen to the podcast. [10:34]

CREDIT CRUNCH: Not in this market. As Tom put it: “The credit crisis has not hit venture capitalists yet. We don’t have a window that people can pull up to and say give us our money back please. We have very low liquidity expectations in general. So, on the whole, venture capitalists have not run out of money. The bars are high and it’s difficult, but my gosh, my advice to entrepreneurs is keep working on your idea until it does appeal to the money, or don’t use the money to do it.”

MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKS: Great opportunity but a big risk. The trick: Deciding what is going to be viral and picking services that have the necessary ‘cool’ factor. His advice: “I think that there are [openings] to take advantage of successful mobile social networking opportunities. I think there’s a chance to co-market once they’ve succeeded. There are some very cool things that large groups of interconnected people can do together, and there are some tremendous opportunities to help them do it.” (An example he offers is Ontela, a company he’s invested in that is getting serious traction with an offer that unlocks the photos users save on their phones by allowing them to automatically save them to their email, a “My Pictures” folder on their PC, and a range of online Web photo albums. The offer is a boost to mobile operators and Web-based image services because it gives them a center spot in the exchange, with an offer to deliver people’s picture where they want them.) As Tom sums it up: “One click, take the picture, and it’s gone. And that’s pretty cool. That opportunity wouldn’t exist if there weren’t large groups of mobile social networks [and members].”

DEAL MAKING: Between three finds Tom has “10 to 20 ideas that are moving along towards what I think could be very large opportunities.” In fact, one of them is an enablement tool for mobile social networking. It would also enable a brand to have a personal relationship with consumers – a hint that 2009 may indeed be the year of engagement.

If this is indeed the year of engagement and two-way conversations between brands and people on their mobile phones, then we’ll surely need some guidelines to make sure it’s a dialogue built on trust. Good timing as this is also the year Every Single One Of Us, a global effort aggregating knowledge, and authorizing best practice and methodologies that ensure optimal mobile advertising user experience, moves a huge step forward with a research project to identify growth opportunities in the emerging mobile advertising marketplace, and thus help ensure content is delivered in accordance with the 3Ps: Permission (people will decide what brand messages they interact with); Privacy (people will decide where there data is collected and how it is used); and Preference (people will decide what content they find relevant).

Another big opportunity is measurement. Everyone – particularly mobile advertising companies -  needs good analytics, and Tom tells me the demand for companies that can deliver has never been greater.

Disclaimer: MSG is closely alligned with Every Single One Of Us.

We also took the opportunity to discuss the state of supply and demand in the mobile advertising marketplace. In December AdAge reported (via MocoNews) the “onslaught of inventory” going mobile was bringing down prices. Prior to that, reporting in MocoNews left the impression that the inventory was not able to keep pace with demand. “Already, evidence is surfacing that big brands are cutting back on their mobile ad buys, which will make AdMob’s job more difficult since it already doesn’t have enough ad inventory to fill every request coming from publishers.” The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle, so I asked Jason for his take on the numbers and the reports circulating in the blogosphere.

His reply: AdMob has seen a “fairly flat market” with “supply outpacing demand just a bit.” Against this backdrop, AdMob continues to see “extremely strong demand for performance-based media.” With regards to the cost-per-thousand (CPMs) on the brand-based side of the business, “AdMob has dramatically grown in number of advertisers and the regularity of spend of those advertisers. At the same time, the number of users continues to grow, and the amount of media they’re consuming on their phones grows, there’s more and more inventory to serve to those advertisers.”

How is pricing? “We’ve had a fairly steady price plan. I think we were in the $10 to $15 rate card price range depending on how much targeting you were selecting for quite a while. We’ve seen that come under a little bit of sort of micro-economic pressure based on all of the supply in the market, but I would say the price [of] most of our brand-based media buys hasn’t changed more than 10 percent in the last year.”

Other highlights:

MOBILE METRICS: In a nutshell, smartphone operating system share and the rise of the iPod Tough are the main attractions in the new-release December AdMob Mobile Metrics Report. It reveals a significant increase in the number of ads it served up to iPod Touch users—from 86 million in November 2008 to 292 million in December 2008. The report noted requests doubled overnight on Christmas, and remained strong throughout the close of the month, leading BusinessWeek to question just how much of the device’s popularity is coming at the expense of the iPhone. Another surprise: A look at smartphone operating system (OS) share reveals the IPhone OS has already surpassed the RIM and Windows Mobile operating systems combined. (In the US, the iPhone OS generated 48 percent of smartphone requests in December, up from only 9 percent in May. The RIM OS and Windows Mobile follow with 19 percent and 15 percent share, respectively. Only two months after launch, Android has captured 2 percent OS share.) Overall, Symbian is the number one operating system with a 41 percent share and more than a 90 percent share in Africa and Asia. (Download the report here.) What was the impact of this shift on AdMob? “In November and December, we didn’t have enough … iPhone impressions to service all of the demand and we saw our price-point for iPhone inventory actually bid up.”

2009 TRENDS: More companies are planning to include mobile in their advertising campaigns and assigning budget to it now. “We’ve taken up-front buys from major agencies and advertisers for the first time in our history.” Other trends high on Jason’s radar: The arrival of the big players (Google, Yahoo Microsoft and AOL with Platform A) “spending a lot more attention on mobile, search and display in 2009.” Expect the “rapid maturation of the mobile advertising market as you get established players realizing that they have to play here and have to have a sophisticated solution in order to service the growth in demand.

FUTURE ROADMAP: Look for more granularity in both the mobile analytics tools and the monthly mobile metrics report. “We’ve seen a lot of interest seen a lot of interest on the part of advertisers in being able to benchmark against their competition. We’re seeing a lot of interest on the part of publishers to be able to understand where they stand relevant to their competition in their segment.”

Note: Jason and I spoke just prior to the Download Tracking announcement, so Jason couldn’t discuss the details of that particular announcement. But you can hear in the podcast that he was doing his best to drop clues, stressing that future innovation would focus on “helping advertisers track what’s going on with their ads at the point of the click after the click which is a place where AdMob’s been very vocal about the importance of measurement, as well as some important things at the user level that will allow advertiser’s to better reach the users that interest them most.” From the press release we know that the Download App (and the conversion tracking it provides) allows advertisers to drill down into conversion rates (by specific ad and for specific dates). We do have a view into the results of a limited test of the Download App and some interesting trends.

Among these:

· Free applications have an average conversion rate of 10 percent, significantly higher than the average 1 percent conversion rate for paid applications.

· Games generally have higher conversion rates than other categories of applications, up to a 100 percent improvement over non-game applications at similar price points.

· The App Store is an effective distribution platform for free applications. The average acquisition cost for free applications is under $1, significantly less than average application download costs on the PC Web.

I will reserve judgment until I test the tracking tool in a campaign. Regular readers will recall that my mobile advertising experiments – which provide the material for my continuing series of white papers – also analyze the mobile analytics tools provided by AdMob and Bango. Next in the series I look conduct mobile advertising campaigns across a range of mobile social networks. Judging from the excitement about advertising on the iPhone– it may well merit a separate white paper…

PODCAST: [16:33]

Disclaimer: AdMob has been an MSG supporter.

But it was Jonathan’s presentation in London last week – like no other – that has strengthened my determination to create/cultivate the linkages/ exchanges that will allow us all (“every single one of us,” as Jonathan would say) to move the industry a giant step forward. One day after a speech to the 450+ attendees at Future of Mobile, where Jonathan launched into a harsh critique of the mobile advertising industry (in fact, the entire communications industry), he switched gears and replaced his entertaining rant with a realistic roadmap to change. I was fortunate to witness the birth of this powerful plan and overjoyed that I accidentally left my MP3 recorder running.

If you do nothing else today, listen to Jonathan’s speech here.

It outlines the seven steps that the industry can/should/must follow to get where it needs to be. Jonathan aptly titles this chapter of our great adventure No Way Back From Here. And the truth is. There isn’t.

By way of background, it all began with Vol. 1 of a book/concept Jonathan dubbed The Communication Ideal. (Many of you may not know the context – and therefore miss the pivotal importance of Vol. 2 ( No Way Back From Here). For this reason, Jonathan and I are developing a comprehensive yet highly accessible summary of key points to post on MSG to make sure we’re all on the same page. On December 8, Jonathan “will close the Communication Ideal Phase of the ‘Every Single One Of Us‘ movement.” December 9 marks the start of No Way Back From Here, a new venture and one that will be the most powerful ever because it combines pragmatism and passion. (Listen to the audio and you’ll understand…)

Cognitive dissonance (until now rampant in the mobile space) has been replaced by the recognition of a painful truth: Mobile advertising (and perhaps mobile as a whole, if we accept advertising is nothing more than a form of content) is broken. Now we (“every single one of us”) has to fix it. The good news: We are ready to seek solutions. The great news: It’s not just about Jonathan.

Granted, Jonathan is spearheading this re-think, but his outreach to stakeholders, shareholders and investors at all levels ensures this effort will deliver real value and tangible results. And if you think this has never been/can never be done, then think again. Mobile Advertising Netherlands, an effort involving the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and companies up and down the mobile advertising value chain, has recently produced research aimed at providing companies “insights in the possibilities and status of Mobile Advertising in the Netherlands.” Clearly, there is a blueprint here to follow – and Jonathan gets this better than most.

However, as I have I observed earlier, it’s not about Jonathan; it’s about every single one of us.

There is encouraging evidence that many of us see it this way. In fact, the need for new guidance and new approaches runs like a leit motif through my work and my encounters with execs over the last weeks/months. From briefings with brands such as Coca-Cola, to yesterday’s amazing exchange with Mauro Montanaro, Jamba CEO (soon to be branded Fox Mobile), the same message comes through loud and clear: Mobile is not about technology, it is about communication.

Insisting that mobile content/apps/advertising is about anything else is a flawed approach and “business as usual” is not an option.

The need for a re-think also echoed through many of the presentations during the Mobile Content conference and the invigorating discussions/exchanges that followed. You could sense this groundswell at Future of Mobile when six social media practitioners/industry bloggers – including Helen Keegan of Beep Marketing and James Whately of Whatelydude – took the stage to tell us where mobile has failed and why. (More on Helen’s take here.)

Take a wider view and you can pick up on similar messages and similar intensity across a wide range of sites and destinations, including London Calling (written by mobile advertising evangelist and esteemed colleague Andrew Grill), David Cushman’s FasterFuture and Tomi Ahonen’s Communities Dominate Brands – to name a few.

Connect the dots, as Tomi and I did, and change is underway – at all levels everywhere. (Tomi documented his moment of clarity in this eloquent must-read post.)

My take: If we accept that advertising is content (just today MoCoNews tells us Gap and Target have launched iPhone apps to spread brand love and boost their value-add) and we recognize the pivotal role of mobile and community in advertising (translated: mobile social networks, viral marketing and personal recommendation), then the only sustainable business model lies at the intersection of these new universal constants.

And, if you listen in on the audio, take special note of Tomi Ahonen’s introduction. Yes, there is a change in Jonathan’s thinking, but there is also a seismic shift in the mobile industry -and the epicenter for this is London!

(I am immediately reminded of The Medici Effect, a book by Frans Johansson that documents how, why and where diversity in ideas and experiences breeds breakthrough ideas/insights. They occur at intersections, and London is certainly the place where mobile and advertising meet. I’m going to read the book again, and suggest you also check it out…)

And before you dismiss the potential significance of London (and the U.K.) in the scheme of all things mobile, consider today’s stats from Nielsen and the story they tell (as reported by Brand Republic): Mobile Internet use has skyrocketed in the U.K. in 2008, growing eight times more than PC-based Internet.

The Mobile Media View report found that from Q2 to Q3 2008, the number of people using the mobile internet increased by 25 percent from 5.8 million to 7.3 million . That’s compared to 35.5 million surfing the wired Internet, up only 3 percent from Q2 to Q3. The mobile audience is younger than its PC-based counterpart, and flocking to sites that provide immediate information/value. In fact, mobile Internet traffic also accounts for the lion’s share of visits to majority of page visits to sites like BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Gmail.

Finally, as I have twittered and told my closest associates, MSG will be a proactive part of what Jonathan is leading and what we are all building. The first efforts will center on #1 of the seven-step plan: Documenting/assessing the lay of the land through primary research, interviews and analysis.

Understanding how things are now is the first step to affecting significant future change.

And speaking of analysis, interviews with Coca-cola, Jamba (Fox Mobile) and some 25 other key execs/thinkers will be featured (in Q&A format) in the Netsize Guide 2009, a book whose unifying themes are empowerment, engagement and expansion. I am proud that Netsize has commissioned me to write the guide and pleased to collaborate with George Yaryura, Netsize Strategic Marketing Manager, who shares my enthusiasm about the project and excitement about its potential impact.

Why did I include a section on Blyk in my white paper?

Because the company has had phenomenal success with SMS/MMS campaigns, reporting an average 25 percent response rate to campaigns that harness the messaging technology to enable a conversation with users. No doubt this success is linked to Blyk’s bleeding-edge approach to mobile advertising (no spam – no way) and customer profiling (drilling down to deliver the right ad to the right person). However, in my white paper I also argue Blyk stands as an example of what a well-executed mobile advertising campaign can achieve – and one that mobile advertising newbies should note.

The bottom line: Strategy matters. If we accept advertising is content, then it’s clear advertisers/publishers can get a long way if they use existing technologies (SMS/MMS) and focus energy on crafting creative (and engaging) messages. As my dearest and most disruptive colleague Jonathan MacDonald points out: Advertising is in need of a re-think. It’s not about selling hard; it’s about listening harder to what consumers want. Jonathan (ex-Blyk) has obviously left his mark because Blyk excels in delivering advertising as content in a two-way conversation with customers. (For more background on Blyk, please check out this earlier analysis on MSG.)

Against this backdrop, it’s excellent timing to continue with part two of the audio interview marking Blyk’s first anniversary, which I conducted during a recent analyst briefing with Leif Fågelstedt, Blyk COO.

A message that comes through loud and clear: Blyk is not about warm-and-fuzzy business models. It is a serious and successful company that systematically collects and wields analytics (customer data and feedback) to drive high performance. Mobile advertising is just one area where Blyk’s approach pays off. In fact, Leif and I mused that the real money may be in Blyk’s ability to reality-check brands’ preconceived notions about what youth thinks, likes/dislikes, and will likely recommend to their friends.

Listen to the podcast here.

Before I deep dive into Leif’s views and my take, allow me to direct your attention to a recent research note from my esteemed colleague, Marek Pawlowski. (His thought-provoking analysis of mobile usability and user experience issues sets the bar, and his events attract some of the brightest minds in the business.)

We attended the same briefing, and have come to some similar conclusions. While I hint in my earlier post that Blyk should be considered as something other than an MVNO, Marek goes straight to the heart of the matter. He asks: Is it still appropriate to call Blyk an MVNO when the company’s real focus is on being a leading youth media?

While you’re making up your mind, some key figures tell us Blyk has long achieved this status. Some 100 brands have run some 1,000 campaigns on Blyk, reporting an average response rate of 25 percent. The response rate to some campaigns is much higher.

Seeing is believing (and also understanding why the campaigns struck such a chord with youth), so I asked Blyk to create a space where you can check them out for yourself. My personal thanks to Dan French and his colleagues who made this great graphic and the revolving carousel of mobile advertising case studies. Enjoy!

KEY STATS: ARPU isn’t relevant to Blyk and neither is CPM. The performance measurement that matters is Cost Per Response (CPR), which Leif says is “around 50p [pence] for Blyk. If you compare that with other media channels which our advertisers are looking at…[our] Cost Per Response is industry-leading.” Leif notes that other advertising channels cost much more if you want the same impact. The range is GBP1.50 (a figure he mentions in the podcast) to GBP2.20 (a figure Blyk presented during the analyst briefing). The point is: Blyk measures engagement (response), which is what counts on a personal device like mobile.

ADVERTSING MIX: Blyk sells each advertising SMS for GBP0.07 and each MMS for GBP0.22. “So the cost is 7 [pence] to send out the SMS and then 7 [pence] for every individual that is replying to your message.” The power of that two-way conversation is what allows Blyk to measure performance in CPR rather than CPM, a term “irrelevant to what Blyk is practicing.” Blyk assumed the lion’s share of pitches would be push-campaigns, but that has changed. “Probably 95 percent of everything we are doing right now is a combination of SMS and MMS, and [that] it can be linked to different websites….There are a lot of advertisers that have spent a lot of money creating their web portals and everything for mobile, and they want to drive traffic there.”

ROADMAP: Blyk is purposely targeting the countries where brands already spend the most to get their message across: Germany, Spain, Belgium, and The Netherlands. But prepare for some surprises from Blyk. “The first aim is to become the biggest youth media in Europe, and that is what we have communicated and that’s [what] we deliver. We are also looking to other kinds of opportunities outside Europe as well, but that’s not something I can reveal today.”

FREE SELLS: Blyk is ad-funded (hence, free to users). But it’s not an easy act to follow. Rivals would have to make significant investments in analytics tools and target the right growth markets. “We have invested a lot of money in profiling, ad engines, [as well as ways] to do booking and planning [of ads], and so on.” Leif also reports Blyk has “more partners than competitors right now in the marketplace.”

***

Shortly after this interview, Andrew Grill, MSG friend and frequent contributor, posted on a new ad-funded model called Tomato Plus from Croatian mobile operator Vip, a me-too Blyk model he strongly suggests we monitor moving forward. (You can check out the full post at London Calling here.)

By way of background, the brains behind this ad-funded model is global mobile advertising company Out There Media. The company has launched Mobucks, which it describes as a cross operator, cross advertiser marketplace, matching demand and supply for advertising over mobile phones. Mobucks effectively enables the creation of ad-funded tariffs for MNOs and MVNOs.

From the press release: “This mobile advertising marketplace enables consumers to sign-up, share their data, and receive targeted mobile SMS and MMS campaigns – which is exchanged for free airtime.” Out There Media reports response rates of “up to 75 percent.” Matthias Grundböeck, Vip Residential Marketing Director, is upbeat about his decision to launch an ad-funded sub-brand. “Mobucks AdFund by Out There Media gives us the opportunity to offer genuinely interesting, relevant and useful information to our customer base,” he said in a press statement.

I sent an email to Out There Media requesting a more in-depth briefing to answer key questions: What are the nuts and bolts of Mobucks and who is involved to date? How is customer data collected and what visibility does it provide into user preferences? How many ads, in what form (SMS/MMS) and from which brands? And the list goes on.

In the meantime, you may want to check out this related discussion at MobHappy.

My take: Blyk is a tough act to follow because it understands the business and the pivotal importance of customer analytics. Does the advance of similar models represent competition? Not in the markets that top the Blyk agenda. There, Blyk can protect its turf. However, the advance of ad-funded models such as Tomato Plus sends a clear message to mobile operators that they must choose their course.

To borrow from my esteemed colleague Chetan Sharma and his must-read mobile advertising book, Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market: Mobile operators must decide soon whether they wish to be access companies (pipes) or audience companies (media companies). If the goal is the latter, then they would do well to borrow a page from Blyk (and others) and focus on enabling an engaging advertising conversation with consumers (thereby gaining users’ trust and access to some key customer data) before other companies (search companies, social networks, media brands etc…) beat them to it.

Why the focus on Blyk? For one, it’s a perfect fit with my passion to analyze all things mobile at the intersection of content and context. Blyk has honed its customer profiling to send its users (between the ages of 16 and 24 – the toughest demographic there is) only those advertising messages that they (the users) deem relevant and valuable. Blyk understands the requirement to conduct its business at these crossroads (where content and context meet) and that is rare. It merits a closer look, and I recently attended an analyst roundtable hosted by Blyk executives to find out more.

Listen to the podcast here.

Before I list some of the podcast highlights, allow me to focus on one presentation slide that stood out during the roundtable – one I believe speaks volumes about the brand power Blyk has built over just one year. (No wonder esteemed colleagues such as Emeka Obiodu at Ovum speculate on whether a mobile operator might not just buy up Blyk to pull ahead in mobile advertising.)

At first glance, the slide documents that Blyk has the highest “net advocacy score” among mobile networks. (Translated: 40 percent of those polled would recommend Blyk.) In my view, the real story is the company Blyk now keeps. It trails the likes of YouTube and Facebook – and has pulled ahead of MSN, MySpace and Bebo.

My take: It may not have been Blyk’s strategy to be in the same league as social networks and Internet giants – but Blyk has made the grade.

And that without spending “a single pound on marketing.” Leif tells me Blyk has become a word-of-mouth brand with strong appeal among members of a choice demographic of trendsetters, early-adopters and lead users he calls “The Recommenders.” True to the name, these young people try new things and pass them around to their friends. (Little wonder why friend-tells-a-friend referrals are how 6 out of 10 Blyk users learned about the offer and joined up.)

Can Blyk cash in on this phenomenon to enhance its appeal to brands as a provider of mobile advertising (more correctly mobile social advertising) content to youth?

I put the question to Leif during the podcast. Blyk isn’t pursuing a wider strategy around providing content and enabling mobile social networking – but it could. For now, however, research and focus groups confirm his views that users can and will get content and services from other sources and other kinds of channels. “The evolution of mobile advertising will not go to [in the direction of] more content. It’s about dialogue …it’s not about [adopting] online business models or anything like that.”

During the roundtable, I learned that some companies have approached Blyk – a numbers-run company that takes customer analytics seriously – with a strong interest in purchasing a white-label solution that would get them up to speed and pave the way for them to engage users, collect and collate data, and so effectively advertise to empowered consumers. Will Blyk do it? There are discussions but the company will stick to its knitting – at least for now.

Other podcast highlights:

ADVERTISING & ENGAGEMENT: Combining the two is a core value at Blyk and a key competitive advantage that has allowed Blyk to chalk up some impressive stats, including a 25 percent response rate among Blyk users to mobile advertising campaigns. In fact, the campaign by Penguin to introduce the book Slam by author Nick Hornby resulted in a 67 percent response rate. Over half (51 percent) of users downloaded an audio clip (a preview of the opening chapters) to their mobile phone. Mobile advertising is in need of a re-think (as Jonathan MacDonald is quite quick to point out). Leif agrees and sees some encouraging progress in this direction. “The industry is starting to realize that mobile advertising equates to engaging young people. It’s a communication tool.”

MESSAGING & MESSAGES: Blyk messaging traffic is fairly evenly split between SMS and MMS. Interactive campaigns generally consist of 2 SMS text messages and one MMS. The first text message asks the user if they want to know about a specific brand or offer; the second continues the conversation; and the MMS comes as a follow-up. It’s more natural for someone in the 16-24 year-old demographic to receive and respond to an SMS as opposed to clicking through to a WAP link. (I learned during the roundtable that even if the user says “no” to the first SMS, indicating they are not interested, they will get a message back acknowledging that choice and asking them if they would be interested in something else. This advertising is a conversation.)

Will other forms of advertising, such as display and search advertising, be the “next big thing” in mobile advertising? Not if it’s a conversation. “People don’t want to be advertised to. They want an experience,” as Leif put it. “I think if I take the research …there was a lot of discussion about what would be the driving pattern in mobile advertising. With the [advent of] display advertising, it will be search advertising. [However,] the latest trend reports I have seen … talk about the lion’s share of all investments already now [and] moving forward is based on message advertising. This is for the simple reason that it’s the most common [communication] pattern and the way people use their phones.”

NO-BRAINER CAMPAIGNS: During the roundtable, Blyk asked the big question: Why has mobile advertising not been happening, and why is it happening now with Blyk? Clearly, the emphasis on engagement is part of the answer. But Blyk also has ambitious plans underway to make mobile advertising campaigns (planning, execution and measurement) a no-brainer for brands. Leif couldn’t disclose details, but it’s clear Blyk want to make this dead simple. A welcome change from the bureaucracy brands typically face when they put in a call to a mobile operator.

(Indeed, many advertisers with significant budgets have told me they threw in the towel after making dozens of calls around mobile operators and their ad partners. Even Shaun Gregory, Blyk Managing Director, UK, revealed his own experiment -posing as a brand with a GBP25,000 mobile advertising budget – ended up with him talking to “no less than 27 touch points” at which point he gave up.)

As Leif put it: “We have been working with a lot of big media agencies, and we have developed booking and planning tools that they can use. We also have a couple of frame agreements now in place with the biggest media companies in the U.K.”

CUSTOMER DATA & MORE: These are Blyk’s crown jewels. Users freely share their preferences (filling out customer profiles to qualify for the service in the first place) and freely share their opinions with Blyk on what they think is hot – and not. Case in point is this user response to the question: Are you proud to be British? ^Y/N

“Being British is about drivin’ in a german car 2 an Irish pub 4 a Belgian beer, then on way 2 ya home, grabbin’ an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab, 2 sit on a Swedish sofa and watch USA shows on a Japanese TV. And most of all being suspicious of anything Foreign. Oh and.. Only in Britain .. Can u get a pizza 2 ya home faster than ambulance. Only in Britain do banks leave both doors open and chain pens 2 the counter. Also Supermarkets make sick people walk to the back of the shop 4 prescriptions whilst healthy people get their fags at front of shop. We might be british but by hell we’re funny!”

Read between the lines and it’s clear that Blyk is doing more than delivering mobile advertising and recording the response. It has become a brand users trust with their ideas, feelings and personal opinions. As Leif pointed out: “People are opting in [and] we have a lot of insight into [youth] trends.” This unique position – between the brands and the consumers – is money in the bank, so no wonder Blyk is “accelerating” the development of this “inside piece” of the mobile advertising equation. Knowing why users think a campaign is off the mark is as important as understanding why it is a success. “There are many brands that – before they run a campaign – want to test the waters and know ‘do I have the right value proposition, do I have the right messages.’ It can even be that advertisers want to know what TV shows young people are watching.”

My take: Companies will no doubt try to copy the Blyk model (in fact, MSG has reported on a similar ad-funded scheme here). But it’ll take more than free services to convince consumers to offer frequent and honest feedback to ad campaigns.

Remember Blyk isn’t only delivering mobile advertising. The combination of analytics systems and solutions (supplied by Xtract, a pioneer in social advertising intelligence whose claim to fame is its ability to tap into social interactions, behavior data and other dataflow to create dynamic real-time customer profiles) and Blyk’s own conviction that advertising is and must remain a two-way conversation position at the center of the exchange and allow it to keep its finger on the pulse of users long after the campaign is over. And that’s a powerful place to be.

More in Part 2 of this podcast series – so check back!

A major obstacle is usability. Inputting search terms on a mobile device is tedious, but the more words in the query the more accurate the result set is likely to be. You’re sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, which is why query completion and/or multi-modal technology (voice) have a top-notch spot in many mobile search strategies.

But input is just part of the equation. Another important issue is context/personalization, and the requirement for mobile search services to “learn” with the user to understand that when they type in “bond” they want financial news (stocks and bonds) and not entertainment (James Bond).

Many tools and technologies are coming online to tackle these issues, but kannuu, a newcomer that broke on the scene with its patented technology in 2007, has the capabilities mix to address several key issues at once. In fact, I have had kannuu high on my radar since the start of the year when I was requested to judge the 2008 Meffy Mobile Entertainment awards in the mobile Search and Discovery category for the second consecutive year. (BTW: The awards provide an excellent snapshot of cutting-edge technology and business models, and are presented by the Mobile Entertainment Forum, the global infotainment industry association. In the end, kannuu made the shortlist, along with some other companies you can read about here.)

I was initially impressed by the company’s approach to usability. But a recent briefing with Sean-Michael Daley, kannuu CEO, has made it clear that kannuu has its eye on a much bigger prize: Applying its self-learning algorithms and key IP in indexing to improve mobile search and enable new monetization schemes that go far beyond Google AdWords. (Thanks again to Sarah Duckett, kannuu VP Communications, for arranging the briefing and providing me with first-rate background materials such as the video below.)

Sean-Michael tells me that recent usability tests estimate kannuu’s technology “generally delivers a 3x improvement in the speed at which users can find something.” But it’s not just about speeding up mobile search. The pay-off is in fine-tuning mobile search to enable transactions and commerce on the fly. (Sean-Michael’s remarks remind me of a recent panel on mobile search trends in Japan that MSG covered here. The bottom line: Commerce, not search advertising, will be the way content owners and brands make their money.)

Sean-Michael tells me that mobile commerce pilots are already underway. “That’s where there is a really good return on investment…We can improve the quality of the experience people go through and [enable them to] actually complete transactions. Because of the volume there you only need to increase that by a fraction of a percent and our technology is well and truly paying for itself.”

Listen to the podcast here. [11:30]

In my view, kannuu is one of the few companies in a position to both recognize and address the growth opportunities in mobile search and content discovery. That’s a pretty bold statement, so I’ll begin with a review of the key capabilities that allow kannuu to organize content sources so items are searchable and findable in the first place (thus going one better than most).

As the demo above shows, kannuu’s user interface is built from the ground up to present the user with relevant options at each menu level, along with a way for the user to make their next move. In the case of a device with a screen and four-way directional button, the user gets four choices at a time, and can select between them by pressing the button up, down, left, or right. The system also provides an option for the user to request more choices if the desired option is not displayed.

The interface is cool, but I’m even more excited about the algorithms and the indexing capabilities under the hood that work with the interface component to ensure the user gets shortcuts to content that is indeed available. It’s not about telling the user what could be there; it’s about showing the user what really is there.

In a nutshell, kannuu only presents data that exists in the database – that is, data that belongs to the partner mobile search provider or content partner – so users never receive the dreaded “no results found” message. As Sean-Michael explains: “We index your content [the content belonging to kannuu's partner] and enable the lookup on that content only. … We present the user with the most likely bit sized chunks of characters required to complete the desired lookup phrase.”

In addition to indexing content items in the database owned by the customer company, kannuu can also index content stored on the individual user’s device, making it searchable, findable and monetizable.

“Just say there may be someone in your address book whose name starts with a “Z” who you call often…If we’re looking at it [your behavior]  we see you call this person often. We can say the algorithm should be influenced by frequency and, since you call that number on a regular basis, we can promote that number higher up the list of choices. So you’ll actually get to that choice much earlier.”

So how is this possible?

Kannuu technology begins by analyzing source content and organizing it into a hierarchical tree of string sections, a structure we’ll refer to as the kannuu index. The kannuu index is the basis for kannuu lookup. It is also the mechanism that determines what to show to the individual user. At a deeper level, it’s the interplay between the index and kannuu’s own algorithms that makes doubly sure each individual user is shown the results in the order they will appreciate.

Once the kannuu index tree is generated, lookup is all about presenting the user with the most likely sets of characters needed to build their desired phrase. The feedback loop between the technology and the user – as options are selected or rejected by the user – give the kannuu algorithm the clues it needs to analyze the kannuu index and bubble up the right answers faster.

Kannuu’s technology can also be fine-tuned to learn over time which content is the most useful to the individual user and place those results at the top of the list. To this end kannuu can arrange results according to the user’s preferences or shuffle results to match the business rules of a business partner. “So if the advertiser is promoting a particular [item], the algorithm can be influenced so those particular choices are pushed further up the list and therefore appear earlier in the user’s selection process.”

BUSINESS MODEL: “We will make money two ways. If we’re actually on the device itself, [then] we sit on the actual device itself and therefore the manufacturer pays us a royalty per device that we’re on. The other way is that we sit on the server side. So if you’re on say a mobile phone and you’re on a Web connection and you’re looking at, say, Amazon, it would be Amazon that would be paying for our server license to use our technology.”

KILLER OPP(ORTUNITY): “The opportunity to be able to make more sales is there if people can easily and conveniently do a lookup on a mobile device. So, to me, it’s about making it easy. If you make it easy for the user, they’ll do it more often, they’ll complete more transactions, therefore we’re making more revenue. It’s a pretty straightforward story on that front.”

TRACTION: Kannuu is getting it. A major deal for the company is an alliance with Coby Electronics that will bundle kannuu’s proprietary technology with MP3 players beginning this quarter. The tie-up allows users immediate access to on-device content. In the mobile device space, chances are we’ll see more of kannuu on Nokia devices. In March, kannuu won the Technology Innovation Award for Best Mobile Multimedia experience at Nokia’s annual Mobile Rules! competition and has since been in discussions about ways to improve on-device search. “We’re moving down a path to getting [kannuu] into a pilot and that will be on their [Nokia] high-end phones.” (It’s easy to imagine taking it a step further to make the content part of the equation (think Ovi) indexable and searchable.) Sean-Michael tells me kannuu lookup functions can also be embedded into games consoles, media players, set-top boxes, kiosks and GPS-enabled devices. “Kannuu can work on any device that has a screen, a directional control of touchscreen, and the ability to index data from a database.”

The company shines on set-top boxes. “We’re having some really interesting conversations right now with a couple of the major service providers in that area [set-top boxes]. There is no doubt when you’re on a remote control, being able to choose up, down, left, right, center is the natural with your thumb, you don’t need to look at the remote to do that, you just need to look at the screen. I think also you’ve got much more screen real estate than you have on a mobile device, so we can do more things with our technology to make the experience even more fulfilling for the user.”

BTW: Kannuu can also be incorporated into widgets including Nokia WidSets, Yahoo Go widgets, and Opera widgets.

APPLE: Kannuu’s search SDK for iPhone application developers is now available for download. (The free beta iPhone SDK can be downloaded here.) Sean-Michael tells me the technology, which is also now available on the Apple Apps Store, has been well-received by Apple executives. “The popularity of the platform, along with the high demand for applications, gives us an amazing opportunity to connect consumers with content.”

SCALE: “Yahoo and Google can’t take their current search metaphor that they use on the desktop and just resize that to the mobile environment, they’ve got to really re-think it. That’s part of what we are, we’ve re-thought what search is and what look-up is when you’re on a device that’s got limited entry and of course the big databases, that’s where we really come into our own because [of] the way our technology works.”

Kannuu employs an exponential selection algorithm, rather than a linear selection algorithm. This means kannuu can work with source lists of any size, with only fractional increases in the number of clicks required to find content as the list exponentially grows. As Sean-Michael puts it: “As the list of possible results grows, kannuu becomes more efficient.”

“So, as you go from say 1,000 items to 1,000,000 items, on average you’re only adding an extra three clicks into your search and I think everyone realizes that the trend is more data, not less.” A word about speed. Sean-Micheal tells me it “takes seconds” to process an index the size of Yahoo – and kannuu should know because they work with Yahoo often.

CONTENT PROVIDERS: It’s about allowing content providers to provide a better user experience now rather than wait for handset makers to meet the usability problems heads-on. “We allow the content providers to take control of the full user experience rather than rely on the hardware to be the way the text is entered and the search is experienced. In a way it standardizes it – allowing content providers to deliver a consistent user experience regardless of the hardware.” BTW: The kannuu user interface is fully customizable, enabling a consistent brand experience for content providers.

CONTEXT & LOCATION: The kannuu algorithm can take in and process data around the user. “It may be previous searches; it may be location; and [whatever the input] they all have an effect on the [search] results that are presented….This could also be influenced by other searches taking place on the network or by mobile advertising.”

WHAT’S NEXT: Pilots – and lots of them. On mobile devices and set-top boxes, as well as “some interesting experiments in new markets.”

MY TAKE: The demo is impressive and so is kannuu’s three-prong approach to tackling the issues that make mobile search a chore. Wrapping an indexing method and a partial word completion algorithm together with a super-cool user interface, kannuu takes the heavy-lifting out of mobile search and content discovery, requiring fewer clicks to reach relevant results. If mobile search does indeed move across platforms and devices – as we would expect when convergence kicks in – then kannuu is a company that can deliver it.

The enhancements are the logical next step in the company’s ongoing strategy to place human interaction and judgment at the center of the mobile search experience.

As Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, put it in a recent interview with MSG, search is social. Users are not content to search for information in isolation and they want to communicate what they find. “When you’re on a mobile device, most [of what you do] has some kind of social context….You don’t finish the process as a user until you’ve interacted with somebody. So we think that finding the search results is not the end of the process; sharing the search result with somebody [marks] the end of the process, and that has to be designed into the system.”

To this end Taptu has launched 1-Tap, a feature of its mobile search service that – true to its name – lets users share their mobile search results (including cool mobile content) in one click. To save users from typing in their friends’ details, 1-Tap can also tap into other services such as Web-based email and Twitter.

But sharing is just the first step in Taptu’s ambitious strategy to give users more of a say in their mobile search results. Look for the company to innovate in the area of enabling “human-assisted results” (tools and technologies that allow people to edit their search results) and indexing social information (such as the social graph) moving forward.

Might Taptu be on to something bigger than pure PageRank?

Steve walked me through social search, search advertising and his pick of trends in this recent podcast.

His views are as impactful today as they were then – one reason why I have chosen to feature this podcast here and on ReadWriteTalk, the podcast series broadcast on ReadWriteWeb (RWW) and across its network of sites. Regular readers will recall that MSG has a close partnership with AltSearchEngines - a RWW destination dubbed “THE voice of alternative search.”

Listen to the podcast here [12:55]

Among the highlights:

MOBILE ADVERTISING: “We want to see specific targeting of mobile ads around search terms. At the moment there isn’t a sell-side marketplace for this, so if you have a lot of inventory – a lot of advertising inventory that is linked to search terms – there’s no open marketplace in the mobile ecosystem where you can sell that inventory. And that’s the first step because we’ve got to make these ads specific to the intention of the searcher because, that way, they’re a lot more relevant and they’re a lot more useful.”

LOCAL SEARCH: Indications are it’s not the draw we think it is. “When we look at the mobile search logs, we don’t see a lot of evidence for people searching for local services or Starbuck’s or pizza. It doesn’t show up very high in the list of search terms….The evidence is that they’re not so much interested in local, and this fits in with the pattern of people’s lives. Most people don’t spend the majority of their time traveling away from their normal locales, and most people are either at home or in the office or in three or four other places that they know quite well.”

CRAWLING & INDEXING: Letting people search for people and peruse all the UGC content flourishing under the radar of universal search engines may be essential is search is to become a mass-market activity. “Most of the social information we [users] would like to search on … lives in social networks like Facebook and MySpace. It would be great if search engines could crawl and index that stuff so you could find it quickly.”

My take?

I stand by this summary quote, which Taptu also chose to publish on the cover of its white paper, Making Search Social: Unleashing search for the mobile generation. (You can download it here.)

“Taptu not only recognizes the importance of injecting human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint truly relevant information; it has taken the lead in allowing people to communicate those results easily to their peers.

“In the past, if users wanted to make themselves heard they created a Web page. What we’re seeing now with Taptu is the potential for communities to form based on their search behavior and passion for results that reflect what humans want and not what algorithms dictate.”

Mobile social networks also figure prominently in the monetization models that will drive usage of directory services and mobile local search. That’s the view of Mike Short, who heads R&D at O2 UK. This week Mike is the keynote speaker at European Directory Marketplace 2008. The industry event, organized by Whitaker Associates and sponsored by MSG, takes a hard look at local search on mobile and the monetization models that can make it happen sooner than later.

What role will advertising play? What content will fly? And will operators continue to have a top-notch role in the value chain? These are few questions I put to Mike before he gave his speech.

Listen to the podcast here. [7:50]

From our first meeting at a mobile content panel I chaired I recognized Dave was more than an industry practitioner with valuable industry insights to share; he is a fair critic with firm views we should consider carefully. With this in mind I contacted Dave for a podcast to discuss the current state of the content industry, the content-selling value chain, mobile search and (in his own words) the “cut throat old business using Google AdWords to try and get people onto your site.”

In addition, Dave let me in on his own mobile search ambitions and impressive results since creating and implementing his own recommendation engine. A simple content-to-content recommender added a whopping 12 percent to sales (!) (Suggesting content based on peer preferences is a way away for FoneStarz, but this “simple and remarkably effective feature” has more than paid off.)

Listen to the podcast here. [11:00]

By way of background,  FoneStarz have evolved from a media company to a mobile service specialized in image-based download services (image, video, animation, infotainment) managing content across 25 networks in 22 countries. The company, which sees itself as a content retailer, handles the licensing, aggregation, distribution and real time management of mobile content.

FoneStarz at a glance:

• • licenses and aggregates content from over 130 companies – including many globally recognized brands;
• • specializes in personalization products, mobile entertainment and information services;
• • has a global relationship with Vodafone and works extensively with other mobile operators including T-Mobile and 3;
• • hosts, manages and publishes multiple content formats for over 2,300 different handset types;
• • analyses real-time usage data to help drive revenue from content sales and advertising by maximizing traffic on its sites;

Traditionally, FoneStarz does the heavy-lifting for content providers/brands and mobile operators. However, the rise of off-portal and the rousing success of FoneStarz’ own D2C offer, kazzip, creates a new dynamic: “Some of the new operators that we’re talking to [who are interested in the WAP portal] are thinking about moving from solely on-portal models to a sort of hybrid on- and off-portal [approach].

STATS & CHALLENGES: On-portal (across the sites managed worldwide) FoneStarz sees “around 500,000 downloads a month” of wallpapers, animations and videos. “That’s from about a million unique visitors and we generate around 50 million page impressions on all our sites. That obviously plays into a very interesting advertising play as more and more operators look to put ad banners, sell ad banners on those pages.” On the D2C destination kazzip, Dave sees a “steady conversion of between 25 and 50 percent of people, who come onto our site every day, buy something. The average purchase is 1.5 pieces of content, so it’s a great business model.” But it has its challenges. “Basically, if people give us the traffic or we find the traffic, we can convert them into customers. But, buying the customers off-portal at the moment is very difficult. It’s a cut throat old business using Google AdWords to try and get people onto your site. There really isn’t much of a future in that.” The real revenues come when content off-portal can be more easily discovered. Make it a no-brainier and customer volume will increase as well.

MOBILE SEARCH: Is it the silver-bullet solution? Maybe – but right now it’s more like work in progress. Dave gives high marks to Google and Yahoo, but adds they aren’t there yet. “Unfortunately, the basic mobile search products that are out there off-portal tend to give and be dominated by Web results. So, we have the unfortunate situation where you get the people [content companies] paying on Ad Words or the equivalent products to get the three sponsored links that do appear on the page, and that’s cut throat. But apart from that, you’re then very quickly dropping down into just standard Web pages. They are either not transcoded at all for the mobile or very poorly transcoded, and it’s just an awful experience.”

MOBILE ADVERTISING: It’s early days for banner ads. However, a few sites have launched them and the results are encouraging. “We’re seeing a pretty good uptake on the banner ads. There’s around a 3.5 percent click-thru rate … that is quite good in terms of what the market was expecting.”

PERSONALIZATION: “What we don’t do yet – [although] we could – is target individuals or males versus females with different portal design. We do allow people to customize the portal themselves, so that we retain the user agent….But I think the most important piece of the data for us is actually knowing what the general user behavior and the conversion rates are at different times of the day so that we can actually improve the results for everybody.”

VERTICAL SEARCH AMBITIONS: “If the statistics are true and 25 percent of all mobile search terms – in one way or the other – are content based, then any search company that properly integrates content companies into their search products so that users who are looking can find content that they like and that is appropriate, then that’s going to be (A) a huge step forward for the industry and (B) a huge winner both for the content companies and for the search firm.” Sensing a business opportunity FoneStarz has developed it own search engine (based on its own IP) that lets uses search all the content on its WAP site, for example. “But we are working with the big search companies to plug in our content.” Such cooperation would boost the ability of Google & Co to deliver mobile content results rather than Web pages.

Will FoneStarz become a vertical mobile search provider for indexed image-related mobile content? It’s on the radar. As Dave put it: “It’s quite possible that we will try to plug in a vertical search product into other places because it’s another way of funneling traffic through.”

Will the usual suspects (Google Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask) dominate mobile search? This summary post from AltSearchEngines (and the rousing success of its AltSearch Day) tells us it’s by no means a shoe-in. The site counts 227 alternative search engines in the online space. Sure, they may only have 1.7 percent market share, but the fact that there are so many of them speaks volumes about our increasing need for vertical search engines. (And then there is the novel idea of building a single federated search for alternative search that would most definitely give Google & Co a run for their money.)

A Long Tail of search engines is flourishing in the online space – will it be the same in mobile? And more importantly when can we expect it?

Common sense tells us the personal nature of the device and the variety of content types available create the perfect Petri dish for vertical mobile search. (Consider mobile music and mobile games search – two content-specific search services we can look for this year.) In line with MSG’s brief to track and analyze all the flavors of mobile search coming online, I have set up briefings with the vertical search companies I’m sure we’ll see more of soon. I also have an exciting mix of multimodal (visual/voice) search providers in the pipeline – so please check back regularly.

One company on my radar is Juice Wireless, which earlier this year took the wraps off its Mobile Video Search (MVS) service. As the video below shows, this free and first-of-its kind service allows anyone with a mobile phone (capable of viewing video) to search for videos (user-created content as well as professionally produced videos from brands and media companies) by texting keywords to the shortcode 84462 (in the U.S.). The search tool sends the user a reply with links to the requested content.

The MVS announcement got some media attention, but I missed a closer look at Juice Wireless strategy and some straight answers to some nuts and bolts questions. For example, what is the connection between mobile search and JuiceCaster – the company’s hugely successful social networking app/subscription service lets users upload/share pictures and videos directly from their camera phones to more than 20 online social networking and blogging sites (including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter)? More importantly, why does it make business/commercial sense?

I caught up with Nick, who was fortunately forthcoming with answers, stats and a status report on his wider plans to partner with media companies/brands and let them reserve keywords in a “Google AdWords-like model.”

Listen to the podcast. [11:37]

Mobile social networking: Lots of other sites are mixing mobile and video, but Nick is convinced made-for-mobile and mobile-centric schemes will make the winner’s circle. “Our goal was [and is] to build a solution for the phone, with the phone at the center of a hub and spoke, where the spokes [include] your MySpace page, or a Facebook page, or personal website, another phone user, or an IP TV set-top box.” BTW: JuiceCaster counts “some 75,000 users.” The MVS is “extremely popular” – but no numbers since both members and non-members use it.

Mobile search basics: The idea and the IP is all Juice Wireless. “We built a search engine for the JuiceCaster social network; we built the ability for people to upload videos; and we built the transcoding solution.” Why? Because mobile search may be powerful – but it is currently powerless when it comes to bubbling up all the cool video content, Nick says. The solution: Simply combine keyword search, SMS text, and content-specific search. “It [our approach] combines the influential power of video with the immediacy of mobile search.”

Mobile search strategy: Moreover, it lays the groundwork for a virtuous cycle of more content, more searches and – potentially – more advertising. The combination with JuiceCaster is a “way to very easily upload your video, put in your own keywords – which is free – and then promote it as a solution for your own search needs.” An example Nick offers: A band trying to promote its music. Including a keyword in a flyer and instructing fans to text it to the MVS service is a sure-fire way to guide users to that content – and more. “If I have time and want to check out some videos, why should I have to run the social network [on the phone]? If I want to watch videos, then why not just be able to text in some keywords?” Making it simple makes it valuable to consumers as well as brands.

Advertising & “AdWords-Like” Approaches: How can this play out? Juice Wireless’ recent tie-up with Vogue sends some clear signals. By way of background: Vogue magazine recently teamed up to deliver SHOPVOGUE.TV on-demand mobile videos, with the help of JuiceCaster’s MVS service. As a result, anyone can access SHOPVOGUE.TV’s mobile video content by texting the keyword “SVTV” to 84462. The MVS tool then sends a reply with a link to a library of programs including 60 Seconds to Chic, Behind the Lens, and Trend Watch. As it is all about social networking, users can also comment on, rate and share the videos right from their mobile devices. What a clever way to get users to watch and share video programming developed with the magazine’s advertisers…“Our model is to allow brands and media companies to reserve certain keywords in their Google AdWords-like model, so that if you search for “Vogue”, you always get their videos right up at the top.”

And there is more to come. “We’re in the process of commercializing and signing a bunch of Tier-1 and Tier-2 partners from the media and advertising community.” Juice Wireless doesn’t want to be an ad sales network, but it does want to dig down deep into its corporate DNA (the company started out in mobile marketing, delivering solutions to brands ranging from Conde Nast to Sony) to make search pay.

Expansion: Nick hinted at operators wins in North America, Western Europe and India. (This interview was conducted shortly before the company formally announced the tie-up with Tata Teleservcies and T-Mobile.) So, keep an eye on Western Europe…

In-Brief: A detailed look at Mobicious, a nimble newcomer that has quietly signed a slew of deals with content retailers and fine-tuned its own proprietary crawling technology to create a place where users can find everything for their mobile phone. David Chang, Mobicious co-founder and VP of Marketing, talks about the company’s focus on discovery, plans for expansion outside the U.S. and hints at the pivotal role of social media. Shortly after the audio interview Mobicious took the wraps off of SnapMyLife, a mobile photo sharing and social media site. In March 2008, over 500,000 unique visitors from over 180 countries visited the site, which served over 4 million page views. Since then Mobicious reports over 1,000 people are joining the made-for-mobile community site (which has also appeared in the top ten social networking apps for the Apple iPhone). Could mobile advertising be far off? Read on!

When it comes to mobile content, offering more is good. But offering it all is best. This is the thinking at Mobicious, a Boston-based start-up that has made it its mission to become a kind of mobile content/services/apps emporium. The company, which built a “discovery engine”, has partnerships with around 10 major retailers including Jamster and Thumbplay – alliances that have laid the groundwork for an impressive and comprehensive catalog of 400,000+ premium and free content items.

More importantly, Mobicious has developed the IP to spider mobile content sites (as well as user-generated content destinations) and pull in a steady feed of fresh content from the legendary Long Tail…This has allowed the company to launch 100+ content “channels” where users can browse content according to topic and explore related content. (Mobicious aims to improve its Amazon-like approach to content recommendation – but that’s coming a little later in the roadmap.)

One part iTunes, one part Google (as the company has been described) Mobicious is more than a single destination for users to discover all things digital for their mobile phone. The company also reports high conversion rates for its content partners – generally over 20 percent conversion – and has plans in the pipeline to bring the same positive benefits to mobile carriers who tie-up with the company to boost their off-portal traffic and mobile commerce.

As David put it: Mobicious is in discussions with U.S. carriers about “augmenting their current on-deck content with all of the off-deck content.” How would it work in practice? “If you’re a subscriber, you’ll see not only your own service provider’s content; you’ll see all the off-deck content ‘merged’ into one place.” The result is a “one-stop discovery engine for everything that’s out there.” Unlike a Google or other portal/search provider that would no doubt prefer to take center stage as a content super-store in their own right, Mobicious would “forward the consumer off to complete the purchase at the specific site – whether it’s the carrier’s site itself or a third-party provider….We let the consumer complete [the purchase] using the existing distribution mechanism.

Listen to the podcast here. [14.00]

Business model & making money: Mobicious lets users preview content/services/apps as well as read reviews and rank their own experiences. “There’s quite a large selection of free content that users [in the U.S.] can download to their phones. For premium content we refer consumers to both on- and off-deck suppliers.” The business model is primarily based on referral fees from partner content providers that are our partners (on a pay-per-performance basis). In addition, Mobicious takes advantage of Google’s AdSense and display advertising.

Crawling technology: Mobicious acquires content uses a variety of tools and technologies. “Part of it is spidering content that’s already out there….We’ve identified the top websites that have mobile content. Some of these larger players – because they’ve embraced this sort of distribution model – have XML feeds and structured feeds that we can take directly into our system.” For the rest, the procedure is manual. “The model is very similar to the early days of the Internet [with] Yahoo hiring college kids just to find all of the websites that were popping up. And so it’s a combination [of these methods].” But Mobicious also has its eye on the prize: a comprehensive content index. “If you layer all the metadata, ratings, reviews and tagging on top of the content, it becomes a very valuable information asset – [and one] we would then work with other players in the industry to distribute.”

Google & Co: They are also trying to create a similar index, but David is confident Mobicious has the edge. “We have a significant head start in building up that index….These Internet giants face a pretty steep learning curve, and they been tripping over some of the oddities of the mobile world.”

Cool stuff: Amazon-like recommendations are on the roadmap as a means to “bubble up interesting content” and encourage users to explore more, similar content. But the plan that has the most promise is Da