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EXCLUSIVE: Sidebar CEO Takes Wraps Off Participation Mobile Merchandising & Marketing

Peggy Anne Salz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:19:32 +0000

In-brief: An in-depth look at the pivotal role of personalization and some excerpts from a recent briefing with Sidebar, a company that combines conversation (via text), personalization (via algorithms and recommendations) and exposes the results to us (via smart menus) to help operators, content owners and media companies get the right stuff (apps, content, marketing) in front of the right people.

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

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

PERSONAL SHORTCUT

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

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

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

ASK FIRST?

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

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

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

SIDEBAR SMART MENU

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

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

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

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

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

What is Smart Menu?

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

How do they work?

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

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

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

DRIVING (RETURN) VISITS

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

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

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

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

MY TAKE

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

SOCIAL MEDIA ASIA PODCAST: Toys “R” Us Reveals Mobile Shopping & Barcode Asia Strategy

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:37:11 +0000

In brief: MSG is proud to be a media partner and launch a series of podcasts in the run up to Social Media World Forum Asia (September 22-23, Singapore), an event organized by Six Degrees bringing together major global brands (Facebook, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, BMW, OgilvyOne, Freemantle Asia) to discuss how they are using social media in their marketing and public relations strategies. Today we speak with Argha Sen, Toys “R” Us head of Marketing & CRM.

Asia is fast becoming a major focus for social media giants. Indonesia and Japan have risen to become the second and the third largest Tweeting countries; Facebook has opened offices in Asia and forged a partnership with Malaysian based MOL; and a recent milestone report from Nielsen confirms that social media usage has seen unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific in the past year and is now “one of the most critical trends” – period.

Against this backdrop, the region is a perfect test bed for mobile social marketing approaches (what I call the combination of mobile, social media and marketing). Little wonder that major global brands have quietly and cleverly harnessed social media to raise brand awareness and – ultimately – generate sales.

A textbook example of this is Toys “R” Us, one of the companies presenting at Social Media World Forum Asia (September 22-23, Singapore). It has placed social media at the center of a retail strategy sharply aimed at results. Specifically, the company integrates social media with other efforts (loyalty programs and barcode schemes, for example) to make and maintain contact with customers before, during and after their in-store visit.

PODCAST WITH ARGHA SENN

I caught up with Argha Sen, head of marketing and CRM of Toys “R” Us, where he is responsible for managing company programs across 8 countries in the region. He also directs the company’s multi-country loyalty program. We discussed the details of his strategy, the results of his barcode/iPhone launch in Taiwan, and the topics he will discuss during the conference.

The podcast with Argha – chock-filled with fascinating observations and figures – is one of my personal favorites, which is why I couldn’t edit it down beyond 15:45 minutes. I urge you to listen in and hear his pragmatic views on social media, personal mobility and how this all comes together in a shopping experience aimed to blur the boundaries between physical retail (in-store shopping) and virtual interaction (scan a barcode to engage via social media). Very progressive and extremely impressive! I greatly look forward to a follow-up interview when Argha can return to discuss some hard numbers and real results.

Among the highlights:

LOYALTY & RETAIL: As Argha sees it, the number one priority of all his programs is to drive people into the stores to buy toys. The linchpin of this advanced CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy is the Star Card program, the Toys “R” Us loyalty program that runs across six markets in Asia and counts some 2.3 million members. This program drives “about 50-60, sometimes even 70 percent of sales,” which is why it is crucial to make sure all social media efforts support it. How? Integration. As Argha puts it: “Ultimately, they are connected to each other….The Facebook page takes you to our YouTube channel, or the Facebook page takes you to our store or takes you to our website; the website takes you to our Facebook page and all of them drive you to the store.”

MOBILE: Mobile penetration in Hong Kong (where Argha is based) rates among the highest in the world, so mobile is a big part of the company’s strategy. “There are three things that a consumer in Hong Kong does not leave home without: one is the Hong Kong ID card, which you need to carry around with you all the time; the second is what we call the Octopus card, which is really a transport card that allows you to get onto the subway, the bus, the ferries; and the third thing that a Hong Kong person is never without is his or her mobile phone…. So, that obviously presents huge, huge marketing opportunities provided of course that it is done the right way.”

BARCODES: Unlike the U.S., barcode scanning in Asia is about information first and price comparison second. Apps such as Red Laser have not gained traction – yet. Instead, barcodes are the way to “link the customer to videos and other kinds of elements that we can’t always display in the store.” Barcodes also fill the information gap. “You can’t always get all that information from the store staff, so one of the things we are moving towards is [displaying] a QR code next to the product. The customer simply scans that and it takes him or her to a website or to a landing page or to a video explaining the features of the product.” The barcodes were also featured in the company’s summer catalog, allowing customers to scan the printed page and land at the website (where they can also see the video). “We see a lot of opportunities for us to continuously experiment with the QR codes and build this in-store engagement, and take the customer to information and offers that we normally can’t give in the store.”

POINTS & PAYMENTS: Argha is also interested in exploring CRM and developing more holistic programs incorporating coupons and loyalty cards that can be completely executed on the mobile. “Ultimately, there may even be a situation where the customer also pays with their mobile, like they do in Japan or in Korea.” Until then Argha shares his insights around a new service (available in Taiwan) that allows people with smartphones and to swipe a barcode and collect points. “In the future, instead of swiping the [loyalty] card, the customer will swipe the mobile phone and we’ve already launched this in all our stores in Taiwan. There you can actually scan your iPhone. We give you a barcode, the Star Card is digitized and turned into a barcode, and that barcode is stored in the customer’s iPhone. The cashier simply scans the customer’s iPhone instead of scanning the card, and that links to the database and that gives the customer the points and the rewards and the coupons and all of that.”

MY TAKE:

Toys “R” Us understands the fit between mobile, the fiercely personal devices we carry with us at all times, and CRM, the programs and approaches that treat us as a valued customer and individual. Argha tells me the complete CRM program will be executed over the mobile phone in the next two years. But it’s not just about the mobile; it’s about linking CRM with social media (YouTube videos and the company Facebook page) at the all-important point of purchase. Connect the dots, and the power of mobile in retail is proportionate to the level of integration at the POS (point of sales). Barcodes, coupons, mobile payments – these are all elements of an exceptional shopping experience, but it’s the integration that makes them truly effective. I’ll have more on this in Real Goods, Real Commerce & Real Results: The positive future for mobile operator billing platforms, a soon-to-be released white paper MSG has produced on behalf of Tego Interactive.

In the meantime, allow me to leave you with Argha’s key message to his peers: “Instead of treating this as a completely separate channel and a separate thing that only the marketing guys are involved in, we tend to integrate this with all our other marketing channels and all our other business channels. Now, if we do things here which are not integrated with the business, however cool they are and however award winning they might be, they really have no place here. We’re not here to win awards, we’re not here to get plaudits for our social media work, we are here to run a toy business and to get the customer to the store and to get them to buy toys.”

You can register for the event here and receive a 15 percent discount – just quote that you’re a reader of MSearchGroove.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE. [15:45]

BEST & BRIGHTEST: COM #236: Mobile Games, Mobile Web, Mobile Data, NFC, Bible Apps & Trends

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:49:27 +0000

In brief: This week’s line-up includes mobile social games opportunities (now that Facebook is bombing and mobile is booming); must-read mobile design element documentation, mobile Bible content, and a look at why the Web is dead (not).

A few reminders before we deep-dive into the best in this week’s mobile blogging. As COM coordinator (or “keeper of the tents”) I’d like to encourage regular contributors and Mobilists to help me make the COM more interactive and valuable for everyone.

A step in this direction will be our LinkedIn group (an alternative to our presence in Google Groups). I also encourage everyone to follow posts and hosts via Twitter (@COTMobilists) and reach out to me directly with ideas, improvements and ways to make the COM outstanding as it nears its fifth anniversary in October. (The COM made its debut on October 13, 200, via this post over at MobHappy.)

Meantime, I want to showcase the quantity and quality of the COM’s 100+ contributors and mobile passionatas. A call to the Mobilists: Please send me a 50-100 word profile of your website and or/a recent (brief) bio.

And don’t forget to check out the calendar and pick a date to host. There are slots still open!

COM #236

It’s a slow summer at the COM, all the more reason for you to follow Tomi Ahonen’s excellent advice and use the seasonal “downtime” to re-charge your batteries and catch up on COM posts you may have missed. You can find a complete list of COM posts and links here.

This week we have a short (but snappy) line-up of posts, including my pick of the week. So let’s roll!

Social mobile games and the social graph: This post from Raj Singh looks at how mobile social games might tap the social graph to drive significant revenues for the ecosystem. He draws from several examples (such as the Game Lobby from U.S: mobile operator Sprint, a virtual mobile community for gamers to meet, recommend games and challenge each other) and concludes that if these platforms follow a write-once, run anywhere paradigm and tap the social graph (much like Facebook – only bigger and better), then viral distribution will pay dividends for everyone.

Mobile design for the masses: Steven Hoober over at Little Springs Design shares a detailed and valuable post documenting mobile design elements and the process that will ensure that his work helps everyone everywhere. As he puts it: “I think good documentation should not just communicate the idea, but help the designer, whether it be UX or software of systems or database design.” And remember you can still connect with Steve and the Little Springs team in Chicago next month.

Fair data usage debate: James Rosewell over at The Fonecast explains from a personal perspective what happened when he crossed the line between “unlimited” and “fair usage.” Based on this he warns that network operators should prepare for a consumer backlash if they stick to their current limits.

NFC noise and reality: In two posts C. Enrique Ortiz provides perspective on NFC (Near Field Communications) and mobile payments following the news that Apple could be making plans for a big role in mobile NFC after hiring of Benjamin Vigier as its product manager of mobile commerce. We also get the inside track on the discourse at the recent Forum Oxford and some provocative statements made by disruptive and highly respected Mobilist Dean Bubley. Did Nokia get it right (by dropping NFC) and will Apple get it wrong (by picking up the ball)? And what are the implications as handset makers push forward with non-Single Wire Protocol (SWP) NFC handsets next year? Read on here (and here) and find out

Bible apps & community: A thoughtful post from Antoine RJ Wright retraces the evolution of Bible content and apps and challenges us to imagine the future of Biblical software. From the advance of social networks to the pace of publishing industry consolidation, Antoine outlines the megatrends likely to impact companies in this space and the investments they make in Bible content and related services.

Is Skype (?): Last week’s gracious COM host Tam Hanna is back with a brief post about Skype in Germany. It seems that the German government can listen in on Skype-2-Skype calls – and Tam provides the proof.

The Web is dead?!: This insightful and balanced post from Ajit Jaokar dissects a recent article in Wired magazine claiming that the “Web is dead.” Kudos to Ajit for going beyond the hype to show how Wired misunderstands what the Web is – period. For one, the assumption that the mobile Web is always about browsing ignores the other models and ways we access content (such as Web widgets on mobile devices). It’s a detailed post and I am glad Ajit picked up the gauntlet, which is why it is also my pick of the week.

* * *

That’s a wrap until next week. You can still sign up to host the COM #237 at your site, so please contact me directly via Twitter (@peggyanne) or email (peggy@msearchgroove.com) to sign up for the privilege

Keep it fun!

Global Mobile Content & Apps Competition: Call For Nominations NOW

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:27:43 +0000

In brief: Content and innovative applications with impact are recognized by the World Summit Award (WSA). National pre-selections for the WSA-mobile run through experts in respective countries. The only way to apply for WSA-mobile is to be nominated by the national expert, so reach out with your story NOW.

Every two years the World Summit Award (WSA) recognizes the companies and organizations that impact our lives through path-breaking content and innovative applications. Mobile is a huge part of this – particularly since mobile in is the ONLY screen for people living in Africa, Asia and the emerging markets.

WSA-mobile emphasizes cultural diversity and identity, the creation of varied information content and the digitalization of educational, scientific and cultural heritage. It aims to make the benefits of the new Information Society accessible and meaningful for all humanity, and in particular, to raise public awareness and give deserved public recognition to the highest quality e-Content, produced all over the world. As of today, around 160 countries actively participate in the initiative.

National pre-selections for the WSA-mobile run through experts in respective countries. The only way to apply for WSA-mobile is to be nominated by the national expert. My friend and esteemed colleague Michelle Manafy (editor of EContent magazine you can and should follow @MichelleManafy) is the US national expert and she’s seeking nominations right now.

If your company and/or client is US based, submit via Michelle’s wiki (http://wsamobile.pbworks.com/). If not, you’ll need to reach out to the appropriate national expert.(You can find the expert in your country here.)

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT nominations to Michelle is SEPTEMBER 1

She asks that you review the categories and criteria, then visit her nomination wiki here to submit your case studies of mobile content making the world a better place.

The Winners’ Gala will take place in Abu Dhabi in December 2010 in cooperation and along with the UN DESA GAID Global Forum.

Stand up to be considered for this prestigious award. Let’s show the real power of mobile content!

PODCAST: Tomi Ahonen Forecasts Mobile “Platform War”; Will Apple Be On The Losing Side?

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:16:35 +0000

In brief: Time for our monthly podcast with Tomi Ahonen, mobile author and authority. We kick off with a look at our growing addiction to text messaging and wrap up with a well founded argument against going it alone in mobile. Does the company with the largest ecosystem win? Read on and find out…

While the global press and digerati may focus sharply on handset shipments and market share reported by individual vendors, the vast majority are blind to the decisive battle taking place between platform providers.

In his recent blog, Tomi Ahonen begs us to think beyond the quarterly numbers and handset shipments, and get our head around the real story. This is not about sales; this is about a race between players to be the dominant mobile phone operating system. The winner(s) will shape the mobile industry (and how we live our lives) for decades to come.

Why does it impact us?

Because mobile is rising up to take its rightful position at the center of our (digital) daily routine. As Tomi points out: “If you think digital convergence is a major trend…, then mobile is at the center of that convergence. While smartphones today form only 19 percent of all phones sold, most major analysts of mobile believe that the majority of all mobile phones will become smartphones before the end of this decade. Many think that all mobile phones will be smartphones by then. And the relentless advance of Moore’s Law certainly suggests it’s likely that most ‘dumbphones’ will turn into smartphones by the end of the decade.”

Who are the likely winners? Tomi does the math and shows that size does matter.

However, this size is not a measure of the numbers we count in quarterly results and balance sheets. The number we should pay more attention to is the number of vendors, developers and “family” members in the platform ecosystem that proactively support the OS.

Against this backdrop, companies that insist on fighting it alone (Apple, RIM, HP with Palm) are “doomed to become tiny niche players.”

What will ultimately happen to this group? It’s a tough one to call, but Tomi warns us they will only achieve single-digit market share – if they’re lucky. “Platform wars produce a whole ‘family of winners’ and a ‘family of losers’. If your tech brand supported a losing side, no matter how great your product (and how profitable your company), you end up disappointing your customers and abandoning the long term gains to your rivals. The worst humiliation comes when (or if) you are forced to join the rival standard – like when Sony started to sell VHS-based VCRs (or, arguably, when Apple joined the Intel CPU based computers and made Macs 100% Windows Compatible).”

TEXT ADDICTION

Tomi and I also explore the meaning of a surprising stat from Motorola (based on a consumer survey) that shows a significant number (30 percent) of people prefer a device with a QWERTY keypad. Earlier this year, a report from the research firm NPD found that people want to text, a desire that is driving them to buy mobile phones with QWERTY keypads.

What does this new number from Motorola tell us?

In Tomi’s view, this “astonishing” stat confirms that many analysts have a “false understanding of the mobile industry.” Put another way, there is no reason to assume we will transfer our personal computer behavior over time to our personal mobile devices. Touch screen may be cool, but there will always be people who want to use phone for text, not surfing the Web. After all, the mobile is a personal communications device.

As Tomi reminds us: “There is a good opportunity for computer-like mobile devices,” but it’s the “need to communicate and the addiction to texting and messaging that drives the whole industry.”

That’s the reason we take our phones with us everywhere we go (!)

WEIRD STAT OF THE MONTH

More children in the U.K. have phones than books. It’s not good news for a best-selling author like Tomi, but ReadWriteWeb argues it could have an upside. What do YOU think?

[Listen to the podcast here and pass it on! 11:53]

GUEST COLUMN: Social Augmented Reality; Connecting People, Content & Context In New Worlds

Christine Perey — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:42:38 +0000

Editor’s note: Interest in Augmented Reality (AR) is on the upswing as companies harness it to super-charge their brand or make their offer more compelling. Malaysia Airlines has developed a mobile AR app to promote special flights; the magazine Time Out New York is using mobile AR to let smartphone users call up a singing chorus from Staten Island; and department stores are experimenting with AR to take the hassle out of trying clothes. (Consumers try on clothes by overlaying the clothes over an image of themselves.) Over in Asia, a region light years ahead in the adoption and acceptance of mobile AR, Japan’s mobile operator NTT DoCoMo is set to launch “chokkan nabi”, (stands for intuitive navigation), in September. The service uses mobile AR to help people find their way around megacities such as Tokyo and Osaka. While this progress is encouraging, Christine Perey, an independent consultant and industry analyst focusing on mobile AR, suggests that Social AR – the intersection of mobile social networking and AR apps – is the one to watch.

***

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) applications started out allowing us to view useful or factual information associated with objects and places in the world around us. The classic example of this type of mobile AR is the Wikitude application (by Mobilizy), which associates georeferenced Wikipedia entries with a point of interest and presents the same Wikipedia text in a box overlayed on the live video window. Using platforms that empower individuals to post their thoughts or comments on objects and places in the real world, we now have the potential to be immersed in Social AR.

As I show in this column, social AR is a natural next step in the evolution of mobile AR and social networking.

We started out with social networks and microblogging services that allowed us to post our ideas and reactions to places and events. And then, with GPS in mobile handsets, we moved to services that allowed us to geolocate our cyber-graffiti, adding new meaning and context to the breadcrumb trail we left behind.

Then came the “see through” video streaming we know from using an Android handset or the iPhone4. This made it possible for us to “see” the same tags in the context of the real world and – more importantly – share our comments with anyone who cares to lift up their device, switch on their AR application and take a look.

Now we’re moving full steam into a new scenario. Imagine a thought or comment about an object or person which is not fixed in space, but which has unique features—a face, a pet, a product—which can be recognized from an image (using image recognition software) and tied or “stuck” to the target when it appears on your field of view. We are very nearly there and the implications for people and businesses will be profound.

TECTONIC SHIFTS

But before we talk about where this is going, it’s important to trace the milestones that mark our path to this point.

Dan Melinger, one of the founders of Kamida, a NY-based startup, was working on geo-located social media as early as May 2004. Later that year, Dan presented his vision via this poster at Ubicomp 2004 , and introduced the use of “sticky Shadows” as a way to bookmark our lives and literally leave our mark everywhere. The company released its commercial service, called Socialight, in December 2006.

Today the company is still pushing the envelope. In fact, a review of its clients (a list that includes Ford in Europe) tells us there is a lot of mileage in geo-tagged social media. Socialight’s platform has an open API, permitting developers to infinitely extend features (they can add a new symbol to the list of emoticons, tint/color different personal comments or objects) and deepen the user’s social experience with a brand or a place. This opens up Social AR to a larger audience, allowing public communities to build their own custom applications with filters.

In 2007 we saw photos show up on a live map, a development that gave geo-tagged mobile social applications new importance and impact. Back then Marc Davis was running Yahoo! Research Berkeley, and his prototype project combined geo-tagging with images. I got a demo of the maps-based view of comments and Flickr photos (only supported with Yahoo! ID users) when our paths crossed at an Informa Mobile Social Networking event in London. Back then the processor limitations of the handsets and lack of an integrated compass meant that overlaying those same images on a live video stream could not be implemented as a feature for mainstream users. But it was on the roadmap!

A year later, at ISMAR 08 (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality), Sinem Guven and a group of researchers from IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, demonstrated a prototype mobile AR application aimed at transforming the shopping experience. And, in my view, it did.

In a nutshell, the application allows a consumer to scan the cover of a book or a barcode to access more information about the book from Amazon – with a personal touch. Magically, an animated figure appears (overlayed on the page of the book) and offers opinions and reviews about the book. It was the first sign that retail and AR were coming together to impact our lives.

TWITTER ENTERS THE PICTURE

Fast forward to 2009 and the arrival of the iPhone 3GS and smartphones with compass (and GPS from other handset makers) catapults AR to a new level.

By the fall of 2009 we started seeing a new wave of applications that combined AR and real-time or near real-time social media. Among these were path-breaking applications that harnessed the Twitter API to bring tweets to eye level.

In July 2009, Michael Zoellner, a designer working on AR applications at Fraunhofer IGD released TwittAround for Android handsets. Soon after an application was released for the iPhone

Not long after, Andrej Solar developed TweetAR for Android. But, for people who don’t live in highly concentrated urban environment, tags appear far apart from one another on the spatial scale. So, viewing a simple list view of your Tweets remains more convenient. The situation changes, however, when we find ourselves in a city center. One of the most densely populated areas on the planet is Tokyo, the birthplace of Tonchidot, the winner of a TechCrunch 2008 award and provider of a social AR platform and service, Sekai Camera for Android and iPhone.

Another leap forward for Social AR came in the fall of 2009, when Metaio, one of the players in industrial strength Augmented Reality, released the junaio application for iPhone 3GS. Getting social media into this platform was not incredibly easy, but it was possible. Users could follow a series of steps using their computer or the mobile phone app to tag the real world. What’s more, users could post personal comments or “insert” a photo or a 3-D object, which would then float in space over the place or object. Since then, junaio continues to improve and social AR is a major feature of some of the most popular channels on the service.

Around the same time, the design innovation company The Astonishing Tribe, aka TAT, upped the ante with an application that allowed users to tag themselves for others to see.

The concept of Augmented ID – the result of a collaboration with Polar Rose, a company specialized in facial image recognition and head tracking – brings a new dimension to social networking allowing users to choose and customize the profile they show to the outside world. In this video (click image above), we have the example of a user who links his image with suitable social media links, such as his Facebook page, in preparation for a night on the town.

The companies followed up on this application with Recognizer, which was shown during Mobile World Congress 2010. Unfortunately, due to lack of a clear business model and concerns about privacy and lack of social acceptance, the service is not commercially available.

LAYAR’S IMPACT

Social AR is here to stay. But where is this genre of AR applications heading?

We got a glimpse of this future on June 18, 2010, when Layar, the Dutch provider of the popular Layar mobile AR browser, announced the development of animated 3D objects called Floaticons. The Layar browser provides information in the video camera field of view, organized into various “layers” such as entertainment, eating out, games, real estate, retail, social networks, tourism, transportation and weather.

Floaticons put people back into the “total information” picture, giving users of the AR browser the ability to post their thoughts in space with more than just a bubble or a photo.

Although Layar has not yet released them, the company website highlights several series of Floaticons, including Floatos Locos, Robots 3000, Classic Monsters and Sparkle & Shine.

These animated 3-D creatures are part of a dead-serious business strategy. As Layar puts it: “Floaticons are Layar’s first step into the business of Digital Goods.”

To ensure that only relevant messages remain visible over time, Layar limits the “lifespan” of a Floaticon message. The health of a Floaticon can be prolonged by feeding it a digital cookie. And, since Floaticons are tightly connected with the in-application micropayment system, it looks as if there will be a business model for Social AR!

Identifying a viable business model is crucial to the continued investment in mobile AR services in general and social AR in particular.

In my view, having end-users pay—directly or indirectly—for Social AR is a much cleaner option than advertising or sponsorship. Consumers are nervous about seeing too much advertising super-imposed over their physical world, and advertisers are jumpy about having their brands associated with user-generated content that isn’t tightly censored or manually filtered/approved.

User-controlled options do more than build brand; they also add to credibility of the social AR content because it is more likely that, when users pay for it, only the best or highest value content is seen. It’s a simple voting mechanism. If a lot of users benefit from a post in the AR view, and give it their thumbs-up, then perhaps credits go to the source of the Floaticon and the cookie monster gets fed!

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

In the coming months, with the improvement of visual recognition algorithms, we can expect new mobile AR applications to support and super-charge retail, making good on the user experiences IBM promised and prototyped several years ago.

Take the recent moves made by both Metaio and Layar to integrate their client applications and backend systems with image recognition technology provided by Zurich-based Kooaba. It’s clear that shopping – already a social experience – is about to be transformed by Social AR.

As Metaio CTO Peter Meier put it in a recent interview with VentureBeat, we already have the object of desire in the field of view, and we can add on user reviews. The next logical step is to make it possible for the user of an AR application to purchase exactly what is in front of them through the AR payment system.

So, why not just buy it outside the AR service?

It’s easy to imagine incentives to both merchants and users to engage in this. It’s called Mobile Social AR Shopping and I saw it coming in 2009 when I wrote this post.

But we’re not there yet. From a user experience point of view, Social AR could make the screen very, crowded, to the point of being chaotic. So, filters will need to be developed and implemented that allow users to select their preferences and manage the noisy environment in urban centers, where people have tagged – well – everything.

Social AR will also have to address some thorny issues such as privacy management. Currently, the technology is so new and the number of social AR users is so small that we can’t point to a case in the courts. But it’s not difficult to imagine a situation in which privacy management in AR becomes as loaded and troublesome as it is in Facebook today.

But there are ways to turn a pending problem into a golden opportunity. (The topic is sure to be of interest to the participants of the upcoming ISMAR 2010 workshop. The Mobile AR Summit focuses on Mobile AR Commercialization strategies.)

One solution for managing social media sharing policies across federated networks, which the W3C Social Web Incubator Group is examining is the use of a third-party “privacy management service provider” to manage and protect an individual’s social media profile across the Social Web. Look for services like this to come on the market next year as distributed social media management tools, such as the One Social Web project from Vodafone, emerge.

Until then, enjoy a walk around and the chance to view the thoughts of your friends and family floating freely around a family pet or restaurant near you!
* * *
Christine Perey is an independent consultant and industry analyst focusing on mobile Augmented Reality, mobile social networking and smart spaces/intelligent objects. All these domains are leveraging Cloud Computing combined with small, ubiquitous end points which sense and process information about their environment for users. Christine provides business development/sales, management consulting and custom market research services to companies seeking to build upon these domains of expertise for the purpose of improving quality of life of end users worldwide.
You can contact Christine via email (cperey@perey.com).

MEDIA SPONSOR: Mobile Future Forward Discount Offer Extended Until Friday

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:46:59 +0000

In brief: Take advantage of the opportunity to experience the next five years in mobile in just one day! Special discount rates still available for Mobile Future Forward, a high-caliber Executive Summit (September 8, Seattle) organized by Chetan Sharma and his team. The agenda is in place to make this one of the events of the year, where attendees can shape industry debate and network with a “Who’s Who” of the mobile industry.

From the evolution of mobile data to content monetization models, to mobile health (mHealth) to mobile cloud computing, Mobile Future Forward is much more than just another mobile industry event. The one-day summit brings together top-notch senior execs and speaker to take the pulse of the mobile industry and ask the brave question: Where do we go from here?

SPECIAL OFFER

MSG is proud to be a media sponsor and help build awareness of this premiere event.

If you follow Chetan’s tweets, then you know that the special discount offer has been extended for another week.

Registration is Open Now. Special offer expires August 6 – Enter MSG to receive your discount rate

And speaking of agendas, here’s a comprehensive list of the event speakers and sessions.

8:30 am
Keynote – Stephen David, former CIO, Procter & Gamble

9:00 am
Keynote – Glenn Lurie, President – Emerging Devices, AT&T

9:30 am
Keynote – Anand Chandrasekher, SVP and GM – Mobile, Intel

10 – 10:30 am
Break

10:30 am
Keynote – Takayuki Hoshuyama, CEO, D2Communications

11:00 am
Taking the pulse and where do we go from here

Mike Sievert, Chief Commercial Officer, Clearwire
Dr. Genevieve Bell, Fellow, Intel
Lirong Shi, President, ZTE
Subba Rao, CEO, Tata DoCoMo

12 – 1:30 pm
Lunch

1:30 pm
Network and Mobile Data Evolution 2010-2015

Wims Sweldens, President, Alcatel-Lucent
Neville Ray, Chief Network Officer, T-Mobile
Bob Azzi, Senior Vice President, Sprint
Matt Bross, CTO and Vice Chairman, Huawei
Sean Cai, Vice President – Advanced Wireless Technology, ZTE
Ken Denman, CEO, Openwave

Future of Content, Engagement, and Monetization

Louis Gump, Vice President – Mobile, CNN
Jack Kennedy, Senior Vice President – Digital, News Corp
Omar Javaid, Vice President, Converged Media, Motorola
Paul Palmieri, CEO, Millennial Media
John Zehr, Senior Vice President, ESPN Digital
Rob Glaser, Chairman, Real Networks and Partner, Accel

2:30 pm
mHealth – The Impact on Society and Global Health

Dr. Sailesh Chutani, CEO, Mobisante
Jon Stross, General Manager and Vice President, Babycenter.com
Dr. Boris Nikolic, Sr. Program Director, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr. Greg Brandenberg, CEO, Columbia Basin Health Association
Dr. Suzanne Clough, Chief Medical Officer, Welldoc

The Economics and Politics of Consumer Data

Krishna Vedati, Senior Vice President, AT&T Interactive
Chris Murphy, Head of Digital Strategy, adidas

3:30 – 4:00 pm
Break

4:00 pm
Evolution of Communication and Social Interaction

Christopher Dean, Chief Strategy Officer, Skype
Mario Quirez, Vice President – Product Management, Google
David Weiden, General Partner, Khosla Ventures
Joe Sims, Lead Partner, Booz&Co
Chamath Palihapitiya, Vice President – Mobile, Growth, Intl, Facebook

Mobile Cloud Computing – At the Tipping Point?

Hank Skorny, Senior Vice President – Media Cloud Computing, Real Networks
Brian Shepherd, President – Mobile Services and Marketing, Amdocs
Abhi Ingle, Vice President – Industry & Mobility Application Solutions, AT&T

5:00 pm
Internet of Things

Amir Mashkoori, CEO, Kovio
Tony Lewis, Vice President – Open Development, Verizon
Danny Bowman, President – Integrated Solutions Group, Sprint
Mark Selby, Vice President – Industry Collaboration, Nokia

At the Intersection of Gaming, Social, and Commerce

Tim Chang, Partner, NVP
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Adjourn, Reception, and Networking

WHITE PAPER & PODCASTS

And if you want to get to prep for this lively event and debate, then check out Chetan’s new white paper (available for download here/PDF), which provides a comprehensive overview of the topics/issues that will define the business agenda for years to come.

In line with MSG’s special offer (available only to select event organizers), MSG will feature a special podcast interview with Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO. In it we’ll explore some recent company news, the state of mobile advertising and mobile ad networks and take a sneak peek at what he plans to address during the session.

Keep checking back or follow MSG on Twitter (@msearchgroove & @peggyanne) to get the inside track on the speakers and the hot topics they will discuss.

Register today for your special rate – and I hope to see you there!

GUEST COLUMN: Spreading The Message; Why The Major Growth Opportunities Are (Still) In Text-Messaging

Mark Hawkins — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:18:55 +0000

Editor’s note: Text messaging is more than a means of communication; it’s a mass medium – with the emphasis on mass. It’s universal (anyone can use it), it’s effective (capable of reaching millions across the planet and returning direct responses within seconds), and it’s ours (SMS is a language native to mobile phones created by mobile users). Mark Hawkins, Director of Communications at the Mobile Data Association (MDA) – the U.K.’s longest established mobile industry association – explains how lesser known areas such as mobile CRM, mobile health and conversational marketing bode well for the future of text messaging and mobile data.

Text messaging allows companies and brands to interact with mobile users everywhere. From appointment reminders, to remote diagnosis, to more personalized mobile marketing pitches, these conversations are driving new growth and new business models.

The Mobile Data Association’s most recent Mobile Trends Report found that the U.K. is sending 11 text messages per hour. That may not sound like much, but mobile data analyst Tomi Ahonen has global figures that show the vast reach and potential of messaging. At the end of 2009, 77 percent of the 4.6 billion mobile phone subscribers on the planet used SMS text messaging (that’s 3.5 billion), and 37 percent used MMS messaging (1.7 billion).

Connect the dots, and messaging is a mass media used and enjoyed by a global messaging-literate audience.

Despite our fixation with smartphones, super-phones and apps — mobile 2.0 attractions that interest affluent audiences and users living in developed markets – text continues to be the main attraction. SMS features on all mobile devices launched to the market. Thus, messaging is the best and most effective way to reach everyone everywhere.

Moreover, the evolution of mobile marketing and the introduction of new mobile tools and technologies are pushing messaging usage to new levels. Little wonder that messaging continues to make considerable money. Non-voice mobile markets are still predominantly driven by SMS messaging, which is second only to voice in mobile network operators’ revenues.

A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY

SMS began as a person-to-person form of communication. Over time text emerged as an ideal way to deliver mobile marketing messaging, a scenario that made good business sense from brands, but partially blinded the industry to the many other use cases possible.

While it is often neglected in favor of new, richer mobile media, messaging is still the centerpiece of mobile marketing campaigns today. But it also sits at the centre of much more.

Messaging is used to deliver basic notifications to both consumers (B2C) and businesses (B2B). And it is increasingly being deployed in more innovative ways across a number of industry sectors.

Indeed, messaging can be harnessed to coordinate aid efforts, raise funds, and help people and non-profits in remote areas of emerging nations organize their daily routines. Closer to home, messaging can significantly reduce costs and increase productivity in the U.K.’s own healthcare sector.

The advance of messaging and the its impact on business and society at all levels strengthens the MDA in its goal to promote the use and benefits of mobile data and allow companies across the mobile data industry to speak with a single voice.

Building on successful projects such as the BBC Radio 1 Picture Messaging Day in December 2009 — a day that saw over 42,000 BBC Radio 1 listeners send in MMS messages of themselves via an MDA-enabled free short code — the trade body will continue to focus on activities that bring mobile data to a larger audience.

Indeed, a key focus in the 2010/12 term will planning and activities to integrate messaging into preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Efforts will also center on ways to improve mobile giving by streamlining the mobile charity text messaging process in accordance with the existing MDA framework.

To spearhead this effort Roger Craven – CEO of Vir2, a U.K. pioneer in mobile charity fundraising services – has recently been appointed Director Responsible for Mobile Charity within the MDA. The position has been created to encourage wider adoption of the framework and make it possible for more users to give to their favorite charities and causes. Roger is more than qualified. Since founding Vir2 in 2005, he has been involved in over a thousand charity campaigns using messaging, Bluetooth and other mobile media. He has also lobbied British Parliament for HMRC VAT rules for SMS donations to be clarified.

In recognition of messaging and its increasing role in marketing the MDA has also appointed Oscar Jenkins — CEO of Dynmark International, a U.K.-based mobile marketing company with a strong focus on messaging — the MDA Director responsible for Mobile Marketing. Shawn Brown, Head of Sales at Dialogue Communications, a mobile solutions specialist, has been named Director responsible for Regulatory matters.

MOBILE DATA STATS

From telematics and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) messaging, to mobile health and mobile (conversational) marketing, the intersection between mobile and business is a lucrative one. This is where the MDA strives through its work to bring benefits to industry, educating stakeholders about the potential applications and giving guidance on best practice.

Technology and user behavior are perfectly aligned to drive significant growth in mobile messaging – both SMS and MMS. However, regulatory issues must also be overcome before messaging can achieve its commercial potential as a mass-market mass media.

Live SMS voting, competitions, chat and tarot services are all well-positioned to experience healthy growth provided the industry is united on best practice and firm regulation. This is why the MDA is involved in liaison with PhonepayPlus, the U.K. regulator of phone-paid services, as it draws up its latest Code of Practice.

There’s a lot at stake.

A study by the research firm ThinkTank estimates that Premium SMS market revenues totalled GBP316.7 million in 2009. Meantime, new MDA board member Dynmark recently reported that the commercial messaging market (which excludes person-to-person messaging) will be worth GBP 620 million in 2011. This forecast is a clear indication that mobile data is thriving and will remain a strong-growth sector for some time to come.

What’s more, Dynmark suggests that evolving media consumption behavior through subscription-based publisher paywall models will likely encourage new ways of integrating messaging as companies and organisations seek new ways to monetize their content.

BUSINESS IS BOOMING

Clearly, messaging in the enterprise – and across a variety of sectors including M2M, healthcare and public sector — is poised for significant growth.

A vertical high on the radar is mobile health (mHealth). Here the deployment of even the simplest messaging service, such as a reminder service alerting patients to the time of their appointments, can create huge benefits and cost savings. In fact, local health organizations estimate the cost associated with missed appointments alone is a whopping GBP180 million per year. More importantly, the National Health Service (NHS), the U.K.’s publicly funded health service, report inefficiencies cost the country GBP800 million. An excellent opportunity for mobile to reduce wastage and make a positive difference.

Against this backdrop, case studies demonstrate that messaging is the best way to reach patients on the move.

Why? Because text messaging is simple, affordable and it can give consumers the opportunity to reply. Another benefit is the guarantee of scheduled delivery within a 24-48 hour period before the appointment, allowing doctors and general practitioners to reach patients when they are most likely to respond in the first place. And let’s not forget that these messages can be delivered to all mobile devices everywhere. Sensing a business opportunity, an increasing number of companies now offer solutions that integrate with appointment software, completely automating the task.

As this column illustrates, messaging and mobile data continue to play a central role in much more than marketing campaigns and direct-to-consumer offerings. It is a primary communications medium that connects companies and enables all verticals to communicate with their customers. Bank statements, medical advice, appointment reminders, voting and location-linked services are just a few examples of the services that will ensure the advance of messaging in data-hungry societies across the globe.

* * *

Mark Hawkins is the Director of Communications of the Mobile Data Association (MDA), a U.K. trade organization that has spearheaded the promotion and use of mobile data by businesses and consumers since it was established in 1994. As a director of the MDA Mark has acquired a deep knowledge of the mobile industry. An area of expertise is mobile data transmission and aggregation, including messaging (SMS and MMS), 3G Video and Location-Based Services (LBS). Mark is also the founder of Composed Communication, a company providing public relations and marketing communications services to technology companies.

For more information, and good reasons to join(!), visit the MDA website here. Sign up to become a member here.

UPDATE: The Best Of Mobile Web Africa, MLOVE & More!

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:14:48 +0000

In brief: An overview of new content and projects at MSG. Look for exclusive posts and podcasts that showcase mobile industry rock stars (thanks to the great people at MLOVE) and highlight the mobile case studies transforming the developed world (courtesy of Matthew Dawes, who organizes must-attend mobile events across Africa).

MSG is on a mission to amplify the voices of individuals we should/must hear and provide a platform to organizers of path-breaking events and happenings. A raft of new partnerships and collaborations with a high-caliber mix of mobile companies and event organizers deliver on both counts, allowing MSG exclusive access to an eclectic mix of industry rock stars and brave individuals at the forefront of mobile innovation that impacts our everyday lives.

My personal thanks to Harald Neidhardt, MLOVE Founder, for forging the ties with the event speakers that will allow me to feature the best and brightest in the upcoming Netsize Guide 2011 and in the Netsize Briefing Room here on MSG.

The MLOVE Confestival 2010 — described as TED for mobile ONLY – was a huge success, and planning has begun for the next MLOVE (at the same German castle) in 2011. The audio interviews I conducted with MLOVE speakers to promote the event (specifically, Google’s Nick Heller and Sagem Wireless’ Jerome Nadel) are among the most popular content ever (!) on MSG.

MOBILE WEB AFRICA

Innovations impacting developing markets will also feature prominently on MSG.

I am proud to collaborate with Matthew Dawes, Managing Director of All Amber, the UK-based conference company behind a series of path-breaking conferences across Africa and an impressive initiative to promote the Mobile Web to everyone, everywhere.

The Mobile Web Africa series of events brings together the leading stakeholders in the mobile ecosystem, as well as the industry’s “rising stars.” To achieve this, the organizers offer subsidized tickets and speaking slots to start-ups and developers. In addition, each of the three conferences (listed below) kicks off with a special session called App factor, allowing local African start-ups and developers to demo their best apps.

Mathew and I are working together to map out our series of content, and the line-up is shaping up nicely. Topics range from mobile for social change (using the example of Frontline SMS) to the unexpected success of mobile novels (m-novels) in South Africa.

If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the developments shaping the African market, then mark these events in your calendar NOW.

Mobile Web Africa 2010, September 28 – October 1, 2010, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mobile Web West Africa 2011, February 2-3, 2011, Lagos, Nigeria
Mobile Web East Africa 2011, May 25-26, 2011, Nairobi

MSG will be announcing more content partnerships in the next weeks, so stay tuned. You can also follow MSG (@msearchgroove & @peggyanne).

CENTER STAGE: Real Mobile Innovation That Drives Real Results; Why Developing Markets Are The Ones To Watch

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:47:21 +0000

In brief: Moving on with another in the “best of” selection of executive interviews from the Netsize Guide 2010 we examine how innovation in user-centric design and user-centered services are improving lives and livelihoods in developing markets. Susan Dray, President, Dray & Associates, walks us through the real-life examples that set the bar.

Despite the excitement about the advance of the iPad and the avalanche of smartphone apps, the real innovation is in services that harness universal tools and technologies, such as text messaging and speech recognition, to reach (and empower) every person on the planet.

This is the message that came across loud and clear in this well-written analysis in the New York Times. To drive home this key point the article recounts how people in emerging and developing markets are using their simple mobile phones and SMS text – a language you could say is truly native to mobile devices – to improve their lives, conduct commerce, transfer money, record and share sermons and even oversee elections.

This mobile revolution has been hailed as the enabling force for emerging markets and developing countries to become more active participants in the global economy. Given the right tools and environment, people can harness mobile technology to leapfrog more developed countries, creating localized content and services that address local problems and issues, and ultimately close the digital divide.

Susan Dray, President, Dray & Associates, has worked as both an internal and external consultant, combining her expertise in interface evaluation, usability evaluation and ethnographic research to help develop solutions that increase benefits to people in emerging markets and the service providers that operate there. I caught up with her between trips to talk about the positive impact of mobile and the ways in which local communities are using mobile tools to achieve socioeconomic development goals.

INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN DRAY

Q: What is user-centered design (UCD) and what are the benefits, particularly in emerging countries and markets?

A: Much of the motivation guiding design and development of mobile technology today is ‘techno-centric.’ User-centered design (UCD) begins from a very different premise. If companies are to design products and services that will truly meet users’ needs, they have to start by gaining deep understanding of who their users are, and, most importantly, how the new product or service will fit into the cultural, social, technical, and physical contexts of the intended users’ lives. Localization – or fitting a product to the users and context of another country – is not simply a matter of translation, adapting the interface to fit local information display conventions, or visual design preferences that are different from those we are used to. We also need to understand how people work and live in other places, so that the localized product will fit into their lives. When we learn about this, we may decide that the very product concept has to change for localization to even be possible. It is very common that early user research in a variety of international markets results in new product concepts. This is equally true for mobiles as it is for PC-based applications.

Q: How has the market changed over the years?

A: In 2009 we saw a proliferation of people developing mobile phone content and services that fit their context because they finally have the tools to do it. Some of this driven by the advance of voice-activated services which are becoming ubiquitous and extend mobility to the functionally-illiterate in these regions.

But there is also a new wave of interest and excitement in SMS as more people design more applications that make use of text. Indeed, there is a groundswell of grassroots efforts around the globe to meet local needs with text services that are relevant to the lives of people and improve life in the community, particularly in areas where village residents share a mobile phone.

On one hand, it’s about education, healthcare and using mobile to help bring socio-economic stability and sustainability. On the other hand, it’s about progress and services such as mobile banking, where Africa leads the world because its people are under-banked and under-served. At both ends of the spectrum, it’s fascinating how incredibly creative scarcity can make people.

Q: From healthcare to banking, the mobile phone is at the center of this innovation. Can you provide some concrete examples?

A: Take Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists using their mobile phones to capture and report incidents during a time of crisis. This initial deployment was the catalyst for realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world. It has since been used in the DR Congo and South Africa. In fact, I was in South Africa during the xenophobic riots where Ushahidi was used to map the incidents of violence. It’s an exciting project with obvious benefits that continues to grow in scope and impact.

Another example is Souktel, an SMS service based in the Middle East and East Africa, which uses text to connect users to everything from jobs and internships to humanitarian aid and youth leadership programs. Job seekers can register via SMS with Souktel, and then, through a series of text messages, enter details about themselves into the system. Whenever the job seeker is looking for a job, they can text ‘match me’ to Souktel to receive an instant list of jobs that matches the resume stored in the system. The service also helps connect humanitarian agencies with people who are looking for aid.

And let’s not forget how mobile is improving healthcare awareness and treatment. In India IFFCO, a service provided by a fertilizer cooperative with over one million members, provides rural Indian farmers voice messages and regular updates about crop and veterinary information and empower them through technology. The voice messages are in local languages, so they are accessible even to illiterate farmers or those who don’t speak English and who can’t read text messages.

In South Africa an impressive project is Cell-Life, which uses mobile phones in the hands of rural HIV/AIDS workers to monitor patient health and reactions to AVRs. The HIV Aids rate in South Africa is over 30 percent of the population, so services that allow healthcare workers to collect symptoms from patients and text those back to the doctor or pharmacist ensure that the right treatment and dosage is given. And in Malawi, UNICEF has been using cell phones to monitor children for signs of malnutrition using the RapidSMS system that allows UNICEF can rapidly move into areas where malnutrition appears to be imminent.

Q: These are some amazing success stories. What will ensure that there are more to come?

A: I am optimistic because I see signs that companies understand they can not just export their ideas to an emerging market or country. It’s about understanding the people and their environment, and the more companies internalize this the more they are going to be able to mail it with an application that, like Cell-Life, is ethnographically-driven at its core.

Q: What are some key learnings or lessons you can offer?

A: Mobile companies have to think locally and tailor services to the local environment. So, developing a basic toolkit and being able to tweak it is important. We also need to do more to educate people in different parts of the world so they can take these basic ideas and services and make them their own, using them to design new technology, new applications and spread brilliant ideas like m-banking. Mobile banking came out of nowhere and now it is everywhere [in the developing world] because it fits the local environment and understands the needs of local people.

The success of mobile in the developing world is linked to the commitment of companies to understand local needs, and translate it into usable and affordable product. The impact of these innovations will be global, providing benefit to all people. Some companies are retrenching due to the recession, but I am hopeful that these companies will soon realize that – if they really want to have impact – they must have a grasp of the local situation. Nokia and Intel, for example, are companies that understand the importance of local perspective in the creation of mobile technology and services. They also understand that the central position of mobile – the only screen for users in these regions – influences the kind of chipsets and services we will likely need for all mobile phones, in these regions and – ultimately – around the world.

THE NETSIZE GUIDE

The Netsize Guide – which features exclusive interviews with 28 industry senior executives at leading companies and organizations including Havas, M&S, MMA, Nokia NAVTEQ, PayPal and Sony Music Entertainment — provides unique perspectives and reveals how players across the mobile ecosystem are preparing to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.

The Netsize Guide 2010 also includes the results of Mobile Trends Survey 2010, an online survey asking +1,000 mobile professionals and practitioners across 67 countries their views on these key themes and their insights into trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the increasing importance of mobile across a range of business verticals.

Finally, the Netsize Guide 2010 presents detailed data on the wireless telecoms sector in 41 countries, including revenues, market shares and value-added service offerings for messaging and billing of 194 mobile network operators worldwide.

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010 and has been commissioned to write the Netsize Guide 2011.

UPDATE: Mapping Out Massive Mobile Industry Book; Pitch Ideas NOW For Inclusion In Netsize Guide

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:05:10 +0000

In brief: Wrapping up two-days of meetings in Paris today and leaving with a blueprint for the next Netsize Guide. The annual mobile industry analysis and almanac is written by MSG on behalf of Netsize, a mobile commerce and communications company belonging to Gemalto.

It’s that time of year again! Regular readers will know this is the fourth year that I have been commissioned to research and write the Netsize Guide, a global and comprehensive analysis of mobile milestones and future trends.

Last year’s Netsize Guide set a new benchmark, drawing from interviews with senior executives at 28 companies and the exclusive results of a mobile trends survey of more than 1,000 mobile practitioners and professionals to conclude that the industry is entering a new phase of development.

MOBILE IS THE REMOTE CONTROL OF OUR LIVES

With this in mind, the Netsize Guide 2010 is actually titled Mobile Renaissance, and the company –in addition to the thought leadership and information portal here on MSG – has also launched a microsite dedicated to the Netsize Guide.

Put simply, it’s not longer about “mobile;” it’s about the rise of mobile as a new mass media that has impact on all aspects of our lives and lifestyles. The tremendous success of recent conferences focused on mobile learning, mobile retail and even mobile insurance are signposts that mobile has arrived full-force.

Another development highlighted in the Netsize Guide: the arrival of mobile Augmented Reality (AR) and its impact on how we experience everyday activities on our mobile phones. Shops and brands use AR, allowing us to superimpose clothes on our bodies, rather than physically try them on. Ikea recently made its catalog mobile, allowing us to “picture” just how items of furniture would look in our homes before we buy them. And the list goes on…

PITCH NOW TO MSG

The Netsize Guide 2010, which you can still download by clicking the banner below, features exclusive C-level interviews including: EmFinders, Evernote, Flirtomatic, GeoVector, GetJar, Havas Digital Mobile, Layar, Marks & Spencers, NearbyNow, Nokia NAVTEQ, PayPal Mobile, Scanbuy, SFR, Sony Ericsson, Sony Music Entertainment, UGC and Universal McCann.

It also featured insights from analysts and associations including Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (a German association of digital firms and professionals), comScore, Informa Telecoms & Media, Dray & Associates, Innopay, Mobile Entertainment Forum, Mobile Marketing Association and VisionMobile.

This year’s new Netsize Guide will likely bring back a few outstanding companies, but I am also eager to connect with new companies and hear exciting case studies. What am I looking for: pragmtic and path-breaking people, companies, ideas – the works.

Meantime, download last year’s guide and then reach out to me with your story. (Peggy@msearchgroove.com or @peggyanne). It may be that it is included in this year’s Guide, which is the tenth edition of this important publication. I look forward to connecting with you.

Special thanks to Stan Chesnais, Netsize CEO; Alexander Vlasblom, Group Marketing Communications Director; and Christine Blattes, “Creative Spark” and Webmaster. The pieces are in place to make sure the Netsize Guide 2011 pushes the envelope!

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010.

PODCAST: Mobile Entertainment Forum On Meffy Awards, Mobile Media Megatrends & How Smart Service Enablers Can Pay

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:05:40 +0000

In brief: The Meffy awards, the 10th annual MEM Conference (the Mobile Entertainment Market), and the release of a new must-read Smart Enablers Guide outlining how everyone can/must work together to deliver a good consumer experience and streamline payment. The last weeks have seen a flurry of activity and announcements around the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) – the global trade body for the mobile media and entertainment industry. I discuss the key takeaways and progress made with Rimma Perelmuter, MEF Executive Director.

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

PERSONALIZATION PLAYERS & VODAFONE 360

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

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

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

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

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

MEFFY WINNERS & FANCHARGE

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

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

Other Meffy 2010 Winners:

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

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

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

PODCAST WITH RIMMA PERELMUTER

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

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

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

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

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

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

MEF grows its global presence

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST [17:30]

PODCAST: Tomi Ahonen Warns App Store Model Doesn’t Pay; Is The Blockbuster App Model Bankrupt?

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:01:38 +0000

In brief: We’re back with another look at the mobile trends and numbers that matter most – with mobile pundit and all-around-great guy Tomi Ahonen. The main attraction is his must-read post that connects the dots in recent download stats to tell us just how much money developers are making (not). We also explore the rise (and rise!) of Android and how handset makers aligned with Android can achieve competitive advantage.

“iPhone Economics: It is bad news. And then it gets worse.” The title of this blog post from Tomi Ahonen says it all. In it Tomi does the math, matching figures from Apple with stats from other analyst houses to conclude that most app developers can count on breaking even sometime in 2021.

SERIOUS APP STORE ISSUES

What is the methodology and – more importantly – what is the message to investors?

I caught up with Tomi during MedienForum NRW (PDF), a milestone cross-media conference that took place on June 30th in nearby Cologne. Tomi gave the keynote at the Mobile Media Summit, a mobile-focused event expertly organized by Mark (Mr. Mobile) Wächter, bringing together some great mobile minds and strategists including Mark Curtis (Flirtomatic CEO), Gerd Leonhard (media futurist), Ajit Jaokar (author), Michael von Roeder (Iconmobile COO) and John Gerosa (Vertical Leader, Technical Markets, Google).

ANDROID LEADS THE PACK

Tomi also documents the rise of Android and the success of its ecosystem approach that could see over 100 handsets on the market by the end of the year. What did Google do right and where did Apple (potentially) lose the plot? As Tomi sees it: Apple will pay dearly for being a control-freak. “Apple is alone, one manufacturer with one new phone a year. RIM Blackberry is alone, one manufacturer with eight phones. How can they compete against 30 manufacturers and 70 phones today?”

HIT OR MISS APPS?

The app model is flawed now – but things will get better. Meantime, investors are well advised to see the app market dynamics in a new light. It’s not Hollywood, where blockbuster hits make up for all the misses. “Hits business is what people thought the Apple App Store was like. Now we know the reality is much, much, much, much worse. It is not a ‘hits business,’ it is a lottery business. You really have to be supremely lucky to have that one application that is a success – then you might make millions. But, remember, there are 170,000 other people who did not make the millions. The odds are nowhere near as good as in Hollywood.”

WACKY STAT

It comes from the U.K. and underlines just how very personal our personal mobility has become (!)

PODCAST

[Listen to the podcast here and pass it on! 14:57]

KNOWLEDGE SHARING: VisionMobile Report Reveals Developer Attitudes & Operator Opportunities

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:19:02 +0000

In brief: MSG kicks off a new series showcasing must-read sites and resources with a look at VisionMobile, a premier destination for mobile industry market analysis and advisory services. The new report, Mobile developer Economics 2010 and Beyond, based on a survey of 400+ developers, provides a wide range of insights into what developers demand and how the industry must respond.

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

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

ANDROID MINDSHARE

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

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

So, is Android the mindshare leader?

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

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

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

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

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

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

MOBILE OPERATOR OBSTACLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POOR OPINION, RICH OPPORTUNITY

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

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

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

MY TAKE

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

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

Disclaimer: Peggy Anne Salz is a VisionMobile Associate.

PODCAST: Is Social Content Discovery The New & Improved Mobile Search?

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:11:42 +0000

In brief: Back after a conference where – surprisingly – recommendation and content discovery took center stage as the mobile megatrends to watch for NEXT. What’s happening now and how important is social search going to be soon? Colm Healy, Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services and General Manager of Xiam Technologies, is back to discuss the business drivers and why discovery is hotter than ever.

Excitement around app stores and a gold rush mood around mobile commerce sites and schemes is turning up the pressure on content owners and mobile operators to offer a much more engaging experience in tune with what we are like and are likely to appreciate. But are the use cases and data points that underline the role of content discovery in digital strategy?

One sure-fire sign could be the decision by the Mobile Entertainment Forum to increase the number of categories for its coveted Meffy award by seven – including a Blockbuster app category (reflective of the explosion in apps) and Personalization and Content Discovery (a nod to the increasing importance of these technologies in our mobile experiences).

I caught up with Colm Healy — Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services and General Manager of Xiam Technologies – a third and final time to discuss developments in the space and the heightened interest in approaches that tap us and our social interactions to super-charge content discovery and commerce.

In Colm’s view mobile search is no longer the tool we need on our super smartphones. This is because these superphones are also action phones. “These are devices where you want to get fulfillment straightaway and that is why discovery is over-indexing …on the mobile versus the Web.”

Among the highlights:

BETTER SHOPPING: Discovery and personalization is core to achieving a high level engagement with us when we shop or browse content storefronts and app stores. It is also becoming the measure for all mobile commerce interactions. Morgan Stanley believes that about 25 percent of Amazon’s sales come from recommendation and Colm is seeing a similarity with mobile. “People are using search less and less to find something, which means they’re less and less likely to have come into the store with a specific intention in mind….They’re coming to be entertained, to be amused, and to find stuff in a much more serendipitous way.”

ENAGEMENT: “If you get it right, people engage with the content, they rate it, they review it, they tell their friends about it….One of the key metrics today I think will predict your success in the future will be that level of engagement. Are your visitors reviewing the content, are they telling their friends about it, are they doing more than just searching and buying?” If you want to see where all this is going, then look at shopping in the real word. “It’s about getting amused, finding stuff, sometimes buying stuff… not just going in and grabbing the thing you need.”

MOBILE OPERATOR OPP: It’s a new world with new opportunities. There are three [parties] who can do it right. “One is the webcos, the other is the handset manufacturers, and the third is the operators…. With the right will, the right focus and the right partners, operators have a really strong chance of being a major player in a big market. They won’t have walled gardens, that is, 100-percent of a tiny market. They will have a very significant share of a much, much larger market and that’s the opportunity for the operator.

TRENDS: Social discovery. It’s all about “harnessing of community, a greater harnessing of social networks for people to find what they’re interested in.” Another one to watch is video. “If you want to make a business that is distributing video, you need to be able to keep people on your site and not just looking at a single video. You need to keep them for extended periods of time and that’s where a really great discovery technology like ours helps to provide the visitor to your site a stream of entertaining content.”

Editor’s note: Well, that wraps up this three-part series – but there will lots more to come in the form of columns, contributions and some surprises from ecosystem companies and partners speaking their mind on the money-making opportunities around personalization and , recommendation and the strategic value of content, apps and digital stuff that is in-tune with what our preferences.

Listen to the podcast here. [9:15]

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

Countdown to MobileBeat 2010 San Francisco; MSG Offers VIP Discount

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:08:10 +0000

In brief: There’s just over one week left for you to register for MobileBeat 2010 (July 12-13, San Francisco), VentureBeat’s third annual conference and start-up competition exploring the real money-making opportunities with mobile industry movers and shakers. Register with MSG’s VIP code for a 20 percent discount.

Less than a week to MobileBeat and the program continues to add new speakers and exciting topics. Be sure not to miss out on the chance to hear and connect with a powerful keynote line-up that now includes: John Donovan, CTO of AT&T Operations; Phil McKinney, VP & CTO of HP’s Personal System Groups; Omar Khan, Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung; and Omar Hamoui, AdMob founder and now Google’s VP of Mobile Ads.

Newly added panelists include Christy Wyatt of Motorola Mobile Devices, Pooja Midha of MTV Networks Digital and Ian McKerlich of T-Mobile. They join a stellar array of insiders such as Facebook’s Erick Tseng and Twitter’s Kevin Thau of Twitter.

MSG is proud to be a media sponsor of MobileBeat, an event that has sold out (!) the last two years. Attendance is limited so be sure to register now to avoid missing THE mobile conference of the year!

MSearchGroove readers click here and use promo code MB2010-MSEARCHVIP to get 20% off.

Join 500 mobile industry leaders — from the major U.S and international carriers, to the top device makers, developers, startups, marketers, investors, and press — for two packed days of exciting content, power networking, and deal-making.This year’s new two-day format will explore “The Year of The Superphone and Who Will Profit.”

You’ll also get a peek at 20 of the hottest new start-ups in the applications and infrastructure/services categories showcased in MobileBeat 2010’s Startup Competition. Help select the ones most likely to shake up the mobile world and who’ll receive the coveted Tesla Award plus accompanying fame and glory.

Agenda highlights:

Move over, Telcos, Here comes Silicon Valley

Samir Argawal, Nokia, Head of MeeGo software development
Kevin Thau, director of mobile, Twitter

Mobile Platforms 1: the Future Struggle Among the Titans

Christy Wyatt, SVP Motorola
David Ko, Yahoo! SVP, Audience, Mobile and Local, North America
Alan Brenner, SVP at RIM

Mobile Platforms 2: Who is Winning the Heart of Developers?

Jason Spero, Director, Mobile, Google
Ian McKerlich, T-Mobile, Director of Mobile Content
Oliver Gunasakera, Symbian
Peter Vesterbacka, Angry Bird

Building a Successful Mousetrap

Russ McGuire, Sprint, VP of Strategy
Tyler Lessard VP, Global Alliances and Developer Relations Research In Motion
Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO, GetJar
Laura Merling, Alcatel-Lucent, Vice President Developer Platform and Programs

It’s 5pm. Do You Know Where Your Friends Are?

Othman Laraki, Director Geo, Twitter
Tasso Roumeliotis, Location Labs, Founder & CEO
Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja, SCVNGR
Keith Lee, CEO, Booyah (MyTown)

Enabling Mobile Games

Stewart Putney, Founder and CEO, Moblyng
Ben Keighran, Chomp, CEO & Co-Founder
Si Chen, PapayaMobile, CEO

For a complete list of speakers, panels, and breakout sessions, check out the full agenda here.

MSG Media Partnership With Mobile Future Forward; Special Rate Expires June 30th

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:32:18 +0000

In brief: Learn what’s next in mobile NOW. Mobile Future Forward, a high-caliber Executive Summit organized by Chetan Sharma and his team, brings some of the industry’s most influential minds together in Seattle on September 8 to explore the future of the mobile industry. Get thinking about the big-picture issues that define what mobile is (and will be), and network with a “Who’s Who” of the mobile industry.

What are the user experiences and use cases that will drive positive results? What are the challenges and opportunities that face us as we seek answers and solutions? These are just a few of the questions this all-day event will debate and discuss. In fact, this new white paper from Chetan (available for download here/PDF) provides a comprehensive overview of the topics/issues that deserve a top-notch spot on your business agenda.

MSG MEDIA SPONSOR

MSG is extremely proud to be a media sponsor and promote this excellent event. I’m also pleased to report I have lined up the first exclusive pre-event podcast with Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO. Keep checking back or follow MSG on Twitter (@msearchgroove & @peggyanne) to get the inside track on the speakers and the hot topics they will discuss.

Registration is Open Now. Early Bird special rate expires June 30th(!) – Enter MSG to receive your discount rate

Confirmed speakers include:

Glenn Lurie, President, AT&T;Danny Bowman, President, Sprint Nextel; Subba Rao, CEO, TataDoCoMo; Mike Sievert, Chief Commercial Officer, Clearwire; Louis Gump, VP Mobile, CNN; Paul Palmieri, Founder and CEO, Millennial Media; Dr. Sailesh Chutani, CEO, Mobisante; Abhi Ingle, VP, AT&T Wireless; Ken Denman, CEO, Openwave; Amir Mashkoori, CEO, Kovio; Stephen David, Former CIO, Proctor & Gamble; Dr. Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow, User Experience, Intel; Hank Skorny, SVP, Real Networks; Jon Stross, VP & GM – Babycenter, Johnson & Johnson; Dr. Suzanne Clough, Chief Medical Officer, WellDoc; Dr. Boris Nikolic, Sr. Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Krishna Vedati, SVP & GM – Mobile, AT&T Interactive; Christopher Dean, Chief Strategy Officer, Skype; Russ McGuire, VP, Sprint Nextel; Jack Kennedy, EVP, News Corp; David Weiden, General Partner, Khosla Ventures; Anand Chandrasekhar, SVP and GM, Intel; Chamath Palihapitiya, VP Growth/Mobile, Facebook; Rob Glaser, Chairman, Real Networks; Wim Sweldens, President, Alcatel-Lucent; Takayuki Hoshuyama, CEO, D2 Communications; Neville Ray, SVP, T-Mobile, Bob Azzi, SVP—Networks, Sprint Nextel; Mario Queiroz, VP—Android, Google; Matt Bross, CTO and Vice Chairman, Huawei; and Tony Lewis, VP – Open Development, Verizon.

Topics they will discuss/debate include:

•   Emerging Devices
•   Internet of Things
•   Network Evolution
•   Content, Media, and Entertainment
•   New sources of Revenue and Business Models
•   Evolution of Communication and Interaction
•   Mobile Cloud Computing
•   Globalization and Competition
•   Mobile Anthropology
•   Mobile as a platform
•   The economics and politics of consumer data and privacy
•   Nurturing Developer Ecosystems
•   Shifts in the Ecosystem
•   Mobile Health and Implications
•   Mobile Retail
•   Japanese Mobile Industry
•   Innovations at each level of the value chain
•   Mobile Social and Commerce
•   Managing network growth

Register today for your special rate – and I hope to see you there!

BEST & BRIGHTEST: COM #228: App Store Hype; Android UI Control & Bad Mobile Advertising

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:06:09 +0000

In brief: The Carnival is up (again) at MSG with a selection of solid posts that ask some tough questions. Topics include: The math that spells trouble for app developers; the issues handset makers face as they strive for differentiation on Android; connecting the dots in recent carrier comments; bad mobile advertising that should have us thinking; and good mobile outreach that raises awareness about prostrate cancer.

I’m pleased that my calls for posts and hosts via Twitter (@COTMobilists) have encouraged new activity and interest in the Carnival. This is reflected in the number of submissions I received this week and the offers from Mobilists to take the helm and host the COM. Thanks to Steve Litchfield over at allaboutsymbian.com, who will host later in July. There are more slots open, so check out the calendar and pick your date to host soonest.

This week’s line-up:

Tam Hanna conducts an interview with Resco, a Slovakian company sharply focused on Windows Mobile 7. What’s the view of WM7? What is the likely take-up among enterprise users? Is the timing of the release good for business (literally)? Lots of key questions, so read on and find out.

Tomi Ahonen provides us a masterpiece of math and logic. His post recounts the key stats we need to know to understand just how much money the Apple App store has made and argues that the numbers spell disaster for developers who hope to make real money selling their apps. As he puts it: “I have been claiming now for many months that the App Store hysteria is developing into a tech bubble, and that most developers will never recover their costs.” It’s a well-researched post that starts off as a typical Tomi rant, but evolves to offer us some hard-nosed business advice. It also earns my vote for Best Blog Of The Week. More on the numbers and the reasoning behind Tomi’s dead-serious warning to mobile companies and investors in our monthly MSG podcast next week.

We know Tomi doesn’t buy the apps hype. But what about Web shortcuts? Steve Litchfield over at allaboutsymbian.com points out that booksmarks may be the best way to get Web content on your smartphone. What’s more, since many servers auto-detecting a mobile phone OS and adapting their content automatically, bookmarks are a sure-fire way to “bypass a lot of typical high profile ‘apps’ entirely.” Steve wraps this up with a road test of some popular apps (app vs Web bookmark and complete with screenshots) and assess the user experience. So, do we really need app stores to get a lot of the content we love? Read on and find out…

Kudos to Stasys Bielinis over at UnwiredView.com for his keen observations and conclusions from the Droid X launch. What has happened to Motorola’s Android smartphone strategy? Where is the MotoBlur interface now? And how can handset makers differentiate on the platform? Could it be that Google has learned to innovate at Internet speed? Will handset companies ever catch up? Read on and find out…

Taking a similar stance, Sachendra Yadav tracks the evolution of the Android operating system as it takes up the charge to beat back Apple. Consolidating and defining the UI layers in the Android OS is the best solution. But how will handset makers differentiate? Will it be through media features and social networking? Sachendra is hardly convinced…

Keeping with the focus on developers, Steven Hoober over at Little Spring Designs blog walks us through a detailed discussion focused (no pun intended!) on images, resolutions and new approaches that get good images to display even better on a mobile screen.

Helpful advice of a different kind comes from Terence Eden. His blog post provides us a textbook example of bad mobile advertising (badvertising) using the example of an Apple app advert shown on an Android device. A complete mismatch and a bad user experience via the Guardian – or, more likely, whoever runs their advertising department. But it gets worse – a lot worse. How could this badvertising disaster involving the Guardian, Barclays Bank and Apple have been avoided? Terence has the answers…

In contrast, my submission from MSearchGroove offers a positive example of how charities can harness mobile for the greater good. A cancer awareness campaign gets our attention using barcodes and calls-to-action that make sense (and a difference!)

Volker Hirsch over at Volker on Mobile connects the dots in recent comments by carrier representative to conclude that the classic 50/50 rev share model may be on the way out. Will it be replaced by a 70/30 rev share model that favors developers? No clear answers, but Vodafone’s content Services Director hinted at last week’s MEM event in London that it beginning to see things differently. Will operators embrace Volker’s logic and understand that “the real value of (great) content to carriers may not lie in incremental revenues (be it 50% or 30%) but in softer albeit much, much more important values, namely marketing, positioning as well as customer retention.” Read on and find out…

And finally, an emotional plea from Antoine RJ Wright for change in the U.S. mobile market. It may not be everyone’s taste in posts, but there’s no arguing that many customer feel locked in a market that is high on carrier control and low on carrier innovation…

* * *

That’s a wrap for this week. Next week we converge on Communities Dominate Brands where Tomi will summarize the best of the week’s mobile blogging.

In the meantime, I encourage EVERYONE to get involved and submit a post. Better yet – recruit your buddies to join in as well. I still miss posts from bloggers in the emerging world where I know the REAL innovation is happening…

Mobile Charity Moves The Masses; Conference Roundup & Barcode Cancer Campaign Update

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:26:22 +0000

In brief: A look at the key takeaways from a recent AIME conference dedicated to empowering the charitable sector with mobile and an update of last week’s mobile campaign raising awareness about prostrate cancer in men and powered by mobile barcodes.

Regular readers will recall that MSG was a media sponsor of a full-day seminar entitled Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology and organized by AIME. The tremendous industry response to the event has now led to the formation of a Charity and Interactive Tech Special Interest Group, spearheaded by AIME, to help drive further improvements in the value chain and encourage more charitable organizations to tap into this rich seam of revenue and communications. A round of thanks to Andrew Darling, AIME Event Chairman and Director of Communications, for organizing this excellent event and for providing MSG with the following learnings and observations.

AIME EVENT RECAP

Mobile is with us when it matters: at the point of inspiration. A personal outreach or call to action delivered to us on our personal device allowing us to get involved using technologies we understand intuitively (such as text or barcode scanning) drives positive results.

This is one reason why most of the AIME seminar sessions were focused on mobile and the perfect fit with fund-raising. Robert Thurner, commercial director of mobile agency Incentivated, highlighted several case studies from Save the Children, Marie Curie and British Heart Foundation.

In addition, Keith Brown (paythru), Rory Maguire (3UK), Roger Craven (Vir2), Jim Manis (Mobile Giving Foundation USA) and Simone Schmidlkofer (Cause2Connect) all focused their presentations on the mechanics of how mobile text donations via short codes work and – more importantly – how they could be improved from a user perspective.

The final panel session, chaired by Mike Short, honorary chairman of the MDA and VP at O2 Group, continued on this theme and the need for value chain improvements. Mike’s expert knowledge and questioning in this area brought out the best of the panel, which included Rob Weisz (MIT), Rory Maguire (3UK), Paul Whiteing (PhonePayPlus) and Rupert Daniels (Join 1Goal Org charity).

NEW INTEREST GROUP

Building on the positive momentum of this event AIME will push new initiatives, workshops and further seminars sharply focus on mobile charity and the requirements of stakeholders (value chain companies and real people) moving forward. Specifically, AIME is coordinating a Special Interest Group to assist in creating greater understanding of the space and a roadmap to navigate it.

To find out more or get involved, please email either Andrew (andrew@aimelink.org) or Zoe Patterson (zoe@aimelink.org) for more information.

Also: more in-depth editorial, photos, podcasts and video interviews will be published shortly over the next weeks on the AIME website. Meantime, here are some excellent speaker presentations to get you thinking…

MOBILE RAISES CANCER AWARENESS

While AIME obviously boosts awareness – particularly in the U.K. — of the new role of mobile companies in mobile charity, The Mobile Movement - a mobile ecosystem initiative providing non-profit organizations with a mobile platform and applications to extend their reach- continues to chalk up impressive progress. (press release and post)

Interestingly, campaigns that harness 2D barcodes to get out the message and inspire people to action are proving to be hugely effective. Even more so if they are linked to live events.

This is the key learning from last week’s One Million Voices Against Prostrate Cancer, a campaign that successfully extended the reach of Ed Randall’s Bat for the Cure, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about prostrate cancer, to mobile in a big way.

The outdoor, in-stadium campaign was supported by a partnership of mobile companies. NeoMedia, a mobile barcode technology developer, created the campaign’s mobile barcode, and Neustar, a company known for innovative solutions and directory services, supplied the mobile barcode management, thus serving as a clearing house for mobile communications and IP that securely processed all of the campaign’s mobile barcode transactions. Renu Mobile, a company MSG profiled here, supplied short code call-to-action and website build.

BARCODE OUTDOOR CALL TO ACTION

In a nutshell, the campaign – which launched at minor league baseball parks across the U.S. — allowed people (baseball fans and so a predominantly male audience in the first place) to download an app by scanning the barcode below.

The app allowed users to interact with the non-profit in a variety of ways. They could view video content, navigate to the donations area and make a donation, and follow the cause via a live Twitter feed from @batforthecure. More importantly, the app let users add their names, addresses and emails to a petition demanding sweeping policy changes and governmental action in the U.S. to promote prostrate cancer awareness, detection, treatment and ongoing research. This last campaign also lays the foundation for a larger push in September 2011, when the non-profit will focus its efforts on promoting an awareness month. (By way of background, prostrate cancer strikes 1 out of 6 men in the U.S. Early detection can extend the lives of millions of men.)

According to Carol Glennon, Renu Mobile CEO, the next step is to deliver more applications that can be triggered by scanning the 2D barcode, including a look-up for clinics where the PSA blood tests can be taken, and “many other innovations that break down the barriers so that after a man is educated, he or his friends and family can easily act.”

I caught up with Carol today on Skype to chat about the future for this and similar mobile barcode campaigns to raise awareness of charity causes. Her takeaway: harnessing no-brainer barcode technology brings down the barrier to participation significantly.

But it may be the context that really clinches it. “People at these events don’t have laptops; they have their mobile phones. They are outside and open to using some of their free minutes to interact with a campaign that speaks to their interests.”

MY TAKE:

Ed Randall’s Bat for the Cure is sharply focused on raising awareness about prostrate cancer through national campaigns and fundraisers at baseball-oriented events around the U.S. Adding barcodes to the mix allows people an easy, no-brainer way to navigate to the mobile website and get involved. Combine this approach with additional features, such as a shortcut to make donations or a site to “sign” a petition, and non-profits can definitely wring even more value from their mobile charity strategies. What’s needed now? This industry (through campaigns like this one) has shown that it has education and awareness “covered.” However, non-profit campaigns would also benefit from sharing and allowing us ways to use our mobile to spread the message for them. Fortunately, I know of mobile barcode campaigns in the pipeline that will allow just this. Even better: campaigns coming online soon will allow people to scan health-related products for helpful information they can share with their peers. It is encouraging that mobile barcodes can power much more than mobile marketing and trigger purchases. (Although that is a big part of it.) As barcodes become a de facto interface to a range of digital content and destinations, they will also provide the bridge for us to share what we find (information, products, places to get treatment) with others who share our need.

Disclaimer: MSG is aligned with the mission and goals of The Mobile Movement and Peggy Anne Salz sits on the Advisory Board.

BEST & BRIGHTEST: COM #227: Smartphone Stats; Android’s Lead; Mobile Future Event; Developer Issue Survey & Voting Campaigns For Impact

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:28:14 +0000

In brief: The Carnival is up at MSG with a balanced mix of must-read posts and rants. Topics include: Apple’s reign, Android’s gain, video how-to, SMS voting and a campaign that could have been in Slovakia.

Thanks to Communities Dominate Brands we get a great update on the numbers that play in the zero-sum game involving smartphone makers worldwide. As the inimitable Tomi Ahonen sees it, it’s a bloodbath – and he has the stats to back it up. It’s a meaty, must-read post that recounts shipments and sales by all the major players. It also claims “Apple’s market share has indeed peaked and we’ll see gradual market share decline for this year 2010 compared to 2009.” Is Tomi right? Read on, find out… (and bookmark!)

While Tomi argues with numbers, Ajit Jaokar gives invaluable insights (with a nod to Sun Tzu) in his post into why Apple is no longer the one to watch. Now it’s all about Android. In his view, Apple’s obsessive and un-open approach to mobile has stunted its growth. Android is gaining traction and “it is now a race for Nokia, LiMo and others to compete against the rate of change of Android and that will be hard.” Who will win and why? Read on and find out…

In the run up to an exciting event — Mobile Future Forward (September 8th) — Chetan Sharma’s new post gives us the opportunity to download a worthwhile white paper that outlines the themes/ trends impacting mobile at all levels. It’s a great way to get us all thinking about the big-picture issues that define what mobile is and will likely become. The white paper also gives us a good idea of the topics senior execs from a wide range of top-notch companies will discuss during the path-breaking event. (Shameless plug: MSearchGroove is proud to be the newest media sponsor, so check back here for more content in the run up to the event, including an exclusive podcast (!) with Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO.) What are the trends that matter most? Read on and find out… (Download the PDF here)

Registration for the event is open now. Early Bird expires June 30th 2010.

Mark Bridge over at Fonecast showcases a podcast with Hans Eriksson of mobile video streaming service Bambuser, which lets you share streaming video in real-time and even add chat. Hans tells us about the service and innovative ways people are using it. For one, the service was used to cover Jukka Mutanen’s 1,000 km cross-country drive through Finland. Hans also discusses some of the problems (and solutions) associated with live video streaming. A useful podcast – particularly in view of the traction video is getting on microblogs. How can video amplify your message? Read on and find out…

We know from the Obama campaign that SMS messages encouraging people to vote can have a profound impact on people’s perceptions of candidates and key issues. This post from Alfred DeRose over at Tego Interactive connects the dots in recent research on the topic and walks us through a campaign (combining Web, social media and mobile) his team developed for a Slovakian political party. Why can a well-integrated multi-channel campaign influence voter’s perceptions and participation? Read on and find out…

Participation of another kind is the focus of this post from C. Enrique Ortiz over at About Mobility. He reflects on some of his recent work and insights about the rampant spread of mobile broadband that cause him to wonder if developers (or operators) will have to carry the burden of app support. He asks: Is app-specific support a real issue today or one that is coming? More importantly, can developers even handle the hassle? And he also wants your input on these questions, which is why he asks us all to participate in a simple survey. What are app developer responsibilities and where should we draw the line? Fill out the survey and make your voice heard!

BEST OF THE WEEK

My pick this week: Ajit’s excellent explanation of why Android is pulling ahead of – well – everyone in the smartphone space. His perspective – backed up by multi-disciplinary common sense — is a pleasure to read. And don’t miss his nod to an excellent post from another author on why Apple’s secrecy may also be its undoing.

That’s a wrap until next week – when I hope someone will step up to the plate. At the moment Tomi – always the gentleman – has agreed to be our host. However, I would like to hear from some of you lurkers out there! With over 100 “members” and counting – I sure hope one of you will give a shout….

MLOVE PODCAST: Google’s Nick Heller Talks Mobile Trends, Opportunities & Why Access Rules

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:11:37 +0000

In brief: Today we continue the shout out for MLOVE with Nick Heller, who is responsible for New Business Development across EMEA at Google. Listen in to his take on mobile, information access, location and where the NEXT Google might come from.

What’s next in mobile? MLOVE, a multidisciplinary event with a strong emphasis on mobile, promised to give us all a glimpse into the future of mobile and insights into the great ideas and biz models that can bubble up when artists, entrepreneurs, academics and executives brainstorm in a castle near Berlin. TED meets Burning Man? Maybe… But if you want to find out for yourself – then register for MLOVE at MLOVE.com – and take advantage of the 20 percent discount MSearchGroove offers as a media partner for the event.

PODCAST WITH GOOGLE’S NICK HELLER

Moving on to our final podcast in the series to tell you what awaits you at MLOVE – I am extremely to connect with Nick Heller. Nick is responsible for New Business Development across EMEA at Google. He is also sharply focused on new product incubation and exploratory efforts in technology, meta-data licensing, strategic partnerships, special projects, and alternative distribution for existing and new business initiatives.

In addition to a preview of his keynote at the event, Nick gives me his take on a variety of exciting – even controversial topics.

The role of mobile? In Nick’s view mobile is an “access point” to information. And the device is more about convergent computing than communications.
The value of location? Predictably, quite central to a quality (and relevant) mobile experience.
And where is the NEXT Google going to come from? A surprising answer that leads us back to the Web and not mobile…

For the full story listen to the podcast – or register for the event to meet up with Nick in person.

Register at www.mlove.com/register . Enter VIP-MSG to receive an instant 20% discount.

Listen to the podcast here. [10:34]

MLOVE PODCAST: Using the Phone To Promote Brand & Commerce; Sagem Wireless Reveals Puma Phone

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:51:31 +0000

In brief: What’s the next big thing? This interview with Jerome Nadel, Executive Vice President of Marketing & User Experience at Sagem Wireless, gives us some answers. His radical and revolutionary thinking about devices, services and the role of the brand in the scheme of things points to a mega-opportunity in mobile brands really shouldn’t miss. All the more reason for you to take advantage of the 20 percent discount NOW and register for MLOVE (Berlin, June 23-25).

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

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

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

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

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

Among the podcast highlights

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

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

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

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

MY TAKE

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

Listen to the podcast here. [15:20]

PODCAST: Winning “Apps Arms Race” With Personalization; Qualcomm VP Argues Why Discovery Trumps Mobile Search

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:11:29 +0000

In brief: Back with Part 2 in this three-part podcast series looking at the business value of recommendation and personalization. Colm Healy — Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services and General Manager of Xiam Technologies – discuses the issues related to fragmentation and where personalization fits in to drive mobile commerce (for paid apps) and user acceptance (for ad-supported apps).

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

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

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

Among the highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.[11:04]

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

Jumptap Adds Video To Mobile Advertising Mix PLUS Q&A With CMO Paran Johar

Peggy Anne Salz — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:42:19 +0000

In brief: Following up on news and developments coming out of this week’s explosive and insightful MMA Forum in NYC with a look at Jumptap’s decision to add video to its premium mobile ad network. A Q&A with Jumptap CMO Paran Johar connects some of the dots in the company strategy moving forward.

Jumptap keeps them coming. Last month it was all about Consumer Intelligence, which MSG covered in detail here. To recap: The aim is to put consumers in control of their advertising by allowing them to choose the advertising they will accept on their mobile phones. This week the news is Jumptap’s decision to add of video to its premium mobile ad network through a technology partnership with iVdopia (for pre-app interstitials) and Limelight Networks, (for in-stream video, including pre roll, mid roll, post roll). The move effectively establishes Jumptap as a one-stop shop for search, display, rich media, video and in-app advertising.

Interestingly, iVdopia recently introduced a new twist on video ads it calls Viper Ads, which make the most of device capabilities for a more tightly integrated, interactive mobile video ad experience. We learn from Light reading Mobile that iVdopia powered a cool campaign for the iPhone that allowed users to push away the “sands of time” on their touchscreen to reveal a menu of interactive options related to the movie Prince of Persia. The post quoted iVdopia Chief Operating Officer Chhavi Upadhyay as saying that [for a recent campaign] 89 percent of people who watched a Viper ad, which was 27 percent of the total, actually took action on it too.

RICH MEDIA PAYS

Jumptap beefed up its rich media offer in April through a partnership Medialets and Crisp Wireless. The tie-up paved the way for the creation of what the companies call a Unified Rich Media Ad Platform, allowing advertisers and publishers to take advantage of a variety of ad units including configurable click through actions, tap-to-video, tap-to-audio, scrolling shakable, take-over-branding, location-aware – and more.

As Adam Soroca, Chief Product Officer and General Manager of Jumptap put it in a press statement at the time: Delivering a broad array of highly-engaging, rich media ad units for mobile apps and the mobile Web is the best way to expand an advertiser’s campaign reach and increasing a publisher’s fill rates and eCPMs. “Rich media campaigns are proven to drive higher levels of user engagement, more than any other media, with demonstrated increases in message lift association and higher CTRs.”

mobile video ads from jumptap

Jumptap is equally bullish about the outlook for video, and draws from Nielsen figures to make a strong case for high engagement and better response rates. Driven by the significant increase in smartphone penetration, mobile video usage is also on the rise. In the U.S. people spend an average of three hours and 37 minutes each month watching video on mobile phones. Connect the dots, and mobile video ads present advertisers with a significant opportunity to deliver messages that drive engagement and deliver higher ROI.

Indeed, just today Orange UK said it is expecting a big boost to its mobile TV viewing figures from the World Cup. Mobile Entertainment quotes the mobile operator’s head of sport partnerships and services Steve Wallage as saying: “Based on the surge in demand for mobile TV during the Ashes last summer, we expect viewing figures could rocket by at least 74 percent during the World Cup.” (Unfortunately, Orange doesn’t disclose how many viewers it has in total – so a 74 percent increase could be massive or minor…Nonetheless, mobile video is clearly gaining traction.)

INTERVIEW WITH PARAN JOHAR

To get the inside track on the announcement and some new Jumptap stats, I caught up with Paran Johar, Jumptap CMO. Huge thanks to Julie Ginches, who heads up marcom, for arranging this briefing on the fly!

MSG: So, now Jumptap is a one-stop. Why the focus on scope?

Paran: Whether it’s search, display advertising, rich media, or video, or – on the other side – branding or performance, they [advertisers/publishers] can come to Jumptap and get a comprehensive solution. That’s the number one reason for this announcement. Number two – from the publisher side – it’s about providing the same scope of services to help monetize their traffic. So, whether it’s to monetize display advertising, rich media or mobile video, we provide solutions for all of that. In addition to that, this [deal] allows them [publishers] to monetize it for premium advertisers for brand engagement, or if they have remnant inventory, for performance advertisers.

Having a one-stop-shop or one resource, makes the buying process simpler. There’s only advertising partner for an agency to do search, video and rich media. What is even more important is to have an open system. We offer an open system for rich media, which we announced [the Unified Rich Media Ad Platform]. It’s multi-platform and multi-handset, that is our approach. That is more important because an advertiser fundamentally doesn’t care what handset or what OS they’re running on; they care about they have an audience. That’s why an open approach is really going to be the one that wins in the long run.

MSG: Getting back to video, several execs have told me they are seeing more interesting in video. What are seeing that makes you excited enough to add it to the mix?

Paran: If you remember our last release was all about consumer intelligence, driving relevancy to drive engagement. That is one side of the coin. The second part to drive engagement is really about the creative, right? Mobile video is that next evolution in mobile creative. Certainly rich media is the first step, but the one right after that is sight, sound and motion — which is obviously video.

We know from Nielsen that mobile video users grew 57 percent to 17.6 million year over year, and that they spent an average of 3 hours 37 minutes. But what is even more interesting is the type of viewing they’re doing. It’s a much more active environment versus on the PC or on a TV, where people are much more in a passive state. When you’re watching video on your cellphone, you’re 100-percent focused on it, and so we felt this was a great way to round out our offering for advertisers.

Mobile video ads engage

MSG: Beyond being a one-stop-shop, what is the interplay between the formats and approaches you are offering here? I’m thinking about the focus on relevancy here…

Paran: They all work in conjunction with our focus on consumer intelligence to drive engagement. When you package all these pieces together, they work together to drive user engagement. On the relevancy side, it’s allowing consumers to manage their own profiles. On the creative side, it’s allowing advertisers to have these multiple formats. So, click-to-video, allows a big movie studio like Sony to promote their trailer in a new way. Consumers can literally, click on the banner and then watch the movie trailer. With interstitial, we’re allowing pre-roll. So, after you have downloaded an app and you’re opening it, we allow advertisers to insert pre-roll into that. Finally, in-stream. If you’re watching a news clip – say, on CNN.com — prior to you watching the content, you will see a 5 to 15-second pre-roll ad.

The innovation really doesn’t come from the actual ad unit itself, because you don’t want to provide more hurdles for advertisers to learn something brand new, a new way of doing something. What we are providing is a framework that they’re comfortable with – and certainly a nice extension of the PC Internet – coupled with targeting parameters that allow them to drive engagement.

MSG: High engagement is part of it. But what about the CPMs?

Paran: CPMs for video, you mean? It ranges – depending on placement within the app — from a low of 15 to a high of, say, 25.

MSG: What are the rollout plans?

Paran: We’re in the process of lining up our beta advertisers and we’ll be live probably within the next two weeks. We’ve got about half a dozen advertisers who are going to be the initial beta testers of this for the product. They’re actually buying the inventory and we’ll be launching them live in about two weeks and probably announcing the results in about five to six weeks. Right now, we’re in the process of announcing it, (a) telling the market that we have mobile video and (b) selling it, selling the first opportunities for advertisers.

MSG: Your last announcement is about putting consumers at the center of their experiences. Does this extend to mobile video ads?

Paran: The ultimate open approach is really allowing the consumer to be part of it, and we’re taking the leadership role.

MSG: Video is part of the opt-in package?

Paran: Yes, absolutely.

MSG: Let’s catch up on the other partnerships you have and the objectives…

Paran: Number one, with Crisp and Medialets: what’s exciting with those partners, and new partners that we’re going to be bringing on board, is that it allows an advertiser to plug directly into our system and run their current rich media initiatives. We have our own rich media package, so — if they’re not working with a partner — they can utilize that. That’s why we are and will continue to take an open approach to the eco system in general.

To give you an update on Jumptap in general: we have seen growth at a rate of about 30 percent quarter over quarter. And the reason for that is really simple. It is our open approach. Apple is really taking a walled garden stance and – you know this better than anyone – their pricing structure of a $10 CPM+, or $2 CPC – that is getting an incredible amount of push-back from advertisers.

Ours is much more simple, much more in line with what advertisers are used to. Whether it’s on the branding side for a premium mobile ad network or whether it’s on the performance side with our CPC performance ad network, we get to benefit from both sides.

If you look at Apple, they’re really trying to capture the big brand dollars. Google is known for performance and their acquisition of AdMob really kind of illustrates how they’re really going after the long tail. We sit in the middle. We have our premium business, so we get the benefit from the growth by brand advertisers. We also have our performance CPC network, so we get the benefit from the direct response advertisers as well.
* * *

Prior to the briefing, Jumptap also provided MSG some key data points.

By way of background, the Jumptap Premium Ad Network delivers the broadest reach and highest quality video ad inventory including 50+ million monthly impressions from premium publishers and applications including Mobi TV, MSNBC, Best of YouTube, iBasketball, iBowl, Movie Challenge Lite, and MovieFX. Advertisers can reach audiences across a broad array of content categories including entertainment, utilities, games, music, news, sports, and a wide range of devices including Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Jumptap also offers comprehensive creative management and sophisticated campaign analytics.

Advertisers on network: Over 350 premium and performance advertisers

Mobile ads served or page impressions: 8 billion performance & 900 million premium

Unique mobile users that see ads: 55 million

The breakdown: 34% IPhone, 10% RIM, 7% Android, 2% Windows Mobile, 1.5% Palm OS

PODCAST: Tomi Ahonen Says Mobile Location Services Will Make Money (Not)

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:12:32 +0000

In brief: A Who’s Who of the mobile industry gathers at the must-attend MMA Forum in NYC, where a highlight is today’s keynote from Tomi Ahonen, mobile authority and best-selling author. Tomi is also a close friend and colleague who joins me this month – and every month – for a lively new podcast series looking at the mobile news, trends and “wacky stats” that impact our industry.

Tomi Ahonen needs little introduction. His path-breaking ideas on mobile and its centerpiece role in our daily lives have profoundly impacted my work at MSG and elsewhere. His thinking about mobility and his observations that it has indeed become our 7th mass media can be heard in boardrooms and conference rooms around the world. Today Tomi is giving the keynote at the MMA Forum, where his ideas will no doubt resonate with advertisers and brands just beginning to understand why mobile is different.

To recap: Tomi – in his book, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media: Cellphone, Cameraphone, iPhone, Smartphone — believes mobile is rising to become the “7th of the mass media,” following print from the 1500s, recording from the 1900s, cinema from the 1910s, radio from the 1920s, TV from the 1950s, and Internet from the 1990s.

What makes mobile special? Seven unique benefits:

Mobile phones are the first personal mass media channel
Mobile phones are permanently carried
Mobile phone are always on
Only mobile phones provide a built-in payment channel
Mobile phones are available at the point of creative impulse, enabling user-generated content
Mobile phones are the first media with near perfect audience data
Only mobile phones capture the social context of media consumption

It’s an exciting observation, with profound consequences that I will continue to document in contributions and columns here and elsewhere.

It’s also a way of thinking that Tomi and I will explore in our newest collaboration: a no-holds-barred monthly podcast looking at the stats and stories that rocked the industry.

In a nutshell, our podcast consists of three thought-provoking segments: The Numbers Game, a wrap of the month’s reports and stats; The Story, an informed discussion of the companies and technologies highest on investors’ radars; and Wacky Stats, a lighter look at our mobile behavior.

To kick off the series Tomi looks at mobile’s bigger milestone: 4.8 billion total subscribers. What does this number mean? How did we achieve it? And when do we cross the 5 billion mark?

We also talk frankly about location services and where the money is. What did Nokia do right/wrong? And what does its location strategy tell us about the outlook for the sector on the whole? Are investors our time and their money? What is Tomi’s message (as an ex-Nokia, mobile veteran) to analysts and entrepreneurs?

Finally, we wrap up with a ‘wacky stat’ from the U.K. that may surprise you. It’s all about text, drugs, rock-n-roll…

Listen to the podcast here and pass it on! 16:47

PODCAST: Driving Real Results; MMA Forum NY Features How-To Sessions & Cool Ways To Connect With Consumers

Peggy Anne Salz — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:11:03 +0000

In brief: A podcast with Michael Becker, North America Managing Director for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) outlines the highlights of next week’s must-attend MMA Forum in New York City (June 7-10). From the pre-event Mobile Marketing 101 workshop and crash course in analytics, to Mobile Experience Lab to the new Adopt-A-Brand program, the event format has been revamped to put the emphasis on expert advice and key learnings.

Mobile marketing has moved on. It’s all about ways advertisers can deliver brand messages and branded utilities to people in a context that they are sure to appreciate. It’s also about ways advertisers can harness mobile to really reach people and encourage calls to action that deepen the dialogue or inspire that all-important impulse buy.

Indeed, companies across the emerging ecosystem –including companies in financial services, education and healthcare – are all looking at way to make mobile the cornerstone of their marketing, commerce and CRM strategies.

There are no easy answers, but attendees at the MMA Forum next week in New York (June 8-9 – with a pre-event workshop on June 7) will certainly get some valuable ideas from connecting with the experts. This year, the MMA Forum will feature speakers from across the mobile ecosystem, including Alcatel-Lucent, Best Buy, Disney, Google, Kodak, Microsoft, MTV, Openwave and the United Nations Foundation – to name a few.

The MMA’s goals to educate the marketplace and move mobile marketing a giant step forward are perfectly aligned with my own objectives at MSearchGroove. This is why I caught up with Michael Becker, North America Managing Director for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), to learn more about the hot topics and new features that will make this particular MMA event the most interactive and productive for attendees – ever (!)

Among the highlights:

The Agency, Brand & Retailer Roundtable (sponsored by Neustar and Hipcricket)

The event will be held at Ogivly from 2:00pm to 5:00pm in New York, and will be followed by a cocktail reception from 5:00 pm to 7:00 PM. Qualified agencies, brands & retailers are invited to register by emailing their complete contact info to the MMA at forum@mmaglobal.com. There is no cost for them to attend.

The “Adopt-A-Brand” program

Under this program, agencies, brands and retailers interested in attending the MMA Forum may join the waitlist to be matched and adopted by a vendor, who will pay the reduced event entrance fee of $500 on behalf of the agency, brand or retailer. Alternatively, those agencies, brands and retailers that do not want risk not being adopted or matched once the available event tickets for this program are sold out, can register immediately for the event at the reduced price of $500 by returning the completed adopt-a-brand registration form, which can be download at http://mobilemarketingforum.com/?q=node/1008.

The Mobile Experience Lab

An interactive way for delegates to hear from the industry’s thought leaders, experience successful mobile campaigns firsthand, and interact with brands using mobile as part of their integrated marketing strategy. Each mobile campaign features a booth that provides attendees with an interactive, hands-on opportunity to experience the campaign from an end user’s perspective. From 2D barcodes (via NeoMedia) to interactive mobile movies that encourage commerce through product placement and mobile interaction (via Mozaik), the emphasis is on hands-on experience and cool technologies that allow brands to connect with people on the move.

* * *

Listen to the podcast here [12:59]

PODCAST: Right Here, Right Now; Will Mobile Personalization & Mash-Ups Deliver Us ‘Digital Sixth Sense’?

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:38:47 +0000

In brief: Will recommendations from our significant others help us navigate the content deluge? This post draws from provocative statements about our future and the pivotal role of personalization in our everyday lives made by Andrew Gilbert, EVP, President QIS and Qualcomm Europe, and a podcast interview with Colm Healy, Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS) and General Manager of Xiam Technologies.

Regular readers will recall that I have been tracking personalization and recommendation in mobile since the start. It began with my industry-first report on the topic and continues in my current projects for GigaOM PRO. In many ways recommendation is much greater opportunity than mobile search because it’s not about giving people what they are looking for in the first place. It’s about surfacing new options for customers, helping them get over the paralysis of endless choice and creating a compelling and dynamic experience they’ll want to come back to.

In other words, it’s about selling more digital stuff and getting closer to your customer.

CONNECTED INTELLIGENCE

Speaking at Open Mobile Summit last week in London, Andrew Gilbert, EVP, President QIS and Qualcomm Europe, revealed that his company’s internal research shows mobile users who normally download one application a month, download five apps a months if they receive recommendations that are relevant to them.

As Andrew put it: “This means we need to better understand what our customers want. We have been doing this in sales for years, but now we have access to more information that allows us to better analyze the needs and make decisions on what to recommend so that customers can decide what they want to do.”

Put another way, it’s not about communications. It’s about tapping communications and social networks to turbo-charge services and deliver context-relevant content. “We are now working on recommendation engines to predict what you are interested in. Social commerce where you tap into your social networks to provide help and advice for purchases, holiday destinations, places to eat or locations to visit.”

All this paves the way for what Andrew calls the “next phase of Information Access.” In this phase of Connected Intelligence– which we are about to enter, by the way – things are connected and the information these things collect or monitor is then made available to us in an variety of ways.

DIGITAL SIXTH SENSE

At the same time we are rapidly moving from search (looking for stuff we know we want) to discovery (wanting services to suggest and deliver stuff for our consideration).

Andrew calls the result of this mash-up the Digital Sixth Sense. A way to think of it: it’s your “invisible friend who helps you out.” It tells you things before you even thought you needed the information.

Another part of this mash-up is the increasing role of our social circle in the scheme of things. “People will define what information they want to share with close friends. We will also rely more on our friends and our friends’ friends for help in our decision making.” Beyond that, our smartphones will help us make even smarter decisions. “Apps will help you decide where to buy clothes that you are interested in, what restaurants your friends have recommended and what interesting places to visit.”

INTERVIEW WITH COLM HEALY

A big part of this vision – and the capabilities that power Qualcomm’s aptly titled “relevance engine” — come via its acquisition of Xiam Technologies. I caught up with Colm Healy, Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS) and General Manager of Xiam Technologies, for his views on what personalization is – and what it isn’t – and what it can deliver.

Among the highlights:

GETTING PERSONAL: “To me personalization is really about helping people to discover more easily stuff that’s going to enrich their lives, entertain them and make them more productive. A large part of that is actually filtering out the stuff that isn’t relevant to them.” In Colm’s view, personalization is also about us taking control to ensure we see what we want. “But it’s also about somebody, an assistant in the cloud, who’s actually working out — based on what you have told us about yourself or what you’ve shown interest in before — what’s going to really excite you.”

BUSINESS VALUE: There are two ways to see and measure this. One is the enhanced user experience that it delivers. “We see that people who engage with, say, an app store that is personalized, come back more often. They spend more time on it, and they find it just a better experience…. So, that enhanced user experience is the foundation and cornerstone of any other business objective you want to achieve.” In addition, it’s a way mobile operators can differentiate themselves (and their app stores) from the shopping experience offered by Apple or Android, for example. “By using the kind of technology we offer, our customers have increased the likelihood of people to actually respond to an offer by three to four times, and even higher in some cases, and that, in turn, leads to being more engaged with the service.”

SOCIAL MATTERS: The next wave is about people connecting with people to make decisions – what Colm calls social discovery. So we will find out what we want to do, buy or experience based on what our peers (or the groups of people most like us) like. “Frankly, in many ways, the app store experience is almost going to become the last leg, where you simply pay for whatever you’re looking to download.”

MY TAKE

The innovation is clearly going to be in personalization and recommendation – and companies like Qualcomm have collected the capabilities that will allow it to play a major role. Mobile search (speaking here about universal search – not cool stuff coming out of mobile search companies on the fringe) will be more about the nuts and bolts, getting the destinations we want to do what we want. But how will we know what we want in the first place? Colm’s vision of social discovery is perfectly aligned with our current behavior. The rise of social networks and their impact on all we do (from using Twitter to replace our RRS to consulting communities for the best X (music, restaurant, apps — you name it!) are proof-positive that we discover cool stuff by asking our significant others. Clay Shirky correctly reminds us that the future is all about the filter. Personalization technology is one way to cut down the clutter and potentially boost revenue for the companies that give us what we want – even before we ask for it.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE. [10:22]

* * *
In part two of this series (June 16th) Colm and I explore the cloud, fragmentation and what all this means to developers, retailers and companies trying to make money on the mobile Web.

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

Apple App Store Model Is Not The Blueprint For Success; App Store Providers Will Need To Offer More Billing Mechanisms, More Choice

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:06:25 +0000

In brief: App Store Billing, a new report from Netsize, draws from survey to identify business models that will likely bring app store providers and developers mass-market success. The vast majority of respondents report chief enablers are operator-billing methods, not just credit card billing. However, in-app billing, which puts providers and developers in control, may drive the real revenues.

The Apple app store model – which relies on credit card billing to effectively bypass the mobile operator – may be staggeringly popular in markets such as the U.S. But it doesn’t dictate the direction for the global mobile applications market and the 75+ (and counting) app stores jockeying for position and competitive edge.

Indeed, Apple has been able to capture a large percentage of the apps market from within its own walled garden. Its app store model is inextricably linked with its iTunes content storefront and married to its range of proprietary devices. Thus discovery, download and payment are all part of the same seamless experience. The fact that this approach may actually limit its future market reach (to high-end devices users and owners of credit cards, for example) doesn’t bother Apple in the least.

However, the customer segments Apple ignores (such as featurephone users, youth with credit cards and emerging markets that prefer freemium and ad-supported content models) spell opportunity for the dozens of app store providers and thousands of developers bringing their virtual goods and services to market.

Granted, it’s a tougher play –one that requires providers to cater to a plethora of devices and payment preferences – but the pay-off is worth it.

According to Sizing Up The Global Apps Market, the recent milestone report from Chetan Sharma Consulting (commissioned by independent app store GetJar), app downloads are expected to rise from over 7 billion in 2009 (Asia accounted for a whopping 37 percent of the total) to almost 50 billion by 2012. Revenue is forecast to increase from $4.1 billion in 2009 to $17.5 billion by 2012. Predictably, a variety of models — ranging from paid apps and apps bundled with subscription offers, to ad-funded schemes and loyalty programs that raise brand awareness – will drive distribution and monetization. (Listen in to the podcast with getJar here.]

MAKING APPS PAY

Chetan’s report and the sheer number of app stores (75+ listed here via WIP Connect) confirm the existence of a Long Tail of app stores catering to a variety of customer segments (enterprise, gamers), devices (smartphones, featurephones, netbooks, personal navigation devices) and geographies (Asia, India).

By way of background, WIP Connect reckons 39 out of the 75 stores listed are smartphone-only app stores catering to a variety of high-end devices. However, 26 app stores offer software and content for both smartphone and feature phones, while another three focus exclusively on feature phones.

It’s clear that we are seeing an avalanche of new app store providers. But we are also seeing an increase in the range of payment and monetization models coming online as developers seek to increase flexibility (by supporting pay-per-use, freemium and subscription models) and take more control over the end-to-end app experience. An outcome of this is the new interest in solutions that allow developers and providers to sell content, virtual goods and add-ons from within the app (so-called in-app billing).

NETSIZE SURVEY

What are the components of a good app store experience? An earlier Netsize survey of 1,000+ mobile professionals and practitioners across 67 countries, concluded that the four C’s - Convenience, Compatibility, Choice, and Charging are the top enablers of application store success.

The newest report, aptly titled App Store Billing, delves down deeper in the survey results to identify the payment models and mechanisms likely to deliver mass-market success.

Among the findings:

The majority (85 percent) of respondents indicated that operator billing is a key enabler for application store mass market appeal.
Almost half (46 percent) of respondents believe operator billing alone will dominate; 39 percent also include credit card billing in the mix.
Only 15 percent of respondents indicated credit card billing alone will ensure mass-market success for app store providers.

Put simply, the report confirms that the tenets of Retail 101 hold for app stores everywhere. Retailers (providers and developers) must embrace a variety of business models and payment methods to reach their target audience. Credit card billing may be the rage in regions where Apple has carved out a significant share of the market. But the race is just starting.

As Netsize CEO Stan Chesnais put it in a press statement: “The survey shows providers will need to develop much more than a me-too application storefront modeled on the Apple blueprint. Clearly, to guarantee a seamless user experience and a ubiquitous quality of service, application store providers must support a variety of payment mechanisms including operator billing.”

APP STORE LANDSCAPE

The research also presents substantial proof that a Long Tail of app stores is indeed emerging. To illustrate this exciting trend Netsize has drawn from publicly available research to rank the top 52 app stores by size and the number of applications on offer (as of May 2010). The chart speaks volumes (literally) and can be downloaded with the report here.

Predictably, application stores linked with the Apple iPhone and Android platforms lead the list. However, a substantial number of independent application stores run by mobile operators and independent providers also hold top positions. Indeed, new entrants are breaking on the scene with niche app stores that target a wide variety of customer segments.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE NETSIZE APP BILLING REPORT HERE

My take: Are app stores going the way of mobile portals? It sure looks that way if we add up the numbers (75+ app stores) and note their niche focus on vertical markets (such as retail, enterprise, and even cars.). We will no doubt witness an avalanche of app stores and the emergence of an almost equal number of business models (paid apps, subscription bundles, freemium, ad-funded– and everything in between). To support these app store providers and developers will need to offer a variety of payment mechanisms, including operator-billing. Interestingly, app store business growth will likely be driven by models that put the provider/developer in control of the experience. Top of the list: freemium-type models that offer consumers free applications as a means to cross-sell or up-sell consumers to a variety of paid content and services, ranging from real-world physical goods to digital services. (And we should not underestimate the potential of mobile commerce. It was the business model that Alisa Bowen, Thomas Reuters SVP, told me had the most mileage and would potentially make the most money for content owners – period. Listen in!)

* * *

Continuing the focus on app stores, I’ll be back later this week with a look at Ondeego, an app store that has cleverly chosen to target the mobile enterprise and the needs of workers on the move.

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter and client.

M-PUBLISHING PODCAST: Handmark CEO Tells Why ‘Good Brands & Great Apps’ May Not Cut It

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:38:13 +0000

In-brief: In the countdown to M-PUBLISHING (June1, London) MSG catches up with keynote speaker Paul Reddick, CEO of Handmark, to discuss opportunities and threats facing media companies everywhere. Is it all about iPhone? How can publishers cope with a plethora of devices and platforms? This in-dept podcast has some surprising answers.

Does the iPad represent an opportunity or a threat to content companies? Can print publishing survive? What are the monetization models that will guarantee sustainable mass-market success? These are just a few of the hot topics media companies, analysts and attendees will debate during M-PUBLISHING on June 1 in London.

There are still a few tickets for this event – which combines an array of formats, sessions and provocative one-on-one debates to identify winning business models and encourage alliances that will deliver positive results. Speakers at M-PUBLISHING include: representatives from leading U.K. daily newspapers (Guardian, Mirror, Evening Standard, Mail, FT), global magazine publishers (IPC Media, Bauer Media, Contagious Magazine), and book publishers (HarperCollins, Ether Books). Digital media experts from Sky, Absolute Radio will also present their key learnings and Teletext Mobile will use the event to demo its new iPad application for the Metro, a free newspaper in the U.K.

OPINION POLLS

To identify industry concerns and gauge interest in issues such as advertising-funded schemes and the rift between mobile applications and mobile websites Camerjam has also conducted an informal online poll of practitioners and professionals. The survey, which is still going on, has provided some interesting initial findings:

Is there a future for print publishing? Yes 77% (357 votes), No 23% (109 votes)
Apps vs. mobile websites ? Apps 74% (201 votes), Mobile websites 26% (72 votes)
Is ad funded or paid content more sustainable? Ad funded 48% (32 votes), Paid 52% (35 votes)

PODCAST WITH PAUL REDDICK, HANDMARK CEO

In the countdown to this high-caliber event Camerjam has teamed with MSG to produce a special podcast interview with Paul Reddick, CEO of Handmark.(press release) In this exclusive interview Paul urges publishers to acknowledge the impact of device and platform fragmentation on their future business. As he put it: “Publishers need to be where their customers are. It’s not just the iPhone or the iPad. You [publishers] must build rich applications that take advantage of what all these devices can do….It’s not enough to have a good brand and a great app. Publishers also need to seek partners that actively drive distribution of their apps and monetization of their business.”

Among the highlights:

APPS VS WEBSITES: “You’re going to get far more engaged with the customer with an application versus just providing an optimized global website, and that application needs to be able to cache information, to cover text, pictures, video, and other elements that you want to keep up to date. Then you [really] take advantage of what that specific device can do.” Paul says he is currently seeing a lot of rich apps – and this makes sense because these apps also offer users a richer experience. “These applications allow customers to personalize to some degree the content and the whole viral aspect of being able to share content between these applications is fantastic as well. I also think the opportunity is to make real money….Media brands are getting to have their day again. To get to customers with an icon and their content –something they seemed to have lost in search on the Web.”

iPAD: For a media company, it’s important to play across all devices. “I think it’s very important to keep the distinction between mobile and portable devices out there and recognize that – while Apple is pioneering – it’s not ploughing new ground alone. There are others that will be out there soon.”

ADAPT OR DIE?: Publishers “have to adapt to the environment of mobile as that’s where the customers are going to be. You can’t just write an iPhone or an iPad application and expect to hit the majority of the market. In the U.S. Android and RIM are huge markets publishers will need to address. “In the rest of the world, you definitely want to be on Nokia phones.” So, what should publishers chose? All of the above. “I think it would be ridiculous to say you write or produce a TV show that, for example, only runs on a Samsung TV. So, it’s important that you’re able to run across all of these devices.

SECRET SAUCE: Handmark works with the existing content management system that the publishers have in place to make it simple to keep up to date with Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Java platforms. “Soon to be some new platforms that we’ll be covering as well.” Paul says getting media partners to market quickly is key. But, increasingly, media companies choose Handmark for assistance in distribution and monetization. In addition, Handmark also connects with publishers’ existing CRM systems, allowing it to recognize if a reader also has a connection to the publication (for example, an online subscription).

MARKET MOVES: “It’s moved much more to an audience building than it has been in the past. In the past, we built an audience by knowing someone at a carrier or any of the other gatekeepers to those audiences. Now, media brands have an extraordinary opportunity to put themselves right, front and center with their customers.” Paul likes to compare the pace of change in publishing to Amazon’s rise to the top. “Amazon established buying habits online years ago and it was very hard for existing retailers to come in later and displace the space that Amazon had taken. We think the same thing can happen in mobile. If existing brands don’t jump in early enough, others will displace them. People are establishing their reading habits now. They’re dating somebody whether you’re there or not, and you need to make sure it’s you and you need to get out there.”

Listen to the podcast here. [14:26]

PODCAST: Thomson Reuters SVP Plea To Publishers: Go Mobile, But Focus On Companion Products & Mobile Commerce

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:53:40 +0000

In brief: Gearing up for the Open Mobile Summit, the deal-making mobile industry happening and conference taking place tomorrow in London, with a sneak preview of the key points Alisa Bowen, featured speaker and Senior VP consumer publishing at Thomson Reuters, plans to make during her panel. A special focus: the pivotal importance of iPhone and iPad apps and the business imperative to pursue monetization models beyond ad-funded and freemium.

The Open Mobile Summit is only a day away and – if you can somehow manage a ticket – I suggest you head on over. There are just over 50 seats left and the line-up of a whopping 70 speakers, includes senior execs from major players including Google, Yahoo, Nokia, Spotify, Admob, Ogilvy, AKQA, the BBC, MTV, FT.com, Opera, Vodafone, O2, HTC – and the list goes on. A special highlight: the first public appearance by Alberto Torres, the former McKinsey consultant who has recently been appointed head of Nokia’s MeeGo smartphone operating system.

Kudos to Robin Batt, my esteemed colleague and the executive producer of this conference. Robin fully understands that doing business -and making money- in an Open Mobile world will require new thinking and business models. The caliber -and variety- of speakers from across the mobile business ecosystem that she has brought together for this event will undoubtedly deliver attendees some answers and useful advice. MSG is proud to support Open Mobile Summit as a media sponsor. I won’t be able to attend this event – but I have already booked my flight for the next Open Mobile Summit (San Francisco, November 8-9) and suggest you do the same.

INTERVIEW WITH ALISA BOWEN

To promote this event and give you a preview of the hot topics on the agenda, I caught up with Alisa Bowen, Senior VP consumer publishing at Thomson Reuters, who will speak tomorrow on the future of publishing in a three-screen world. Alisa oversees the sales, marketing, product development and operations for the company’s Web, Mobile and IPTV propositions in 12 languages and 17 markets globally. From the start mobile has been at the top of her agenda, so I used the opportunity to ask Alisa what makes her so sure mobile is so powerful.

Among the highlights:

CONTEXT MATTERS: Thomson Reuters is sharply focused on the business professional, a customer segment that is increasingly mobile. “We need to do a world class job of providing them with the information they need wherever they are, whatever context they’re operating in and on whatever device is most convenient to them. Thomson Reuters provides intelligent information which means both information that you can make real business decisions on, but it also means information that it contextually aware.” Moving forward, that means much more intelligence built into the services. “It’s essentially just beginning. I think contextual awareness we’re seeing begins with location awareness…but I think there is tremendous opportunity in the future for the technology to become so much more sophisticated, to understand what your mobile consumption habits have been, and then customize your applications around that.” Alisa envisions a linkage between technology and context resulting in services that “know” our moods or the appointments in our calendar and then uses this insight to serve up relevant information.

READING & RELATIONSHIPS: “We spent a lot of time last year researching how business professionals were using mobile devices and what we discovered was that there is no generation gap. There’s been a seismic mind shift in terms of people’s adoption of mobile technology.” But it’s more than just information access on the fly; Alisa says mobile also has to help them connect with their peers in new ways. “For many of our professionals, their jobs are now much more about managing relationships.” They need information but they also need to be “a part of a community internally within [their] own organization and externally within [their] own client base.”

MOBILE VS DESKTOP: It’s not a case of “either or” – it’s a matter of creating content that harnesses the best of both. “In previous eras of our mobile strategy, there was a tendency for us to try and cram everything that somebody would use on a desktop onto a smaller screen. We’ve seen the light, so to speak, and I think we understand much more clearly that the mobile information consumption is not just the same stuff on a smaller screen.” This recognition has prompted Thomson Reuters to “split a desktop companion product from what we call task-oriented, bite-size applications that are very focused on executing a specific task. In the case of consumer media, that’s news awareness, browsing and reading, and so we’ve developed applications that just do that superbly and they don’t try to do everything else.”

APPS & ROADMAP: Alisa is predictable tight-lipped about the details, but hints that apps such as the News Pro for iPad is a prime example of where things are going. Video is another focus, which is why the company’s financial services division recently released Reuters Insider. “It’s an extremely innovative new video platform for financial professionals; it aggregates content from third parties but also showcases Reuters’ world class financial reporting on video. It has a number of interesting usability features and functions and essentially allows users the ability to create their own channel by dragging and dropping — from their desktop and from their iPad and from their iPhone — different video clips that fit their profile.” In addition, the service provides a transcript of the video content in “almost real-time” and allows users to search those transcripts and jump using touch gestures to the specific place in the video that contains the relevant keywords they’re interested in following.

ADVERTISING & M-COMMERCE: “I think customers have some cultural sensitivity to paying for the content. But they’re not just paying for the content, so my plea to publishers is to understand that balance between content and experience. One without the other is worthless, but both together is extremely powerful….I think it’s up to us as an industry to make of it what we can and I think you will see advertisers follow in and marketers follow in behind that.” But it’s not just about stock-standard banners and ad units we know from the Internet. “I think the [iPad] platform is a canvas for much more creative and rich advertising and marketing experiences [such as video].” So how can publishers make real money? Alisa is bullish about the potential for the iPad, in particular, to drive sales of real stuff. “I think that we forget sometimes that the iPad platform represents 125 million users with their live credit card details entered into a store, one click away from buying real stuff. I think that is incredibly powerful….I think if publishers can think about how to harness that opportunity around commerce for buying real goods and services, as well as virtual ones, then that’s a pretty interesting space that I don’t think is being well discussed yet.”

My take: Publishers and media companies are well-advised to embrace mobile. But they must also factor our “state” into the equation. Thomson Reuters has created robust services that effectively split the desktop chores from the task we have to perform on the move. Mobile optimizing content is not about whiz-bang stuff; it’s about understanding what we want to do and providing us the tools (information and access to our communities) to do it well. I was also struck by the sharp focus on video moving forward (for both rich advertising and exciting content presentation). Will video be the next big thing? A tough one to call (and fraught with bandwidth issues we also need to consider). Nonetheless, this bodes well for an announcement we can expect soon: the launch of the industry’s first mobile video ad network. I’ve signed up for a pre-briefing and will report back once it’s prime time.

Listen to the podcast here. [15:07]

EDITORS NOTE: MSearchGroove (MSG) – named a top 50 influential technology site by Konector – provides its platform to showcase select events that set the bar. In addition to standard media sponsorships, MSG produces interviews and podcasts free of charge for select event partners to boost promotion and create buzz. Contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com) to explore ways we can collaborate to make your event stand out.

Next in the series: An interview with Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO, in the run up to M-Publishing, the premier mobile publishing event (London, June 1) organized by James Cameron and the team at Camerjam.

EXCLUSIVE: AdMob Fine-Tunes Geo-Targeting; Will Sharper Focus On Location-Linked Mobile Advertising Deliver?

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:54:54 +0000

In brief: Loads going on at AdMob. On Friday the Federal Trade Commission gives the Google-AdMob deal the green light; earlier this month AdMob marks a new milestone (200 billion ads served);and we learn AdMob’s testing geo-targeted ad serving technology with a U.K. dating service. In an exclusive interview Russell Buckley, AdMob Vice President Global Alliances, discusses the nets & bolts of AdMob targeting, the significance of iPad, the positive outlook for mobile coupons and the future of mobile advertising. PLUS: Some stats you may have missed that confirm the buoyant growth of Android and a Millennial Media report that comes to an entirely different conclusion.

* * *

It’s been a busy month at AdMob, culminating in the news that the Federal Trade Commission – after a six-month investigation into antitrust concerns – ruled 5-0 to clear the Google-AdMob deal. The way is clear for Google to complete its acquisition of AdMob for $750 million and turn up the pressure on strong competitors in the mobile advertising space, including Apple.

It’s early days to judge how the two titans will fight the battle, but this observation (via MarketWatch) from Scott Cleland, president of consulting firm Precursor LLC, suggests Apple and Google will focus on opposite ends of the market. As he sees it: Google will likely dominate the “medium and low-end market” for mobile ads, while Apple is likely to focus more narrowly on the “high end.”

Hmmm… This split could leave the large and lucrative markets of Asia, Africa and India to smart ad networks such as BuzzCity that have correctly chosen a Blue Ocean strategy to focus on the markets where neither Apple nor Google’s Android have an iron grip. (More in an exclusive interview with KF Lai, BuzzCity CEO, in June.)

ANDROID’S AWESOME GROWTH

This view is plausible if we consider the device demographics. Apple remains popular with affluent, technology-savvy demographic, while Android has made its mark with a more mainstream crowd. Interestingly, Android has also made impressive gains. Last week Google announced that it has seen worldwide activations of Android smartphones skyrocket to more than 100,000 a day, up from about 30,000 at the end of 2009. Do the math – as the inimitable Tomi Ahonen did via Twitter (@TomiAhonen)– and this news speaks (literally) volumes. In Q1 Android was selling 24 million and now it’s more like 36 million. That’s “DRAMATIC growth,” according to Tomi.

Another confirmation of Android’s stellar growth comes from the recent AdMob Mobile Metrics Report (March 2010). Based on data collected from its own network AdMob reports advertising traffic on the Android phone has surpassed that on the iPhone. Specifically, Android ad traffic in the U.S. was 46 percent in March; traffic on Apple’s iPhone reached 32 percent. In January, the numbers were practically reversed. Android accounted for 39 percent of ad impressions, and iPhone came in with 47 percent. What’s more, the Android platform has seen significant growth over the last months with traffic growing at a compound monthly growth rate of 32 percent, rising from 72 million requests in March 2009 to 2.0 billion in March 2010.

The fact-packed report further explored the spread of devices (11 devices including the Motorola Droid accounted for 96 percent of traffic) and the traffic share of each version of the Android OS (1.5 Cupcake, 1.6 Donut & 2.x Éclair). The fact that each version has about one-third of the traffic tells us OS fragmentation is not going away any time soon. In fact, GigaOM argues it’s going to get worse.

However, Android impressions in the U.S. lag far behind Apple, according to Mobile Mix – a monthly report published by mobile advertising network Millennial Media tracking mobile device and connected devices (iTouch, iPad, Nintendo DS). Based on campaign and network data collected over billions of monthly ad requests Millennial reports Apple’s iPhone remained the leading OS on the network with a 70 percent share of smartphone impressions in the U.S.

Meantime, Android’s share of impressions increased 3 percent to account for 6 percent of total U.S. smartphone impressions. Still, Android is making gains. In March the OS rose to the number three position. Android ad requests grew a whopping 72 percent (from a low number); Apple ad requests grew 20 percent month over month. RIM remained the number two OS.

ADMOB & GEO-TARGETING

Beyond the stats, AdMob announced that it had started testing geo-targeted ad serving technology with Lovestruck, a location-linked/location-aware dating service, in the U.K. (More via Net Imperative.).

I used the news as a springboard to connect with AdMob for an update on the tests and a look at the overall importance of location-awareness in mobile advertising. My personal thanks to Matt Watson over at Speed Communications for arranging a briefing with Russell Buckley, AdMob Vice President Global Alliances. (BTW: Russell’s own venture ZagMe, which delivered consumers special offers from stores in the mall where they were shopping, was a little too far ahead of its time to be a success. Russell’s white paper on the experience and key learnings remains a must-read treatise on the do’s and don’ts of location-based advertising. You can get a copy by emailing him at Russell AT mobhappy DOT com.)

AdMob’s campaign with Lovestruck is aimed at allowing the company to serve iPhone and iPod Touch users in London with ads from Lovestruck based on their location. Lovestruck, which is available for users in major cities including London, New York, Dublin, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney, targets users based on their real-time location, alerting them to other people in their vicinity looking for love. The site is available as an iPhone app and as free-to-download app in the Android Market.

The test with Lovestruck isn’t the first foray by AdMob into location-linked mobile advertising, but it could be the most ambitious.

INTERVIEW WITH RUSSELL BUCKLEY

MSG: Let’s start off with targeting. How does AdMob target for location?

RUSSELL: We do it in three ways. First, we do it by the IP address of the phone, which is usually dictated by the mobile operator who applies the IP address to that phone session. It allows us to identify the country of the user and it is sometimes even more granular than that, depending on the operator. Second, we do it by Wi-Fi. A lot of iPhone and Android sessions, both the mobile Web and in-application advertising, is done over Wi-Fi. In fact, it’s more than half. By working out where the Wi-Fi IP is, you have a much more granular way of targeting location down to the nearest urban area. You can even go deeper than that, but we don’t really need to go deeper than that right now because most advertisers interested in mobile advertising are primarily concerned with reaching a lot of people. So, if you go too granular, say down to Oxford Street in London, you won’t get enough people to serve the ads to. Thirdly, the publisher can give us some data as well about where the person happens to be and we can use this to target ads we serve. That depends on the publisher and whether or not the consumer’s registered with them.

MSG: Let’s move to the tests with Lovestruck. The press release was rather vague, but I think we have established this is by no means a world-first. AdMob has conducted similar targeting tests elsewhere…

RUSSELL: Yes, we have been doing it in the U.S. and this marks the first time we are testing this technology in Europe. We’ve always been able to target by geography – the country – and by handset and handset capability. What we’ve now launched is a more granular approach to targeting, allowing us to target by urban area. And we also target by the publisher-type as well. We can target a particular demographic [such as youth] by restricting the ad to appear only on certain publishers’ sites. In instances where publishers have registered users, we can add that user information – such as gender and age – to improve targeting even more.

MSG: In Europe we’re just seeing the arrival of the iPad. Does this represent an opportunity for AdMob? After all, you just recently expanded AdWhirl to support serving ads on the iPad. But is this just more fragmentation at the end of the day?

RUSSELL: We tend to be platform-agnostic and we tend to invest our focus and time and energy when a platform starts to emerge. We first saw that happen with the iPhone two years ago and we invested time and effort into that platform, developing special formats which played to the iPhone’s strength. More recently we’ve seen that happen with Android, and again we’ve developed special ad units to cater to that.

We’re already serving ads on the iPad because if you’ve got an application which is available on the iPad, it’ll only be serving ads on there. But we’re not really seeing significant volume or uptake at the moment. But I think it’s early days and it is only in the U.S. at the moment, so we’ll just have to wait and see. The device and platform diversity doesn’t really present us with too much of a problem. We tend to focus on the platforms that are dealing in volume and when a platform emerges, which has significant volumes, we’ll invest in it.

MSG: You developed new ad formats to take advantage of the iPhone features and capabilities. More recently, you also showed you could link ads to social media, allowing user to click through to a brand’s Twitter page, for example. What formats and innovation are next? Or does the focus need to be on getting plain-vanilla display right?

RUSSELL: We’re innovating on a constant basis. The example you mentioned where you can click through to a Twitter page is client-led: So, if an advertiser asks to do that, it’s pretty straightforward. The innovation is what we are doing with the formats. We have done a campaign with Reebok, where the actual banner ad unfurls when you scroll over it, increasing in size by a factor of four. When you click on it, you go through to a landing page where you do a range of things, include see the nearest store offering Reebok and see a branding video.

It’s about being innovative on the on the landing pages. In fact, at least 50 percent of the importance of the mobile advertising campaign is in the landing page. The banner is important too, because that’s how you start the conversation with the consumer. But, if the conversation is to go anywhere meaningful, then you’ve got to take them somewhere to continue that conversation and introduce the call to action – whether that’s a click-to-call, or a click to download and app, or a click through to the fan page on Facebook.

By way of background, AdMob launched a new Android SDK at the end of March, allowing advertisers to run rich-media ads inside Android apps. Reebok is the first AdMob advertiser to extend their rich-media mobile campaign to both the Android and iPhone platforms. Reebok’s new rich media ads distributed via AdMob all link to a landing page that includes videos, photos and a store locator, among other features. The campaign – which runs until June – is aimed the male 18-34 demographic and will appear in apps in the sports, news and music categories.

MSG: You are testing technology to serve ads based on location. And, as the Godfather of Mobile Marketing, the excitement everywhere about location-linked advertising is nothing new. Are we talking about a commercial opportunity or are we getting carried away with the hype?

RUSSELL: We’ve passed the technology challenge and it’s back to the advertiser to get a grip on the business challenges. So, if you’re a restaurant chain in a country like the U.K., and you’ve got 600 restaurants up and down the country, you will only want to promote those restaurants on an individual basis when they’re empty or not full. The question is: how do you manage that process? Do you let the managers of the stores become the arbiters of when to run a mobile marketing campaign at any time? They’re not really trained marketing people, so is that a good thing? And how to you organize it?

Equally, you don’t want to send people into a restaurant when it’s really busy because it’s rather unwelcoming. And then there are the problems around creating a meaningful location-based offering that includes local stores and ‘Mom & Pop’ shops. No one has found an effective way of reaching those people with mobile marketing. I was talking to one of the managers at a directory publisher in the U.K. and he said they only actually sell – take money for mobile — from about one percent of the businesses that are in their listings. So, even with their sales force, their history and their brand, directory publishers haven’t been able to effectively monetize the local merchants.

MSG: Those are the challenges. What are the opportunities?

RUSSELL: Overall, big brands are starting to look at location advertising and take it seriously. They are focused on location-based advertising combined with couponing.

MSG: We have some numbers from eMarketer that tell us – no surprise – that women like coupons. Is this the opportunity on the horizon?

RUSSELL: Yes. Traditionally, the fast moving consumer goods section has been a big user of coupons. But they haven’t been able to really reach their potential using PC-based advertising. There you can send consumers to the website, but they have to print out the coupon. In the old days, we used to say ‘Advertising loads the gun and sales promotion pulls the trigger.’ Couponing is a technique of sales promotion, so PC-advertising is great at loading the gun but you can’t pull that trigger because you can’t send a coupon and trigger a call to action. Mobile advertising can.

We’ve started to do some early thinking with brands about this. We’ve come across people that are hung up on barcodes. But barcodes aren’t really scalable when it comes to redemption. There’s a company we’re working with that has the worldwide patent on a chip and PIN mechanism.

MSG: And what is the user scenario and experience the company provides?

RUSSELL: Say you see an ad for Coke, as an example. You click on a banner, engage with the brand via the website and — if you want a coupon or a free sample or whatever — you then click and an SMS is delivered to your phone containing a PIN number. You can take that to any participating retailer and use their chip and pin machine – just put in the chip and PIN, and it will automatically deduct the money from the cost of the purchase. I think this is a very neat and potentially a very powerful way of running a coupon campaign on a scalable basis.

MSG: What’s next in mobile marketing and advertising? You are testing location targeting – and there are some who say the ability to link ads and location will be table stakes soon. So where is the differentiation and where is the excitement? There is some excitement around Augmented Reality. Is that a part of it?

RUSSELL: I think Augmented Reality is interesting. But it’s going to be a while before it actually enters the mainstream. If I went out and walked around Nice, where I am right now, there isn’t really much to look at. So, pretty soon I’m going to get bored.

Yes, I think location is going to be important. But, if I have to say where the marketing is really going to be, then the hot market is in coupons.

Podcast: Taptu Reports Mobile Web Growing Faster Than Apps; Will Visual Search Take On New Meaning On Touchscreen Devices?

Peggy Anne Salz — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:20:28 +0000

In brief: Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, recounts the key takeaways of the new report showing the growth of Mobile Touch Web sites outpaces the growth of apps in the Apple and Android app stores why commerce rocks on the Mobile Touch Web PLUS a look a the Virtual Roundtable and what mobile industry entrepreneurs, authorities and pundits think about the Mobile Touch Web and the potential impact on how we live, work and shop.

Taptu, the search and discovery engine that indexes touchscreen content, reports that the Mobile Touch Web – websites and destinations created specifically for access via touchscreen devices such as the Apple iPhone – has grown 35 percent since last quarter. Unlike other mobile Web content, this content stands out through finger-friendly layouts and light-weight pages that are faster to load over cellular networks. The report, which covers January 2010 thru April 2010, also shows Mobile Touch Web sites rose to 440,100 from 326,600 in January.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

This rise represents a 232 percent annual growth rate. Interestingly, the growth rate for Mobile Touch Web sites is far ahead of the Apple App Store, which currently shows an annual growth of 144 percent. Appleapp growth trails behind the Android Market, which is growing at an annual rate of 403 percent (after getting off to a slow start).

The growth of the Mobile Touch Web also far exceeds Taptu forecasts. It expected the number of touch-friendly sites would grow to more than 500,000 at the end of 2010, and to 1 million by end-2011. But now we’re well on our way to 1.1 million sites by end-2010 – almost twice the original forecast and nearly a full year ahead of schedule.

Why? For one, touchscreen device sales are skyrocketing. (Taptu draws from handset sales and market research from Gartner and Piper Jaffray to document this trend– another good reason to download the report.)

Another reason could be the business opportunity companies and brands can tap into if they have a site optimized for these devices. This would explain why commerce and shopping destinations dominate the Mobile Touch Web.

They continue to make up 22 percent of all sites on the Mobile Touch Web.

Connect the dots here, and the Mobile Touch Web is becoming more than another Web. It’s becoming a marketplace. Where does this leave apps? Perhaps apps will be a more natural fit for content and services (such as games) that need access to device feature and functionality (such as the accelerometer) to deliver an excellent user experience.

VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE

Does the Mobile Touch Web represent a new wave in content, services and experiences?

In a search for answers and insights Taptu brought me on board to create and curate an ongoing discussion of the impact of touchscreen devices on how people access, enjoy and purchase content and services. The result is a Virtual Roundtable that includes commentary and analysis from a wide range of mobile industry entrepreneurs, authorities and pundits.

Taptu: Virtual Roundtable

View more presentations from Taptu Touch Search.

The Virtual Roundtable includes view from: Saverio Romeo (Frost & Sullivan); Tomi Ahonen (best-selling author); Jo Rabin (The Handheld Company); Alfred DeRose (Tego Interactive); Mark Curtis (Flirtomatic); Carl Martin (RedWeb); Andreas Constantinou (VisionMobile); Jonathan MacDonald (This Fluid World); Hugh Griffiths (Phonepay Plus); Dennis Bournique (WAP Review); Neil MacDonald (Nuance Communication); Martin Wilson (Indigo 102); Dave Moreau (Fonestarz); Dr. Mike Short (Telefónica Europe); Dan Appelquist (Vodafone R&D, MoMoLondon); Carl Uminiski (Somo); Christian Lindholm (Fjord); Simon Andrews (Addictive!); Tim Bray (Google) and Jason Grigsby (Cloud Four). Thanks guys!

The contributors agree the rise of touchscreen phone shipments from handset manufacturers including Apple, HTC, Nokia and Samsung, and the growth in touch-friendly websites and content will profoundly impact how we live, work and shop. From content creation and publishing, to user experience and design, to commerce to advertising, the Mobile Touch Web changes all the rules.

As Christian Lindholm, a partner and director with Fjord, a leading European digital design agency, who contributed his vision to the Taptu Virtual Roundtable, put it: the Mobile Touch Web has not only arrived full-force. It marks the beginning of a seismic shift that will spur the creation of new Webs and new device segments.

“Within 2-3 years we will have 3 Webs. The 13″ Mouse web, designed for computers, desktop and laptops; the 4″ pocket Touch Web for mobile touchscreen devices and the like; and the 10″ casual Touch Web for devices such as the iPad. Thus, we will have three segments: Phone, Pad and Computer. The Phone and Pad are Web sub-segments, and will require their own discovery, structure and monetization solutions.”

PODCAST WITH STEVE IVES

Read between the lines, and the advance of the Mobile Touch Web could herald a new kind of interactive mobile Internet, a vibrant bazaar where new content, new experiences and even new forms of commerce set the bar. But that’s my take…

To get the inside track I caught up with Steve Ives, Taptu CEO. We discussed the report findings and debated some larger issues, including the requirement to fix mobile search for touchscreen devices and presenting mobile search results in a format that fits better with the UI.

Highlights from the podcast:

WEB OR APPS?: A lot of the Touch Web is a “website-centric approach where [companies] are taking a website paradigm and they’re just trying to make [content] work well on the touch screen device….The other paradigm is the app paradigm, where there’s usually a smaller and more focused scope of the content and often it’s task-centric.”

COMMERCE EXPLODING: “We observed that 22 percent of our index was shopping and services sites and that kind of surprised us because, in the App Store on the iPhone, games were top category at around 20 percent or so.” Why commerce and shopping? Steve says it makes business sense. “If you’ve got a big successful e-commerce site on the desktop web, it’s a lot easier to create a mobile version as a Touch Web property rather than going down the apps route. You can re-use a lot of the technology on your existing desktop e-commerce site. You can re-use the session handling, the cookies, the shopping cart structures and so on.

VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE: “Tomi Ahonen has an interesting viewpoint that Touchscreen represents a media platform. That really fits in with our thinking. We think that the mobile device is now not really a voice device so much anymore. About 80 to 90 percent of what you do on these touch screen devices in the future is non-voice.” It’s early days for this new medium and companies are first “just using existing forms of content and repurposing very quickly to run on the touch screen devices, but more and more we’re seeing highly optimized, made for touchscreen content. The App Store is the first wave of that and the Mobile Touch Web is the second wave for that.”

MOBILE SEARCH INNOVATION: “Firstly, nobody’s really tackled the whole challenge of visual mobile search. A lot of the content that’s being created for these touch screen devices is very visual in nature, and the blue [search] links approach that Google has traditionally brought from the desktop doesn’t really do justice to the huge variety of new content forms that are appearing on these devices.” In fact, mobile search may be due for a re-think. “It’s no good to have a search engine that just returns PC content results first and then occasionally may give you some touch-optimized content….At some point in the future, there will be a tipping point where there’s more made for touchscreen content in the world that needs to be accessed than there is PC content.”

CONTENT CURATION: “We’re in the very early stage of the Mobile Touch Web and users need help to show them what exists. It’s not sufficient just to give them a search box; you need to show them which are the important categories of content, which are the important sites in those categories. There’s a need to curate content into meaningful collections for different audiences and we’ve taken a first step in this direction with the directory that we have in the latest versions of our app and browser.” Moving forward, Taptu is focused on “more powerful and more flexible curation structures, so users can go and create their own selections of content.”

ROADMAP: Taptu is innovating in two directions: “Firstly, we think there’s more interesting stuff that can be done and needs to be done in visual search.” To this end Taptu has introduced a flick-based user interface model on the iPhone that allows people to have an overview of results. “On the browser version of Taptu, if you point your mobile touchscreen browser at taptu.com you get a more kind of traditional scrolling overview and we think there’s a really interesting visual treatment that can blend the best of both worlds in one very attractive and simple solution. So, you’ll see some innovation in the next couple of months from Taptu in that direction.”

My take: I summed it up best in the press release MSG issued to kick off the discussion on the Mobile Touch Web and this exclusive podcast. “The Mobile Touch Web, though growing vigorously as Taptu shows, is not the only game in town. Thus, the pressure is on companies everywhere in the ecosystem to re-think their strategies and create a balance of touch-friendly content for touchscreen devices and the emerging Mobile Touch Web, while not losing sight of the opportunities offered by the other Internets. We face tough choices, but hoping for the Internet to become a unified place where everything is accessible and connected (again) is not an option.”

DOWLOAD TAPTU REPORTS HERE.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST WITH STEVE IVES HERE.[11:12]

Disclaimer: Taptu is an MSG supporter and client.

MOBILE SEARCH DATA POINTS: U.K. Usage Insights; ComScore Numbers; Taptu Reports; Australian Stats & Mobile Search Workshop

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:48:04 +0000

In brief: A run down of some significant mobile search stats and studies in the run up to Exploring the Future of Mobile Search, an exploratory expert workshop organized by the European Commission, where MSG will give the keynote address.

It’s encouraging to see a much sharper focus on mobile search and a growing realization among mobile operators, content providers and publishers/developers that there is a lot more to mobile search than the universal model we know from the online Internet. Mobile phone form factors push companies to develop new mobile search services that deliver us relevant results in tune with our intent and context. All the better if these services make use of features and functions such as voice recognition, image recognition, location-awareness and Augmented Reality.

Another development that makes search essential is the avalanche of apps and app stores, and the drive by all the players in the ecosystem to make these content and services storefronts a commercial success. Case in point: Apple’s decision to snap up Siri, a voice-activated digital personal assist that takes the concept of search to a new level (allowing us to find not search!)

OPEN CALL FOR MOBILE SEARCH FIRMS

Regular readers will recall that I have tracked mobile search from the start (hence, the name MSearchGroove, following on the popularity of my industry-first report on the mobile search and content discovery space).

My background and passion also allow me to connect with cool companies in the space such as Taptu, the first mobile search company to index the Mobile Touch Web; Expertmaker, a mobile search company in stealth mode that allows us to refine our search parameters in real-time; GetFugu, a company that combines search and image recognition to help people find local businesses and navigate to their website; and Aisle 411, a company at the sweet spot between mobile search and inventory management. (Check out the bnetTV video interviews I conducted with Carl Freer, GetFugu founder, and Nathan Pettyjohn, Aisle 411 Chairman & CEO.)

I look forward to including these and more cool companies in my keynote presentation to the European Commission. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, has organized an exploratory expert workshop titled “Exploring the Future of Mobile Search” to discuss the innovation potential in mobile search. The workshop will take place in Ghent, Belgium (June 9), during the 9th Conference of Telecommunication, Media and Internet Techno-Economics.

Timed to this event I will also kick off a new series on MSG profiling mobile search newcomers and innovators. If you are a mobile search company and want to be included in my ongoing work and upcoming series, then please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

DATA POINTS

With search at the top of the business agenda, the timing is excellent to recount the key takeaways of several recent mobile search reports.

MOBILE COMMERCE & MOBILE SEARCH: Mobile Commerce (MC) – which handles over 25 percent of the searches coming from U.K. mobile operator portals and other sources – recently released a report summarizing the trends it observes based on the search queries it “sees” per year.

Among the findings:

The volume of searches has more than doubled over the last 12 months. MC reports an increase in mobile search usage from 125 million queries to 250 million, in part due to the jump in the number of people signing up for flat-rate data bundles to surf the mobile Web. The number of searches per unique user also shows an increase. The total has grown from 8 per month to 13. (Granted this is not the frequency of use we know from the online Internet, but it is an indication that users are gravitating to the search box on portals as they become more familiar with the mobile Web.)
The position of the search box is critical. MC’s data confirms that the higher the search box is placed on the portal, the more people use it. It’s not rocket science, but it does show that there are very simple ways to significantly increase the use of search. Even stating that search is free of charge (as Orange has done on its Orange World Portal) can boost usage.
Tag clouds are useful shortcuts. Many use search instead of bookmarks to reach sites and destinations quickly (which is why Facebook was the single most searched term of 2009). MC tells us that displaying tag clouds containing the most popular search terms is another way to increase searches and drive results.
Date, time and current events drive searches. No surprise here – but you can follow Steve Page, MC founder, who shares the top search terms and trends via his Twitter feed (@sjspage).
Internet destinations and giants (Google, Facebook, YouTube) are top search terms. In addition to this information and analysis (summarized in this earlier post on MSG) MC shares how subjects are searched, reminding advertisers that they must bid on many related terms and tag their mobile pages correctly to ensure their results are high up in the natural search results for the terms.
Are local terms also local searches? Google may have recently claimed that 33 percent of all searches on mobile have a local context, but MC is less convinced. It shows that searches such as “Manchester” are more about local soccer teams (Manchester United) than the city. Of all location searches, 55 percent include either a city or area name, 17 percent have a point-of-interest, 15 percent use a full zip code and 13 percent have a partial zip code.
Search shortcomings can be avoided. Transcoding is not the only way to mobilize sites. Advertisers should build versions optimized for device types. (Taptu indexes sites that are touch-friendly and built from the ground up for access via touchscreen devices, for example.) The intelligence behind the search boxes could also be better. MC’s road test of search on Nokia Ovi reveals that it delivers games results for pac man – but not for pacman. Android Market suffers the “same shortcoming.” (BTW: This could be solved with a simple “Did You Mean” response to clarify the search term and the searcher’s intent.)

Source

The bottom line: MC has brought together a lot of insights about what people search for and how they search for it. Mobile search isn’t perfect, but volumes are increasing, and so is the pressure on providers to deliver a better experience. And it’s not just about mobile operators any more. The rise of the app stores means publishers and the 75 app stores are well-advised to develop mobile search strategies to deliver people the apps they want – or at least relevant results.

* * *
ARE APPS BEATING SEARCH?: This insightful post from GigaOM draws from a Broadpoint AmTech note and asks if apps are poised to disrupt the standard online search model. The Broadpoint report says search engines derive significant revenues from commerce-related queries (searching for “Amazon” or “eBay”) and suggests that warns that the growth in the usage of mobile apps that take people directly to destinations could be bad news for Google & Co. “If users get in the habit of simply using the Amazon app to search for products or a Fandango app for movies, then Google would be seriously impacted,” the report concludes.

Source

The bottom line: Mobile apps cover the bases to bypass search engines when the purpose of the search is navigational (using the search box as a shortcut) and commercial (looking for a product on Amazon by searching for Amazon first, for example). Sebastian Rupley, who wrote the post, reminds us that Google can likely read the writing on the wall, which is why the search giant is so interested in the “spread of Android-based phones, many of which emphasize its tools and applications, and steer users into its search/ad ecosystem.” It will be interesting to see how all search engines react to the onslaught of mobile apps that make finding and buying stuff with our phones a no-brainer.

* * *

FACEBOOK DOMINATES: We all know that social networking is the number one activity on mobile. A recent ComScore report reveals that search queries on the social networking site (online) grew by a whopping 48 percent between February and March 2010. In its study, which is based on 15.4 billion core searches in the U.S., ComScore also found Google leads with 65.1 percent of the market, down 0.4 percent from February. It was followed by Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask and AOL. Microsoft showed a 7 percent increase after adding mapping and other features.

Source

The bottom line: Read between the lines and this bodes well for social sites and social search via mobile. Facebook, which has more than 400 million active users, is exploding when it comes to search (up 48 percent) on the Internet. Only a matter of time before this trend spreads to mobile, our preferred way to connect with our social networks and information about people who matter most to us on the fly. Meantime, Tech Crunch points out that search growth is slowing. The post concludes: the slowdown “may also be an indication that the search industry is maturing, and the next leg of growth may not kick in until people start searching on their mobile phones in a significant way or something else gives people a reason to search even more than they already do.”

* * *

TAPTU TOUCH WEB REPORTS: This week Taptu releases the fourth in its series of reports analyzing the Mobile Touch Web. To make sure we are all on the same page and to set the stage for the next report findings, here’s a summary of the key takeaways.

The January Report defined the Touch Web (and the ecosystem emerging around it) and concluded that the Mobile Touch Web had arrived full force. According to the company, which indexes touch-friendly sites and destinations, there were around 326,000 touch-friendly sites in January compared with a total of 180,000 apps across all app stores.
The February Report takes this a step further, offering a breakdown of the sites that make up the Mobile Touch Web. The report emphasized shopping and services, a major subset of this new Web. In total Taptu counts approx. 83,000 Mobile Touch websites devoted to shopping and services. Why is this significant? Shopping and services accounts for about 26 percent of all sites. The same category accounts for less than 4 percent of apps in app stores. Taptu concludes that commerce is a chief focus on the Mobile Touch Web and will play an important role in its evolution.
The March Report takes an in-depth look at the Government and Non-Profit sector and its growing presence on the Touch Web. The report highlights some of the leading services from Education institutions such as MIT, the Haiti disaster relief effort from the Charity sector and various local and federal government agencies that are using the Touch Web to reach a mass audience. A surprise: a large number of religious organizations embracing the Mobile Touch Web (a whopping 72 percent of all sites in the Government & Non-Profit segment are faith-based services).

Source: You can download all Taptu reports here: http://taptu.com/metrics/

* * *

AUSTRALIA STATS: This post draws from new Nielsen research to provide numbers on mobile search usage in Australia.

73 percent of mobile Internet users conduct searches, compared to 38 percent accessing email and 14 percent checking social media sites
The figure (73 percent) of people using mobile search was just 30 percent a year ago
43 percent of total Australian mobile phone owners have Internet-enabled handsets, though just 29 percent use their mobiles to access the Internet
Search came out on top of activities conducted on mobile Internet; checking the news and weather, emails, maps and directories, and social networking were also cited as common mobile activities

The report also includes some insights into mobile social networking and the top handsets.

Source

The bottom line: Great to have country-specific stats. Although mobile Internet usage has a way to go, there is a tendency among users to use mobile search to explore all the exciting content at their finger tips. Makes sense that we start off by transferring our online experience to mobile.

Disclaimer: Taptu is an MSG supporter and client.

Mobility Meets Compassion; New AIME Event Empowers Charities & Non-Profits To Leverage Mobile

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:47:04 +0000

First, a round of thanks to all the companies and individuals that have reached out to become part of The Mobile Movement, a coalition of entrepreneurs, humanitarians, artists, academics and other industry leaders committed to bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits.

In the last weeks since the launch several members of the advisory board (which includes MSG and Laura Marriott, consultant and former global President of the Mobile Marketing Association) got together for the first board meeting in Boston to evaluate and prioritize the flood of requests from non-profits and companies.

It was also an honor for my post on our launch and mission to be chosen “Post Of The Week” by the Carnival Of The Mobilists (and COM host Holly Kolman).

HEALTHCARE IS THE FOCUS

The positive feedback to The Mobile Movement is overwhelming, and we are encouraged by the number of organizations resolved to reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications they will create in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

Healthcare is a prime focus and we have already received several requests from non-profits interested in harnessing mobile to offer early cancer detection services, for example. An interesting application in discussion is a location-linked early detection service that would allow people to input their zip code to find the nearest clinic offering these screening services.

MEDIA SPONSPOR FOR MOBILE CHARITY EVENT

Clearly, mobile is becoming a strategic focus for an increasing number of non-profit organizations and charities.

The timing couldn’t be better for an event exploring how the charitable sector can leverage mobile and this is precisely the focus of Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology (May 27, London), an all-day knowledge seminar organized by AIME (the Association for Interactive media & Entertainment).

MSG is proud to be a media partner of this worthwhile event, which will feature presentations, case studies and panel discussions based around an editorial agenda that brings together charities, advertising & marketing agencies, service providers, broadcasters, industry bodies and mobile operators.

Attendees will learn, first hand from established charitable organizations and their supporting partners, how to put together multiple platform solutions which maximize the potential for all kinds of charities to connect with the public and collect donations on a massive scale, while benefiting from lower overheads.

The event will also include a number of networking opportunities throughout, such as coffee and tea breaks, lunch and possibly a small exhibition space for companies to showcase products and services.

It will also bring charities new to using mobile together with experts in an environment to share ideas, contacts and key learnings.

SPEAKERS & TOPICS

In an increasingly ‘connected’ world, interactive platforms such as the web, TV, mobile and social media offer the charitable sector opportunities to drive higher revenue generation and public engagement at lower costs.

This event looks as the key areas that charities should be focusing on in order to maximize their fundraising activities and get the most out of their investment in digital platforms.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Caroline Lien, Head of Interactive, Comic Relief & Sports Relief
• Jim Manis, President, Mobile Giving Foundation
• Chris Ward, Director Join1 Goal Organization
• Daniela Martimo, Director, World Society for the Protection of Animals
• Simone Schmidlkofer, President, Cause2Connect
• Mike Short, Honorary Chairman, Mobile Data Association
• Doug Laughlen, Director, Local Giving Organization
• David Ryder, Director, y6Media Ltd
• Darren Parker, Business Development Director, BT Agile Media
• Robert Thurner, Commercial Director, Inventivated
• Rob Weisz, Commercial Director, Mobile Interactive Technology
• Rory Maguire, Head of Payments, 3
• Roger Craven, Managing Director, Vir2 Ltd
• Paul Swaddle, Marketing Director, WIN PLC

Case studies include:

Comic Relief/Sports Relief
Save the Children
Unicef
Leonard Cheshire Disability Organization
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Just Giving Organization
DEC

Key topics include:

• Text Donations – tax and revenue share implications
• Maximising Direct Response using WAP, SMS, Web and Email marketing to achieve optimum outcomes
• Enabling a standardized charitable giving process across MNO platforms
• Understanding the practicalities of data segmentation
• Text and Email Alerts – CRM and data management
• The role of apps and Social Media Integration
• Online fundraising –key points for success
• Legislation – Opt outs, black and grey listings
• Other platforms available for fundraising – IVR, Red Button
• Driving consumer engagement to support your mobile, online and social media strategies
• What does the future hold?

Pricing: AIME Members & attendees from the charity sector (GBP 75.00), non members (GBP 99.00)

So, register as soon as possible to ensure your place. And here’s a link where you can book your place today.

Disclaimer: Peggy Anne Salz is member of The Mobile Movement advisory board.

Blyk Is Back With Ad-Funded Service In The Netherlands; Will Social Media Marketing Make The Difference?

Peggy Anne Salz — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:58:00 +0000

In brief: Details of this week’s commercial launch in the Netherlands from Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO and Co-founder of Blyk, PLUS an update on activities elsewhere and a look at the social media marketing approach that the company has chosen to stand out from the crowd.

Blyk — the company that launched the world’s first ad-funded MVNO in the U.K. in 2007 and then moved to operator partnership model in 2009 – is back with its first commercial launch and consumer-facing service. The direct-to-consumer, pre-paid mobile services offer is branded Blyk and offered in partnership with Vodafone in the Netherlands.

Following the blueprint of the business model it pioneered in the U.K., Blyk offers free text messages and calling minutes (1,000 SMS and 1,000 free Blyk-to-Blyk minutes) to youth (and then some since the demographic is 16- to 29-year olds) in return for accepting a set number of SMS/MMS mobile ads per day. Once again, Blyk requires users to opt-in from the start and chose the advertising channels they want to receive.

To ensure that users aren’t just opting in to receive perks, the Dutch service requires users to top up every three months and update the information. This permission-based approach – delivering users advertising related topics such as fashion and sports that they agreed to accept in the first place – helped brands achieve high response rates on campaigns they delivered to Blyk’s profiled audience in the U.K. Overall, Blyk says it delivered campaigns on behalf of over 2,000 brands and reached an average response rate of 25 percent.

As Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO and Co-founder of Blyk, explained in this earlier interview, the only part of the puzzle missing back then was scale. Put simply, media buyers wanted to reach more youth than had signed up for Blyk’s service in the U.K. This is why Blyk made the move from an MVNO model to a partnership model where it now focuses on providing mobile operators a managed mobile advertising service and delivering advertisers a greater reach.

BLYK IN NETHERLANDS & BEYOND

I caught up with Pekka following the launch to get an update on the U.K. services (offered in exclusive partnership with Orange) and the overall outlook for mobile messaging and advertising.

Here is a summary of the key points:

Mobile advertising formats: Predictably, Blyk is bullish about the outlook for advertising delivered using a mix of SMS and MMS. However, Pekka sees opportunities beyond messaging that spill into app advertising and notifications. “We believe messaging is the paradigm. It will win and find its way into other multiple formats such as notifications in apps, which are also push, and instant messaging.” No matter what flavors of messaging emerge, Blyk will remain “platform and transport agnostic.” He adds. “We can use W-LANs and email to give us the breadth if we need it.” As far as formats go, messaging will dominate, followed by search and in-app ads.

U.K. and beyond: Pekka was tight-lipped about stats and details, but has promised to update MSG at a later date (together with Orange) on progress in the U.K. That update will include APRU numbers that Blyk achieved during its time as an MVNO. Meantime, Pekka is “very pleased” with the partnership with Orange (where Blyk is not a consumer-facing service) and Orange’s overall strategic view of mobile advertising. The Monkey offer, the Orange service that draws from Blyk’s mobile advertising model, is a “different offer and constellation” but the results to mobile advertising campaigns are similar. “We are seeing similar results although the set up and model are different. We anticipated this. So, we can report the results and response rates are at the high level we reached at Blyk – as MVNO – and now as partner to the mobile operator [Orange].

Increasing competition: Blyk may have been one of the first, but – as I show in my upcoming report on permission-based for GigaOm PRO — a slew of companies have since staked their turf delivering, enabling and brokering permission-based advertising. How will Blyk continue to differentiate? Pekka said the rise in the number of rivals confirms that messaging is where the action – and the business – is. “We are rolling out the right services in the right sequence of countries and this will generate results, allowing us to move up the learning curve quickly and ahead of the competition.” India, the largest youth market, is next on the list.

Blyk proposition in the Netherlands: In addition to the free texts, “attractive rates for mobile Internet, roaming and other benefits” are planned. One example could be a members program that rewards members for recruiting friends/peers to use Blyk. The service is branded Blyk and the focus is on growth through minimal marketing budget and maximum impact. Pekka noted that Blyk’s grassroots marketing campaigns in the U.K. had achieved a net advocacy rate similar to Facebook and YouTube. It plans to follow a similar blueprint to recruit members in the Netherlands.

RANDOM ACTS OF FREEDOM

Which brings us to my chat earlier today with Eric Kip, MD for Blyk Netherlands. He couldn’t give me numbers but he did let me in on the details of the company’s “random” social media approach designed to deliver very deliberate results. As Eric put it: With more than 50 MVNO brands jockeying for position Blyk had to go for “small events with big impact.”

The motto: “Blyk Likes Freedom, Do You?” (and how can anyone disagree with freedom??)

Eric tells me the Blyk team brings together two Blyk employees, a small agency and “students and advocates who just like Blyk,” to commit “random acts of freedom” to reward people for just being – well – alive.

Timed to the launch Blyk took over a store selling sneakers and sporting apparel, closed the doors and then offered the people inside a free pair of sneakers. “The idea is to enrich people’s lives with actions and excitement they wouldn’t expect.”

For the twenty-something crowd, the Blyk team plans to reward people in coffee shops with lunches and perks. “We’ll just pop up and pay for their lunch.” Other campaigns will revolve around free movie tickets. Eric is even mulling over whether to make it all into a game and encourage youth to guess where the band of Blyk do-gooders will show up next…

My take: Reams of research (including the research I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K., a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.) suggest that permission-based advertising is at the center of a virtuous cycle for all stakeholders. People opt-in, choose their advertising and – in the process — volunteer personal information. Brands and advertisers then use these insights to deliver advertising the people who most likely want to hear their message in the first place. It’s early days, but high response rates speak volumes. Display advertising appears to be different because it is one-way not two-way. Permission (in the form of opt-out) may quiet privacy concerns but the principle lack of a brand conversation (a text exchange that asks people if they like what they see and factors their answer into the marketing response) doesn’t let brands get quite as close to people as they would like. More about that in my upcoming GigaOM PRO report on permission-based advertising models.

In the meantime, Blyk’s launch shows progress and proves the permission-based model has benefits. But even more interesting is Blyk’s decision to go for small “events” with big impact. Because the business is people-focused (as permission-based advertising is), it makes good business sense to connect with people directly at the grassroots level. It is not social marketing – it’s the way all marketing of services in this space (and beyond) will have to be.

Disclaimer: Blyk is an MSG supporter and has authored a series of sponsored thought leadership columns examining mobile advertising strategies and business models.

Best & Brightest: COM #221 iPhone Stats & Rants, Smartphone Headaches, Mobile Advertising Figures PLUS This Month’s COM Highlights & High Flyers

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:22:06 +0000

In brief: As many in Europe embark on a long weekend, here is some required reading in the form of a detailed summary of the best in mobile blogging covering the top posts from the last month. From iPhone stats to the size of the mobile market, from the business value of location to the potential dangers of social media, it’s all here.

This time the Carnival of the Mobilists – the line-up of the best blogs and bloggers on all things mobile – comes to us via Holly Kolman. Holly a first-time host, who – true to her blog title – is a real mobile enthusiast brings us COM #221. Kudos for an excellent job and I hope Holly will host another COM soon (!)

The line-up of blogs includes:

A look at the recent announcement that Japan’s four leading mobile phone makers are teaming up with NTT DoCoMo to develop the operating system for DoCoMo’s next-generation mobile phones (via Ajit Jaokar @ Open Gardens)
The real reason why Apple iPhone sales didn’t dip (via Tomi Ahonen @ Communities Dominate Brands)
Refreshing realism on the iPhone and app opportunities (via Carl Martin @ Mobsessed)
A welcome reminder to designers – and everyone in mobile – that not everyone will have or wants to have a smartphone (via new COM member Belen Barro Pena
The potential headaches associated with supporting smartphones & the opportunity for operators to wring more value from helping their customs use them in the first place (two post via new COM contributors Amdocs)
An in-depth look at opportunities in gaming and gambling (via James Coops @MobiAffiliates)
More need-to-know mobile stats (via Andy Favell @mobiThinking – an excellent curator of key mobile advertising facts & figures)

PLUS Post Of The Week:

Humbled that this week’s pick is my own post on The Mobile Movement. By way of background, I have joined with entrepreneurs, humanitarians, artists & academics in a coalition committed to bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits in order that they may reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications created in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

On Monday I will update you on our recent advisory board meeting and the exciting projects in the works, as well as details about a new Knowledge Sharing event focused on mobile charity. (Disclaimer: MSG is aligned with the aims of The Mobile Movement and Peggy Anne Salz sits on the board of advisors.)

COM #220

Tsahi Levent-Levi over at Radvision steps up to host COM #220 – a vibrant mix of posts and insights that fits with the excitement that comes with the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. Pay special attention to the post-even coverage and videos around this centerpiece event looking at the impact of technologies on our life and work in 2025. Another destination not to be missed: The Wadi – a new site/blog dedicated to the Israeli hi-tech industry. For links and details check out Tsahi’s blog post here.

GUEST COLUMN:Tapping New Messaging Approaches For New Revenues

Antti Öhrling — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:18:44 +0000

EDITOR’S NOTE: This special series of thought leadership columns, which examines the pivotal role of messaging in advertising, promotion and all the ways companies connect and engage with their customers, continues with a look at exciting opportunities brands – and mobile operators – could be missing.

* * *

Mobile phones – and specifically text messaging – are central to the lives of everyone everywhere on this planet. This is the message that came across loud and clear in this well-written analysis in the New York Times. To drive home this key point the article recounts how people in emerging and developing markets are using their simple mobile phones and SMS text to improve their lives, conduct commerce, transfer money, record and share sermons and even oversee elections.

Mobile has become the truly universal technology and text messaging – a flavor of people-powered communication discovered quite by accident by ordinary individuals eager to connect using their mobile phones – has become mobile’s first and truly universal language.

Granted, we increasingly use our mobile phones to explore the wealth of content on the mobile Web or browse the assortment of applications in our chosen device or mobile operator app store. But mobile is and remains central to our lives because we rely on it to connect with the people who matter most.

Put simply, texting is embedded into our mobile behavior.

Rafts of recent surveys show teens would rather text than speak, and even more have turned off their voicemail as a rule to show they mean it! Some five years ago Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist at Keio University in Japan, observed in her book, Personal, Portable, Pedestrian, the emergence of “tele-nesting,” the practice–especially among youth in Japan, and now everyone everywhere –of staying in touch through a steady stream of text messages. In the West Alan Moore, author and founder of the Engagement Communication Consultancy SMLXL, reminds us that we are a “WE SPECIES,” individuals who are part of, and belong to, a bigger whole. Our messaging behavior reflects this enables us to achieve our ultimate goal: to (co-)create and share the narrative of our lives that adds meaning and value to us and everyone around us.

The simplicity of ordinary phones and the fact that people everywhere can use them to send and receive text messages opens up a world of opportunities. It also paves the way for global innovation that allows companies and startups everywhere to harness simple text messaging to achieve extraordinary results.

We’re already seeing evidence of a new breed of messaging services. And this is surely just the beginning. From life-simplifying reminders to life-saving medical advice, people around the world – particularly in emerging markets – are using text to connect, communicate and interact with companies, brands, medical doctors, government authorities and clergy – and the list goes on.

SPEAK TO US

The emerging markets may have a greater reliance on text messaging, but our appetite for messaging – and the value we receive on top of the text messages we send and receive — is growing.

This is the key finding of a recent survey of the U.K. market by Dialogue Communications, a mobile messaging and mobile payments company. It reveals more than 67 percent of respondents want more messaging in their lives.

According to the findings, respondents would welcome reminders and alerts via text for everything from medical alerts to bill payments. People said they wanted to move away from postal reminders because it’s convenient, reliable, easy to store and on a phone for future reference and simple to synch up with the calendars they already have on their mobile phones. (Again, messaging – all messaging – should be permission-based.)

And let us not forget the important fit between text and marketing, for all the reasons I have outlined above.

Destinations such as Mobile Marketer and Mobile Marketing Magazine document the success of messaging campaigns daily. Brands and agencies harness text to connect with consumers (an even more effective approach if the advertising is opt-in, of course). From soft drinks that use text messaging to deliver brand messages and links to downloadable content and perks, to large U.S. chains that cleverly use text messaging to deliver product vouchers and drive customer loyalty, the press is chock-full of case studies that underline the central position of text in marketing and advertising.

But we should not limit ourselves to just these. Paul Berney, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Managing Director Europe, has also said on several occasions that mobile CRM and mobile commerce loom large on the horizon as the next big opportunities for brands, agencies and all their partners.

I would take it one giant step further: messaging lays the groundwork for a much deeper – and potentially lucrative — exchange between a wide array of companies, advertisers and institutions, and the people who want to hear what they have to say. Brands want a dialogue with their consumers. What better and more effective way to achieve this than messaging?

Messaging in the proper context adds real value to our lives.

MORE MESSAGING MILEAGE

I have therefore identified three other scenarios where rich messaging – the mix of text and image we know from mobile advertising campaigns we have facilitated at Blyk on behalf of brands – could add significant value for everyone involved, including consumers.

AMS (Application Messaging Services): The heightened interest in ‘apps’ presents advertisers and mobile operators worldwide a new opportunity to deliver consumers a message they would appreciate in this context. We are witnessing the advance of services linked to reminders or alerts that connect with the mobile phone features and functionality to remind users us of birthdays, appointments and other important dates/events. Consumers have indicated that they would opt-in to receive these messages. Surely, this provides a perfect platform on which to deliver a related message or branded utility. And this could be so simple for handset manufactures. All they need to do is build on top of the functions they have already embedded into many phone models.
LMS (Location Messaging Services): The rise of travel advice and social media network services such as DOPPLR and WAZE point to a much larger trend: our willingness to receive messages about what’s nearby. From points of interest to traffic jams, consumers desire more information about their surroundings and have granted their permission to receive push messages that provide this detail. Again, this presents companies and mobile operators with an excellent opportunity to deliver a related and relevant commercial message. Done correctly this exchange might even lead to a transaction that consumers could perform using their mobile phones. The potential for mobile operators – the trusted keepers of our location data in the first place – are huge.
VMS (Value-Added Messaging): Here we are talking about real value to the consumer because these messages enhance and improve their lives. Mobile education and mobile health are two obvious examples. A global market survey of 3,000 consumers in six countries (500 each in Brazil, USA, Germany, South Africa, India and China) conducted by management consultancy McKinsey & Company suggests that mobile health (m-health) opportunities in 2010 could be worth between $50 and $60 billion in 2010, a finding that has prompted mobile operators – and the GSMA – the professional organization that unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem — to step up initiatives. According to the research, the vast majority of respondents were interested in the following services: PhoneDoctor, a service that would allow people to call to speak with a qualified physician for remote diagnosis and advice, and HealthWatch, a SIM embedded biosensor watch that monitors vitals, and is connected to emergency services. It is easy to imagine how companies – through sponsorship and commercial messages — could align with these services to deliver related information, offers and real value to people everywhere.

Clearly, our messaging behavior powers of a wide variety of use cases and scenarios. What’s more, as a WE SPECIES we have come to expect – even demand – a two-way conversation with the companies delivering messages to our phones.

From bank statements to medical advice, from appointment reminders to public opinion polls, from location-linked services that tell us what’s nearby to mobile CRM services that ask us if we are satisfied with the service we just received at the checkout, messaging impacts people’s lives and lifestyles at all levels.

It also paves the way for new business models and combinations of models that harness push, permission and personal context to benefit companies across the ecosystem and – most importantly – consumers.

I have identified three areas of new messaging opportunities where companies, provided they apply the same rules of engagement, can reap tremendous benefits and build long-term customer relationships built on trust and respect. I expect to see much more innovation in this space –and I welcome it wholeheartedly. If you are thinking about new opportunities in messaging or have an application success story to share, please reach out to me directly to continue the dialogue. After all, two-way communication always produces the best results. (antti.ohrling@blyk.com)

* * *

Antti is the Co-Founder of Blyk, the messaging media that works with mobile operators to link young people with brands and other stuff they like. He has over 25 years experience as a senior manager in branded goods, retail and wholesale, TV& film and advertising industries. Antti is also founder of Contra Advertising Group, today part of Touch Worldwide. He serves as Chairman of Contra China, an advertising agency specializing in mobile and social media marketing based in Beijing. In addition, Antti is a Fellow at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Art, Manufactures and Commerce) in the U.K. and a regular speaker at lectures on innovative business strategies and brand issues worldwide. For more information about Blyk, check out the company profile and explore the collection of customer case studies.

Disclaimer: Blyk is an MSG supporter. This is another in a series of columns by Blyk examining mobile advertising strategies and business models.

LAST CHANCE: MSG Offers Guest Passes To Open Mobile Summit, THE Premier Deal-Making Event

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:46:26 +0000

UPDATE: Today is the last day to register and get one of my specially discounted VIP passes.

Here’s a link that will take you straight there: https://www.openmobilesummit.com/lon/register/step1.aspx?dc=MSEARCHVIP

* * *

Now in its second year the Open Mobile Summit (May 26-27, London) covers all the bases to again set the bar. I attended and spoke at this exceptional event last June and was struck by to things: the sold-out crowd and the balanced mix of speakers and authorities from companies and organizations across the entire ecosystem.

Doing business (and making money) in an Open Mobile world will require new thinking and business models. The caliber (and variety) speakers my esteemed colleague, Robin Batt, Open Mobile Media Founder & Executive Producer, has brought together for this purpose will undoubtedly deliver the audience some answers.

This is not just another mobile conference; it’s an industry happening – which is why MSG is extremely proud to be a media sponsor. It’s rare to find such an impressive gathering of thought leaders in such an intimate setting, and I look forward to connecting with this year’s speakers (participants include Spotify, Gowalla, Admob, Ogilvy, AKQA, Yahoo, the BBC, Google, BSkyB, MTV, FT.com, Opera, Vodafone, O2, HTC, Nokia and more – and all at the top executive level.

It’s just four weeks away and there are limited seats remaining, so you should register now.

MSG has 5 guest passes at just GBP850 (retail GBP1395). If you’d like one, register here with VIP code MSEARCHVIP . https://www.openmobilesummit.com/lon/register/ (First come, first served.)

WHY ATTEND

Whether you’re a start-up or a media giant, Internet company or mobile operator, ad agency or software company, mobile and Internet convergence presents a huge opportunity. Over two days the Open Mobile Summit provides participants a clear vision of how the industry will evolve in the next 12-18 months, which – in our fast moving space – is invaluable.

At the Open Mobile Summit you can:

Understand the business drivers of all the players in this fast converging ecosystem – the key to finding a successful business model for your services
Explore all the hot topics –mobile advertising, the future of search and discovery on mobile, the role location and social, content monetization models and mobile payments, apps in the cloud vs. the mobile Web and the impact of the iPad, to name a few
Do business with all the influential people –operators, handset manufacturers, Internet and media giants, agencies, software and application start-ups
Meet with me (a little humor here, of course)

So, register as soon as possible to ensure your place – if you’re quick, you might get one of my specially discounted VIP passes.

Here’s a link that will take you straight there: https://www.openmobilesummit.com/lon/register/step1.aspx?dc=MSEARCHVIP

PODCAST: App Store Marketing Basics; What Options Do Developers & Operators Really Have?

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:22:45 +0000

In brief: Building on the tremendous positive response to a recent talk on app marketing I catch up with Mike Lurye, Director of Product Marketing at Amdocs Interactive, to connect the dots in the models that will enable a developer/retailer ecosystem, pave the way for a Long Tail of app stores and allow operators to stay in the game after all.

The avalanche of apps and app stores (nearly 70, according to WIP Connector) turns up the pressure on developers and other ecosystem parties to find ways to make money selling apps. How are apps discovered and promoted? And more importantly, how are these app emporiums and boutiques going to handle the simple CRM to encourage the all-important return purchase?

After all, it wasn’t so long ago that a study from Pinch Media, which analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple’s App Store, reported that just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it.

A lot of open questions. But one thing for certain: competitive differentiation is in the business model. And we know from the findings of a recent Netsize Mobile Trends Survey of +1,000 professionals and practitioners that the 4-Cs (Convenience, Compatibility, Choice and Charging) are key requirements for a winning app store (and so for the developers that hope to make a living selling their apps). Netsize is gearing up to release new (unpublished) survey results and a new report that reveals attitudes toward business models and what will enable real and significant app sales. Watch this space!

MAXIS, ONDEEGO & AMDOCS

What is the app store landscape and what are the monetization models?

This was also the topic at Mobile Web & Apps World Forum, a CTIA partner event organized by my esteemed colleague Ajit Jaokar. (Again, I congratulate Ajit on organizing a standing-room-only event dedicated to answering the tough questions around app fragmentation, monetization and how to make it all work. Thanks also for inviting me to speak during the SuperSession looking at mobile advertising and in-app opportunity moderated by mobile authority Chetan Sharma. It was an excellent session with Joe Lally from MTV Networks and Jerry Rocha from Nielsen and Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile, and one that provides a great deal of material for future MSG analysis and follow-up.)

However, it was the session on personalization and content discovery, presented by Mike Lurye, Amdocs Interactive, Director of Product Marketing, that got people thinking about the business value of granular subscriber intelligence (anonymized) and ways it can be used to get consumers to the content they will appreciate and without making them search for it. To drive home the point Mike didn’t use marketing-speak. He used case studies from mobile operators in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. (You can download all the speaker presentations here.)

I used the opportunity of our in-person meeting to discuss the larger issues around app store marketing and pick up on a fascinating conversation we had weeks earlier (in preparation for Mobile Monday Austria) delving into the tough choices facing developers.

Certainly, developers can jockey for position in the Apple App Store (and others), where getting featured (placed where people can find you easily) is the only way to build a business. But developers can also align themselves with retailers/operators that seek differentiation through innovative business models emphasizing customer service, easy discovery or local culture.

The latter works for Malaysian mobile operator Maxis. I am a great admirer of the carrier’s app store focus and mission: “to nurture and foster interesting developer applications for our community.” (This and more in this must-see video interview with Nava Wathan, Director 1Maxis, Maxis Communications.) Maxis has become the place to go for “something that is Malaysian.” Surely, many more mobile operators can pursue a similar strategy to stand out from the crowd (and build a successful business for their business ecosystems of developers and customers).

At the other end of the spectrum, Ondeego also “gets” it. It launched AppCentral, a mobile app store for the enterprise last fall becoming the first mobile application store meeting the unique needs of the enterprise workers and their IT departments. For enterprise employees a one-stop shop means that they can select what they need (serious apps) to do their job. For developers it means a channel to a difficult to access market and a chance to sell their productivity and enterprise apps direct to professionals who will likely buy.

PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH MIKE LURYE

First, credit where credit is due here. Although people have tweeted about the simplicity and originality of my views on the evolution of the app landscape and the marketing strategies that will help everyone make money, it was Mike who came up with the popular Supermarkets/Farmers Markets analogy.

I caught up with Mike in-person following the Web & Apps World Forum event to talk about marketplaces and ideal models for making money – now.

Here an excerpt:

APP STORES & STOREFRONTS: “The main difference between an app store and a traditional digital commerce storefront is actually not that it sells apps, but that it is based on a certain business model that’s been pioneered by Apple. Stores selling apps have been around for a very long time but Apple changed the game because they set up a business model that opened up the opportunity to get to market for a much broader range of developers and they did so by establishing very straightforward business terms that are the same for everybody.” But not all app stores must sell apps. China Mobile, for example, sells traditional digital merchandise (ringtones and wallpapers and so on) on the storefront they call their app store.

MAXIS MODEL: This mobile operator has cleverly defined the segment it will go after: the local population and local developers. “So, their store is never going to be very big, they acknowledge that. They are not trying to compete, they are trying to co-exist….This is a good strategy because when you know your customer and when you know what you want to offer to your customer that is valuable to them, and you know who is going to build it which is a local developer community, you are poised for success.”

FARMERS MARKETS: The close customer relationship is what makes a farmers market special. And mobile operators have a close customer relationship they can build on – if they recognize their real role. “The owner of the farmers’ market doesn’t get in between [the] transaction…There is a direct [customer] relationship and the owner of the farmers’ market acts as a facilitator. They make it work.” How? Through payment services, personalization insights and scale.

CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH: If you are about to pack, think again because it may have peaked. Apple found gold in apps and now everybody is moving to California (literally). “Now, guess what, not everybody who came to California at the time of gold rush became rich, some people did, but most actually didn’t, so that is what is going on right now. Everybody and their brother wants to have an app store; some people have a well thought out strategy. Maxis is an example of that. Some people are doing essentially a ‘me-too’ kind of a thing, and there is actually nothing wrong with that in principle as long as you realize that that’s what you’re doing.”

WHITE LABEL: Mike says it’s a low-risk model. The not-so-good news: it’s unlikely to build subscriber loyalty. “There is no leverage of the operator’s unique capabilities, there is no more value for the subscriber to purchase an application in that app store versus the original app store from the white label supplier themselves. There might be some cost advantage…but fundamentally it’s not a model that will differentiate the operator.

TAKE A PAGE FROM AMAZON: Personalization has made Amazon a success. “This is the business they are in: the business of personalization. They are offering it now as a platform to others. You do that search, you bring results not only from Amazon, but [also] from Amazon’s competitors and that’s OK by Amazon because they build such a sophisticated platform that now empowers [the] ecosystem.
***
MY TAKE: Are we on the brink of new business models or is history repeating itself? And — even if it is very much a repeat of the mobile portals – what will guarantee success for the developers and retailers this time around? At the moment, developers have a handful of choices: boost word-of-mouth promotion (tough and tedious, which is why Mob4Hire’s peer app recommendation is an interesting one to watch), mobile advertising (complicated and unpredictable, which is why we are all searching for better ways to deliver the right advertising to the right demographic) and placement (tricky and transient, which is why GetJar has cleverly created a model where developers pay for shelf space). What role will personalization play (even in a pre-paid environment)? My ongoing research into recommenders brings me together with mobile operators already wringing value out of granular analytics to help people discover content they’ll likely appreciate. A prime example is Hong Kong’s CSL, an operator I showcase in my upcoming report, that has harnessed personalization to support My Net, its own (branded) mobile Internet service. Clearly, personalization is moving up the business agenda (as it should) because it’s a way mobile operators can generate revenues (helping people find and buy what they want) and stay in the game.

* * *

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE: [13:00]

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Amdocs is not an MSG supporter. However, ChangingWorlds, a company acquired by Amdocs, has published a by-lined thought leadership column series on MSG. Peggy Anne Salz has also spoken at invitation-only thought leadership events organized by Amdocs for its operator clients.

Permission-Based Mobile Advertising Gains Traction; Jumptap Platform Upgrade Puts People In Control

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:12:29 +0000

In brief: An exclusive interview with JumpTap CMO Paran Johar connects the dots in this week’s announcement to support permission-based advertising with a new feature that lets consumers choose mobile display ads they will accept. PLUS a wider discussion of the value of permission and preference in mobile advertising.

After months of researching my chapter contribution to an upcoming book on marketing to Digital Natives, it’s increasingly clear that mobile advertising companies – and their view of “consumers” needs — must evolve.

Mobile is a fiercely personal device and people – particularly empowered Digital Natives – want content and advertising on their terms. (I purposely mix content and advertising here because they are becoming one and the same thing.)

Another shift in the marketplace: our requirement to have a say in the content/advertising we are willing to receive. This came through loud and clear in the research/interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K. 2009 project, a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.

Among the findings (based on 1,000+ consumer online responses and 20+ interviews with operators, enablers, agencies, and brands): only 32 percent of the 1,000+ consumers surveyed had a positive attitude toward receiving advertising messages on their mobile phone. However, that number rose to 64 percent, provided people were properly “incentivized,” and 70 percent if they were incentivized and “in control” of their mobile advertising experience.

Connect the dots, as an increasing number of mobile advertising companies and ecosystem companies have begun to do, and it’s clear that the capability to provide permission-based mobile advertising (with an easy opt-in/opt-out option) could become table stakes.

MOBILE PIONEERS

Companies such as BuzzCity’s myGamma and gofresh’s itsmy.com, mobile social networks turned mobile social ad networks, need little convincing. They made the strategic decision in 2007-08 to allow their verified members to choose the channel of advertising they would accept. Of course, this wasn’t just out of respect for the individual member. Opt-in also allows advertisers to better target their key demographic (example: sports enthusiasts with sports ads) and ensure members who receive a marketing message actually listen.

In my own mobile advertising road test/white paper (PDF) on behalf road test on behalf of Bango, a provider of mobile analytics solutions and MSG supporter, showed that this was indeed a plus for my own campaigns. In fact, I gave BuzzCity the highest marks overall because its opt-in allowed me to deliver effective mobile advertising. (Happy coincidence — I have an interview with BuzzCity CEO KF Lai next week and gofresh’s Vince Staybl has also just reached out to me from his NY trip to offer me a pre-briefing on some significant news, so watch this space.)

JUMPTAP CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE

Jumptap, a provider of mobile advertising solutions that also operates a major mobile ad network, aims to tackle these shortcomings. The company announced this week that is will implement a new feature in mid-year (translated: by end-June) that “enables mobile consumers to manage their own profiles for a more personalized brand experience.”

The focus is on permission-based advertising and on putting the consumer (individual) at the center of their advertising experience. In a nutshell, the feature will enable visitors to participating websites in Jumptap’s ad network to chose the mobile advertising content that interest them – and the choice to opt-out of the process altogether. (Specifically, all publishers in the network will be able to participate. Participating publishers will need to include a link to Jumptap’s profile manager.)

What’s the user experience?

People can choose from a variety of some 29 advertising content categories, including automotive, careers, chat & email, entertainment, finance, fitness, food & drink and games, as the slide below illustrates.

What’s at work (and how) in the background? And how does Jumptap avoid potentially presenting the same people with the same ads?

JumpTap operates a premium mobile advertising network with a penetration of approx. 50 million unique visits a month in the U.S. alone.

Predictably, Jumptap’s IP, which includes patented technology, mobile search algorithms and proprietary know-how around targeting and relevancy (which I have analyzed in this post), plays a huge role in delivering people mobile advertising they will likely find relevant and useful. The company counts unique visitors based on “distinct IDs we get from carriers, cookies, request headers and device IDs.” This can vary across network. “In instances where we don’t have a unique ID, we estimate the number of unique visitors based on page views/unique user that we see elsewhere in the network.”

INTERVIEW WITH PARAN JOHAR

Armed with this background I caught up with Jumptap CMO to learn still more about the nuts & bolts of this ambitious solution and what is says about the company’s wider mobile advertising strategy.

Q: Jumptap is one of a growing group of companies sharply focused on putting the consumer at the center of the mobile advertising ecosystem? Why is this important and what do you offer people?

A: What we’re now seeing is a new wave of mobile advertising right, with the focus on customer intelligence and really putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Many companies got lost and focused on other constituents: operators, publishers and advertisers. They are all important people, but we are putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem, and the way we’re doing that is allowing them to manage their own profiles in a really simple format. This also drives the relevancy of ads.

The concept of is revolutionary but because everyone else has been trying to satisfy other constituents. By driving customer intelligence you’re going to see a higher engagement rate. If you see a higher engagement rate, you’re going to see advertisers who are getting better ROI. If they’re getting a better ROI, you’re going to be able to charge them more. If you can charge them more, by default, you get a better publishing yield so you’re really taking care of all these other constituents by focusing on your core audience, which is the customer, and driving the customer intelligence.

Q: Other companies have a similar approach. And just last week Alcatel-Lucent broke on the scene with a mobile advertising solution that is the subject of a larger report I am currently writing. In it I argue that permission-based advertising is a good fit with messaging because you build a conversation that – in turn – can improve the customer data. But your focus is display….

A: Yes, it’s only about display and it’s not about behavioural targeting. What this is about is empowering consumers to choose their category of interest. That’s one component of the data that will drive the delivery of relevant advertising. It goes into the user profile. And then there might be a component related to context, a component related to carrier data, a component related to publishers’ data – or a keyword from a search. All these are components and the ultimate goal is to drive consumer relevancy through this focus on consumer intelligence– and the better we can understand our mobile ad network, the better we can serve relevant ads to consumers.

Throughout this process three things are critical. One is full-transparency. Two is respecting their privacy and making sure all this data is completely anonymous. And third is preference. We’re allowing them to tell advertisers ‘these are my categories of preference.’

Q: What’s the roll out and what are plans beyond the iPhone?

A: That’s a great question. We’re rolling this out at the end of Q2, and you’re going to get a link to a Beta site where you can go in on your iPhone – or any device – and just scroll through and change categories of interest to suit you. It’s incredibly simple. The idea was to keep it as simple as possible.

Q: It it’s for all handsets from the get-go?

A: It is for all handsets and all advertisers. It’s on iPhone and on mobile Internet, so it’s going to be limited at first. But, as it rolls out, it’s going to obviously develop [momentum]. The goal is ultimately to drive more relevant advertising to everyone on all handsets.

Q: I mentioned that other companies have placed some form of permission-based advertising at the core of what they do. Take BuzzCity. BuzzCity even surveys its members and shares this anonymized information with advertisers to help them target their audience. From an initial look at Jumptap is different because it offers the data to third-party publishers. This would perhaps be the differentiating factor. At the other end of the spectrum there is Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism solution, [a solution that harnesses permission-based advertising – specifically, text messaging – to improve targeting.] So, there are other flavors out there…

A: No one else is doing this the way we are. It is absolutely one of our key differentiators. We also have 80 percent of the carrier business in the U.S. AT&T works with two sales partners, right? One is Jumptap and the other is Yahoo. Needless to say, we’re in good company.

We also have the broadest IP portfolio of any mobile ad network. And we have our pay-per-lick performance marketplace that allows users to bid at a keyword level, category, handset or carrier. We’re the only ones who have all of that.

You bring up the mobile social networks such as BuzzCity. I think it’s a little bit different within a social media construct. That is one component that can be added to the user profile, certainly. But remember we are not taking a siloed approach. It’s not just contextual, not just consumer category information, not just behavioural, not just carrier information. It is all of these components aggregated across multiple forms of data to drive relevancy. That’s our consumer intelligence.

Q: Another part of this might be that you are a neutral network. You belong to a group of ad networks – including the likes of Millennial Media and inMobi – that is not in the Google or Apple camp…

A: I think that’s a great way to break out the marketplace now and there are three groups, so to speak. There’s a lot coming from Apple that I agree with — and there’s a lot that I don’t. On the one hand, Steve Jobs came out publicly and said that mobile advertising sucks and that he has this goal of driving relevancy right to his network. That’s something we applaud. It’s very much in line with our strategy of customer intelligence, so that I think is dead-on.

The piece I don’t think is dead-on is his approach. He’s almost creating a walled garden for himself, almost an AOL of the mobile Internet. Advertisers really don’t care where their ad runs. They care about reaching their audience, not the device. iPhone happens to be the sexy thing right now, but Android will be the next sexy thing – and it [Android] is already is starting to catch a lot of that limelight.

Imagine you were a TV buyer and you had to buy a 30 second TV spot and you had to be cognisant of whether your audience is watching television on a Samsung, Sony or Pioneer TV set. And then you had to worry about whether they were watching it over cable, satellite or a dish network. And then you had to customize your creative accordingly. And so on. It doesn’t make for an efficient marketplace and that’s where I think Apple is missing the boat a little bit. They’re becoming a walled garden in advertising, which I think is not good for the mobile advertising ecosystem in the long term.

Q: Finally, where is the excitement?

A: We’re doing a lot in rich media. Our Unified Rich Media Platform [which I detail further down] delivers the industry’s broadest set of rich media units – for both mobile Web and in apps – all from one network. And our rich media platform is completely open. So, if you’re a rich media buyer for you plug right into our system. We work with iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry. We’re an open system and we help advertisers reach their target audience.

***

MY TAKE: Permission-based advertising sits at the core of a variety of approaches and solutions I analyze in my upcoming report for GigaOM PRO, a project that has evolved from a SWOT analysis of mobile advertising solutions (including Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism and JumpTap’s solution powered by “consumer intelligence”) into a wider discussion of the business value of permission-based (opt-in).

We have ample evidence that permission-based messaging delivers positive results and response rates. A messaging approach also allows brands and other companies in the ecosystem to build on this personal profiling data (with the individual’s permission) by adding questions to refine the profile. This way, an individual who has signed up for car ads (a broad topic) might divulge that they are more into Audi than BMW and even say why they prefer one over the other. All voluntary information an advertiser would no doubt value.

Display is a different. It’s more one-way than two-way, and there is a danger of “spamming” people with repeat advertising because there aren’t enough ads in a category – or because the ad networks can’t identify unique users (and therefore gauge whether an individual user has seen the same ad already, or not). Jumptap claims to have addressed the latter with its IP, technology and techniques that allow the ad network to identify 50 million uniques per month in the U.S. alone.

This week’s announcement builds on that foundation. The focus is to increase the value and relevancy of mobile display ads. (Thus, Jumptap does not compete with companies that focus on mobile messaging and direct marketing.) To achieve this Jumptap inputs the advertising categories chosen by the individual into a much larger, more sophisticated equation that includes data from carriers, searches and some context. This covers the bases to provide people a better user experience (provided there is a good supply of ads in each category), and that should certainly lead to high advertiser ROI and publisher yields. Of course, the proof is in the numbers. We’ll have to wait a while for those. In the meantime, Jumptap’s move can be read as an important confirmation that all advertising – not just messaging – is correctly evolving to provide people more of a say in what they get.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter with a branded thought leadership presence on this website; Jumptap has been an MSG supporter and sponsored a series of podcasts.

THE MOBILE MOVEMENT Launches, Brings Mobile To Non-Profits; MSG Joins Advisory Board

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:10:52 +0000

In brief: MSG and the Founding Members of a new initiative supporting non-profits – The Mobile Movement – announced today they have formed a coalition committed to bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits in order that they may reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications they will create in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

Ever since expanding the focus of the Netsize Guide, an analysis of mobile trends, to include mobility in verticals such as healthcare and education, I have sharpened my own focus on ways companies can combine mobility, creativity and compassion to help organizations reach out to people in need.

A moment of clarity came during my interview with James E. (Jim) Nalley, Co-Founder and CEO, EmFinders.

The U.S.-based technology firm has harnessed mobile to provide new support to caregivers and new freedom to a growing population of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and a range of cognitive and developmental disabilities. The aim is to facilitate the rapid location and recovery of wandering or missing adults and children. EmFinders achieves this through EmSeeQ, which combines a small, watch-like, wireless device without buttons or a screen, and a location service that uses triangulation through the cellular network – and with 911 emergency response systems – to accurately determine a person’s location.

I was struck by Jim’s dedication to his work (more like his mission), stemming no doubt from his own personal experience with his father, who – like some 5.6 million other Americans — had Alzheimer’s disease. His respect for his father’s quality of life and personal freedom inspired him to develop a solution that doesn’t track individuals like a Big Brother (potentially limiting their feeling of autonomy and self-worth). Instead, the EmFinders solution is designed to give some peace of mind to the caregivers and to the families, and ensure that – if the impaired person wanders off – then the service can recover them quickly.

As Jim put it: “It’s about personal mobility and giving these impaired people and their families the freedom they haven’t had before. We’re hearing back from our customers that we’re making it possible for them to go on vacation for the first time in years because now they don’t have to be worried that their mom or dad or child is going to run away and not be able to be found again.” (For the complete interview, download the Netsize Guide 2010 here.)

LEVERAGING MOBILE FOR GOOD

Jim’s service is just one of a new breed of personal mobility services that puts people, not technology, first.

Since then I have examined the needs of non-profits and explored how they might harness mobile to extend their reach and help people everywhere. Fortunately, I was able to connect with other entrepreneurs, academics and humanitarians who share my passion.

The result is the recognition that non-profits need (and are not yet using) mobile messaging solutions to connect people to resources and essential services, and the resolve to change that (literally) for good.

Today I am proud to join with my esteemed colleagues in announcing THE MOBILE MOVEMENT Initiative and serve on the advisory board. Our mission is to support non-profits by bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits, helping them to reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications they will create in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

Carol Glennon, a founding director of The Mobile Movement and founder & CEO of Renu Mobile put it best in this press statement (distributed today via MSG and its partner RealWire): “As we launch this effort we are very fortunate to be supported by a board of advisors with experience in education, non-profit services, finance and mobile applications, as well as the compassionate creativity we’ll need to continually innovate. Together we will build a platform and services by collaborating with our non-profit colleagues enabling them to help more people everywhere mobile devices can be found.”

Members of the advisory board include:

Avis Richards, film maker and philanthropist creating short videos and documentary films for dozens of non-profits – www.birdsnestproductions.com and www.lunchthefilm.com

Cynthia Artin, managing director of Auster Capital Partners, a private equity firm and investor in telecom, software and mobile applications companies

Kevin Patrick, serial social entrepreneur and producer, founder of a new web-based exchange that brings together musicians with the causes they care about

Laura Marriott, global thought leader in the mobile marketing industry, consultant and former global President of the Mobile Marketing Association

Dr. Mary Cronin, Boston College professor of management, consultant and author of mobile and smart product strategy analyses

Simone Schmidlkofer, expert in corporate social responsibility programs, entrepreneur and founder of a Cause2Connect, global strategy and branding agency

MOBILIZING THE MESSAGE

Thousands of non-profits are not yet using mobile messaging to serve their community because they lack the technical expertise and budget. The Mobile Movement fills that gap by connecting non-profits with sponsors and – more importantly – tools (mobile texting, mobile petitioning, mobile barcodes and mobile website creation/design) to achieve amazing results. We’re keeping it simple to scale quickly and have a positive impact on the causes that seek our innovation, support and collaboration.

Thanks to Avis Richards, founding board member, lifelong humanitarian, and Founder and President of Birds Nest Foundation, a non-profit organization that produces short videos and documentaries for a wide range of important causes, we kick-off with our first campaign.

As part of a series of Earth Day events in New York City this week, her company, Birds Nest Productions, in partnership with
Earth Day Network and Earth Day New York is screening LUNCH, a short documentary film investigates the causes and the consequences of “growing up in a junk-food culture.”

Using the platform to promote the documentary, Avis says her organization can “share our stories and services with millions more people.” Moving forward, Avis will take her initiative national (in the U.S.) with the help of the Mobile Movement team.

MORE INFORMATION

The Mobile Movement was created as an organizing force around a force of nature called collective compassion. Now that we have done the hard work of building global connectivity, and are placing communications devices into the hands of billions, we commence the work of finding usefulness and meaning through applications that can help improve, extend and even save lives.

If you manage a non-profit or would like to find out more about how to get involved, then please email me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com). And please check out our new website. (Thanks again to the phenomenal Lauren Towle!)

Disclaimer: MSG is aligned with the mission and goals of The Mobile Movement and Peggy Anne Salz sits on the Advisory Board. Netsize is an MSG supporter and Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010.

RealWire supports MSG with a global news release distribution service (specializing in the online media and mobile) that consistently delivers reach, audience and exceptional analytics.

MOBILE MESSAGING DATA POINTS: New Numbers; Not Just Mobile Advertising & Growth Everywhere

Eliza Dashwood — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:26:48 +0000

EDITOR’S NOTE: While many may have gone gaga over the iPad, this must-read article (via The New York Times) reminds us the real (and global) excitement is still about no-frills mobile phones and text messaging. In fact, I’m off to London tomorrow for a mobile advertising solution launch designed and commercialized to harness text and picture messaging in a two-way conversation between brands and people (aptly called Dialogue). Meantime, several sessions during the MMA Mobile Market Forum this week in Singapore also focus on the importance of messaging to deliver compelling mobile marketing. Connect the dots, mobile is becoming the universal technology (to borrow from the NYT piece). Eliza gives us a roundup of stats that drive this home. Good catch girl!

NOT JUST ADVERTISING: What do people want from mobile messaging services? According to research conducted by Dialogue Communications, people are warming up to the idea of receiving SMS-based appointment reminders. The website is thin on methodology (how many were asked what), but 67 percent of respondents said they would be happy to receive a wide range of reminders and alerts via their mobile phone. Source

The upshot: Given that the mobile phone is the one truly ubiquitous device, it makes sense that people would want to use it for more than just receiving ads and offers. There’s a real opportunity here for organizations to use technology to make our lives a little easier by offering SMS services that are not only customized and convenient, but also more cost-effective and environmentally-friendly. Just be sure to ask us our permission (opt-in) first!

MESSAGING MILESTONES: Yep, mobile messaging is HUGE. But just how big is it really? A new report from Portio Research provides us some important insights. It reckons worldwide messaging revenues are set to exceed $233 billion by 2014.

Some other stats:

• Over 5 trillion SMS messages were sent in 2009 with that figure on target to exceed the 10 trillion mark (!) by 2013.
• In 2009, MMS revenues exceeded $27 billion
• Enterprise emails account for 70-85 percent of revenues
• Mobile IM is set to reach $18 billion by 2014

The upshot: Sure, we can hug our iPads (like the young girl who unpacked hers at the launch last week), but text reaches real people and a real mass market at that! There’s a lot more organizations can do with text messaging. The possibilities are limited only by their own imagination. Source

OPERATORS SOLD ON TEXT. It may come as no surprise, but it’s always good to know what the practitioners say. A new study — commissioned by Comverse and produced by research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan – concludes that text messaging will “continue its dominance in the messaging arena for the foreseeable future and will evolve with additional features over the next three to five years.”

Drawn from interviews with 18 telecom providers across major global regions and with strategic industry professionals, the study predicts new paradigms around text messaging. Examples include: text messaging with contextual presence and location information, as well as a unified identity for messaging that provides a user’s status, personal information, updates and messages in one user interface. Source

The upshot: Another report that confirms the massive success and staying power of text messaging.

Peggy adds: Would like to know more about the “next-gen” messaging services harnessing presence and personalization. If you have examples, please email or @ me (@peggyanne).

LAST CALL! Submit Your Best Service Or Innovation for ‘Meffys’ Today

Peggy Anne Salz — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:27:28 +0000

UPDATE: The deadline for submissions is extended to today. It’s also an excellent opportunity for all the super-cool personalization and content discovery companies to shine!

I know and cover many of you on MSG – and encourage you to get involved. They’ve been dubbed the ‘Oscars of the mobile world’ – and the title fits. The Meffys (Mobile Entertainment Awards) are indeed the mobile industry’s recognized benchmark for measuring success and rewarding innovation. That’s why MSG is particularly proud to be a media partner and why I am honored the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) has asked me to join the panel of judges (for the third consecutive year).

Kim Arazi, MEF Member Relations & Operations Manager, is once again the motor behind this excellent event. (Last year 400+ industry influencers and executives from 30+ countries attended the gala dinner in London.) Award categories span the entire mobile entertainment ecosystem, from games to innovation to social media.

NEW TIMELY CATEGORIES

But this year there are a few exciting new categories including: Cross-Platform, App Store Blockbuster, M-Commerce, Mobile connected Device and – my contribution – Content Discovery & Personalization.

After connecting with Kim last week and discussing the industry requirement for good content discovery (the key capability that will separate industry from the also-rans), we agreed the timing couldn’t be better to recognize the cool companies helping us find and buy the stuff we like. Indeed, the avalanche of apps and app stores (68 and counting according to Caroline Lewko and the folks at WIP Connect) turns up the pressure even more on providers, developers and mobile operators to help us navigate these application hypermarkets.

My ongoing research into recommenders and personalization providers — which has allowed me to profile must-watch players including Xiam (a Qualcomm company), ChangingWorlds (an Amdocs company) and nimble newcomers such as Predictive Intent – tells me this is space is alive with good ideas and even better success stories.

Another (indirect) confirmation of the pivotal importance of content discovery straight from the “man” (Steve Jobs) himself. “Search is not happening on phones; people are using apps. And this is where the opportunity is to deliver advertising is.” I would add that the real opportunity is in helping us find the apps in the first place. Content discovery & personalization is going to be table stakes – and let’s not forget these potential for more personalized (translated: relevant) mobile advertising.

I therefore encourage companies in this exciting space to stand up and be counted. All the details on how you can enter are below.

MEFFY ENTRIES

The deadline for entries is APRIL 16. Entry costs are GBP 300 for non-members and GBP 100 for members. Companies interested in entering the awards or nominating a candidate for the Outstanding Contribution Award should go to the new Meffys website at www.meffys.com for full details.

Meffys 2010 Categories:

Games Award
Music Service Award
TV & Video Service Award
Video Content Award
Content Discovery & Personalization Award
Cross-Platform Award
Social Media Award
Ad Campaign Award
App Store Blockbuster Award (recognizing the best app on an individual app store)
Innovative App Award
Consumer Experience Award
Technology Innovation Award
Innovative Business Model Award
Mobile First Innovation Award
M-Commerce Award
Business Intelligence Award
Mobile Connected Device Award
Outstanding Contribution Award

The Gala Dinner will take place on June 21 (the evening before Mobile Entertainment Market – MeM) at The Grand Connaught Rooms in London’s famous Covent Garden.

See the full list of Meffys 2009 winners here.

Hope to see you there there!

Barcodes Shaping The Future Of Information Access Beyond Mobile Marketing; Renu Mobile CEO Talks BIG Opportunities In Enterprise & Security

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:31:11 +0000

The positive response to my earlier recap of barcode milestones and reprint of my exclusive interview with Scanbuy, a major player in the space, demonstrates there is growing interest in understanding the real scope of the barcode opportunity and a new urgency to sort out the business models before someone else does.

Who is making the money (and how) with barcodes? No easy answers there.

But the raft of recent announcements makes it clear that barcodes, like online/mobile search, cover the bases to become the interface to information everywhere. They allow us to access information (about products, places, people – the works!). Like search, barcodes also trigger the delivery of advertising in tune with the information we request.

With so much in common between these platforms (barcodes and search) it’s not surprising that search/OS giants Apple, Google and Microsoft have all unveiled ambitious barcode strategies. (Even Facebook has joined the party.) But even these giants will need to develop the IP and business ecosystems to make this work.

Will they “make” or “buy” the pieces they need (perhaps snapping up a provider of end-to-end barcode services that include the handset app and the overarching platform)? It’s a tough one to call. But one thing for certain: barcodes are in the bowling alley and making a solution from scratch (down to the clearing house or other barcode management scheme to help advertisers and brands achieve reach and interoperability among operators, agencies and enablers) may cost time even these giants don’t have.

MORE THAN MARKETING

While we wait to see how this could play out over the next months, barcode providers are signing deals that lay the groundwork for a myriad of applications beyond mobile marketing and couponing, bring the day closer when barcode scanning could well replace search as a means to access information about everything everywhere. (And without making us scroll through reams of results on our mobile devices, I might add.)

This exciting scenario is at the core of the recent tie-up between Renu Mobile – a company that provides marketing and advertising services including mobile Web (WAP), SMS, social media and now barcodes – and NeoMedia, a provider of barcode scanning, management and publishing solutions whose platform includes barcode reading software (NeoReader) and a barcode management system (NeoSphere).

Earlier this week the companies announced an agreement to include NeoMedia’s products as part of Renu Mobile’s end-to-end mobile campaign management services. This paves the way for Renu Mobile to build out its cross-media mobile marketing mix and deliver barcode capabilities to agencies and brands. I caught up with Carol Glennon, Renu Mobile CEO, to ask her about the tie-up with NeoMedia and her strategy to target a wide range of industry sectors including pharmaceuticals, enterprise and homeland security.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

First, what does the tie-up mean?

According to Carol, it’s the only fit that allows her company to get reach without allying itself with a potential competitor. Put simply, NeoMedia NeoReader barcode reader software comes pre-installed on key devices and platforms. (NeoMedia recently announced its reader software was released for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Its reader software also comes pre-installed on Sony Ericsson devices – and more handset deals are imminent, I’m told.)

More importantly, NeoMedia doesn’t compete with Renu in managing/executing mobile marketing campaigns. If anything, NeoMedia, through its involvement with Neustar, a company spearheading the creation of a barcode clearing house to drive adoption and enable interoperability, is doing its part to ensure mobile marketing delivers. To date barcode companies NeoMedia, 3GVision, Mobile Data Systems and Mobile Discovery are using the Neustar clearing house (more in this press release from Mobile World congress).

Connect the dots, and it’s about delivering barcode campaigns that are open, interoperable and global.

However, it’s also about powering enterprise apps everywhere.

Carol aims to be on top of the game with a slew of clients and services that focus sharply on public sector, security and pharmaceuticals. It’s easy to imagine how scanning a barcode on a bottle of medicine could allow people to access valuable information such as the proper dose, potential side-effects and/or a mobile website with advice or the location of nearby pharmacies and physicians.

Likewise barcodes could ensure that authorities (such as police and fire) resolve an emergency situation with fewer casualties. Among the scenarios high on Carol’s radar: barcodes built into the firefighter’s badge that allow doctors access to details about the individual (profile, health record, allergies etc) when that person is unconscious or injured. “It’s about enabling services – and rapid deployment – without authorities having to invest in new equipment or learn a new skillset.” Little wonder the next stop for Carol is MILCOM 2010, a military trade conference focused on the “Next Decade of Military Communications.”

Keeping with the security scenario, barcodes could also allow authorities to define and oversee a security area. Barcodes on vehicles, equipment, even people would potentially streamline security checks and wring more value out of limited manpower and resources.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Carol tells me Renu will expand its mobile marketing activities through the partnership with NeoMedia. But Renu will also move full-steam ahead on its first test of a pharmaceutical application later in the summer.

After I interviewed Carol I saw a tweet from my esteemed colleague and Forrester anaylst Thomas Husson about his latest blog post, a must-read treatise aptly titled Liberty, equality and mobility. Having studied barcode reports and white papers in preparation for the posts I was writing, I struck by some interesting possibilities and parallels.

Thomas’ post is an excellent examination of the societal impact of mobile phones and the pivotal role of governments in moving effective communications and media tools a giant step forward. He argued that governments should balance investments and “make the most of mature mobile ecosystems” such as NFC (near-field communications). Thomas provides some examples and reminds us that “innovative research and development clusters that focus on mobile innovation, optimized transport systems, and a tech-savvy image are key to appearing innovative and attractive to firms looking for new locations. This is why the French government and the city of Nice are heavily backing the large-scale live Near Field Communication (NFC) trials that will take place in Q2 2010 in the South of France.”

While NFC is quite different from barcodes – there is some exciting overlap because they are both interfaces to the digital world of information, content and utilities.

In fact, Neustar joined with Visa at Mobile World Congress to showcase the potential of barcodes. In this pilot it was about scanning the barcode on the back of the Visa card to check your balance. But it’s easy to imagine more applications involving financial institutions.

Likewise, it would also be possible to scan a barcode (as it is to swipe an NFC-enabled device over an NFC tag) to manage workflow. (I am reminded here of a white paper I wrote for Nokia years back that argued workers – in this case technicians – could swipe their phones over an NFC tag on a particular piece of equipment to access repair records and streamline trouble-shooting.)

Hmm – sounds like an application that would fit with barcodes – particularly since these technicians could do this now with ordinary mobile phones. (NFC success is somewhat stalled until we have a critical mass of NFC-enabled devices.)

And, if we need any help figuring out additional scenarios, I’m sure Carol could think of a few…

The takeaway: Barcode business models and use cases are falling into place – and companies that miss this wave (and the opportunity to add a barcode component to their service offer) risk falling behind.

UPDATE: Carol just informed me via Skype that Renu Mobile has signed its first hospital customer. Looks like barcodes with be everywhere this year. Look for more analysis of this exciting space on MSG.

SOCIAL MEDIA DATA POINTS: Blogging Isn’t Big; Look Who’s Shopping, Facebook Monster-Growth

Eliza Dashwood — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:47:04 +0000

EDITOR’S NOTE: MSG warmly welcomes Eliza Dashwood, who will regularly share her pick of the stats, facts, reports and industry talk (as a matter of record) and her take on what matters most. Each DATA POINTS post will focus on all things mobile. From mobile advertising and social media to mobile search and apps sales/discovery, look for Eliza to cover it with the professionalism and passion that have become her trademark.

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Social media is more than a trend; it’s part of our daily existence. Whether it’s tagging people on Facebook, using your new smartphone to “tweet”, blogging a review of a brand that’s annoying you or connecting with colleagues and asking for references on LinkedIn, the whole world is talking. So what have we learned? And how has an avalanche of communications channels impacted our interaction? Here are some reports that offer some answers.

BLOGGING VS. SOCIAL: What are people using and why? A recent study from Pew Research Center reports a shift in behavior that could have consequences. For one, “since 2006, blogging has fallen among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults.” As the tools and technology embedded in social networking websites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, Pew says, “youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for micro-blogging with status updates.” The split: adults are finding their voice online through blogs while teens and young adults are going for community. Source

The upshot: In the U.S. young adults are leading the way in mobile and wireless Internet usage. The outcome is a huge reduction in blog commenting and an explosion in two-way and micro-blogging communication. Predictably, Twitter stands out as the exception with only 10 percent of 14-17 year olds tweeting. Mobile uptake is soaring thanks to the fact that a whopping 58 percent of 12-year olds now carry a mobile device (!).

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SOCIAL SHOPPING: Here’s one even I didn’t expect. People are more open to brands that use new media to make the connection. Research findings via eMarketer from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate, drawn from a survey of some 1,500 U.S. Internet users, indicate that social friends and followers feel more inclined to purchase from the brands they are fans of in the first place.

That’s pretty much common sense. But it’s interesting to note WHY people became fans in the first place.

Some of the top reasons for becoming a brand fan are as follows:

• 49% are customer of the brand
• 42% wish to show support for the brand
• 40% enjoy discounts and promos from the brand

Source

The upshot: Brands that are leveraging the power of social media to truly engage with their fans are walking the talk. They can count on a number of benefits from this – including improved chances of conversion.

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MONSTER MARCH FACEBOOK STATS: Facebook is huge – period. Just how big it is (in numbers AND influence) comes across in this infographic. It’s packed with detail, so allow me to give you a few highlights.

Mobile

• Over 100 million users access Facebook via mobile
• People who access Facebook on their mobiles are twice as active as those who do not
• Over 200 mobile operators worldwide are looking to deploy and promote Facebook via mobile

International

• 70 languages
• 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the U.S.

General Wow-Stats

• Since 2004 Facebook has grown to over 400 million active users worldwide
• More than 3 billion photos are posted on Facebook each month
• The Average user has 130 friends on Facebook

Source

The upshot: Facebook is a monster but where is the money in the long-term? Having been an executive at a marketing company I have to ask myself if the anatomy of Facebook (also revealed in the infographic) doesn’t translate into more opportunities and models beyond simple ad-serving. Would Facebook users tolerate more sledgehammer advertising? Maybe some brand fanatics would and I can think of some brands that could get real value out of this approach. Will big organizations learn from the likes of Coke, Barack Obama and Starbucks? Again, it’s easy to imagine brand strategies that could copy this success. What works? I’ll keep that to myself…