Mobile Entertainment September 2010 by Intent Media (now Newbay Media Europe)

FOR EVERYONE IN MOBILE CONTENT

SEPTEMBER 2010 ISSUE 67 WWW.MOBILE-ENT.BIZ

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Come to the crunch Introducing ME’s new online TV series

Pic credit: Photographer Ashish Maurya Source GSMA & Decisive Media

MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT

Banner headlines We catch up with ad giant InMobi Sweet streams Aspiro talks music ...and loads more

Going for growth Who needs 3G and smartphones? Find out how emerging markets are turning IVR, SMS and more into gold in an ME special issue...

Tuesday, September 28th • The Soho Hotel • London

CO NF ER EN CE

IS SU E

CONTENTS

SP EC IA L

SEPTEMBER 2010 | ISSUE 67

MUST BE CHOKING

FEATURE Pic credit: Photographer Lisa Young Source GSMA & Decisive Media

10 GOING FOR GROWTH Ahead of our Monetising Mobile: How To Get Ahead In Emerging Markets conference, we present a series of features on ‘growth regions’. Read on for insights into rural India, ad-funded games and more. Plus loads of stats.

FEATURE

18 THE CRUNCHY BIT

22 CLICKING ROUND THE WORLD

Introducing ME TV. First up, five interviews on the ‘data crunch’ sponsored by Amdocs.

In less than two years, InMobi as emerged as one of the major global players in the mobile ad space.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE 4 OPINIONS

28 SHOWS

You’re entitled to our opinions. This month: m-payments and Facebook Places.

New York, London, Paris, Munich… everybody’s talking about mobile conferences.

8 STREAM POWER

27 DEALS

Aspiro shares top tips for a successful music streaming service.

Illicit industry liaisons laid bare in our round up of who’s buying and who’s bagged a ton of VC cash.

24 ME AWARDS

28 CHARTS

The nominations are in, the shortlists are being considered. Book your ticket now!

Up or down, in or out. Anyway you look at it, it’s the charts.

26 APPOINTMENTS

30 DISCONTENT

In the words of OutKast, we like the way you move (between jobs).

This month’s topics: piss, polo, sumo and other unmentionables from the mobile content biz.

33 MARKETPLACE YOUR GUIDE TO THE MOBILE CONTENT INDUSTRY

Download the

Apps versus the browser: Is there a single issue of more significance to the mobile media than this? It's a question that's been debated since Apple ushered in the app era in 2008, and one that heated up this year when Steve Jobs rejected and rubbished Adobe Flash and bigged up HTML5. Of course, HTML5 is the technology that could bring app-type functionality to the browser and thereby stifle the growth of the app. Would Apple care if it did? Not sure. The App sSore is a great feature that helps to market the iPhone, but revenue wise it's hardware, not software, that counts. Whatever Apple's stance, there's no doubt that the majority of brands, media companies and content providers will be cheering for apps. Why? Because apps give them a route to cash and control denied to them by the 'open' web. When I see stats like the one from Research2guidance that the app market generated $2.2 billion in 1H10 from 3.8 billion downloads, I have to pinch myself. But, as I said, it's not just the money but the element of control that makes apps so attractive to content providers. Last month, Wired's Chris Anderson, penned a controversial article that argued the web is dying, and being replaced by 'semi-closed platforms that use the internet for transport but not the browser for display'. Apps, Skype, Xbox Live, podcasts, eReaders – they're all replacing Google and the web. They're easier to navigate. Quicker. Of course, the upshot is that the web loses its openness – and control of access is concentrated into a small number of ‘choke points’. Anderson reasons that this is how capitalism works. The same thing happened to railways and landlines. I suppose the worry here is that, while apps as a concept are more closed than the browser, the current set-up still allows indies to flourish. Witness the colossal success of Angry Birds, Shazam and the like. If and when Apple, Google, Nokia, GetJar and the rest start favouring the big boys and shutting out the indie army, that’s when we should all worry. Tim Green Tim.Green@intentmedia.co.uk

iPhone app!

Available for free at the iTunes app store To sponsor the ME app contact Katy Grant on 01992 535647 or email katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk now!

2.6m

6.5m

Foursquare can safely be described as a new media phenomenon, with 2.6 million users and thousands more joining every day

Angry Birds is the latest iPhone game sensation, with 6.5 million sales and 11 million downloads of its Lite version

The number of Google Nexus One devices left after they were withdrawn and made available only to developers

IN BRIEF Itsmy gets more social The Gofresh-owned social network Itsmy has bolted extra communication tools into its service. The major addition is the ability for members to receive cross and in-game notifications whenever a friend starts playing a game in the Itsmy world. Members can customise what the company calls ‘gamers playgrounds’, so that they can add favourite games, buddies and trophies with a single click. In-game gifting and in-game messaging has also been introduced – Itsmy says the latter will enable players to ask each other for help, plan strategies and exchange hints and tips. Itsmy CEO Antonio Vince Staybl said: “We’ve built an easy-to-use and pure mobile gaming platform for the whole world, for all phones and with connections to all online and mobile social networks, so that people can play games on their mobile phones with their friends no matter where they are, without downloading an App or starting a PC.”

iPhone App Store is such a trial Apple has launched a Try Before You Buy section on its App Store highlighting lite versions of paid apps. One of its sub-sections within Free On the App Store is called Try Before You Buy, and it lists some of the best ‘Lite’ versions of paid apps and games. These Lite versions have been around since its earliest days, but the fact that free and demo apps are being more heavily promoted by Apple is significant for developers, and may lead to a new boom in the creation of Lite versions of paid apps. Among the Try Before You Buy featured apps are Smule’s Leaf Trombone, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and ALK’s CoPilot Live.

Saffron Digital heard on the Widevine UK video specialist Saffron Digital is integrating Widevine’s video optimisation and DRM technology into its own Saffron Locker cross-platform DRM offering. The firms say the deal will enable them to exploit video opportunities in the connected TV, Android, Apple and RIM environments. Saffron’s proprietary technologies, which include the ability to support multi-device video delivery, encoding and Domain Based DRM, have been integrated into products by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung, as well as services for Sony Pictures, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sky, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Shashi Fernando, CEO of Saffron Digital, said: “We are committed to enabling users to play content securely across multiple devices from different manufacturers and this partnership with Widevine takes us significantly closer to that goal.”

4 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

OPINION

Buying into m-commerce Retailers are the key to the next wave of mobile payments. They should grab the opportunity now, says AIME’s Andrew Darling... ntil now the credibility of mobile commerce has been largely built on the success of selling ringtones, games, screensavers and other bits and pieces of digital content. Thanks to a few unscrupulous content promoters that credibility was stretched to breaking point in the mid-noughties. It all came to a head after some high profile subscriptionbilling scandals rocked the industry and led to a regulatory crackdown in 2007. Since then, revenues have dropped as consumers lost trust. However, over the past few months growing interest from major high street retailers looks set to pave the way for the second generation of m-commerce. Although use of the mobile for end-to-end transactional services remains slight, recent m-commerce efforts from companies such as Ocado, M&S and Tesco are targeting a more mainstream shopping audience. Clearly retailers are recognising the platform-wide benefits as more and more people find the confidence to use their phones to access retailers. Last month, trade bodies AIME, the IAB and IMRG released findings of research into this sector, and found that over half of UK retail brands expect revenues from mobile channels to rise over the next 12 months and 65 per cent plan to launch a transactional mobile site within two years. That’s all encouraging. But it’s clear that hopes for the future outweigh actual activity today. So while 94 per cent of those retailers surveyed cited mobile as a real opportunity for future growth, the research worryingly found that only 20 per cent of the 20 most popular UK retailer websites were actually optimised for mobile browsing. Retailers must move faster to keep up with consumers who are already seeking out retail websites via their phones. According to the GSMA and Comscore, a staggering 4.2 million UK consumers are visiting retailers’ websites using the mobile internet every month. Even if m-commerce is still in its infancy as a transactional tool, retailers must act now to seize opportunities that already

exist, by looking at mobile not just as a means for direct rev generation but also as a way for driving sales to other online and in store channels, CRM, couponing and loyalty programs – as part of a wider, joined up marketing mix. Extending their presence onto mobile platforms can be a daunting prospect. Indeed, many companies have rightly questioned the perceived lack of ROI in launching a mobile website and asked whether consumer behaviour is ready for m-commerce. However, those concerns should be quelled now that there is clear evidence of a market opportunity to exploit. Consumers are driving demand for a new shopping channel, just as they did in the early days of online retailing. The difference this time is that it’s easier. The cultural shift required for retailers to go from online to mobile is much smaller than moving from high street to web. And in many cases it simply requires the optimisation of an existing web presence rather than a ‘ground-up’ development of a new technology. Of course, there is a risk of doing too much. Mobile apps may be popular right now but in terms of cost versus reward, a lot of retail brands are probably better off investing in mobile CRM or simple text alerts. Some are spending money on iPhone and other smartphone apps at the expense of improving their mobile websites that everyone with a mobile browser can access. With iPhone app development costs running at ten times more than mobile site costs and with a reach which is 50 times less, sex appeal and app vanity will only trump pragmatic reach for so long. Most retailers need tools that can drive traffic and generate sales at low cost. In the coming months, AIME, the IAB and IMRG will be holding a series of events around m-commerce, as well as producing educational materials for retail brands and conducting further research into the behaviours and attitudes of UK consumers in this area. For more information, visit www.aimelink.org. Andrew Darling is MD of West Pier Media, and the communications director for trade body AIME. He can be reached at andrew@westpiermedia.com

Retailers must move fast to keep up with consumers who are already seeking out retail websites via their phones. According to GSMA and Comscore, 4.2 million UK consumers are visiting retailers’ websites every month.

www.mobile-ent.biz

298,000

2.6 billion

That’s the percentage of UK iPad owners that never take their device outside the home. Hope they bought the cheaper one.

…Symbian phones ship every day – that dwarfs iPhone and Android. But how media-savvy are those users?

There could be 2.6 billion wi-fi devices by 2014, driving market worth $250 billion a year, says Strategy Analytics.

OPINION

‘Where’ next for Facebook What does Facebook’s entry into the social location space mean for Foursquare and the rest? ME’s Stuart Dredge has some ideas… acebook must be big: two different UK TV shows have parodied it. Geeks roared with approval at the episide of The IT Crowd where social network 'FriendFace' played a prominent role, although they probably cringed at Ian Beale's recent adventures on 'MatesGate' in Eastenders. That said, there is no shortage of big numbers to show Facebook's meteoric rise. It recently sailed through the 500 million user mark, and claims that 150 million of those are actively accessing the service from their mobile phones. That latter number is likely an underestimate, too. According to Facebook's own published figures for its various official smartphone apps, it has more than 102 million people using its iPhone app, more than 57 million on its BlackBerry app, and 12 million on Android. There's even nearly a million people still using the Facebook app for the now-venerable Sidekick messaging device. Facebook's mobile ambitions have increased rapidly in the last couple of years, as it improved its applications, and rolled out its Facebook Connect technology, allowing apps and games to hook into its social graph. In short, Facebook was already one of the 900lb gorillas of mobile entertainment even before last month's announcement of Facebook Places. So what are the implications of its move into the social location game? The simplistic way to describe Facebook Places is as a Foursquare killer. Like that startup, whose lingo it borrows, it's based around people 'checking in' to realworld locations, in order to ensure all their friends know exactly which pub/restaurant/office they're currently drinking, eating or messing about with apps in, instead of working. Facebook Places is currently only available in the US, and only within the Facebook iPhone app and the company's touch.facebook.com mobile website. Users can check in at their current location, and also check-in the friends that are with them. The latter feature is already controversial, with Facebook being accused of a habitual disregard for people's privacy. You can prevent people from checking you in by changing your privacy settings on the social network, but there's a big debate around whether this should be opt-in or opt-out, and whether users will realise they can do it.

Beyond this, Facebook Places poses two key questions for the emerging area of social location. First: will it take the idea of check-ins mainstream? Very probably. Compare those 150 million-plus Facebook mobile users to the three million-odd people using services like Foursquare and MyTown. Check-ins are about to leap the chasm from geeks to, well, everyone. The second question: will Facebook Places really kill Foursquare? The company was on-stage at the Facebook Places launch along with rivals Booyah and Gowalla, backing the pitch that Facebook wants its new service to be a rising tide for the social location startups, helping them grow rather than choking off their lifesource. In theory, this is true. Facebook Places isn't just a feature in the company's own app: it's an API that other developers can use for their own apps – much like Facebook Connect. At the launch, Booyah announced a new app called InCrowd that uses the API, while its rivals promised they'd be integrating it into their own services as soon as possible. The show of unity was cracking even before the launch, when both Booyah and SCVNGR told ME that Foursquare had most to lose from the launch of Facebook Places, since it's more reliant on pure checkins than their own apps. Meanwhile, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley's testy response to an interview question a week after the launch was enlightening: “It’s not that great or interesting. It’s a pretty boring service, with barely any incentives for users to keep coming back and telling their friends where they are.” That may be true at launch, but there’s already evidence that Facebook is planning to add more sticky features to Facebook Places over time. Recently, it acquired a startup called Hot Potato, whose service was based around users checking in to activities and live events, rather than just places. Finally, though, it’s important to note that in the longterm, the social location war isn’t Facebook versus Foursquare, but Facebook versus Apple versus Google versus Nokia. In that context, Facebook Places is just one of the opening salvos. Stuart Dredge is the online editor of ME

There’s already evidence that Facebook is planning to add more sticky features to Places.

www.mobile-ent.biz

IN BRIEF RIM carries the Torch BlackBerry maker RIM has hailed its ‘best BlackBerry’ ever – the Torch qwerty slider. The new handset is an exclusive to AT&T in the US, and will come to Voda in the UK. It’s a touchscreen device with a slideout keyboard, five-megapixel camera, BlackBerry 6 OS complete with a WebKit browser, aggregates feeds from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and WiFi 802.11.

Nokia totally sold on Motally Yet another bit of M&A business for Nokia, which has signed an agreement to acquire Motally, a US-based mobile web and app analytics specialist. Motally’s service offers in-application tracking and reporting, and is designed to enable developers and publishers to optimise their content. Nokia says it will adapt Motally’s technology for Qt, Symbian, Meego and Java developers, while continuing to serve the company’s existing customer base.

Dell joins app store stampede Months after it launched into the smartphone space, Dell has unveiled its own app store. The Dell Mobile Applications Store has 50,000 apps available, and is the result of a partnership between Dell and PocketGear. Supported smartphones include Android, BlackBerry, Palm OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile. Users on US and some of the bigger European operators are catered for, with pricing in dollars, pounds or Euros.

Scoreloop inks first operator deal Mobile social gaming platform Scoreloop has signed its first contract to provide a connected gaming community for an operator - Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom. Scoreloop is working with Chunghwa subsidiary Spring House Entertainment to provide a customised version of its Scoreloop SDK to developers making games for the operator’s service.

PayPal bumps into Android The e-money giant PayPal has added bump tech to its Android app giving users the ability to ‘bump’ two handsets together in order to transfer money between two PayPal accounts. The update also means users can ‘split the check’ – a nifty little function that allows people to split a bill an then collect the cash when on a night out.

Mobile Entertainment September 2010 | 7

ASPIRO

Streams and reality What’s the secret behind a successful music streaming operation? ME asked Aspiro, the firm behind the WiMP service, to share... hanks to Spotify, Napster and others, the idea of music streaming has entered the mainstream in many European markets. But in Nordic countries, it’s Aspiro’s WiMP that’s making all the running. The service launched to Telenor’s Norwegian and Danish customers via PC, Mac and mobile (Linux and Android) in April. WiMP lets users access three million tracks for 99 kroners per month. New users can try the service for free for 30 days. A few months later Aspiro submitted the service to the iPhone app store for approval. The iPhone app features most of the functionality from the PC-version of WiMP, and like the Android-version also features an offline mode, so users can play music from WiMP with or without an internet connection. The firm is adamant that the streaming habit actually increases the consumption and spending on music. Last month it revealed survey findings that showed one in three Norwegians have now streamed

Stats, stats, stats Collect statistics and use that knowledge. With good feedback on user behaviour, listening habits and promotional effectiveness, you can learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and modify your product accordingly.

Streaming is not about technology – that is irrelevant – it’s all about the music and the joy it brings. music, and that 68 per cent listen to more music as a result. The survey also concluded that streaming reduces the extent of illegal music file sharing, with 54 per cent saying they’ve stopped downloading music illegally as a result. In the process of launching WiMP, Aspiro has learned a lot about what makes a streaming service successful. We asked Gunnar Larsen, global sales director of Aspiro, for his top ten tips. Get your retailing right Even if millions of songs are just a few clicks away, it’s essential to guide users to music they know, like and probably would like. Recommendations, interesting editorials and the latest news make the service more fun and rewarding. 8 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Pick your partners Guess what. Some of your partners are better than you at some things. Team up with firms who have complementary services, and together you can offer an even better user experience.

Above: Gunnar Larsen, global sales director at Aspiro, has recently launched the successful streaming service, WiMP

Make yourself accessible Work towards being present on PC, Mac, Linux, mobile (iPhone, Android, Symbian) – and try to make a similar experience on each platform. But if a platform cannot meet a specific user demand, don’t dilute it and confuse your customers. Socialise your service Let users share their views, invite others to join, and make your service more attractive. Use existing social networks though, rather than trying to build your own. Be deep and wide It’s OK to offer a large and varied catalogue, but it’s not OK to make it bland or just big. Be local. One size does not fit all, and you need to cater for the users in each of your markets.

Operational excellence is not just a bullet on a PowerPoint It’s a mistake to focus only on uptime and response times. You also need to increase the speed of making new music live, while ensuring metadata and categorisations are clean and up-to-date. Customers are fickle, and they will walk if they aren’t satisfied with your performance. Get the rights Make sure you work with whoever holds the rights. There is a lot of trialing of different business models at the moment, but music should not be a zero-sum game (but it’s okay to have a good argument along the way). Build to last If you don’t plan and build for the longterm, then how can you ask your customers to invest time, money and energy in your service? A successful streaming service is a service to which users return and use daily. That commitment must be treated with respect and gratitude, and rewarded with setting up your service to last. Make the user experience magnificent. There should be no difficulty setting up and enjoying your service. Streaming is not about technology – that is irrelevant – it’s all about the music, the fun of music and the joy it brings. A minute to learn, a lifetime to enjoy. www.mobile-ent.biz

Book your place at Monetising Mobile now

Innovation nations They say necessity is the mother of invention. It’s certainly the case in emerging markets, where wildly innovative services are constantly rolled out. Ahead of this month’s Monetising Mobile conference, ME picked out a few… t’s easy to tie yourself in knots when you’re a westerner talking about socalled ‘emerging markets’. Such an unsatisfactory term. But what’s better? Growth markets? Developing regions? All imply some kind of backwardness when these markets are actually brimming with innovation, and numerically out-punch virtually all Western territories. One simple point of difference is inescapable though: these regions are the only ones with growing subscriber bases. Look at China – 750m connections and still 650 million to go. So mobile content makers are watching carefully. According to Informa Telecoms & Media, emerging markets will help take VAS revenues from $200 billion in 2009 to $340 billion in 2014. It says China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Poland and the Ukraine will account for 36 per cent of global mobile data revenues by the latter date. Without doubt the infrastructure in these countries will be transformed by then. But for now, VAS specialists have to dream up services that use voice, SMS and IVR. The fact is, these restrictions have only served to nurture creativity. Earlier this year, IMImobile launched Cell Shakti to deliver voice-based information to the most remote rural mobile users (see feature on page 12). And then there’s the BubbleMotion service, Bubbly. It’s best described as a kind of Twitter that uses voice messages instead of text. You record your message and broadcast it to a group of followers. Whenever there’s a new audio update, followers are notified via SMS with instructions on how to listen. BubbleMotion works because it addresses the population that can’t read, works in any language and relies on the widely available 2G voice network. Like Twitter, it’s been enthusiastically adopted by ‘regular’ users and also embraced by celebs as a hybrid of PR and performance. Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, for example, has more than 350,000 followers to his Bubbly voice-blog, compared to 250,000 on Twitter. Even the BBC is using it. Bubbly users actually pay 30 rupees ($0.65 USD) per month to be notified in real

10 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Services like BubbleMotion (top) and SMS GupShup (bottom) have discovered a way to monetise voice and text

time of voice-blog updates per celebrity they are following. It has well over 1.2 million paid subscribers across multiple operators in India. And Bubble Motion is adding 100,000 new paid users per week. For literate Indian phone users, the textual equivalent of BubbleMotion is SMS GupShup, which enables one-to-many, many-to-many and many-to-one SMS messages. It has over 26 million users now, and the ad inventory available on its messages has been purchased by eBay, Pepsi, Indian Idol and more. Intriguingly, the firm recently launched AppShup, an app store dedicated to SMSbased products. It runs an open developer platform to encourage third parties to build apps and get them hosted on operators channels. Close to 100 SMS apps are already available. Mostly, they consist of simple cricket info services or word jumbles.

Meanwhile, GupShup has also created a brand channel through which firms can build communities around these alerts. The sheer accessibility of tech such as SMS has led some entrepreneurs to dream up socially-useful concepts around them. One of the best known is Bangladesh’s CellBazaar. It’s like eBay and uses SMS to bring the trading of basic goods to a previously unwired rural population. It’s available to 22 million Grameenphone subscribers and has 51,000 registered sellers and 1.5 million users paying the standard SMS or GPRS charges for accessing the service. There are no monthly or posting fees. The service has won numerous awards, and keeps Grameenphone happy by improving loyalty and generating voice calls. It says a popular item can generate calls from up to 30 people. SMS, IVR and voice are clearly powerful www.mobile-ent.biz

Email katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk

Don’t miss the Monetising Mobile conference

Snaptu is bringing the mobile web to millions of consumers in emerging markets

For valuable insights into emerging markets and great networking, you simply must attend ME’s Monetising Mobile conference on Tuesday, September 28th at the Soho Hotel in London. It follows our hugely successful May event and will examine the market for mobile content in regions such as Russia, Eastern Europe, India, South Africa, the Middle East and more. The event starts at 4.30pm, with two and half hours of presentations and debate before dinner, drinks and networking, which lasts until midnight. Our speakers are: Anu Shah, CEO, IMI Europe – An overview of the content market in key regions from one of the sector’s biggest specialists Simon Davies, MD Europe of Snaptu – Putting the internet into the hands of feature phone users David Ryder, director of marketing, Oxygen8 – an insight into South African mobile VAS market Neeraj Roy, Hungama – what does the Indian content consumer want? Shailendra Pandey, senior analyst, Informa – key stats and insights from the world’s emerging markets

tools for reaching users without data connectivity. But the mobile internet is expanding its reach all the time. And plenty of companies targeting this growing addressable market. Just a few weeks ago, Facebook announced it would launch a stripped down, text-only version of its social site in emerging markets. Importantly, the service will incur no data charges. Third party destinations will, but writing on walls and updating status will be completely gratis. The audacity of the strategy proves how high the stakes are for Facebook. Yes, it’s spreading fast in all regions, but there are powerful incumbents such as Orkut (Brazil, India) and VKontakte (Russia) to take on. And then there’s South Africa’s MXit, which lets feature phone users message each other in groups or individually without paying data charges. They can also www.mobile-ent.biz

download wallpaper, ringtones and games. MXit has become a phenomenon, with 20 million users in a population of 50 million people. It is now eyeing expansion into other territories. The question of how best to deliver mobile web services across low-end devices in a 2.5G world has not been overlooked. In April Vodafone announced it would collaborate with Opera on a stripped down browser with complementary data tariff, for example (see box on page 14). Meanwhile, Snaptu developed an app that directs users to the web’s primary online services. It’s achieved over 3.5 million downloads across India, Indonesia and South America. This footprint obviously opens up the market for advertising, and there are no shortage of advanced CPC performance networks to go to – not least the region’s biggies BuzzCity and InMobi.

Anuj Khanna, CEO, Wireless Expertise – a statistical snapshot of the Indian market James Lamberti, VP of global research and marketing, InMobi – The mobile advertising market in India, Asia and the Middle East Andreas MacMahon, account director, Accumulate UK – preloaded content distribution in emerging markets

Monetising Mobile: Emerging Markets Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 Soho Hotel, London To reserve a place now for just £229 +VAT, please contact Katy.Grant@intentmedia.co.uk or call her on +44 (0) 1992 535 647 for more information.

Dave Moreau, CEO, Fonestarz – How to get your content into the Middle Eastern region KF Lai, CEO, BuzzCity – Profiling the mobile internet user. This session will provide insight into the consumer behaviour of today’s mobile internet user in emerging markets. Balbir Blugan, applications manager, Sony Ericsson – the market for apps in Russia and the Middle East

Mobile Entertainment September 2010 | 11

Book your place at Monetising Mobile now Email: katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk

The rural deal With its Cell Shakti service, IMImobile is targeting India’s most remote rural users with value added mobile content. And it’s picking up ideas that could be applied in the west. Tim Green found out more from IMI’s Anu Shah and Madhavan Iyer... t’s a common mistake in ‘developed’ regions to focus on consumers at the highest end of the market. Witness all those brands making iPhone apps that still don’t have a decent mobile website. If anything, this approach is even more erroneous in the world’s emerging territories, where the mass of users have basic feature phones and pre-pay contracts. Yes, they have relatively low incomes, but the sheer scale of this user base is so vast that it cannot be ignored. In India, IMImobile is helping operators target these consumers with a specialised mobile VAS offering for rural India called Cell Shakti. It says 70 per cent of India’s population lives in the rural areas and that 64 per cent of the nation’s expenditure comes from its villages. Significantly, India’s rural tele-density currently stands at 13 per cent so there’s huge growth to come. Cell Shakti aims to give information on weather, healthcare, basic law and order, and more. Madhavan Iyer, VP of managed services at IMImobile, says the service is helping rural users to improve their lives. “We’re giving farmers info about commodity prices, for example,” he says. “Every village has a market, and we collate information about crops and husbandry that Cell Shakti users can access before they arrive.” Clearly, this information has to be presented with a view to the capabilities of its audience. For this reason, the chosen method is SMS alerts or IVR using shortcodes and spoken messages. This is common sense given the relative lack of data-enabled phones and the fact that many users are unable to read. IMI is also mindful of the myriad of dialects spoken so it presents the service in 16 languages. At present, IMI is working with Airtel on Cell Shakti. Airtel charges one rupee a day for access, and attracted 48,000 users in its first week. Iyer believes the marketing of the service is critical to its success and would like to see special Cell Shakti SIMs that activate the service when the device is powered up. For IMI, the emerging market dimension of Cell Shakti is not too significant. It prefers to see it as an example of how it targets a vertical and creates a service specifically for it – wherever it is in the world. It’s done the same in the ringback space, launching the

12 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Pic credit: Photographer Ashish Maurya, Source GSMA & Decisive Media

Caller Ring Back Tone (CRBT) service with BSNL. Among the innovations it introduced is the ability to listen to live news and cricket while waiting for the caller to pick up. Intriguingly, IMI is now teaming up with European ringbacks specialist Muzicall to open up the space in the EU zone. It wouldn’t be the first time an emerging market success has travelled west. The Music Radio service, which provides Indian subscribers with a dial-in music service listened to on the voice network has been a huge success in India – and is said to have inspired the Orange Monkey concept launched earlier this year in Europe. Anu Shah, MD of IMImobile Europe, says: “Music Radio works because there are so many people who have moved to cities and want to listen to music in their own language. It’s been reported that mobile radio has overtaken broadcast radio in terms of revenues. The fact that Orange Monkey is based on it shows that the most sophisticated services aren’t always right for the market.”

Cell Shacki’s emphasis on commodity prices is giving workers in rural regions important economic benefits

Meet at Monetising Mobile IMImobile’s Anu Shah will be presenting at ME’s Monetising Mobile conference on September 28th at the Soho Hotel in London. He’ll give an overview of the content space in various growth regions across the world, and share IMI’s experience in creating World Cup content with MTN and other high profile case studies. IMI offers a portfolio of managed services for operators, media companies and enterprises. This currently enables over 77 operators in 66 countries and reaches over 780 million subscribers.

www.mobile-ent.biz

Book your place at Monetising Mobile now

World services Apps in China, Vodafone’s ultra cheap handsets, Hungama’s channel for Indian rock acts – Mobile Entertainment rounds up more nuggets from the world’s emerging mobile content markets…

The great call of China Mobile

The mobile way to pay

China Mobile’s own app store knocks all the others into a cocked hat; it’s got 500,000 developers for a start…

In cash-dominated societies with negligible broadband, mobile payment is the only feasible digital alternative. No wonder these services are exploding across the world…

China does things differently. With its mix of rampant economic capitalism and oldschool political socialism, it's a curious mix alright. It's also very far harder to penetrate for outsiders than its BRIC counterparts India, Russia and Brazil. China has two massive operators, although they are run like quasigovernment departments, and they do things their own way. China Mobile, the world's biggest operator with 554 million subscribers in June 2010, is already preparing for the post-voice era with Mobile Market, its own riposte to the iTunes App Store, which it launched in August 2009 to sell video, software, e-books, music, games and other content (rival operator China Unicom launched an official iPhone app store in August 2009). Unbelievably, it has over 500,000 registered developers and offers 200,000 apps across multiple devices. By the end of Q2 2010, 25 million apps had been downloaded, putting China Mobile on target for 200 million users by 2012. The results reflected the general

success of China Mobile's value-added services drive. VAS revenues increased 13.4 per cent in FY2010, contributing 29.5 per cent to overall operating revenue. Within this, its mobile video service exceeded six million users, and China Mobile was also rather proud of accumulating over five million M2M (machines to machine) customers. This has all been achieved with a negligible 3G build-out. China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network had just 10.46 million customers by the end of June, which is 1.89 per cent of its total subscriber base. The operator's music download service had over 3.2 million paying users and over one million songs available, and this along with the still-powerful ringback tone business makes China Mobile a formidable player in the music space. Mind you, it didn’t stop Google announcing a free, ad-supported (online) music download service with Top100.cn. Or Nokia choosing China as the first destination for Comes With Music with DRM-free downloads.

Kenya's M-PESA payments system has a good claim to being the most transformative of all mobile products launched in emerging markets. Run by local operator Safaricom, it has changed people’s lives by turning 18,000 airtime-selling retailers into quasi banks. Customers pay to have money credited to their mobile wallet, which they can then use to pay for goods or transfer to others so that they too can buy stuff – or exchange credit for cash – in the same shops. The service has boosted the productivity of Kenyans who would otherwise spend hours queueing to pay bills. It’s used by 9.5 million people, or 23 per cent of the population, and transfers an astonishing 11 per cent of Kenya’s GDP each year. M-PESA has inspired dozens of similar schemes across the world. Africa’s biggest operator, MTN, is rolling out m-payments in several countries, and signed up 890,000 in Uganda alone. The scheme has also alerted payments superpowers to what's possible in emerging markets. It’s Interesting that PayPal chose Malaysia as the first country in which to launch an operator partnership. The firm is deeply committed to mobile apps, but is working with Maxis on a service that’s offered direct from an operator. It lets customers log-in from their handsets and then click to purchase high street items.

Africa goes browsing Want proof of the voracity with which the 'unwired' are embracing the mobile web? Look no further than Opera Software’s State of the Mobile Web special report on Africa. It shows how triple-digit annual growth rates are routine in the region, while illustrating that Africans are checking Facebook and Google, just like the rest of us. Here are some highlights: The top 12 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius. From June 2009 to June 2010, page views in the top 12 countries in Africa increased by 182 per cent, unique users increased by 124 per cent, and the amount of data transferred increased by 160 per cent. Sudan and Ghana led the top 12 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth with a staggering 4,645.6 per cent and 916.5 per cent respectively. Kenya leads the countries in the region for page views per user, with each one browsing an average 639 pages a month. Facebook is the top-ranked site in six of the twelve listed countries, and Google is ranked #1 in the remaining six countries.

14 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

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Voda’s drive on the cheap Ultra-affordable handsets and complementary tariffs are spearheading Voda’s ongoing drive into emerging markets… When Vodafone announced betterthan-expected profits in the summer, it was frank enough to admit that nearly all the growth had come from Africa, India and Asia. The operator has been targeting these regions for years, and now the policy is paying off. But the strategy involves more than just buying up operators like Airtel. Earlier this year Voda made two announcements that showed just how carefully it wants to nurture users in emerging markets. First, it unveiled ultra low cost handsets for users in India, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Qatar, South Africa and Tanzania. The Vodafone 150 and Vodafone 250 offer voice, SMS and support for mobile payment services. They retail at at below $15 and $20 respectively. A few weeks later Voda confirmed a deal to launch a customised version of the Opera Mini browser to run on 20 low-cost handsets over 2G networks in India, South Africa, Turkey, Tanzania and Egypt. Since the Opera Mini 5 browser can compress data by up to 90 per cent, it's quicker – especially in remote locations. The move was backed by competitive data tariffs for worry-free browsing and a simplified UI for newbie users.

India for indies is a rocking good deal Content giant Hungama is known for its close links with Bollywood and the established Indian music biz. But, with ArtistAloud, it's also doing its bit to support the indie scene... India is not readily associated with rock and soul. Isn't it all Bollywood? Well, no, it's not. Which is why Hungama Digital Media launched ArtistAloud.com as a platform for the country's army of independent musicians who may not have record labels, but want a platform for promoting their music. Hungama immediately signed 30 independent artists including Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Shibani Kashyap, Thermal And A Quarter and Parikarama. Users can listen to song previews of one minute and then buy a single MP3 download for 10 rupees, or four songs for 20 rupees. What's interesting is that there's so much more that's novel and innovative about the deal than the content itself. In the summer, for example, Hungama announced that consumers can access and buy songs through all three digital screens – mobile, internet and DTH. But even more radical than this is the way Hungama promotes the store via live web concerts, which it calls web certs. ArtistAloud.com is an intriguing move for Hungama, because it’s so solidly part of the music

establishment in India now. In fact, the firm concluded a huge deal in December with record label Reliance Big and local distributor T-Series to handle their catalogue across telcos, internet, IPTV and mobile networks in India and 37 other countries. The channels include Hungama.com, iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3 and more. The firm has become the premier digital music player in India thanks to a series of creative ideas, of which web-certs are just the latest. Another example is MusicConnect, which lets Aircel subscribers listen to music on the voice network via IVR. They can also make recommendations to friends and share playlists online via Facebook, Twitter et al.

Hungama is a Gold Partner of the Monetising Mobile conference.

Here you go, an article about Indian entertainment and not a single Bollywood female belly button to be seen. Instead, feast your eyes on the indie stars of Hungama’s ArtistAloud service – Thermal And A Quarter (bottom) and Parikarama (top).

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Mobile Entertainment September 2010 | 15

Book your place at Monetising Mobile now Email: katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk

Growth markets in play Want to reach the vast army of mobile gamers in emerging territories? If so, BuzzCity wants to hear from you. Its Djuzz portal hosts free games and already generates eight million downloads a month. ME quizzed BuzzCity’s CEO KF Lai… What were the origins of Djuzz? It grew out of MyGamma, which is our mobile social network. We were looking at how we could offer advertisers new channels to reach consumers in emerging markets. Gaming is hugely popular, so it was an obvious move. How does it work? How is it monetised? All the games are free, and they’re a mix of demos and complete versions. We host ads on the site, but there’s no revenue share. Instead, the idea is that developers acquire new users and keep 100 per cent of any sales that come from this. It’s really a marketing channel for publishers, sometimes for physical products. How has it performed so far? It’s become very successful very fast. We launched in February and there are now around 6,000 games available from over 100 publishers. At present, we’re running at around 50 million page views a month and eight million downloads in the same period. The top three territories are India, Indonesia and South Africa, but the service has users in Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka and even western markets like the US. Which games companies are participating? Cellufun, Hovr, HeroCraft, Glu Kiloo and others from the west along with Indian companies like IGFun, and more from Asia and Russia.

BuzzCity. We’re now up to 300 partners including operators, handset manufacturers, content providers and portals in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and elsewhere. Around 70 per cent of all traffic comes via them. With the Djuzz Catalogue we do give partners a share of ad revenues, but the upside for us is the added promotion and the sheer number of new users coming into the network. The partners get an offering they can optimise by geographic area and game type – and they keep their customers on portal for longer.

What’s been the response from advertisers? Advertisers like the clear proposition, and the fact that there are options other than CPC, such as sponsorships. It meant we could attract brands like Puma and Adidas. They both did campaigns around sports titles during the World Cup. Soon advertisers will be able to advertise inside the games, too. The SDK for this is out there, and over 100 developers have downloaded it.

As Djuzz is all about downloads, has this restricted its growth in some markets? Are there enough addressable handsets? It’s not really an issue. Most phones are Java enabled now. Take a country like Indonesia. Nokia has a 70 per cent market share, and all its devices now ship with Java. Data is affordable for most customers. It’s around 39 rupees a month – that’s less than a dollar.

In May, you launched a syndication programme, Djuzz Catalogue, to give third parties the chance to host the service. How has that affected its progress? I think syndication has been the biggest boost of all for Djuzz. We launched with the idea of giving partners the chance to create their own branded games portal, hosted by

Have you considered turning Djuzz into a fully-fledged app store like GetJar? I can see the argument, but for me it’s a branding and discovery issue. We want to keep Djuzz as a games channel – although it’s true we do have some products that could be described as lifestyle – so that customers know what to expect and don’t

16 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

There’s an army of keen mobile gamers in emerging markets. They’re downloading eight million a month from Djuzz

get lost inside it. So what we’ll do instead is launch new services using the Djuzz engine but offer different product types. We already did this with the Now Cook channel for recipes. That’s been great for bringing in new advertisers like Nestle. And in a few months, we’ll launch a music service around independent artists. That will start in Indonesia, where there is a big community of local artists looking for exposure.

Meet at Monetising Mobile Sign up for to ME’s Monetising Mobile conference on September 28th at the Soho Hotel in London to hear KF Lai speak in more detail about mobile web users in emerging markets. BuzzCity runs a vast ad network across multiple territories in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, so it has deep insight into all the trends. BuzzCity is a Gold Partner of the Monetising Mobile event.

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Get Monetising Mobile updates on the new ME iPhone app

MONETISING MOBILE

SPEAKERS: ANU SHAH, CEO, IMI Europe An overview of the content market in key regions from one of the sector’s biggest specialists SIMON DAVIES, MD, Europe, Snaptu Putting the internet into the hands of feature phone users in India and elsewhere. DAVID RYDER, director of marketing, Oxygen8 An insight into South African mobile market from the UKbased VAS specialist. NEERAJ ROY, CEO, Hungama What do Indian consumers want? Expert insight from the region’s content powerhouse. SHAILENDRA PANDEY, senior analyst, Informa Key stats an insights into the world’s emerging markets from Pandey’s recent report. ANUJ KHANNA, CEO, Wireless Expertise A statistical snapshot of the Indian market from the former Tanla exec. JAMES LAMBERTI, VP of global research and marketing, InMobi The mobile ad market in India, Asia and Middle East

How to get ahead in emerging markets India • Brazil • South Africa • Middle East • And more

ANDREAS MACMAHON, account director, Accumulate UK Pre-loaded content distribution in emerging markets

Tuesday, September 28th The Soho Hotel, 4 Richmond Mews, London

DAVE MOREAU, CEO, Fonestarz How to optimise your content for the Middle Eastern content market.

Conference & Dinner £229

KF LAI, CEO, BuzzCity Profiling the mobile internet user – insights from the exec behind Buzz City, MyGamma and Djuzz.

Gold Sponsors

BALBIR BLUGAN, applications manager, Sony Ericsson The market for apps in Russia and the Middle East An ME Event

For sponsorship and delegate booking information contact: Katy Grant on 01992 535647 or email katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk

Fo more details go to www.mobileent.biz/events for updates.

ME TV – ‘TACKLING THE DATA CAPACITY CRUNCH’, LIVE ON WWW.MOBILE-ENT.BIZ SPONSORED BY

Tackling the data crunch: an ME TV online production This month, Mobile Entertainment will introduce its new ME TV online feature. Each series will comprise five one-to one video interviews with senior industry execs on the thorniest issues of the moment. The first, sponsored by Amdocs, will focus on the ‘data capacity crunch’. Here, we examine the issue and introduce those interviewees… ver since the first phone shipped with a web browser and a video player, the mobile industry has been hurtling towards unsustainable network congestion. Now, the number of apps that consume data and perform frequent status checks has led to such congestion that even voice calls are being missed. According to a Cisco report, mobile data traffic will increase by a factor of 39 times in the next four years, reaching 42 exabytes annually by 2014, and 66 per cent of this will be video. This year, the industry finally confronted the ‘tsunami’ launched by video streaming, apps and broadband dongles. RIM’s CEO Mike Lazaridis said: “No matter how you slice it, bandwidth is not free. If we don't set up economic incentives now, research and innovation for new networks won't happen for the future.” Shortly after Ronan Dunne, O2's UK CEO, added: “There isn’t a CEO or CTO in the industry who doesn't have this (issue) on their desk.” Shortly after O2 moved to abandon flat-rate data tarriffs. It’s in everyone’s interest to tame this capacity crunch. Not least the mobile

18 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Does this picture successfully communicate crowded networks and heavy mobile activity? It was the best we could do.

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ME TV – ‘TACKLING THE DATA CAPACITY CRUNCH’, LIVE ON WWW.MOBILE-ENT.BIZ SPONSORED BY

content companies finally enjoying success after years of struggle. Happily, there are solutions – and not all of them are technical. Instead of simply installing ever more cellsites and new equipment, service providers need to develop an approach that thinks more “out of the box”. We asked networks specialist Amdocs to provide a list of techniques that could be used by all affected to fix the problem… Offload data to wi-fi and femtocells Wi-fi hotspots at home can remove significant traffic from the networks. 3G signals at the common 2.1GHz frequency are poor at penetrating indoors, further enhancing the value of this approach. The downside is the drain on battery life. Femtocells operate seamlessly as part of the 3G network, with factors of 100 to 200 times the current capability of outdoor cellsites. Deploy Metro-Femto Here, large numbers of low-cost cellsites are installed in high data traffic areas, such as transport hubs, stadiums and city centres. Backhaul connectivity is done through existing copper wires such as DSL, cable modems or fibre. The estimated capacity is around 3Gbit/s per square km. Sideload content Obvious one. Already common on iPhone. Traffic shaping Here, resources are allocated to each user based on their demands so that, for example, web pages show up quickly while heavy traffic activity like file downloading takes longer. Alternatively the customer profile can be used to track data usage and tweak it depending on permitted allowance. This avoids individual users being able to hog a large proportion of the available capacity in any individual cell. Expand the range of data tariffs Education is important here. Users need to know how much data certain activities consume and how to use wi-fi or off-peak hours to reduce data-hungry activity. Streaming Studies of those viewing YouTube videos uncovered that most do not watch each complete scene. This means that downloading the whole clip in advance wastes a lot of capacity. Conversely, reducing the size of buffered video saves capacity for everyone. Optimising for mobile If a video is sent in a format suitable for larger screen sizes, it wastes capacity. Far www.mobile-ent.biz

About Amdocs Amdocs is one of the world’s longestestablished ‘customer experience’ specialists. It works behind the scenes to help service providers such as mobile operators explore new business models and streamline operations. It indirectly serves hundreds of millions of end users in more than 60 countries. The firm’s newest release, Amdocs OSS 8, offers multiple techniques for easing congestion on mobile networks.

Who’s on ME TV? ME’s first-ever video series premieres on the www.mobile-ent.biz site this month. The subject is ‘Tackling the data capacity crunch’, and it’s sponsored by Amdocs. Over five weeks, we’ll introduce five high-level interviews with execs from all links in the value chain. Here they are… Jonathan Earle, head of consumer marketing for Telefónica O2 UK In the UK, O2 can claim to be the operator with the most proactive approach the to data crunch. It has begun to phase out flat-rate plans in favour of limited allowances and bolt-ons. It claims that 97 per cent of its subscribers do not need to buy additional data allowances, as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides 2.5 times the average customer’s current use. In this interview, Jonathan Earle will elaborate on what prompted the re-think and how customers have responded. Dean Bubley, founder, Distruptive Analysis You won’t find a more knowledgable and acerbic telco analyst than Mr Bubley. His Distruptive Analysis site is required reading for operators – even if it makes occasionally disturbing reading. Bubley has strong opinions on the proposed methods for taming the data crunch and making a ‘happy pipe’, whether it’s wi-fi offloading, intelligent caching or LTE. But he’s equally compelling on the behavioural impact of crunch-taming measures, such as customers hammering their data allowances at the end of the month, or operators requesting their users sign up to access adult material to shame them into less consumption. TO BE CONFIRMED, RIM In February RIM’s CEO Mike Lazaridis caused a few ripples at Mobile World Congress by speaking out against the untrammelled expansion of traffic across mobile networks. He called this the ‘capacity crunch’ and accused iPhone supporting operators of doing most of the damage, before adding that BlackBerrys are five times more network efficient. So how does RIM square its sense of responsibility with reinventing its browser and preparing the way for ‘super apps’. We hear the answers in this interview. Emma Lloyd, business development director, Sky It’s hard to think of a media company as committed to the mobile medium as Sky, which was among the first to offer live streaming TV via operators, to offer a multi-channel ad sales service to advertisers and create iPhone, Android and iPad apps around its various TV channels. It even has an app for programming your Sky+ box from remote locations. So how does the broadcaster feel about the crowding of the networks? Has it examined new business models around the issue? Nick East, general manager, Amdocs OSS Division For years, Amdocs has worked closely with operators on improving network efficiency. It’s observed the ‘tsunami’ in data consumption and has very clear ideas on how to tackle it (see main article). In this interview, Amdocs’ general manager (OSS division) Nick East examines the short and long term fixes available to operators.

better to transcode it into smaller and more efficient formats. Better app design Developers should consider the impact on network resources in their products. Software updates, for example, could be timed to download at offpeak times.

Various network-centric technical upgrades… These require significant spend, but address the long term health of the network. They include expanding cellsite capacity, upgrading to HSPA+ or LTE, installing more carriers per cellsite or rolling out new macro cellsites and buying more spectrum. Mobile Entertainment September 2010 | 19

2010

AWARDS

The Mobile Content Industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Premier Awards Event Thursday, November 18th 2010 The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8

2,750 + VAT Tables of ten ÂŁ ÂŁ295 + VAT Single Places

AWARD CATEGORIES

DEVELOPMENT & PUBLISHING

Best Gambling Company Best Adult Company Best Games Company Best Location Company Best Social Media Company Best Mobile Book Company Best D2C Company

SERVICES

Best Video Service Provider Best Music Service Provider Best Games Service Provider Best Transactions Provider Best App Developer Best Mobile Web Publishing Platfor m Best Advertising Network Best B2B Content Provider Best App Store

OPERATORS & HANDSETS

Best Handset Company Best Developer Programme Best Operator

SPECIAL AWARD

Outstanding Contribution to Mobile Content

For sponsorship opportunities con tact: Katy.Grant@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647 For table sales and ticket enquiries contact: Kathryn.Humphrey@intentmedia.c o.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647

INMOBI Q&A

Inside Two years ago InMobi was an Indian-based ad network serving 500 million ads a month. Now it’s a mobile ad powerhouse, serving 40 times more ads and operating all over the world. Tim Green asked Rob Jonas, Inmobi’s VP and MD of Europe, what’s next for the firm…

It’s fair to say InMobi is riding the mobile advertising wave as successfully as anyone. What are the topline figures? We’re up to 20 billion impressions across the network a month. That’s up from half a billion in January 2009. And we’re operational in 150 countries, with offices in India, the UK, South Africa, Singapore, the US and Tokyo. What sort of pressure does this put on the operation? From the start, the company’s effort went into engineering and the platform, so it has always been robust. The challenge was more about business development and people, and clearly that has been where the expansion has come in the last year or so. We are up to 130 employees now, and still hiring. 22 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Above: InMobi’s VP and MD of Europe, Rob Jonas

It’s fair to say mobile advertising is intensely competitive. There are dozens of networks out there. How will InMobi differentiate itself? Well, if you think about it, all networks have three key components to handle: there’s the initial ad request, the serving piece and the click. You have to get those working reliably and fast. And when you have a network that spans 150 countries and thousands of publishers, it’s not trivial to get that working in sub milli-second speeds. Now, clearly the more established networks can all do this. So we are focusing on what happens after the click, and also how we can improve targeting before the ad request.

tool called AdROIt that gives advertisers metrics to show which ads are delivering the best results. But the important thing is that it’s ‘self-learning’ and creates a real-time feedback loop. So it shows where advertisers should place their ads, and which campaigns work best. In the next few months, we’ll be developing tools that help advertisers discover the ‘lifetime value’ of customers.

How will the post-click activity change? Specifically, offering a change from cost per click to cost per acquisition. We now have a

So that’s after the click. How can InMobi improve user targeting before any action has taken place?

But that means advertisers are spending less. Seeing as InMobi represents publishers, is this a good thing? History shows InMobi that the more effective ad spend is, the more advertisers spend overall. Ultimately, everyone benefits.

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INMOBI Q&A

Right now, the only intelligence available to advertisers is based on handset type, operator, OS and so on. But we all know that advertisers want to be able to target in mobile the way they can in other media – by gender, social class, income, precise location and behaviour. This is another project for us, and it involved us teaming up with operators and other data sources like network service providers to open up that data. It’s quite a challenge, but we’re hoping to have something live next year. That kind of targeting is what Blyk do. Could InMobi be interested in that kind of permission-based push activity? No, we are a blind performance-based network. The fact is, if you crack targeting then you reduce the desire to target by site. Interesting, because you have made formal announcements on the back of partnerships with Jumbuck, Hi5 and others. Why do that if advertisers can’t choose where their ads go? Those deals really just help to reflect the size and scale of the network. But most publishers prefer anonymity – and we always honour that. The mobile ad space is incredibly hot at the moment, probably the most active in terms of M&A activity. Do you think there will be further consolidation or will the market continue to support dozens of networks? I think the space breaks down into those companies that can be described as multiterritory performance networks – us, AdMob, Quattro, for example – and those that focus on their own domestic market. There will be a shake-out, but it will come when those single territory firms look to compete globally and choose to get bought or merge. Will InMobi seek out acquisition targets? It’s not a priority, but we have the means to do it if the opportunity comes along. What effect has Apple and iAd had on InMobi? Honestly, it’s been great. We’ve all benefited from the exposure. But I’m assuming InMobi doesn’t really go in for that kind of rich media format… Most of the ads we serve are banners, and most of the advertising is direct response for telcos and handset makers and so on. It’s interesting, though, how the many regions we operate in differ from one another. In Asia it’s more about brand-building than direct response, because of the vast reach www.mobile-ent.biz

Find out more about InMobi at the Meet-Up Come and meet Inmobi at the next Meet-Up social event on Monday September 20th… ME’s legendary networking party – Meet-Up – returns later this month. Come along and you’ll get the chance to find out about Inmobi’s ad network and its expansion plans in Europe. To secure your place, please send an email to: meetup@intentmedia.co.uk. Please include your full name and job title in the email. If demand exceeds supply, we’ll allocate spaces on a lottery basis. Meet-Up • 24 London • 24 Kingly Street • London W1B 5QP Monday September 20th 2010 Email: meetup@intentmedia.co.uk we can offer advertisers. Ten billion ad requests a month is pretty compelling. Clearly there’s still a great deal of growth potential in mainstream brands and agencies. But what about the multitude of small businesses that have made Google Adwords such a success, for example? We see the market in terms of the ‘head, torso and tail’, with the head being top agencies and brands, the torso being the next level of brands and the tail being the small businesses you mention. The agency business is growing incredibly fast, and we have teams in place to handle those accounts. But it’s definitely the case that the tail piece really needs to kick in. I think the key will be when a certain sector really embraces the channel. Then we’ll see smaller providers rush in to replicate them.

Another evening of socialising and networking is on the cards at the next ME Meet-Up

It’s happening online with travel and financial services, for example. Finally, it seems to me there’s a big elephant in the room – and that’s Facebook. How can networks compete against Facebook when it finally opens up its inventory? I agree that Facebook is the big unknown. And when a company has 42 per cent of all mobile web traffic – as it does in the UK I believe – you have to wonder at its impact. I do know people at Facebook and I have some idea of what they’re planning. It’ll be interesting, but there’s so much growth in the ad space. It continuously surprises me. So I’m confident we can keep growing whatever happens in terms of competition. Mobile Entertainment September 2010 | 23

ME AWARDS 2010

AWARDS

Best of all

We’ve received hundreds of nominations for the fifth ME Awards, which take place on Thursday November 18th at London’s Royal Garden Hotel. Book your ticket quick before they all go...

What’s the nominations process? The submissions deadline has passed, so now it’s down to the ME team to decide who makes the shortlists, basing its decisions on nomination pitch documents and consultation with industry insiders.

magine spending the evening in the company of your treasured industry colleagues. Picture yourself getting slowly and pleasantly inebriated. Maybe even winning a prize and making a short speech about how you couldn’t have done it without your team (even if you don’t actually believe it). Well, your reverie could come true at the ME Awards. On November 18th. At the Royal Garden Hotel, London. It’s the highlight of the year for the mobile content space. Everyone who’s anyone attends. And we always have a comedian host who swears a lot – and what’s not to like about that? This year we’ve tweaked the categories a little to reflect changing trends in the space. We’ve introduced a new Best Location Company award to reflect the rise of companies making GPS-enabled products, and there’s also recognition for m-book specialists. Next month we’ll publish our list of finalists. But in the meantime book a ticket. They’re going fast…

24 | September 2010 Mobile Entertainment

What’s the judging process? The winners are decided by a judging panel, which consists of around 400 execs from all sectors of the business. We send them a PDF of the special awards brochure that details the shortlisted finalists. This supplement will be bundled with the October issue of ME.

ME AWARDS 2010 DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLISHING Best Gambling Company Best Adult Company Best Games Company Best Location Company Best Social Media Company Best Mobile Book Company Best D2C Company

Can I sponsor the event? Yes. There are a number of promotional possibilities available. Please contact katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk or +44 (0) 1992 535647.

SERVICES Best Video Service Provider Best Music Service Provider Best Games Service Provider Best Transactions Provider Best App Developer Best Mobile Web Publishing Platform Best Advertising Network Best B2B Content Provider Best App Store OPERATORS AND HANDSETS Best Handset Company Best Developer Programme Best Operator SPECIAL AWARD Outstanding Contribution to Mobile Content

When are the Awards? Thursday November 18th at The Royal Garden Hotel, London UK.

Picture yourself among the handsome and successful people pictured here. It could happen. Buy a ticket.

How much is it to attend? A single place costs £295 + VAT and tables of ten are priced at £2,750 + VAT. For details of table sales and other ticket enquiries contact kathryn.humphrey@intentmedia.co.uk or +44 (0) 1992 535647.

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