Mobile Marketing and Video

I came accross this great article about Mobile Video. It is from Dave Sloan marketing Director of Avot media.

He gives 5 ways where video is critical for mobile:

1. Watching and sharing a video from a mobile web site

2. Sharing video via social networks

3. Sharing video from desktop to mobile

4.Viewing live videos from a mobile web site

5.Viewing video content in a mobile application

Indeed, on point 2, more & more buzz videos are coming from friends post on social network. One of your friend posts a video that you want to share with your other friends then you just post it on your FB wall…and if the video is good the buzz starts!

On Hulu moving to Cellphones, Driving mobile video usage

Hulu has done well as a browser-based video destination. In march 2009, it reached he third position in video internet website with 2.6% market share. (which is good but still really far behind Youtube, 40% market share). With Newscorp and NBC Universal as shareholders, Hulu is a promising start-up. Hulu aims to provide free and legal content sponsored by advertising to users. More recently, Disney just joined the investors enabling TV series like “Lost” or “Desperate Housewives” from ABC available on the network.

So, it’s not surprising to hear that Hulu is headed to cell phones. An anonymous mobile industry executive says the video service will soon appear on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, according to Business Insider.

Mobile SEO

A good visibility on where Mobile SEO is. How to attract traffic now that a brands has its own mobile internet website / mobile applications. You’ve probably heard many “experts” advising you to optimize your site for mobile phones, or to create a “mobile” version of your site and optimize that for “mobile search.” The process has already been defined as “mobile SEO”, and there are already many SEO companies making money by “creating mobile sites” and doing “mobile SEO.”

SEO for Mobile by visibility mobile

View more presentations from Bena Roberts.

As we can see it is still the beginning of SEO for mobile site! Where to go, which platform to use, banners vs referencing…or web to mobile system.

To continue on this subject few links, this young french blogger just hired by gameloft to develop their mobile seo and of course the creators of this presentation Visibility mobile blog

Zapping April 19th

Japanese don’t like (or hate) the iPhone…softbank offers the phone for free in its plan – 1 Billion app (soon to be) downloaded – the battle between Larry King vs Aston Kutcher (Demi’s boyfriend) on the most followed on twitter…Nico we are still waiting for your twiller you may now be able to monetize it with tipjoy – nokia profits down of 90% – for the fan…we are still waiting Maria Sharapova to announce an Android Sony Ericsson phone!

Local content and reviews…a killer LBS service?

In today’s online edition of the New York Times there is an article describing one of the Internet Trend the local reviews and ratings. In an earlier post, I talked about Ultra Local Search. And i more and more feel that these type of service i.e combining search and location will be a killer one.

AroundMe is a good example, AroundMe allows you to quickly find out information about your surroundings. AroundMe quickly identifies your position and allows you to choose the nearest Bank, Bar, Gas Station, Hospital, Hotel, Movie Theatre, Restaurant, Supermarket, Theatre and Taxi. AroundMe shows you a complete list of all the businesses in the category you have tapped on along with the distance from where you are. For every listing you can choose to see its location on a Map, view the route from where you are, add the information to your contact list or even email the information to a friend. The Nearby listing allows you to find information using Wikipedia about what is around you.

Once the advertising will be allowed you can imagine the amount of local ads it will be able to generate!

Mobile 2.0 Paris March 10th

From an overall perspective today was very intense and the speakers were interesting and some of the panelists were extremely sharp and pinpointing the right issues (Jerome Bouteiller, Frederic Dumeny). One of the major challenge I found is to take out from our minds that Mobile users are not always PC users and that services need to be conceived only for a mobile usage! I think that in some cases comparison with the web makes no sense… Take the e-commerce, it’s been years users are downloading ringtones with premium SMS, or are using paid adult services and this is truly a mobile service.

I am going to give some remarks on the different panel I attended:

1. Widgets Panel

Duality between Applications (connected apps reachable in 1 click and widgets in container what webwag or goojet is doing reachable in more than 2 clicks) and Widgets Containers. What I understood at the end, by discussing with WebWag is Widgets in a container is targetting Joe “The Plumber” and Maggie “the Hockey Mum” i.e low-end mobile phone users.

Container of usual services (weather, news, mails, social networks, local information, traffic) target low-end phones and provide a very easy and intuitive way of consuming information. How do they make money by providing White Label widgets to companies, Revenue Sharing on advertising, or Value added services.

I, now, understand why VCs are so attracted by these companies.

2. Mobile Advertising Panel

Nothing really new. There is a strong shift towards the mobile internet from the brands. Applications are a hot topic.

Nevertheless the environment is still very complex, no tracking system (though marvellous, nokia interactive, microsoft, sofialys, phonevalley are implementing solutions). Cellfish summed up very well: bottom line what still work pretty well today is Push SMS.

All the panelists saw a strong demand in Geolocalization.

3. Mobile Social Network

I was very disappointed by this Panel, as the panelists did not speak too much of Social Network…Gemalto released their new Multimedia SIM Card, project name UPteq.

I am suprized by Orange, they are very proactive in different mobile services areas with my Social Place, Jingo and of course Studio 34 their content arm.

4. 2 Platforms, 2 Strategies: Iphone vs Android

The best Panel by far.

Visuamobile created 18 apps, have more than 1 Million download, 14 persons, 9 developers, 11 servers and 200 mb of bandwidth.

There is a problem of Search Engine Optimization on the app store – not a new topic but so true… Visuamobile manged to drive traffic through PR with bloggers, newspapers online and offline…

I discussed also with Mr Silberzahn from Digital Airways. It was a pleasure talking to him, as I guessed this company is healthy, well managed and have good on-going projects. For him Android is the way to go, it is a fact most of their new projects are on Android. DA specializes on developing UI on any devices, Mobile, Netbooks, Set Top Boxes and PND. Historicly their competitors are Purple Labs vs Streamezzo or Bluestreak (client lead solution)

5. mCommerce

Same comment as for the Mobile Social Network…it was very bad we did not talk about true transaction based model implemented in Europe whether in NFC or through Mobile Operators. I am thinking of Austria, Germany….or even the best example which is M-Pesa in Kenya where fishermen sold their fish before coming back to the harbour…

Mobile World Congress 2009

My feedback of the show:

1. Openness: a lot of companies opened their platform and now provides API for developers to work on it. (myGamma…)
2. Applications stores: Nokia, Samsung, Orange, SFR…all of them are opening app stores! Guess it will be harder for the users to understand what will happen!
3. Mobile Widget or mobile connected applications: Qualcomm through Plaza are strongly ahead. Operators are also interested Orange. In their recent announcement it was said by the end of 2009 80% of their mobile “signature range” will be sold with new widgets. Also worth to mention are companies like Goojet (financed by american and french VC), webwag…
4. Green: The universal charger initiative (without Apple…though it is predictible) – the Solar Energy phone designed by Samsung and LG. Nokia got an award for an Outstanding Environnmental Contribution (more info here)
5. Mobile Advertising: admob! admob! admob! and a mobile company that does affiliation for mobile web site! texomobile already more than 130 000 affiliates! Sybase released a mobile advertising platform that allows content providers, publishers, and enterprise to insert text ad into a SMS
6. Mobile Payment: Mobile payment englobes 3 different notions nowadays: mBanking, mCommerce and mRemittance. Tranfer money to your friends or relatives in your home country, several experiences launched with the Philippines operators, namely Globe. A leader in that space is a German company called Paybox (recently acquired by Sybase 365). Maxis have a great mRemittance system with Transfer To Explanation of the service: “Hotlink i-Share is a first-in-Malaysia service by Maxis that was launched in April this year and enables its prepaid subscribers to share airtime credit with their friends and family to several countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines through an easy-to-use “shared top-up” application…”
7. New mobile phones: I will only mention one: The G2 which apparently is close to perfection…what a plan!

And to finish the list of the awards and their winners! One remark in the Champion for Global Award Mobile Innovation we find a chinese company which is great as more and more I think that innovation in the mobile space will come from Asia!

Best Mobile Game: Winner: Gameloft – Real Football 2009

Best Mobile Music or Video Service: Winner: BBC iPlayer on Mobile

Best Mobile Advertising Service: Winner: Turkcell – Tonla Kazan

Best Mobile TV Service: Winner: MobiTV – MobiTV

Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service Winner: Vodafone – Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited

Best Mobile Internet Service: Nokia – Nokia Sports Tracker

Best Mobile Money Service: Safaricom and Vodafone – M-PESA

Best Mobile Handset or Device:
INQ – INQ1
Highly Commended: Nokia – Nokia E71
Highly Commended: T-Mobile – T-Mobile G1

Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development: Nuance Communications – Airtel-T9 India Consumer Vernacular Messaging Campaigns

Best Service Delivery Platform: NewBay Software – LifeCache Social Networking Solution 2.0

The Green Mobile Award: Smart Communications – Alternative Power for Cell Sites program

GSMA’s CEO Award for Outstanding Environmental Contribution: Nokia

Government Leadership Award: The Government of France

THE 2009 MOBILE INNOVATION GLOBAL AWARD CHAMPION: Cootek, China (Most Innovative Wireless Dev)

Ways & Companies to help you drive traffic on your mobile website!

CPM on mobile web site are still fairly high around 20 Eur in Europe mainly in France & Germany. This is the case for less targeted audience for targeted ones these prices can go up to 60 Eur.

CPC vary between 1 to 5 Eur.

These numbers are huge…simply because it works.

On a Mobile Advertising campaign return are within 1% to 5% range.

For an example on a SMS and MMS campaign return (measured by keyword sent back to a Short Code, or clicks to a mobile web site/wap site) are within 5% to 10%!

Now how to leverage on your mobile website – generate traffic and revenue!

I try here to list typical method of doing so:

What are the different ways to drive traffic to your mobile web site:

1. Mobile  ad placements typically banner ads on targeted mobile web site – go through syndicated networks for example admax in SE Asia.

2. Mobile advertising marketplace or Search Engine such as:

Admob, here is a quote from their website “Omar Hamoui wanted to build traffic for his mobile site. He encountered complexity and fragmentation – it was just too hard to engage users. AdMob was born to remove roadblocks and enable mobile web businesses. “

JumTap, they leverage their mobile search heritage and operator relationships to deliver advanced targeting intelligence for advertisers seeking the highest return on their ad spend.

Taptu is a super-fast entertainment search engine for your mobile. You’ll find all sorts of cool stuff like music, videos, images and lots more – all made perfectly for your mobile and made to share with your friends.

Buzzcity provides marketers with unprecedented opportunities to reach this audience via its far-reaching advertising, merchant and publisher programs. They leverage on their community in order to target audience. They have one of the best CPM/CPC click on the market today.

3. Mobile social networks myGamma, Bebo

4. SMS and MMS push to a mobile user database – comapnies like UserAdgents provide these database or most of the time you can find database with Content publishers! We will see more & more companies like iMailGlobal

5. In addition in every countries different alliances between mobile operators exists: Gallery in France (operator portal with 3 Million Viwed Pages per month) or Pay for It in the UK these two portals give you a unique id for the users that browased on your mobile web site.

With all these different tools, there’s definetely a need for a company to help publishers, content providers, mobile web site owner and brands to drive traffic on their mobile web site!

Richard Titus, Future Media Controller, BBC: We Must Target Youngsters Via Mobile

In a very interesting interview  pusblished on the moco news website, the Media Controller of the BBC talks about the use of mobile to target youngsters audience.

Firstly he points out that “twenty percent of the audience for BBC Mobile uses no other services from the BBC.” Indeed, as I mentioned couple of times, we need to think more & more in terms of “mobile only” experience: users will only interact with your mobile apps or site – as these users might not have a computer…

Secondly, he emphasizes on the creation of widgets and mobile applications.  I understood that he targets not only mobile widgets but widgets in general wheter on a PC, on a Notebook and on a non-connected devices such as an iPod Touch or a PSP!

Hopefully BBC innovate and bring new mobile services in the coming year!

And China Mobile created the Open Mobile System…

Yes they did it – the OS is from Android but with the support of the chinese 3G TD-SCDMA.
The first phone to support it will be the oPhone from Lenovo. China mobile already developed couple of applications such as mail, music downloads, sms.

Is it surprising?

• No, China Mobile have a subscriber’s base of 350 Millions it is in their financial interest to not only make the phone but as well design the OS.
• No, Chinese vertical integration (from the standard of transmission up to the handsets) is a move comparable with what Japan did 10 to 15 years ago.

What next will be innovations coming from China to the occidental world!