Telemedia-Month NOVEMBER

Issue 34 • OCT 2012

Premium scratchcards deemed unlawful by European Court

THIS MONTH...

News

The latest news from the industry, along with analysis of what that news means, including: • Failure to roll out 4G costs UK £120m this Christmas says eBay 3 • O2 to use Voice Short Codes in James Bond Promo 4 • Fortumo first to market with in-app billing for Windows 8 5 • A cut above? O2 rolls out free wifi for Toni & Guy 6 • ShortList Publishes first ‘playable’ mag cover using blippar 7 • PPP levies £450k fines for misleading Facebook scams 8 • Bango’s m-payments now reaches 1billion people worldwide 9

Analysis

with the high street as Scratchcards that require consumers to call a premium number to claim their prize if they win have been deemed unlawful by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) following a high profile scam and a long running test case in the UK. The move could be a “hammer blow” to any company running such services, warns AIME, and is a blow to the tentative recovery in the PRS sector believe industry watchers.

The move comes after scratchcard company Purely Creative was heavily fined for getting people to call PRS numbers to claim prizes – calls which racked up huge phone bills and often added many hundreds of pounds in costs to supposedly free prizes.

The ECJ – following a length test case by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the UK – has now outlawed the practice and forced anyone offering these services to not only offer greater transparency on cost relative to prize for claimants and to not indulge in practices that will allow callers to run up large bills trying to claim prizes.

Many of the cards are produced by a company called Purely Creative, who have been the subject of dozens of complaints, according to Melanie Abbott of BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours. These include the cost of the prize not being worth the cost of the call to claim it, and holiday prizes incurring extra costs.

However, a spokeswoman for Purely Creative denied it had received “dozens of complaints” and said it received “a lot of positive feedback” from its consumers.

It also said one particular case study brought to its attention, which complained about a holiday prize, dated from 2004 and was for a promotion that the company no longer ran.

In a statement following the ECJ’s ruling, Purely Creative said: “The ECJ’s interpretation will have an operational impact on all businesses, including charities, across the European Union that run promotions which offer prizes. Even National Lotteries are not exempt. As such we are surprised by the scope of the ruling and believe that other businesses and institutions will be equally surprised once they become aware of the implications of the ruling.”

continued page 2>>>

Editorial From my hat to my shoes Paul Skeldon looks at how booming telemedia PRS services is attracting increased regulatory attention 11 Payments 50 shades of payments AIME’s Payments seminar finds business booming 13 SOCIAL The ugly face of Facebook John Strand’s top 10 things to worry about about Facebook 14 TECHNOLOGY On the cards John Wood from C3 explains why PCI DSS compliance is good for you 15 PRINT MEDIA To apps and beyond Matt Leach looks at the opportunties in print media for telemedia 16 ADVERTISING RTB, DSP, SSP... WTF? Sheldon Johns explains real time bidding and what it means for you 20 WORLD TELEMEDIA That was the show that was Highlights from World Telemedia Marbella 17-19 October 22

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Latest news at www.telemedia-news.com Catch our blog at www.telemedia360.blogspot.com

NEWS Failure to launch universal 4G will cost UK economy £120m this Christmas, says eBay Yet another christmas without universal 4G services will cost the UK economy £120m in lost mobile sales, according to new research from eBay, the leading online marketplace.

As shoppers stock up on Christmas gifts and supplies over the festive season, slow connection speeds are set to pose a barrier for many consumers wishing to shop via their mobile devices. The research reveals that with better connections from the nationwide roll-out of 4G, mobile sales would have been one third more than current predictions, up to £493m from £373m.

This Christmas over half (55%) of consumers plan to use their mobile device more than they did last year to browse the web, while almost the same number say they will use mobile devices to get inspiration for gift ideas and to check prices or product details (39%). eBay.co.uk meanwhile, expects to see around a third of items in its Christmas campaign bought through a smartphone – leaving no doubt that mobile retail is on the rise among Britain’s hoards of shoppers.

But despite mounting consumer demand, significant barriers still remain as the UK’s legacy network infrastructure continues to creak under the strain of rising volumes of mobile data, which is growing

250% year on year.

The top three barriers preventing consumers from shopping on their mobiles are slow connection speeds, payments timing out and network reliability. 4G holds the key to breaking down these barriers, as 4G networks are built to handle mobile internet and data more quickly, enabling faster connection speeds and more reliable mobile connectivity.

The UK continues to lag behind, while around the world more than 40 countries are already reaping the benefits of national 4G roll-out. Although initial 4G services will be rolled out across 10 cities in the UK this month, by the end of 2012 the majority of the UK population will still not be able to make use of 4G – a situation which 32% of consumers consider frustrating or unfair.

Clare Gilmartin, vice president of eBay Marketplaces, Europe commented: “Mobile devices have become virtual stores in our pockets, giving us the ability to shop anytime, anywhere. But for consumers, it’s critical that the experience is quick, seamless and simple. Slow browsing speeds and breaking connections are now significant barriers to mobile commerce – and this comes at a high price.

“While we welcomed the move by Ofcom to bring the 4G spectrum auction

forward to early 2013 there’s no doubt, as this research shows, that for the UK economy the cost of another Christmas without universal 4G is huge. Consumers are increasingly demanding a better experience, regardless of their network.

We hope that the Government will work quickly come the New Year to ensure its promise to deliver 4G for all by the end of 2013 is realised.”

But cost of the service is also seen as putting people off. Analyst IDC believes that even though EE has first to market bragging rights, in reality the operator has priced it as a high end service and so uptake will me slow.

And consumers don’t seem that convinced either. When asked whether the pricing of 4G from EE would put them off upgrading in a survey by Thinkbroadband. com, a massive 70% of the 1,250 respondents said yes, with only 12% giving a clear no. Another 12% want to play the wait and see game.

This suggests that the price sensitivity that has been heightened by people tightening their belts over the last couple of years is impacting on mobile contracts, and possibly faster mobile data speeds is seen as a luxury item rather than a must have.

>from page 1 Premium scratchcards outlawed The case came before the ECJ after the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) won its High Court case against scratchcards in the UK. Jason Freeman, from the Office of Fair Trading said the ECJ’s ruling was a “firm judgement” which supported the OFT’s position, and that the way companies operate prize draws “may have to change”.

He added: “Firms will have to think quite carefully about what they’re offering. The court’s been very, very clear that if you’re calling something a prize, then it’s got to be a prize, it can’t be something which effectively you’re paying for, it can’t be something

that you’re asked to pay money for.

The court was very, very concerned to protect the impression that consumers get when something is described as a prize.”

AIME’s MD Toby Padgham added: “The European Court of Justice (ECJ) opinion supports the OFT case brought against companies it views as promoting misleading prize-draw scratch cards, dealing a hammer blow to any company running such prize promotions in a similar manner. Since 2008 this action has been rumbling on as a test case of the CPRs and whether the way prizes are promoted and claimed via PRS is lawful. Any company

running scratch card services will need to read the case and adjust promotions accordingly.”

But Padgham admitted that AIME was “Not aware of any members running such prize draw services in this manner and haven’t been asked for guidance”.

Should a member ask for guidance we will liaise with the relevant authorities to consider how services may be run, but it is clear that promoters will need to be more transparent about the value of prizes and costs to claim them, he said.

The ruling will apply through the European Union.

NEWS

O2 to give free calls to consumers using voice short code in James Bond ad campaign orca digital, a leading provider of telecoms and converged media solutions, is today announcing that its voice short code product is being used in O2’s James Bond ad campaign. The leading communications company, with over 23 million customers, is featuring a memorable 5-digit code to encourage in-bound calls from customers of competitor networks.

Voice short codes enable UK mobile phone users to dial a 5-digit short code as an alternative to a standard geographic or non-geographic number (such as 0800, 0844 and 0871). Unlike non-geographic numbers, which typically cost more to call from a mobile than their advertised rates, voice short codes provide complete price transparency and are available at a range of price points.

O2 is the first mobile operator to fea-

ture a voice short code in an advertising campaign, offering consumers on any network the opportunity to get in touch free of charge.

“We believe we should provide an opportunity for mobile users to call us free of charge, particularly if they are considering switching to the O2 network,” comments Kevin McFadyen, Senior Marketing Manager at O2. “The voice short code will help encourage in-bound enquiries and improve the effectiveness of this key advertising campaign.”

“We’ve seen a huge amount of interest in voice short codes thanks to their high profile use in shows such as BBC’s The Voice,” comments Will Neale, CEO at Orca Digital. “However, O2 is one of the first brands to incorporate voice short codes into television advertising. It’s an exciting development and we now expect many more to follow suit.”

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NEWS

Fortumo launches in-app payments for Windows 8, signs up 70,000 m-payments merchants mobile payments company Fortumo, who has so far provided an industry-leading in-app payments solution for Android and web app developers, has launched in-app payments for teh newly released Windows 8 apps ecosystem. Fortumo is the first mobile payments company to announce its support for Windows 8.

“With the launch of Windows 8, developers now have an additional platform on which to build and distribute their applications. We will be helping them to develop new revenue streams from the get-go,” says Rain Rannu, co-founder of Fortumo. “With mobile operator billing in 80 countries, Fortumo can provide seamless payment experience for Windows users without a need to register or have a credit card.”

The company also reveals that it has signed up over 70,000 mobile payments merchants to date, originating from over 150 countries. Most popular cat-

egories for mobile payments are online and mobile games, apps and virtual goods, with other forms of digital content, such as books, music and videos, catching up quickly.

Fortumo’s system works via mobile operator billing, wherein customers pay for digital goods via their mobile operator bill. Mobile operator billing is a strong alternative to credit cards, especially in the emerging markets.

Fortumo has payment connectivity to over 250 mobile operators in 80 countries, including a number of exclusive direct carrier billing partnerships. Mobile operator billing is available for over 4 billion mobile users worldwide.

The new product enables developers to add mobile payments to any Windows 8 app, including Windows Store apps running on Windows RT and Microsoft Surface tablets. Fortumo’s inapp purchasing for Windows 8: • works in almost 80 countries;

Embed the payment window directly into your HTML5 web app Payforit Single Click allows payment buttons to be embedded into your content

• supports payments for single items, virtual currencies and non-consumable items; • has built-in volume discounts and all the other features that game and app developers on other platforms have grown used to; • is localized into 32 languages; • supports over 45 different currencies; • features Windows 8 Modern design, popularly known as Metro UI.

NEWS

O2 Wifi at TONI&GUY gets tongs wagging as more merchants start offering connectivity o2 wifi is being deployed in the UK’s leading hairdressing salon franchise, TONI&GUY, which will see the hairdressing chain’s 1.5 million customers per year provided with fast, reliable and easy to use wifi. The deployment will be completed by the end of the year, enabling TONI&GUY customers to search the web totally free of charge, while being coiffed.

For TONI&GUY, wifi is the last piece of the puzzle as it puts its innovative concept of a digital salon into practice - adding further to the customer’s enhanced experience that already includes an award-winning consumer Magazine and in-salon TV network.

Their customers lead connected, busy lives and they can’t afford to be offline during their 90-minute hair appointment. They need to stay connected to their world, and our wifi will enable

them to do everything from catching up with friends, to shopping, to picking up style tips and managing their lives.

James Tarbuck, Global Brand Manager at TONI&GUY explains: “We are delighted to partner with O2 to provide free Wifi to our customers. They will soon be able to connect to data-heavy downloads, such as the latest viral videos, while relaxing and getting their hair done.

TONI&GUY has always been driven by a philosophy of pushing the boundaries and delivering creativity, quality and consistency. We believe this new partnership will provide us with another opportunity to give our clients the best experience possible.”

Ben Mein, Commercial Director at O2 Wifi adds: “Hair and beauty salons are a new context for wifi and we are immensely pleased to partner with

TONI&GUY given the quality and size of the audience that will be using the service. Their customers’ lifestyles mean many are time-poor so the 90 minutes to themselves is prized and, with a high penetration of smart devices, this creates a perfect opportunity for O2 Wifi and TONI&GUY to engage and enrich that experience through unique content.”

“As demonstrated by the way O2 Wifi has changed the market with a truly free and open wifi service to consumers, we share the same philosophy with TONI&GUY and it will be exciting to see how we develop the relationship”.

TONI&GUY is the latest partner for O2 Wifi, joining other leading brands to offer the service including McDonald’s, Costa, Debenhams, Fuller’s pubs, House of Fraser, All Bar One, Café Rouge and the busiest streets of central London.

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NEWS

ShortList publishes first ever ‘playable’ paper magazine using blippar AR for its games edition publsiher shortlist has launched the first ever playable magazine cover. Blippar has turned ShortList magazine into the world’s first interactive game magazine cover using visual discovery and augmented reality. Not content with just having an interactive cover, the partnership sees additional interactive content embedded throughout the magazine.

Top features in the magazine include a 20 greatest retro games feature, which readers can scan for free gaming apps allowing them to play the likes of Space Invaders and Outrun on their mobiles.

The issue also features a 2013 new games preview, which readers can scan for exclusive trailers for GTA V, Tomb Raider and more. There is also an Assassins Creed 3 feature, in which people can photograph themselves in the assassin’s hood.

Renowned street artist Nick Gentry has produced an exclusive painting for this issue worth thousands. Readers can scan the page to view a video of Nick creating the piece.

The magazine’s Playlist features an exclusive outtake from Alan Partridge’s new DVD, and an exclusive video of Ian Rankin reading the first chapter of his new book.

“We are so excited about this partnership – not only does it add new dimensions to the world of print media, but it’s never been done before,” says Jess Butcher, CMO of Blippar . “This is taking mobile visual discovery to a whole new level and will become a new way for print media to take back some of the readership that they have lost through the growth of the internet.”

Martin Robinson, Editor of ShortList adds: “We’d been planning a gaming special for ShortList which celebrated

retro games as well as new releases, and thought it would make for an exciting magazine first if people could somehow ‘play’ our cover.”

Robinson, continues: “In consultation with Blippar, ShortList have chosen to feature the 80s platform game classic Chuckie Egg on the cover, which readers can Blipp to then play the game instantly on their phones and tablets exactly as it appears on the issue.”

NEWS

PPP levies £450k fines for misleading Facebook promotions

phonepay Plus, the UK premium rate telephone regulator, has warned consumers to be on their guard against deliberately misleading promotions on social media sites such as Facebook.

This follows the regulator issuing fines totalling £450,000 against two companies for misleading promotions on social media and networking sites.

In two separate cases, Amazecell Ltd and mBill Pty Ltd employed affiliate marketers to promote their premium rate competitions online. In both cases the services took advantage of social networkers trust in what their social media friends ‘share’ or ‘like’. In these two cases, consumers would see that their friends had ‘shared’ a particular promotion. These promotions included the promise of a voucher worth up to £250 for major retailers, including Tesco and Asda. In some cases, misleading content was automatically posted onto consumers’ Facebook walls without their knowledge.

In other cases, to take part in the competition the consumer was required to also ‘share’ the promotions, which would appear on their personal wall. In this way, the promotions traded on users trust in each other to spread virally through various social networks.

After clicking on the promotion consumers were misled into participating in premium rate competitions.

Consumers believed that these were

stages towards receiving the promoted offer and did not realise that by entering their phone number they would be charged. At least one affiliate marketer promoted the Amazecell competition by masking the terms and conditions, including pricing, from the actual competition page.

In the Amazecell case, consumers were charged £5 per question sent to their phone. Consumers were subsequently charged for further questions regardless of whether or not they answered them. Over 89,000 consumers entered the service only once but were sent a second question for which they were charged.

PhonepayPlus’ Tribunal found that the companies had breached the Code of Practice by misleading consumers and not providing clear pricing information. Amazecell Ltd was fined £300,000 and mBill Pty Ltd was fined £150,000.

Both have been ordered to refund any consumer who requests a refund.

Paul Whiteing, PhonepayPlus’ Chief Executive, commented on the cases and also gave some practical advice to consumers: “Our Code of Practice is clear about premium rate service providers’ responsibilities and this includes the way in which their services are promoted. These adjudications send a strong message to providers that they need to be sure how their services are promoted online by affiliate marketers. These judgements make clear that misleading behaviours such as this will attract sizeable penalties. We have contacted Facebook about these issues and we want to discuss with them what steps can be taken to prevent such abuse of social media before harm occurs.

“For consumers and social media users who are concerned about such practices, I would give this advice: Treat your phone number like your bank card pin number and before you input it online, be sure how the number will be used and what you are signing up for. My other piece of advice is old-fashioned but still worth remembering – if it looks too good to be true then, unfortunately,

NEWS

Bango’s m-payments reaches more than 1bn mobile users

bango has announced that its mobile payments platform is now accessible to one billion mobile subscribers worldwide. This mobile industry milestone demonstrates the knowledge that operator billing – charging purchases to a phone bill with one click - is key to the viability of on-line payments for the mobile generation.

The first wave of e-commerce depended on a combination of expensive personal computers, an internet connection, and access to a separate payment card. The mobile internet means anyone with a phone is online, and has a built-in method of payment.

Companies seeking to monetize their mobile audience can plug into Bango and collect payments from more than one billion consumers without needing cards, pre-registered accounts or having to send text messages.

Bango’s pervasive presence across the mobile web, billing for app stores, publishers and mobile operators, enables Bango to automatically identify more mobile users, creating a massive platform effect for its partners. As a result, Bango maximizes the number of one click payments presented on mobile devices, producing significantly higher rates of collection.

Billing with the Bango payment platform delivers an average conversion rate of 77%. Unlike competing mobile payment approaches, most users who click ‘buy’, do buy. The mobile industry increasingly recognizes that the best way to monetize a mobile audience is to ask users to pay for content and services.

With unrivalled conversion rates and consumer reach, Bango has emerged as the natural partner for the task.

Bango is now the payments platform of choice for many of the world’s leading app stores and mobile brands. Bango’s app store connections include Facebook, Blackberry App World, Windows Phone Store, Opera Mobile Store and operator-led connections to Google Play.

In addition, Bango has announced an agreement to provide payment services to Amazon and has become a technology partner for MasterCard’s PayPass mobile wallet. Finally, Bango has built direct connections into the billing systems of more than 90 operators around the globe. The result is that more than one billion consumers can access Bango’s mobile payment platform and pay for content and services on their phone bill.

Commenting on the milestone, Bango CEO Ray Anderson said “We’re immensely proud to have brought our frictionless payment experience to such a significant percentage of the world’s mobile users”.

“It’s taken 12 months to double our reach and hit the one billion milestone.

With momentum and market growth in our favor it won’t be long before our reach is two billion and beyond. The next billion will likely be found in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, where we’re already making progress.”

Bango’s analysis indicates that the service was accessible to 1,069,836,000 mobile users around the world, on 30th September 2012. Bango’s calculation was based on the subscriber base of each connected operator and used only data available in the public domain.

The largest contributions to the overall total came from Europe (327 million), N America (320 million), and Asia (98 million).

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OPINION

FROM THE EDITOR

From my hat to my shoes Premium rate services and microbilling are on the up – driven by growing use of mobile and the need for quick, cheap fixes of pleasure in these dark times – but is the renewed interest in them causing something of a regulatory backlash? last month’s triumphant World Telemedia event in Marbella showed that things ain’t so bad in telemedia. Thanks to the recession – as ever – we are seeing something of a resurgence in the use of premium services and, thanks to all those people pleasuring themselves in one way or another through their mobile phones, microbilling. Happy days.

Well you would have thought so, but as with anything that starts to do well, it attracts the attentions of the powers that be and of the powers of darkness. As our lead story this month points out, the EC has banned premium scratchcards – cards that you scratch off the silver stuff (called latex ink, in case you are wondering) and call a PRS number to claim your prize, following a number of nasty wee scams that have hit people across Europe.

The move comes after PPP fined Purely Creative, a company that peddles these cards, a record £800,000 following a staggering 15 complaints, last month and passing the case on to the European Courts of Justice, which has made the ruling this week to shut down these services.

OK, so what Purely did to the 15 – largely pensioners – people was a bit cruel (making them call PRS numbers for hours to claim prizes and rack up massive bills), but it seems that only a small number of people fell for it and the damage was minimal. Don’t get me wrong, they needed to be fined and stopped, but £800,000? Heavy.

To be fair the European Court of Justice’s ruling against these premium scratch cards is also looking at how prizes that are won often then entail huge added extras – for example someone wins a cruise in the Mediterranean but then finds they have to pay insurance, a supplement for a proper bed rather than a bunk bed, port fees and their food and drink on the voyage, adding up to £399 per person – but it is a sad day in the tentative recovery of the PRS business.

My worry is that this is the beginning of something of a new witch hunt against the industry, at a time when it call ill-afford it. It could be that this is just the beginning of regulators, governments and others looking more intensely again at PRS, I believe, as it is starting to garner much more use – and let’s face it there hasn’t been a scam in the papers about it for ages… maybe the public are sick of kicking bankers, and will welcome a new corporate bogey man?

As we also reveal in this issue, PPP has also levied fines so far this year of close to half a million quid against fraudulent Facebook scams. Now this is a bit different from the Purely Creative issue, but it is symptomatic of the same thing: anything successful attracts scammers, the regulators get overly watchful, everyone loses.

Following the terrible things that the banks have done to the world (and I am not just being a lefty, they f**ked us all over, often through scams and criminality) there is clearly now an almost Maoist zealotry towards any sort of corporate mishandling of people and their money. Perhaps these latest round of attacks on PRS and PRS-like services is the beginning of this purge? Or maybe everyone has just started getting crooked as times get lean?

The upshot of the banking crisis, the Jimmy Savile debacle and lord knows what else is waiting in the wings is that the mainstream media – and by extension the rabid consumers of the mainstream media – want scandal; they want to be outraged and disgusted. The powers that be want them to also be outraged and disgusted as it stops them pointing at the political establishment and its inability to do anything constructive.

And so we see fines of £800,000 after 15 complaints, and the outlawing of such services across Europe. I’m not saying they didn’t deserve a fine, but its seems disproportionate and everyone in the business should be worried.

As Dirty R.A.Y says “Now that you’ve heard the news, you hate me from my hat to my shoes…”

Editorial Editor Paul Skeldon paulskeldon@me.com | Sales & Marketing info@telemediamagazine.com | Production Director Annika Micheli annika@telemediamagazine.com | Publisher Jarvis Todd jarvis@telemediamagazine.com To subscribe, please go to www.telemedia-news.com What we’ve been listening to Dirty r.a.y | What we’ve been amused by Veep | Who we’ve been following #telemedia | What we’ve been reading about the triple dip recession | Nov 2012 will bring... some interestion revelations about who was abusing kids in the 1970s and 80s in the UK

OPINION

AIME

50 shades of payments As AIME gathers the industry together in London to talk payments, Telemedia-Month finds that commercial and regulatory developments are creating huge opportunities for UK market growth. I’m excited Reggie...

Last month aime hosted a Knowledge & Networking Seminar on Mobile Operator Payments, sponsored by Velti, ImpulsePay and SNR Denton, which sought to demystify many of the issues surrounding MNO-enabled billing and provide insight on how to grow the addressable market and help create a commercial environment which is viable for a wide range of merchants.

Rory Maguire, Head of Payments at Three, argued that the market for charging low-value digital goods to consumers’ mobile bills, was “getting exciting”. Maguire highlighted recent announcements in the media that the power of Direct to Bill capabilities had been recognised by key platform owners, such as Facebook, Google, RIM and Microsoft, who were striking mobile operator payment deals with accredited intermediaries in the UK. According to Maguire, the timing couldn’t be better with mass adoption of smartphones and the emergence of “dual screen junkies” meaning that more than ever before, consumers are connected to the Internet all of the time – fuelling growth in the digital economy. In addition, with Britons (and Europeans) getting used to “Austerity times”, more and more people are relying on digitalbased socialising and entertaining at home. This is creating further opportunities for merchants to improve their transactional capabilities with consumers by providing low-cost digital goods in an easy way for customers to impulse buy via micro-transactions.

With all UK MNOs coming to market with Direct Billing APIs (O2 launches its service on 13th November – revealed an O2 executive at the seminar), merchants will soon have the ability to offer granular pricing and a single standard for all payment intermediaries, as well as a stable regulatory environment.

Gambling Industry Consultant and Analyst, Aideen Shortt, provided a valuable perspective on how the increase in m-gambling was creating a high demand for mobile payment options.

“Gaming operators know their customers are going mobile and so they have an increasing need for m-payment options,” she said.

However, the need for commercial certainty from MNOs. “Gaming operators need reasonable fees and charges from MNOs and they also want to develop closer relationships and value chain collaborations to ensure we achieve workable solutions,” she told delegates.

Building on Maguire’s theme of market growth opportunity, Chris Newell, MD of Payforit service provider, ImpulsePay, told delegates that from his experience it was clear that consumers would spend small amounts of money on digital content and services, but that they would “not spend time doing it.” In order to catch consumers’ attention and disposable cash for micro-transactions, the payment mechanism must be simple, frictionless and very quick.

“This is why the one-click payment option from Payforit4 is good news for merchants,” said Newell. “When consumers are faced with the Payforit payment page on websites and mobile sites, 90 percent of them complete the purchase. And Payforit is available on all UK mobiles – any handset and any tablet device.”

Citing case study examples from www.spareroom.co.uk – the UK’s flat sharing website which currently works with ImpulsePay – Newell showed how the mobile site’s Freemium model of providing landlord details to flat hunters, was monetised by offering an “early bird upgrade” via a Payforit transaction of £5 which gave information to viewers two days before appearing on the free site.

The move yielded 50% more people used the Payforit option over PayPal,168% increase in total transactions when using Payforit 4, 87% people made a payment and 17% made a repeat purchase.

Once again, this supported the view that consumers will complete a transaction if it is made simple, familiar and intuitive. The technical integration for developing embedded Payforit payment flows is easy and supports HTML5 standards, making PFI an ideal option for web and mobile apps, said Newell.

Merchants can learn a lot from the charity sector about using MNO payments. That was the message from Richard Atkinson, CIO of Just Giving. In 12 months, the service has witnessed spectacular growth in donations through MNO payments with 90% growth in donation volumes and a 58% growth in donation value.

“This is new revenue [donations],” said Atkinson. “It isn’t cannibalization of other payment options. Consumers like the convenience and flexibility. Charities like the fact that the public can respond impulsively to calls to action they see on the train or bus. There is massive reach from mobile and combined with the ability to give small amounts of money means the totals add up.”

Event hosts, law firm SNR Denton’s Senior Associate, Alex Haffner, rounded off the event with a look at the UK’s regulatory environment. “The key issue is who bears responsibility for meeting consumer protection requirements?” he said. “The mobile industry has been proactive in this area, working in collaboration with the relevant regulatory authorities. In addition the EU has acknowledged the importance of digital goods which now forms part of the Consumer Rights Directive.”

Haffner said some issues remain open for consideration and that merchants needed to be aware of how clear and transparent differential pricing might work across device platforms, what the impact on virtual currencies would be, as well as the requirement to include all relevant information in promotional activity and being sensitive to marketing to ‘vulnerable’ groups such as children.

OPINION

John Strand

The ugly face of Facebook John Strand outlines the ten bad and ugly threats and trends which mobile operators need to take into consideration about Facebook – you have been warned, he warns

Strand Consult has just published the results of its global investigation of mobile operators worldwide and their use of Facebook. Our analysis shows that many mobile operators experience challenges with Facebook. Here are the 10 Bad and Ugly threats and trends operators’ need to consider about Facebook: 1. Facebook is under pressure from Wall Street and needs to find viable business models to monetize its nearly 1 billion users. Given its size and scale, Facebook could disrupt a number of firms or industries. What if Facebook decided to become competitor to Skype?

Imagine if Facebook decided to become the customers’ communication channel of choice and rollout a VoIP network? Facebook is already cannabalizing SMS revenue from operators. What is to stop Facebook from taking the next bite of operators’ revenue?

2. Facebook boasts a “free” and open platform. This misleads operators to think that Facebook is an inexpensive medium for marketing. To control its costs and force companies to pay up, Facebook limits the distribution of a company’s message to its fan base, so only a fraction of the fans see the company’s posts.

Facebook is not interested to talk to you unless you are already a major brand and are willing to invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in advertising. The dirty little secret about Facebook is that you have to pay to play.

3. Operators have a dream to transition their marketing from paid advertising to earned media, meaning that customers’ word of mouth will become free advertising Facebook. There is no viable business case for earned media in Facebook for mobile operators.

4. One ugly point about Facebook is not Facebook itself, but rather that companies have made a perversion of accumulat-

ing Likes. In fact “Like Farms” are sprouting up around the world, offering companies the ability to gather likes for their pages a few cents per click. There is no inherent value in a Like, but companies pursue it in a near mindless and irresponsible fashion. Only a small fraction of people who Like a page are true fans and ambassadors.

5. In spite of spending millions of dollars on Facebook activities, operators can’t get more than 2% of their subscribers to Like their page. Facebook is already too crowded by cool consumer products brands (Coke, Disney, Starbucks, iTunes). These brands take account for the majority of mindshare in Facebook, crowding out the space for your company.

6. Operators unwittingly build Facebook’s brand at the expense of their own by referring their valuable customers and traffic away from their own properties. Facebook already has credibility with users as a place to communicate. What would stop Facebook by starting an MVNO? It could roll out as virtual network operator in 10 countries in 48 hours.

7. Facebook doesn’t build brands; it reflects brands. The biggest brands on Facebook already have a large presence outside of Facebook, and they have large advertising/marketing budgets both online and offline. Almost no companies have been able to build a brand on Facebook from scratch.

8. Facebook advertising is not competitive given other digital channels. It costs 10 times as much as Google AdWords to get the same results. Additionally half of all of Facebook users access the platform with a mobile device, though Facebook is still struggling to monetize this. In addition, most mobile users of Facebook live in poorer countries where the revenue per person is much less than the developed West. As such Facebook may look for business models that competes with mobile operators (see point 1 and 6).

9. In a number of authoritarian countries, Facebook has become a de facto channel for news. Governments in these countries pressure Facebook to limit its activities. This could be a concern for operators in countries where there are political tensions and groups decide to take their fight to Facebook. Facebook could be shut down in that country along with all the companies in that country on Facebook.

10. Facebook can change its terms of service for any reason at any time and with no warning. These changes can have material and negative impacts to operators. One example was when Facebook announced its change to the Timeline format. All those tabs and apps the mobile operators developed, the mini-websites within Facebook so to speak, were made nearly invisible. . Collectively, companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars to customize their Facebook page, and thousands of independent Facebook developers and agencies sprung up in the process. With one announcement, Facebook effectively and instantly rendered operators’ investment on their platform worthless. Indeed Facebook prides itself on its “hacker” culture, where new changes to the platform are implement instantly and without stakeholder or advertiser input.

While Facebook has a prerogative to innovate and try new things, it thinks little of the impact to mobile operators.

OPINION

C3

On the cards John Wood, sales and marketing director C3, sees an opportunity to take established telemedia skills mainstream, on the back of PCI DSS since the payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was introduced back in 2007, there has been confusion around compliance and, in some cases, a view that adopting the Standard would lead to restrictive or unwieldy payment methods.

The final (final) deadline for PCI compliance is 31st December 2012 (Visa Europe), and applies to all merchants and service providers processing credit or debit card transaction via web, telephony or SMS. Any business found in breach of the Standard can expect a significant fine - and even the removal of their merchant code.

Over the past five years there has been a drip feed uptake of PCI but, with the final deadline fast approaching, the perception still remains that becoming compliant is a lengthy and costly process that could potentially restrict the development of innovative payment solutions.

In my opinion implementing PCI DSS will actually lead to new opportunities for the telemedia industry, if you see it as a credible vehicle for transferring established telemedia skills to mainstream sectors - rather than just another business overhead.

The telemedia industry is well-known for developing automated payment solutions and, in many instances, they have become common place. PCI is an opportunity to leverage that experience, and take these services to entirely new markets.

Having a PCI DSS Compliant infrastructure in place gives telcos the ability to cross-market their existing dynamic payment services to new sectors – many of which are currently extending their brand presence across ecommerce touch points, and need a range of secure payment platforms to effectively reach their customers.

There are significant numbers of bricks and mortar businesses, for example, who are evolving their businesses into fully integrated multi-channel brands. They need to support this development with a range of new automated payment methods to consolidate their offer across those new channels.

Compliance creates whole load of opportunities where you can offer user friendly payments for Voice, Web and Mobile transactions. You can still provide businesses with innovative payment methods, such as card on file rebilling, end of call billing, automatic payment reminders, or tokenised payments, but the credibility of the Standard means these services immediately have much wider appeal.

Your products can help to introduce greater automation to your customers’ sales and debt collecting, giving them much greater access whilst also helping them to reduce their cost base. But without PCI wrapped around them, these solutions will become increasingly irrelevant.

C3 PCI Compliant Solutions If you are a business taking credit and debit card payments, both online and offline, you must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS): a comprehensive set of principles and requirements developed by the major card companies to ensure consistent data security measures.

Whether you are a Tier 1 Merchant or a Tier 4 merchant, C3’s PCI DSS solutions enable organisations of all shapes and sizes to offer secure, automated and costeffective payment options to their clients.

Why work with C3?

• C3 has been supplying secure payment solutions to UK businesses for over 20 years, and so has a vast amount of expertise in this area.

• As a PCI DSS Tier 1 Service Provider (the highest possible standard), C3 is fully accredited to provide a range secure solutions to process credit and debit card payments, via telephony, web or SMS • We can develop flexible platforms to meet your PCI requirements and budget, whether you want a hosted or onsite solution, reducing the timescale, cost and scope in becoming PCI Compliant.

• We supply a complete solution, inclusive of documented policies and procedures.

• Intelligent payment solutions can easily be built around the payment capability, including payment reminders and automated payment requests, via email, text or telephone.

ANALYSIS

Print Media

To the app and beyond Matthew Leach tales a look at how the print media industry has moved towards the app as a first stage of digitisation, but the industry is looking now to what lies beyond in the realm of digital publishing – and what it offers the telemedia industry MOST PRINT MEDIA companies worth their salt have embraced the app as a way of serving up content to a new, digital-savvy audience. But the digital world is a constantly evolving beast and if any of those companies had any thought of resting on their laurels, they are in for a rude awakening.

There has been a global rise in mobile traffic, and media companies are starting to take note, with mobile platforms becoming more prevalent. The key for these media companies is how to utilise these new channels effectively so as to engage readers with compelling content, instill brand loyalty and develop new, much-needed revenue streams.

Telegraph Media Group, whose core offering is The Daily Telegraph, have been among the leading lights in facing the brave new digital world head on, launching its iPad app in October 2010.

Mark Challinor, director of mobile at Telegraph Media Group, said: “The fundamental thing is that if traditional media companies stay as they are, then there will be casualties. They need to prove they are not just about print but true multimedia companies.

“As far as the Telegraph is concerned, print is still vital, but it is just one part of the mix. Mobile platforms have come to the fore. But we need to monetise the mobile space in a more structured way. We need to be in it for the long term.”

One company that is working with print media companies to extend their digital offering is mobile agency Wapple. The company is helping Shortlist Media’s weekly publications, Shortlist and Stylist, distributed throughout London underground, urban metro centres and hotels, to hit its mobile-savvy customers. Adam Maxted, a consultant at Square Media Consultancy, currently consulting to Cellcast TV, (one of the leading interactive UK TV companies) and Wapple (pioneers in Mobile Web and Mobile Consultancy), said: “For companies in general, digital strategy needs to be cross-platform – print, mobile, web – reflecting the fragmented media market place – and also, as customers now choose how and when they want to reach you, each channel can appeal to different socio-economic groups.

For example, newspaper tabloids typically have a higher AB profile online than they do in the paper. Tablet apps will reach the higher income-earning consumers.

“Stylist and Shortlist are free distribution magazines, with digital extensions offered through their web sites and now they have added mobile web sites, which automatically redirect you if searching from a mobile device. Their model

is to make money from ad revenue, targeting young urban commuters with good disposable income. To exploit mobile advertising, they have partnered with YOK who serve their banner adverts.”

Maxted agrees that print media companies must look beyond the app. He said: “In London, for example, there is a higher use and penetration of smartphones and tablets. Then companies will typically use app strategy, a good example being the Metro publication. But Johnston Press, one of the largest regional newspaper publishers, would tend to adopt more of a mobile web strategy as a higher proportion of their readers will be using older feature phones compared to the latest smartphones.”

On the rise Recent figures for Johnston Press, the regional media group that owns such regional publications as The Scotsman and The Yorkshire Post, saw revenues from its print advertising, newspaper sales and contract printing all continue to decrease.

The publisher reported in August that revenues were down by 8pc to £176m in the six months to June 30. First half advertising revenues had dropped 12.5 per cent to £97.4m and contract printing sales had fallen 10 per cent to £12.6m. But there was a ray of hope among all the doom and gloom – digital turnover had risen 8.4 per cent to £10.3m.

One man who can take pride in this silver lining is Arup Biswas, Senior Mobile Development Manager at Johnston Press. He said: “Our current mobile portfolio consists of tablet and smartphones apps, as well as a network of 211 mobile websites launched in December 2011; we are now seeing approximately 30pc of our traffic coming from our mobile sites. The way we monetise our mobile sites is through banner adverts, using cost per click or cost per impression (the number of eyeballs). We are seeing the revenue stream for mobile growing month on month.”

As well as mobile, Johnston has embraced the app, using localised and updated content. Biswas said: “We currently have seven iPad apps in the market for titles including The Scotsman and The Yorkshire Post, and have developed an iPad app template because, for us, scalability is important.

“Each iPad app has the best of the local website plus full digital copies of the local newspaper. The readers like the page scrolling aspects of it and things like pinch and zoom. The digital content within the app is updated throughout the day, and

ANALYSIS

Print Media

also includes exclusive content, which offers added value. This is monetised through monthly subscriptions and sponsorship.

“We offer subscription bundles. For example, many of our newspaper subscribers are offered a bundle of services which includes the local newspaper, access to their local iPad app, loyalty benefits and more. These bundles recognise the different ways people are accessing news and content, and reward them for their loyalty to their local title.”

Johnston Press does not just stop there in its quest to diversify and find new revenue streams. Biswas said: “Johnston Press also has strong vertical and classified businesses that are promoted across all our platforms, including mobile. We have our voucher business ‘DealMonster’ (dealmonster.co.uk), our recruitment service ‘JobsToday’, and our business directory service, ‘Find it’.”

In August, Mobile Money Network announced it was working with Associated Newspapers to develop reader insight and create new revenue streams using its instant checkout technology. The partnership allows ‘Mail Shop Instant Mobile Checkout App’, powered by Simply Tap, to enable purchase directly from the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, dedicated shopping supplements, the Mail Shop online and from within the app itself, using the in-app Marketplace.

Nick White, Marketing Director of Mobile Money Network, said: “The real vision here comes from Associated

News, as well as Mobile Money Network, we see mobile as the glue between print and digital rather than just another channel. Kevin Beatty [CEO of A&N Media] had this vision; people are on the tube with a Smartphone and a metro, inspired by what they see, but they can’t engage and respond. It is frustrating for the advertisers and publishers, because they don’t really know about their readership. But smartphone and digital can bridge that gap.”

White explains that there are several ways to sell from print and online depending on the client. MNN uses image recognition and QR codes with Carphone Warehouse and Thorntons.

With Associated News, however, MNN embeds an alphanumeric code and a QR code in print. It allows the reader to either tap in the product code or scan the QR code that will take him straight through to checkout. White adds: “We are finding new revenue streams for advertisers and publishers – that is massive. It is not just building awareness but it is now transactional.”

There has been a massive resurgence in popularity in free print publications and the Metro is a big part of this popularity.

Jamie Walters, Metro’s Product Development Director, is tasked with replicating this upturn in print numbers to digital. He said: “Our digital editions suite currently comprises Tablet Editions on iPad and Android as well as a Phone Edition on iPhone and an edition on Kindle. We will shortly be launching editions ver-

ANALYSIS

Print Media

sions for Android smartphone and 7” tablet devices such as the Google Nexus and Kindle Fire when it is launched in the UK. “The digital editions suite has huge potential, as demonstrated by the success of Tablet Edition on iPad which has had more than 575,000 downloads and 275,000 subscriptions. The editions are distinct from a website in that they are published once a day, designed for download for offline reading and are more of a lean-back than a lean-forward experience.”

Despite the undoubted success of the digital editions suite, Walters has little doubt where the future lies. He said: “We are currently redesigning Metro.co.uk with a mobile-first philosophy (due to go live by the end of the year) and we are taking a number of design cues and lessons from the digital editions suite to provide a consistent experience across our product portfolio.

“We have a mobile-first philosophy. Our primary goal when designing and building products is to tackle the challenges posed by mobile devices first and then work up to bigger screens. We want to provide functionality that is very app like, but for mobile-browser technology. For example, we will be enabling users to touch sideswipe through stories when they visit Metro.co.uk on a mobile device – many apps offer this kind of functionality, few websites do.”

It’s easy to see why Walters is eager to enhance Metro’s mobile offering, the figures are only pointing in one direction. He

said: “Mobile media consumption is particularly high within our audience, as demonstrated by our website traffic. Even without being optimised for mobile, 30 – 35 per cent of Metro. co.uk’s traffic currently comes from mobile devices, a figure that is significantly higher than the industry average.”

With the increase in larger screens, and the uptake in smartphones and tablets, which consumers are increasingly willing to take out and about with them, Walters understands why advertisers are excited about the opportunities within Tablet Editions, particularly the full-page, high-definition, rich-media executions. However, he also sees challenges that must be overcome. Walters said: “One issue is the cost of producing those ads. They are expensive to produce and overall the reach across the market as a whole currently is not as big as it is through other media. At Metro, we see it as our responsibility to provide cost-effective yet engaging creative to help our advertisers experiment within this environment, which is something we have done for a number of clients. There is some simple animation that can be data light, cost-effective and very engaging.”

Advice and education of advertiser and agencies by the print media company who knows its product and readership the best, is essential. Telegraph’s Challinor said: “We are helping to educate advertising agencies through roadshows, master classes etc. This is important as traditional print buyers are

ANALYSIS

Print media

being told to use mobile/digital so we teach them how to treat mobile platforms and monetise it.”

Challinor is excited by the possibilities of engagement, on the client as well as the consumer side, that rich media has brought into the mix. He said: “New technology, such as augmented reality, brings print to life. It is something the TMG are offering clients as part of a multimedia campaign. You show clients what you can do with AR and their eyes light up. We have sold two or three campaigns using AR as a key component – one is for Citroen and the other British Lions.”

Blippar is one of those companies that can provide the stickiness and innovative advertising that print media companies and brands crave. Blippar is the world’s first mobile augmented reality and image recognition platform enabling advertisers to reach consumers via newspapers, magazines, outdoor ads and billboards.

Jess Butcher, CMO & Co-Founder, Blippar said: “Imagerecognition technology is truly game-changing for the printed format. It offers a new medium for instant content delivery ‘off’ the page, enabling it to jump to life with timely, interactive content experiences for the reader, whether it be a video related to the story, an opportunity to buy the products on the page, ‘visiting’ the travel destination, or magically revealing the crossword answers. We fully expect an imminent future where newspapers, magazines and catalogues are routinely read phone-in-hand.”

Blippar has worked with a number of print publications including The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Total Film, Sport magazine to name but a few. But the figures for Stylist’s Olympic edition make impressive reading and shows a publication that invested in the concept by converting a large percentage of pages into ‘markers’ for interactive content. Detailed analysis reveals excellent usage figures from Stylist’s readers.

In the seven days post publication, more than 26,500 unique users used Blippar to unlock the pages – 7 per cent of the magazine’s total readership – and on average each person used 5.8 blipps each, which equates to a staggering 152,863 blipps in total. Out of the magazine’s 64 free pages, 21 were turned interactive. Repeat blipps were high, with 71pc of users blipping more than one page.

Data capture is crucial for any print media company serious about embracing digital. That loyal customer is key to media owners’ ongoing success. The more they learn about how, when, where and what content they engage with, the more chance there is of success, the wealth of data also brings its own headaches.

Conrad Bennett, VP of Technical Services EMEA for analytics company Webtrends, who were instrumental in helping the Telegraph understand its iPad users, said: “There are many more opportunities for collecting and analysing data. The problem with some print media companies is that they are not used to having feedback on how people interact. By understanding how

people are consuming content, we make changes. But companies must have a clear idea of what it is they want to measure once they have the data and who is going to sit down and improve things. It still requires a lot of effort.”

MNN’s White insists data capture is a big part of their strategic partnership with Associated Newspapers “offering an insight about the customers, understanding what else they are looking at, when they are looking at it, what they are buying.

White said: “When customers join, they register their name, address and payment details, plus, once they have given us their postcode, there is other third-party data that can be used. In time, transacting using content and newspapers, you build up a history of transactions right down to the product level, and what else people are looking at. We assimilate this information in order to gain more customer engagement, more cross-selling and up-selling – but at the end we provide the information to the client and help the client.”

What opportunities?

But what of the opportunities for third-party content providers to get a slice of the action. These are exciting times but the challenges are there to adapt to them. Maxted believes that as companies look to become more interactive within the app or mobile site they will develop their mobile strategy. He said: “Opportunities like mobile couponing, which would be location-based, teaming up with specialist voucher providers.

It is likely that popular premium content areas like dating and gambling will be added to such sites in future, where it is all about acquiring new customers and third-party brands being prepared to pay for them.

“There is also premium opportunity for up-sell, say to mobile gambling sites, where traffic could be redirected by linking from a media title’s mobile website to the gambling or dating brand’s site and the media title would be paid for the clickthroughs, or on a CPA basis.”

“It is all about matching the relevant premium content to the audience of the mobile site and offering compelling, convenient proposition that can be experienced now.”

In order to survive these difficult economic times, it is not enough for print media companies to replicate their print edition in digital format. Consumers are hungry for fresh, innovative, compelling and interactive content and if they can’t find it at one company many will happily try another. There is no point in a business dipping its toe in the digital waters, it has to jump wholeheartedly in, no matter how scary it might seem.

That is not to say jump blindly, new opportunities in data capture means that print media companies with even the most basic digital offering can attain data that will be crucial in developing a digital strategy for the future. The constant growth of tablets and smartphones means the way people consume content has changed for ever. Companies that embrace this change and have a clear plan of action will reap the rewards.

ANALYSIS

Advertising

RTB, DSP, SSP… WTF? If you are looking at mobile advertising it’s crucial you know your RTBs from your DSPs. And with it taking centre stage at ad:tech London in October, Sheldon Johns takes a look at why real-time bidding is so important and very simple to understand

real tim bidding, or RTB, has been big news in the US for a while now. Back in 2011, eBay International director of internet marketing, Daphne Sacco predicted: “It is early days, but RTB is going to be as big an initiative in Europe as it is in the US, where we are seeing triple-digit increases in our ROI.” And she was right.

According to a recent study by International Data Corporation (IDC) the UK RTB growth until 2015 will outstrip US, France and Germany. By 2015 RTB-based spending will stand for 27 per cent in the United States (up from 10 per cent in 2011), 25 per cent in the UK (up from 6 per cent), 21 per cent in France (up from 4 per cent) and 20 per cent in Germany (up from 4 per cent). Total spending on RTB in the US will reach $5.1 billion and $680 million for the UK. This ain’t chump change.

Getting past the jargon So what is RTB? In a nutshell: it allows brands to bid for individual online users’ ad impressions in real time and pay what they want. No longer do advertisers face the wastage of bulk buys and the time-consuming efforts involved in negotiating directly with individual website publishers. Crucially, there’s also the opportunity to put to work the wealth of data that marketers have on their customers and their target audience, along with everything websites know about their users.

“Real-time bidding has fundamentally changed the digital marketing landscape,” explains DataXu VP of business development, Adrian Tompsett. “Before RTB, the majority of digital

media buys were transacted with ad networks and publishers on an IO (insertion order), which offered limited transparency into what they were actually buying.”

With the advent of demand side platforms (DSPs), marketers are now able to evaluate each impression before buying, and only purchase those impressions that deliver their goals most efficiently. “It’s like hand-selecting each apple for your pie, rather than blindly buying a mixed bag of apples and taking pot luck,” says Tompsett.

Advertisers first decide to put a specific ad in front of a specific individual on a given site and then bid for that impression. If they win the bid, the ad is served. Advertisers (and their agencies) decide in advance what they’re prepared to pay to reach different audience profiles.

Once the advertiser has decided what they’re willing to bid, the process is set up on an RTB platform so that the bid happens automatically when the right person logs on to a participating site. The DSP should then report back on what the advertiser has bought and the rates the inventory was sold for.

“RTB is a tool that contributes to more effective trading, so your time and resources can be spent on the actual content than how and to whom the ads are delivered,” explains Carl Nelvig, VP R&D at Burt.

How will it help?

RTB fans argue that the tool not only prevents digital waste, but also is essential due to the increasing size and speed of the

ANALYSIS

Advertising

internet. Plus, it means customers more likely to see the ads that are relevant to them, meaning they’re happier to receive relevant ads and far more likely to buy your product or service.

And it’s good news for buyers and sellers too. “Sellers can control the transparency and floor pricing of their inventory and the advertisers and creatives they want to accept, while buyers can positively target by category or even to URL. They can also utilise block lists to ensure they do not appear against a given website or category,” explains Sue Hunt, Director, Right Media EMEA at Yahoo!

However, some are still not convinced of the advantages. “While ad exchange is predicted to grow rapidly, there is a feeling that it still needs to convince marketers and advertisers of the benefits of investing in RTB,” says ad:tech head of UK, Chris Asselin.

“Although the benefits of RTB are very easy to grasp – allowing advertisers to set the price they are willing to pay to target specific users, and offering the publisher chance to maximise their inventory – there’s still a lot of scepticism and criticism,” explains Asselin. “The ad:tech RTA Summit has been launched

to knock down myths, re-establish facts and provide advertisers and publishers with simple and actionable knowledge.”

Online video and RTB One of the ways RTB is now being utilised is through online video advertising. “Video advertising continues to go from strength-to-strength in the UK with ad spend doubling every year,” says SpotXchange CEO and founder, Mike Shehan. “Buyers are increasingly looking to capitalise on the RTB developments seen in display and include video within programmatic buys.”

In a study commissioned by SpotXchange, Forrester estimates that video RTB will represent 15 per cent of all online video advertising spend in the US in 2012 growing to 22 per cent by 2013. Europe is also poised to see significant growth in video RTB. “In an industry which is looking to bridge the gap between RTB and brand advertising, video RTB may be the key. After all, online video advertising has been the most successful digital channel in attracting brand-spend online.”

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REVIEW

World Telemedia 2012

That was the show that was

Paul Skeldon takes a look at some of the highlights from World Telemedia Marbella 17-19 October – a show that once again championed the slow rebirth of the telemedia sector this year’s world telemedia show in Marbella once again showcased how the telemedia sector is growing and, while booming maybe putting it too strongly, there is cause for some cheer.

What the event showcased was that there is still plenty of money to be made in ‘traditional’ telemedia services, as well as offering an insight into how new opportunities around publishing, TV, social media and all things m-commerce are all starting to offer some lucrative new markets.

According to David Ashman from AIME’s state of the nation address charity, virtual goods through the likes of Facebook and other services and international payments are all growth areas, helping propel PRS earnings, according to PPP figures at least, to nearly £1billion in the UK alone.

In Germany, virtual goods are worth some £139.3million while the UK is not far behind with £93.1million. The UK has the largest average spend of some £19 per person who spends on virtual goods, which the French have really embraced it spending £28 per person.

Facebook is, unsurprisingly, leading the march, with some 15million of its European users purchasing virtual goods, of which three quarters are doing so via Zynga games.

But, as Ashman pointed out, as Facebook has announced a phase out of its Facebook Credits and the cancellation of its Facebook Wallet, there is now a huge opportunity for telemedia billing services to mop up here.

But the traditional markets are also doing well. According to AIME figures chat and dating is a £1billion market, and accounts for some £33.5million of UK PRS revenues and is expected to grow by some 57% in 2012, making it potentially the soaraway success of the PRS market, if it can be capitalised on effectively and scams and bad press are avoided.

Adult is also a rich area for PRS, generating some £125.7million in the UK. Psychic however seems to be on a downward trend, showing a 4% drop in PRS revenues this year against the while PRS industry largely being up by an average of 9.5%.

The other potential growth area for all content types – including the psychic sector – is in delivering in-app billing for developers. Many are following the freemium model, offering free ‘lite’ versions that either generate revenue through inapp purchases or upgrades to richer versions from within the app. This is starting to be a growth area for the sector, with Payforit ideally positioned – and it has form here, as we saw

last year – to help offer this to non-iOS store apps.

To this end, AIME is developing a PRS flow model for Payforit in apps and is working with MACH to deliver these services through 2013.

But all of this is nothing without balanced regulation, argued Square1’s Mark Birkett. Complaints about PRS services are up, he said, but that is largely down to closer scrutiny by the regulator and the apportioning of ‘blame’ across the whole value chain. This, Birkett believes, is a good thing, but PPP has to have balance in how it adjudicates, since we are seeing some very high fines being levied for issues that previously would have attracted much less censure.

So what does the coming year hold? There are issues of media fragmentation several speakers warned and the industry has to be keen to look at how different billing mechanisms suit different people in different circumstances depending on how they are looking to consume media and services. This is something that has to be addressed through the coming year – and something we shall see a lot more of at the next World Telemedia in 2013.

There will also be an increasing focus on m-commerce, video services and cross-media offerings. The industry is also seeing a smattering of new start-ups which is encouraging, said Shawn Brown from Converto, He believes that we are going to see a lot more clever applications and monetisation around mobile social commerce offerings.

That is true, said Graham Halling from Spoke in his opening keynote, but the industry and the new start ups face the challenge of developing the right business models to support an growing amount of interactivity across media types.

Brands, TV companies, print and charities are all looking at how to generate monetisable interactivity and new services are emerging, but working out how to monetise them is a challenge.

The good news is that these verticals need guidance in how to do this, and that is something that telemedia business can help them with.

One challenge that the whole business is going to face, believes Halling, is the emergence of Me-tail, where brands and retailers slowly start to become media outlets for relevant media and content around what they sell, either as advanced marketing or as a revenue stream. This is going to be very challenging for the established media, but also presents an opportunity for the telemedia sector.

REVIEW

World Telemedia 2012

In Pic tur es

REVIEW

World Telemedia 2012

WHO DID WHAT Proud to be platinum sponsors of the show

world wide premium telecom (WWPT) was the proud platinum sponsor of WORLD TELEMEDIA MARBELLA (17-19 October) and was on hand to showcase what it does and took part in industry panel discussions to help the telemedia shape how it develops and expands over the coming years.

World Wide Premium Telecom is an International Premium Rate Number provider, exploring new conditions for growth and opportunity by advertising its own and exclusive international Premium Rate Numbers over favorable destinations globally connected with aggressive share revenues and World Wide Access. WWPT has an extensive know how and a recognized track record of 10 years in the Telecommunication market, serving many renowned clients from countries all over the world and being interconnected with over 70 Tier 1 Carriers.

Our technical/Premium Telemedia experience enables us to provide technical support lines, Voting Lines, Horoscopes, Tarot reading And Fortune Telling, Competitions, Live or virtual chat services, including: • World Wide Access To Global Destinations • Over 70 Tier 1 Carrier Interconnects • Exclusive IPRS Number Ranges • Direct Wholesale Routes • Voting & Competitions • Conferencing Services • Roaming SIM Cards • Tech Support Lines • Horoscope & Tarot • Live & Virtual Chat • Stats Panel • IVR

EG Telecom sponsors World Telemedia Marbella

eg telecom sponsored World Telemedia for the first time this year. EG is a technology provider for payment systems by voice and mobile, with direct connections to all the mobile operators in Spain. EG is an integrator with a complete offer in terms of connectivity and payment,... providing the technology required for every business model. When asked what prompted EG to become a sponsor, Managing Director, Robert Nijeber said: “ We are a long term player in this business and we know Telemedia´s event is the most important one in the market… so the question might be… how can you not get involved?” EG are expecting meet new customers that are interested in their billing solutions (inc Direct Operator Billing) and to gaining access to the Spanish and LATAM markets. They’re also hoping to unveil “The One Click” on line purchasing of Movistar – an exclusive pilot scheme that promises to surprise and delight!

Opening night drinks thanks to SwitchFire & ImpulsePay Impulsepay and client Switchfire sponsored happy hour on the show floor on 18 October at WORLD TELEMEDIA MARBELLA 2012. SwitchFire, which architects, designs and develops mobile products across multiple platforms for businesses, is a lead off customer of ImpulsePay’s Payforit4 billing product. Find out more as you sip cool drinks at the opening night party on 17 October.

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World Telemedia 2012

AT THE SHOW Spoke bridges “Print-to-Digital” with watermarking SPOKE, the consumer engagement specialists, launched its latest interactive product offering, digital watermarking, which integrates print and digital content to deepen engagement between brands and their consumers.

Spoke’s digital watermarking solution, which incorporates patented Digimarc® Discover technology, enables readers to pursue compelling and entertaining interactive experiences via their smartphones from any kind of printed material, allowing them to access a range of mobile-optimized content without removing them entirely from the print product. Instead, it bridges the gap between print and digital, bringing the print to life and enabling users to get more in-depth content on their mobile.

Digital watermarks can be used on all kinds of print such as product packaging, magazines, newspapers, print ads and marketing materials, and are visible only to smartphones.

Consumers simply point their phone at the watermarked print, to be instantly connected to a menu of optional action-led experiences such as ‘share’ via social media, ‘learn more’ via a web URL, ‘watch video’, ‘view map location’, ‘email us’, ‘call us’ or ‘add to calendar’.

Unlike many competing image recognition technologies, brands and advertisers can simply drop the digital watermark reader into their own app, saving consumers from having to download an additional app to view mobile content. Alternatively, if they don’t have an app, they can choose to offer Spoke’s free Fetch app or their own branded version of it.

Rob Ellis, Managing Director of Spoke, commented: “Digital watermarking provides a highly effective bridge from the print to digital environment, allowing readers and consumers to explore and enjoy a wide range of multimedia content, without severing the traditional reading experience or compromising direct revenue generating opportunities.

We are delighted to add digital watermarking to our growing suite of mobile and digital solutions since we re-launched as Spoke last month.”

VoiPay launches self-serve VoiPay and micropayments ORCA DIGITAL unveiled its self-serve platform for VoiPay at World Telemedia Marbella – enabling service providers to sign-up at http://voipay.net and add global premium web telephony to their existing services in five minutes.

VoiPay uniquely enables promoters to embed a couple of lines of HTML in their site - to add global access via credit card and premium rate numbers, routing to DDIs on their existing telephony platform. VoiPay also serves as a micropayment platform for promoters to sell their content with a simple integration.

Stephen George, Commercial Director of Orca Digital, says: “More of our clients were using the web to promote their services and existing forms of monetisation were disjointed and offered limited billing in limited countries. We built VoiPay to address this, taking the pain away from the promoter and offering the consumer clear billing in their own currency with local access numbers - it even works without a phone, just like Skype.”

VoiPay has seen rapid growth since launch earlier in 2012 - and this is set to accelerate as promoters can now switch on new billing routes instantly. VoiPay also offers industry leading reporting for both the promoter and the consumer - with call traffic appearing in real-time, enabling promoters to track their revenue and consumers to keep their spend.

George adds: “We’re really excited about the launch of self-serve and micropayments – our future product enhancements - our customers have already seen a substantial revenue uplift to their premium rate services. We handle all the complexities of both credit card and premium rate billing internationally - including any regulatory requirements such as call intros and termination. The promoter, without changing their service, can instantly turn on incremental revenue.”

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REVIEW World Telemedia 2012

C3 and Sundial Telecom focus on PCI

sundial telecom is using c3‘s technology and PCI experience to provide a PCI Compliant managed service solution, initially targeted towards the live psychic and adult markets but applicable to many main stream sectors .

The two Cambridge-based companies are combining their knowledge and expertise to develop the service, which will provide businesses with a complete PCI Compliant managed service solution.

Sundial Telecom is developing the service in C3’s Fusion software; an intuitive IVR toolkit that provides huge flexibility in creating and deploying new IVR services as well as the ability to quickly implement any changes to an existing service.

The service will enhance the caller’s ‘user experience’, managing the entire process, from call distribution to secure payment, via web, telephony or SMS. A carousel of client and overflow agents will be available for peak call times, and their bios and availability can be automatically updated on the client’s website via the service API. Callers will have the option of paying for the service via a number of PCI Compliant avenues, including pre-paid web vouchers, special occasion purchases.

Online content billing with SoftLock from Square 1 square 1 communications’ SoftLock is you’re billing solution for online content provided by one of the most reputable and reliable solutions providers in the UK. The Square1 SoftLock billing service provides you with embeddable ‘widgets’ that allows you full control of layout and styling within your host page, each chosen payment option is a separate ‘widget’ allowing you to mix and match to your specific billing requirements. SoftLock offers several billing options including premium SMS, PRS and Credit Card, SoftLock also offers you full international billing for each payment option.

SoftLock allows different tariff charges to be configured on each payment option to give you further flexibility in billing. The User buys ‘credit’ for use on your ‘service’ which can be for a period of time or a per-usage charge / deduction from credit. It also provides a backend API call for each service that allows third-party interaction (create account, revoke account, etc) driven by payment outcome.

Online Administration tools you can administer each client’s credit and access and also view full management reports and data SopftLock is also fully integrated with Sq1’s CDN.

TelServ is on the numbers

TelServ is offering only (voice) numbers worldwide with several diverse IVR possibilities. The product line consists of: Premium Rate Numbers, VoIP Numbers, Shared Cost Numbers, Video, Call Numbers, (International) Free Phone Numbers (UIFN/IFS), International Services Numbers, Geographical Numbers (DID’s), Personal Numbers, etc.

TelServ has it’s own Telco Switch, IVR and infrastructure with billing system. This advanced billing system enables TelServ to check all traffic with every operator in their network, to guarantee the customer optimum payout. TelServ has a transparent network that allows supplying their customers with live CDR’s with all kinds of information right after a call has been made. The current vision and focus of TelServ is to offer the highest level of service and fastest realization possible of customer orders.

Next to this is TelServ’s commitment to delivering customers order proposals within a 24-hour time frame. This turns out to be possible in 97% of the cases. To continue this level of service, TelServ had to expand personnel, office space and Switch capacity several times within the last 2 years.

Looking at the increase of minutes worldwide every month, TelServ will have to expand their team again within the near future.

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World Telemedia 2012

C3 helps Manx Telecom deliver enhanced services

manx telecom, the Isle of Man’s leading comms provider, has gone live with a new and improved network messaging solution for the island’s subscribers., using C3’s cutting-edge Apcentia Network Messaging SIP-based platform, to offer an enhanced service to its voicemail users.

The new platform has been fully integrated into Manx Telecom’s IMS Alcatel Lucent carrier infrastructure, whilst all DTMF Menu Interfaces have been set to match the previous system, preventing any disruption to customer usage.

“We were very impressed with C3’s multi-application platform, which offers our customers a number of new and enhanced services,” said Mervyn Harvey, Mobile Product Manager Manx Telecom. “We were very pleased with the high level of support they provided during the change-over and the minimal impact on customers at that time. The team are incredibly easy to work with and very responsive in delivering any custom changes that we requested.”

Manx Telecom now has two mirrored C3 systems meaning it can provide a geographically resilient platform to its customers. The platform’s scalable footprint means that new applications can easily be added to the system, and the Manx technical team has been trained to use Fusion IVR - C3’s call services software to develop their own custom features.

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Mobile Life expands Latin American billing connectivity mobile life has expanded its Latin American billing connectivity to include Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Central America and the Caribbean. The company also sponsored “Party In The Port� at World Telemedia 2012, Marbella on the 18th October.

With these new connections now complete Mobile Life offers the most dynamic markets in Latin America to its partners by offering the fastest and most reliable connections with rapid payment clearance.

Mobile Life offers local market knowledge and practices with global expertise and facilitates market entry to its regional mobile operator network bringing the very best and latest services to the ever expanding Latin American regional subscriber base. Mobile Life will be adding new markets very soon as it continues to build the most complete access to regional Latin American billing available.

Mobile Life will assist your business with expansion into Latin America from market due diligence through to successful integration and deployment of your services. Mobile Life has successfully connected partners from Europe, N. America, Middle East and Asia into our Latin America connections.

Telemedia Industry Directory International Premiums

txtNation

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paythru

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AGMO

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VoiceBlade

Provider of quality wholesale & retail telephony applications

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Ellisons

UK Advertising agency media planning/buying - press, TV, online, mobile

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Get your company listed here Contact Jarvis Todd on Tel +44 (0)8707 327 327 or email jarvis@telemedia360.com

Telemedia Industry Directory Xonadu

White label providers of real text dating & sms chat. Real women = real revenue

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Oxygen8

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Contact: 0808 206 2062 E-mail: sales.uk@oxygen8.com www.oxygen8.com

tyntec

SMS interaction: 2-Way SMS Dialogue, Outbound & Inbound, Mobile Authentication & Number Lookup.

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Paul Markham

Paul Markham content provider for Mobile Phones and iPods.

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telequest & Internet Solutions GmbH !!! Domestic Numbers Worldwide !!!

Contact: 00800 102 502 22 or info@telequest.com www.telequest.com

Enarpee

Global Regulatory/Compliance/Service Audit and support services organisation

Contact: Neil or Paul on +44 844 357 3938 or email info@enarpee.com ww.enarpee.com

ImpulsePay

ImpulsePay is the fastest growing provider of Payforit.

Contact: office@impulsepay.com, tel: +44 (0) 20 7099 2450 www.impulsepay.com

EG Telecom

Spain & France • SMS Premium • 123ticket.com • Micropayments • IVR • Worldwide coverage • Voice premium • subscription • billing platform

Contact: Robert Nijeboer on rnijeboer@egtelecom.es and mobile (+34) 661636577

Masvoz

Spanish leading provider in Voice Services, Micropayments solutions & Sms services

Contact: Carlos Jiménez. 0034 902 500 807, carlos.jimenez@masvoz.es www.masvoz.es

Viatel

Premium SMS • Premium rate numbers • IVR • Specialists in Scandinavia • Safe payments

Contact: Phone: +46 8 50601015, Email: premium@viatel.se www.viatel.se

Kwak Telecom Ltd

Leading provider of International payouts numbers & domestic premium rate numbers

Contact: Tel +357 22 022300, sales@kwak-telecom.com www.premium-rates.com

Silverstreet BV

Silverstreet provides global, mobile advertising and broadcast solutions.

Contact: Tel.+44 207 060 5480 www.silverstreet.com

Text121Chat Premium Rate Operators Services

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Contact: UK 0871 872 6154, helen@text121chat.com, USA 1-888-711-0121, lorna@text121chat.com

Orca Digital

UK’s leading provider of interactive platforms for mobile, web and TV

Contact: hello@orcadigital.com // 020 8819 5710 www.orcadigital.com