Mobile Marketing Issue 6 - June 2011 by Mobile Marketing Magazine

Issue Six | June 2011

News | Views | Analysis

FIRST MOVER

Incentivated MD Jonathan Bass reflects on 10 years in mobile marketing

PAPER TRAIL

How the Guardian made a success of mobile

ALL CHANGE

The evolution of mobile advertising

RETAIL THERAPY FAST FORWARD

Russell Buckley analyzes mobileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s explosive growth

TOP TIPS FOR PUBLISHING CONTENT ON TABLET DEVICES

En te M r th o e Aw bile 20 ar M 11 ds ar Ef to ket fec da in tiv y! g e

We put 6 mobile-optimised shopping sites to the test

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contents

elcome to our latest print edition, which is, as ever, packed to the gills with opinion, analysis and news from the mobile marketing coalface. Kicking us off, we have Steve Wing from Guardian News & Media, taking us through the newspaper publisher’s journey onto mobile. In her regular missive, Helen Keegan reports on the current buzz of excitement around mobile marketing in the US. Nic Newman from Tigerspike shares his thoughts on putting content on tablet devices. And we are delighted to bring you a special Guest Column from Russell Buckley, who found time between moving from AdMob to Eagle Eye Solutions to share with us his thoughts on the future of mobile marketing. One year after we last looked at the mobile advertising market, we revisit it to see what’s changed, and find that an awful lot has. We have done our best to make sense of what’s going on in a sector where new networks, formats and business models seem to pop up almost every day. In our Regional Focus, we turn the spotlight on Western Europe, a mature market in mobile terms, but one where significant differences in approach exist from one country to the next. And in our mCommerce Showcase feature, we go shopping on our phone on six mobile-optimised retail sites, looking to find which offers the best user interface and shopping experience. We also have news of our 2011 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, which are open for business. Last year’s awards were very well received; this year’s are going to be even bigger and better. Head for p32 to find out more. And on top of all this, we still have room to get up close and personal with four players in the mobile space – Google, InternetQ, Sponsormob and madvertise – to find out more about their approach to mobile marketing. We hope you enjoy the issue. Remember, you can get it on the iPad too. And for all the latest news, head for www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com. Or m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com on your phone. David Murphy Editor

Cover story 20 First mover Jonathan Bass, managing director of Incentivated, reflects on a decade on the mobile marketing coalface

Thought leadership 5 Paper trail The Guardian’s Steve Wing charts the publisher’s journey onto mobile

19 Dev zone

30 Mobile first Ian Carrington outlines Google’s commitment to mobile, and why the company puts “mobile first”

34 Attention to detail InternetQ’s Konstantinos Papoutsis, explains the company’s approach to mobile marketing

37 Payment by results Sponsormob CEO Peter Glaeser outlines how the company’s affiliate-style mobile ad network operates

Nic Newman offers advice on publishing on tablet devices

22 Talking exponentially Russell Buckley considers the explosive growth mobile marketing is experiencing right now

42 Off-deck Helen Keegan celebrates the enthusi-

asm for mobile marketing in the US

41 Right place, right time

madvertise CEO Carsten Frien explains how brands are taking to location-based advertising and coupons with enthusiasm

The real world 26 Regional focus

Technology 7 Near field of dreams George Cole looks at the prospects for Near Field Communications (NFC) contactless technology

Business models 11 Making sense of mobile advertising David Murphy offers an overview of the current trends and issues at play in the rapidly-changing world of mobile advertising Issue Six | June 2011

News | Views | Analysis

FIRST MOVER

We throw the mobile marketing spotlight on Western Europe, highlighting differences in approach between different countries

Best practice 32 It’s awards time

The Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2011 are open for business. We have all the details on what you need to do to enter

38 mCommerce showcase

We put six mobile retail sites through their paces, testing each for ease of use and navigation

Subscribe today and guarantee your copy If you want to be sure of receiving your copy of the print edition of Mobile

INCENTIVATED MD JONATHAN BASS REFLECTS ON 10 YEARS IN MOBILE MARKETING

Marketing four times a year, you can subscribe today to go on our controlled circulation list. It costs just £30 (UK); or £40 (rest of the world). To take out a

PAPER TRAIL

HOW THE GUARDIAN MADE A SUCCESS OF MOBILE

subscription, just send an email to: subscriptions@mobilemarketingmagazine.

ALL CHANGE

THE EVOLUTION OF MOBILE ADVERTISING

RETAIL THERAPY

WE PUT 6 MOBILE-OPTIMISED SHOPPING SITES TO THE TEST

FAST FORWARD

RUSSELL BUCKLEY ANALYZES MOBILE’S EXPLOSIVE GROWTH

TOP TIPS FOR PUBLISHING CONTENT ON TABLET DEVICES

En te M r th ob e Aw ile 20 ar M 11 ds ar Ef to ketin fect da iv y! g e

com and we’ll respond telling you what you need to do.

Editor: David Murphy - david.murphy@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0) 7976 927062 Commercial Director: John Owen - john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0) 7769 674824 Business Development Manager: Richard Partridge - richard.partridge@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Contributors: George Cole, Martin Conway, Helen Keegan, Russell Buckley Design and Production: Alistair Gillan, AQ2 Mobile - info@aq2.info Print: Advent Print Group info@advent-colour.co.uk Special thanks this issue to: Jo Murphy, Rowan Chambers, Alistair Gillan For a paid subscription please email: subscriptions@mobilemarketingmagazine.com One Year Subscription Rates – UK: £30.00; ROW: £40.00 Mobile Marketing is published by Dot Media Ltd., 15 Loraine Gardens, Ashtead, Surrey KT21 1PD. www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

June 2011

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Paper Trail

thought leadership

“I HAVE BEEN GENUINELY SURPRISED BY THE HUGE APPETITE FOR GREAT CONTENT, BEAUTIFULLY DELIVERED ON a range of DEVICES” Steve Wing

Steve Wing, head of digital marketing at Guardian News & Media, charts the newspaper publisher’s journey onto mobile, and the lessons learned

he Guardian’s mobile journey can be traced right back to 2000, when the market looked complicated and small. But we started in earnest in 2008, when it looked simpler, bigger and more exciting. For us, mobile’s promise changed with the launch of some brilliant smartphones, fixed data tariffs and a host of new apps. Almost immediately, you could see the change in the way people wanted to interact with us, as they started to fall in love with their devices and all that they were capable of. Crucially for us, as part of this change, our consumers started to read, watch and listen to more and more content on their mobile devices.

Brilliant experience At the beginning of our journey, our objective was simply to give people a brilliant experience of the Guardian on whatever device they wanted to read us on. We also wanted, and still do want, to build our reach, revenues and reputation as a mobile-savvy publisher across both browser and apps. There are so many ways you can go with mobile, so we spent a lot of time mapping out our strategy and our tactics. First on the To Do list was a mobile-optimised site. Why? Simply because anyone and everyone with a browser can read one, you are visible in search, and easily linked to. Subsequent product launches such as our iPhone/iPod touch app have been prioritised for their ability to build reach against our target audiences, generate sustainable and scalable revenues, and to be innovative. I think we have been fortunate in that it has never been difficult to get buy-in for mobile within the company. It has always been seen as exciting and new, with people right across the organisation wanting to know more, and, crucially, wanting to contribute. Clearly it is still a small part of our overall offering, but as a company, we have grasped how important mobile will be in the future, and that has been extremely advantageous.

There have been a few surprises along the way. I have been genuinely surprised, by the huge appetite for great content, beautifully delivered on a range of devices. This just wasn’t the case a few years ago. And not only has there been growth in the number of people who now use our, or other, mobile services, but also, in the intensity of their usage. Nothing prepared us for the frequency and depth of engagement we have witnessed. It’s truly incredible. And long may it continue.

Lessons learned We’ve learned a few lessons too, the main one being that you have to constantly talk to, and listen to, your consumers, as their expectations and requirements are constantly changing - and changing fast. But overall, our mobile properties have performed really well against all our own metrics. m.guardian (our mobile site), reached 4.5m monthly unique users in April, and we have had over 370,000 downloads of our Guardian app for iPhone since January. 32,000 of these are in the US, and 65,000 of them are now paying subscribers. Our Eyewitness app for iPad has also now been downloaded over 520,000 times. So we’re off to a good start, but we’re not resting on our laurels. We will continue to invest in, upgrade and build out our existing mobile internet offering and iPhone app, with some interesting developments planned for our other products. We have just launched a Nokia app for the Guardian, with Android very much in our sights. On top of that, we have a whole host of tablet, app and browser products in development to bring to market So it’s been an exciting period in the Guardian’s evolution. And if there’s one piece of advice I would offer to anyone just starting out on the journey we’ve been on, it would be this: remember that behind the device is a person waiting to be delighted. Concentrate more on them, and less on the shiny new technology in their hands, and you won’t go too far wrong.

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technology

Near Field of Dreams With all the current hype around Near Field Communications, George Cole goes under the bonnet to find out more about the technology and who’s doing what with it

eep in touch without making contact. That’s what Near Field Communication (NFC) technology offers; the ability for devices to connect without contact. The contactless nature of NFC is causing much excitement in the mobile world, with some forecasting that NFC will transform mobile payments, marketing, advertising and much more besides. NFC uses short-range radio waves to transfer data between objects, typically over a distance of several centimetres. NFC-enabled handsets are already being used by millions of consumers in Asia. The Mobile Suica system in Japan, for example. supported by NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, allows com-

muters to pay for their ticket on the JR East railway network by waving their mobile phone in front of an NFC sensor. NTT DoCoMo and Korean mobile operator KT have announced plans to launch commercial NFC services before the end of 2012. Another Korean mobile network operator, SK Telecom, together with Japanese mobile operators KDDI and Softbank Mobile, have announced plans to trial mobile NFC services in Japan and Korea. Now, it looks as if the rest of the mobile world is embracing NFC. At this year’s Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that: “NFC should revolutionise electronic commerce.” Ever since then,

Google has been very quiet about NFC, though the reasons for this became apparent as it launched the Google Wallet NFC payment service with its partners, Citi, MasterCard, First Data, and Sprint in the US, just as we went to press.

Strategic mistake Even more rumours are swirling around Apple’s approach to NFC, with some suggesting that the iPhone 5 will include NFC, but others saying that it won’t. David Eads, product lead at Kony Solutions, says: “I’m perplexed at Apple if the rumours that it’s not doing NFC turn out to be true. Apple has all the pieces to exploit this technology. Google has some

Orange and Barclaycard’s Quick Tap NFC payments service launched in the UK with 50,000 retailers in May 2011

June 2011

“NFC should revolutionise electronic commerce” Eric Schmidt, Google of the pieces, but whether they have enough to make their NFC programme work is debatable.” Eads believes that Apple would make a strategic mistake not to do NFC. “They could have a huge percentage of the market wanting to make NFC payments with their technology.” But some companies have put their heads above the parapet. Barclaycard and Everything Everywhere (parent company to Orange and T-Mobile) have launched a contactless mobile phone payment service in the UK called Quick Tap, although

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technology

“IF YOU SEE NFC PURELY AS A TRANSACTION TECHNOLOGY, THEN YOU ARE SELLING IT SHORT…THIS TECHNOLOGY GOES WAY BEYOND TRANSACTIONS” Chris Brassington, Starfish only Orange will be involved initially. More than 50,000 retailers will participate in the scheme, and consumers will need an NFC-enabled handset, Orange secure SIM and a Barclaycard, Barclays debit or Orange credit card. “Initially, mobile payments will be limited to £15, which is the contactless industry standard. For added security purposes, after several transactions you will be asked to enter your

PIN number,” explains Jason Rees, Everything Everywhere’s director of mobile payments and ticketing. Rees adds that the plan is to launch the service across multiple devices by the end of the year. Isis, a mobile commerce joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, plans to launch a pilot mobile commerce programme using NFC handsets in Salt Lake City by summer 2012. The Isis mCommerce network will be made available to all merchants,

will be a spectrum of systems, with Apple at one extreme and an open platform at the other; network operators and handset manufacturers will sit somewhere in between,” Clark tells Mobile Marketing. She adds that: “Retailers and other parties are not going to buy into an NFC platform that is owned by a single company.” NFC also faces non-technical challenges, according to Chris Brassington, CEO of Starfish 360, “If you see NFC purely as a transaction technology, then you

can combine real insight and data with loyalty and contactless interaction, you’ll have it cracked,” he says. Kony’s Eads notes that the potential for NFC is vast. “In the US, electronic payments account for $40 trillion (£24.3 trillion). If just 1 per cent of consumers adopt mobile payments, that’s more than $400m of transactions. Google makes money from advertisements at point-of-sale and mobile, but it’s not making revenue from transactions – they want a slice of the transaction pie.”

banks, payment networks and mobile carriers. But if NFC is to take the mobile world by storm, certain conditions will have to be met, says Sarah Clark, author of NFC Business Models, a whitepaper that can be downloaded for free from SJB Research’s website. Clark says that open standards are the key to NFC’s success. To emphasis her point, she notes that companies such as Google and Facebook have built billion-dollar global businesses by using the internet, an infrastructure that no company or consortium owns.

are selling it short,” he says. “If retailers use NFC technology for more mundane tasks, they

Open standards

are missing a fantastic opportunity - this technology goes way beyond transactions.” Brassington says there are many fantastic applications out there that enable NFC to be used for many things, such as redeeming points or vouchers. “If you

But Eads warns that: “There could be chaos if we have different payment models, different systems and different technological implementations. If you’re a retailer, you will need an app that supports many different platforms – iPhone, Android, Symbian and so on. Also, some NFC transaction systems might use a microSD card; others may have it on the SIM. At the same time, you’ve got payment systems that use barcodes or a PIN. Lots of alternative technologies will have to co-exist for a while. You need to support lots of different systems in order to support your customers.”

But with Apple’s closedsystem approach to product development, how realistic is the prospect of a mobile NFC market based on open standards? “I think Apple will be the exception, and that there

NFC offers the promise of quick-andeasy contactless mobile payments

Emerging markets Some believe that the greatest potential for NFC lies in emerging markets. The mobile financial services provider Fundamo is running an NFC

Accells is working with Fundamo on an NFC mobile payment pilot in Africa

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Isis is an NFC-enabled mCommerce joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless

mobile payment pilot in Africa this year, and with contactless network provider, Accells Technology, has developed an NFC-enabled POS (point of sale) device. Funadmo CEO, Hannes van Rensburg, says that launching an NFC payment service in developed markets is difficult. “For NFC to be successful, there has to be the infrastructure; there has to be a business case, and there has to be a good reason for people to use it,” he says. van Rensburg believes there are three major barriers to NFC services in developed markets. “The first is that you have to spend a massive amount of capital to upgrade the infrastructure - chip-and-pin took a decade to implement and involved lots of investment. Now, you are asking retailers to upgrade again to be able to read an NFC chip on a mobile phone - that will be a move too far.” The second barrier is that consumers in developed markets are not used to paying for payments. “People moan if they have to pay to use an ATM, and most payment transactions are free,” says

van Rensburg. The third barrier is finding a compelling reason for consumers to use NFC. “I’m not convinced that using your phone to save time when you purchase a hamburger is going to be a compelling reason,” he adds. Eckhard Ortwein, chairman of the advisory board at Accells, notes that: “POS terminals in developed markets are very expensive, because you have a fortress security built around the terminal keypads and the networks, and there’s little scope for a third party to piggy-back onto it. In the emerging markets, you can go to market with a lowcost terminal and printer.” van Rensburg says that, in emerging markets, people are used to paying for transactions, and will pay for the security and convenience of electronic transactions. There’s also a question of literacy – 50 per cent of the market can’t type information on their phone, so NFC can reduce the amount they have to type. “There’s a business case and a compelling reason to use NFC in these markets,” he adds. “The key is to keep it simple.”

Fundamo and Accells are also using standard mobile handsets equipped with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) stickers, rather than phones with NFC chips built into them. “It will be one or two years before we see low-cost NFC phones, but we can use an NFC sticker on the handset,” Ortwein tells Mobile Marketing. “Our portfolio will allow parties to enter the market more quickly with a lowcost solution.”

Flawed model He adds that operators and banks are building their business models around the NFC device, but cautions that this is a flawed model. “In 2014, there will be around 150m NFC-enabled devices, with 50 per cent of them in Asia. That leaves just 80m handsets for the rest of the world. In Germany, that would mean around 2m NFC phones or 5 per cent penetration. It will take another five to six years before NFC penetration is at a high level,” he says. Ortwein adds that everyone is searching for the right NFC

June 2011

business model. “There are so many questions for service providers – what handsets are available? Where are the security elements and who protects them? I think operators will struggle with the challenges to build an NFC ecosystem, while managing the technological complexities around it.” Kony’s Eads agrees. “The feeling was that banks or mobile operators would make money from NFC transactions, but it looks as if someone else will be taking the pie,” he says. But SJB’s Clark says that compelling applications could be offered in developed markets. Technology company Gentag, for example, has developed a system that allows patients with chronic medical conditions (such as diabetes) to monitor their health using an NFC handset and medical patch with an embedded wireless sensor. Clark thinks that, rather than developing NFC services and then seeing if consumers want them, NFC service providers should target certain demographics and offer a package of services. “Take business travellers. Imagine if your NFC handset could be used to make payments and check-in at the airport?,” she says. “And what if your hotel could send an electronic door key to your handset before you arrive, allowing you to avoid the check-in queue on arrival? Or if you could exchange electronic business cards between handsets? I think quite a few people would pay for a service like that.” Indeed they might, and over the next 12-18 months, it should become clear where NFC fits in the mobile marketing value chain. And while no-one yet knows who the winners and losers will be, the only certainty is that there will be no shortage of companies scrambling for a slice of the NFC pie.

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business models

R I

N S

H G

A N

Making sense of mobile advertising O

O M L E T harder to fathom by the day. It’s growing like stink, but it’s also becoming T E R S

David Murphy attempts to steer a course through the choppy waters of mobile advertising

t the start of 2010, mobile advertising used to be pretty straightforward. You had publishers with mobile ad inventory to sell, usually on mobile websites. And you had advertisers, taking space on those sites. Bringing the two together were mobile ad networks. These fell into two camps. The first were premium ad networks, who sold inventory on behalf of specified publishers and sites, usually on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Then you had performance networks. They sold inventory for the “long tail” of mobile sites, typically

on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis, with the advertiser paying a set rate each time someone clicks on their ad. On a performance network, the advertiser could not specify the sites they wanted their ads to appear on, hence the term “blind” was often applied to these networks. Some allowed the advertiser to at least choose the channel (e.g. Sports sites, News sites), that their ads would appear in. These were called “semi-blind” networks. All of which still holds true today. It’s just that, in the last 18 months, things have got

June 2011

a lot more complicated, due to a number of factors. Firstly, the number of mobile ad networks out there has boomed, as companies see the possibility of making a lot of money as brands tap into the mobile channel. The second factor is the emergence of ad exchanges (aka supply-side platforms). These have sprung up out of the publisher’s desire to make some money out of their unsold inventory. The exchanges aggregate this inventory from multiple publishers, and sell it a lower rate than it would have gone for first time round.

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business models

In-app advertising The third factor is the explosion in the apps market over the past 18 months. The number of apps, combined with the number of people using them, has created a whole new market of mobile inventory within apps (inapp advertising), and some developers have made a lot of money from the ads contained within their free apps. The fourth factor is the emergence of an affiliate-style CPA (costper-acquisition) advertising model, where the advertiser pays only when the consumer completes a specified action, such as downloading an app, or signing up for something. While this is by no means common, one ad network, Sponsormob, sells all its inventory this way, and in the app space, the CPA (aka CPD for cost-per-download) model is growing in popularity. One ad network, madvertise, offers a service called kattapult, which offers advertisers a guaranteed top 25 listing in the App Store in a specific category, in a specific country. A fifth factor is the increasing sophistication of the ads themselves, with the basic banner evolving into rich media ads, including video and 3D, plus a variety of new calls to action, including click-to-call/ map/social media/Augmented Reality and

more. Finally, we are currently witnessing the emergence of the advertiser-side version of the exchange, in the form of the demandside platform. These offer advertisers the promise of highly targeted inventory, bought via the exchanges, at the keenest prices, using a real-time bidding (RTB) system. All of which risks making the mobile advertising marketplace look somewhat complicated, even prohibitive to new entrants, even if some of the developments, such as the evolution of mobile ad formats beyond the basic banner, are to be welcomed. So what to make of it all? Harald Niedhardt, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Smaato, concedes that things are getting complicated. “I have been saying for some time that easy is over,” he tells Mobile Marketing. “It started with the mobile web and then apps, and now we are in the middle of the next game-changer tablets. We want to make it easier for agencies to spend money in the right channel, but we are in the middle of a totally new industry, and in that situation, it is always hard to see what the biggest game-changing winner will be.” Christian Louca, managing director at mobile ad network ubiyoo, agrees. He says:

“The problem is that no-one is acting in the interests of the publisher. It’s all about getting the lowest possible price for the advertisers” Mark Slade, 4th Screen Advertising

Tablets could be the next game-changer in mobile advertising

“At the moment, the mobile advertising market is still an infant. As it matures, the market demand will dictate how technology providers position themselves to service this demand in the best possible way. This will not mean reinventing the wheel - this is the same model as online – but discovering innovations around the freedom the device brings when accessing information or services on the go is where mobile will differ. Mobile advertising is already mainstream we just don’t know it.” One thing that does seem clear, however, is that the emergence of the exchanges is driving the price of mobile ad inventory down. “The problem is that no-one is acting in the interests of the publisher,” says Mark Slade, managing director of premium ad network, 4th Screen Advertising. “It’s all about getting the lowest possible price for the advertisers, so they are all trading at $0.05-0.10 a click, and they never know how any clicks they are getting.” Slade adds that some of the performance ad networks are “trying to come upstream” with premium, CPM-based formats. “It’s a very competitive market, and I’m not sure how many of them will survive,” he says. Fanning the flames of this fire are the demand-side platforms (DSPs).These have only just begun to emerge in the last couple of months, so it’s too early to say what impact they will have, but Alex Rahaman, managing director of StrikeAd, the DSP that is making the most noise, makes a good case for their existence.

Labour-intensive He notes that the current process for buying mobile media is a very labour-intensive task, compared to what brands are used to online, with third-party ad serving platforms. The

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Beginners Start Here Buzz City CEO, KF Lai, offers a guide to the crazy world of mobile advertising

ypically, an ad network represents site owners and helps them to sell their sites as inventory – i.e. places where brands can advertise. An ad network makes it easier for site owners, as they effectively outsource their sales functions so they don’t have to have a global sales team. In fact, the smaller publishers generally don’t have a sales team. An ad network also makes it easier for advertisers, as they won’t have to manage multiple contracts with site owners when running large campaigns. Why are there lots of ad networks? As more content is deployed, more niche opportunities are created for advertising. These in turn lead to many different product packages, each with its own set of benefits. On some, you pay for clicks; on others, you pay for impressions, and on others still, you pay for an acquired customer. These (and more) exist because customers need many different outcomes from their campaigns. While as networks may be known by the different ways they package their products (blind, premium, performance etc.), they essentially represent the publisher.

More networks is good, right? Yes, and all this diversity also brings to the fore the need for a clearing house, just like a stock exchange model, that allows ad networks (and major publishers) to sell on their unsold products better - the ad exchange. Just as you can’t buy shares directly from the stock exchange, advertisers can’t buy direct from the ad exchanges; the buyers here are ad networks and agency buying desks. Ad exchanges have become popular due to the growth in digital advertising, and buyers and sellers wanting to generate additional revenue. Ad networks participate in the exchange by putting their publishers’ unsold inventory up for sale, and by buying relevant inventory on behalf of their advertisers. An ad exchange is seen by some as a much more efficient way to buy and sell inventory, avoiding the multiple ad network approach, and resultant cuts each ad network would take. Ad exchanges are designed to keep that from happening by finding the most value for available ad inventory, balanced with advertisers’ demand in getting the best deal. When a mobile exchange manages a collection of ad networks, it also manages a large amount of data on consumers that enables it to improve its algorithms to better predict where ads will work best. Ad exchanges provide advanced tools that allow an advertiser to improve the concurrent campaigns run on many ad network accounts.

Demand-side platforms But it’s not just about the publisher making money – there’s still the advertiser, represented by the mediabuying agency, who wants to get the best deal for the placement of their ads. The demand-side platform (aka buying-side platform) helps the media buyer pay the right amount of money for the right audience. This means not only connecting to ad exchanges, but also to data exchanges or third-party data to allow yet more analysis of the value and desirability of ad impression opportunities. This is then matched against budgets and campaign rates across all media sources, in order to deliver the most effective campaigns. So what does all this mean? It means that a well-considered media strategy is important. An advertiser can feasibly work directly with an individual site (perhaps for custom brand activation or sponsorship); an ad network (because it focuses on the relevant vertical); and an ad exchange (because its relatively large size allows an advertiser to explore many small niches of opportunities across the mass market). With this level of online buys, the advertiser will probably be working with an agency that uses a demandside platform (possibly supported by third-party consumer data and other tools) to make sure the best rates are paid for the right media.

Brands are using mobile to engage with the youth market, using click-to-social media as a call to action

June 2011

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business models

“There is a lot of hype promoting DSPs, but I have not seen evidence of one working properly yet, with a real-time bidding system in place” James Connelly, Fetch

In-app advertising barely existed twoyears ago, but now offers developers a key revenue source

advertiser has to email or upload banner ads to each network, then consolidate separate spreadsheets with campaign metrics from each network to marry up the delivery against the event the advertiser was trying to create. It means the advertiser has to do a lot more work to spend a lot less money, compared with other media. By contrast, StrikeAd’s platform consolidates the inventory available to advertisers via the ad exchanges – namely, Smaato, NexAge, AdMeld and Mobclix - and then presents it in a dashboard view, where the media buyer can create a plan, look for the type of person they are trying to target, then buy that media across different sources. Once the campaign is running, they can see in real-time how it’s performing, and adjust it on the fly. “It gives the advertiser a lot more control and visibility of what they are doing, and it gives them access to billions of pages, through the exchanges,” says Rahaman. “We can plug into the exchanges, and for the first time, bid on individual impressions on a real-time basis.” However appealing the DSP model looks, however, it is very early days for the concept. “DSPs aggregating across ad networks currently play no significant role in continental Europe, and I think it will be a couple of years before they hit the mainstream,” says Carsten Frien, CEO of mobile ad network, madvertise. James Connelly, managing director of mobile ad agency Fetch, concurs. He says: “There is a lot of hype promoting DSPs, but I have not seen evidence of one working properly yet, with real-time bidding in place.” And Rami Yared, managing director of mobile ad network adsmobi, questions whether the DSP concept is really all that new. He says: “We are working

In the UK, O2 is leading the way in SMS offers with its O2 More program

with the major DSP players, but it is really an automation of what already exists. As of now, the Smaato structure is a good example of a DSP; it’s just not labelled as such. The DSP model and real-time bidding is really just about exploiting the system to the max to get the most out of it.”

Greater transparency Away from networks, exchanges and DSPs, the biggest challenge facing the mobile advertising sector is measurement. “Greater transparency is still needed to drive greater investment in mobile,” says Paul Childs, COO at mobile ad network, Adfonic. “Advertisers expect to be able to measure campaign effectiveness with the same degree of clarity as online, and this is driving demand for post-click measurement and third-party ad tracking in mobile. We also need to develop industry-standard models to measure engagement, such as post-click video engagement, to provide brands with genuine visibility of the performance of a click-tovideo campaign.” Childs also wants to see some form of vetting for mobile publishers to certify that they have been checked out and that they meet certain standards. “There is a lot of new mobile inventory that has not been exposed online, such as mobile social networks, apps and entertainment platforms,” he says. “These guys have not been audited, so there needs to be some kind of stamp of approval that says that our publishers are all safe, that there is some kind regular audit process. This is important for agencies, because most of the time, they are buying blind, and it needs to happen quickly in order to open up mobile ad spend.” Childs adds that he is confident that such a system will be in place before the year is out.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Ad formats When it comes to mobile ad formats, the last 12 months have all been about rich media. While there’s still a place for the basic banner, ad networks know that they have to offer rich media capabilities in order to attract big-name advertisers, who are looking to deliver the same levels of engagement on mobile as they do in other channels. “We are seeing more interaction between the brand and the user,” says adsmobi’s Yared. “We are using HTML5 banners to deliver an interactive experience, so the

the banners like this, it becomes much more fun to click on them, and if people think it’s cool, they will spend more time with it, so we need to focus on the post-click experience.” Niedhardt’s words strike a chord with Shaheen Kazi, director of product marketing at Velti, which runs mobile-based CRM campaigns for brands and operators. She says: “Mobile does not end at the click; this is only the beginning. The true value of mobile comes from long-term engagement with the consumer and a value exchange, where the mobile delivers information, utility

“Easy is over…we are in the middle of a totally new industry, and in that situation, it is always hard to see what the biggest game-changing winner will be” Harald Niedhardt, Smaato

user clicks on it and it expands the width and height. In fact, with HTML5, you can do almost anything.” Social media is also proving increasingly popular as a call to action. “We are seeing a lot of brands linking to social networks through their mobile campaigns,” says 4th Screen’s Slade. “Connecting to Facebook from a mobile ad makes a lot of sense, because Facebook is so popular on mobile.” Adfonic’s Childs concurs. “We are seeing some really effective campaigns that make use of multiple calls to action,” he says. “One recent film promotion used social media, HTML5 and video, directing traffic to a dedicated Facebook page, HTML site and video clip of the trailer.” Smaato’s Niedhardt is encouraged by this trend. “It is good to see some brands now taking the view that mobile advertising is not a couple of banners, but the whole, post-click experience,” he says. “[Apple]’s iAd format has been a big catalyst for this, because you can click on an ad and maybe change the colour of the car. When you can interact with

and retention of the customer through the delivery of value.” And on the subject of delivering real value through mobile, location-based ads remain as popular as ever, particularly when tied in with money-off coupons delivered to the phone. “The whole ‘Daily Deals’ thing on mobile, tied in with geo-location, is extremely important,” says adsmobi’s Yared. “It makes sense for everyone – the advertisers, the publishers, but most of all, the consumers.” Despite all this innovation, however, Fetch’s Connelly cautions against forgetting the basics. “We are seeing a massive resurgence in the use of SMS as a mobile advertising medium,” he says. “There are lots of providers, but O2 is leading the way with its O2 More offering. SMS offers good open and conversion rates if targeted correctly.”

The future So what of the future? Given what’s happened in the last 18 months, the only thing that seems certain is that nothing is certain. There does seem to be a genuine recognition

June 2011

among mobile advertising practitioners that they need better metrics and better standards, and, as has been said for a long time, the process of buying mobile advertising needs to be made easier – something which StrikeAd and other DSPs aim to address. But however easy or hard it is to buy mobile advertising, as long as consumers continue to engage with it, through apps, mobile sites and social networks, sensible brands will have little choice but to do it anyway, on the basis that they have to go where their consumers go. Some are taking it further, like vehicle-maker Smart, whose eScooter concept uses an iPhone as the dashboard and satnav. Smaato’s Niedhardt believes this is an example of a company that has seen the future. “I love the eScooter concept, and I look too, at companies like Red Bull, becoming MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) in various countries. For companies like these, mobile advertising will become part of the process of telling the story on mobile about these products. This is where we are heading, to a world where the products around us will entail some interactivity with smartphones or tablets. Where your phone becomes your remote control for life, and at that point, budgets will increase 10-fold.” Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but given the exponential growth mobile is going through right now, it would be a brave man to argue too loudly against Niedhardt’s view of the world.

Smart’s eScooter concept vehicle uses an iPhone as its dashboard and satnav system

Please turn the page for a directory of selected mobile ad networks www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

mobile advertising

Type of business

Ad network marketplace

Mobile media agency

Ad network/mobile payments

LAUNCH DATE

July 2009

February 2010

January 2007

OPERATES

Worldwide

sales offices

London (HQ), New York, Paris, Seville

New York, London, Singapore

San Francisco, New York, Chicago, London, Singapore, Nairobi, Sydney, Bangalore, Berlin, Milan

blind/transparent

Blind

Transparent with Blind option

Semi-blind network

cpm/cpc/cpA(%)

10/90/0

n/a n/a n/a

10/90/0

In-app advertising?

Yes

ad formats

Banners, text links, interstitials, expandable banners, rich media

Standard banners, animated banners, expandable banners, text ads, interstitials, pre-roll videos, clickthrough actions (click to app store, iTunes, map, call, web, video)

3D, rich media, video, social media, banners, text, full range of MMA and IAB formats

targeting

Country, geo-location, platform, device, day-part, keywords, mobile operator, demographics, channels

Contextual, demographic, channel/ category, device, operating system, platform, carrier, geographic

Category, handset technology (e.g. manufacturer, device, OS), demographic, location-based

restrictions

No adult

None

No adult, culturally sensitive, political, offensive

min spend (US$)

None

n/a

no. of publishers/ siTes/apps

5,000+

20,000

10,000+

unique publishers

n/a

50%

monthly impressions

Total: 2.5bn US: n/a UK: n/a France: n/a Germany: n/a Italy: n/a Spain: n/a

Total: 20bn US: 6.7bn UK: 652.7m France: 307.7m Germany: 1.1bn Italy: 96.2m Spain: 177.2m

Total: 35bn US: 6.8bn UK: 725m France: 186m Germany: 574m Italy: 103m Spain: 274m

average fill rate

n/a

3 recent advertisers

Booking.com, Tesco, Mazda

Skype, Google, O2

Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Emirates

contact address

nicola.reed@adfonic.com

alexander@adsmobi.com

marketing@InMobi.com

they say

Adfonic is Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only locallyheadquartered global mobile advertising marketplace, and the fastest-growing marketplace, with over 5,000 publishers within its network, generating earnings from an average of 3,000 live ad campaigns per month.In addition to advanced targeting capabilities and extensive reach for advertisers, and leading iOS & Android SDKs for publishers, we offer end-to-end transparency, with real-time reporting, analytics and post-click measurement including app install tracking and conversion tracking for mobile sites.

adsmobi is a global player. Many mobile ad networks have a regional focus, but through our partnership with Smaato, adsmobi is able to serve ads in more than 220 countries worldwide. We offer extensive targeting options, including geographic, demographic, device, channel/category, and contextual. We offer traditional (CPC and CPM) campaigns, as well as new types such as Costper-download (CPD) or Cost-perranking (CPR), for the promotion of apps. We also offer new rich media formats such as expandable, interstitial, and video.

InMobi, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest independent mobile ad network, is a performance-based network which helps publishers monetize their inventory and advertisers reach their audience. Unlike other mobile ad networks, InMobi has massive scale to over 314m consumers through 35.3bn impressions monthly, mobile technology expertise in ad serving, mobile payments, and developer monetization, and real-time post-click ad optimization technology, which helps connect publishers, advertisers, developers, and consumers around the globe.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Ad Network

Ad optimisation platform

Ad network

May 2006

August 2005

December 2006

2005

US and Europe

Worldwide

Hamburg, San Francisco, Singapore

Berlin, San Francisco

UK, France, Germany, Austria, Spain

Premium Blind

Transparent with Blind option

Blind

Both

n/a

Minority/Majority/0

0/0/100

98/1.5/0.5 (Open network); 1/99/0 (Performance network)

Yes

A broad suite of banner, rich media and interactive video ads

Animated banners, clickthrough actions (click to app store, iTunes, map, call, web, video), expandable banners, interstitials, pre-roll videos, standard banners, text ads

Text ads, banners, HTML5-based rich media ads for smartphones and iPad, Flash-based banners for Android tablets. Dimensions: standard MMA sizes, smartphonespecific sizes e.g. (e.g. 320 x 48, 320 x 50), standard web sizes for tablets (e.g. 728 x 90). Calls-to-action: redirection to (mobile) website, redirection to mobile application store, click to call

HTML 5 layer banner, slideshow expandable banner, flip interstitial, video banner, expandable banner, standard banner, text banner

‘Mobiblocks’, demographic, audience, local market, tactical (carrier, device operating system, app/ browser), day part, run of network, channel

Contextual, demographic, channel/ category, device, operating system, platform, carrier, geographic

Country and city, mobile carrier, internet service provider when using wi-fi, operating system, operating system version, device brand, device model, screen size, feature phone vs. smartphone vs. tablet, day/time of day

Country, demographic, age & gender, location, time & date, device, platform, site-specific (Open network only), operator, IP targeting

No adult, violent, offensive

No adult

No adult, gambling or religious

None

1,000

None

12,000+ sites and apps

20,000+

2,000+

1000s

n/a

None

98% (Open network); n/a (Performance)

Total: 23bn US: n/a UK: n/a France: n/a Germany: n/a Italy: n/a Spain: n/a

Total: 20bn+ US: On request UK: On request France: On request Germany: On request Italy: On request Spain: On request

Total: 1bn US: n/a UK: n/a France: n/a Germany: n/a Italy: n/a Spain: n/a

Total: 1.5bn US: 500m UK: 450m France: 50m Germany: 340m Italy: 1m Spain: 160m

n/a

Up to 90%

100%

n/a

McDonalds, Hyundai, Kellogg’s

The Economist, Nestlé, Skype

Groupon, Gameloft, iLove

Google, Dior, HP

marketing@millennialmedia.com

sales@smaato.com

talya@sponsormob.com

christian.louca@yoc.com

Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising and data company. We are committed to growing the mobile advertising marketplace by becoming the preferred partner to advertisers seeking to reach mobile consumers, app and media developers seeking to maximize ad revenue, and mobile operators seeking to further monetize their networks. The company has produced more than 43 reports on mobile advertising in the past three years. View them here: www.millennialmedia.com/research

Smaato provides ‘Ads for Apps’, via its leading mobile advertising optimization platform called SOMA (the Mobile Ad Cloud). More than 20,000 app developers and premium publishers have signed up with Smaato to monetize their content in 220+ countries, and to manage more than 20bn ad requests per month. SOMA aggregates 60+ leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile ad revenues. Through an open API and the widest range of SDKs, SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners and third party ad technology providers.

Sponsormob is an international, mobile CPA network whose goal is to expand the concept of performance-based marketing into mobile advertising, via the mobile web. Sponsormob’s CPA model enables its advertisers to benefit from lowrisk, performance-based advertising that delivers results. Sponsormob also enables publishers and affiliates to generate revenue from their mobile traffic. In addition, developers can advertise their mobile apps through the network or generate income by advertising within their free apps.

We are Europe’s leading full-service mobile solution provider, with the largest premium network in Europe. We were the first ad-network to launch HTML5 advertising in Europe.

Baltimore (HQ), London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Boston

June 2011

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

All ADvERtiSing iS unWAntED, So iF you ARE going to

CRASH tHE PARty, BRing SomE CHAmPAgnE* Bob thacker, senior vice president of marketing and advertising, officemax

sparkle to your ideas, leverage engagement and * Add create fun for your customers through technology. Welcome to the world of ad:tech london... Discover the universe of digital marketing: • What’s next in social and mobile marketing • Boost your digital know-how with 120+ free seminars • 170+ worldclass exhibitors

21-22 September 2011

the event for digital marketing

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

DEV ZONE With the explosion in tablet devices, Nic Newman, managing director (EMEA) at TigerSpike, offers advice to brands looking to publish content on tablets

artner recently estimated that worldwide tablet sales will grow from 69m in 2011 to almost 300m in 2015. While the tablet market is still very much in its infancy, the publishers we work with are now getting a better idea of what they and their consumers want, and we are beginning to see some clear trends emerge around what works and what doesn’t.

Unique user interface and user experience In a world where content is becoming ubiquitous, a unique user experience will make your app stand out. That said, you don’t want to create too much complexity, so that consumers have to learn a new interface for each media application they use. The user interface needs

to remain intuitive, rather than just create complexity, whilst still standing out from the crowd. It’s a fine balance to try and get right,

publishers can make sense of the mass of tweets, status updates and comments around any given story. Consumers do not just want

but it’s worth the effort Two examples of iPad applications we’ve developed, both with very different user interfaces, are Eureka (for The Times) and The Economist. Eureka was designed to showcase the full potential of the iPad and contains a truly unique navigation experience, whereas the user interface for The Economist was designed to offer the same immersive, lean-back experience that you get with the newspaper. The key is that both are designed with the reader in mind. Publishers need to know their readers’ expectations and deliver content to them in a format that they will want.

a continuous stream, they want to be helped to filter the information.

Loyalty over downloads It’s been reported recently that both Google and Apple have altered their app store ranking algorithms to incorporate loyalty, or ‘stickiness’. So, a lot of clients want to know how they promote re-use, create loyalty and run CRM campaigns. What if, for example, people could choose to follow a story in a magazine throughout the week after it was first published? Think of an article on the death of Osama Bin Laden, where you can follow the story as it develops through an infographic or word cloud, which lets you know how the story is developing and brings in different people’s opinions about the story. There are a lot of stories that could fit into this model. That brings us onto the addition of social features - helping readers to see what people are saying about certain stories out there in the world. The key challenge is how

June 2011

Going multi-platform Publishers often ask what technology they should use to go multi-platform, while keeping an eye on costs. The majority of the “quick-and-easy” multi-platform development frameworks that help publishers to reduce cross-platform development costs are, we feel, not quite there yet in terms of being able to provide the rich feature support and slick user interface required to make an application truly stand out from the crowd. An alternative approach is to blend native code with HTML5 to create a hybrid app for each platform. This approach makes it easier to launch apps across various devices, while playing to the strengths of native apps. We often help publishers create application roadmaps that look one or two years into the future, and we’ve found that our clients are as focused on business models as on technical differences when it comes to weighing up the various smartphone and tablet platforms. Publishers are waiting for the other platforms to make it as easy to monetise apps as Apple have, but no one’s quite worked it out yet. The iPad, Motorola Xoom, and BlackBerry PlayBook are already here, with the HP TouchPad, and many others, just around the corner. Gartner recently forecast that the iPad’s challengers will not really dent Apple’s domination of the tablet market for another 12 months, but beyond this, Android and BlackBerry will begin to catch-up, as both platforms continue to gain traction with application developers.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

Building mobile David Murphy talks to Incentivated MD Jonathan Bass about the company’s 10 years at the mobile marketing coalface

onathan Bass has waited a long time for the mobile revolution to happen. The company launched in 2001 and since then, has been chipping away, developing its own technology, and a series of award-winning campaigns for clients as diverse as M&S, British Airways and the NSPCC. For Bass, mobile marketing’s tipping point came towards the end of 2009. “It was then that clients stopped asking ‘Why mobile?’ and started questioning ‘How mobile?’” he says. “They wanted to know what best practice looked like and how to formulate a strategy for the medium. Around half the population is now accessing the mobile internet on a regular basis, double that of last year.”

Brand refresh Taking this cue from the market, Bass and his team refreshed the company last month, with a clearer business focus for itself and its customers. “Our new branding and strap line of ‘Building Mobile’ helps us to

communicate this. It feels like a great time to be in this sector, as macro factors come together to make this the decade of mobile” he tells Mobile Marketing. He is justifiably proud of the work his company does, and the technology it has developed. “Companies in this market seem to be lumped together, whereas they do very different things,” he says. “We are in marketing services, giving our clients access to the technology whilst also doing some wonderfully creative stuff as well. Our servers are running round the clock making our clients money. However, without a diverse set of skilled individuals onsite, this would not be possible.” Focusing on marketing and eCommerce budgets enables the company to deliver everything a client would need from its own resources. “Working directly with clients, and not relying on anyone else for delivery, is fun. We understand the technology inside out, and our answers are honest ones; if all we did was develop iPhone apps, then we would be conflicted.”

solutions, from a free-to-receive mobile soap opera, to collection of gas and electricity meterreadings by text – the truly innovative services always have customer utility at their heart,” he explains. “We do not shy away from a challenge, and this is why we have developed our technology in-house. Our database of mobile handset capabilities is proprietary and maintained daily; our mobile internet site publishing and analytics tools use our own code; and our messaging platform has had 10 years of development go into it. I do not believe that anyone has a more comprehensive or Incentivated is helping customers to manage their domestic power use

17:30

Ground-breaking solutions Over the past 10 years, Incentivated has done some great work, and Bass is keen to pass on some of the credit to the firm’s clients. “They can be highly adventurous, and have allowed us to develop ground-breaking

Sponsored Feature June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

King of Shaves makes sales through Incentivated’s mCommerce solution

capable platform. I could go on, but put simply, we really, really know our stuff.” Of course, there is no shortage of app developers willing to build you a single native app, but Bass questions how many of them have the skills to develop for all operating systems, and to develop apps that integrate with the client’s back-office systems; booking engines, payment gateways and Single Customer View databases etc., in a resilient manner, and supported round the clock. Interestingly, given how far mobile has come in the past decade, Bass says he believes we are “back at the beginning” of its evolutionary process.

Make it Inclusive Bass has a firm belief that mobile marketing should be inclusive all platforms, technologies and manufacturers. “Resorting to a ‘one-size-fits all’ mobile presentation layer that your existing desktop CMS happens to allow, or not as the case may be, will result in something that dam-

“By that, I mean we have gone beyond Gartner’s ‘trough of disillusionment’ for each and every mobile marketing format” he explains. “Clients recognise that mobile includes a bit of all the usual suspects, broadly; enterprise messaging, mobile internet and apps, with the odd QR code sprinkled on top. The teams that make up a client’s marketing department (acquisition, CRM/loyalty and eCommerce, for example) all use, or have the potential to use, mobile to a greater or lesser degree.

to use within their CRM activity, or even manage it for them,” says Bass. “We love a good old text-to-win sales promotion, especially when there is a social media twist added and it reaches millions of people, but the real value comes from the mCommerce sites and apps or enterprise messaging solutions that we deploy for clients behind the scenes and which have become business critical. “The money is in data, CRM and mCommerce. Providing customer

Advances will come from these teams working together and integrating mobile into ‘traditional’ marketing processes, rather than having to make a special case for its use.”

value: even something as elegantly simple as the order-bySMS school nametapes activity for M&S. Campaigns Incentivated’s work includes mobile sites, apps, campaigns and are cool, but services for brands as diverse as Jaguar Cars, Macmillan Cancer Support and Lloyds Bank services are where the big ROI figures are for enthusiasm at what’s in the client. As for the internet, store for Incentivated over mobile marketing has been a the coming decade. revolution in commerce, rather “We have achieved everything than advertising.” that we have done so far with It’s hard to find a chink in his almost no external funding,” enthusiasm, but it’s there, if he says. “It might be time to you ask him about the biggest turbo-charge the business model mistakes brands make on mobile. now and raise some new equity. “There are three,” he says. We have worked out how we can “Transcoding their website for grow the company to 100-200 mobile as opposed to developing personnel, and it would be imit properly (unless they have no mensely satisfying to do so. It internal IT resource whatsoever would be rewarding to our loyal and this is simply the only opstaff as well to manage the extra tion); building a native app when people and projects.”

Global customer reach Incentivated sells primarily to UK- headquartered clients, but as these companies have operations all over the world, the campaigns and services it builds and runs are being accessed by consumers globally and 24/7.

“campaigns are cool, but services are where the big ROI figures are” “We’ve built apps for retailers, sites for government departments, and we licence our messaging platform to FMCGs ages your brand on the majority of handsets. Consumers have seen great mobile sites, and will blame the brand, not their handset or network, if the site looks OK on a top-end phone but looks rubbish on theirs (one of the 61 per cent not classified as ‘smart’). “I apologise for the fragmented nature of the industry but this is

not an excuse to be lazy, especially when progressive enhancement techniques are readily available. “Don’t get me wrong,” he adds. “I love the iPhone, but until everyone has one - and such luminaries as Mary Meeker predict that the iPhone will plateau soon at about 15 per cent ownership - a brand cannot generate the reach that it

Sponsored Feature June 2011

a cross-platform web-app would deliver the same functionality for a similar budget but reach everyone; and finally, ignoring SMS, believing it to be somehow old-fashioned, boring or ‘not creative’. 2m people respond to an SMS call-to-action each month and many, many more receive delivery confirmations as well as other customer service text messages every day.” Having got that off his chest, however, he is back to positive thinking, looking ahead with

needs without delivering mobile marketing to every device. It is easy to do so, and so why not go the extra mile and make a real difference to your brand by being inclusive? If you look at the big players (BBC, Twitter, Facebook etc.) they serve different presentation layers depending upon the device in use.”

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

TALKING EXPONENTIALLY Mobile marketing veteran Russell Buckley, recently appointed CMO at Eagle Eye Solutions, offers a personal take on the future for mobile marketing

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

here are two great difficulties involved in looking at the future of technology. The first is pretty easy to understand, but the second takes some time to get your mind around. Let’s start with the easy one. Everyone knows that it’s very difficult to get a sense of perspective when you’re involved in unfolding events, to step back and see the forest and not the trees. This can be observed in many areas of our lives, from the student getting obsessed with exam results that no one will subsequently ever ask about, to the great quote by Harry Warner, Hollywood legend, one of the Warner Brothers and “Founder of the Talkies”. Yet, in 1925, just two years before Warner Brothers released the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, it is claimed that he said: “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” If a genius of his industry can’t appreciate the historical megatrend going on when he’s in the midst of it, what hope for us lesser mortals?

Exponential growth The second reason is more specific to how technology grows. It grows exponentially - not a straightforward concept in the first place, as the human brain has evolved to think about linear growth. This means that we tend to think back about progress in the last few years and assume that this rate will continue for the next two. However, exponential growth in this context means that progress doubles every year. Here’s a great analogy that helped me get my head around the concept: Imagine a magic drop of water that doubles in size every minute - exponentially. You’re at a large stadium, like Wembley, and this magic drop of water is placed in the middle of the pitch at precisely 12 noon.

What time would this drop take to flood the whole stadium right to the very top seat, where you are sitting? The answer is at 12:49pm - so that’s less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. But even more interestingly, even as late as 12:45 pm, the stadium is still 93 per cent empty of water. The water only really fills the stadium in the last four minutes. For the vast majority of the time, you would see nothing, since the progress is ‘below the grass’. Then in the last four

Firstly, it’s now clear that we’re heading for a post-PC society. I’ve been writing for the last seven years that “the mobile will do to the PC, what the PC did to the mainframe”. In other words, PCs won’t disappear, but for most of us, all digital access will soon be via the mobile, all of the time. I can assure you that this seemed somewhat unlikely when I first started saying it, but exponential growth has seen this view now endorsed by the giants of the computing industry, from Steve Jobs to Eric Schmidt.

minutes, you would drown, even if you were sitting in the topmost seat of the stadium. In terms of thinking about mobile then, if progress is doubling every year, and we’re well into the exponential curve now, it makes the next phase very hard to predict and make sense of. What we instinctively think may take years, may now only take months - and this is going to grow ever faster.

Admittedly, we don’t quite have the tools to say, compose a document or create a spreadsheet on our mobiles today. But that is going to change very quickly, thanks to the kinds of growth we’re talking about. We also have the driving factor that in many countries, mobile internet penetration is already much higher than PC penetration, and this will accelerate the development of tools for the post-PC generation. As an example, according to On Device Research, in India, 59 per cent of mobile internet users don’t have any access to the web

Fundamental impact Still not convinced? If we assume the same rate of progression in the last 25 years or so, the mobile of the future (or whatever replaces it) will be about 1bn times more powerful and 10,000 times smaller, according to Ray Kurtzweil, one of the leading thinkers in this whole area. This is clearly going to have a fundamental impact on humanity as a whole, as well as our little corner of the world known as mobile marketing. When you have today’s mobile device shrunk to the size of a red blood cell, and at the same time, you factor in the fact that it’s many times more powerful than the human brain, the consequences are really unimaginable. In the meantime though, let’s explore what that means for those of us involved in mobile marketing in the immediate future.

“IF PROGRESS IS DOUBLING EVERY YEAR, AND WE’RE WELL INTO THE EXPONENTIAL CURVE NOW, IT MAKES THE NEXT PHASE VERY HARD TO PREDICT AND MAKE SENSE OF. WHAT WE INSTINCTIVELY THINK MAY TAKE YEARS, MAY NOW ONLY TAKE MONTHS”

In India, 59 per cent of mobile internet users don’t have any access to the web via PC

June 2011

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

via PC. This will lead to huge numbers of people clamouring for their mobiles to give them equal functionality to the rest of the world, and drive innovation, both locally, and then also in more developed markets. So, the good news for us mobilists is that the whole of the PC industry is coming to join us on our devices. It also means that mobile marketing is going to be synonymous with digital marketing generally within the next five years.

to break away from the pack. All these will happen - as well as developments we can’t even

Radical thinking The second area of opportunity for mobile marketing involves thinking radically. Tomorrow isn’t going to be constrained by today’s limitations; just because it can’t be done right now doesn’t mean that it won’t be possible next Augmented Reality has the potential to be a truly year. Some immeditransformative technology ate examples of this might be the nascent 3D displays guess at - and much sooner than that are starting to be launched; you might think. Augmented Reality, which By the time you read this, has the potential to be a truly you’ll see that I’ve placed my transformative technology; and latest bet on mobile vouchers. mobile coupons and payments But there are many, many oppor- still a multi-billion dollar tunities today, as there always industry waiting for someone are at times of seismic change.

The final trend that we need to think about is the implications of everyone always carrying a very powerful connected computer with them at all times - or what we call a smartphone these days. It’s really only in the last five years that citizens started accessing the mobile web on feature phones, and really only a recent trend that more mainstream consumers joined in on smartphones at any scale. This is going to be very disruptive for many businesses, ranging from bricks and mortar retailers to content publishers of all kinds, including books, audio, film and news. As an example, already, 10 per cent of shoppers use their smartphones to compare pricing in-store, according to Experian. This is clearly just the start, and retailers are going to have to develop new strategies to cater for a society that is 100 per cent price transparent. Doubtless, some retailers will try to ban consumers using their phones in this way, despite the lesson from history that prohibition of any kind never works.

Mobile coupons and payments are a potential multi-billion dollar industry in the making

Canny retailers, on the other hand, will find a way to work in this transformed business arena, from creating their own exclusive, desirable products (which can’t be price-compared) to emphasising service and instant gratification over and above waiting for the product to be delivered by an mCommerce competitor. And they’ll also ensure that they have strong mCommerce plays of their own to compete aggressively in this channel too.

Always connected This mega-trend of being always connected will also have social networking implications. How do we connect with our brand fans and get them to spread the word about us? Do they get rewarded for this type of behaviour, and if so, how? Or does the wise marketer just stand back, get out of their customers’ way, and simply provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs as brand advocates? Marketing in the last 15 years has seen massive and dramatic changes. Who would have forecast, for example, in 2000 that UK digital advertising would be bigger than TV spending within the decade? And yet, throughout that decade, and especially in the early days, pundits were regularly questioning if it was ever going to take off all. So it has been with mobile marketing - how many times have you read someone asking: “When will the year of mobile marketing finally arrive?” But what these critics fail to understand is the power of exponential growth, and that’s why mobile marketing is going to be such a big winner. To some of us, it’s clear that the digital revolution was just a dress rehearsal for the real opportunity. Step forward, mobile marketing.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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the real world

p st

ets ar hands o pu l

in Germany

Cheap handset deals have created a boom in smartphone users across Western Europe in the past 15 months. Now, the continent may benefit from taking a few lessons from the US mobile advertising model, experts opine. Martin Conway reports

he current recession may be forcing European consumers to tighten their belts and cut back on their spending in some area, but expenditure on mobile usage, far from plummeting, remains constant. Figures released by digital market analyst comScore highlight that, between March 2010 and 2011, the mobile market actually grew by 2.2 per cent across the ‘EU5’ bloc of Western European countries - the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain - with notable increases recorded in the number of female users (up by 3.6 per cent) and users aged over 55 years (rising by 10.8 per cent over the 12 months in question). From a mobile marketing perspective, the most encouraging area of growth concerned smartphone purchases, which rose from 38.8 per cent in March 2010 to 53 per cent by the end of

Q1 this year – a massive leap for such a short timeframe. The reasons for this growth would appear to be cheaper package deals and roaming rates. Christian Henschel, director of partner development at mobile marketing publisher and app developer madvertise, tells Mobile Marketing: “Currently, you can purchase a mobile data flat-rate for approximately €10 a month, and smartphones have become affordable for almost everyone – most of the time they are given out for free in conjunction with mobile contracts.” This has led to a rise in mobile advertising campaigns in some European quarters, he continues, claiming: “Many advertisers have shifted their budgets to mobile, as they realised that mobile advertising is an affordable and efficient way to reach their target audiences. This is due to

The BlackBerry Curve is one of t

m o

Focus on Western Europe

less wastage, which is achieved by more precise forms of targeting, such as locationbased advertising.” On the surface, then, the Western European market would appear to be bearing up well; some commentators might even describe last year’s growth as a case of ‘business as usual’. After all, alongside its American cousins, Western Europe could safely be described as a mature market, and therefore, unlike those continents in the developing world, firmly on the case

when it comes to innovative new methods of mobile advertising…couldn’t it? As with any continent, however, there is always the risk of overlooking distinct consumer patterns in individual countries in favour of the landmass as a whole, and

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Location-based services are popular with European consumers

mass mobile adoption alone does not guarantee a uniform, easy ride for mobile marketers who are attempting to crack what can prove to be a complex and fragmented territory.

Highs and lows Jeremy Copp, VP for mobile, Europe at comScore, reveals some interesting statistics: “In Germany, smartphones’ reach is 27.7 per cent - nowhere near as popular as in other parts of EU5. The market with the high-

publishing specialist TigerSpike, explains: “We’d tend to break the global markets into three tiers: Tier 1 being Korea and Japan; Tier 2 comprising the UK and US; and Tier 3 covering Italy, France, Germany and Spain.” His view is backed by Paul Childs, COO at mobile ad network Adfonic, who tells Mobile Marketing: “The UK leads the EU in terms of being driven for mobile advertising. On a practical level, all of the ad networks have some form of agency presence in London, and the main revenue drive remains in the UK – according to the Internet Advertising Bureau [IAB], one in every four pounds of advertising spend in the UK is being spent

EU5’s alive Tracking mobile user growth patterns across the EU5 nations Audience (millions) Male Female 13-17 (age) 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+ Total (13y.0+)

March 2010 114.7 113.8 16.1 25.6 40.3 46.3 40.1 60.1 228.5

March 2011 115.6 117.9 15.9 25.1 40.4 44.0 41.5 66.6 233.5

(Source: comScore)

est smartphone penetration is Spain, with 39.8 per cent reach, though the UK follows closely behind with 39.2 per cent reach.” comScore’s figures also indicate that German users are least likely to access social networks or blogs via their mobiles, with just 13.3 per cent of the country’s user base doing so, compared to 30.2 per cent in the UK and 19.5 per cent in France. Alternatively, while it is tempting to group the EU5 nations together as the most representative cache of Western European mobile activity, not all players agree. Nic Newman, managing director for EMEA at mobile marketing and digital

online. Germany is probably just behind the UK, with Italy, France and Spain following.”

Model behaviour With this in mind, cutting the UK from the equation provides a slightly different picture of activity across the region. For example, although there has been much media hype about the UK beginning to trail the US in Android sales, this trend does not necessarily translate to the remaining EU5 states. comScore identifies Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic and 6400 models as the main adversaries slugging it out with the iPhone4 for top honours in Western Europe,

with the BlackBerry Curve 8250 smartphone – a strong seller in Germany – and iPhone models following closely behind. However, while conceding that iOS has taken off well across the EU5 states, madvertise’s Henschel adds: “From what we’ve seen in our network statistics, Android is already as big as iOS in Germany, while over half the traffic generated in Switzerland is by iPhone. Android has proven a real growth driver, with above-average growth rates. Apple opened the door for smartphones and tablets in Europe, and will continue to hold a large share in the tablet market, but we’re also excited to see which other tablet PCs will step into the iPad’s footsteps.” Antonia Neubauer, business development director at Germany-based mobile agency Yoc, says that: “Western European markets are harder to impress because they have seen and done more than Eastern European countries. This holds true for mobile, but even more for classical media,” she says. “SMS campaigns, which are very successful in Latin American markets, are not working very well in Western European markets any more. “However, mobile consumers are impressed by innovative approaches such as rich media ad-

“SMS campaigns, which are very successful in Latin American markets, are not working in Western European markets any more” Antonia Neubauer, Yoc vertising formats, video advertising, location-based services/ advertising and mobile couponing. To be successful, campaigns should feature relevant content for the target group, and offer value-added content, interactivity and user engagement.” The question is whether all of the Western European states are ready to embrace these new ideas. TigerSpike has been heavily involved in mobile campaigns in France and Italy, having

Canal+ is one of the few French media companies to extend its brand onto the iPad

June 2011

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the real world

“Mobile ad spend in Europe is becoming increasingly linked to performance” Paul Childs, Adfonic

Handsets like the Samsung Wave have helped fuel rapid growth in smartphone penetration in Western Europe

attracted some 14,000 entries in an informational, multilingual TV and mobile campaign to promote the Peugeot 3308 brand, and securing 150,000 entries in a promotion on behalf of cat food manufacturer Whiskas, spanning Germany and France. However, when it comes to embracing mobile for publishing, Tigerspike’s Newman thinks France could do better. “French publishers are starting to question why they’re lagging behind the US in terms of publishing apps, and wondering why they can’t extend their brands over platforms such as the iPad,” he says. This contrasts with Yoc’s findings in Germany, where Neubauer identifies 11 of the 15 top publisher and broadcaster sites as currently boasting their own mobile apps. Similarly, while there has been a high take-up of QR codes in Italy, Newman claims that the large number of Italian telcos, with 14 majors competing in the market, has caused a great deal of fragmentation, making things more chaotic for mobile marketers who are looking to utilise these useful paths to mobile users. Stephen Upstone, VP, sales at Velti, says he is seeing an increasing move to emotional engagement with consumers, through the “gamification” of marketing programmes to increase engagement and drive revenue and loyalty goals for large corporate customers. “We have seen the mobile operators such as Orange and Vodafone, and media companies like The Daily Mail Group as early adopters of these techniques, but are discussing interest from retailers and retail banks for future campaigns,” says Upstone. “We also see a move to campaigns becoming more converged across mobile and online, SMS, IVR, mobile sites and apps. These

richer experiences drive more profitable results and better communications or branding opportunities, and currently form part of multi-million dollar investments in large programmes such as Recargy y Gana, run by Orange Spain.

Lessons from America

SMS mechanics to reach a wide target group. Also, mobile couponing is gaining importance in both in campaigns and in apps.” Yoc recently used QR codes for Sony’s 3D World Tour event, raising awareness of the tour stops on the electronics giant’s roadshow, and in another campaign conducted on behalf of optician Bausch & Lomb. Mobile owners were able to use their devices to scan QR codes in a selection of German women’s magazines, directing them to

Adfonic’s Childs also predicts that mobile advertising campaigns in Western Europe will, in time, come to emulate the US model, in providing a higher degree of third-party tracking. “Mobile ad spend in Europe is becoming increasingly linked to performance,” he says. “There are few successful brand Rich media campaigns are growing in popularity campaigns running that don’t have some sort of mea website where they could ter attached. Transparency is set obtain a coupon to be redeemed to become a big issue in the next for glasses, contact lenses and few years, and I think Western related products at participating Europe will also catch up with stores. Users could also search the US in exploiting rich media, for the closest store to their and geo-targeting - France and location, either by zip code search or GPS. There is little doubt that the EU5 nations will continue to grow, both in terms of mobile usage and adoption of cuttingedge technologies to facilitate mobile marketing. However, the rate at which individual countries adopt these solutions is bound to vary, proving that there is no such thing as a ‘united Europe’ when it comes Fierce competition in the Italian mobile to developing mobile marketing network sector is hampering the adoption of QR codes in the country campaign strategies. All the same, with explosive Germany will certainly buy growth recorded in Eastern Eumore into these areas.” Realrope, and a significant portion time bidding could also increase of ad spend being earmarked in popularity in the next few for mobile channels, this is one years, he hints. continent that won’t be afraid Yoc’s Neubauer says: “In to let marketers know exactly Germany, since December what they want, and how they 2010, many mobile marketing wish their campaigns to be campaigns have involved the use conducted. Be prepared to of QR codes, often supported by address to impress.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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business models

Mobile First

David Murphy talks to Google’s Ian Carrington about the company’s approach to mobile

hen then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt used his keynote at Mobile World Congress 2010 to tell the world that the company was now adopting a “mobile first” strategy, it was a defining moment. Here was a company that had made its name - and its fortune - on the web, giving its unequivocal backing to mobile as the next big thing. That was almost a year and a half ago, but while

Google clearly “gets” mobile, according to Ian Carrington, the firm’s director of mobile advertising sales and strategy, many businesses are still in a state of denial about it. “This is a consumer-led revolution, and businesses are not keeping up with it,” he says. “My role is to help businesses get up to

ers For v i l e D b o M Ad l Firm French Rai

t ch rail gian ency of Fren ag el that av tr 07 e onlin l site in 20 cf.com – the transactiona , ed is Voyages-sn im pt ile-o ched a mob th. s SNCF, laun tors per mon si internet user vi ue iq un 2m of its mobile ts nt ac ce tr r at e, pe ur 51 rt at pa th de ny found e day of The compa before, or th rvices to avel the day tr r delivering se fo r ts fo ke m iu ed m l book tic yagesea id e t. In 2010, Vo mobile is th ed them mos iPhone ne proving that ey an th of n ch he ith the laun precisely w w s er ce en om es st cu mobile pr creased its . sncf.com in to craft mobile site e th t s-sncf.com plemen with Voyage d ke email app to com or its w t e gl complemen to nloads, Goo w gy do te d e ra iv st dr To vertising twork, offere ed mobile ad its AdMob ne ith w e, e gl tiv oo a well-defin ns. G y of innova mmunicatio use a variet e marketing co sncf.com to sge nner, Googl ya ba Vo C r P C ity fo an , to a classic n er an opportun tio nn di ba l ad In multi-pane ad formats. paign an animated m d ca te e en Th . em l ad also impl an interstitia , and banner, and ers in France us ne expandable ho iP to in h is too. ac th re er d oa le to deliv required a br twork was ab in ne ds ob oa nl dM w A e eve 15,000 do the extensiv hi ac to ing tt ed hi cf.com aim ctations by Voyages-sn hed all expe e as er sm w p 00 ap but the these, 70,0 December, e month. Of . th ns ng io ri at ic du un nloads d comm 87,000 dow wsletters an , which customer ne by d 50,789 clicks te ed ra er ne liv ge de n ig pa sive AdMob cam g an impres The 10-day representin , ds oa nl w ,000 do generated 17 r cent. te of 33.5 pe ra on si conver

Carphone Warehouse Profits From Sitelinks Mobile phone retailer The Carphone Warehouse recently launched a mobile-optimised site. “Previously, if you searched for ‘carphone’ on your mobile, you’d have gone through to the dotcom site,” explains Carphone Warehouse head of online marketing, Gareth Jones. “We were selling through that, but that was more to do with the tenacity of the user to pinch, scroll and end up at the checkout.” Next, Carphone Warehouse worked closely with its agency, Efficient Frontier, to build a search campaign specifically for mobile, analysing results frequently to refine its keyword lists. In addition, it included a click-to-call number in its text ads. “Click-to-call is an important element of our paid marketing activity, because it’s clearly driving calls that are converting very efficiently for us,” says Jones. Next, the retailer began to explore new AdWords ad formats designed for mobile. Taking advantage of Mobile Ad Sitelinks, which allow an AdWords text ad appearing on a high-end mobile device to include two links to a site’s deeper content, The Carphone Warehouse included a link to its storefinder page. “That’s a clear multi-channel dynamic. You’re walking down the street, you fancy buying a phone, you need to know where The Carphone Warehouse is and you use your mobile search functionality to do that,” says Jones. The clickthrough rate for Mobile Ad Sitelinks was 312 per cent greater than mobile search activity where Sitelinks did not appear.

speed, and from what I see, it’s like the web 10-15 years ago, where CEOs didn’t think the web was for commerce. Mobile is already a

billion-dollar business for Google, and it’s growing quickly. Yet we’re still in the earliest chapters of the history of mobile. We see that 79 per cent of the websites of the 1,000 top advertisers aren’t

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Ian Carrington: “If you don’t have a mobile strategy in place by the end of 2011, you will be too late”

optimized for the mobile web; for smartphone users, that’s a bit like watching television in black and white.”

Key principles

The third principle is what Carrington calls “made for mobile”. This is the idea that mobile devices have unique characteristics such as portability, location-awareness, and of course, connectivity, that make it easy for users to engage with information conveniently, and at

on a device that they love and take everywhere with them,” he says. “Our tailored advertising solutions help marketers, developers, and publishers to take advantage of the special characteristics that mobile uniquely enjoys.” One simple example of this

a mobile site, to drive consumers to. On the app front, online grocery service Ocado employs Google Voice Search, and a barcode scanner in its iPhone app, to make the mobile shoppping experience rich, and at the same time simple, for its customers.

To help businesses take advantage of the opportunities presented by mobile, Google has developed an approach centred Mobile objectives around three key principles. While the stats (see panel) show The first is the idea of a seamthe massive growth in activity in less link between the desktop the mobile channel, Carrington and mobile. “Our aim is to is under no illusions that there help marketers and developremains a massive amount of ers extend the benefits of their work to do to convince brands to desktop advertising to users on use the channel. mobile devices, while easily “Most businesses do not yet and effectively have mobile objectives,” he 2010 f o r e uart third q te s managing their says. “Many of them develop ugh ra t in the n e c r ckthro e li p c 0 3 in 1 campaigns and ad an iPhone app because se d a e e p r c m nt in ks es ju per ce Sitelin search space across many the CEO thinks it would 0 d e 3 A il a b e o e il m ks se when t Mob Google Sitelin igns withou e CTR channels,” says be cool to have one, but in il d b A o e m il a brid ca m p h Mob ase in on a hy ns wit t incre Carrington. truth, mobile should be fully mobile ig n a e h CTR c p it r e m w Ca red mobil 1.5 pe compa e, an 1 o their The second integrated into whatever t g a d r e e r (CTR), v a comp e, on a principle is incluelse you are doing, and at erienc c campaign, sing p u x s e r s e iser ecifi dvertis nt globally Advert a mobile-sp sivity. “It’s hard to the same time, you need ogle a e o c n G r ig f e a n o p ber y 28 p they ru esktop cam he num obile grew b understand where specialist tactics to take t , d 0 + 1 e 0 il mob mber 2 to-call, on m the lines are between advantage of mobiled Dece n k c a li r e c e g ob devic en Oct cilitatin mobile PCs, tablets and specific features.” a Betwe tensions, fa n o we d ex ads vie ared to phone mobile; it’s all mergAnd he cautions that nth p m o o m r f m o c e n -o CTR, un-rat month verage ing,” says Carrington. brands that wait too early r a y in n b e 1 creas ga$ ts cent in “This means you have to long to go mobile will is seein eques -8 per 6 Google a e ly ad r e h s t s n o n r ig m offer advertisers a good, suffer the consee a n b p b m 1 m u a n c hone n re tha to-call ed mo rich experience across all quences. “If you out a p t Clickh a r it e w n igns rk ge r ago er ca m p a n e t wo y (12 p y a yea devices and all formats. don’t have a mobile b r n t o a n b M u m o d r o the A one c e AdM nd Ge cent) a Europe in th tries in up from just The medium is about more strategy in place by n r e u o p c 7 Nine stern 2010, nce (1 t), Fra om We than one device, one type the end of 2011, you ember r n f c e e s c t D r s e in (33 p reque da he UK t of ad of ad format, or one style will be too late,” t e n c e n c s ie r ie r e 60 p ex p e countr ork all re than 10 of ad campaign, so we offer Carrington tells Three o w t m e n e v 20 ro dMob cent) d in December n the A ts in 2010 advertising solutions across Mobile Marketing. o e p k o r r s eque rn Eu n e t wo in ad r Weste search, text, display, and “The analyst Mary e t in a s r ie h untr rowt cent g p 10 co more, on a wide variety of Meeker predicted that shipT h e to h a n 4 0 0 p e r rt devices, that enable businesses at work is ments of mobile would overtake greate and consumers to connect in click-to-call functionality as those of PCs in 2012, but in fact, newly relevant and effective the same a call to action on mobile adverit happened in 2010. Even the ways.” One example of this at time, create unique optising. This enables advertisers best brains in the business are work is Google’s mobile ad netportunities for brands. to use the channel to generate struggling to keep up with how work AdMob, which caters for “Mobile offers advertisers a new leads, even if they don’t fast mobile is growing. Attitudes mobile websites and iOS apps, unique opportunity to engage currently have a mobile propare changing, but not as fast as as well as Android apps. and resonate with consumers erty, in the form of an app or consumer habits are changing.”

k c a t t a t Sta

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best practice

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he Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2011, headline sponsored by Upstream, the global mobile marketing solutions provider, are off and running. Last year’s programme attracted almost 100 entries from across the mobile marketing ecosystem, with brands, agencies and mobile specialists rewarded for their efforts across 11 categories. This year, we have some new categories, and we hope to see some new brands taking part, but one thing won’t change, and that is our commitment to rewarding those campaigns, projects, platforms and mobile marketing initiatives that best meet our key criteria of effectiveness. We want to find, and recognise, the mobile applications, campaigns, websites and other promotions that have best succeeded in meeting campaign objectives, whether that’s to raise brand awareness, increase sales, or whatever the brand was seeking to do. For while some brands and agencies have been engaged in mobile marketing activity for several years, many remain to be convinced, and in our opinion, there is nothing more likely to convince a brand to go mobile than the sure and certain knowledge that it’s an effective marketing medium that delivers results. There are 17 categories this year, including eight new ones. The deadline for entries is 5pm (UK time), Friday 26 August 2011, and there is no fee to enter. The shortlist will be announced in September. Companies can submit multiple entries and, if they feel it’s appropriate, they can submit an entry into more than one category. For example, a Mobile Ticketing solution could feasibly be considered for the Most Effective mCommerce Solution award, and for the Most Effective Mobile Ticketing Solution award.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

The full list of categories is as follows: Most Effective Mobile Application â&#x20AC;&#x201C; b2c Most Effective Mobile Application â&#x20AC;&#x201C; b2b Most Effective Tablet Application Most Effective Mobile Advertising Campaign Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform/Network Most Effective Mobile Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign Most Effective Campaign from a Mobile Operator Most Effective mCommerce Solution Most Effective Mobile CRM/Enterprise Messaging Campaign Most Effective Location-based Service/Campaign Most Effective Mobile Couponing or Barcode Campaign Scan for category details Most Effective Mobile Site Most Effective Mobile Charity Campaign/Solution Most Effective Mobile Ticketing Solution Most Effective Mobile Payment Solution Most Effective Mobile Publishing Solution Most Effective Mobile Travel & Tourism Solution For sponsorship and table reservations please contact John Owen, tel +44 (0) 77696 74824 or john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com For more information, head for www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/awards Any queries, address them to: awards@mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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business models

ATTENTION TO DETAIL David Murphy talks to InternetQ’s chief commercial officer, Konstantinos Papoutsis, about what gives the company its edge

“ALTHOUGH WE ARE EVER MINDFUL OF THE BIG PICTURE, WE KNOW THAT IT’S THE ATTENTION WE PAY TO THE DETAILS THAT DRIVES THE HIGH PARTICIPATION AND REDEMPTION RATES FOR THE CAMPAIGNS WE DELIVER” Konstantinos Papoutsis, InternetQ

s the power and reach of mobile has grown dramatically over the last decade, right alongside, InternetQ has been one of the pioneers in the mobile marketing and entertainment industries, ever since its inception in 2000. The company provides mobile marketing services to mobile operators, media networks, brands and agencies. It has active connectivity agreements with 55 mobile operators in 27 countries, across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and S. America. Customers include top carriers such as Orange, Turkcell, Vodafone and Wind amongst others. Media clients include MTV Europe and Bauer, while on the brand side, InternetQ works on behalf of Nestle and the Italian firm Barilla, among many others. Since inception, InternetQ has run hundreds of small- and large-scale mobile marketing campaigns, generating over 2.8bn consumer interactions, and engaging over 26m customers, with impressive campaign response rates of up to 32 SMS messages per participant. “Typically, we deliver customer engagement through SMS-based opt-in sweepstakes contests, on-pack promotions, community portals, voting, interactive quizzes and mobile

sites and loyalty programmes,” explains InternetQ chief commercial officer, Konstantinos Papoutsis. “We have an end-toend campaign management and delivery system that enables brands to reach, profile, engage, measure and monetise their offering to their customers in real-time.”

Mobi-Dialogue This end-to-end campaign management and delivery system is InternetQ’s proprietary technology platform, Mobi-Dialogue, developed in-house, and responsible for keeping half of the company’s 100 employees in eight offices around the globe in gainful employment. During 2010, the company enjoyed something of a growth spurt. After several years of steady growth, it more than doubled its revenues to €35.5m (£30.9m), compared to €17.2m in 2009. Of this, €30m came from mobile marketing services, a 155 per cent increase over the previous year. According to Papoutsis, more than 85 per cent of the additional revenues in 2010 came from repeat business from existing clients, a figure of which he is justifiably proud. “We believe very strongly in the importance of detail,” he tells Mobile Marketing.

“Although we are ever mindful of the big picture, we know that it’s the attention we pay to the details that drives the high participation and redemption rates for the campaigns we deliver. The Mobi-Dialogue platform enables us to carry out behaviourbased analysis and real-time segmentation of the database. This potent mix of continuous user profiling and refined interaction measurement ensures that we keep campaigns optimised and relevant to the people they are targeted at.”

Skilled team The Mobi-Dialogue platform works across multiple channels, including the web and mobile web, apps, SMS and IVR. Papoutsis says that by monitoring campaign activity in real-time and fine-tuning the media outreach, InternetQ can produce results that are “a minimum 30 per cent higher” than those delivered by its competitors. The picture is completed by a skilled campaign and project management team with many years of experience in running, monitoring and optimising mobile marketing campaigns. “It’s difficult to overstate the importance of a team with many years of experience in designing, managing and

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monetising mobile marketing and mobile content services,” adds Papoutsis. In the remainder of 2011, InternetQ aims to continue its geographic expansion, with the focus on Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. And while it is also seeking organic growth from existing clients, Papoutsis says that, with its strong balance sheet, the company will also be looking for strategic acquisition opportunities. InternetQ has been listed on the London AIM (Alternative Investment Market) since 2010. He sees a healthy future for mobile, with the market maturing, and consumers now accepting mobile promotions as a useful way to receive personalised marketing messages. “Budgets will continue to increase, thanks to the reach, efficiency and the ability to build strong relationships with the consumer that mobile offers,” says Papoutsis. “There is also a healthy appetite for mobile media content among consumers, which is being fuelled by the growth of new, smart devices.” He sees a bright future for mCommerce and mobile payments too. “These will come to play an important role in consumers’ daily lives, and will be an excellent way to push and integrate mobile marketing and mobile advertising in an even more efficient way, much closer to the point of sale,” he says. Most of all, though, it’s the details that concern Papoutsis. “Our biggest USP is that we constantly pay close attention to the details in the delivery of campaigns across all channels, and through this process maximise campaigns to deliver the best results,” he says. “We are judged on the results we deliver, and that is the main reason that we enjoy so much repeat business.”

Driving loyalty for Orange Poland Orange Poland is a top-three mobile network operator, with over 14m subscribers, and a 32 per cent market share. Orange was seeking an innovative way to reach out to its subscriber base, maintain loyalty and reduce churn rates. InternetQ staged a 100-day SMS competition for Orange mobile subscribers, with daily and weekly prize draws. The campaign was communicated to subscribers via mail, posters and other POS materials in Orange shops, as well as through a full-spectrum media campaign, involving all major TV channels in Poland, and the internet. By sending in an SMS response, subscribers were entered into a sophisticated mechanism of quiz dialogues and bonus sessions. One lucky subscriber each day won a BMW 316i, while on Sunday, the stakes were raised even higher, with a BMW X3 up for grabs. Later on, the campaign took on a viral aspect by allowing contestants to invite friends to join the game. To reinforce the loyalty program, Orange subscribers could also use their bonus points for top-ups, renewing contracts, adding service packages, adding pre-paid talk time, or extending their subscription. The campaign generated outstanding results, with 13 per cent of the subscriber base participating.

InternetQ’s promotion for Orange Poland gave subscribers the chance to win a BMW every day

Middle East Mobile Magic The Rotana Group is a true media conglomerate: its portfolio includes six TV channels, seven radio stations, film production, a magazine and a record label. In fact, Rotana is the Arab world’s largest entertainment company. The Group came to InternetQ with a brief to raise awareness of its brand and accelerate the monetisation of its media assets. This required a detailed understanding of a complex media landscape, involving pan-Arab audiences spanning 15 countries, several time zones, and multiple languages. The challenge for InternetQ was to devise a single motivating concept that was engaging, but also technically compliant across these 15 disparate markets. The solution was a series of compelling skill-based quizzes, with categories styled and themed for each region. The company also devised a dynamic advertising campaign, motivating subscribers to participate in a general knowledge competition. Correct answers earned bonus points towards winning daily cash prizes of 1,000 Saudi Arabian Ryal (SAR)/£165, culminating in a bonanza final prize draw for 1m SAR. Critical to its success was the way InternetQ’s Mobi-Dialogue platform stimulated interaction by delivering personalized questions based on behavioural responses and demographics. The multilingual campaign management team extracted maximum value from the platform, running the competition simultaneously across 30 mobile operators. Over a period of four months, the campaign attracted over 200,000 participants, who engaged in approximately 5m interactions, averaging 24 SMS messages per participant. This delivered a significant uplift in brand awareness and goodwill; a major new source of revenue for the Group. It also enabled the Rotana Group to create a detailed, permission-based database of participants’ personal interests and demographics for use in future campaigns. As a result of the campaign’s success, InternetQ is now working on a number of ‘Super Promos’ across many of Rotana’s key TV assets in the Middle East and N. Africa. Rotana has also partnered with InternetQ on all mobile-driven promotional activities around its popular pan-Arab talent show, Star Academy. These include live voting with Q&A capabilities, quiz contests and access to premium Star Academy digital content.

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business models

Payment by results Sponsormob CEO Peter Glaeser explains to David Murphy how the company’s affiliate advertising model works

n the world of mobile advertising, there are, broadly speaking, two types of network – premium and performance. Premium networks sell mobile ad inventory for named publishers, so the advertiser knows exactly where their ad will run. Typically, inventory is sold on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. In a performance network, you may be able to specify the channels you want your ads to appear in (e.g. News, Sport), but you can’t specify individual sites, and inventory is usually sold on a cost-per-click basis, hence the name, ‘performance’. Advertisers only pay for the clicks the publisher’s mobile site or app generates. If you take this to its logical conclusion, you end up with Sponsormob, which could be described as the ultimate performance network. Here, advertisers pay, not by the number of people seeing the ad, or even the number of people clicking on it, but by the number of people converting, or carrying out the action the ad was trying

to encourage, whether that was downloading an app, taking out a loan or buying a piece of mobile content. The company’s proprietary technical platform enables advertisers to target users by country, device, and operating system, and also to track the results.

Performance marketing “We believe we are the only network out there pushing true performance marketing on mobile,” says Sponsormob CEO, Peter Glaeser. “We try to put a price tag on every new customer we help our clients acquire, so that they can accurately predict the marketing cost of acquisition. There are other companies who do this in the mobile space, but they are still mainly driven by cost-per-click, rather than cost per acquisition.” It’s an approach that seems to be working. Advertiser customers include Groupon, Gameloft and iLove, and between 2009 and 2010 Sponsormob doubled its revenues to around $4m (£2.5m). The company is also expanding

into new territories and new

developers to integrate Sponsor-

channels. It recently opened a US sales office, and is also targeting UK advertisers. And while Sponsormob has traditionally focused on the mobile web - it works on behalf of around 2,500 publishers, some with multiple sites - it is now moving into in-app advertising. “You can’t ignore the huge volumes of mobile traffic on apps now,” Glaeser tells Mobile Marketing. He adds that Sponsormob is also developing a click-to-call solution to enable advertisers to run a mobile campaign, without the need to drive consumers to a mobile property, in the form of an app or a mobile site. “It makes it easier for the advertiser who wants to tap into the mobile audience,” explains Glaeser. “We will be paid on a per-lead basis, with a successful lead being defined by the length of the call.” Click-to-call is not the only innovation on the horizon. The company has just launched an Android SDK (software development kit), to enable Android app

mob advertising into their apps. It has also launched a tracking service for Android apps, to complement a similar service for Apple’s iOS platform, which it launched in April 2010. The conversion tracking enables advertisers to distribute their mobile apps on a true performance basis, based on the number of generated downloads, or the volume of in-app purchases. There are also some bigger projects in the pipeline that Glaeser says it’s too early to talk about. “We are a techie company, always developing new things,” he says. “We don’t believe in business as usual; we need to continue to develop new features, because that’s what makes us unique. There are companies coming into this field from the online world who don’t have their own technology; they have just ported what they do online. The difference with us is that we have created our platform specifically for mobile, and that’s why it performs so well.”

App Tracking In Action

ne of Sponsormob’s most successful campaigns of 2010 was the Flirtalike iPhone dating app. The app was marketed in the US as a free iPhone app, which included a free profile registration in the app itself. The goal of the Flirtalike campaign was to create a critical mass of users for the dating app in a short period of time, using female members to attract paying male site members. Sponsormob delivered matching users by sending them wi-fi iPod and iPhone traffic. The company tracked the downloads of the app, as well as the profile registrations in

the app. There were different payouts based on gender, with the advertiser paying more for female profiles than male. This advanced tracking is an example of true performance marketing, says Sponsormob, as the advertiser was able to set unique payouts for different profiles. The campaign generated over 500 new profiles per day over a period of two months. The sign-up flow was optimised by designing and testing multiple landing pages, and the in-app purchase tracking will enable the advertiser to pay affiliates for premium features that users of the app buy in the future.

Sponsored Feature June 2011

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best practice

MCOMMERCE Showcase We throw the spotlight on six mCommerce sites, looking at how easy they are to navigate on a mobile device Marks & Spencer

&S blazed a trail in mobile with the launch of its mobile site in May 2010. In the first four months after launch, it attracted 1.2m unique visitors, generating more than 10m page views, and taking more than 13,000 orders. The biggest order, famously, was for £3,280, for two sofas. The homepage is clean, uncluttered and easy to navigate, yet there’s still a lot of useful content on there, even before you go below the fold. At the very top of the page is a storefinder, which locates your nearest M&S store via your postcode or town name. Once located, you get the address, phone number and opening hours for this week and any other week up to six weeks in the future. You also get details on car parking, products and services available at the store in question. You even get driving directions from your current postcode. Below the storefinder is a link to Summer Offers, which shows all current offers categorised by section (Women’s, Men’s, Beauty etc.). Under the Offers link are 3 more, one for the Homepage, another for the Search facility, and another which shows you what is currently in your basket.

Then to the Category links themselves. Click on one, say Shoes, and you get a list of subcategories (Kid’s, Men’s) etc. Another click and you drill down further (Formal, Casual etc.), until you arrive at the shopping screen, with a photo and description. Click on it for more detailed information, and, if you wish, add a review. Then finally, if you like the look of it, click the ‘Buy Now’ button. At this point, you either sign in to your account, or sign up for one to complete the purchase. Social media also makes an appearance in the form of Tweet and Facebook Share buttons. Of course, many brands are trying to integrate social media into their marketing, but to see it on a mobile site like this is impressive. You can also email a friend with details of the item, but you have to have an M&S account, and sign in to it, in order to do so. It’s worth noting too that below the fold is a lot of useful housekeeping information, including an invitation to sign up for the retailer’s SMS-based CRM programme. Overall, the M&S mobile site is very impressive - a great piece of work.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

JD Sports

nother mobile site, another clean, easy-on-the-eye homepage. At the top of the page is a storefinder link. You can enter your postcode to find the nearest store, or share your location and it will do it for you, but in our case, it only got part of the postcode, so we had to resort to doing it manually. The search returns the nearest stores, and there’s a link for more information, which takes you to a map, plus the address and phone number, accessibility details, and the opening hours. Helpfully, there’s a link back to the homepage from this, and all other screens.

The homepage is also home to a search box, and there are three Category links (Men, Women and Junior) to follow. You can drill down into these to your heart’s content, until you end up on a page with medium-sized photos of the items in question, together with a brief description, including the price. Tap on the item to bring up one larger photo, plus some supplementary ones, and a more detailed description. As well as the link to the homepage, you also get a breadcrumb trail at the top of the page, enabling you to step back one, two, or however many pages you need to with one click,

on a Category link, instead of arriving on a new screen, the sub-categories appear beneath the main category. The same happens again if you click on one of these, so that you get from homepage to shopping screen with just one page refresh. There is integration with Twitter and Facebook, and an email option. Click on this and it launches the email client on your phone and generates an email which is pre-populated with a link to the item in question on the mobile site. After entering

the email address and sending the email, you end up back where you were on the New Look mobile site. One other neat feature when you get back to the homepage is a tab called ‘My Recently Viewed’ beneath which are photos of the last few items you looked at. Click on the photo to go back to the sales screen for that item. A neat touch A lot of people have been raving about HTML5. After spending some time on the New Look site, we can see why.

which is potentially very useful. There’s no social media or email integration on the site, in terms of tweeting about a product you like or emailing a friend the details, but in among the housekeeping links below the fold, there is the option of going to the JD Sports Twitterfeed, Facebook page or YouTube channel. Obviously though, this does take you away from the retailer’s own mobile site. And if you want to buy anything, you need to log in or create an account. This is another well thought-out offering; only the social media and email integration is lacking.

New Look

he New Look mobile site is another good-looking beast. Clever too. The storefinder feature gets your location via GPS and returned accurate results. And there’s a named homepage link and breadcrumb trail on every page. The site employs Javascript, CSS3 & HTML5 technology. One of the benefits of this is what Mobile Interactive Group, who built the site, calls “accordion navigation”. This reduces page refreshes, which makes for faster browsing. When you click

Halfords

alfords is another firm that seems to be taking mobile very seriously and it’s mobile-optimised site is clean and appealing. The storefinder link requires you to enter a postcode, at which point you get the list of nearby stores, and when you click on any of them, the usual information, complete with a map. Once you get away from the homepage, there is a named link back to

it, but you have to scroll down below the fold to see it. Once you do this though, to be fair, you can’t miss it. Click on the photo to get a slightly bigger one, plus, in the case of a bike, three tabs: Description, Specification, and Customer Reviews. All of these go to some length (where reviews exist) to give you all the information you could need about the product you before

June 2011

make your decision. There’s no social media or email integration on this site, but this is countered to some extent by the inclusion of customer reviews, and by the fact that you can see a rating for each item, based on the reviews, at the item group stage of the buying process. Overall then, this is a good effort from the car and cycling multiple retailer.

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best practice

ASOS

he ASOS homepage is even cleaner than the M&S one above the fold. Visitors are invited to click on a ‘Women’ or ‘Men’ link, and there’s also the option to sign up for ASOS Style news. It’s not obvious what you should enter in this box; we went for an email address, but after entering it, we didn’t get anything by way of confirmation. Below the fold, there are several housekeeping links (My Account, Returns, Help Desk etc.) Click on the ‘Men’ link and you get two links to ‘New In’ products, one for clothing, the other for shoes and accessories. Below these are product category links (Bags, Jeans, Shirts etc.) Click on one and you get a screen full of photos of models

wearing different shirts with a one-line description, including the price. You can filter this by size, colour or brand to narrow the options. Click on one of the photos and you get a much larger photo, plus shots of the model from different angles, and a detail shot of the item in question, plus a more detailed description. This includes information on looking after the item once you’ve bought it, such as the temperature to wash it at. As on the M&S site, there are Tweet and Facebook Share buttons, and the option of emailing the details to a friend. The good news is, you don’t need an ASOS account to do so. All you need to do is enter your, and their, and their name and email address. The message: “I

esco has not yet done a mobile version of its main Tesco.com site, favouring its barcode-scanning app instead. But it does have a mobile site for Tesco Direct, and a goodlooking, understated one it is. At the top of the homepage is a storefinder. Like the JD Sports site, it can find your nearest store without out you doing anything more than agreeing to share your location, and this time round, it worked perfectly. For each store selected, you get the address and phone number, opening hours and facilities

available. Like the ASOS mobile site, you don’t get a link to the homepage on every page, but clicking on the Tesco Direct logo takes you there. Beneath the storefinder link is a search box, and beneath this, a large banner occupying half of the remainder of the visible screen area. This is a link to a range of items discounted by at least 20 per cent, but on the day we looked at it, the link wasn’t working. But we did manage to follow it via a second link at the bottom of the Categories list.

Drill down into the Categories list and you end up on the shopping screen, where you get the usual photo, brief description and price. Tap on any item for a slightly larger photo and more detailed description. There’s no social media or email integration, and as usual, you need an account in order to be able to buy anything. Overall then, a decent offering, but not one that blazes any trails.

Conclusion Our review of six mCommerce sites suggests that all of them are working to a pretty similar template. All six score highly for their clean, uncluttered user interface, though the omis-

sion of a named homepage link on some of the sites is surprising. It’s good to see the social media integration on the M&S, ASOS and New Look sites, while Halfords deserves plaudits for the way it uses customer

thought you’d be interested in this item” is pre-written for you. And if you like the item of course, you can buy it, by signing in to your account, or creating one there and then. This is straightforward enough, but requires you to fill in all the usual details, name, address, phone, email, credit card details etc. Probably best done on a PC. This is another impressive, easy-to-use site that makes it easy for consumers to spend money with the retailer via their mobile phone. We noticed however that, unlike the M&S site, you don’t get a link back to the homepage on every page. In fact, clicking on the ASOS logo does indeed take you back to the homepage, but this is something the average user may or may not stumble upon.

Tesco Direct

reviews and ratings. We were impressed, too, by the accordion navigation on the New Look site, and overall, we have to say, if these sites are representative of what the man (or woman) on the street is going to

experience the first time they try mCommerce for themselves,some of the forecasts we have seen for mCommerce revenues might not be as ambitious as they appear.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

Right place, right time Location-based services are growing – primarily because users love services like Foursquare, Groupon and Facebook Places, says Carsten Frien, CEO of madvertise

ith people carrying their smartphones with them almost all the time, there is a new, huge opportunity for advertisers, in the form of locationbased advertising and offers. These are more relevant and targeted offers, which means consumers are more open to receiving them. And, given the sheer number of smartphones in consumers’ hands now, they deliver real reach and scalability. madvertise (www.madvertise. com) is the first mobile advertising network to offer locationbased advertising in Europe, with pinpoint accuracy for towns, regions and federal states down to 50 metres. This enables mobile advertising to be delivered at a local, regional or wider level, allowing advertisers to target their campaigns directly to their customers.

madvertise uses the GPS data of the mobile phone to deliver banner ads based on the location of the users. If the user’s GPS co-ordinates aren’t available, madvertise can use other localization information (e.g. the device’s IP address, the network operator’s cell ID, or nearby WLANs) in order to determine the user’s location.

Relevant offers We delivered the first locationbased advertising campaign in the Rhine-Ruhr district for the iPhone app gettings in December 2010. gettings is a mobile service that ensures that consumers can always find out about nearby special offers that are relevant to them in retail, restaurants and leisure outlets at the right time and in the right place. The service can be accessed by anyone via a mobile browser or the dedicated mobile website m.gettings.de. gettings apps are also available for iPhone and Android mobile users. Moreover, gettings allows advertisers to communicate their special offers in a location-based manner when subscribers are near their branches. Initially available in the Rhine-Ruhr area, gettings will be rolled out throughout Germany during 2011.

In order to spread the word about gettings among end-users in the Rhine-Ruhr district, and to generate users for its mobile service, madvertise launched a mobile campaign geared to specific cities. “Directly addressing the target group with location-based advertising enables us to raise gettings’ profile in the Rhine-Ruhr region without wastage and to address the target group directly,” explains Meike Seulen, gettings GmbH’s marketing manager. “Although the initial investment for a campaign like this is higher, this type of advertising is much more effective for us.”

Higher revenues Publishers, who provide the ad space in an app, profit from location-based advertising. If they forward the GPS coordinates to madvertise (if the users opts-in), more locationbased campaigns will be shown in their app. And because users’ higher interest means clients can expect a better performance and a higher price point, the pay out to the publishers is also increasing. It seems like location-based advertising is a win-win-win for advertisers, publishers and ad marketplaces like madvertise.

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madvertise ran a location-based ad campaign to promote the gettings mobile site and apps

madvertise Mobile Advertising GmbH Oranienplatz 2, D-10999 Berlin, Germany www.madvertise.com info@madvertise.com

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thought leadership

OFFDECK Helen Keegan returns from a trip to the US, fired up by the enthusiasm she witnessed for mobile

n the 2011 study of the world’s Top 100 brands by dollar value carried out by Millward Brown Optimor, Apple emerged at the top of the rankings, valued at $153.3bn (£93.6bn), with Google in second place. The research firm made a point of noting that the rankings were dominated by technology and telecoms brands. Facebook appeared for the first time, valued at $19.1bn, and Microsoft, AT&T and China Mobile all featured in the top 10. I read about the study fresh from a week in San Francisco, where I had been speaking at the AppNation conference, and catching up with some west coast contacts, and as I read the results, they only confirmed what I had witnessed first-hand in the US; namely, the incredibly positive vibe around mobile in Silicon Valley now. At every networking event I attended, the VCs and the big guys were actively seeking out the start-ups that they hoped might be the next Google. I even got a business card from someone at Apple, something that has never happened to me before. Someone said it felt like 1999 all over again, and I knew what they meant. What I experienced in California, and what I read about the Millward Brown study, just goes to reinforce the notion that what a lot of people – myself included – have been doing so much work on for the past 12 years, is finally starting to come to fruition. When I talk to brands who are new to mobile, or just trying to get their head around it, they often ask me why it seems to be getting so much attention all of a sudden, and the

answer I give them is that it’s not by chance. If enough talented people and companies work hard enough at developing smart ideas, and the ecosystem to support them, sooner or later, it will pay off, and that’s what I see happening in mobile right now.

Myopic view It’s not all good news though. As positive as the vibe around mobile is in the US, the people with the money do have a somewhat myopic view of it. Mobile, in their eyes, is apps. Nothing more, nothing less. In fact, their focus is narrower even than just apps. It’s all about consumer apps. I saw very little interest in b2b apps, or machine-to-machine apps, although there were a handful in areas such as mobile health, for example. And just as the scope of interest in mobile in the US is quite narrow, the geographic focus is also limited. The people with money to spend in the mobile sector in the US are interested, by and large, in only one country – the US. During the conference, I participated in the closing keynote panel debate, and asked one of the participants what he Silicon Valley - hot for mobile

thought about mobile’s impact in emerging markets, to which he replied, in so many words: “To be honest, I don’t really care what happens outside of the US.” The exchange reminded me of a stat I heard recently, that only around 37 per cent of the US population has a passport. It’s a stat that can appear shocking, until you sit down with an atlas for a minute and look at the size of the landmass that is the US. It takes 16 hours just to drive the length of California, after all. So while the US obsession with apps is, in my view, regrettable, the focus on their own country is perhaps more understandable. If you have a market of more than 300m people to go for, you could argue that it makes sense to do so, before you start looking elsewhere. And there’s a lesson in this, I feel, for European start-ups; that while it’s tempting to look for Silicon Valley investment in the next hot thing, it may not always be the best approach. If you’re developing something for emerging markets, for example, or if your mobile solution does not, or cannot, take the form of an app, then based on my experience, you may be better looking closer to home for investment. Not that I want to be too down on the US. The country has lagged behind Europe on mobile for many years, despite the dominance of the likes of Apple and Google. It’s great to see the US finally getting mobile in such a big way. If they can just start to see beyond apps, they could be on to something and beat us Europeans at our own game.

June 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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To claim your place in the mCommerce Value Chain as a sponsor or exhibitor, please contact john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com To register your interest in attending, email mobileretail@mixingdigital.com

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