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Cricket and Fox Interactive Media Sign Mobile Content Distribution Agreement

2008-07-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

Unlimited Wireless Pioneer To Bring Cricket Customers Array of Content from FIM’s Leading Web Brands

Cricket Communications, Inc, a leading provider of unlimited wireless services and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leap Wireless International, Inc. and Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corporation, today announced a content distribution agreement, which will enable Cricket customers to access FIM’s portfolio of leading sites.

“This is a significant milestone in Cricket’s efforts to form strategic relationships with industry leaders who can provide rich content and exciting applications to our customers,” said Doug Hutcheson, President and CEO of Leap. “Research shows that Cricket’s young and diverse customers are already heavy users of mobile content and applications, by providing them with a vehicle for expressing themselves in a mobile environment, their wireless handsets become much more than a simple phone. We look forward to working with Fox Interactive Media to bring their exciting portfolio to our customers and maximize the resulting business opportunities.”

“Our goal is to extend the reach of FIM’s leading Web brands across all platforms, and we’re already seeing tremendous demand for mobile access to our sites and content,” said Peter Levinsohn, President Fox Interactive Media. “By forging this relationship with Cricket, we’ve taken another important step in ensuring that consumers can enjoy our popular content and applications wherever they are and on whatever device they are using.”

mywaves Announces 2008 Second Quarter Growth and Surge in iPhone Usage

2008-07-31T01:19:00.000-07:00

Up to 300,000 daily unique users watch free mobile video on mywaves; iPhone use grows 500% over the first quarter

mywaves, the largest mobile video destination for consumers, today announced that second quarter traffic to the mywaves mobile site grew by 25% over the first quarter. Now, up to 300,000 daily unique users visit m.mywaves.com, to access a broad choice of free, short-form video entertainment, watching up to 255 videos every minute. In addition to overall traffic growth, mywaves saw iPhone users increase in record numbers, 500% over the first quarter. Music, celebrity, comedy, and sports videos continue to be extremely popular with the mywaves global user base.

“It is clear from our growth and the popularity of videos from content partners including MTV, Sports Illustrated and Fox, that high quality, short-form professional entertainment is far more engaging for mobile consumers than the user-generated video anyone can find on the Web,” said Rajeev Raman, CEO and founder, mywaves. ”And when consumers can enjoy the video entertainment they want on a large, mobile screen like that of the iPhone’s, the experience is unmatched.”

mywaves offers the broadest choice of free mobile video for consumers. Leading content partners such as MTV, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, CBS, Fox, SpikeTV, VH1, and more have dedicated channels on mywaves. mywaves direct-to-consumer mobile Web site enables consumers to tune into video free of charge on more than 500 different mobile phone models in more than 100 countries.

mywaves attracts leading advertisers and content providers interested in using video entertainment to connect with the mobile consumer. Industry experts from eMarketer forecast that worldwide mobile marketing and advertising spending will reach $19 billion by 2012.

Limbo’s Social Community Exceeds 2 Million Members – Limbo Community Generates 44 Million Text Messages in June 2008

2008-07-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

Limbo announced today that it has exceeded 2 million opted-in US members only six months after passing the one million mark. Limbo adds a new member with a registered US cell phone number every 12 seconds. This announcement comes shortly after Limbo's release of a new iPhone application that helps members more easily connect with their friends in the real world using their mobile phones.

Since 2005, Limbo has been expanding the mobile entertainment options for members though games, text message alerts and mobile community interaction. Limbo reaches over 5 million people each month through their mobile phones via text messages and mobile web. In June, Limbo members generated over 44 million messages, averaging over 1.5 messages per second.

"Limbo’s tremendous growth over the past six months is a direct result from our continued commitment to add mobile entertainment applications that add value for our members," says Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner. "Limbo members are actively engaged in the Limbo community and have strong relationships with other members and the products advertised.

"Over 30 percent of Limbo community members are active each month. Earlier this month, Limbo added location features to its social networking tools. The new features enable members to set what activity they’re doing, where they are, and who they're with, through mobile phone applications, text messages, Internet or mobile web.

Limbo also added a group messaging tool which allows members to send a text message to multiple friends who can then reply to the entire group, further enhancing the interaction of the community. Limbo's community is open to all members, regardless of carrier or mobile phone model.

"People are choosing Limbo as their mobile social network because of the variety of mobile tools offered, and the interactivity of the members," says Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner. "Limbo members are actively engaged. They invite their existing friends, make new ones, chat to one another, and do the things that make a social network come to life."

Agency Execs Tout Mobile ROI, Growing Budgets

2008-07-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

by Mark Walsh

Citing case studies for household brands ranging from Vicks DayQuil to Tide, mobile experts gathered at an industry conference Monday said the medium is increasingly going mainstream and is proving more effective than traditional channels.

For marketers, "the key is to figure out 'what am I providing to the consumer that's useful' and they will follow you," said Vladimir Edelman, CEO of Ansible, Interpublic's mobile marketing agency, speaking on a panel spotlighting mobile success stories at the Interactive Advertising Board's Leadership Forum: Mobile seminar in New York.

Panelists stressed utility as an important feature of mobile campaigns, taking advantage of the cell phone's role as an always-on, on-the-go device. In that vein, Eric Bader, president and co-founder of mobile marketing firm Brand in Hand, highlighted a mobile campaign for Tide offering tips on how to treat certain stains. Another, on behalf of Pringles, featured a tool for creating a mobile shopping list.

Edelman pointed to an application Ansible created for Verizon in connection with the Tribeca Family Film Festival that allowed users to appear as movie or cartoon characters via green screen, with finished videos delivered to cell phones.

These types of interactive campaigns lead to higher engagement and higher return on investment for advertisers, according to panelists. "Interactions per dollar have been very competitive with other media," said Bader, noting that mobile campaigns still have far smaller budgets--typically far less than $1 million--than traditional marketing outlets.

Keynote speaker Maria Mandel, a senior partner and executive director of digital innovation at Ogilvy, cited average click-through rates of 2% for mobile banners compared to .20% for their counterparts on the PC-based Web. While acknowledging that click-through rates will likely decline as mobile advertising matures, Bader noted that marketers are gaining more confidence in the medium.

"What we're finding is that brands are all re-signing for programs because they've found audiences," Bader said. "For the dollars they're spending, it's worthwhile."

Panel moderator Julie Ask, a research director at JupiterResearch, noted that half of marketers surveyed by Jupiter say they are spending $50,000 or less on mobile campaigns. But Bader and others said they're increasingly seeing mobile budgets in the range of $250,000 to $750,000.

Ansible's Edelman said $50,000 was the minimum to be able to do "something interesting" with a mobile campaign.

Using mobile ad dollars to focus on Hispanic consumers was especially encouraged because that demographic is overrepresented among cell customers. Hispanic and African-American audiences index 30 to 50 times higher mobile users overall, said Jupiter's Ask.

Some 56% of English-speaking Hispanics with a wireless handheld device use a non-voice data or information application on the average day, according to a recent study of mobile use by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"You're making a big mistake if you're overlooking mobile activity among Hispanic audiences," Bader said. "They're great audiences to reach and getting very good interaction rates."

Underscoring the large Hispanic mobile presence, Edelman noted that Ansible launched a mobile companion site for BabyCenter en Espanol, the Spanish-language version of the parenting site, before an English-language one.

Admob Mobile Analytics Beta

2008-07-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

(Posted by webanalytisbook.com after attending a Webinar by Admob)

The expected launch is within the in August 2008. Admob will be open to all mobile website owners for free and I could not hear anything about charging their users (following in the steps of Google Analytics).

The deployment of mobile analytics software is not comparable with web based analytics solutions. Admob has to be installed server side, but their team is planning to add a 1×1 Pixel tracking some time later (problem is the accuracy which comes with that).

Admob Tracking can be used also for full website.

Admob Analytics is not only used to provide data to mobile webmasters, but it will be used to optimize the advertising that is spent with Admob’s PPC platform.

Main functionalities that are offered:

Dashboard overview: Tracks Pageviews, Visits, Pageviews per Visit and Average Time spent. (Change data range posssible. Also Top5 Content URls, Top 5 Events (e.g. login attempt) and Top 5 Keywords are available. Additionally Pageview by source (organic, Referrals, search, advertising).

Visitors : Visitors on daily bases, BPagevieww, PVs/Visit, Bounce Rate and Average Time Spent. Segmentation with different sources possible (Advertising: Admob/Adwords, Search traffic, Direct, Referral, …or just all)

Engagement: Length of Visit, Depth of Visit, Loyalty, Visit Interval(=Numbers of Days since last visit.

Geo Stats: Shows traffic by Region (visits/pageviews/PV/visit. Segmentation down to country possible

Operators: List of operators that send traffic. Segmentation also available.

Device Details: Manufacturer, Model, Browser, Operating system, Markup Language, Screen resolution. Starts are sortable with different tabs (e.g. Models that create most page views).

Sources: Overview, Advertising, Referrals, Search Engines, Keywrors, Track Sources

Site Usage: Top Content, Page Titles, Entrance Pages, Exit pages

Events: Top 10 Events by Occurrences (custom build events = goals). Setting up events can be done within the system. Up to 25 events possible. All there has to be done is add a little piece of code in the URL.

Overall I am really impressed with the capabilities of Admob Analytics. I am sure they still have to figure out the fine tuning, but it looks very promising so far.

I also think it is really smart to put the user’s interests before financial interests (the product is free for anybody!).

After viewing the webinar, I am sure that Admob, which already has a strong brand and a lot of coverage from the tech media, will be the top runner for becoming “the”Mobile Analytics solution. Competitors like Amethon, Bango or Mobilytics need to improve their game in order to compete with Admob Analytics. This can be done by distinguishing themselves e.g by offering better functionalities (e.g. API) and/ or placing themselves as a high-end solution in the market place (kind of like Omniture does it in order to compete with Google Analytics).

Ericsson IPX First to Enable Launch of Services on Payforit in the UK

2008-07-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Ericsson Internet Payment Exchange (IPX) WAP billing solution is the first mobile payment system to host a live payment service on T-Mobile and to meet the requirements of four other major mobile operators in the UK.

The Payforit scheme provides a safe, trustworthy environment for mobile content purchases. The “Trusted Mobile Payment Framework” rules define how merchants, accredited payment intermediaries and operators co-operate to make mobile payments a secure and seamless process. The framework will firstly deal with off-portal WAP session mobile payment mechanisms for mobile content.

Further to developing trust in mobile payment, Payforit aims at creating transparency and ease of use for consumers. A set of “screen style” rules govern how payment pages look and function, simplifying and securing how users purchase content via a standardized interface presented on their mobile phones.

Gavin Dent, Group Manager – Commercial Partners at T-Mobile UK, comments “We are excited at the huge opportunity Payforit represents in the mobile payments space. T-Mobile has now accredited several Payforit service providers including Ericsson IPX, who were the first on the T-Mobile network to launch a live Payforit service called wap.logogo.com”

Peter Garside, Regional Manager, Ericsson IPX, says, “We are proud to have established this early position with Payforit. We have launched similar WAP Billing services in 12 countries already and because of this, we were able to adapt our service to react quickly to UK network operator requirements.” This is another of Ericsson’s steps to secure a leading position in the growing sector of multimedia, content and payment solutions. Via IPX content providers are now connected to more that 650 million subscribers worldwide who can use their mobile subscriptions to pay for content.

In the Payforit scheme all payment pages are hosted by Accredited Payment Intermediaries (aggregators) and not the merchant; hence the payment mechanism and the merchant are separated. The payment intermediary will be responsible for being able to audit all transactions, therefore creating a secure, reliable payment mechanism, where content consumers feel reassured.

Americans Spend More Than 4.5 Hours per Month Browsing on Smartphones, Nearly Double the Rate of the British

2008-07-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

Social networking and commerce draw consumers into the mobile Web

Social networking and Internet commerce are compelling smartphone users to spend an average of four hours and thirty-eight minutes per month browsing the mobile Web in the United States and two and a half hours per month in Britain, reports M:Metrics, the mobile media authority.

According to March data from the measurement firm’s metered smartphone panel, active mobile Web users in the United States spent an average of one hour and thirty-nine minutes in the month browsing Craigslist on their smartphone, the longest duration of any site among the top twenty domains visited. In the United Kingdom, Facebook commanded the most time spent browsing in the month, with visitors dedicating an average of one hour and forty-five minutes using the site, which is also drawing in users in America. There, Facebook ranks fourth in terms of time spent browsing, after eBay and MySpace, with Disney’s Go.com rounding out the top five. In the UK, the remaining top sites by browsing time are the mobile operator 3’s portal, Sky TV, Microsoft’s Live and BBC.

“People are becoming increasingly engaged in the mobile medium,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Among smartphone users in the United States, mobile browsing has increased 89 percent year over year, and pageviews have increased 127 percent. Consumption is quickly evolving from brief transactions, such as checking the weather or flight status, to time-intensive interaction with mobile Web sites—even without an iPhone.”

“A primary factor in the discrepancy in the duration of time spent browsing between British and American smartphone users is the relative popularity of flat-rate data plans in the United States, where 10.9 percent of users have an unlimited data plan versus only 2.3 percent in Britain,” commented Paul Goode, senior analyst, M:Metrics from the firm’s London bureau. “Other factors to consider are the popularity of devices with QWERTY keyboards in the United States—where nine of the ten top smartphones are QWERTY, while the inverse in true in the UK—and the greater penetration of smartphones in the British market.”

Even so, mobile social networking sites are running up the meters in the United Kingdom. Each day they visited the site, Facebook users spent an average of about 19 minutes, compared to an average of 15 minutes for Microsoft Live visitors, 10 minutes for mobile operator 3’s portal visitors, 14 minutes for Sky TV and nine minutes for BBC visitors.

In the United States, on the days they visited each site, consumers spent an average of 22 minutes on Craigslist, 29 minutes on eBay, 16 minutes on MySpace, 14 minutes on Facebook and 18 minutes on Go.com.

This data is derived from actual user behaviors among those with Windows, Symbian and Palm handsets. M:Metrics uses sophisticated on-device metering technologies to capture the mobile browsing and messaging activities among its panel of 3,500 smartphone users in the United States and the United Kingdom. M:Metrics’ MeterDirect is the world’s first syndicated research service reporting mobile media consumption using mechanical measures and was launched in March 2007.

M:Metrics applies trusted media measurement methodologies to assess the audience for mobile content and applications. As the world’s most authoritative mobile media measurement firm, M:Metrics delivers the most accurate mobile market metrics through the world’s largest monthly survey of mobile subscribers as well as automated data collection methodologies.

US Social Networking: Where’s the Money?

2008-06-27T10:14:00.001-07:00

by Jill Meyers

At present the US social networking market relies on three basic models for generating revenue: advertising sales, subscription fees and premium content and data access sales. Most social networking sites rely on traffic and the number of registered active members since the most popular revenue model is advertising based. In increasing quantities however, social networking sites are beginning to offer premium services to increase revenue generation.

In March 2008, In-Stat conducted a survey regarding social networking application usage and the creation of user generated content. The results of this survey revealed the majority of respondents elect not to pay for premium services or features. Then the respondents who did not currently pay for premium services were asked about the likelihood of doing so in the future.
Respondents who said they would not consider paying on either type of site were then asked why they did not anticipate paying for premium features or services. Cost was reason cited by more than 40% of respondents across the seven age segments surveyed.

An interesting fact is that most premium services/features offered on social networking sites are below the $10.00 a month price point. If consumers believe that the quality of services or features offered on social networking sites is not currently worth the money, then we can expect that as network operators improve service offerings, consumers will be drawn to these features and services over time. Supporting this notion is the significant response that came from the 18-24 year old group – the largest group of social network users. A majority of these respondents indicated a lack of desired premium services and features. In-Stat interprets this to mean that if compelling premium services or features of increased value were offered, the respondents would have increased willingness to pay for them.

Quattro Adds to Roster of Leading Entertainment Sites

2008-06-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

Quattro Wireless (www.quattrowireless.com) announced today it has signed deals to add a variety of leading entertainment sites to its fast-growing premier mobile Ad Network. The sites include Cracked.com, Savvy.com, TheInsider.com (a division of CBS Interactive), Fandango.com, Hollywood.com, JoBlo.com and MovieWeb.com.

Quattro will deliver mobile ads for the sites which feature a range of entertainment content, including: movie listings, video humor, gossip, community forums, entertainment news and men’s lifestyle information. According to recent research conducted by Quattro Wireless, entertainment related sites are among the best performers within its Network consistently delivering high page views per user and click-through rates on advertisements.

“We are very pleased to add this list of high quality publishers to the Quattro Ad Network,” said Lars Albright, vice president of Business Development at Quattro Wireless. “Using Quattro Wireless’ site analytics, we have found entertainment consumption comprises a large part of mobile Web usage. This genre of content represents an excellent way for advertisers to reach an engaged mobile audience.”

Quattro Wireless, North America’s Best Performing Mobile Ad Network, has established a leadership position for delivering premier, entertainment-driven wired content to the mobile world. Quattro allows its publishing partners to choose from a range of services that include site mobilization, ad serving and ad sales.

Millennial Media, Industry's Fastest-Growing Mobile Ad Networks Company, Continues Market-Leading Momentum, Endorses Open Approach

2008-06-20T11:02:00.001-07:00

Industry-leading ad networks operator crosses 2.5 billion impressions globally in May with 1.94 billion impressions in the US alone, reaching nearly half of all US mobile Internet users on devices from mobile phones to iPhones to PSPs

Millennial Media today celebrates its market momentum by announcing several new partnerships and releasing its market-leading impression numbers.

Millennial Media is proud to add TV Guide, The Boston Herald, Goal.com, GoTV’s video service and The Washington Times to its roster of the more than 1,200 sites participating in its ad networks. These networks include mobile services from top-tier online media properties and mobile media content properties, and quality ad placements both on and off carrier decks.

Millennial Media’s networks are comprised of over 1.94 billion US-specific monthly ad impressions, and with figures of over 18 million unique mobile users in May, the company reaches nearly half of the US Mobile Web universe. As the US market’s largest mobile advertising network, Millennial Media is committed to helping brands and publishers achieve all of their mobile advertising objectives with the most complete and flexible set of solutions for advertisers and the most complete and diverse monetization for publishers.

“We are delighted to serve our clients in reaching their mobile advertising goals,” said Paul Palmieri, president and CEO of Millennial Media. “We look forward to growing our reputation advantage in the marketplace by delivering innovative media solutions, superior service and market-leading insight.”

Commitment to an Open Market

Recognizing the need for the entire market to grow, Millennial Media is also announcing its support of an open approach to the advertising market. Open markets and connections between mobile ad servers will drive greater monetization for publishers and carriers.

The company has already announced key server and network integrations and will look to help publishers adopt this inclusive approach moving forward.

From MySpace to the Office Space

2008-06-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Reedy

Behemoths Facebook and MySpace weren't the first to capitalize on the human need to connect. The first true social network — friend lists, profiles and all — quietly came on the scene in 1997. Designed as a web of contacts, SixDegrees.com attracted millions of users before shutting down in 2000, when Facebook was still just an ambition of Mark Zuckerberg's. In its place, hundreds of social networks — or those claiming to be — have sprung up. What once was reserved for a select group of teenagers has grown to encompass all ages and facets of life, bringing many consumers and businesses into the fold of one network or another.

No longer blocked from work computers by IT departments, social networks are now a staple of the enterprise, typically in the form of an online presence to connect employees and distribute information. Enterprise social media provider Small World Labs has seen a pickup in its business coinciding with a downturn in the economy. As budgets grow tighter and jobs less secure, companies such as the American Cancer Society and The Dallas Morning News have called on Small Worlds for a nontraditional and cost-effective way to boost morale among employees.

Michael Wilson, CEO of Small Worlds, said that more and more businesses are using social networking as an integral part of how they communicate and collaborate. “In the end, it is all about community,” he said. “If it is going to be successful, people need to have a good benefit of its participation.”

As a byproduct of an increased enterprise focus on community, the demographic of those getting on board with social networking is starting to age. According to Yankee Group studies, in 2007, 51% of 25- to 34-year-olds and 31% of 35- to 41-year-olds were active users of one or more social networks. With 46% of social networkers older than 35, the demographics are beginning to balance out.

“Increasingly, it is also executives who are older trying to get a grasp of what's going on in new media and social networking because it is starting to affect their business,” said Adam Ostrow, editor in chief of Mashable.com. “They have advertisers asking about social networks, wanting to do partnerships with social networks to get more people interested in their brand. It is starting to extend out to a very wide group of demographics.”

Mashable.com is a Web site devoted to covering the social-networking space, and according to Ostrow, the biggest trend it's seen this year has been aggregation. The industry is past the point of consumers discovering their first social-networking site. Now, most Mashable.com readers are on between four to 30 sites, and they want seamless access to all of their networks. Friend Feed, for one, lets them do this. The aggregator streams everything users do on all their networks across every site so that it can be viewed from one central location. Among Ostrow's informed reader demographic, this — along with the microblogging trend — is what everyone is talking about.

“A huge earthquake in China was first reported on Twitter rather than CNN,” Ostrow said. “It's the immediacy of everything right now, whether via live text or audio.”

Getting in touch with this instant gratification, in-the-know market segment has become priority No. 1 for advertisers as well. Jupiter Research predicts that 48% of Internet marketers will find a presence in social media marketing this year. Members of one's social network have proven to be significant influences on purchasing decisions, and the site itself often affects how they find and interact with products and services.

Social network Icebreaker, makers of “Crush or Flush,” ties the advertising experience into the interactive gaming focus of its site. Just as users can decide if they want to crush a contact — meaning connect and become friends — or flush them (“reject” in social-networking lingo), they do the same with the product in an advertisement. Called Golden Ticket, the social-networking experience at Icebreaker forces branded advertisers to view the mobile platform in a whole new light. Michael Robinson, CEO of Icebreaker, said the platform captures the three most important aspects of advertising — awareness, usage and advocacy — all in the context of a social network.

“We wanted our brand to be immersed into the experience, so there would be no objection from the user,” Robinson said. “Quite the opposite, they'd feel like this profile would be a friend in some sense like the people they meet on the site.”

So far, Robinson said Icebreaker members have been receptive to the advertisements. They associate the brands with a positive emotional feeling and, as an opt-in experience, don't find it intrusive. Whereas traditional advertisements have always been one-sided and information-based, social networking has expedited this evolution to more interactive and immersive advertisements. Yet, while advertising has changed as a result of social networking, the benchmark of the phenomenon has remained the same: Communication is still interest No. 1.

“The things that are being most frequently used — it is still all about communication,” said Scott Silk, CEO of Action Engine. “The ones that are taking off the most about communication are things like IM and social networking. A lot of it is one-to-one but also one-to-many communication.”

Action Engine, which last week launched a mobile social-networking on-device portal in partnership with MTV, also offers mobile users an instant messaging platform for mobility. With more than 147 million using IM on their handsets, and eMarketer's forecasts that mobile social networking will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to more than 800 million worldwide by 2012, the handset is evolving into a social-networking vehicle to be reckoned with. In fact, the opportunity here might be more significant than for fixed-Internet sites — a fact that hundreds of mobile social-networking start-ups are banking on.

“I do think that in the fixed-Internet environment, it is a possibility that in terms of the total pie of users, the total volume of users, we've nearly reached a peak,” said Jill Aldort, wireless senior analyst for Yankee Group.

RadiSys, meanwhile, takes a behind-the-scenes approach to social networking, supplying the enabling technology for much of the real-time interactive services. From this point of view inside the network, communication may be the cornerstone, but the future is all about multimedia capabilities.

“The multimedia aspect is a big trend in the future,” said David Smith, general manager of the RadiSys media server business unit. “Not only voice services, but introducing video services as well. From our perspective, those are ubiquitous network-based services that are of low cost and can be widely deployed across the entire subscriber base.”

Social networks are in a perpetual state of evolution. As they mature and continue to change, it is becoming clearer that they aren't a passing trend. Their influence on consumers, enterprises, advertisers and the network itself is only the tip of the iceberg. The next billion-dollar social network may still be just an ambition waiting to find another facet of the industry yet untapped.

“I think that social networking is here to stay, but it might not necessarily look like it does today,” Aldort said. “The overall concept of social networking and creating and connecting to a community is not a fad by any means, but the current mechanics of it may be a fad.”

Microsoft Technology Will Help Las Vegas Bar Patrons Flirt

2008-06-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Technology made by Microsoft Corp. has been installed at a bar in Las Vegas to help bar patrons meet and flirt.

The iBar lounge at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino will use the Redmond computer giant's (NASDAQ: MSFT) "Surface" computer -- a 30-inch table-sized computer display. The "Surface" computer will allow bar patrons to take and send their photos across the bar, play computer games with each other, and tour other Las Vegas attractions.

Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which operates the hotel and bar, said the service began at the bar on Wednesday.

"With this latest deployment of Surface, we're now ... showcasing the breadth of opportunities Microsoft Surface provides to innovative businesses like Harrah's," said Pete Thompson, general manager for Microsoft Surface, in a statement.

How to Get the Most Bang for Your Mobile Advertising Buck

2008-06-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

By Tony Nethercutt

In my past columns I’ve discussed the ad units you can buy on the mobile Web and how to size your media buy. The next topic I am addressing involves creative for mobile.

You know you can run both text link ads and graphical banner ads. You may be wondering if there are any tips on how to get the best performance from these ads. Here are five best practices that we have learned from running thousands of campaigns and from listening to our advertisers.

Test multiple creatives for each campaign and track performance. Instead of taking a gamble by trying to predict which banner design or which ad text copy will catch the eye of your target market, I recommend that advertisers provide the site or mobile ad network they are working with multiple creatives at the outset of the campaign.

This way, you can run small-scale tests to give you meaningful insights into which creative clicks best.

The average click rates for banners range from 1 percent to 2.5 percent depending on targeting (5 percent-plus is not unusual), and around 0.5 percent for performance text ads, so you’ll want to test and track performance for best results.

By testing your creative, you know which ads to run based on real data.

Most advertisers want to also measure post-click results back to the creative. That functionality exists in various forms today through home grown systems and other vendors.

Keep creative fresh. Once you’ve determined which creative performs best and you start running your campaign, you’ll want to work with your sales partners to change creative every two weeks throughout the flight of the campaign. This is particularly true if your campaign is ongoing for a few months or more.

By changing images or just the word order of your text, you’re more likely to see continuous engagement with your ads, because users are more likely to click on relevant ads they’ve never seen before.

Most advertisers use a “champion vs. challenger” approach to determine which creative to run.

Go easy on the text within the banner ad. Since banner ads run with a line of text below them, you can use the banner itself to catch your customers’ attention with images and your logo. Communicate your calls to action in the line of text that runs beneath the banner.

Use trigger words in your ad text where appropriate. This recommendation may not surprise you, but if your product offering includes a free element – free download, free evaluation, et cetera – let users know by including the word “Free” in the text portion of the ad that runs below the image.

Likewise, we’ve seen evidence that users respond well to video offerings, so if you have video assets on your landing page, let users know. “Watch Video” is a simple and effective call to action. At AdMob, our device detection techniques allow us to only serve ads that mention videos to phones that are video-enabled.

Personalize your message. As you know, relevance enhances engagement. In mobile, one effective way to personalize an ad is to include the user’s device manufacturer, device model or operator in the ad text.

Many ad networks can dynamically insert these details at the time of the ad request. All you have to do is ask your mobile ad network to enable the feature.

For example, a Land Rover text ad that runs on a Motorola Razr could say “View Land Rover photos on your Razr” instead of “View Land Rover photos on your phone.” Adding a detail like this will make any ad instantly more relevant.

Using these creative best practices to maximize click-through and conversion metrics will help you find new levels of success on the mobile Web. You can work with brand research companies such as Dynamic Logic and Insight Express to measure brand awareness and favorability metrics of your mobile campaigns.

Tony Nethercutt is vice president of sales at mobile ad network AdMob Inc., San Mateo, CA. Reach him at tony@admob.com.

U.S. Cellular Selects JumpTap for Mobile Search and Advertising Solutions

2008-05-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

Customers Get to The Web with Greater Ease through One-Click Access

BREW 2008 CONFERENCE, SAN DIEGO — May 28, 2008 — JumpTap, the leading mobile search and advertising solutions provider, today announced U.S. Cellular (AMEX:USM) has selected the company’s industry-leading white-label search and advertising solutions. JumpTap and U.S. Cellular are committed to providing customers with the most dynamic and relevant mobile experience possible.

Through the agreement, U.S. Cellular customers will have one-click access to the Web, helping them quickly find the on- or off-deck content they’re looking for. JumpTap’s sophisticated solutions can draw from U.S. Cellular’s data and usage information to ensure only the most relevant search results are delivered, as well as provide more effective ad targeting for advertisers.

“Using JumpTap’s made-for-mobile solutions, our customers will find what they’re looking for quickly and easily," said Alan D. Ferber, vice president of sales operations and chief marketing officer for U.S. Cellular. “This partnership helps us build the best mobile Web experience in the industry.”

“This agreement further substantiates the growing momentum amongst operators around the world to choose white label solutions that preserve their brand relationship with their subscribers,” commented Dan Olschwang, president and CEO of JumpTap. “Our solutions leverage network data for more effective advertising and guarantee the operator’s position in the mobile advertising value chain.”

Beyond on and off portal search, U.S. Cellular customers can access news, sports, flight updates, white pages, chat services, maps and directions through JumpTap’s vertical categories. Additionally, local and national content publishers and advertisers will be able bid on search queries to further hone their target market for each specific ad campaign.

Mobile Social Networks Embraced by Millenials

2008-05-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

Mobile social networks are quite popular with the Millennial generation, just as social networking is, reports In-Stat http://www.in-stat.com . Blogging, photo and video sharing, location-based socialization services, games, SMS, and IM will eventually be combined to afford the mobile user the entire social networking experience from a handset application, the high-tech market research firm says. The mobile handset will simply become an extension of the user in most aspects of life.

The critical issue most mobile social networking site and application developers struggle with is how to make money with their services. There are three primary methods of revenue generation for mobile social networking applications' advertising, subscription services, and premium upgrades.

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

In-Stat forecasts over 229.5 million mobile subscribers globally could be using mobile social networking services by 2012.
Social network advertising continues to be experimental to marketers, but 2008 revenues are predicted to be over $1.5 billon.
Last year's introduction of the iPhone enabled the least techno-savvy user to surf the Internet, download and play music, take pictures, send messages, and record videos, all on a thin, touch-screen-operated unit. This has changed mobile phone users' expectations.

This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat research, US Mobile Social Networking and the Millennial Generation (#IN0804034MCM), which covers the worldwide market for mobile social networking. It provides results of In-Stat's 2007 Consumer Mobility Study (CMS), drawn from a random selection of US residents subscribing to a wireless service. It also analyzes market drivers and barriers, and provides a forecast of mobile social networking users worldwide through 2012. A roundup of US mobile social network providers is included.

MLB.com Reaches Mobile Page View Milestone

2008-05-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

A Home Run for Mobile

MLB.com reached a milestone yesterday when it said that the site has reached almost 12 million page views from mobile phones in a single day.

What does this mean?

Major League baseball fans are increasingly depending on their mobile phones to access baseball information on-the-go.

The record-setting day for MLB.com mobile page views was Saturday, May 17 at the same time as Major League Baseball ballparks combined to draw the sixth-largest single-day attendance ever - 631,458 people - to the 16 scheduled games.

Since Opening Day of the 2008 regular season, MLB.com and the 30 club mobile sites have recorded nearly 325 million page views.

The mobile MLB site lets users get text and video alerts with team information.

Users can even listen to an audio record of gameday right from their mobile phones.

The site also offers wallpapers and ringtones and player alerts. The WAP site has content such as sports news, game schedules and scoreboards, too.

Social Networking Going Mobile, Nielsen Finds

2008-05-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

By Jason

A growing number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide are taking online social networking to the streets, research conducted by The Nielsen Company reveals. The findings, released by Nielsen Mobile, a service of The Nielsen Company, show that the U.K. leads Europe in mobile social networking on a percentage basis -- with the U.S. boasting comparable numbers.

In the U.K., approximately 810,000 mobile subscribers, or 1.7 percent of all mobile subscribers in the country, visited social networking websites on their mobile phones in the first quarter of 2008. That reach percentage was twice as high as it was in other major European markets-though similar to the U.S., where 1.6 percent of all mobile subscribers (4.1 million in all) accessed social networks via their phones in December 2007. For more details on mobile social networking access by country, see the chart below.

Mobile Social Networking Reach - US and Europe

% of mobile subscribers who Number of mobile subscribersaccess social networks over who access social networks the mobile Internet per month, over their phone

United States - 1.6% -- 4,079,000
United Kingdom -- 1.7% -- 812,000
Italy -- 0.6% -- 293,000
Spain -- 0.8% -- 291,000
France -- 0.6% -- 255,000
Germany -- 0.2% -- 141,000

Source: Nielsen Mobile; EU data Q1 2008, US data December 2007.

Leading PC Social Networking Sites are Also Tops Over Phones

In the U.S., MySpace.com, the leading social networking site among PC users is also the most popular mobile Internet social networking site. The site logged 2.8 million unique mobile users in December 2007. Also in December, Facebook, which has the second largest audience among social networking sites, had 1.8 million unique mobile users. In contrast, Facebook led mobile social networking sites in the U.K. with 557,000 unique mobile users per month in Q1 2008, while MySpace followed with 211,000 unique mobile users. While Facebook and MySpace.com were also among the top social networking sites in other European countries during the first quarter of 2008, MSN's Windows Live Spaces led in Italy (154,000 unique mobile users per month) and France (106,000), and ranked second in Germany (45,000) behind MySpace, which boasted 52,000 unique mobile users per month.

"Social networking is already a global phenomenon, and going mobile is the next big thing," said Jeff Herrmann, vice president of Mobile Media at Nielsen Mobile. "In the U.K. and the U.S. especially, we already see millions of users of MySpace.com, Facebook and other social networks interacting with their virtual spaces while they are on the go. Consumer demand for mobile social networking may be a significant driver of mobile service pricing models as evidenced by Vodafone UK's recent move to offer unlimited Internet access as a standard feature of its new monthly mobile price plans."Nielsen's Mobile Internet Reports are available today in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. The reports provide detailed audience measurement metrics for mobile Internet and offer insights on how mobile users are interacting with social networking and other mobile Internet content.

About Nielsen Mobile

The Nielsen Mobile service of The Nielsen Company is the world's largest independent provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets. The Nielsen Mobile service focuses exclusively on tracking the behavior, attitudes and experiences of mobile consumers; their reports also provide up to seven years of data on Internet, video, gaming, audio and advertising trends for mobile phone users. Nielsen's technology-driven research provides unique and holistic insight into how mobile customers use their devices and what they think about brands, devices and services. For more information, please visit http://www.nielsenmobile.com/.

Frengo Connects Users Across MySpace, Facebook, hi5, Orkut and Bebo Social Networks

2008-05-07T05:08:00.000-07:00

Frengo leads industry in creating first interoperable applications amongst leading social networks

Frengo, a leading provider of social mobile services, announced the availability of a suite of applications that run on top of and across Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Bebo. Frengo focuses on social applications that are fun, engaging, entertaining and available anytime and anywhere – from a Web enabled PC or mobile phone. These applications not only allow users to interact with friends and friends-of-friends, but more importantly help establish new connections by discovering others across social networks who share common interests.

FLIRTABLE, the most-used mobile application on Facebook and a top 20 application overall, boasts four million members who use the social browsing and dating application globally. This application allows participants to surf profile pictures, send and receive private messages and virtual gifts and make introductions to friends. This is one of the first applications to interoperate amongst leading social networks. In addition to Facebook, FLIRTABLE is now available on MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Bebo.

FLIRTABLE users can now interact with other users distributed across those networks. For example, a MySpace user can interact with other MySpace users as well as users of Facebook, hi5 and Bebo.

Furthermore, FLIRTABLE MOBILE provides access to all of the above features from any Web enabled mobile phone. “We are excited to unlock the potential of interaction across more than 200 million people on these social networks. This is reminiscent of text messaging ten years ago, when you could only message people on your network. The traffic was very small, but when the carriers established interoperability across these networks – the traffic and utility of texting exploded,” said Mahi de Silva, Frengo CEO.

“Applications like FLIRTABLE have already found great traction within individual social networks but we are really jazzed about leading the charge to get users across these networks to connect with one another. We think it adds a whole new layer of vitality to social networks and raises the bar for other developers in this space.”

Another application called LOLz, a collaboration between Frengo and I Can Has Cheezburger? (http://www.icanhascheezburger.com) is also now available on MySpace, Facebook, hi5 and will be on Orkut later this month. It is a unique application that represents the utility that can rise as user-generated content, social media and mobile technology converge. Centered around user-submitted images and captions, this application brings the humor of “LOLCats” to social networks – making it easier to upload content, caption or re-caption popular images, and share with friends as a quick way to participate in a community of users who share a quirky sense of humor. LOLz can also be easily accessed from a mobile phone and includes features that allow users to easily upload and caption pictures from a camera enabled mobile phone.

In addition to I Can Haz Cheezburger?, Frengo powers the mobile services for popular applications from top social networking developers including Slide, RockYou and Frozen Bear.

Crush or Flush Indiana Community Predicts Obama to Win State Primary

2008-05-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

Through Crush or Flush's new interactive polling feature called Golden Ticket™, a representative sample of 500 Crush or Flush members in Indiana predict that Obama will win the Democratic candidate nomination in Indiana with a 53:47 percent margin. In Indiana, the Crush or Flush community is 57% male, 43% female, and over 75% are between the ages of 18 and 30 years old.

5 Things that Make Your Social Network Monetize

2008-04-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

By Andrew Chen

Are the social networks making tons of money?

People have been very excited about the advertising prospects of social networks lately. First you have announcements from MySpace about an 80% rise in CTR through profile targeting, as well as some claims of Facebook's going rate CPMs being $4. Furthermore, the recent gold rush in Facebook apps has led quite a few folks amassing large userbases with dreams of incredible monetization. It's quite easy, with all the profile information that social networks have, to automatically assume that this information is the same type that drives Google-like revenue and monetization.

So let's talk about this... Are social networks making money hand over fist? Why or why not?
To aid this discussion, I'll go through a couple of the critical challenges that affect social network monetization:

Engagement is inversely correlated with CTRs
Inventory isn't homogeneous, it's a pyramid
Don't confuse interest with intent
CPMs are driven by underlying value, not just targeting
Brands are a big wild-card

Understanding the CPM formula

Before we jump in, let's talk about how CPMs are generated. For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to focus on direct response advertising, rather than branding (which we'll get into later).

Ultimately, CPM is a simple calculation that is determined by:
CPM = Clickthrough Rate * Price Per Click * 1000

For example:
1,000,000 impressions * 0.5% clickthrough * $0.25 PPC= $1250 per 1 million impressions = $1.25 / 1000 impressions= $1.25 CPM

This is from the publisher side - if you have a good CTR or PPC or Impressions, you make more money. Now from the advertiser side, you need to figure out what the underlying value is. After all, even if you get a ton of clicks, if you can't convert them on your side and have a good transactional value at the end, you won't want to pay a PPC.

CPM = Clickthrough Rate * (Value of Action * Conversion Rate) * 1000

Conversion rate means the percentage of people who do the desired "action" that drives value for you. That might mean the % of people who buy from your e-commerce store, or who fill out your mortgage lead form, or whatever. You could also substitute this for Lifetime Value for your social network, or LTV for your virtual goods-driven casual game, or whatever.

Now let's jump into how different dynamics on your site drive these different variables.

1. Engagement is inversely correlated with CTRs

You know how MySpace and Facebook just encourage you to click-click-click and log in every day and are just incredibly sticky? That's great engagement, and it helps with a lot of things, particularly growth and competing in strategic areas.

However, the drawback is that the more pageviews people have your site, the lower the clickthrough rate gets.

You should read the rest of the article on MikeOnAds, it has some other great data on there. This issue of engagement negatively correlating with clickthrough rate is well-documented, and happens at every network.

So how bad are the clickthrough rates, exactly? I'd guess that across all the social networks, something from 0.01% to 0.05% is pretty standard. You might have some higher CTRs in some very specific areas, for example right after a user completes an action (composes an email, friends a person, etc) but in general, they will be quite low.

There's some evidence for Facebook's CTRs being about 0.04%, doucmented here:

2. Inventory isn't homogeneous, it's a pyramid

Sometimes you might hear the CPMs for one of these social networks is X dollars. And that's true, it's exactly the price that SOME people are paying for the inventory. But in general, that's not how publishers end up managing their inventory. Instead, if you take the impressions for a user across their session, you'll instead get something like this:

The first US impression in a session has the most value ($10)
Then impressions 2-5 have some level of brand value or high CTR value ($3-5)
Then after that, you're hitting ad networks selling on category ($1)
Then eventually, you hit remnant ad networks ($0.50)
Finally, you hit pure CPA remnant networks ($0.10)

These are just example numbers. Now the problem is that while people often quote the premium numbers, the majority of the impressions happen in the low CPM remnant numbers. The premium ads happen on the homepage, major channel pages (like Music, Games, etc), but not in the most popular pages like forums, profile pages, etc.

I'd expect the top inventory (let's say 5-10%) end up generating 50% of the overall revenues.
So in your financial forecasting, don't expect to be able to multiply a big CPM against your ad inventory. Instead, you need to be nuanced about the different sections of your site, and how they sit relative to the ad inventory pyramid.

3. Don't confuse interest with intent

Now to the profile data - how much is this worth? You might expect that by looking at profile keywords like "skiing" or "travel" or topics like that, you could make a ton of money on social networking sites.

Every page should be like Google, right? Wrong. (unfortunately)

The reason is that interest in a topic is different than having intent. Having "skiing" on your profile is completely different than searching for "ski tickets." The latter means you're ready to buy, whereas the former simply means that you sometimes buy. This is GREAT for brand advertising, but really doesn't help on the direct response CPM formula.

Having high intent typically drives a higher conversion rate (driving up the PPC) as well as driving up the CTR. Having interest but not intent should theoretically be better than nothing, but there might be other effects, like having more "looky-loos" click on your ad just out of interest, but not actually buy the product there.

4. CPMs are driven by underlying value, not just targeting

Furthermore, you really have to look at the underlying value of the transaction to figure out how the CPMs will turn out. After all, the underlying value drives the PPC, which then drives the overall CPM. In order words:

Mortgage leads trump contextually relevant ads because Mortgage leads can be worth 50X more than a non-transactional site.

This is how a mortgage lead generation site might work: Person enters their contact info, which then gets sold to 4 lenders, which then call the person to work out the loan. Each lead might be worth $10, but because it's sold to 4 different companies, it's worth $40 total.

Now a ski ticket might be more contextually relevant service. Or maybe a music subscription service. Or some other mass consumer good. But the increase in clickthrough rate COMPLETELY offsets the powerful value of the mortgage lead, all you will see is LowerMyBills psychedelic peacock ads.

Now targeting really does help advertisements, but the problem with display advertising which shows as you are using a site is that the effects are not going to be as strong as high-intent areas.
In this case, targeting might increase CTRs and conversion rates, but it's unlikely that it's so powerful it'll completely offset the value decrease. People are mostly interested in things that don't generate lots of money, and because of that, you have to compensate.

5. Brands are a big wild-card

Of course, the real wild-card is brand advertising, because it really follow the CPM formula. Brand advertising is really not priced based on any logical way that follows a formula like that. Instead, it's based on relationships, prestige, audience metrics, and other intangibles. So as the audiences for brand advertisers migrate from TV to the internet, you will see a tremendous amount of brand dollars move as well. These brand dollars will simply follow whatever's "hot" - thus, because the major portals seem to be growing pretty slowly and/or actually losing engagement, you'll see brand dollars chase the social networking sites.

However, unless your name is Tom or Mark, you're unlikely to get your hands on too many of these dollars. And the reason is that brand advertising is sort of a "winner take all" game, where only the largest sites can afford large sales teams that can develop the deep relationships required to sell to Madison Avenue brand ad agencies.

The current hurdle is that advertisers don't like UGC (er, CGM content) because it requires them to let go of their brand. So until that changes, through technological means or an attitudinal change, the brands are preferring buying video on mainstream media sites.

What's next?

Now, it's not all bad for social network ad monetization. The place in the CPM formula that's really driving revenue is that impressions are getting bigger and bigger. What these sites can't make up via advertising efficiency, they are making up through pure bulk. That's why you can build sites with 100s of million in revenue, and it's growing every day. The brand shift is also going in their favor.

More interestingly, I'm looking for native ad units to develop on the site which do work for advertisers. Months ago, I had written about "tag along widgets" which has quickly materialized as the Cost Per Install ecosystem on Facebook. Here's the excerpt from "What's a Facebook user worth, anyway?"

Another option would be for some sort of deeper integration to happen as hooks to another widget. For example, I could imagine a company (let's say Apple) creating their own widget. If you as Mr. Travel Widget, when installed, would try to convince the user to also install an Apple widget, I think that'd be an interesting model. Basically tag-along widgets which advertisers pay some amount for every user that is brought along.

As these native ad units mature, I'd expect some new revenue opportunities to be built from scratch. Let's see how it goes - it can't be worse than display ;-)

Mobile Marketing Association Releases Global Mobile Advertising Guideline

2008-04-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA’s) Mobile Advertising Guidelines provide global formats, guidelines and best practices necessary to implement mobile advertising initiatives in a variety of mobile media channels including: Web, messaging, downloadable applications and video. The guidelines are intended to promote the development of advertising on mobile phones by (i) reducing the amount of creative effort required for a mobile advertising campaign, (ii) providing an effective and consistent experience on the majority of mobile phones worldwide and (iii) providing an engaging consumer experience.

The MMA’s Mobile Advertising Overview provides an overview of the mobile media channels available to advertisers today, including the benefits and considerations to optimize campaign effectiveness and strengthen consumer satisfaction.

The Mobile Advertising Overview can be located on the MMA Website at www.mmaglobal.com/mobileadoverview.pdf.

The MMA guidelines are the result of ongoing collaboration between MMA member companies and MMA Mobile Advertising Committees in the Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LATAM) and North America (NA) regions. Committee members are representative of all parties in the mobile marketing ecosystem, including handset manufacturers, operators, content providers,
agencies, brands and technology enablers.

The intended audience for these guidelines is all those involved in the commissioning, creation, distribution and hosting of advertising via mobile. The MMA Mobile Advertising Guidelines present a baseline whose widespread adoption will accelerate market development and ensure consumer satisfaction.

About the Mobile Marketing Association

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association established to lead the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. The MMA is an action-oriented organization designed to clear obstacles to market development, establish mobile media guidelines and best practices for sustainable growth, and evangelize the use of the mobile channel. The more than 600 member companies, representing over fifty countries around the globe, include all parts of the mobile media ecosystem. The Mobile Marketing Association’s global headquarters are located in the United States and it has established Branches in the North America (NA), Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Latin American (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC) regions. For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com.

About the MMA Mobile Advertising Committee

The MMA Mobile Advertising Committee, with active committee member participation across the globe, has been established to create a library of format and policy guidelines for advertising within content on mobile phones. By creating mobile advertising guidelines, the MMA ensures that the industry is taking a proactive approach to keep user experience, content integrity and deployment simplicity as the driving forces behind all mobile advertising programs world-wide.

Counting Mobile Advertising Effectiveness Remains a Challenge

2008-04-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

By Colin Gibbs

Like Britney Spears, mobile advertising is desperately in need of some monitoring.

Market research firms seem to be tripping over themselves to offer the most optimistic projections for wireless ads. The Kelsey Group predicts the U.S. market will grow from $33.2 million last year to $1.4 billion by 2012, while IDC believes wireless ads in the United States will generate as much as $4 billion by 2011. Worldwide forecasts range from $14.4 billion by 2011 (Strategy Analytics) to $24 billion by 2013 (ABI Research).

For those kinds of atmospheric figures to be approached, though, the industry will need to find better ways of analyzing traffic on the mobile Web and measuring the effectiveness of wireless ad campaigns. A small audience coupled with “the lack of critical mass of educated advertisers able to measure return on investment will restrain mobile media’s potential in the midterm,” according to a report released last month from JupiterResearch.

“Mobile advertising is destined to be a multi-billion euro industry,” wrote JupiterResearch President David Schatsky. “But the maturation of this industry could take a decade. Advertisers tend to be slow to reaction to consumers’ changing behaviors and will need more than encouraging trials and early click-through rates to begin to invest massively in this nascent medium.”

The challenges in mobile are so complex that even Google Inc. is struggling to compile accurate information. Google AdWords, a service that tracks the number of visitors that take a specific action on a site, leverages technologies such as JavaScript and cookies that — while ubiquitous on the fixed-line Web — are relatively uncommon in mobile.

“Without JavaScript and cookies, the vast majority of conversions resulting from AdWords on mobile devices will go undetected,” the London-based search engine marketing agency AccuraCast noted last month. “This is a serious issue, as it implies that the ROI calculations on many mobile advertisers make for their campaigns will be far from the actual figures. Not only is this a serious problem for Google, who has traditionally bragged about the exceptional accountability and reporting capabilities of its advertising platform, but it is also one that cannot be solved by the search giant.”

That inability to accurately measure the effectiveness of mobile ad campaigns was the source of much of the activity at the Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, Spain.

Nokia Corp. made its long-awaited mobile advertising play by introducing Media Network, an alliance of more than 70 publishers and operators including Sprint Nextel Corp., Discovery, Heart and Reuters. The network, which claims a potential reach of 100 million mobile consumers, leverages analytics technology from Enpocket, a Boston-based startup acquired by Nokia for an undisclosed sum last year.

Five European carriers formed a working group to develop common measurement standards for wireless marketing campaigns. GSM Association members Vodafone Group plc, Telefonica O2 Europe, T-Mobile International and Orange aim to work with advertising industry associations to develop a range of metrics to “describe the mobile audience” and measure the effectiveness of wireless ads.

Comverse launched a mobile ad solution that comprises an ad server, ad-targeting engine, data collectors and a campaign management component as well as a comprehensive billing and reporting tools.

A host of others are working to develop analytics for mobile ads as well. Millennial Media and Third Screen Media, among others, have built solutions that attempt to build user profiles, monitor consumers’ behavior and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns on their advertising platforms. And Bango, a U.K.-based wireless firm that specializes in off-deck activity, recently joined the field with a hosted service that counts the number of unique visitors to sites and determines the type of phone being used and the language and country of the user.

Bango is giving the service away to operators of smaller wireless Web sites in the hopes of expanding its reach. The company hopes to leverage its existing network of mobile site operators — as well as its position outside the traditional mobile ad space — to create a standardized system for tracking activity on the wireless Web.

“Millennial has a very good product; they can give you terrific analytics about how their marketing channel works. So can Google, so can AdMob. But what they can’t do is compare that to each other,” said Anil Malhotra, Bango’s VP of marketing and alliances. “One of the challenges of the mobile marketplace is that it is fragmented. We actually think that because of the big footprint we’ve got, we’re in a position to become the standard.”

A London search engine marketing agency found that Google AdWords failed to accurately track the effectiveness of mobile ads.

Tip for Big Brands in Mobile: Extend Existing Campaigns

2008-04-23T16:02:00.000-07:00

By Tony Nethercutt, Vice President Sales, AdMob

The latest numbers from Nielsen Mobile paint a picture of the mobile Web that reveals it is not just the tech-savvy few that can be reached through mobile. With 80 percent of mobile subscribers using data in fourth quarter 2007, mobile is decidedly mass market.

Mass market equals reach, and there is nothing that gets a big brand’s attention faster than the word “Reach.” Now that we’re heading the right direction with the reach numbers and targeting capabilities that have been proven, mobile advertising for big brands is really coming into its own.

Brands and agencies are spending an increasing amount of time focused on creating a brand presence that is specific to mobile. This is certainly a fertile area to explore and holds great potential for the future, but creating an impactful mobile presence need not be divorced from all other existing campaign activities.

Extending existing campaigns to mobile, or better yet, conceiving of a mobile component to an integrated campaign from the outset, is the best way to ensure a consistent brand presence and campaign across all forms of media and leverage existing assets. I recommend this as the first step for a brand looking to develop its mobile presence.

When I was at DoubleClick in the early days of interactive advertising, I saw a similar pattern as big brands began spending and experimenting online.

The most effective first step in online then, as it is now in mobile, was to extend an existing campaign to a new medium. Once a brand is familiar with mobile, building a standalone campaign for mobile can be exciting. But unfamiliarity with the space should not prevent big brands from getting into mobile today by extending their existing campaigns.

The best mobile campaigns we have seen recently for big brands capture the essence of the overarching campaign while incorporating functionality that is uniquely suited to mobile.

An example of a campaign that was seamlessly extended to mobile is the recent Adidas “Basketball is a Brotherhood” campaign. The integrated campaign included media such as print, television, online, in-store and mobile components, and emphasized the team culture of basketball.

Adidas, a sportswear giant, worked with the agencies Carat and Isobar, and they conceived of mobile elements from the beginning of the campaign.

For example, users could opt-in to receive SMS text messages and calls from professional basketball player Kevin Garnett, one of the NBA players who were sponsored as part of the campaign. Full disclosure: AdMob sold the mobile media.

The Adidas campaign showcases the interactive potential of branded mobile sites. Adidas placed text link ads and banner ads on the AdMob network directing users to their mobile site where users could browse and discover products, download content and Click-2-Call Kevin Garnett.

Users could also get a customizable voicemail recorded by Kevin Garnett automatically configured to their phone. Click-2-Call and voicemail features enabled users to interact with the NBA players featured in the campaign and highlighted functionality that is uniquely suited for mobile.

Without getting too deep into the specifics, the agency says that mobile out-performed all other media for driving opt-ins to the campaign.

Also, the fact that 18 percent of those who used the Click-2-Call campaign called back again a second time suggests a viral nature of this campaign, as users may have been showing off the feature to their peers.

The key point to remember is that an advertiser can stick to the same goals it has in online and other media and extend them to mobile. A direct response advertiser can implement direct response campaigns in mobile. A lead generation-focused advertiser can make use of information capture functionality to generate leads.

If an advertiser is used to showing brand building videos online and on TV, it can show video on mobile that customers can watch anytime, no matter where they are.

Brand impact studies from InsightExpress, Dynamic Logic and Factor TG are becoming increasing common in mobile. The results of their studies demonstrate that mobile advertising has a positive impact on key brand metrics.

My top recommendation to brands and their agencies is extending campaigns to mobile while taking advantage of the unique functionality that mobile offers. It is also the top recommendation of the Mobile Marketing Association. Reach your customers where they are spending time in increasingly larger numbers: the mobile Web.

Crush or Flush Community Predicts Obama to win Pennsylvania

2008-04-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

I just saw a poll predicting that Obama will win (shown below). It is interesting to see mobile communities being used to for polling. While I think the prediction is wrong, it seems to match well with the age group who uses their cell phone for daily activities. I think we are going to see a lot more polls using cell phones for gathering information.

The Crush or Flush community of nearly one million registered mobile members in the U.S. has spoken - Obama will win Pennsylvania in the state’s primary tomorrow by a 55% to 45% margin. Over the last two weeks, Crush or Flush community members where shown two distinct branded picture profiles of both candidates asking them who will win the Pennsylvania state primary. The real time data was queried directly from our database and aggregated at a macro level to ensure the privacy of each community member. Members also voted on which candidate was more ‘out of touch’ and which candidate was ‘more honest.’ Interestingly, Obama was considered more out of touch at 53:47 yet only slightly more honest than Clinton at 51:49. One would have expected Obama to fair better on these questions given his overall favored margin. These are the facts as we are reporting them from our database… please don’t be bitter with the results.

Background: Crush or Flush is a social network where members meet people, chat and flirt by browsing real picture profiles and decide whether to ‘Crush’ or ‘Flush’ them. The Crush or Flush community is 59% male, 41% female, and 60% are between the ages of 18 and 30. Golden Ticket sponsored profiles consist of a photo of the brand or person and descriptive tags.

Mobile Marketing Fantasy Vs. Reality

2008-04-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

By Kenneth Hein

Those who doubt that mobile marketing hasn't made headway might want to go amp themselves.

Among the brands that ponied up millions for a piece of the Super Bowl this year was PepsiCo beverage Amp Energy. While its 15-second TV spots didn't venture far from the proven realms of Big Game locker-room humor—one featured an overweight truck driver starting a stalled-out car via jumper cables hooked up to his nipples—a quieter, related effort was reaching much further out. How far? Well, to people who might not even have had the game on at all. As part of its NFL deal, Amp Energy sponsored Sprint's exclusive Super Bowl mobile channel, which allowed it to run ads via cell phone. A photo of the Amp can materialized on cell phone screens along with music, swirling green flames and the tagline "Go Amp Yourself." (Hopefully, none of those cell phone users elected to do it with jumper cables.)

When a Super Bowl ad effort stretches into the cellular realm, it's surely a sign that mobile marketing has arrived, right? After all, even though the third-screen spot was a timid boil-down of the in-your-face TV version, the very idea of adapting a commercial for mobile distribution would have seemed like an alien concept only a few years ago.

Today it is a reality, sort of. Around this time 12 months ago, experts were busy touting mobile marketing as the Next Big Thing. It wasn't. And not a whole lot is different. Mega brands like Pepsi and Burger King are still toe-dipping in the mobile pool, testing various forms of advertising and promos even as the bulk of their spending dollars go elsewhere.

As mobile expert John Hadl puts it: "It's hard to get a real read on the value of mobile when you're only spending $25,000 to $50,000 on it."

But things are beginning to change. Mobile marketing is "headed in the right direction," said John Vail, director of the interactive marketing group at Pepsi-Cola North America, Purchase, N.Y. "It's just taking a lot longer than people thought." Mobile analytics firms such as U.K.-based Bango are helping companies measure mobile Web site traffic, what devices recipients used and the countries they're in. In February, 58 million mobile subscribers reported that they'd already been exposed to mobile advertising, per San Francisco-based Nielsen Mobile (a unit of Nielsen Co., which also owns Brandweek). While that's only 23% of today's total mobile subscribers, that number will spike as marketers' mobile experiments continue to grow. And Hadl, who serves as managing partner of Beverly Hills-based BrandInHand, overseer of Procter & Gamble's mobile efforts, added that a threshold is approaching: "Once there's direct proof of ROI," he said, "the spend will shift faster than the industry can handle."

That might happen as soon as two years from now. Forrester Research forecasts that mobile-marketing spending in the U.S. will surge from the $270 million it stands at now to $405 million in 2009. Then it all goes exponential, doubling every year through 2012, at which point the Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm predicts mobile marketing will be worth $2.8 billion.

Marketers view the mobile marketing explosion as "inevitable," said Bill Jones, president of Atlanta-based mobile Internet platform provider Air2Web, which counts Starbucks and UPS as clients. Some are "really trying to accelerate" the channel because "properly used it is the most effective mechanism to interact with customers and prospects."

All of which begs the question: How can marketers profitably use mobile devices to deliver their brand messages right now?

What follows are some of the answers. Like many emergent ideas in the tech realm, mobile marketing's birth has been attended by as much fantasy as reality, and marketers are learning the painstaking (and, at times, just painful) differences between the two. For instance, studies repeatedly show that many consumers don't like to get ads on their phones. (A mere 10% of mobile data users deem ads received via PDAs to be acceptable, according to Nielsen Mobile.) At the same time, a third of the same respondents said they'd be OK with seeing ads, so long as the spots offset their mobile bills—say, via free minutes. "That," said Nielsen Mobile corporate marketing vp Paul Okimoto, "is where we're starting to see an uptick."

No doubt, we'll start to see many more of those. For now, here's the story on the mobile-marketing phenom today—both fantasy and reality.

REALITY
Customers dig mobile games.

Videogames were once synonymous with geekdom, but one glance at who's using a Wii these days (including AARP members and the physically disabled, at last check) shows how dated that stereotype is. This love affair has carried over to mobile devices. In fact, some watchers are now predicting that the global revenue from mobile games will eventually surpass that of traditional console and handheld versions. According to U.K.-based consultancy Understanding & Solutions, mobile gaming is expected to hit $6 billion by 2011.

Some brands are already prepared to embrace this passion by offering free downloadable games for mobile devices that keep their brand front and center. The latest is BK City, debuting April 21, an elaborate game with three worlds (five games in each) ranging from a castle to a BK drive-thru. It will be available across all carriers except for Verizon. POP, online ads and mobile ads, of course, will support the effort. BK City is the latest creation of Mobliss, Seattle, whose prior efforts include Nickelodeon's Rugrats Food Fight and Brady Bunch Kung Fu."

A lot of what mobile content advertisers throw out there is cheesy," said Tia Lang, director of media and interactive for the Miami-based chain. But, "as players progress, our game gets more difficult. It's fun, funny and relevant to our target."

FANTASY
People will never use their phones to buy stuff.

Think again. Remember when everyone was worried about using credit cards online? Even some tech-savvy shoppers wrung their hands over cyberthieves stealing their identities and draining their savings accounts. (Psst—it rarely happens.) Even as those same worries have swirled around mobile banking and on-the-go transactions, the truth is that a quarter of cell users with mobile Web access have already trusted their handheld devices to do their shopping, according Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y. Sixteen percent already use mobile banking services and one-in-five respondents hope their phone becomes a mobile wallet.

Smarter brands are beginning to respond. In January, Pizza Hut began allowing U.S. consumers to order from any of its 6,200 stores using the mobile Web or text messaging. The chain said it expects half its sales to come online or via mobile devices within the next five years. Papa John's began offering the ability to text in orders last November."

If privacy and security issues can be caged, mobile banking and mobile wallet services could launch the next leg up for mobile operators," predicted Joseph Porus, vp of Harris Interactive's technology practice. Rajeev Raman, CEO of mywaves, a mobile video destination whose clients include MBW, concurs. In the near future, he said, "purchasing movie tickets, fast food and music via mobile phones will be considered normal, everyday behavior."

REALITY
Convenience works.

Skip the cleverisms; brands that give consumers information that makes their lives easier are the ones that'll benefit. "That's why we bought the phone in the first place," Hadl said.

Starbucks, for example, makes it easy to find the nearest latte with a mobile-based store locator. When is that blue turtleneck you ordered going to show up? UPS will let you track the whereabouts of your package on your mobile device."

Too many people pigeonhole mobile marketing as just being ringtones or wallpapers," said Air2Web's Jones, whose company created both applications. Brands that sponsor services that tell users things like where the is nearest baby-changing station or where is the store where I can buy what I need, will thrive, added Hadl of BrandinHand. "Soon," he said, "mobile devices won't simply be a push medium."

FANTASY
Texting (aka SMS) isn't effective.

Like hell it isn't. While many are looking at mobile video, the mobile Web and other features, the simple, text-only brand campaign often still is what works the best. Why? Because even the oldest, most primitive cell phones out there have the technology that lets people receive a text promo and respond to one. Plus, the practice of text messaging has already been widely adopted.

In December, 1-800-Free411 attached ads sent to users who opted in to receive text horoscopes, diet tips and other information from a company called Limbo. While the free-information service usually gets about 40,000 to 50,000 new callers daily, that volume shot up to nearly 80,000 a day after the mobile ads ran. Overall, Limbo received a 7.1% response rate for text ads it ran for its clients in the fourth quarter."

The forgotten technology of SMS will be a much bigger factor in digital spends than anyone is predicting," said Jonathan Linner, CEO of Limbo, Burlingame, Calif., who's amused that so many marketers are buzzing about putting a movie or banner ad on a cell phone. Those people, he said, "Don't' get it yet. You'll get 10 times better performance from SMS."

REALITY
The iPhone's changed everything.

One of the biggest hang-ups (pun intended) for mobile marketers is the lack of "high" in the tech. We're talking about antideluvian cell phones that everybody was carrying around prior to last summer, when the Apple iPhone hit stores. In January, CEO Steve Jobs had promised the iPhone would "reinvent" telecommunications. Some disagreed. Some still do. But mobile-marketing advocates generally aren't among them. The average iPhone user over the age of 18 is five times more likely to explore the mobile Web and 11 times more likely to use mobile video or TV, per Nielsen Mobile. An iPhone-toting American also is 70% more likely to use SMS."

Look no further than the iPhone for proof that improving the device and user interface can radically increase media consumption," said John Najarian, svp-media and business development at the Comcast Entertainment Group, who oversees E!'s mobile page.

Better still, the iPhone's popularity has meant lower-price imitators—triggering a new generation of "smart phones" that experts like Chetan Sharma, co-author of the just-released book Mobile Advertising, believe will make up as many as 20% of the domestic market in two years. (More powerful data pipelines as well as all-you-can-eat data plans will help, too.) Thanks to the iPhone, Sharma said, Americans finally think the cell phone "is more than just something you talk with."

FANTASY It's getting easier to run mobile marketing programs.
Dream on.

It still takes about two months to get a major carrier like AT&T or Verizon to approve a text program. And that, according to Gene Keenan, vp-mobile services at Isobar, San Francisco, and vice chairman of the Mobile Marketing Assn., Denver, is "ridiculous."

"You can by a URL and have a Web site up in two hours," Keenan said. "It's still way too hard for brands and agencies to do mobile." Even worse: "Until it's easier for big brands to participate, you won't see the big money."

Keenan and experts like him have likened carriers to walled gardens: nice to be part of, but good luck getting in. They exert authoritarian control over their on-deck content (that's the proprietary stuff available only to subscribers) and move with Soviet-style bureaucratic slowness in approving marketing programs.

For instance, WAP sites and banner ads have to be customized by handset and by carrier. "It introduces a lot of complexity," Sharma said. "You can't press a button and have a program launch nationwide. You have to negotiate everything and get your content approved."

But stay tuned; fantasy might turn to reality by this time next year. "You can get over the wall," Hadl said. "You'll get hot and sweaty doing it, but you can get over. AOL already proved that this [walled approach] is a model for failure."

REALITY
The mobile ecosystem is evolving rapidly.

Quick as the pace of technology is, sometimes it never seems quick enough. But mobile advocates hamstrung by tools that haven't kept pace with their marketing dreams may soon be doing a high-tech jig. In November, Google announced Android, a new Linux-based operating system for mobile. Microsoft just inked a deal with Nokia that'll bring its Silverlight platform to mobile. And this quarter, Yahoo! will launch what it calls onePlace, a mobile bookmarking tool that will allow better control of information. These developments come on the heels of AOL's '07 purchase of Third Screen Media, a company that serves banner ads to mobile Web sites. Nokia bought the mobile agency Enpocket last year, too.

All of it, said Sharma, means that "there's a cautious optimism" out there. "Optimism, because of the uniqueness and reach mobile presents. Caution because of the enormous fragmentation in the industry."

FANTASY
There is one killer application.

Just like Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd debated whether New Shimmer was a floor wax or a dessert topping (it's both!) on Saturday Night Live, each marketer seems to have his own miracle claim for mobile marketing. And so far, nobody's quite nailed it.

Take GPS-enabled initiatives, which some see as the potential holy grail of mobile marketing. CBS Mobile announced a test earlier in the year that'll pinpoint ads to customers based on where they happen to be standing, and Burger King's Lang has been lovingly nurturing the idea of "serving customers an ad at lunchtime, asking them if they're hungry." The problem? "Those kinds of things are fantasy."

Hardly the only one. "My fantasy is offering Pepsi Smash [music programming] as video-on-demand optimized for the third screen for millions to view," Vail said. P&G, General Mills and others are currently in test with Cellfire, a company whose technology allows customers to store e-coupons on their cell phones.

There's the dream of direct-to-consumer mobile video, alive in the mind of BMW Mini as it kicked off a program with mywaves in January. Still others are excited about mobile search; more than 46 million used their phones to search for information in the third quarter of last year, per Nielsen Mobile.

Alex Muller will tell you that GPS-driven mobile marketing won't be a fantasy for much longer (then again, he's CEO of GPShopper, which enables mobile-using customers to track down the best deals on stuff they want to buy.) "There will be a point," he said, "where flipping through a paper circular won't make sense."

REALITY
There needs to be standards.

Mobile marketing is still a lot like the Wild West: a landscape of many players of various reputes, each a competitor peddling his wares and promises. "We need to develop more standards to reduce the friction out there," said Jordan Berman, executive director of media innovation at AT&T Mobility, New York. "There needs to be more uniformity about how programs get off the ground. I'm on the MMA board of directors and we all agree it is a confusing marketplace out there."

Then again, people said much the same thing about the Web itself when it was new. The growing pains, Berman said, are natural: "Online is like a toddler; mobile marketing is still in the womb."