Mobile Marketing Issue 9, March 2012

Issue Nine | March 2012

News | Views | Analysis

“SPEAK LESS, MORE CONVINCINGLY!” UPSTREAM PRESIDENT MARCO VEREMIS ON THE TRUE MEANING OF EFFECTIVENESS

DOUBLING UP

The second screen phenomenon and what it means for marketers

OLYMPIC SPIRIT

How the Games are bringing mobile innovation to London

TOUGH COOKIES Our must-read guide to the EU Cookie Law

AR SPECIAL

10 PAGES ON AUGMENTED REALITY, INCLUDING AR CONTENT FROM BLIPPAR

MOBILE MARKETING LIVE: OUR NEW 2-DAY EVENT – FULL DETAILS INSIDE

Mobile Advertising is Complex.

Millennial Media Keeps Making it Simpler.

mMedia is the one-stop tool for self-service mobile advertising and application monetization. Advertisers can leverage a variety of targeting options, upload custom ad creative, control daily budgets, set cost-per-click bid price, and more. Developers can quickly and easily monetize their apps by integrating video, rich media and banner ads from premium brand advertisers, while applying earnings toward advertising to improve app discovery and drive downloads. mMedia’s dashboard and robust reporting tools provide detailed campaign insights and metrics that allow developers and advertisers to make informed decisions which help grow their businesses.

Visit Our Chalet AV42 on the Avenue for More Information

|

www.mmedia.com/mwc

POWERED BY Š2012 Millennial Media. All rights reserved.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

contents

3

W

elcome to Issue 9 of our quarterly magazine.

And what an issue it is, with 10 pages on Augmented Reality, including real-life AR content, starting with the editorial you’re reading now. Just download the Blippar app for iOS or Android, fire it up, and blipp this page to see me and my lovely QR code shirt come to life. Scary, but true.

There’s more blippable content on p.22-23.

The essential reading doesn’t end there. With the London Olympics only a few months away, we look at how the organisers are preparing for the hordes of mobile-touting tourists, and at how partner brands are planning to use mobile to leverage their sponsorship. Turn to p.10.

And, if you’re watching the Games at home on the TV, chances are you’ll have a smartphone or a Tablet in your hand to enable you to look up stats on the athletes, Tweet about what you’re seeing, update your Facebook status, or just chat with your friends. In our feature on p.6, we take a look at this ‘second screening’ phenomenon to try to understand why it’s happening, and what the implications are.

We also look at the EC Cookie Directive and the impact it will have on mobile marketing, and in the first instalment of a regular new column, Andrew Darling from OpenMarket lifts the lid on some of the issues currently taxing the aggregator community. On p.18, you can find out all about our new two-day exhibition and conference for the global mobile marketing industry – Mobile Marketing Live. We look forward to welcoming you to that event in London in October.

There’s another small mobile event kicking off in Barcelona right now. If you’re in town, we hope to see you among the throng. If not, you know where to go for the most in-depth, up-to-the-minute coverage of all the Mobile World Congress news. Thanks this issue to Andy Penfold, making his debut as editor. We hope you’ll agree, he’s done a great job. Enjoy.

David Murphy Editorial director

Cover story 24 Beyond Mobile Marketing Upstream CEO Marco Veremis says it’s time to think in terms of the mobile consumer, not devices

Thought leadership 5

Look to the Sky How BSkyB has embraced mobile and brought content to its customers

15 Dev zone Netbiscuits’ Stephan Haux explores context in mobile consumer habits

50 Off-deck AR has potential, but now’s the time to experiment, says Helen Keegan

Technology 6

Second Life

39 Advancing the Art InMobi’s Rob Jonas on rich media and the firm’s acquisition of Sprout

41 Mob Rule

Sponsormob’s Heiko Kasper explains the company’s new RTB platform

43 Big Ideas at BigTime

How BigTime plans to expand upon its remarkable first year of operations

45 Experience Counts

Consumer experience is the key to driving mobile payments, says mBlox CMO Michele Turner

47 Upwardly Mobile

Matt Hawkes of Propel looks ahead to 2012 in the mobile world

The real world 10 London’s Mobile Olympics How the Olympic Games are set to drive mobile marketing innovation

Explore the concept of second screening and what it means for marketers

17 AR: What is it for?

We investigate how Augmented Reality is developing as a marketing tool

Business models 27 Aggregate Score OpenMarket’s Andrew Darling says the role of aggregators is evolving

28 When Cookies Crumble Everything you need to know on the upcoming Cookie Law – are your sites and apps legal?

36 Rich Pickings Adfonic’s Paul Childs on why it’s time brands embraced mobile rich media Issue Nine | March 2012

News | Views | Analysis

“SPEAK LESS, MORE CONVINCINGLY!” UPSTREAM PRESIDENT MARCO VEREMIS ON THE TRUE MEANING OF EFFECTIVENESS

DOUBLING UP

THE SECOND SCREEN PHENOMENON AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR MARKETERS

OLYMPIC SPIRIT

HOW THE GAMES ARE BRINGING MOBILE INNOVATION TO LONDON

TOUGH COOKIES

OUR MUST-READ GUIDE TO THE EU COOKIE LAW

AR SPECIAL

10 PAGES ON AUGMENTED REALITY, INCLUDING AR CONTENT FROM BLIPPAR

MOBILE MARKETING LIVE: OUR NEW 2-DAY EVENT – FULL DETAILS INSIDE

32 Digital Snapshot What do consumers think about augmented reality? Our survey found out

Best practice 30 Mobile Website Essentials The latest news from our Mobile Training Academy division

34 Application Showcase Check out two of the smartest new AR apps – stiktu and Findaproperty.com

Subscribe today and guarantee your copy If you want to be sure of receiving your copy of the print edition of Mobile 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 subscription, just send an email to: subscriptions@mobilemarketingmagazine.com and we’ll respond telling you what you need to do.

Editorial director: David Murphy – david.murphy@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0)7976 927 062 Commercial director: John Owen – john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0)7769 674 824 Business development manager: Richard Partridge – richard.partridge@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Event sales director: Shelley Dowsett – shelley.dowsett@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0)20 3008 5375 Editor: Andy Penfold – andy.penfold@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Staff writer: Alex Spencer – alex.spencer@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0)20 3008 5376 Contributors: George Cole, Helen Keegan, David Gibbs, Rob Thurner, Andrew Darling 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

March 2012

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

A major new two-day exhibition and conference for the Mobile Marketing business brought to you by Mobile Marketing

• •

500 sq. m Exhibition Space

•

2-day Conference Programme

One-to-one meeting opportunities

•

•

Mobile Training Sessions

Free for brands to attend

1–2 OCT Business Design Centre

London

Payments

For details of sponsorship, exhibition and all other packages, contact Shelley Dowsett, Event Sales Director on

020 300 85375

or email: ShelleyDowsett@mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Mobile Marketing Live - Taking Mobile Marketing to theSeptember World 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

5

Look to the SKY Sky has moved fast to embrace its customers’ demand for mobile content. Director of mobile applications & services David Gibbs outlines the company’s mobile roadmap

S

ky’s mobile journey started over 10 years ago, and over that period we have seen mobile move from the periphery to the core of our business.

Our first forays were focused on distributing our branded sports and news content via network operators, initially in the form of SMS headlines and scores, and then through the operators’ and our own WAP portals.

In 2006 we started to broadcast our linear Sky Sports and Sky News channels via the 3G networks and began to experiment with ‘made for mobile’ video content.

Early adopting The early days were tough – devices and networks weren’t designed to support a highquality video experience. However, through some strong partnerships with the operators and the desire from consumers for sports content on the move we were able to generate over 250,000 subscribers to the service.

Whilst we initially thought that short-form content would drive the service, it was live sports that took the lion’s share of viewing.

We are always looking to innovate and give our customers flexibility and choice over how they consume their content. Whilst the business was supportive of our mobile plans and prepared to invest, in those early years it was not shifting the dial in terms of mass usage among our subscribers.

The world really changed in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone and competitive data packages, giving content and media owners the ability to talk directly to their customers without having to go through an operator.

Since then, our customers have embraced their mobile phones and shown an insatiable appetite to consume more and more content on them. With this comes more opportunities and for a business as diverse as ours – we are a TV platform, a content owner, and a

broadband and fixed line network – there is always the scope to develop new apps, which enhance the overall Sky experience.

Sky Go is an evolution of Mobile TV, allowing more and more of our customers to watch live Sky Sports and hundreds of ondemand movies on their PC, laptop, iPhone, and iPad as part of their Sky subscription.

The service formed a core part of our summer sports and Christmas movies campaigns, and has been a real success with well over 2m unique users accessing the service since launch, viewing, on average, more than 30m pieces of content. This Spring we will see the service move to Android.

Today, we offer more than a dozen highquality apps across iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. We also offer dedicated mobile websites, which include customer service functionality. The constant in all of these is a commitment to providing a simple, consistent and quality experience.

We now have over 20m downloads of our apps and millions of customers using our services every week. According to comScore data for last October, three of our apps appeared in the top 20 UK connected apps, including Sky Sports Football Score Centre, which appeared at number 8 – no mean feat given the first six mobile apps are all preinstalled on various smartphones.

Applied knowledge So, what have we learned? Firstly, we know customers value immediacy and the security of knowing that no matter where they are, they are only a moment away from the content they love. Secondly, we have learned not to underestimate the demand for these services once they form part of a consistent and high-profile multi-platform message.

Thirdly, a commitment to invest in a strategy that places mobile as a core platform for

February March 2012 2012

“a commitment to invest in a strategy that places mobile as a core platform for the long term is key” the long-term is key. The days of ‘tests’ and ad-hoc development are over. Finally, it’s vital to listen to your customers every day – the app stores and social networks give us almost instant feedback.

Watch with friends Where next? The social TV space is of real interest, and through our partnership with Zeebox we will evolve our Sky+ application to offer unique ‘augmented’ TV viewing features, such as connecting with friends around TV shows, finding more information about what’s on, and buying products relating to their favourite programmes.

As more and more people reach for the phone or Tablet rather than the traditional remote control, we will add the ability to tune into shows and access the set-top box planner with the aim of offering the best fully integrated companion-viewing experience.

We’ll also continue to invest and innovate so that we can carry on creating experiences that our customers love and value.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

6

technology

Second Life Many people use their mobile device while watching TV without even thinking about it.

George Cole looks at the opportunities of this ‘second screening’ for marketers

T

he worlds of mobile, broadcasting, home entertainment and the internet are connecting, thanks to a new living room phenomenon: ‘second screening’.

Second screening involves using a mobile device (such as a smartphone, Tablet or laptop) while watching the television, and it’s a surprisingly popular activity.

In the US, a Nielsen survey involving 1,200 connected device owners found that 70 per cent of Tablet users and 68 per cent of smartphone owners used their device while in front of the television. The most common activity was checking email (68 per cent) but almost a third of those surveyed (29 per cent) also looked for information related to the programme they were watching.

“It’s now almost natural behaviour for many of us,” says Chris Bourke, MD of mobile media specialist Mobext. “Lots of us now log onto Twitter and watch a live stream of comments related to our favourite TV programme.”

Second screening has given rise to ‘social TV’, but as Colin Donald, director of research company Futurescape points out, the concept of social TV is not new. “Television has always had a significant social dimension, as with viewing together in the living room and having water

cooler conversations at work. Social TV now involves the digital interaction between people about television content or their digital interaction with that content.”

Multitasking A poll of more than 1,300 people under 25 in the UK conducted by the digital marketing agency Digital Clarity found that 80 per cent of those surveyed use a mobile device to communicate with friends while watching TV, with 72 per cent using Facebook, Twitter, or mobile applications to actively comment on shows as they are watching them.

Reggie James, founder of Digital Clarity, says: “TV shows with small audiences can generate enormous traffic on Twitter.

Social TV is a new platform for engaging with a TV show and has turned TV programmes into online events.”

ITV’s X Factor show offers viewers a free iPhone app that can be used to register opinions on judges’ comments and results.

ITV says that the X Factor app has been downloaded about a million times, and that the app’s interactive feature – known as ‘Tap to Clap’ – has been used more than 100m times.

The social TV market is being driven by the massive growth of social network sites; the wide availability of broadband in

homes; and the vast numbers of connected devices such as smartphones and Tablets.

Futuresource Consulting says that global shipments of Tablets reached 15.5m units in Q3 2011, compared with 4.5m for the same period in 2010.

Many see the Tablet as the perfect form factor for second screening, with its large screen and easy user interface. “The Tablet is the device for the living room and the most socially acceptable device,” says Ajay Shah, CEO of TVplus, a TV web browser company. “The Tablet screen is parallel to the ground, whereas the screen on a smartphone or laptop is perpendicular, and closed off from others.”

Many parties are now jostling for position in the second screening market, including broadcasters, Hollywood studios, Smart

TV manufacturers, advertisers, brands, social network sites, and dozens of start-up technology companies developing second screen applications.

Move with the times One newcomer, Zeebox, is a UK company co-founded by Anthony Rose, one of the main drivers behind BBC iPlayer. Zeebox has developed a second screen app that helps users find programmes to watch, and connects TV viewers with each other. A survey of 5,000 people by Zeebox and Lightspeed found that while live television accounted for around 90 per cent of TV viewing, there was much dissatisfaction with the medium.

“People are frustrated with live television because it hasn’t kept up with the pace of innovation. On a computer, you can use

Using a Tablet while watching television is almost an automatic behaviour

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

7

“The Tablet is the device for the living room and the most socially acceptable device. The smartphone or laptop is closed off from others” Ajay Shah, TVplus

Skype, email, and watch a video, but TV just beams out at you,” says Rose. “We found that 57 per cent got around this frustration by using a second screen, and of these, 60 per cent were using the second screen for a programmerelated activity, such as doing a Google search on an actor.”

The survey also found that people wanted three main things from their TV viewing: more information on the programme they were watching; the ability to buy things shown on TV, and more episodes. When it came to social TV, those aged over 35 were wary about it, while those under 35, says Rose, “couldn’t get enough of it”. But Shah thinks that older consumers will eventually embrace second screening. “With most new technologies, it’s the young people who embrace it first. But then it

spreads to adjacent demographics and beyond. Facebook started out with a college demographic – today, the fastest growing user base is people over 60.”

Many apps have been developed for second screening, and Rose divides them into four classes. The first type helps users find things to watch, but is much smarter than a standard EPG (Electronic Programme Guide). “Instead of just giving me a list of programmes, the app could tell me what my friends were watching, so I can watch it with them and chat to them about it,” he says. Zeebox (www. zeebox.com) offers this type of functionality, by enabling friends to share information about what they are watching.

Another type of app gives you something to do while watching, such as vote, make comments, or

Through apps such as Zeebox, marketers can connect to consumers in new ways

get additional information.

TVplus (http://tvplus.com), for example, syncs your iPad to your TV and can deliver contextual content related to each scene, such as behind the scenes information.

Pass the remote The third class of app allows the mobile device to be used as a remote control. “Using your iPhone to replace your plastic remote isn’t adding great value,” says Rose. “What you want is a social remote, so I can click on your name, see what you’re watching and then get my TV to change to the same channel, so we can chat about it together.” The Buddy TV app (www.buddytv.com) for instance, enables an iPhone to be used as a remote control, and also allows users to tell friends or followers on Facebook and Twitter what they are watching.

The fourth class of app is designed to make it easy to purchase advertised products.

The Fanhattan app (www.fanhattan.com), for example, makes it simple for viewers to purchase soundtrack music and merchandise related to TV shows and films. Most second screen apps offer a combination of these four classes of functionality.

Some second screening apps, such as those from start-ups

March 2012

such as GetGlue and Yahoo!’s IntoNow, get viewers to check-in to a TV show, with an associated gameplay element that typically involves winning badges.

“Checking-in like this is easy for viewers, which would tend to raise participation rates,” says Futurescape’s Colin Donald.

“However, some research indicates that automated check-in tweets have a low click-through rate. This suggest they have less social value for people seeing them in Facebook or Twitter – people aren’t interested enough to click. Other competing startups have openly expressed their dissatisfaction with check-ins.”

With the potential to forge even stronger relationships with viewers, generate additional revenue streams and keep audiences tuned to their programmes, it’s little wonder that TV broadcasters and programme makers have launched or are planning to launch applications, websites and platforms that support the second screen/ social TV idea. In the UK, ITV and Channel 4 have announced plans for a second screen app, while BSkyB has taken a 10 per cent stake in Zeebox.

In the US, HBO has launched HBO Connect, a social TV site for fans of HBO shows. Meanwhile, Hollywood studios such as Sony, Disney, and Universal are also

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

8

technology

offering second screening apps for some Blu-ray titles, with the second screen activities including games, puzzles, social media integration, and eCommerce.

Social screening A Futurescape report on social TV states that Facebook and Twitter are now power brokers for the global television industry.

“Their ability to create new business opportunities, engage viewers and boost advertising and pay-TV revenue, gives them a significant and increasing influence over all aspects of television,” it concludes.

But not everyone thinks Facebook and Twitter are the best forums for second screen

audiences. In the US, PepsiCo has launched its own Social TV networks, Pepsi Pulse, and Pepsi Sound Off, with the latter designed for X Factor fans. “Twitter or Facebook are sometimes too broad of a place to have those non-stop conversations,” says Andrea Harrison, PepsiCo director of digital engagement.

“A large number of friends who follow fans on Twitter or are their friends on Facebook couldn’t care less.”

Mobext’s Bourke says that conceptually, second screening has been hard to grasp for many clients, but he sees the picture changing in 2012.

“There are going to be lots of brand managers and marketing

PepsiCo’s Pepsi Pulse is a TV-specific social network for second screen activity

“People are frustrated with live television because it hasn’t kept up with the pace of innovation” Anthony Rose, Zeebox

Zeebox is a second screening app that allows users to connect with viewers watching the same things. BSkyB now owns 10 per cent of the company

managers who will be living in households where a member is second screening,” he says.

However, a major challenge will be how you measure the impact of the second screen, he says.

“Clients demand measurement, and what you’re trying to do in this case is juxtapose mobile digital data with offline media TV, and both use different metrics. Convincing the client that there’s a relationship between the two will be really important.”

So who will be the winners and losers in second screening? “Success will come when someone figures out the magic formula for ‘stickiness’ – something that will make users want to stay and interact with con-

tent,” says Shay Fan from Miso’s marketing department. “With so much competing for our attention, it will be a difficult, crowded industry.”

Watch this space Despite the challenge though, the opportunity for marketers is clear. Second screening is already close to being an automatic behaviour for many TV viewers, and if broadcasters can create content that generates second screening activity, it puts them in a strong position.

As Zeebox’s Anthony Rose says: “The Tablet and the smartphone could become the tastemaker – they could determine what you want to watch and then the TV simply renders that choice.”

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

February 2012

9

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

10

the real world

London’s The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games represent a massive opportunity to drive innovation in mobile infrastructure and mobile marketing. Andy Penfold reports

T

he greatest festival of sport in the world is coming to London – and with it, a festival of mobile marketing activity on an unprecedented scale.

You don’t have to be a huge cynic to note that the Olympic and Paralympic Games represent massive opportunities for brands to reach consumers.

And, with the explosion in smartphone use in the UK particularly, but also around the world, the London 2012 games promise to be the most ‘mobile’ in history.

With apps, mobile internet, and multichannel promotions at the marketer’s disposal, London 2012 will be buzzing with mobile data, and infrastructure at the Games has had to adapt. IT systems company Atos, which among other things is providing the IT systems that will deliver Games results from all the Olympic and Paralympic sports competitions to the world’s

media, says the demand for data has soared even since the 2008 Games in Beijing.

“There is an increase in demand from fans for information as it happens,” says Michele Hyron, chief integrator at Atos for the London 2012 Games.

“With 8.5bn PCs, smartphones and Tablets predicted to be connected to the internet by 2012, the London Games are set to be the biggest smart Games ever.

Atos expects to process 30 per cent more results data than [at the 2008 Games] in Beijing.”

Data use and data infrastructure is therefore a big issue. The UK mobile operators are working to supply wi-fi to the Games venues – O2 is installing wi-fi in the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea for what will be the largest free wi-fi zone in Europe.

Even Transport for London’s (TfL’s) plans to grant public wi-fi access on the Underground net-

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

11

Mobile OLYMPICS work are still on course. Despite several delays, TfL assures us that mobile wi-fi will be available by the time the Games start in July. Gareth Powell, director of strategy and service development, says that London Underground is on track to deliver wi-fi services at up to 120 stations before the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“We are in the final stages of the tender process,” he says.

“London Underground is continuing with preparations to install the necessary infrastructure and is on schedule to complete the project as planned.

An announcement of the chosen service provider will be made in early Spring, leaving plenty of time for this to be delivered to customers in time for the 2012 Games.”

Wi-fi on the Tube will certainly be a turn up for the books – but the Games will help to bring innovation in other areas

of technology. Visa is hoping to leverage the Games to drive NFC payment technology forward.

The company, which is a worldwide partner for the Games, says it is installing 3,000 new contactless payment terminals across Olympic and Paralympic venues. This is in addition to the 85,000 contactless terminals that already exist across the UK, and the company also says that by the time the Games start, 8,000 buses and 2,500 taxis across London will accept contactless payments.

Track and Near Field Consumers with a contactless Visa card, or an NFC-enabled mobile phone will be able to use these terminals.

“London 2012 will be a showcase for the future of payments,” says Mark Austin, head of contactless at Visa Europe.

“The eyes of the world will be on the Olympics and it is a unique

opportunity to give visitors a chance to experience some of the new payment technologies that will become mainstream in the coming months and years.

We see this as a tipping point in terms of awareness, giving consumers who already have a

the Games will drive increased usage going forward and consumer interest in future contactless payment services.

“We also believe that the technology put in place for London 2012 – from contactless-enabled buses and taxis to contactless

contactless card the chance to realise its benefits, as well as offering a showcase for the first live mobile payment services.”

Working with Samsung, Visa is launching the official Olympic and Paralympic Games handset, incorporating NFC payment technology, in time for the Games. Visa has also certified handsets from Samsung, LG and RIM for its NFC payment technology.

terminals at Olympic venues – will provide an improved payments infrastructure for the future. As alternative payment methods become mainstream, this will give the UK a great platform to build on in the years to come.”

So, all being well, there will be unprecedented mobile infrastructure behind the games – the question is how marketers will use it.

Milton Elias, head of mobile at marketing agency Starcom MediaVest Group, says innovation will be essential to even be noticed. “For an event as important and grand as the Olympics, mobile marketing initiatives will

Paying up “London 2012 will give an unprecedented opportunity to showcase contactless payments to consumers first-hand,” says Austin. “We believe that using contactless at

“with 8.5bn pcs, smartphones and tablets predicted to be connected to the internet, the london games are expected to be the biggest smart games ever” Michele Hyron, Atos

March 2012

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

12

the real world

need to be truly innovative and above all valuable in order to make an impact,” he says. “Consumers will be bombarded with more marketing messages than usual throughout the duration of the Games so it’s extremely important for marketers to go the extra mile to captivate, inspire, and contribute to the public’s Olympic experience.”

Game time

BMW Driving onto the iPad As an early taster of Official Automotive Partner BMW’s mobile activity, the company produced a high-production value digital magazine app for the iPad. The magazine features interviews with current gold medallists Rebecca Adlington, Tim Brabants, and David Weir and also explores BMW technologies and videos that show Team GB athletes using BMW cars.

“The combination of the surge in the use of applications on Tablets and smartphones over the last year and the world’s biggest sporting event coming to London, meant that we felt this was the ideal time to respond to the everchanging way that we are consuming our media through mobile,” says Paulo Alves, general manager of national communications and CRM at BMW UK. “We wanted to create stand-out at a time when more traditional mediums are flooded with London 2012 content and promotion. The innovative nature of mobile and the way we’ve made the most of it for the iMagazine helps us to mark ourselves as a leader brand in the eyes of our customers, and mirrors our position at the forefront of technology in automotive.”

Alves says that mobile is one of many channels BMW will use to inform people about BMW’s brand and to bring fans “our take on the latest news from their Olympic and Paralympic heroes”.

Paul Childs, chief marketing officer at mobile advertising network Adfonic, agrees. He says that the kinds of experiences consumers will demand during this summer’s sporting events lend themselves to rich media mobile advertising.

“It’s a great opportunity for Olympic sponsors,” he says.

“Mobile is big, full-stop. Rich media is now deployable on a large scale. This’ll be the first time that global sponsors of the Olympics will have the option to create brand awareness on mobile. These guys spend stacks of money on sponsorships.

Campaigns on the mobile phone shouldn’t be a big issue for them if they work with the larger global ad networks to create these experiences. I see 2012’s key sporting events as a major vehicle for ramping up case studies on rich media.”

Add mobile social media into this mix and you have a potent recipe for consumer engagement – particularly when it comes to sports fans, according to Martin Copus, digital director at sports marketing agency Sports Revolution.

“The propensity of the sports fan to social media is extremely high,” says Copus. “Sport is a passion point and sharing mutual enjoyment and mutual excitement is really what sports fans and being a sports fan is all about. Mobile is about facilitating that 24/7 – wherever they

are, fans want to share their fun experiences, their passion, their sadness at a result.”

And Copus says that London 2012 does represent a sea change in sports marketing. “The mobile phone isn’t new compared to recent Olympics,” he says. “What is new is just how multi-purpose and multimedia the actual devices themselves are now. If you think back to Beijing, and the kind of phones that were prevalent there, it was extremely hard to get on the mobile internet, whatever device you had. And the concept of downloading applications that do a myriad of different things was pretty much unheard of. Beijing seems very recent but it’s actually four full years ago, and the mobile industry is moving so quickly that four years is a generation ago, truly.”

Olympic spirit As well as a surge in rich media mobile ads and social engagement mobile marketing techniques, Copus says the Olympic and Paralympic Games will see other technologies pushed towards the mainstream.

“In terms of consumer uptake of new mobile media such as QR and AR,” says Copus, “I think there will be a propensity to try new things – it’s all part of the Olympic spirit of ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’.

Fans will engage in new ways with brands and the mobile phone being as important and ubiquitous as it now is will be a major driver of that.

“We’re seeing a major uptake over the last six months in the UK especially of marketers using QR codes to hyperlink to the mobile web. It can still be used in a more creative way, and execution and delivery can be significantly improved, but what can now be done is

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

13

phenomenal. Consumers have already been given the opportunity to try this out ahead of the Games. All these new technologies will be picked up in a significant way come July and August.”

Interestingly, all this new ground in terms of mobile marketing will be covered with a backdrop of strict regulation.

Olympic venues are ‘clean’, with no branding visible inside and in a defined ‘Zone’ outside (to the extent that the O2 Arena will be renamed the ‘North Greenwich Arena’ for the duration of the games, to protect BT’s rights as an official sponsor).

Strict regime LOCOG, the London 2012 organising committee, says it is working with leading location-based social networks to ensure they are aware of the Olympic Act, which sets out the restrictions.

“We will also incorporate location-based recognition and checkin functionality in our London 2012 mobile applications,” says a London 2012 spokesperson. “As part of their contract, sponsors must respect London 2012’s clean venues policy in any marketing execution. We work with them on their activation plans to ensure they can get the most out of their sponsorship.”

Copus says: “It’ll be interesting to see where the dividing line is between advertisers and sponsors who want to connect with fans in as much real-time as they are able – in venue – when there are these restrictions in place as to what can be done commercially.”

Event sponsor brands are understandably tight-lipped about their forthcoming campaigns, as they prepare to fully leverage the money they’ve put behind the event. But real-time content could be one focus.

Paulo Alves, general manager of national communications

and CRM at BMW (the official automotive provider for the London 2012 Games) says: “Whilst there are rules surrounding the amount and the times at which athletes can speak directly through mobile channels such as Twitter, we may well see new levels of engagement between the athletes and their fans at London 2012. As heroes emerge we’ll be engaging directly with them or hearing behind-the-scenes excerpts almost straight after they have competed and mobile will be key to this.

“A lot of brands will be operating in this space, competing to bring fans relevant, entertaining content as quickly and regularly as possible and this will inevitably filter through to exclusive marketing and experiential opportunities. Like other brands, BMW will be looking to deliver content that’s relevant and engaging for our customers in real time through mobile.”

BMW has also offered a special iPad magazine, featuring video interviews with Olympians such as Steve Backley and Matthew Pinsent (see boxout).

With the Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as the UEFA Euro 2012 football tournament taking place this summer, sport-themed marketing makes sense for everyone – not just official sponsors.

“The main sponsors will try to maximise their linkage to the games,” says Sports Revolution’s Martin Copus. “The fact that the Olympics is on is not going to preclude other mainstream advertisers who aren’t officially sponsors from making hay while the sun shines.”

The infrastructure is in place, the ad units are ready, and marketers recognise the huge opportunity for innovative campaigns the Olympics and Paralympics are bringing to London and the world. Let the Games begin.

Engaging sports fans: apps that make it happen Screach An AR games controller that can double up as an interactive companion to the sports fan’s viewing – giving updates on stats and the chance to contribute opinions and vote in ‘man of the match’ or MVP polls. www.screach.com Qustodian A mobile fan channel that lends itself to sports clubs and brands.

Fans submit a profile of themselves and marketing messages are delivered to them based on their profile. Fans are then paid cash via PayPal in return for engaging with the content. uk.qustodian.com Scratchino A mobile gaming environment that puts virtual ‘scratchcards’ onto touchscreen devices. Players interact with the screen as they would a scratchcard, offering brands incentivebased marketing opportunities. www.scratchino.com Blippar Sports case studies of the AR app include a campaign for Southampton FC. Fans were able to place their own face in a team huddle image and share via social media – as well as link to the club ticket shop – by pointing their phone at posters placed around the city. www.blippar.com

March 2012

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

14

thought leadership

If I’m your customer, why don’t you text me?

‘Messenger’ lets you communicate with customers in seconds for pennies by text.

Send promotions, booking confirmations, reminders or news to drive your business and best of all it only takes minutes to set-up.

97.5

%

of al l mess text ages read are w seco ithin fiv n e recei ds of bei ng ved

• Simple online mobile messaging • Plan an entire promotional campaign from 2.4p • Over 86,000 happy customers • No software to download • Faster and more effective than email, direct mail or advertising • Free trial with no obligation, give it a go!

Try it out for yourself FREE at www.textlocal.com/mm

or call 0845 009 3180. See how fast it works

text: MM to 66777

text local Mobile messaging solutions

Also trusted by:

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

15

DEV ZONE How we access the internet is rapidly becoming both context-sensitive and device-oriented. Stephan Haux, product director at Netbiscuits, looks at the implications for web apps in this multi-device world

O

nly 10 years ago, the personal computer and a limited dial-up connection began to alter the way we conduct our daily lives.

Today, we take the internet for granted, and a burgeoning range of affordable mobile and connected devices fuels our desire to enter into ongoing dialogues via the web.

It is the context, the task, and the user experience which now governs our choice of device at a given time.

Designers of applications for this alwayson, fully mobile world need to react to the growing expectation of users that the preferences and data of their online sessions should be automatically passed from device to device. Whether using a smartphone, Tablet, PC, game console, TV or other emerging

developmental savings. But there is also a whole host of frequently overlooked user interface components still to be exploited.

Take integration of the TV’s remote control unit or Apple’s Siri voice recognition, for instance. And what about functional capabilities such as the camera, click-to-call, GPS and local storage, or gesture-driven and touch-based characteristics?

Even more challenging is the scattered usage of web apps throughout the day which requires better strategies for tracking and anticipating what users want almost before they have even thought of it. This calls for a whole new set of standards and platform strategies to economically and sustainably address issues raised by screen design, utilisation of device-specific features, multiscreen interaction, and cloud services.

Bridging standards gaps

device, the challenge is to make the transition as seamless as possible for the user and maintain the flow of online interaction without interruption.

Grappling with complexity Catering for different screen sizes and form factors is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to designing and implementing optimised web apps. Device detection and responsive design already offer considerable

Platforms go a long way to solving the challenges of different operating systems, browsers, and vendor-specific JavaScript implementations in multi-device scenarios.

HTML5 simplifies screen design with semantic concepts and embedding of device functions.

Yet leveraging device capabilities inside mobile web apps still requires a substantial amount of specialised clientand server-side programming. HTML5 also forces rendering decisions that can be suboptimal on particular devices. And the quality of CSS3 animations and transitions is still very inconsistent.

Looking to the future, the breakthrough is likely to come in the form of a cloud-based HTML5 framework, which greatly simplifies the development, deployment, and the ongoing updates for new devices and browser

March 2012

versions. This will help speed up the development lifecycles of complex web applications whilst bridging some of the gaps in the current standards.

I’ve started, so I’ll finish

eCommerce and social media operators have been the first to acknowledge that web users now browse the same site across different screens. Their user-centric web apps already include single shopping baskets; and common sets of friends, contacts, or pictures.

But true multi-device support will need to go further. Users will expect web apps not only to share preferences and settings across devices but a much wider range of status information in the background. Consider the well-known Tesco Korea virtual shops in Seoul subway stations: What happens when the train arrives and you haven’t finished shopping yet? Wouldn’t it be great if you could step onto the train and continue shopping on a Tablet at the precise point on the virtual shelf where you broke off ?

Mirror, mirror… on the web The most demanding issue to solve will undoubtedly be ‘situation awareness’ – guessing what the user is up to when using a web app. Location-based services represent a first step in this direction. Unsurprisingly, current results are mixed, as location is nothing more than one attribute constituting a user’s specific situation. The answer needs to be more sophisticated. We’re in its early days, but a solution for the era of the multidevice users will need a comprehensive assessment of both situation and desire.

Emergent cloud services will consequently need to be connected with intelligent web apps to facilitate this shift.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

16

technology

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

17

AR: What’s It For? Augmented Reality (AR) on mobile devices is a $9m industry, with no shortage of impressive examples – but it’s still undeniably a niche. Alex Spencer speaks to some of the key players in mobile AR, to find out whether it’s the next big thing, or just a passing fad

W

hen Mobile Marketing editorial director David Murphy saw mobile Augmented Reality for the first time in 2009, it took his breath away. “I met this guy from a company called Intelligent Spatial Technologies outside Hall 7 at Mobile World Congress, and he proceeded to point his phone at various buildings around the Fira complex,” says Murphy. “As he did so,

photos and information about the buildings appeared on the screen. It might seem like no big deal now, but back then, it was like a kind of magic.”

Some would argue that since that time, the art of AR has not advanced a great deal. There have been isolated campaigns bringing the pages of a printed magazine or an in-store display to life, but it would take a brave soul to argue

that AR is part of the mobile marketing mainstream, or that it’s about to be any time soon.

So what’s AR’s problem? Is it too clever for its own good, or is it just a case of brands and agencies not having worked out how to use it to its best potential?

“It’s not necessarily something you can explain – you have to demonstrate it,” says Windsor Holden, research director at the

March 2012

analyst Juniper Research,“it takes time to educate people.

And not just consumers – the middle of last year, I was speaking to people in the mobile advertising business who didn’t know what AR was. Going into 2011, the question was: what exactly is AR?” It’s a good question. From humble beginnings – in 2008, only a handful of Android

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

18

technology

This AR ad for Xbox features content overlaid when used with the Blippar app

“It takes time to educate people. And not just consumers – last year, I was speaking to people in the mobile advertising business who didn’t know what AR was” Windsor Holden, Juniper

devices were AR-capable, with an audience of 8-9m consumers – the AR-ready global audience has grown to something closer to 100m, thanks to the the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010, which added a gyroscopic sensor alongside the iPhone’s accelerometer.

There are now several hundred AR-enabled apps available, and it’s a broad church – some focusing on using GPS technology to offer location-based services, as used in the TripAdvisor app’s ‘Live view’ mode.

Other apps, like Layar’s Stiktu, use image recognition to overlay information about a product, while a few – particularly in Japan – focus on using QR codes as a jumping-off point.

The effects can be highly impressive – certainly when the technology works, it feels positively futuristic. And, if you listen to some of the loftier claims, perhaps AR does represent the future. Dutch AR company Layar’s Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald says: “Augmented Reality liber-

ates space, just like the web liberated information – with AR you can create your own world.”

For now, though, it offers a way of embedding direct call-to-action into an exciting and novel piece of technology. It’s not difficult to imagine AR enhancing – or ‘augmenting’, perhaps – locationbased vouchering. A consumer walks down the high street, and is able to scan shop fronts to be presented with a coupon they can immediately use in store.

“The benchmarks of our customers show that the interaction with a product increases sales and brand identification,” says Daniel Gelder, head of marketing at metaio, the Munich-based company behind the junaio AR browser.

Novel approach “It’s a fantastic way for consumers to engage with brands, and brands need it more than ever, in the current financial environment,” says Carl Uminski, COO and co-founder of mobile

marketing agency Somo, whose 24-hour Le Mans app for Audi last year included AR content.

“But the number one reason why brands want to be involved, right now, is innovation and being first to market. Take Nike for example – it’s seen as a high-end, tech-led brand, so its consumers expect it.”

If this rush to get in first is the only driving force, though, that could be dangerous. After all, as Uminski points out: “What the technology really doesn’t need is AR that doesn’t work.” And one man’s brave innovation is another’s tacky gimmick – an accusation that’s been levelled at the technology more than once.

“AR campaigns are good at attracting attention but that is in itself part of the problem – it’s seen as gimmicky. It does grab your attention to have a game where you can make blue aliens dance around your desk, but that doesn’t keep it for more than five minutes,” says

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

19

Juniper’s Holden. “How does AR translate into a campaign which is driving footfall into shops, which is driving purchases?”

As enticing as it is to imagine an AR-enabled customer walking down the high street, using an AR app to decide which shops to visit, there is a potentially fatal flaw – how many people are really willing to walk with a screen held constantly in front of their face? For that matter, how many can be convinced they’d even want to try it?

“I love AR, but in the right place,” says Jonathan Bass, managing director of mobile marketing company Incentivated. “I am not sceptical of its viability, but it is never going to be mainstream – that is, of use to the majority of brands.” There’s a feeling that AR might be a case of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”, as Bass puts it, adding he’s yet to see any direct proof of ROI on AR campaigns.

Other companies that are investing in AR have to concede the point: “There’s no way there’s going to be a huge consumer adoption,” Somo’s Uminski admits.

Jessica Butcher, marketing and founding director at Blippar, which specialises in imagerecognition technology, of which AR is just one application, says: “AR is often used to quite faddy effect and some of the novelty factor is starting to wear off. We see more long-term scope for some of the more functional take-away applications of the technology, as opposed to AR.” Hardly shining endorsements from companies who are currently working to sell AR marketing as a viable option to brands and agencies.

Reality distortion And it’s not always an easy sell.

“Some brands have told us it’s a little too chicken and egg, and they don’t want to be the ones doing the hatching,” reveals Butcher. It seems that brands, even those keen to try out the technology, still don’t quite ‘get’ AR. “Some do. Most don’t,” she says. “Those that truly appreciate the implications of our technology embrace it as the new content-delivery medium that it truly represents. Others don’t and simply use it as a way

of linking together other assets or media – to play a TV advert, or linking to a website that isn’t mobile optimised – which doesn’t produce particularly satisfying experiences.”

Which might just sound like a familiar story to anyone who’s been preaching the mobile marketing gospel to clients for the last few years.

“Any brand has to think about what the return is that they’re looking for – ask yourself how many consumers are going to use this, and is the consumer base growing?” says Somo’s Uminski.

After all, it’s in the interests of any company invested in the

Wikitude World Browser uses Augmented Reality to overlay location-aware information onto the view from the camera

Consumers Engage with Cadbury on AR Dairy Milk Game W

hen the Blippar app launched in August last year, it was accompanied by a Cadbury campaign. The Qwak Smack AR game, triggered by pointing a handset at a Dairy Milk, challenged players to tap ducks which appeared from behind the bar, with prizes offered for the highest scores.

“We loved Blippar from the moment we saw it in action,” says Sonia Carter, head of digital at Kraft Foods. “The potential

market for initiatives like this is huge, and we are proud to be bringing this incredible technology to the masses. It doesn’t seem all that long ago we were all marvelling at what QR codes could do, but Blippar’s markerless image-recognition technology takes the experience to a whole new level.”

With no on-pack or above the line promotion – the campaign was promoted via below-the-line social media and PR – the

March 2012

campaign reached 24,812 unique users.

With users playing Qwak Smak an average of six times each, the game achieved 111,656 unique plays.

And the results were beneficial for Blippar, too – the demo video received over 33,000 views on YouTube and, as a result of the campaign activity, the Blippar app was downloaded over 140,000 times on the iTunes App Store.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

20

technology

Layar is another company with an AR app and marketing capabilities, and has run campaigns for the likes of The Rolling Stones

future of the technology that clients get the most out of their first AR experience, even if it means holding back until a more strategic moment. And it looks like that could be starting to pay off.

“We’re seeing more and more interest, from some very large brands,” says Uminski. “Where last year the focus was around AR as a brand-supporting tool, we’re now seeing people using it for a wider range of purposes.”

If AR is deployed with this kind of strategic foresight, and brands and developers alike are willing to learn from their mistakes, then even failed experiments in the technology are valuable. It’s still early days, and there are undoubtedly lessons to be learned.

Layar’s Lens-Fitzgerald explains how the company’s understanding of the technology has changed over time – having originally presumed users

would demand and create highquality 3D content, Layar has since realised that simplicity is the key. It’s a mantra Somo’s Uminski echoes: “Companies need to keep it simple, and get it to market quickly.”

Lens-Fitzgerald uses the analogy of web pages in the early days of the internet, and how important the idea of a ‘page’ – something which could be scrolled, and contain a certain amount of textual and visual information – was to helping people understand the basic format, that has since been built on.

Keep it simple “We’re still looking for the ‘page’ format that will make this part of everybody’s lives and businesses,” says Lens-Fitzgerald, “and that is still the core story of AR – what is that one thing that will make it ubiquitous.”

Like any technology, AR is neither good or bad – it all comes down to how it is incorporated.

“Walking the streets looking for houses for sale? Great. As a tour guide in a museum? Great – and yes we’re working on an AR app for precisely this,” says Incentivated’s Bass. “But using it for finding Tube stations, McDonald’s and Starbucks is stupid, as looking through the lens provides zero extra utility.”

Juniper’s Holden agrees: “It’s a similar problem – perhaps more acute – to the one with 3D in cinemas. The technology has to be there at the outset of development, rather than overlaid as an afterthought. The other thing is, it has to be a good film, a good product, in the first place.” And what makes a good app? “You don’t necessarily have to have the most sophisticated app – go back to Angry Birds, which is graphically quite limited. But it

Layar’s campaign for Manchester’s Park Inn shows users where nearby sights and attractions are located

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

21

A Brief History of AR The term ‘Augmented Reality’, was coined in 1990 by Professor Thomas P. Caudell in reference to a headmounted digital display that guided workers through the task of assembling electrical wires in Boeing aircraft.

But the roots of the concept stretch back much further – arguably, as far as 1961. This was the year cinematographer Morton Heilig patented his Sensorama machine – which tied smells, vibrations and a wind machine to a stereoscopic video clip, and is now for sale online for $1.5m. This proto-AR developed through Ivan Sutherland’s head-mounted displays in 1968, and Myron Krueger’s Videoplace in 1974 – an ‘artificial reality’ laboratory combining projectors, video cameras and image-recognition technology.

In 2008, AR came to mobiles with the Wikitude AR Travel Guide app for the G1 Android phone. “A confluence of different necessary technologies – mobile broadband, accelerometer and gyroscope, allied to camera phones and GPS – those were the key ingredients for the first handsets to be AR capable,” according to Juniper’s Holden.

has to be fundamentally good to use, intuitive, and – in the case of a game – addictive,” says Holden.

Technologically, both hardware and software have reached a level where AR can begin to fulfil its potential, as Somo’s Uminski says: “If you look at the triggers you need, nine months ago you needed a border around the trigger to make it register, today it can be anything. Obviously that requires more processing power, but the handsets are ready for it now. The technology is already moving at a huge velocity, changing more quickly than consumers can even engage with it.”

There are still slight setbacks – metaio’s Gelder stresses the

importance of expedient access to “huge data sets” to streamline the experience, something which would be aided by widespread high-speed 4G connectivity – but AR is getting ready to enter its adolescence, and make the most of all that potential everyone keeps mentioning. The next 12 months will be a fascinating sink-or-swim test for AR, as the current technology is consolidated and perfected, while the next generation develops alongside it.

Augmenting commerce So, what should we expect to see in the near future? “Over the next 12 months, the focus will be on commerce in AR – that’s where the money’s going to be made,

Dutch women’s glossy magazine Linda has used Layar to bring pages to life

March 2012

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

22

technology

where the numbers, the growth, the scalable turnover, will be,” says Layar’s Lens-Fitzgerald.

“Meanwhile, AR will emerge as useful and something that will never go away. Every object in the world eventually will have layers of content – whether from the brand, the retailer, or the consumer – all stacked on top of one another.”

There seems to be a consensus that AR hasn’t yet found its killer app. Developers such as Layar, Blippar, and metaio obviously hope to hit upon the perfect formula for AR, but for now, it’s game for the imagination of anyone.

Killer app “Imagine if Google Maps had AR built into it – then everyone would start using it. If Streetview was AR-enabled, so you could scan store fronts and see promotions, then you’d suddenly see it come together,” says Somo’s Uminski, returning again to

that idea of an AR-enabled high street, conjoined with a highly popular app that the public are already familiar with.

So perhaps it will be one of the big names that will make AR their own – Google, or perhaps Facebook? Juniper’s Windsor Holden foresees “sophisticated facial recognition technology – something which would obviously be useful in a social media setting – but that will be much further down the line.”

Meanwhile, will the smartphone stay the home of AR? “Things like AR glasses might come along at some stage, but they’re not there yet,” says Layar’s Lens-Fitzgerald. “And maybe it’s a sort of ‘flying car’ scenario – people talk about it as the future, but ultimately they don’t want it because the functional technology already exists.”

That certainly fits with the view of Blippar’s Butcher: “Ultimately, a truly entrenched second screen behaviour will emerge over the

“every object in the world will eventually have layers of content – from the brand, retailer, or consumer” Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald, Layar

The History Channel and the Museum of London joined forces for this AR app, which placed historic scenes over the modern day view of the city

AR in Action: Four From Blippar How to ‘blipp’ Download the free Blippar app from the iOS App Store or Android Market Ensure you update the app to the latest version Open the app, and wait for it to sync the latest content Hold your phone up to each marker in blippar mode, filling the screen with the whole image to see it ‘blipp’ to life Note that blipps can expire – if you’re blipping after the campaign has finished running, contact Blippar for some live examples to see the technology in action.

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

23

next 12 months, where phones are held up to things in the real world, not to take pictures, but to extract content and experiences. We won’t do this alone, but in conjunction with all the other AR players out there whose efforts and creativity we applaud and learn from, and who we intend to work closely with to help educate both the brands, and the masses.”

It all sound almost too good to be true – the opportunities, for developers and marketers alike, of a truly immersive technology that can turn the emphasis in advertising from ‘push’ to ‘pull’, are enough to make your head spin – but it has to be remembered that the success of AR still isn’t guaranteed. “It’s all down to education of consumers, and whether something else leapfrogs the technology,” says Somo’s Uminski.

After all, the success of AR won’t be a decision made by the marketers, or even by the development of the technology – which has reached a functional level –

but by the man and woman on the street. The reaction to AR from consumers is still mixed, and Blippar’s Butcher says that rebranding its technology with “more fun definitions”, like ‘Magic Lens’, has produced a warmer reaction.

Reason to engage “Consumers like to engage if they’re given cool and fun new reasons to do so through new technology,” she says. “So it’s about finding a reason to engage – in Domino’s Pizza’s case, it was an exclusive deal and opportunity to order by mobile. In Tesco’s case, it was to find a nearest store and download a recipe file – functional and with content value. In Cadbury’s, it was to get consumers playing with the brand in realtime – enhancing memorability and competitive edge.”

“Useful consumer elements – like offers and discounts – are key to getting users in, then you must ensure there’s brand engagement and rich media content,”

agrees Somo’s Uminski. But once consumers have been drawn into AR – and brands have been convinced that it could work for them – keeping their interest comes back to the question of having a good app in the first place. An app that can be, as Uminski puts it, “stitched into everyday life”.

As of yet, AR hasn’t reached that point. AR is a technology that can feel futuristic, but also as though that is still where it

Somo’s app for Audi was designed as a companion to the Le Mans 24-hour endurance car race

belongs – that its moment in the sun is still somewhere in the future.

Layar’s Lens-Fitzgerald puts it best: “So far, it’s been a great journey of discovery – of what exactly the medium is, of what works and what doesn’t work – and we’re still on that journey.”

Jurassic Park (far left)

blipp for an animated dinosaur graphic and sound, plus a weblink to a trailer.

Ran in the Irish Metro Herald to promote the dino crisis movie’s return to the cinema.

Shrek at Tesco (left)

This nationwide campaign lets you blipp to hear Shrek’s voice, and see an animated menu featuring links to a trailer on YouTube and the Tesco mCommerce site to buy the DVD.

Heinz (right)

blipp the Ketchup bottle to see a recipe book – with details that can be saved to your device – plus social networking links and the chance to enter a competition to win a Heinz cookery pack. This works on the actual Ketchup bottle as well as on the printed image shown here.

Mercedes Benz (far right)

blipp to see a video that calls you to engage with the Mercedes Benz brand through a social media campaign. The video is launched by blipping, but once it’s started you can point your device in any direction and it’ll keep playing.

March 2012

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

24

business models

Beyond Mobile Marketing Upstream president Marco Veremis explains to David Murphy the company’s shift in emphasis from mobile phones to the mobile consumer – and what it means for the marketing industry

O

“convergence is reaching a point where consumers don’t distinguish between devices any more. Good marketers understand this” Marco Veremis

ver the past 11 years, Upstream has established itself as one of the most effective and well-regarded mobile marketing firms in the business, providing the technology and the know-how to enable brands and mobile operators to engage with consumers in a timely, engaging manner that encourages loyalty and increased spend.

So it comes as something of a surprise when Upstream president Marco Veremis declares that the company’s mobile marketing platform is no longer purely about mobile marketing, but rather, about the mobile consumer. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that is crucial to understanding where Upstream is on its evolutionary path, and one that also acknowledges the increasingly important role that mobile plays in most people’s lives.

“The direction we are taking, and the character of our platform, the Marketing Communications Suite (MCS) is that it is not about mobile per se, but is applicable to any form of digital marketing,” Veremis says. “The single most valuable thing to come out of our 11 years’ experience is that we

have learned how to address the new breed of mobile consumer, but this expertise is not limited to any particular device. Our specialism is not around mobile devices, but around how to address the dominant form of consumption today, which is the mobile consumer.”

Mobile consumers The reason for this change of focus, says Veremis, is simple.

“Given the convergence between different devices, companies that remain entrenched in the mobile space alone and that do not redefine themselves to address the mobile consumer will become obsolete,” he says.

Veremis goes on to explain the logic behind his thinking: “When you talk to a big client like a Skype or a Verizon, they no longer talk about devices, but about channels,” he says.

“Facebook, Twitter, email, these are channels that cut across different media. Think about a consumer using Facebook.

He will use Facebook through his mobile, his Tablet, his PC, and going forward, his TV and maybe his car. He will not even remember what he did on each device, because convergence is

reaching a point where consumers don’t distinguish between devices any more. Good marketers understand this, and realise that they need to work with companies that can help them address their entire channel, irrespective of device.”

This change, says Veremis, will have a “transformative effect” on the mobile marketing business. “Vendors who do not follow this trend will become irrelevant,” he says. “The mobile marketing industry must go to the next level and take on the debate.” He adds, however, that so far there are few signs of other traditional mobile marketing specialists following Upstream’s lead.

If the proliferation of channels and connected devices that Veremis describes presents an opportunity for marketers, it’s clear too, that it also presents a threat, as consumers increasingly suffer from a sense of advertising overload.

It’s a threat of which Veremis is acutely aware. He says: “From our vantage point as one of the five largest mobile marketing companies in the world, we have had the benefit of seeing what has been happening within large

Sponsored Feature March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

25

clients in different countries around the world, and the main problem we see is consumer saturation, and the massive inflation of advertising over any digital device – up from 125bn messages in 1996 to over 5 trillion today. That’s over 750 messages per person per year, and correspondingly, response rates have collapsed, from 7 per cent in 1996, to below 0.1 per cent now.

“This is a massive problem for digital marketing. We need to recognise that we have almost reached the limit in terms of how much people can take. It

equation. The platform was built to deliver relevant, contextualised messages to consumers’ mobile devices. In simple terms, the company’s change in focus means that it will apply its intelligence to delivering these offers to the mobile consumer through any channel, irrespective of what device they are using.

“We are planting a stake in the ground in terms of capturing entire digital marketing briefs,” Veremis tells Mobile Marketing.

He draws a distinction between the intelligence needed to identify the right consumer segments

With insights gathered from conducting campaigns to more than 500m consumers in 40 countries under its belt, Veremis says Upstream’s place in the value chain is firmly on the intelligence side of things, adding that companies that position themselves here need to become media neutral, something Upstream has worked hard to do over the past three years.

Global presence In parallel with its change in focus, the last 12 months has seen Upstream significantly

so we needed a US presence. It also gives us access to some very interesting and high calibre people working in the Valley.”

Upstream’s lead client in Brazil is Telecom Italia, whose subscriber base currently stands at over 50m, and is growing rapidly. “Latin America is seeing remarkable growth,” says Veremis. “Any company that wants to be taken seriously must have a presence there.” Upstream’s Dubai office, meanwhile, serves the entire Middle East and African region, where Upstream has executed campaigns with STC, Vodacom, MTN and Airtel, among others.

Powerful platform

signals the need for a complete change in attitude, moving clients away from a volumebased game with good enough technologies, to a quest for effectiveness, driven by brilliant, innovative technologies that can deliver the kinds of contextualised, relevant offers that encourage consumers to respond.”

This, of course, is where Upstream’s MCS fits into the

and the right products and offers to target them in order to create a compelling proposition; and the execution part of the process, in which the offer is delivered through each medium. This he describes as “more of a pipe”, adding that it’s this part of the process that is likely to become commoditised over the next couple of years as it becomes less technically challenging.

increase its global presence, opening up offices in Silicon Valley, Brazil, Dubai and Singapore, to add to its strong European presence.

“For a long time, our focus was mainly on Europe, because it was a front-runner in mobile marketing terms,” explains Veremis. “But the US has caught up, and most of the companies spending big on digital are there,

Sponsored Feature March 2012

There will be plenty more of those campaigns to come from Upstream in the coming year, delivered sometimes via mobile, but equally, via other digital channels.

“This year, we are seeking to prove that a platform borne out of mobile can be a disruptive and game-changing platform for any digital marketing activity,” says Veremis. “We are not going to start hiring web developers or media buyers, but we will insert into this space a very powerful platform that can massively increase customer response.

“We are not competing with traditional digital agencies; instead, we are bringing something new to the table, and this is a full understanding of what the modern consumer is – a mobile consumer, consuming media on the go with a short attention span, and very personal, intimate relationships with the media they use. This is the kind of insight that only a mobile specialist has. It’s not about mobile marketing any more; it’s about the mobile consumer.”

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

26

thought leadership

Don’t take chances with your mobile transactions Take control with the OpenMarket mobile transaction hub.

OpenMarket is the world’s most reliable mobile transaction hub with over ten years’ experience in the market. We have more than 250 staff dedicated to providing innovative solutions to help you manage your mobile business successfully. We provide the industry-leading cross-channel, cross-network platform with extensive mobile operator connections around the globe.

Get started today!

Whether you are a large retailer, consumer brand, developer, or an agency, you need a partner that gives you a competitive advantage, as well as access to the most comprehensive suite of mobile service tools and the largest possible mobile audience.

OpenMarket delivers the operator connectivity, application building blocks and mobile payment capabilities that drive your mobile business success.

Vist us at Mobile World Congress – Stand 7E42

openmarket.com/europe +44 20 8987 8855 Text sales to 88600 Email sales@uk.openmarket.com Copyright 2011 OpenMarket Inc. All rights reserved. OpenMarket is a business of Amdocs.

September 2011 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

thought leadership

27

Aggregate Score In the first instalment of a new column looking at the aggregator community, OpenMarket director of marketing Andrew Darling considers the evolving role of aggregators in mobile media markets

T

he mobile aggregator community has always adapted and evolved to changing market dynamics. Traditionally, aggregators provide connectivity and billing tools for content platforms and networks. They remove the complexity of monetising and distributing content across all networks, so that publishers and media owners can market to the widest possible audience.

Enabling mobile engagement campaigns and delivering monetised services to mobile consumers is how OpenMarket grew from a start up company in 2000 – known as MX Telecom – to being acquired by OpenMarket, an Amdocs company, for over $100m in 2010. OpenMarket has evolved into an international mobile solutions hub.

Although mobile marketing and entertainment services have traditionally been the customer sweet spot for aggregators, as the importance of the mobile channel for enterprises across all sectors has grown, so too has the demand for reliable and innovative solutions providers that can add value to the bottom line. Today’s customers include companies, charities, and public sector bodies, as well as the digital agencies that develop campaign strategies for them.

The rise of mobile media is changing the aggregator landscape yet again. A tiered structure has emerged, with smaller aggregators competing on price for simple delivery services, while other players try to add value by integrating creative agency services, app development, or by specialising in specific verticals. Meanwhile, Over The Top (OTT) services from Facebook,

Google and others are more compelling than ever. These are mainly free to end users and often overpower mobile network operator’s (MNO) own services.

Delivering content Providing feature-rich, cross-network, mobile engagement experiences for consumers requires management of complex relationships and technical integration between multiple parties. Some MNOs are attempting not to be sidelined by OTT providers and have begun to open up network APIs to developers, either directly, or via trusted intermediaries like OpenMarket.

As MNOs evolve themselves, Tier 1 aggregators are developing more customised solutions for all types of organisations. We’re building more bespoke, merchant-branded payment flows for web and app transaction environments, enabling deeper platform and network API integration for content publishers, licensing toolkits for developers to build more optimised app and mobile web presences, as well as providing reliable access to scalable, cross-network international gateway and payment solutions.

Increasingly, larger enterprises are looking to consolidate services to a few reliable suppliers that can provide these enhanced services. Mobile messaging is no longer just a simple form of communication between friends and family. It has evolved into an essential tool for maintaining commercial relationships. SMS and push messaging bring a fast, reliable and rela-

March 2012

tively low-cost form of communication and application enhancement to enterprises from all sectors.

The recent downward trend in MNO P2P (peer-to-peer) messaging in some developed markets disguises a rise in A2P (application-to-person) and push messaging traffic, and this illustrates how mobile web, apps and interactive messaging all optimise natural browsing and response habits for smartphone and feature phone users.

In a few months, brands will be able to add cross-network, free or premium priced IVR and voice services to the marketing mix in the UK, accessed through five-digit voice short codes, provided by companies such as OpenMarket. This is the result of the aggregator community working with all MNOs to facilitate a greater range of options for brands on mobile. Other examples include VAT-free outpayments on carrier billed transactions for exempt merchants, mobile crediting solutions and better-performing charity services.

Ultimately, we could see increasing cooperation between OTT providers, developers, and MNOs. Brands want deeper cross-platform and cross-network integration to differentiate their mobile services and improve the user experience, and this will involve closer commercial and technical relationships. Technology-driven mobile solution hubs that can manage the complex technical and partner relationships involved will add considerable value here too, as the digital services evolution continues to be mobilised.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

28

business models

WHEN COOKIES CRUMBLe Is your mobile website operating within the law, and are your mobile apps legal?

From this May, they could well fall foul of the Cookie Law – the latest piece of EU regulation to affect the mobile industry. George Cole explains

I

“the trouble is that the people whose job it was to turn these GOOD intentions into law don’t understand technology” Oliver Emberton, Silktide

t sounds like one of those funny European regulations for curved cucumbers or bent bananas, but for anyone operating a website within the EU, the Cookie Law is no laughing matter. In 2009, the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive was passed, and became law on 26 May 2011.

The law is designed to protect consumers against unauthorised data capture and tracking when visiting websites, and covers the use of cookies. Under the new law, users have to give their positive consent (opt-in) for cookies to be stored on their device (such as a PC, Tablet or smartphone).

The Cookie Law doesn’t just cover cookies; it also includes other forms of data storage and tracking, such as Flash cookies (local storage objects) and HTML5 local storage.

Cookies are small text files that are stored in a web browser, and quite simply, the web could not operate without them. Cookies are used for many functions, including analytics, advertising, conversion tracking, user preferences, log-on and online shopping – many of which form the cornerstone of mobile marketing and advertising. The one conces-

sion the Law does make is that consent is not required for cookies that are deemed “strictly necessary”, such as when putting items into a shopping basket.

However, it has been made clear that few cookies are expected to fall under this category.

Half baked?

So who comes under the Law? If your organisation has a base in the EU and uses a website, then you are bound by the law, even if the website is hosted outside the EU. In the UK, the law is being enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which has the power to fine organisations up to £500,000 for any breaches of it.

“Cookies are useful, but can be used to build up profiles,” says Simon Rice, ICO principal technical adviser. Jonathan Bass, MD of Incentivated, a mobile marketing technology company, says: “I fully support the legislation – I don’t like the idea of organisations tracking me without my consent. But I am concerned over the way it could be implemented.”

Oliver Emberton, founder of website testing and consultancy company Silktide, says the

Cookie Law: “Started off with good intentions, but the trouble is that the people whose job it was to turn those intentions into law don’t understand technology.

It’s going to create a ton of complexity and extra things to worry about.” Critics of the Law have described it as “unworkable”, “a shambles”, “breathtakingly stupid”, and “barking mad”. The ICO’s Rice is more diplomatic: “It could have been drafted differently,” he says.

One of the biggest problems is the vagueness of the legislation.

In an effort not to appear too prescriptive, the law leaves much open to interpretation – when is consent required? How much information needs to be provided to visitors and how should consent be obtained? For example, should a pop-up appear every time a new cookie is introduced? Can consent be included in the website’s terms and conditions? Is a oneoff notification sufficient?

The ICO’s own website, for example, uses an accordion interface on the home page, which asks visitors to give their consent, but Rice says that such an approach may not be appropriate for other websites. “The Cookie Law creates the same

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

29

problems for the mobile marketing industry as everyone else – plus a few more,” says Bass. “For example, you don’t have to rely on cookies for tracking; a mobile phone offers a unique persistent ID – you’re less likely to share your phone than a PC. And what about personalised URLs sent in SMS messages? The legislation says nothing about these.”

Bass is also concerned about the apparent lack of urgency within the mobile world. “None

to the server, and some people are going to have to replace their existing apps in order for them to be compliant with the Law.”

Smart cookie There are two types of apps: hybrid and native. A hybrid app has elements of both a web app and a native app, but a native app is designed to reside solely on a device. Bass says that some apps are written in native code – and that is a big problem. “It’s

Cookies that enable shopping basket functionality will be unnaffected by the new Law, but many other cookie uses will need to be assessed for compliance

of our corporate clients have proactively mentioned the Cookie Law to us; we are having to bring it to their notice,” he says.

Takes the biscuit Configuring a mobile site to conform to the Cookie Law isn’t much different from doing the same thing for a desktop website, says Bass. However, he says: “The fact that you’ve got a smaller screen on mobile, and the user is reliant on the available connectivity, means that implementing the Law will have a negative impact on the user experience.”

Bass is more concerned with mobile apps. “They send a prodigious amount of user data back

easier to develop a native app, which is why some developers are tempted to simply do that.

But my advice would be: don’t, because it’s impossible to update a native app. With a hybrid app, you can update the content and user interface at the server end.”

Native apps will have to be re-built to comply with the Law, says Bass. “This will mean extra work for everybody … developers will have to re-write the app; if your app is on iTunes, it will have to be resubmitted to Apple for approval, and the user will then have to download the new app.”

But whether a mobile app is native or hybrid, the Cookie Law will involve more toil for app developers. “It’s not just about

adding a pop-up that asks for permission to track: you’ve also got to work out what your app will do if the user refuses to give permission,” says Bass.

The ICO has issued a 10-page advice leaflet on implementing the Cookie Law and says that it will be “keeping the situation under review and will consider issuing more detailed advice if appropriate”. It has also given companies based in the UK a 12-month period (which ends in May) to prepare for the legislation, but the ICO warns that this does not mean organisations should do nothing. Rice says companies should use this time to audit their website, see what types of cookies are being used, what data they are holding about online visitors, and deciding the best way of obtaining consent.

“Don’t panic,” is the advice from Mark Brill, chair of the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) Mobile Marketing Council.

“The good news is that the ICO is keen to work with the industry. It’s not taking a draconian ‘let’s fine everybody’ approach.

It’s about working towards a solution between regulators and the industry.”

The DMA plans to produce a white paper and hold briefings on how best to implement the Law, and Brill adds that nonmembers can contact the DMA for advice. Emberton thinks an easier solution could have been found. “The big worry for many people is third-party cookies – the EU could have simply banned them,” he says. “The concern is that, because this law is so badly drafted, it’ll be ignored.”

Another concern is that the Cookie Law could put European companies at a disadvantage. “eBusiness has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, both directly and indirectly,” says Bass. “We now have a Law that could make it harder for European compa-

March 2012

“Cookies are useful, but can be used to build up profiles” Simon Rice, ICO

nies to be competitive with their US counterparts.” Others think that unless the Cookie Law is implemented consistently across the EU, UK-based companies could be further disadvantaged.

“The UK tends to gold-plate EU regulations, unlike other countries,” notes Bass.

So what should organisations be doing? “The ICO needs to clarify what it wants to achieve,” says Bass, “and if we can’t make it work in an elegant way, then consumers in Europe will have an awful user experience. But if implemented correctly, it could give consumers more power, without the industry losing revenue or ceding market share to US companies.”

Useful links For information about cookies www.allaboutcookies.org The ICO’s website includes advice on the EU Cookie Law www.ico.gov.uk Oliver Emberton has produced a free eBook on the EU Cookie Law and created an amusing video on its implications www.silktide.com/cookielaw

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

30

best practice

MOBILE WEBSITE ESSENTIALS Rob Thurner, mobile specialist and adviser to the Mobile Training Academy, offers advice on optimising your website for display on mobile phones

M

ost of my training courses start with a discussion around the pros and cons of mobile as a digital marketing, CRM, and commerce channel.

Everyone has opinions, positive or negative, usually informed by their experiences as consumers.

But more often than not, this ice-breaker exercise is followed by pregnant pauses when I ask them to explain their own companies’ experiences. This is odd, because the majority of them have had an early experiment with messaging or running competitions. Most know what their competitors are up to. Based on the sample of 950 people I trained last year, the biggest question mark hovers over their mobile internet presence.

Some say they’ve used the mobile budget to build an iPhone or Android app, without realising that the majority of customers don’t (yet) have smartphones.

Optimising your site for mobile is no longer a ‘nice to have’. Research from John Lewis shows that consumers expect a decent user experience on the mobile internet, and will shift allegiance to competitor brands that offer a better mobile web experience.

The focus for many brands over the past 10 years has been getting the full PC website right. This is often the reason

brands give for delivering their full site to customers browsing on mobiles. The vast majority of brands – 83 per cent according to Google – still have not optimised their websites for mobile. This stat is mirrored by a rather dismal situation with bounce-rates for mobile sites, which stand at 88 per cent on average. The message is clear: consumers won’t hang around on a mobile site that gives a poor browsing experience.

Mission critical This may not seem like a matter of life and death, but to brands in sectors such as retail and travel, it may not be far off the mark. Digital superbrands, including eBay and Amazon, have proved the central role of mobile in delivering a personalised mobile internet experience built on previous shopping behaviour data, which is fully integrated with your content management system, and sophisticated targeting.

This is often to the detriment of bricks and mortar retailers, whose bewildered store staff are confronted by growing numbers of smart shoppers doing price comparison shopping in their stores. Many of us are intent on seeing the product in the store, checking if we can buy cheaper on Amazon, then placing the or-

der using our mobiles and waiting 24 hours for free delivery.

Amazon’s sales on mobile hit $1bn in 2010, a figure surely surpassed in 2011 and set to rise further in 2012. User experience is a significant factor. eBay is now processing a transaction every second on mobile – whether you’re buying skis on your smartphone or ink cartridges on your feature phone, eBay detects your handset and delivers a consistent browsing experience, from product search to reviews and checkout. Towards the end of 2011, eBay forecast that its

sales on mobile would grow by $1bn, from $4bn in 2010, to £5bn in 2011. eBay’s head of retail, Angus McCarey, says mobile’s effect on High Street retailers is unavoidable, and comes in the form of “shoppers hitting you in store with internet shopping in their pockets”. eBay is calling for collaboration with other retailers.

Open for business Peter Fitzgerald, country sales director for Google UK and former Amazon marketer, likens a poor mobile site to closing

eBay’s mobile site is a huge hit – it now processes a transaction every second

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

31

your doors on the High Street for a couple of days a week. Poor sites turn away customers, and through social networks, they turn other customers away.

This is not the place to debate the merits of partnering with resellers like Amazon or eBay rather than running seasonal sales, or closing down sales, but the disappearance of Woolworths, Habitat, Best Buy and others from the High Street acts as a poignant reminder that mobile commerce, accessed via the mobile web, offers a lifeline to those struggling to stay afloat.

Retailers must act fast to make sure they are providing an optimised mobile sales channel which is easy to find, quick to navigate, and secure to transact. There is clear evidence that optimised mobile sites pay dividends. M&S, a true mobile pioneer, has developed a mobile strategy matching the mobile behaviour of its target audience.

At the heart of its targeted mobile CRM programme, developed

by Incentivated, M&S offers customers an optimised mobile site which has handled one-off transactions exceeding £5,000.

Specialist brands are also reaping the rewards of optimised mobile sites. Kiddicare.com is Europe’s largest online nursery retailer, with further European expansion planned for 2012. It is one of the most successful brands to benefit from Google’s support in mobilising retail brands’ web presence.

Baby steps According to Fred Soneya, Kiddicare’s head of eCommerce: “We identified that our customers’ browsing and shopping habits have changed; consumers are watching product videos, shopping and looking for answers on mobile devices, so support and an interactive community for those experiences are essential.”

In order to address these habits, and make the online shopping experience accessible to 21st Century parents, Kiddicare developed a transactional mobile site to replicate its website offering.

The strategy was to create a presence for the brand in consumers’ pockets via their mobile device, through which they could access the full range

Kiddicare’s mobile site made its first sale four minutes after it went live

of Kiddicare.com products at any time, and compare prices with those of its competitors.

The fully transactional mobile-friendly version of the Kiddicare.com website automatically renders for mobile devices and isn’t a new domain, simply an extension of the existing site. This means that Kiddicare.com’s award-winning SEO strategy maintains all of its link equity in mobile search.

The mobile version of the Kiddicare website took just seven weeks to design and build, from concept to launch and, once live, the first customer order was placed within four minutes. Within 12 weeks, mobile accounted for approximately 10

per cent of all Kiddicare.com unique user revenue. Just over a year later, mobile accounts for 12 per cent of Kiddicare’s revenue, with this figure expected to grow to 20-25 per cent in 2012.

The fundamentals Back to the training room. It’s clear I’ll need to spend time talking through the seven-stage process of designing, building, monitoring and adapting the mobile site for most of the brands represented. And as all ‘off-site’ training groups include marketers from multiple brands and sectors, we’ll be using examples from the financial services, automotive, travel, IT and pharma sectors, and referencing B2B businesses.

If time allows, I’ll ask the group to get their own sites on their mobiles and set them a group exercise to mock up designs for their own sites (remembering the ‘three click rule’ for accessing content, and the ‘on tracks’ vertical navigation rule).

I’ll explain the best ways to drive traffic; how to optimise mobile advertising budgets; the changing world of mobile search; and the value of working closely with offline media channels, as 83 per cent of us are now ‘multi-screening’ – using our mobiles and Tablets while watching TV. The latter explains why successful mobile brands like M&S see spikes in mobile traffic during primetime TV. This article hasn’t addressed the relative merits of mobile sites and apps, which can provide a rich user experience to your smartphone users. As browsers improve, we’ll start to see more mobile sites looking and performing like apps. But in the short and long run, there’s no substitute for the internet, whether accessed on PC or mobile, if you want to reach your customers.

March 2012

TOP TIPS FOR BRANDS LAUNCHING MOBILE SITES User experience is fundamental. Make sure content is quick to find and easy to navigate Use handset detection software and redirect to a mobile-optimised site matching that handset’s capabilities Ensure all other media channels drive traffic to your site. Add SMS calls to action or QR codes on above-theline media, mailers, pointof-sale materials Be honest – would you bookmark your site?

Personalised content, derived from full integration with your CMS, encourages return visits Evaluate payment options and minimise steps in the check-out process to reduce drop-off Test the site prior to launch to remedy errors.

Test text and layout variables to optimise the user experience Monitor traffic and page views constantly, and refine content in real time

www.mobiletrainingacademy.com

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

32

the real world

Digital Snapshot

AR on mobile is a fascinating prospect technologically, but what do real people think? We turned to 1,000 UK consumers to find out

A

ugmented Reality (AR) on mobile is an undeniably hot topic, but Mobile Marketing’s latest research, using Toluna Quick Survey, has revealed that over three quarters of the UK still have no idea what mobile AR is. Less than 25 per cent of the 1,000 UK consumers we surveyed knew what the term ‘mobile AR’ meant.

“This research shows that AR is maturing, but perhaps not at the breakaway rate that many mobile insiders want people to believe. So we must do more in brand awareness of the concept of AR – which is why brands like Blippar get our full support,” says Dan Sodegren, commercial manager at goAugmented.

“Reports from over in the US, and our own findings in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, show a much more expansive market, fully aware of the potential of mobile AR. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing in the UK, or just a matter of time before we reach a tipping point.”

Reality check As might be expected, men (at 30 per cent) were more likely to be aware of the technology than women (22 per cent) – and

awareness of mobile AR was highest among young people.

35 per cent of respondents aged between 18 and 34 were familiar with mobile AR, as compared to 22 per cent of those aged 35-54, and only 15 per cent of the over-55s.

So, AR on mobiles is still a bit of a mystery to the people on the street. And to those who are in the know, when we asked them what one word they’d use to describe the technology, the everpresent criticism of AR as being a “gimmick” rose to the surface.

HOW DID YOU ACCESS THE AUGMENTED REALITY CONTENT?

45%

30%

25%

•By scanning an image/object •Based on my location/using GPS •By scanning a QR code/barcode Visual AR – scanning a real world object or image – was the most popular way of accessing AR content

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

33

“as more consumers adopt smartphones, vision-based AR offers the best capabilities to capture the excitement and attention of consumers” Julian Harris, Qualcomm

Qualcomm worked with the Dallas Mavericks on an AR game triggered by a ticket to one of the US basketball team’s games

But there’s good news, too.

Of those who were familiar with the technology, 43 per

cent had used a mobile AR app – and of those, only 6 per cent were unimpressed with their

DO YOU KNOW WHAT MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY IS? (split by age demographics)

18-34

35 – 54

55+ 85%

No Yes

78%

65%

35% 22%

15%

AR experience. 50 per cent of respondents rated the AR app they used as “great”.

“The findings prove that once people try AR and appreciate its almost unlimited potential, they see a whole new world open up,” says goAugmented’s Sodegren. “We find this is the same with the more creative traditional marketing agencies we approach – once they have tried an AR app for themselves they get it and want to use it. They just need more stats to persuade their clients too.”

And it gets better – 85 per cent will use the same AR app again, and 86 per cent were willing to try another AR-enabled app.

This was even more pronounced among women – 90 per cent will use the same app again, and 93 per cent will try another one.

AR, it appears, might have more sticking power than some of its critics have suggested.

Killer app

Younger respondents were significantly more likely to be familiar with the concept of mobile AR

Our results did, however, support the idea that there isn’t yet a killer app representing mobile AR. No single app emerged as the most popular among our respondents. And while the odd familiar name emerged – including Layar, Aurasma,

March 2012

and the Google Goggles and Sky Map apps – there was no real brand recognition, most respondents identifying the apps they had used by function rather than name.

The most popular way of accessing AR content, among 45 per cent of respondents, was by scanning an object or image.

“As more consumers adopt smartphones and the capabilities of AR grow, vision-based AR offers the best capabilities to capture the excitement and attention of consumers,” says Julian Harris, senior business development manager at Qualcomm, whose investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures, recently put seed funding into imagerecognition firm Blippar.

GPS and location-based AR came in second place at 30 per cent, and proved especially popular with the younger people we surveyed – location-based apps were used by 37 per cent of 18-34 year olds. QR codes were the least popular way, at 25 per cent, of accessing AR content, especially among the 18-34 demographic – with only 18 per cent – but proved popular with those aged over 55, 40 per cent of whom accessed AR content through QR codes.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

34

best practice

APPLICATION Showcase As with any technology, Augmented Reality’s success – or failure – lies in the quality of the software that puts it to use. Alex Spencer takes a look at two examples of how AR is being used in apps Stiktu

S

tiktu is a new project from Layar. It’s completely removed from the company’s location-based browser, instead focusing on image recognition.

The app enables users to scan flat items – like product packaging, posters, or magazine covers – and overlay them with their own images or text, which can then be viewed by other users scanning the same item.

The idea of being able to discover virtual caches, digital graffiti hidden on everyday products by other users, is an exciting one, and the app is intuitive and easy to use. The

image editor, though basic, is as smooth as we’ve seen on a smartphone. However, like most vision-based AR, using Stiktu requires a steady hand and a certain amount of patience.

Scanning shiny surfaces is tricky, and requires some effort to get the lighting just right.

A small issue, but exacerbated by the kind of objects Stiktu naturally lends itself to. Imagine trying to scan a new chocolate bar in a shop, to see what others have to say about it – exactly the kind of task for which Stiktu seems designed. The foil packaging might cause trouble with image recognition. You’d probably have to pick it up and find somewhere with less direct light to scan it, and – given that Stiktu occasionally picks up items behind the one you’re aiming for – somewhere with a neutral background.

Positioning the object in the viewfinder, waiting for it to register and analyse, and then download any results – it all adds up to just a few seconds, but it’s too much work for such lightweight rewards. Especially given that, at least currently, there are only a small number of posts in existence, most of which amount to moustaches drawn on FHM cover models, or

letters grafted onto headlines to spell rude words.

Like anything that relies on user-generated content, Stiktu finds itself in a vicious cycle – if there’s no quality content, there’s no motivation for users to hunt for it. If there are no viewers, users have little reason to create their own content. And so, using the app quickly turns into an uninspiring game of trial-and-error. It’s hard to spontaneously find something that already has content attached to it, and that leaves it feeling unlikely that anything you post will be discovered by anyone else.

The app does offer the option to browse creations without scanning – the popular and well-rated selections at this point mostly provided by Layar themselves – but this misses the point of what makes Stiktu so potentially exciting in the first place.

You can imagine a world where scanning consumer products is a quick way of retrieving layers of information – from nutritional values put there by the manufacturer to reviews from other users

The Stiktu app provides a quick and easy way to draw, write or place stickers onto real-world objects – but they’re not always quite so easy to retrieve

– but Stiktu doesn’t do much encourage that. It’s a good idea, if slightly rooted in novelty value, but the technology isn’t quite there. For now, like a lot of AR, Stiktu is more promise than product.

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

35

FindaProperty

F

indaProperty Search isn’t a ‘pure’ AR app – instead, AR functionality is smoothly integrated into its features.

On opening, the app presents a simple Search page, with three chunky buttons if you want to buy, rent, or find an agent. If set in List View, the app provides a list of nearby properties resembling a streamlined version of a traditional website, all of which can be viewed on a map.

But select Camera View – notably, not explicitly identified as AR – and the same functionality carries over to an augmented video feed, which displays markers of nearby properties over their location, with key information – including road name, price, and distance from current location – and a photograph of the housefront.

It’s a clean, stripped back viewfinder, with just Home and Refine buttons on the left, and a radar in the top right, illustrating the whereabouts of properties within the chosen radius as white dots. The size of the radius can be altered within the Refine tab – along with price limits, and number of bedrooms – and the number of properties can be increased by pressing a More button next to the radar.

If multiple properties overlap, those closest are brought to the front, but a quick press of the Send to Back button can switch this. Tapping the marker of

each property brings details and more options to the bottom of the screen – which will stay there when the device is pointed away, meaning the handset doesn’t have to be permanently held at an awkward angle.

From here, a Call Agent option provides a direct call to action, while Details leads into a series of pages featuring a full description of the property – with photos, and a floorplan if available – as well as options to share the details.

You can also ‘click to call’ or email the agent.

Properties can also be saved as favourites, helping users create a shortlist – but this feature doesn’t feed back into the AR functionality. Refining the Camera view to only feature properties the user liked seems like a missed opportunity.

Throughout, the handset has to be used horizontally – sensibly, as most scanning of an area will be done left to right – but property details flip everything round into portrait. Otherwise, though, it’s a slick implementation, which shows many purely AR apps how it should be done – simple, as a support to other content, and with a practical reason for the user to engage.

March 2012

FindaProperty’s Camera View mode is impressively accurate – with a phone in your hand, it’s easy to spot the ‘For Sale’ sign it’s guiding you towards

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

36

business models

Rich Pickings Paul Childs, chief marketing officer of global mobile ad marketplace Adfonic, explains why rich media mobile advertising is set to take off on a global scale

M

obile advertising garners the kinds of response rates that traditional internet advertisers can only dream of.

But what if a brand’s mobile ads can drive an even deeper level of interaction between consumers and brands? That’s what rich media can achieve on mobile, and we believe that now is the time to embrace rich media in mobile campaigns.

The term ‘rich media’ essentially refers to an ad that gives the user a degree of interaction with the ad itself, and therefore with the brand’s message.

Perhaps most compelling for the advertiser is that rich media can facilitate video playback. A rich media ad, when clicked, can replicate the power of a TV ad on the device’s screen.

Rich media has progressed rapidly, to the point where the technology is ready to see these kinds of ads adopted on a global scale. iOS and Android devices can now provide a seamless user experience – delivering the ad within applications, and letting the consumer play with the rich content there and then. It’s then possible to easily navigate back to their app, and resume what they were doing.

Creatively, the potential executions of rich media campaigns are endless. Imagine an ad

“The ability to offer the ‘wow factor’ of a TV campaign, combined with the interactivity of the internet is surely the holy grail for marketers”

for an automotive brand that allows the consumer to view a car in different colours, or from various angles. Or a campaign for a clothing brand that allows consumers to try out clothes, shoes, and accessories to build a complete outfit.

Couple that with the realestate afforded by increasingly prevalent Tablet devices such as the iPad and you’ve got a campaign that engages consumers

on a far deeper level than simple banners. The ability to offer the ‘wow factor’ of a TV campaign, combined with the interactivity of the internet, is surely the holy grail for marketers.

Rich media campaigns allow advertisers to tell many stories in a single experience, prompting the consumer to do more through signposting. It allows you to expose more of the brand’s messaging and you’re

ultimately getting the consumer to interact with the products and services and features. And through that you’re exposing the key benefits of the brand.

Perfect timing There are a number of levers that have come into play to really enhance the potential of rich media as an advertising format. The first is mass penetration of smartphone devices.

Sponsored Feature March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

37

Rich media ads offer enormous potential for consumers to interact with brands and explore products and services in new and innovative ways. As a result, such campaigns can achieve consumer engagement on a whole new level

There were approximately 252m iOS devices and 243m Android devices globally as of the end of 2011. That’s a reach of almost half a billion people. In the UK, there are around 15m Android and iOS smart devices that a rich media campaign can hit.

The second lever is the prevalence of touch screens among modern smart devices.

Tablets and Android and iOS phones promote interaction through touch, which gives the opportunity for higher levels of consumer interaction.

Thirdly, and probably most important, is the lifestyle aspect of these devices. We are reaching for our phones all day, every day.

Consumers are increasingly ‘info-snacking’, such as when we’re out shopping, when we’re watching a TV commercial, when we’re in bed, or when we’re eating in a restaurant. These are all opportunities that were never accessible before to brands via rich advertising units.

With these three fundamental levers in place, there’s clearly a compelling opportunity for brands to access consumers on a large scale, using ad units that create awareness, have more real-estate for messaging, and more options for the user to engage with the product or the brand on the touchscreen. It also

allows brands to take a more creative approach in telling consumers their stories.

Up until very recently, rich media advertising was dominated by ad networks that play in the premium space. These networks would build their own ad units and rich media experiences for premium clients, to be served through premium apps. But the mobile industry has been working to facilitate rich media advertising on a global scale, and a new, open standard called ORMMA, and a collection of APIs called MRAID, is the result.

High standards This open standard has now been adopted by several key trade bodies around the world, and defines a standardised way for the big global ad networks such as Adfonic to integrate rich media ads into their inventory.

At the same time, third parties such as Celtra, Crisp, and Phluant have created platforms that allow agencies to create ORMMA-based ads. Suddenly, global ad networks have a lot more options on the table for brands and agencies.

The industry standard also means that it’s now really straightforward for a brand to set up a rich media mobile campaign. Depending on the

complexity of the campaign, it can take from a few days to a few weeks to get a campaign to market. Most of the time will be spent on creative development – the brand and its agency should engage with their ad network and see what the options are.

Again, the potential executions are almost limitless.

Banner ads that launch videos are clearly a compelling option, while clicks that launch a carousel of images or HTML5-based interactive content are also possible. Once the brand has an idea of what it wants, the agency can put together a storyboard, outlining the experiences the ad will trigger, and how and where the brand’s key messaging fits in.

Once all that’s been decided, the ad network then works with one of the third-party rich media providers to build the ad with their self-service tools. The ad then just needs sign-off and it’s ready to launch. Within a few weeks, the brand’s ad can reach millions of unique Android and iOS devices in any country.

As with all digital advertising, measurement is key, and we have a range of ways to dissect the effectiveness of your rich media campaign. And the great thing about mobile is that, given that the user has the device in their hand, if they’re playing

Sponsored Feature March 2012

your ad, you can be reasonably sure they’re watching it or engaging with it. We can track the average view time for a video, and the number of complete views. It comes back to metrics that the advertising industry is already familiar with – for example, if you advertise at the cinema, you want to know how many people bought tickets for the film and therefore eyeballed your message.

Of course, the really smart rich media mobile campaigns will feature mobile as part of an integrated marketing strategy.

People are using their phones throughout the day, which offers great opportunities for advertisers to cross-link mobile ads with advertising activity across other channels. For example, big brands advertising on TV should think about how they can use mobile to create rich media experiences that align with and enhance their campaign.

As smartphones and Tablets continue to gain more penetration in major markets, they will increasingly become a key channel for integrated marketing campaigns. The fact that consumers simply can’t put their device down is a marketer’s dream – and the stage is now set for them to create rich, engaging experiences, on a global scale.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

MOBILE MASTERCLASS SERIES 2012 Taking business mobile across the UK, US and German markets

RETAIL

FINANCE

TRAVEL

UK

AUTOMOTIVE

Retail, London

20 MAR

Retail, Hamburg

2 MAY

Finance, London

20 MAR

Brand & Agency,

13 JUN

Travel & Tourism,

Hamburg

London

24 APR

Retail, Munich

13 JUN

Automotive, London

24 APR

Brand & Agency,

18 SEP

Sport & Leisure,

AGENCY

US

GERMANY

2 MAY

6 NOV

SPORTS

16 OCT

Brand & Agency, San Francisco

16 OCT

Retail, San Francisco

Munich

London

25 SEP

Finance, Frankfurt

Brand & Agency,

25 SEP

Automotive, Frankfurt

London

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT

Sponsorship opportunities are limited to 6 per event and selling out fast. To get your brand in front of the digital decision makers from any of the sectors listed above, contact John Owen on +44 (0)7769 674824 john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com

"In terms of partnership development with leading brands, the Mobile Brand & Agency Masterclass was a commercial breath of fresh air.

ORGANISED BY

Erudite speakers shared views and raised questions in a convivial environment that created a real sense of anticipation amongst delegates; this made for effortless networking with the brand owners in attendance and I would not hesitate to recommend the event to anyone charged with building relationships with senior marketing executives."

Chris Bourke, Managing Director, mobext

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

41

InMobi Sprouts SmartPay Business Rob Jonas, InMobi’s MD and VP for Europe and the Middle East tells Andy Penfold how the company is evolving The acquisition of Sprout is an interesting move for InMobi. What was the thinking behind it?

Our business continues to evolve as the market evolves, which as we all know is at a breakneck pace. The core of our business remains performance mobile advertising, but our customers have increasingly sophisticated demands for richer advertising formats and other adjacent services. Therein lies the reasons for our Sprout acquisition and the launch of our SmartPay business.

What does Sprout’s business bring to InMobi?

Sprout has been truly transformative for us, and allowed us to work with a completely different set of customers to our core business. Its independent positioning means that it continues to serve customers that would otherwise be competitive to InMobi. The fact that this happens is testament to the strength of the product and the team that built it. SmartPay has taken us in a different direction and allowed us to understand the payments and developer ecosystem

at another level. There is much more to come from InMobi in this area in the next 18 months.

How does the acquisition reflect InMobi’s ongoing strategy?

We have changed the horizon for our thinking on this business, as we all now know that mobile and mobile advertising will be central to the digital economy and our lives in a way that perhaps we did not understand even 12 months ago. This has prompted us to take a longerterm view, really evaluating the right product and partnership directions to take the business in. Independence is critical to this, as is our revenue growth and funding position with the addition of SoftBank as an investor last year. There are many unanswered questions in mobile advertising right now and we’re working on solving many, if not all of them.

Tell us about premium positioning…

Premium is a much-abused term in our industry, as it’s very subjective concept. Premium to one advertiser may be some-

thing very different to another, but the simple reality is that many advertisers and agencies use a publisher brand as a way to reach a ‘premium audience’.

We all know this is not strictly accurate, but these buying behaviours remain. A better definition focuses on the advertising experience, where ‘Premium’ is a rich media, audience-targeted ad experience on smartphones that satisfies an advertiser’s objectives. This is the positioning that the Sprout acquisition allowed us to move towards, and has so far been very effective for us.

You recently redesigned your company logo. What was the thinking behind that?

InMobi is now a significantly larger business than when Mobile Marketing first wrote about us in 2009 when we were still called mKhoj. The rebranding was a long overdue evolution of our corporate identify that more accurately reflects our larger global footprint – we now have teams in Paris, Dubai, Seoul, Shanghai, Stockholm, Sydney, and more, outside of our core

Sponsored Feature March 2012

“Sprout has been truly transformative for us, and allowed us to work with a completely different set of customers to our core business” Rob Jonas

regional offices - and positions us well for our next stage of growth. We’re about to move into a new office in London and we’ll keep a reminder of our old identify in one of the meeting rooms, so that we don’t lose touch with where the business has come from.

Visit InMobi at MWC 2012 in Barcelona, Stand 2.1C64, Hall 2,1

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

the

Fish where fishes swim

AQ2 specialise in creating content for the iPad and Android tablets.

We can combine your print PDFs with native iPad technology, link the content to your website, and pull in live data from your servers.

The combination of repurposing your print PDFs together with rich interactions, such as video, live data and direct access to your website, creates a cost effective, and quick to market tablet app.

Effective analytics provide in-depth user activity data to ensure maximum return on your investment into the fastest growing digital channel.

For further details contact Alistair Gillan aQ2 Mobile Ltd 07939 003191 | 01245 505380 | jag@aq2.info | www.aq2.info

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

41

MoB Rule Sponsormob’s director of business development Heiko Kasper talks to Andy Penfold about how the company is applying its CPA expertise to real-time bidding our start in 2006, the markets have evolved. The mobile advertising space is heavily populated and fragmented.”

This fragmentation, says

“This is a whole new process and we’ve spent a lot of time and resources making it happen. It brings us to a new level in the mobile ad space” Heiko Kasper

S

ix short years after launching into the brave new world of mobile cost-per-acquisition (CPA) advertising, Sponsormob has learned much about what works. The next phase of the company’s growth is the introduction of real-time bidding (RTB) capabilities to help its advertisers really benefit from its knowledge.

Sponsormob started this year with a revamp of its brand that aimed to better communicate what the company can do, and the company’s new slogan – Mobile Conversions. Data-Driven.

Worldwide. – certainly gives off an air of confidence. “We wanted to have a louder voice and a broader message to our advertisers and publishers,” says Heiko Kasper, Sponsormob’s director of business development. “Since

Kasper, makes it difficult for new advertisers to start taking advantage of mobile, because of the range of networks and the myriad of options. Sponsormob’s focus on CPA means it can target ads to the right consumers, and show advertising clients exactly what return on investment they are getting.

“There aren’t too many networks that can offer ad buying on a CPA basis,” says Kasper.

“We have very good tracking and good ad servers in place, so we can take mobile traffic and optimise it. We can look very deeply into the impressions and clicks and conversions and filter out traffic that isn’t performing. This helps advertisers a lot, because they usually can’t optimise their campaigns to that extent when using several traffic sources.”

Technology revamp Sponsormob’s rebrand is about more than simply better communicating its benefits to its customers – and we’re not talking about the sharp new look for the company’s website. The company is pushing forward technologically, too, with the addition of real-time bidding (RTB) capabilities.

RTB is an automated process that allows Sponsormob to bid for and buy advertising space in

March 2012 Sponsored Feature

real-time, based on whether that particular inventory represents a good deal for the advertiser.

RTB helps Sponsormob to be more precise and transparent regarding the efficiency of a CPA campaign. “We have an algorithm in place, and we can base our bidding on certain parameters,” says Kasper.

“This is a whole new process and we’ve spent a lot of time and resources making it happen.

It brings us to a new level in the mobile ad space.”

And Kasper says Sponsormob’s extensive experience in the mobile CPA space makes its RTB solution compelling for advertisers. “It’s an in-house solution,” he says. “Of course, thanks to our history – starting in CPA and conversion-optimised markets back in 2006 – we have a lot of conversion data. We have access to historical data to better optimise our campaigns.”

With this new technology in place, Kasper says Sponsormob will push to be among the key players in the mobile ad market – with global expansion an ongoing theme for the company.

“We will continue to grow aggressively, hiring more people, entering more markets, and of course moving forward with our unique technology,” says Kasper.

“I think we are on a very good track here. We are one of the first mobile advertising solution providers to use mobile RTB in our systems and we’re ahead of the market.” www.sponsormob.com

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

It’s AwarDs Time again!

Call for Entries Coming Soon

•19 categories •Global competition •No entry fee •Multiple entries allowed

For more information, head for www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/awards

Any queries, address them to: awards@mobilemarketingmagazine.com www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

43

Big Ideas at Big Time BigTime CEO Dimitris Papazisis tells Andy Penfold how the company is aiming to build on its remarkable first year of operations

M

obile marketing boutique BigTime only started life around a year ago, but its growth since then has put it on the mobile map. And CEO Dimitris Papazisis says the next year is set to be just as action-packed.

Launching in March 2011, BigTime’s focus on SMS landed it some big clients in developing markets. Papazisis says the people behind the launch of BigTime were key to its rapid success.

“The year one strategy was to move fast and utilise our relationships with mobile carriers around the world,” he says. “We had to establish our name, and it’s not an easy thing to jump into a market, which is 11 years old now, and say: ‘Voila! Guys I’m here, let’s work together!’”

But when you’ve a team as well known in the industry as BigTime’s, that job becomes a lot easier. The start-up team was widely experienced working with mobile operators, which set potential clients at ease.

Human resources “People knew the person without knowing the entity,” says Papazisis. “The people that comprise BigTime are well-known enough in the industry and

among mobile carriers that our name was automatically credible enough for Tier 1 carriers.”

BigTime also secured investment last year from Libra Group US – one of the largest investment conglomerates in the world. Papazisis says highprofile dollars such as these set off a “chain reaction”, with other investors encouraged to get behind the company.

Chain reaction “Having Libra on our investment board automatically attracted more investors,” he says. “In Q1 2012 we’ll have two or three more big investors coming in. I can’t disclose who right now, but they are big, powerful names.”

Plans are afoot to put this money to good use – one of the key themes of BigTime in 2012 is geographical expansion. The company is set to migrate its Dubai office to the prestigious DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre) – and is the first mobile marketing/services company to receive DIFC approval.

BigTime is about to establish a new office in Singapore, and later this year, in London or New York.

Papazisis also hints that BigTime – which has, to date focused solely on SMS – is

interested in expanding to other channels. Acquisitions could be on the cards come Q4 2012.

“We are about to start looking for companies that would enhance our product offering,” says Papazisis. “Mainly to add business sectors to our company that would have nothing to do with SMS – a footprint or reach to an area that would make us more attractive to different geographies. SMS is an attractive thing, but it’s not attractive globally. It’s not as attractive for very advanced markets such as Western Europe. It’s good for booking tickets or to vote in American Idol, but it’s not attractive in order to promote brands or the mobile operator.

“So, we may be acquiring companies that can help us reach a different medium to help our clients. It would also help expand our client list. We don’t want to limit ourselves to media groups and mobile operators; we also want to start getting deeper into brands and agencies or even radio stations.”

Intimate channel But don’t think BigTime is abandoning its SMS roots – it’s still central to what the company does. “Five years ago, people in

Sponsored Feature March 2012

“we are about to see the ‘beautification’ of the SMS” Dimitris Papazisis

the industry were telling me that SMS was already dead – that it’s a saturated channel, people are not responsive and it’s about to die. Let’s look at the facts. SMS has not died. It’s a channel that isn’t loved anymore, but people keep coming back to it, and it’s the most intimate channel for an end user in the world.”

Papazisis says that SMS is set to develop, though. “SMS is king of data and that will remain.

The only thing that may change is the interface. People may not experience a text – maybe they’ll experience something audiovisual – but it’ll be linked to an SMS. We might be about to see the beautification of SMS. It might be considered gamification as well, but the back end will be SMS.” Clearly, BigTime has big ideas when it comes to SMS. And with expansion around the world and an eagle eye on the acquisitions market, it’s got big ideas for further growth, too.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Sponsored Feature www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

business models

45

Experience Counts mBlox CMO Michele Turner explains why consumer experience is the key to success in mobile commerce

L

et us set the scene: today there are roughly 6bn cellular subscriptions worldwide, while Forrester, in its report Mobile Commerce Forecast: 2011 to 2016, predicts that mobile commerce will reach $10bn (£6.3bn) by the end of 2012. Not only is mobile, in the broadest sense of the word, a major global force, the appetite for paying for all manner of goods using mobile devices is now being satisfied.

What’s more, as the promise of mobile payments and mobile commerce becomes a reality, there are already a great many lessons that we can learn.

Organisations looking to capitalise in this space need to ask tough questions: what has failed to work in the past with regard to mobile payments? What will stand out in an already overcrowded market? And what key areas that are gaining traction need to be the focus of attention moving forward?

‘Put the consumer experience first’ sounds simple enough, but actually delivering great consumer experiences can in fact be very challenging.

Lay the foundation Adhering to industry standards and delivering secure, reliable solutions is the starting point for any service that needs to generate trust and confidence from the end user. Any mobile

payments solution must be easy to use – if consumers have to continually enter lengthy payment details on the small screen of a Tablet or smartphone, their shopping experience will be a frustrating one, and they will take their business elsewhere.

Streamlined experience Balancing ease-of-use and security can be a challenge. To help address this, mBlox recently announced mBlox Entrust, its suite of mobile payment solutions for both in-app and mobile web payments. At the heart of the offering is a streamlined purchasing experience for the mobile consumer, underpinned with security and resilience, as sensitive consumer payment information is stored safely in a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant storage system, and is not accessible or subject to theft if the mobile device is lost or stolen. It’s this balance between simplicity of use and security of data that will generate trust with the user and deliver a successful solution.

The same, considered approach needs to be applied to brand engagement, by delivering contextually relevant content and experiences to the mobile consumer. We have the technology to ensure that offers to consumers are relevant, and specific

to their location and interests. mBlox Engage, for example, is an Application-as-a-Service solution that enables a brand to deliver targeted content directly to a consumer, and modify that content based on real-time feedback. mBlox Engage can deliver a detailed picture of consumer behaviour and help ensure that marketing programs are precisely targeted, delivered, measured and refined. Solutions such as this allow applications to become a platform for an ongoing relationship with customers, supported by frequently refreshed content and offers. The key point here is that it leverages the strengths of mobile: an instant, familiar mechanism for receiving contextually relevant content and driving engagement.

User control Finally, consumers need a simple interface that delivers opt-in transparency; the choice has to be made by the consumer to allow a brand to engage with them via the incredibly personal platform that is their mobile phone. Powerful mobile solutions require a combination of good privacy and opt-in policies and great consumer UI. The proliferation of powerful mobile devices has led to a generation amenable to receiving relevant promotional offers,

Sponsored Feature March 2012

“It’s down to the industry as a whole to take responsibility for ensuring the right standard of consumer experience” which has resulted in a major revenue opportunity for marketers and organisations. With the prioritisation of the consumer experience at the heart of their offerings, companies will be putting their best foot forward in turning this potential into a real avenue of business growth.

It’s down to the industry as a whole to take responsibility for ensuring the right standard of consumer experience. We are in the middle of a revolution in mobile commerce that is allowing us to reshape the future of brand and consumer interaction.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

46

Accelerate your

mobile career

We work with fantastic brands, creative and mobile-specific agencies, technology businesses, and media types, helping them to find the best talent to work on their mobile offerings.

They’re a diverse bunch of people, but they share one thing in common - the desire to get more and more involved in the exciting world of mobile.

If you’re looking for an exciting new career challenge in the mobile advertising industry then get in touch with Propel Mobile.

We can give you free, impartial advice in complete confidence whether you’re dipping your toe in the water, or ready to start your job hunt in earnest.

0207 004 0550 www.propel-mobile.com hello@propel-mobile.com

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

47

Upwardly Mobile Matt Hawkes, head of mobile at specialist mobile recruitment company Propel Mobile, looks back at 2011 and forward to 2012

I

n my five years’ working in the mobile space, I have seen the industry go from strength to strength, and been privileged to help some of the biggest names in mobile advertising grow their teams along the way.

Looking back at 2011 in digital, I think it’s fair to say that mobile was definitely a massive source of growth, innovation and new revenue for both brands and agencies. Both the App Store and Android Market notched up their 10 billionth downloads, while QR codes became the norm in outdoor advertising. And with over 4m iPhone 4S devices

bought by a smartphone-hungry public in the first three days of its release, I wasn’t surprised to learn that approximately 60 per cent of time spent online in the UK was via mobile.

Looking forwards, it looks like mobile will be making its mark on 2012 as well, with the lion’s share of digital advertising trends to watch out for being driven by mobile technology.

To kick-start the mobile year, I’ve put together what I think are the top five mobile trends to look out for in 2012.

Mobile payments Paying with cash is passé, and credit cards are so last decade.

In fact, according to the mobile talent I talk to, mobile payments are the future. Whether it’s contactless payments at the local supermarket, donations to charities via text, or one-click online shopping, smartphones are fast becoming the wallet of the 21st Century.

Mobile advertising Thanks to increased wireless availability, and the huge number of smartphone owners, mobile advertising grew in 2011, despite the economic downturn that affected other marketing

verticals. Research firm Gartner has predicted that mobile ad spend will increase to over $7.5bn (£4.8bn) this year, buoyed in part by big sporting events such as the Olympics and the European Football championship.

Augmented Reality In 2011, Augmented Reality didn’t quite make the impact it promised, but 2012 could be the year in which it really shines. Campaigns such as the Starbucks Cup Magic app and the Lynx ‘Fallen Angels’ spectacular in London’s Victoria station have made advertisers and consumers stand up and take notice of the possibilities provided by Augmented Reality.

I expect it to be bigger – and better – in 2012, pulling together digital, outdoor and traditional advertising to great effect.

Mobile search Mobile search is nothing new: the big search engines like Google and Yahoo! have had mobile-optimised sites for a while now, and they provide good mobile versions of their products. However, a lot of my mobile experts are predicting that modern consumers are going to start to migrate away from traditional

Sponsored Feature March 2012

search engines to ones that have been specifically designed with mobile in mind. These will take advantage of the unique capabilities and advantages of smartphones and Tablets.

App-first strategy Apps will no longer be ad hoc add-ons to digital marketing plans. They will be integral and leading parts of overall digital strategies. From the conversations I’ve been having with mobile strategists and advertisers, it looks like apps will appear in the App Store or Android Market right from the launch of new campaigns. This means that we can look forward to the demise of hastily commissioned ‘bolton’ apps, as mobile takes its place as the fundamental asset of a campaign.

Mobile is still relatively young compared to other digital marketing verticals. The smart mobile brands, agencies and start-ups are always looking for digital talent to bring a wealth of digital marketing knowledge from other verticals.

This makes my job as exciting, fast-paced and cutting-edge as the mobile space itself, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what 2012 has in store.

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

48

mobile ad network directory

Type of business

Ad network/marketplace

Ad network, content discovery platform

Ad network, creative, payments

LAUNCH DATE

July 2009

August 2011

January 2007

OPERATES

Worldwide

Worldwide

Worldwide

sales offices

London (HQ), Madrid, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore

India, Korea, London, New York

San Francisco, New York,Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Dubai, Singapore, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Sydney, Bangalore, Tokyo, Seoul

blind/transparent

Blind

Targeted

Premium, Prem Blind, Semi-blind

cpm/cpc/cpA(%)

10/90/0

10/90/0

10/90/0

In-app advertising?

Yes

Yes

Yes

ad formats

Banners, rich media, expandable banners, video, text links, interstitials, 3rd party ad serving tags, IAB & MMA formats

Banners, textual, rich media, video, full-screen banners, audio, apps, social

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

targeting

Country, geo-location, platform, device, day-part, mobile operator, demographic, channel.

Contextual, real-time, keyword, location, age, gender, channels, demographics, operators, device, operating system, applications, phone/Tablet/Smart TV/PC/netbook

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

restrictions

No adult publishers or campaigns

None

No adult, culturally sensitive, political, offensive

min spend (US$)

50

50

n/a

no. of publishers/ siTes/apps

10,000+

n/a

10,000+

unique publishers

n/a

n/a

50%

monthly impressions

Total: 35bn requests US: 8.2bn UK: 3bn France: 900m Germany: 600m Italy: 400m Spain: 1.6bn

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

Total: 93bn US: 10bn UK: 3bn France: 900m Germany: 700m Italy: 350m Spain: 1bn

average fill rate

n/a

n/a

n/a

3 recent advertisers

Amazon, Groupon, Tesco

On request

eBay, Land Rover, Lufthansa

contact address

nicola.reed@adfonic.com

contact@hoopz.in

marketing@InMobi.com

they say

Global mobile advertising marketplace, Adfonic, enables advertisers to bid for display advertising space on mobile sites and applications to extend their reach and drive results, and publishers to maximise the earning potential of their mobile traffic. Adfonic drives over 35 billion monthly ad requests across more than 190 countries, reaching an estimated audience of 200 million mobile unique users. Adfonic’s expanded rich media offering enables advertisers to plan and buy rich media campaigns on a global level, with over 10 billion rich media enabled ad requests. The company is headquartered in London with further operations in Madrid, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Singapore. To learn more, visit http://adfonic. com or http://blog.adfonic.com

Hoopz is the disruptive force behind the rapid growth of digital advertising and auto information discovery. Our management team comes from the leading online ad networks, mobile and device carriers and manufacturers, the largest brands and mobile technology companies.

Hoopz’s patent-pending, next-generation contextual and real-time digital marketing and auto information/content discovery platform (based on keywords in any application, without interfacing with the application) is set for innovation and thoughtleadership in digital marketing when deployed on phones, smartphones, Tablets, PCs, netbooks, Smart TVs, set top boxes, and any internet-connected device. Our platform offers unique benefits to consumers, brand owners, advertisers, telecom service providers, and device manufacturers.

InMobi is the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on five continents InMobi provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. The network is growing and now delivers the unprecedented ability to reach 340 Million consumers, in over 165 countries, through more than 77 Billion mobile ad impressions monthly.

The recent acquisition of Sprout, a leading HTML5 authoring platform for mobile rich media, helps expand InMobi’s offering to creative agencies and brands. InMobi was recently named “The Best Mobile Ad Network” at the 2011 MOBI Awards and was selected as a 2011 AlwaysOn Top 100 Mobile Company in Silicon Valley.

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

49

Ad network

Mobile Ad & Data Platform

Mobile ad network

Mobile performance network

July 2010

May 2006

May 2008

December 2006

Worldwide

Worldwide

Worldwide

Worldwide

Sydney, Los Angeles

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

London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles

Berlin, San Francisco

Blind

Premium Blind

Blind and premium transparent

Semi-blind

20/30/50

n/a n/a n/a

n/a n/a n/a

0/0/100

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Banners, text ads, app sponsorships, interstitials, animated GIFs, advanced interstitials, rich media ads including text ads, content unlockers, splash ads, push notifications, capture forms, video ads, app walls, offer walls, overlays, linkouts, app icon

Banners, expandable ads, interstitials and a broad variety of rich media features; mobile video products; smart apps, persistent shareable consumer destinations, which include the Mobile Circular, Media Gallery, Smash It, 360 View, amongst others. mmStudio provides a suite of advertising tools, including wireframes, that make innovation easy and enable advertisers and agencies to deliver compelling mobile ads on Millennial Media’s global mobile platform

Text, banner and rich media

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

Country/geo-targeting, platform, category, content type, placement, time, carrier

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

Contextual keyword, publisher channel, location, platform/OS, model, operator, day-part

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

None

No adult, sensitive, offensive

No adult

No adult

50

Please contact to discuss

10,000

1,000

10,000+

On Request

3,000+

6,500

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Total: 2bn+ US: n/a UK: n/a France: n/a Germany: n/a Italy: n/a Spain: n/a

Total: On request US: On Request UK: On Request France: On Request Germany: On Request Italy: On Request Spain: On Request

Total: 3bn+ US: 2.6bn+ UK: 192m+ France: 23m+ Germany: 46m+ Italy: 39m+ Spain: 22m+

Total: 11+bn US: n/a UK: n/a France: n/a Germany: n/a Italy: n/a Spain: n/a

95%

n/a

n/a

100%

Amobee, Outblaze, Snap Interactive

www.millennialmedia.com/brands

n/a

Groupon, Gameloft, iLove

bizdev@leadbolt.com

marketing@millennialmedia.com

avale@mojiva.com

sales@sponsormob.com

LeadBolt is an innovative online and app content monetization company. Recognising that app consumers have vastly different likes and habits, we provide the largest range of traditional and premium ad formats. These interactive ad formats deliver better ROI to both advertisers and publishers by creating higher response rates from consumers, and better eCPMs to app developers.

Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising platform company.

Our technology, tools and services help app developers and mobile website publishers to maximize their advertising revenue, acquire users for their apps and gain insight about their users. We offer advertisers significant audience reach, sophisticated targeting capabilities and the ability to deliver rich and engaging ad experiences to consumers on their mobile connected devices. In three years, we have released more than 55 reports on mobile advertising. Visit www.millennialmedia.com for more information.

Mojiva is the mobile ad network that reaches more than 30m users in the EU5, over 750m unique users globally, and represents over 3,000 mobile publisher and apps. Through deep and open integration with all major rich media providers and ad servers, Mojiva can provide ad agencies with every imaginable mobile creative execution across mobile web sites, apps and devices. Founded in May 2008, Mojiva is led by a team of advertising and media veterans from Google, DoubleClick, Yahoo and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in online and mobile advertising and technology.

Sponsormob is a leading international conversion provider for the mobile web.

Founded in 2006, Sponsormob helps advertisers and agencies gain reach with highly targeted mobile ads using data-driven technology. It also offers publishers strategic integration opportunities matched with a variety of attractive mobile campaigns available.

March 2012

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

50

thought leadership

OFF-DECK Augmented Reality (AR) hasn’t rocked Helen Keegan’s world yet – but with big brands experimenting with the technology, it’s sure to move forward

T

here’s a lot of talk – not to mention hype – around mobile in general at the moment, but about one topic in particular: Augmented Reality (AR). The hype naturally leads to excitement and raised expectations, and it is tempting to think that this is the next big thing. But my advice is to resist the temptation to get carried away with the technology.

Mobile AR has been around for a few years, and to date, I think it’s fair to say, has failed to set the world on fire. It’s certainly not rocked my world yet. Typical executions have involved things like holding a camera over a brand’s print ad in order to see their TV ad, or waving your phone in front of a poster or object in the street.

Hmm. It’s not my idea of fun.

Magazines have also experimented with the technology, and indeed, in this very issue of Mobile Marketing, editorial director David Murphy, resplendent in his QR code shirt, is brought to life thanks to the wonders of AR. It’s clever, it has a wow factor, and it is kinda cute, but my advice to brands looking at AR would be this: it may sound boringly familiar, but the starting point for any AR campaign should be to identify your objectives; what you are trying to achieve. If you know what the goal is, AR may – or may not – be the answer.

In recent weeks, it has been the answer for a number of big brands.

One company, Blippar, has succeeded in convincing Tesco, Domino’s, Heinz and Mercedez Benz, among others, to use its technology, which it prefers to call ‘Image Recognition’ rather than AR. At the recent Mobile Retail Summit, Blippar CMO Jess Butcher argued that where we once mostly held our phone to our ear, then evolved to hold it in the palm of our hand so we could see the screen to access mobile data services, we are now increasingly holding it out in front of us as a window on the world, with AR acting as our guide.

This, I would argue, is AR’s biggest problem. Firstly, you have to ask whether people will feel comfortable using the phone in this kind of way, especially when only they are experiencing the augmented content. To everyone else, potentially, the AR user is just some nutter wandering round like a zombie with his phone in front of his face, and a walking target for a phone thief.

Give me signal strength Secondly, in order to experience it, they probably have to download the relevant app there and then, leaving themselves at the mercy of the strength, or otherwise of their 3G signal and chipping away at their unlimited* data plan (*actually somewhat limited when you look at the fair use policies).

Thirdly, there is the issue of the call to action. I’m critical of QR codes, but at least when you see one, you understand that it’s inviting you to scan it for some reason. Or if you don’t, increasingly, as they become ubiquitous, one of your friends will. Eventually.

The problem with the less overt ‘marker’ technologies is this: how do you know when there is some AR content there for the taking? It’s all very well to have the ‘Blipp It’ logo next to something, but that’s just one AR app in a sea of AR apps.

I do believe these problems can be overcome, and hopefully, these are some of the issues that the brands currently using AR are toying with, and finding answers to. With any new technology, it needs the big brands to get in early, experiment, make the mistakes, and advance the art. I respect and encourage that. That’s where we are with AR right now. I look forward to seeing how the technology, and the way in which brands use it, evolves. And maybe one day you’ll even see me wandering around London’s West End with my phone in front of my face and not in the palm of my hand.

March 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

News | Views | Analysis

Wherever you read the news,we are there,

Globally.

Whether you are trying to reach mobile operators, brands or agencies, Mobile Marketing can help.

For more information, head for www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com or contact John Owen, tel 020 3008 5375 john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

www.adsmobi.com

TM

mobile advertising

FEEL RICH PAY LESS Rich Media Ad Formats at affordable prices:

Mobile Video Ads

Expandable Banners

Interactive Banners

Floating Banners

+

Standard Ad Formats

Find out more:

Meet us at:

Scan this QR code with your favorite QR app or go to adsmobi.com/feelrich to find out more about our unique Rich Media offerings, targeting and reporting capabilities.

February 27 - March 1, 2012 Booth #7C38, Hall 7

New York

▪

London

▪

Hamburg

▪

Singapore

+1 (646) 807-4596 ▪ contact@adsmobi.com