Mobile Marketing Magazine

Out With the Old...

As the last post before a Bank Holiday weekend, I’d normally use this one to tell you that this is it for a few days, because on Monday I’ll be on a beach somewhere with my suncream, and my kagool. And indeed I will, so it will be Tuesday before we are back slaving over a hot keyboard bringing you all the latest news. 
But the next time you check in to Mobile Marketing magazine, you should notice something different, because this is the last post on the Typepad site that has served us so well these past five years.
As of around 7pm this evening, we’ll be on our shiny new site, which we’ve been working on for the last few months. It’s a little bit more interactive than this one, and will allow us to have a bit more fun with videos and podcasts and other such things. It also has dedicated sections for events and jobs, and you’ll be able to sign up to receive news alerts in your inbox.
Because of the vagaries of DNS propagation, you may see the new site minutes after we switch the domains over, or it could take a couple of hours, or in the worst case scenario, a couple of days. Either way, you should be seeing it by Tuesday morning when we start putting up stories again. If you’re not, send us an email and we’ll investigate.
Other than that, it’s business as usual really. We’ll continue to bring you all the latest news from the mobile marketing coalface, and we promise to carry on putting in the odd spelling mistake, posting the odd story without a headline, running the same story twice, one after the other, and all the other things that show we’re human.
The last five years doing the site have been a blast. Here’s to the next five.

David Murphy
Editor  

So There Is Someone at Home

News (at last) from the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), the alliance of telcos announced with great fanfare at Mobile World Congress which was going to revolutionise the mobile applications market. Then after Barcelona, er, not much.
Obviously, these things don’t happen overnight, especially where 24 telcos are concerned. What annoyed me a bit was the fact that for a couple of months after MWC, the WAC seemed to consist of nothing more than a website with an info@ email address, that, if my experiences are anything to go by, redirected to a black hole.
We were planning a piece on the WAC for our next print issue, but given the wall of silence we met with from the organisation at the heart of it, we spiked it. But today, news reaches us that on 5 May, the WAC team will provide an update to media and industry analysts on the progress of the WAC initiative since launch via a webinar or conference call. And the word comes from a proper PR company with lots of clients in the mobile space.
So maybe now we will see some progress. But so far, it has to be said, the WAC has hardly covered itself in glory.

David Murphy
Editor

Secret Codes

When, if ever, will mobile barcodes take off in a big way? It’s a question that enthusiasts of the technology have been asking themselves for a long time. Indeed in our debut print edition, published in February - catch it online here - you could sense the frustration felt by one such enthusiast, Howard Furr-Barton, when he said: “QR Codes have not emerged because of the incompetence of the majority of marketing directors, who don’t see a fabulous asset when it’s staring them in the face."
Yesterday, I met with Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia Technologies, one of the leading exponents of mobile barcodes. He argued that things are starting to happen. Last year, it began licensing its technology to other companies. So far, it has signed up four, including two competitors, Scanbuy and Mobiletag, and one more complementary firm. Neustar. It has also licensed the technology to US mobile agency Renu, and is set to announce two Scandinavian agency licensees later today. 
Last year, McCready told me, over 200 campaigns were executed using NeoMedia technology, plus 80 more in the first quarter of 2010. These figures surprised me. If there are this many mobile barcode campaigns running, the people running are not making much noise about them. Why the secrecy?
There are several reasons for the acceleration in mobile barcode deployments, he told me. Firstly, there have been advances on the standardization front, with trade bodies such as the GSM Association and the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) agreeing on the use of one of three mobile barcode types, QR, Data Matrix and Astec, though there are still proprietary codes out there, and some might argue that even three looks like two too many.
Secondly, the apps phenomenon means that the issue of not having a barcode reader on your phone is much less of an issue than it was a couple of years ago. Added to this, NeoMedia has convinced one handset maker, Sony Ericsson, to pre-install its barcode reader on all new handsets.
McCready conceded that there are still issues to be addressed around data costs and education. On data costs, he told me he’s in favour of the model used in Austria, where the advertiser pays for the costs of the data session initiated when a mobile barcode is scanned. On education, he told me: “I’d like to be in a position where I could show a mobile barcode to anyone in this café, and they would know what it was, but I know we’re not there yet.”
This education process will happen, he believes, as big brands, both offline, in the shape of FMCG companies using 2D barcodes on packaging, and online in the shape of web giants like Facebook and Google, start to deploy mobile barcodes, and consumers get used to interacting with them.
“I believe that by the end of 2010, first quarter of 2011, we will be seeing transaction volumes; it was always going to take that long,” he concluded.
No doubt some will argue that it might take a good while longer than that. But this is a technology that has the potential to tip if it catches on in the right circles, and the viral effect of social media takes hold. It hasn’t happened yet, outside of Japan at least, but it would take a brave man to say it won’t.

David Murphy
Editor

Signing Off

We are closing down for the long Easter weekend now, so we’ll be back as usual on Tuesday morning. If you need your mobile marketing fix in the meantime, you can still check out the digital version of our first print issue online here.
We are currently working on Issue 2, which will be out in June. If you’d like to know more about the advertising and sponsorship opportunities in the print magazine, send us an email and we’ll get right back to you.
And whatever you’re doing over Easter, have a good one.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 53

It’s 1 April, a day for tomfoolery and practical jokes, but unfortunately, the weather here in the UK is for real. But forget about the rain and the snow for a few minutes as we whizz you through the highlights of the last few months in the hectic world of mobile marketing.
At the start of the month, T-Mobile and Orange were cleared to go ahead with their merger by the European Commission, after the operators agreed to give up some of their spectrum. The company will have a combined customer base of around 29.5 million.
There were plenty more deals in the offing too. Mobile marketing firm Inside Mobile was bought by ad agency M&C Saatchi. Inside Mobile will trade as M&C Saatchi Mobile. Its clients include Reebok International, Yahoo! Europe, AB-InBev-Becks and Sky.
Nokia announced that it was to acquire Novarra, which provides a mobile browser and service platform. Nokia says it will use Novarra's platform to deliver enhanced Internet experiences on Nokia mobile devices. And Amdocs, which provides customer experience systems, snapped up MX Telecom for $104 million (£69 million) in cash. MX Telecom is a mobile payments and messaging aggregator with operations in Europe, the US and Australia. MX Telecom will become part of Amdocs’ OpenMarket business, which operates a mobile transaction hub.
There was lots happening on the Augmented Reality (AR) front. AR firm kooaba unveiled its prototype AR app that integrates real-time image recognition technology to augment both stationary objects such as building and statues, and non-stationary objects such as products, newspapers and billboards. Another AR firm, metaio launched an updated version of its open AR iPhone app and mobile web browser junaio, and also revealed that it had partnered with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in San Francisco to integrate transit data, such as station locations and estimated arrival times, into a BART channel on its junaio platform.
And directory service Yell added AR to its iPhone app. The app enables iPhone 3GS users to ‘see’ local shops, offices, restaurants and other useful services through the iPhone’s camera viewer.
With all this AR activity, it was no real surprise when the analyst Juniper Research released its report, ‘Mobile Location Based Services: Applications, Forecasts & Opportunities 2009-2014’, in which it predicted that revenues from Mobile Location-based Services (MLBS) are expected to exceed $12.7 billion (£8.3 billion) by 2014.
Another Juniper report, this one on Mobile Ticketing, forecast that nearly 15 billion tickets will be delivered to subscribers’ mobile devices worldwide by 2014, compared to just over 2 billion this year. Adding credence to these figures, mobile ticketing, couponing and marketing firm Trinity Mobile revealed a 1200% year-on-year increase in the delivery of mobile boarding passes to airline passengers in 2009, with 600,000 passes sent out via text message in 2009, compared to just 50,000 in 2008.
Research firm comScore published the latest data from its MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the US mobile industry during the three month period between October 2009 and January 2010. In an average month during the November through January 2010 time period, 63.5% of US mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.5% compared to the previous three-month period. Browsers were used by 28.6% of subscribers (up 1.8%), while 21.7% of subscribers played games (up 0.4%). Access of social networking sites or blogs experienced grew 3.3% to 17.1% of mobile subscribers.
Another study, this one from BuzzCity, looked at attitudes towards, and use of, mobile payments. It found that 90% of respondents had used their mobile to directly purchase products or services, and while most related to mobile phone use, such as mobile content and prepaid airtime, 23% had bought from online stores, paid a bill, bought prepaid utilities and made bookings through their mobile.
And if you haven’t had your fill of stats yet, independent app store GetJar produced a report predicting that the global mobile applications market will be worth $17.5 billion (£11.5 billion) by 2012, a fourfold increase from its value of $4.1 billion in 2009. The report also predicted that the total number of mobile app downloads would increase from over 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012.
Finally on the stats front, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) revealed the results of research that showed that mobile and online advertising, used in combination can significantly increase brand awareness and purchase consideration. The IAB found that among respondents exposed to ads across online and mobile, recognition was 43% greater than among those exposed just to the online component.
Mobile ad network InMobi launched what it claimed was the mobile advertising industry’s most ambitious local targeting capability for advertisers to date. The program, which is available in the UK, France, Indonesia, S. Africa, US, and India to over 15,000 cities and regions, will continue to expand during 2010. The program also includes the ability to target iPhone consumers with new, optimised creative, specific to the iPhone experience.
And Target Digital brokered a campaign between Unanimis, who exclusively represent Orange’s Shots opt-in mobile advertising service, and Optimum Releasing, which thus became the first film distributor to use Orange’s mobile advertising service for a campaign for the movie, ‘Leap Year’.
Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) announced its expansion into America and Canada with its digital agency, Jigsaw, opening two new offices in Chicago and Toronto. MIG said the move had been driven by growing client demand for the agency’s integrated approach to delivering and implementing multichannel digital campaigns that pull on the group’s expertise across a broad range of online, mobile, and digital marketing and technology disciplines. 
And finally, Barclaycard revealed that contactless mobile payments would become a reality in the UK by the end of 2010 through its partnership with mobile operator Orange. It's been a long time coming; let's hope NFC (Near Field Communications) on a phone can live up to the hype when it does arrive.
Another busy month then. Stay tuned throughout April for all the latest news, and our new-look site, coming very soon.

David Murphy
Editor

Community Care?

There was an initial burst of excitement at Mobile World Congress, with the news that 24 telcos (and a few handset makers) had teamed up to form the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC). While on one hand, it could be seen as a (desperate?) attempt by the operators to wrest some control of the applications ecosystem back from Apple, and also limit Google’s attempts to muscle in with Android, it also promised to create a platform that would enable developers to create an application for one mobile platform, and port it seamlessly to any other.
Almost as soon as the announcement had been made, however, the cynicism kicked in, and not just from the journalist and blogger communities. Virtually everyone you asked about the WAC thought it highly unlikely that a group made up of 24 telcos would stand much chance of agreeing on anything, let alone doing so quickly. There were also rumours that several members of the community had only signed up to it on the eve of the show, with the announcement drawing ever closer.
Such cynicism may of course, be justified, but we feel it’s only right to give the WAC a chance. Which is why we decided to cover the initiative in our next print edition, due out in June. We found a few commentators and analysts willing to talk to us about it. Indeed, the only thing we were lacking was a contribution from the WAC itself. So we headed to the WAC website, hoping to get the latest news and some contact details. Well the latest news is the announcement from the show. And the contact details are an info@ email address. Nothing else.
A few years ago, when people were wondering whether this online shopping lark was actually safe, I remember reading some very good advice about how to tell a good, trustworthy website from a dodgy one. One sure sign to proceed with caution was when you came across a site with no physical address or telephone number. In this respect, the WAC site is like a throwback to the Wild West days of the Internet.
If the WAC is serious about its plans, it should at the very least appoint a press officer to deal with media enquiries, so people who want to explain what it’s trying to do can get the information they need. And if the only contact details it offers are an info@ email address, then it could at least bother to answer emails sent to it. I sent mine around a week ago; no response yet. I’m beginning to understand where all that cynicism came from.

David Murphy
Editor

More Than Mobile

Anyone who believes that TV advertising is dead, or on life support at least, should take a look at our web stats for this evening. The most popular story on the site right now, according to the stats, is one from February 2009 about Orange launching a £7m advertising campaign to promote Orange Wednesdays, its 2-for-1 cinema ticket offer.
Why? Well I’m writing this as Gareth Southgate chews over Barcelona’s destruction of  FC Stuttgart in the Champions League on ITV, and during the ad break that happened five minutes ago, one of the ads was for...Orange Wednesdays.
When I look at the search terms that have brought people to this particular story on the site, I have to concede that a good number of them were merely trying to find out who was doing the voiceover, so they will have left disappointed, but it just goes to reinforce the point that sensible marketing people have been saying forever, and which I hope you’ll forgive me for repeating here: that any one channel - even mobile - shouldn’t be seen in isolation.
We know that TV advertising drives a lot of search traffic, as people sit watching TV with the PC switched on, or a laptop on, er, their lap, as this example proves. And we know that a lot of brands are using mobile to great effect to drive response from offline campaigns on billboards, press ads and TV. I’ve even heard stories of traffic to websites and mobile sites spiking the day after a Bluetooth campaign, for all the stick that particular mobile marketing technology receives.
I’m as enthusiastic as anyone about mobile as a marketing channel, but I think we should remember sometimes that there is more to life than mobile, and if you want to get the most out of it, it pays to think about how you can use it in tandem with, and not necessarily in place of, other channels.

David Murphy
Editor

Spotlight on the US

In the next print edition of Mobile Marketing, we will be throwing the spotlight on the US mobile marketing scene. We want to get a feel for the types of things US consumers are doing on their phone, and the types of campaigns that are delivering results for brands. If you’re an active player in the US market and feel you have some useful insights to share with us about the mobile marketing scene over there, please send us an email to get the ball rolling.

David Murphy
Editor

Shortcut to the Future

I’m at an event hosted by independent app store GetJar, at which the company’s founder Ilja Laurs is presenting the findings of research into the apps market carried out by Chetan Sharma Consulting. The full findings will be released tomorrow, but highlights include a forecast four-fold rise in app download revenues over the next three years, from $4.1 billion in 2009 to $17.5 billion in 2012.
One of the points under discussion is the ongoing debate about whether the future of mobile content and services lies with apps or with the browser, and here, Laurs’ views are interesting. In addition to hosting real apps for download, GetJar also offers things that look like an app, but which are in fact nothing more than an icon which sits on the user’s phone and acts as a shortcut to the brand’s mobile site. Facebook is a good example. If you download the Facebook app to your phone from GetJar, then if your phone is an iPhone, you’ll get the app. If it’s a Sony Ericsson, you’ll get the URL shortcut icon.
I asked Laurs if brands were prepared to pay as much to have these shortcut icons listed on the GetJar site as they do to have an actual app listed. He told me that they are, because GetJar has figures to show that a mobile user with a URL shortcut icon on their phone will access that site eight times more frequently than someone who has simply been given the URL to type in manually.
When asked if the whole app thing could be a passing fad, Llars said that as long as services continued to exist and apps were deemed to be a good “service container” for them, then apps would continue to exist. Which brings us back to this question of whether the browser could usurp the apps market. Llars’ response to this is that he doesn’t particularly care
“I would not care whether it was an app on the phone or just an icon (acting) as a shortcut,” he said.
Llars’ point is that from a user experience perspective, it doesn’t make any difference whether the icon you click takes you to an app or to a mobile site. And clearly, if he is making as much money promoting shortcuts as he is romoting actual apps, then his answer makes sense. All the same, it’s not the one I expected to hear when I asked the question.

David Murphy
Editor

Last Call For Our Mobile Ad Network Round-up

A quick reminder that in the next print edition of Mobile Marketing, which we’re working on now, we are planning a guide to the world's mobile advertising networks. We already have more than 35 on our list, and if you’ve already been in touch to tell us about your network, you’ll be receiving a form to complete in the next few days. If you run a mobile advertising network and have not yet been in touch, please send us an email and we’ll get right back to you.
The next print edition of Mobile Marketing will be distributed at the Mobile Marketing Forum in New York in June, and at other events, and you’ll be able to sign up to see the issue when our new website goes live in the next few weeks.
Below you’ll find a full list of the contents for the next issue. If you have something to contribute, use this email address to get in touch. If you would like to know more about the advertising opportunities, send an email to [email protected]

Synopsis in brief:

• Mobile ad network round-up – a guide to the world’s mobile ad networks
• The data tsunami and what it means for mobile marketing
• The Wholesale Applications Alliance – what is it and what difference, if any, will it make to the applications marketplace
• Regional Focus – we take a closer look at mobile marketing in the United States
• The GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics initiative explained
• mhealth – the latest developments in this burgeoning sector
• The app or the browser  - does the future of mobile content and services lie in applications, or the mobile web?  
• Say Hi to the iPad - what mobile advertising and marketing opportunities does Apple’s latest cool device present?   
• Mobile banking in emerging markets – we throw the spotlight on the leading initiatives and success stories  Introducing the EMMAs – more details about our new Awards scheme
• Campaign Showcase - we spotlight some of the most interesting and successful campaigns from recent months

And don't forget that you can still read the first print edition of Mobile Marketing online here.

David Murphy
Editor

Mobile Marketing Goes to Print Again

Our first print edition was very well received, and this is as good a place as any to say a big public thank you to everyone who has complimented us on it. The online edition has already had almost 900 views, in addition to the 5,000 copies distributed at Mobile World Congress and at other events since. With the new website also taking shape, there’s a lot of good stuff going on right now.
We’re just starting work on our next print edition, which will look at a number of themes that have emerged over the past couple of months, including network operators’ attempts to cope with the explosion in data usage among their Smartphone-owning subscribers, and the GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics initiative.
We are also planning a comprehensive guide to the dozens of mobile ad networks that have sprung up over the past couple of years, and as the Mobile Marketing Forum heads for New York, we throw the spotlight on the mobile marketing scene in the US. And we’re delighted to welcome mobile legend Tomi Ahonen on board as a Guest Contributor.
Below you’ll find a full list of the contents for the next issue. If you have something to contribute, use this email address to get in touch. If you would like to know more about the advertising opportunities, send an email to [email protected]

Synopsis in brief:

• Mobile ad network round-up – a guide to the world’s mobile ad networks
• The data tsunami and what it means for mobile marketing
• The Wholesale Applications Alliance – what is it and what difference, if any, will it make to the applications marketplace
• Regional Focus – we take a closer look at mobile marketing in the United States
• The GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics initiative explained
• mhealth – the latest developments in this burgeoning sector
• The app or the browser  - does the future of mobile content and services lie in applications, or the mobile web? 
• Say Hi to the iPad - what mobile advertising and marketing opportunities does Apple’s latest cool device present?  
• Mobile banking in emerging markets – we throw the spotlight on the leading initiatives and success stories 
• Introducing the EMMAs – more details about our new Awards scheme
• Campaign Showcase - we spotlight some of the most interesting and successful campaigns from recent months

David Murphy
Editor

Check out the Carnival

For several years now, some of the more committed mobile bloggers have been doing something called the Carnival of the Mobilists, in which the best posts from around the blogs are chosen by a guest host and featured in the current Carnival.
We were invited to submit a post for this week’s Carnival, and we are pleased to report that we made the cut. More than that though, you may find some of the other featured content of interest. You can check it out here.

David Murphy
Editor

Just the Ticket

I’m at an m-ticketing seminar organised by mobile transaction network mBlox. The audience is a mix of mobile operators, press and transport companies, with the transport companies in the majority, Most are there to hear what some of the early pioneers in mobile ticketing have to say about their experiences; in particular, no doubt, to learn what mistakes they made, so they can avoid making the same ones themselves.
There have been two case studies so far, one from Swedish train operator SJ Rail, the other from bus company Arriva. The thing that struck me about both is that the delivery mechanism for the m-ticket in each case is vanilla-flavoured SMS. In both cases, the reasons for this are concerned with reach and inclusivity. 1-D and 2-D barcodes may be sexy, but not all phones can handle them. As Mike Woodhouse, Marketing Manager UK Bus, for Arriva said when explaining why the company went for an SMS-based solution:
“We want it now. Yes things are happening with things like NFC. But two years ago, they told me NFC was two years away, now they say it’s still two years away, maybe two and a half." He added that due to the design of the Arriva tickets, “our scanning device is called the driver”.
And this on the day that Russell Buckley, of AdMob and the Mobile Marketing Association, and a resident of Germany, put out a tweet saying: “Why is the #Lufthansa online checkin system always so flaky? Only seems to work 50% of the time #fail”. This system, which has been widely lauded, does use a mobile barcode.
So while mBlox Executive Chairman Andrew Bud may have a vested interest when he describes SMS as “the greatest mass market interactive media that the world has ever seen”, as he did earlier today, you have to concede that for the moment, he may have a point.

David Murphy
Editor

Routine Maintenance

We have been informed by our domain host that they are carrying our routine maintenance on their data centre between 11pm tomorrow, Tuesday 9 March and 7am the following day (UK time), which will mean that web diversion does not work for a maximum of three hours.
This is probably of most interest/inconvenience to our readers in the US. If you need to access the site during that period, you can reach it via the real URL, based on the name I came up with when I launched the site in 2005, the slightly less memorable: http://murphblog.typepad.com

David Murphy
Editor

How to Win Friends and Influence People

I have to take my hat off to Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) once again for another great event today in conjunction with the Institute of Sales Promotion.
The event attracted a good line-up of speakers from big-name brands, including Coca Cola, Barclaycard and Orange to name but a few. But it was in the last two sessions, when MIG’s David Glennie and Tim Dunn took to the stage, talking about apps and future technology trends respectively, that things really livened up.
Yes, the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that they are one of our advertisers. But that should not preclude us from praising them for pulling together an audience of around 100 people with varying degrees of interest in, and experience of, mobile, and both enthusing and educating them.
The enthusing bit came via some great demos of Augmented Reality and Foursquare on mobile. The education via some very blunt satements such as: “You are failing your customers if you are not adequately represented on the mobile Internet.”
And at the same time, they managed to keep it entertaining and give the audience a few laughs, and send them away, I would imagine, having thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Whatever leads MIG get out of today’s event, they deserve them.

David Murphy
Editor

Mind The Gaps

I spent an enlightening couple of hours this morning at the GSM Asociation's London HQ listening to a presentation from the GSMA and comScore about the Mobile Media Metrics initiative, which aims to help brands and media agencies make more informed mobile media buying decisions by giving them metrics about the numbers of people visiting mobile sites, the types of handset they are using, and demographic information, using anonymised data supplied by the UK’s mobile networks.
It’s a laudable initiative, though as the GSMA's Henry Stevens acknowledged, it doesn’t do anything to simplify the process of actually buying mobile media. He told me that this was the next thing on the organisation’s agenda.
One media buyer I spoke to told me he was “90% happy” with the Mobile Media Metrics initiative. The unhappiness stems from the gaps that still need filling in. There are three key ones. The first is the absence of data relating to mobile browsing done over wi-fi networks, either via a wi-fi-enabled Smartphone, or a non-SIM-enabled device such as the iPod touch. With around 20% of mobile web browsing taking place over wi-fi, this is a pretty big gap. comScore’s Paul Goode explained that this will be resolved as mobile site owners 'beacon' their sites. This is the process of putting in place a tag that will track activity on the site, including activity carried out over a wi-fi connection. Goode estimates that the wi-fi gap will be filled by Q3 or Q4 of this year.
The second is the fact that when brands or publishers want to look at activity on sites by type of device, some devices, including one called the iPhone, are currently excluded, though Goode pointed out that in the case of the iPhone, this is not down to the operators, as it is with some other devices.
The third gap is the absence of data from 3 UK. Goode said that this should become available in April. The fourth gap, which seemed to come as news to a few people in the room, was the fact that traffic from BlackBerry devices is not currently included in the Mobile Media Metrics data. “RIM traffic is encrypted when it runs through the network, so we can see it occurs, but we cannot unpack it,” Goode confirmed.
This, like the wi-fi hole, is another pretty big one, and Goode says it is down to the same issue as the wi-fi problem, so will be addressed in a similar timescale.
For the moment, then, the Mobile Media Metrics initiative is some way from being the finished article. That said, media planners and buyers have been crying out for mobile metrics, and even if it is still a little rough around the edges, the mobile advertising marketplace is a better place with it, than without it.

David Murphy
Editor

One Down, Lots to Go

Just had an email that has made my day. It came from someone who was at the mobile marketing conference I attended last week in Manchester. Anyone who saw our coverage of the event may have read the piece I wrote saying that the way forward is lots of events like this, pushing the message, converting brands and agencies one or two or three at a time, until the argument for using mobile becomes a no-brainer. Anyway, the mail came in five minutes ago and said:
“Just emailing to say that I really enjoyed your presentation last Friday. I would love to know more how my agency could utilise the mobile marketing platform, as it's an excellent way to get cut-through and target by region.
“As a creative agency, I'd love to know how logistically you'd go about setting up a mobile campaign. We have a lot of public sector clients, and I believe if we had incorporated mobile media in previous campaigns we would have had exceptional results instead of just good results."
Naturally, I was happy to oblige with the names of some companies I thought could help my correspondent in his cause. But I find it a bit of a buzz to see an agency that really didn’t get mobile until a week ago coming along to a conference and being so fired up about it that they now can’t wait to get going. As I said in a post earlier today, I think there will be a lot more of this in the weeks and months ahead.

David Murphy
Editor

First of Many

I was impressed by the news from Trinity Mobile today that it has seen a 1200% increase in the uptake of mobile boarding passes from customers of its airline clients. Whichever way you look at it, a 1200% increase in anything is a pretty impressive growth rate. But then the cynic in you says, ‘Hang on a minute, 1200% up on what?’ And if you’re brutally honest, 50,000 mobile airline boarding passes issued in 2008 is a pretty low base from which to start. But the fact that the figure rose to 600,000 in 2009 is highly significant, I think. Especially since the increase has not come off the back of a big marketing campaign, but from a simple call to action giving customers the option - note that word ‘option’ – of receiving their boarding pass as a text message.
I had the chance to catch up with Emma Potter, Marketing Manager, and Ben Cussack, Creative Director, of Mobile Interactive Group, yesterday. They told me they have never been busier. A little later, the conversation turned to the success that one its retail clients, footwear firm Faith, is having with SMS campaigns to their opted-in databases. And I just came away thinking, it’s only going to get worse, or make that, better, for companies like MIG that are preaching the mobile message.  Because when you give people the option of doing stuff on their phone that they haven’t been able to do before, and explain how it will make things easier or better for them, more often than not, they will do it.
For the moment, the brands that actually get this are still in the minority, and even many of those that do are only in the very early stages of rolling out their mobile strategy. But as more brands wake up to the power of mobile, and as more brands move from test to full roll-out mode, figures like that 1200% increase in mobile boarding passes are going to become the rule, rather than the exception. Personally, I can’t wait.

David Murphy
Editor

Calling All Mobile Ad Networks

In the next print edition of Mobile Marketing, we are planning a guide to mobile ad networks. There are so many out there now that potential advertisers risk being confused about who they should be working with.
Our guide will explain who the mobile ad networks are, the type of publishers they work with, who their advertiser clients are, and on what basis (CPC, CPM) they sell their inventory.
We feel we have a pretty good idea of who the major ad networks are, but we are also sure there must be a few out there that we have not come across, so if you’re with a mobile ad network, and you want to be included in this definitive round-up, please get in touch. Send us an email and we’ll get right back to you.
And don't forget that you can still read the first print edition of Mobile Marketing online here.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 52

Another month, another 200+ stories from the world of mobile marketing. Yup, you’ve kept us pretty busy these past 28 days. The main event last month, of course, was Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which attracted more than 49,000 visitors, and was the setting for an avalanche of announcements.
The first big story to come out of the show was the news that 24 telecommunications operators had got together to create the Wholesale Applications Community, an alliance to build an open platform that delivers apps to all mobile phone users. The move was designed to address the app industry’s fragmentation problem, and challenge Apple’s dominance in the sector, and was met, perhaps not surprisingly, with some scepticism. Only time will tell if it amounts to anything.
Orange made the headlines with the news that it was extending its interactive SMS and MMS advertising offering across its European footprint, following its launch in the UK last year to its ‘Monkey’ youth segment. Customers will be invited to opt in to receive the advertising, and offers will be tailored to local markets to incentivise customers with localised, relevant rewards. These will include exclusive content, film and games reviews, celebrity gossip, free texts, prizes and up-to-date sports information.
The BBC used the event to unveil a range of applications that will deliver BBC Online services to a range of mobile devices, starting with a BBC News application for the iPhone in April 2010, followed by a BBC Sport iPhone app in time for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, with Blackberry and Android versions to follow. The BBC is also considering BBC iPlayer applications for release later in the year. All applications will be available free of charge.
And on a more musical note, LG and Dolby Labs staged the first public demonstration of 5.1 surround sound – 5.1 means six channels: front left, front right, front centre, rear left, rear right and the ‘.1’ bass channel - on a mobile phone, using the latest version of Dolby Mobile technology and an LG, Android-based Smartphone. Forget maps and Augmented Reality and Location-based Services, surround sound is what you really need on your mobile phone.
There was good news for Apple at the event as CEO Steve Jobs took the media vote for Mobile Personality of the Year. But it was Google who stole the show, as CEO Eric Schmidt captivated a sell-out crowd with a hugely impressive keynote presentation in which he unveiled Google’s ‘Mobile First’ strategy, and staged a couple of live demos that had the audience in raptures.
But it wasn’t all about Mobile World Congress, of course. Elsewhere, The GSM Association and comScore, in partnership with operators O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3UK, announced the official UK launch of the GSMA Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) product, a census-level solution for mobile media reporting. Taking anonymised mobile Internet usage data from all five UK mobile operators, the service aims to provide comprehensive insights into mobile media consumption, empowering brands and agencies to plan effective and focused campaigns for the mobile medium. That’s the plan at least.
Bango also came out with some interesting mobile Internet stats, revealing that traffic to mobile websites had grown by 600% over the past 12 months.
Staying with metrics, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) appointed Lightspeed Research as its official European research partner. The MMA will use the Lightspeed Research Panel to conduct monthly primary research into consumer attitudes on topics affecting marketers. Lightspeed wasted no time in producing its first of its ‘Consumer Briefing’ reports for the MMA for the UK, French and German markets, looking at mobile banking services.
And mobile ad network AdMob released its January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report, which revealed that iPhone and Android users download a similar number of applications, but that iPhone users download more paid apps, with 50% of users buying at least one paid application a month, compared to 21% of Android users.
Shazam was in the news. Firstly, it announced the launch of the Shazam Audio Recognition Advertising (SARA) program, which allows brands and broadcasters to extend the reach and depth of their campaigns to mobile. The SARA program lets brand advertisers directly reach, influence and interact with target audiences using Shazam´s music recognition technology to tag a TV commercial. Advertisers can create campaigns that incentivise viewers to engage with the promotion and ‘Shazam’ the spot. Viewers access the Shazam service on their mobile devices, point the device in the direction of the commercial and hit the ‘Shazam’ button. Shazam's audio technology recognizes the specific advert and returns a customized result.
Shazam also announced a deal with O2 that will see the UK mobile operator delivering highly targeted ads for its Priority Tickets service to Shazam users. Customers will be served relevant ads for O2 Priority pre-sales based on the music they have tagged through Shazam’s iPhone application. The dynamic ads will be delivered using 4th Screen Advertising’s ad serving platform, Mpression, offering O2 customers the chance to buy tickets for gigs at O2 venues being played by artists whose songs they have tagged using Shazam.
Finally, fashion footwear retailer Faith revealed the results of two SMS campaigns that it had run to enable the brand to communicate to its customer database. There were two campaigns, powered by Mobile Interactive Technology’s (MIT) MIDAS Communicate platform.
The SMS element contributed to 47% of the uplift in revenue delivered by the first campaign, and to 30% of the uplift in revenue delivered by the fashion promotion. Over 70,000 SMS messages were distributed throughout both campaigns, with the redemption of promotional codes higher for the second campaign.
That’s it for this month’s round up. Check back in regularly for your mobile marketing fix over the next few weeks, and keep your eyes peeled for the new version of the site, due to go live in the next few weeks.

David Murphy
Editor

How Do Well Done

A great presentation from the Mobile Marketing Association’s Paul Berney to conclude the How Do Mobile Marketing event in Manchester. It’s never easy going on last, but he is keeping the delegates engaged till the very end. He began by pointing out how the mobile marketing business has spent far too long failing to talk to brands and marketers in their own language.
“If we learn how to speak fluent marketing, it will be a lot easier to tell people what mobile is all about,” he said, adding that it’s really just like any other form of marketing: it’s all about acquisition, retention and branding.
He went on to say that the industry seems to have realised this now, and that it has been helped by brands acknowledging that they need to do something different, and he’s now running through a number of case studies to show how brands are using mobile with great success.
It’s been a good day, and the organisers, Don't Panic and How Do, should be congratulated on getting a good number of brands along to the event. OK, so if I name-check some of the brands – Johnsons Cleaners, Lancashire County Cricket Club, Bury Metropolitan Borough Council, Speedy Hire plc – then, without wishing to be disrespectful, they may not quite be of the stature of Unilever and Procter & Gamble, but these are exactly the sort of organisations that need to embrace mobile to help maintain the momentum that the industry has built up over the past few years.
I’m in the camp that says there will be no Year of Mobile, or any one killer app, but rather, a lot of small steps and a lot of small apps and services, like being able to buy your bus ticket on your mobile, paying for your car parking on your mobile etc., etc., etc. (Judging by what he said a few minutes ago, it seems that Berney and I are on the same page on this.) Today’s event has been just one more of those small steps. But it’s one that has sent around 60 people from organisations across the North-west away with a better idea of how their organisation can use mobile. As I see it, that’s a pretty good day’s work.

David Murphy
Editor

Every Brand Should Have One

I’m at the brilliantly-named How Do Mobile Marketing conference in Manchester – well as a Northerner, it gave me a laugh anyway - where both the delegates and myself have got the worst of it out of the way. Yes, I was asked to give an ‘Introduction to Mobile Marketing’ presentation to kick things off. Having done so, I gave up the podium to the professionals, one of whom, Sienne Veit from Marks & Spencer, has just given a brilliant explanation of how M&S has really got mobile, running through some of the things the company is doing with it, including an opt-in SMS database, a .mobi site, and even a data matrix code campaign for a range of fruit juices.
M&S currently has 250,000 people on its SMS database, and sends out half a million messages a month. Veit cited response rates from SMS campaigns of between 2% and 9.5%, and she played a video clip, where a 78-year old lady from Birmingham taking part in ongoing M&S research suddenly started talking, unprompted, about the text messages she gets from the firm, and how useful she finds them.
She also talked about mobile coupons, in response to a question I asked her, saying that with 700 stores, M&S was not about to put in new POS kit incorporating mobile barcode scanners until standards have been agreed. On a more positive note, she added: “Our people who work with coupons are working with the people who provide that kit to make things happen.” And she described the idea of having an opt-in database and sending them a targeted mobile coupon to their phone as “absolute magic”.
In the course of the presentation, Veit invited delegates to see her after the event if they wanted to use any of her ideas or tactics in their own campaigns, and to steal the M&S Ts & Cs, rather than reinventing the wheel. As I listened to her speaking, it struck me that she is exactly what the mobile marketing industry needs, a true enthusiast, or evangelist if you prefer that term, who really fired up the audience and explained the process for taking a brand into mobile and getting other people in the organisation on board.
Every brand should have one.

David Murphy
Editor

The Smart Way to Uncover the Mavens

I’m at the Technology for Marketing & Advertising (TFM&A) Show in London, which is almost like therapy after Mobile World Congress. It’s busy, and there’s a good buzz about the show, but after MWC, it just feels wonderfully compact and manageable.
20 minutes ago, I had a briefing with Chris Underhill, CEO of a company called smartFOCUS, which has come up with a neat analytics offering that enables brands to get a much better handle on their social media campaigns.
They may not be well known in mobile circles, but I know smartFOCUS from many years writing about direct and digital marketing for trade publications. They have some very clever, robust technology, that enables marketing people, as opposed to data analysts, to conduct what they have always called ‘train of thought’ analysis on their database.
So let’s say you have 1 million customers. A marketer can sit at his or her PC, and with a few mouseclicks, from this 1 million, select just the women; then just the women aged 25-34; then just the women in this age group who have bought from the company in the past three months; then from these, just the ones who live within 10 miles of a bricks & mortar store. You get the picture: in a few minutes, you have whittled the 1 million down to maybe 50,000 and you’re ready to run your next campaign.
smartFOCUS has noted the trend for brands to enable recipients of their email campaigns to share them with their social networks. Its new solution enables brands to track the effectiveness of this type of activity. Let’s say a campaign goes out to those 50,000 people. The smartFOCUS solution can analyse, after the event, how many of those emails were shared with recipients’ social networks. It can then identify how many of those shared emails were successful in acquiring a new customer for the brand, and identify the best-performing social networks in terms of referrals. It can also flag up all sorts of other useful attributes about the most influential referrers, such as where they live, how old they are, and which of the company’s customer segments they are in. All of which enables the brand to identify key influencers - the 'Mavens' in Malcolm Gladwell's 'The Tipping Point' - and start to prioritise them in future campaigns, in their attempts to acquire new customers.
In an age where social media is becoming more important by the day, this is one of the best examples I’ve seen of a company enabling brands to not only tap into the power of social media, but also, to measure its effectiveness, and use the results to inform subsequent campaigns.
There’s no mobile element to this as such, though Underhill told me that he is in the process of building the firm’s mobile strategy. But with brands clamouring to work out how best to leverage social networks, this looks to me like a powerful tool in their armoury.

David Murphy
Editor

Is This the Killer App for Mobile Barcodes?

Who knows, but on reading the press release put out by Scanbuy today about its upgraded barcode reader, I was struck by one line in particular: ‘The ScanLife Platform can also be used to generate free personal codes that link to social networking profiles or contact information.’
So far, in many parts of the world, mobile barcodes have failed to capture the public’s or brands’ imagination, despite their seemingly obvious appeal. It seems likely that their day may come, as consumers become familiar with the idea of receiving discount coupons on their phones, and become more comfortable with the idea of clicking on a barcode to take them off to a mobile site for more information, or for free, brand-sponsored goodies.
But the idea of a personal barcode that you carry on your phone that someone can scan to take them to your user profile on your social network sounds to me like just the sort of random application that could spread virally very quickly among the 16-24 age group.
If you move in mobile marketing circles, you will already see quite a few business cards with QR or other types of barcode on them, but so far, this is largely confined to those working in the mobile marketing industry. But the idea of young people exchanging mobile barcodes with each other to get an instant link to their new friend’s profile on Facebook, MySpace or wherever just looks to me like the sort of peer-to-peer application of mobile barcode technology that could help it finally take off. Something at the back of my mind tells me this already happens in Japan. If so, it wouldn’t be the first mobile application to make it big over there, before finally finding a home over here. It just needs someone to put a bit of money behind it to kick-start the idea. If it strikes a chord with the youth of today, they’ll do the rest.

David Murphy
Editor

It’s All About Transparency

Congratulations, respect, or whatever the right word is, to Virgin Media, for the launch of its mobile data Travel Passes, which offer its customers a way to use the mobile web when they are away from home but within the EU, knowing exactly what it will cost them.
The interesting thing about the packages is that Virgin is hardly giving them away. I’m not sure what other packages are around for using the mobile web abroad, so it’s hard to compare these, but looking at the mobile broadband packages, for using your dongle abroad, £10 for one day is pretty similar to what I pay on Vodafone, but whereas I get 50MB, the Virgin deal only offers 10MB. Even on the 50MB daily limit, I find I need to be careful, checking email via the web in case there are any large attachments on any of the emails, rather than simply downloading everything via Outlook.
But the point about this is that if a Virgin Media customer is out of the country and wants to be able to browse the mobile Internet for a few days, they know what it’s going to cost them, and it’s this transparency that I think consumers want. I’ve just spent the best part of a week in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, and fired up my browser and Google Maps several times when I needed to, but while my network kindly informed me that this would cost me £1.50 per MB as soon as I arrived in Spain, I still have no idea how much I spent, and won’t do until the bill arrives.
The only question this raises around the Virgin passes is how the user knows when they are approaching their data limit. The Virgin PR believes there is some sort of SMS alert, and is checking as I write this. (Update: Virgin has now confirmed that user is notified when they have used 80% of their data allowance, and when they have used it all, the pass stops working.) But the message here for operators, if it needs me to spell it out, is that you can do the right thing by your customers, by giving them a crystal-clear offer that removes any worries or uncertainties about using their phone abroad, and at the same time, make a healthy margin on it.
A win-win situation if ever there was one.

David Murphy
Editor

MWC 2010 - Closing Thoughts

So that was the Mobile World Congress that was. Another frantic few days in which we haven´t seen half as much as we hoped to, or spoken to half as many companies as we would have liked to. I´ve been asked by several people what has struck me about the show, and if I´m honest, it´s a question I find hard to answer until the dust has settled, but a couple of things have struck me.
The first is that there is a great buzz around Android, and I for one will be interested to see how Apple responds to the growing number of cool Android phones in the next 12 months.
The second is that Nokia has been very conspicuous by its absence from the event, and save for a few E-series phones, Nokia handsets are thin on the ground among delegates. The dominant models are the iPhone, various Android devices and the ubiquitous Blackberry.
Apps have been high on the agenda, and again, only time will tell whether the formation of the Wholesale Applications Community will turn out to be significant, or not worth the paper that the agreement of the 24 companies involved is written on.
And with Orange extending its opt-in mobile marketing database across its European footprint, will this be the year that mobile operators stop being so frightened about mobile marketing and let their customers have it if they really want it?
We´re heading back from the show tomorrow, so our coverage of the mobile marketing scene may be a bit lighter than usual for 24 hours, but rest assured, normal service will be resumed on Friday. If you´re missing your fix, check out the digital edition of our print version here. In the meantime, we hope you´ve enjoyed our coverage of Mobile World Congress 2010. It´s been our pleasure to bring it to you.

David Murphy
Editor

Google Works Its Magic

Google made an impressive Mobile World Congress debut here in Barcelona last night, as CEO Eric Schmidt captivated a packed crowd in the auditorium of Hall 5 with a presentation that included live demos of Google voice and image search, and another that combined optical character recognition and translation. A German menu was scanned by an Android phone´s camera, and within seconds, an English translation of the meal in question appeared on the screen.
Schmidt´s presentation focused on the convergence of computing, connectivity and the cloud. He did a great job of explaining that the reason why Google voice search works so well, is not because of the power of the phone, but rather, because of the racks of servers in Google´s data farms that analyze the voice instructions, compare the words and phrases to the most popular searches over the last few days, and then take a decision on what the mobile user was probably searching for before returning the results in two or three seconds. He spoke about creating “magic” and hinted that the day when someone could talk into a mobile phone in one language, and be heard by the person at the other end in their own language was not too far away. “We´re not there yet, but it´s coming,” he said.
Schmidt was keen to get the mobile operators onside, praising them for “the awesome networks you have built”. He also introduced the theme of ´Mobile First´, telling delegates that Google´s top programmers want to work on mobile versions of Google´s applications, because “they are more personal, more human, more location-aware, more dynamic.”
He ended his presentation by telling delegates: “The joint project of all of us is to make mobile the answer to pretty much everything.”
Stirring stuff. No doubt many in the operator community are wary of Google´s growing presence in the mobile market, but when you look at what it has achieved already and the growing traction of Android as a platform, it´s hard to argue that the mobile business won´t be a better and a more interesting place to be with Google involved.

David Murphy
Editor

MWC Day 2 Update

We´re conscious that our coverage of the show today has not quite scaled the dizzy heights of yesterday. For that, most of the thanks should go to the slimeball who nicked my laptop yesterday. I did just have one 90-minute briefing, but unfortunately, it was with a man in a police uniform sat at a computer taking details of the contents of my stolen bag. I should take this opportunity, however, to thank the police and the lady from the Barcelona Tourism office for their help and patience.

Have some briefings this afternoon, but will try to check back in shortly with a round-up of the news so far today.

David Murphy

Editor

Welcome to Barcelona

I've had my bag and laptop stolen in Barcelona this evening. Coverage will resume tomorrow, although it may take some time. However, I am sure that with a little help from my friends, we will get there.

Meanwhile, if we have a meeting scheduled tomorrow (Tuesday 16 February), please text me the details immediately.

If you sent me a press release today, and it has not been covered, please resend. Thanks.

David Murphy, Editor

MWC Day One Wrap-up

A busy day at Mobile World Congress as expected. The most interesting piece of news to my mind was the creation of the Wholesale Applications Community by 24 telecommunications operators.
Given the fragmentation that exists in the app world right now, with developers forced to make decisions as to which platform(s) they will develop for, anything that looks like it might bring the industry together and achieve a degree of standardisation should be applauded. Whether two dozen telcos represents the optimum mix of companies to achieve this, however, is a moot point.
The analyst community also has its doubts. Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at Informa Telecoms & Media, also has his doubts. He says: “I believe that the operators behind the inititiative are hoping to capture the mass market for mobile Internet services. Apple and RIM are already dominating the high end of the Smartphone market but this only accounts for about one in five mobile users in Europe or North America. If operators can bring out €100 devices with a good mobile Internet experience they may be able to sell data plans to more low-end users.
“However, I do question whether such a large group of mobile operators will be able to achieve the level of cooperation and integration required to make this initiative a success. Some of these operators (for example AT&T and Sprint) are fierce competitors and have always tried to find ways of differentiating themselves in order to win market share.
“There is also the issue of whether developers will lend their support to the initiative. They are more interested in developing apps for Apple and Android and have historically distrusted operators because of the unfavourable revenues share deals that have been on the table. A number of the developers that we have spoken to would rather operators keep out of the applications development community entirely."
And at Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst, Saverio Romeo says: “Apple has built a nice and very well functioning castle with a direct bridge to consumers over which no one else seems able to walk comfortably so far. During last year, this castle has successfully dominated the mobile content market. This castle is made of a well designed continuous innovation strategy in terms of devices, content distribution model, revenue model and branding.
“The other players, mobile device manufacturers, mobile network operators, consortia of various players can definitely offer competitive devices, development platforms and revenue models and, maybe, treat Apple's domain, but there is one point that are missing: the brand and the marketing power that Apple has. Every time Steve Jobs decides to launch a new product/device/service, the entire world, the common individual in the street included, passionately discusses it for days. Every time, the rest of the industry announces new events, the announcement remains within the industry.
“Apple has a strong brand advantage and it is excellent in exploiting it. Consequently, the real challenge is not to walk on the same bridge to reach the castle. The real challenge is to move the attention towards a new mobile content paradigm, one that is not immediately associated with Apple. For example, a paradigm that combines the concept of store with other content distribution models such as the mobile web. All this requires a strong brand action. Probably, the main challenge of consortia like the one announced today is branding. If the rest of industry keeps just talking about applications stores trying to walk on the Apple's bridge, they will always find Steve Jobs at the door of the castle.”
There's a piece on the fragementation in the app market in our digital magazine, which you can access here. In the meantime, we're off to do some serious networking. We hope you've enjoyed our coverage of the show today. We'll pick up tomorrow morning. See you then.

David Murphy
Editor

Calm Before the Storm

There’s an unusual calm about Mobile World Congress just now, with the odd bit of frantic activity as people in suits wielding screwdrivers make last-minute adjustments to their stands. Even the Press Office is fairly pleasant, presumably because half the hacks at the show had one too many last night and are still en route to the event.
If you’re at the show and want to pick up a copy of the print edition of Mobile Marketing, you can get one from the Networking Lounge at the back of Hall 2. As the people on the Information Desk at the entrance to Hall 2 had no idea what I was talking about when I asked them where this was, some directions may be helpful.
As you enter Hall 2 on the ground floor, keep walking in a straight line, towards the far end of the Hall, and you will see it on your left eventually.

David Murphy
Editor

MMM Print Edition Now Available

A quick reminder that our first print edition of Mobile Marketing magazine is available all this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and if you’re not heading out there, you can get it in digital form too.
It’s an action-packed issue, featuring articles on mobile advertising, mobile applications, Location-based Services, Augmented Reality, QR Codes and NFC (Near Field Communications). We also have a piece by WPP CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, in which he shares his views on mobile as a marketing channel, and an interview with Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) CEO Barry Houlihan, in which he outlines the factors behind the company’s massive growth.
We also reveal the results of an exclusive study carried out for us by Lightspeed Research, into the apps and services that people really want on their mobile phones. The magazine also features our new logo, which will go live online when the new site launches in a few weeks time. So enjoy those iconic old transmitters while you can!
If you’re heading to the show, you can pick up a copy of the magazine from the Networking Lounge in Hall 2 and the App Lounge in the App Planet section of the show in Hall 7.  If you’re not (or even if you are in fact), you can access a digital version of the magazine here.
We hope you enjoy the magazine, and if you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see in the next issue, we’d be happy to hear them.
You can also keep up with us on Twitter via @mobilemurphy for my Tweets and @MMMagTweets which puts out a Tweet every time we post a new story. And don’t forget you can also access Mobile Marketing magazine on your phone at http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

David Murphy
Editor

Something for the Weekend

Like I said this morning - was it really only this morning? - that was quite a lot of news for one day, and there was more than didn’t quite make the cut. We’ll be back tomorrow too. We don’t normally do much on the site at the weekends, but this is an unusual one, with half the industry heading for Barcelona. So we’ve got a Guest Column for you tomorrow from John Strand at Strand Consult with a personal take on what we can expect from this year’s Mobile World Congress. 
Then on Sunday, we’ll have a sneak preview of some of the stuff you can expect to see from companies exhibiting at MWC. Our coverage of the show proper begins on Monday, though the first post may be a little later than usual, to give us a chance to see what’s happening.
Enjoy your weekend, and if you are heading to Barcelona, don’t forget to pick up a copy of our first print edition from the Networking Lounge in Hall 2, or the App Lounge in the App Planet section of the show in Hall 7.
And don’t forget, if you can’t get to a PC because you’re on the exhibition floor, you can access Mobile Marketing magazine on your phone at http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

David Murphy
Editor

Some News About News

Considering that Mobile World Congress kicks off next week, we have been deluged by news in the past 24 hours. So much so, you wonder what’s left to reveal next week, though we are sure there will be plenty. With that in mind, we’re going to keep it coming thick and fast today, and in some cases pretty brief too, in order to get it all up on the site so you know what’s going on. If previous years are anything to go by, it will be pretty similar to this at the show next week as well, so consider today a dry run.

David Murphy
Editor

We've Been Twittered

Our first print edition of Mobile Marketing magazine is available at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, and if you’re not heading out there, you can get it in digital form too. We were planning to hold off publicising the online version until next week to tie in with the availability of the print edition, but someone who has seen it has tweeted about it, and as you realise, once that's happened, it's pretty much pointless trying to keep it a secret.
It’s an action-packed issue, featuring articles on mobile advertising, mobile applications, Location-based Services, Augmented Reality, QR Codes and NFC (Near Field Communications). We also have a piece by WPP CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, in which he shares his views on mobile as a marketing channel, and an interview with Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) CEO Barry Houlihan, in which he outlines the factors behind the company’s massive growth.
We also reveal the results of an exclusive study carried out for us by Lightspeed Research, into the apps and services that people really want on their mobile phones. The magazine also features our new logo, which will go live online when the new site launches in a few weeks time. So enjoy those iconic old transmitters while you can! The new site will feature an email sign up so you can register for news and events alerts, and to find out when there's a new issue of the print/digital magazine available.
If you’re heading to the show, you can pick up a copy of the magazine from the Networking Lounge in Hall 2 and the App Lounge in the App Planet section of the show in Hall 7. If you’re not (or even if you are in fact), you can access a digital version of the magazine here.
We hope you enjoy the magazine, the first of many to come, and if you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see in the next issue, we’d be happy to hear them.
 
David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 51

One down, 11 to go. Months, that is, and already, 2010 looks like being another frantic year for everyone in the mobile space. The year got off to a flying start as Apple responded to Google’s decision to buy AdMob by snapping up rival mobile ad network Quattro Wireless, closely followed by Amobee Media Systems, which announced that it was buying mobile media firm RingRing Media. And that wasn’t the end of the buying spree as, later in the month, Opera Software bought another mobile advertising firm, AdMarvel, and Mobixell Networks acquired mobile Internet firm, 724 Solutions.
Google unveiled its first Google-branded phone, the Nexus One, developed in conjunction with HTC. Not quite the same levels of excitement as that generated by Apple’s iPad later in the month, perhaps, but still a sign of Google’s commitment to the mobile space. The iPhone was, inevitably, in the news too, as Vodafone in the UK revealed that it had needed just eight days to sell 100,000 iPhones since the device launched on its network on 14 January.
Orange and Barclaycard launched a contactless credit card which offers customers the option to set their own spending levels and a choice in how they are kept up-to-date with their account. No one was saying when the mobile version might appear though. Orange also became the latest mobile operator to let advertisers target its customers on their phones with the launch of Orange Shots. The service is launching with 100,000 subscribers who have opted in to receive ads on their phone.
Still on the mobile advertising front, mobile media agency Fetch Media, which launched in November 2009 in partnership with cross media agency AdConnection, revealed that it had picked up five accounts in the two months since it launched, and said that it expects to be billing £100,000 per month by February. Any company that can take the pain out of buying mobile media deserves to do well, and probably will, while there are so few of them around.
A report from Juniper Research painted a bright future for Augmented Reality (AR), predicting that the annual number of mobile downloads featuring AR content would surge from less than 1 million in 2009 to more than 400 million by 2014. According to Juniper, location-based search apps will account for the majority of all AR downloads over the next five years, but by 2014, games will have achieved nearly 30% of all downloads per annum.
Another study, forming part of the Mobile section of the UK National Gamers Survey Report conducted by TNS and Gamesindustry.com revealed that UK mobile users spent £170 million on games for their phones in 2009. And on the mobile apps front, a report from Gartner forecast that consumers would spend no less than $6.2 billion (£3.8 billion) in mobile application stores in 2010.
Finally, digital promotions company Vouchercloud revealed that it had begun final beta testing for its mobile discount voucher iPhone application of the same name, which delivers money-off vouchers direct to the device. Retail chains signed up to the scheme include Fitness First, Slug and Lettuce, Karen Millen, and Chessington World of Adventures. So could this be the year that mobile vouchers take off? Who knows, but if you want to find out what is hot and what’s not in the world of mobile marketing, check back in regularly. If it’s happening, you’ll read about it here first.

David Murphy
Editor

Give us a Quote – Go On

We’re currently working on an updated Media Pack for Mobile Marketing Magazine and looking to garner some feedback from some real readers. Last time round, we made all the quotes up, but we found it increasingly difficult to think of real-sounding names and job titles. And don’t get us started on the company names. (I’m in two minds about whether I need to spell out that this is a joke; OK I’ve decided I don’t need to - Ed.)
So this time round we thought we would see if a few of our readers were prepared to tell us in a line or two why they come back to the site and what they like about it. Feel free to tell us what you don’t like as well. We probably won’t use that in the promotional material, but it might give us a chance to put it right.
If you have a minute, please just drop us a quick email, complete with your name, company name and job title. Fame, fortune, or at least the chance of a small mention of a place in our Media Pack, beckon. And if you’re asking yourself: ‘Why should I?’ just think of it as a small price to pay for the in-depth coverage of the mobile marketing scene that we attempt to bring you every day.
Thanks in anticipation of your help.

David Murphy
Editor

Mobile World Congress Print Edition Preview

Our print edition for Mobile World Congress is coming together nicely, and looking great. It’s an action-packed issue, with contributions from WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell and Helen Keegan, and features covering mobile advertising, mobile apps, Augmented Reality, Location-based Services and Near Field Communications, to name but a few.
We also look at how mobile operators are beginning to open up their subscriber database to advertisers, and we have an interview with Mobile Interactive Group CEO Barry Houlihan, in which he outlines the reasons behind the firm’s impressive growth over the past five years. Plus, the results of exclusive research, commissioned by Mobile Marketing Magazine and carried out by Lightspeed Research, looking at the apps and services that people want on their mobile phone.
The magazine will be distributed at Mobile World Congress. If you’d like to be a part of it, there’s still time to advertise, just send an email to: [email protected]

David Murphy
Editor

Another Day, Another Deal

Another day, another acquisition in the mobile advertising space. First, Google buys AdMob, or at least announces its intention to do so. Next, Apple goes for Quattro Wireless. Then Amobee gets in on the act with the purchase of RingRing Media, and today comes news of Opera Software’s acquisition of AdMarvel.
It all adds up to something of a landgrab, and reinforces the arguments advanced by all those who have been saying for some time that mobile advertising is going to be huge. It’s certainly true that mainstream brands are turning to mobile advertising, and as the network operators begin to wake up to its potential and offer their subscribers the option of receiving ads and offers on their phones, who knows where it will all end?
Both Microsoft and Nokia made their moves in this space some time ago, of course, with Microsoft’s purchase of Screen Tonic in May 2007 and Nokia’s acquisition of Enpocket four months later. The difference back then was that these were isolated moves that did not rouse the interest of Google, Apple, or anyone else. That’s all changed now.
It’s going to be fascinating to see what these firms do with their new toys, and how the entrance of Google and Apple in particular changes the mobile marketing landscape. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how things will turn out, but I’m looking forward to reporting on it.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 50

As is the tradition on Mobile Marketing Magazine, our last monthly round-up of the year comes a day earlier than usual, and looks back at the highlights of the past 12 months in the mobile world.
It seems hard to believe that this time last year, AdMob, did not have a tracking service for iPhone app downloads, but that was not launched until January 2009, with an ad unit for Android applications also released the same month.
Also busy in January was mobile and online flirting service Flirtomatic, which launched a mobile beta in the US, and mobile agency Incentivated, which was commissioned by the charity, Save The Children, to handle the mobile response element of a text-based appeal to put pressure on decision-makers to do everything in their power to end the violence in Gaza. The appeal generated 115,000 responses in three days.
February saw the industry decamp en masse to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, where Yahoo! unveiled Yahoo! Mobile, Nokia and Amdocs announced plans for app stores, and Zain said it would bring mobile banking to over 100 million people in East Africa, with the launch of its Zap service for consumers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. We also got an early look at mobile Augmented Reality with a demo of the iPointer from Intelligent Spatial Technologies, and very impressive it was too.
Elsewhere, Google launched Google Latitude, Orange ploughed £7 million into a campaign to promote its Orange Wednesdays 2-for-1 midweek cinema promotion, and independent mobile ad agency RingRing Media revealed that it had booked in excess of $4 million (£2.75 million) worth of mobile search and display advertising since it launched in June 2008.
In March, the UK’s mobile networks showed their soft side by agreeing to waive their usual charges on text donations to the Comic Relief appeal, so that every £1 or £5 donation went in its entirety to the appeal.
In the same month, car maker Volvo turned to mobile with an ad campaign incorporating 2D barcode technology to promote its C70 Coupe Convertible by linking print ads directly to the mobile Internet.
National Rail Enquiries and Agant launched an iPhone app enabling iPhone and iPod Touch users to access real-time rail journey planning information across the national rail network, and the Direct Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Council published
the first ever set of best practice guidelines for the Bluetooth marketing sector. Finally, figures from Bango revealed that the US had knocked the UK off the top slot for mobile web browsing, with a 29% share of worldwide traffic, compared to the UK’s 20%.
And so to April, in which Apple revealed that its App Store had clocked up its 1 billionth download in just nine months. The European Parliament took action to end what EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding called “the roaming rip off in Europe,” by capping the price of a text message sent from abroad in the EU at a maximum of €0.11 (£0.10) as of 1 July, compared to €0.28 previously.
Buongiorno unveiled peoplesound, describing it as a “mobile-centric social network”, and Vodafone was named as the UK’s most valuable brand in a study prepared by brand research company Millward Brown Optimor. It responded by offering its customers a day’s free mobile web browsing, and launching a daily flat-rate fee of 50p for unlimited mobile browsing and email.
May saw the release of figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers that revealed that mobile ad spend in the UK was worth £28.6 million in 2008, split almost 50/50 between mobile display ads and paid search, and virtually double the previous year’s spend.
Mobile marketing firm Velti acquired Ad Infuse, which specialises in personalised mobile advertising, while 2ergo was also on the acquisition trail, snapping up Australian mobile marketing firm Wapfly Technologies, as part of a move to extend its global reach into the Asia-Pacific region.
Nokia finally launched its Ovi Store, though the launch was plagued by technical problems, and eight months on, Ovi has still failed to set the world on fire. And Orange celebrated the fifth anniversary of its Orange Wednesdays promotion.
Apple fans were smiling in June as the company launched the latest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS. In the first three days alone, 1 million were sold. Android was also in the news in June, as Orange announced that it would be launching the HTC Hero, its first Android phone, early in July. 
Sony Ericsson revealed that it was adding app store GetJar’s library of over 45,000 free applications to its PlayNow arena service, and QR Codes were in the news, with First HarperCollins Publishers and Arena BLM unveiling campaigns to promote book and movie launches respectively. 
And Augmented Reality made a welcome return as IBM launched the Seer Android beta, which used location-aware visualisation technology to act as a real-time guide and interactive map of the 2009 Wimbledon tennis tournament for G1 users.  
So much for the summer holidays, July was as busy as ever in the mobile marketing world. Social networking was to the fore, as O2 announced an agreement with Twitter allowing O2 customers to receive SMS alerts from Twitter for free from August, and Vodafone offered its customers one week’s free access
to Facebook on their mobile, or on their computer using Vodafone mobile broadband.
Apple revealed that 1.5 billion apps had been downloaded from its App Store, while independent app store GetJar also reached a significant milestone with its 500 millionth download.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola launched a promotion aimed at its teen audience, offering consumers of its Fanta, Dr Pepper and Sprite brands 50p free mobile credit with every purchase. It was a first for this type of promotion in the UK and let’s hope it’s not the last. And 2ergo went shopping again, this time buying mobile ticketing and couponing company ActiveMedia Technologies and its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary ActiveMedia Technologies Private.
Talk to any mobile marketing firm and they will tell you one of the biggest problems they have is getting clients to talk about the results of campaigns. That attitude went out of the window in August, however, as mobile couponing specialist i-movo revealed the results of a campaign for Coca-Cola Great Britain which ran in the UK during May and June. The campaign gave away hundreds of thousands of bottles of Fanta, Sprite and Dr. Pepper, using secure digital vouchers delivered to mobile phones. Over 200,000 free drinks were distributed to almost 100,000 consumers, over the course of the 8-week campaign, with a remarkable 87% redemption rate.
Another firm happy to talk about its mobile marketing hit rate was live music restaurant group, Bistro Live. It released the results of an SMS campaign devised by Text Marketer, that aimed to increase bookings at its three venues. One campaign targeted 10,500 customers and resulted in 280 bookings, generating a spend of over £8,000, against a campaign cost of just £472. That’s what you call ROI.
There was plenty of mobile advertising activity too. Mobile Interactive Technology (MIT) teamed up with sister company 4th Screen Advertising to launch what the companies claimed was the UK’s first premium Ad Insertion platform, allowing MIT’s messaging clients to monetise trailing ‘white space’ at the end of MIT SMS messages.
Another mobile ad firm, mKhoj, announced a rebrand to InMobi to coincide with its European launch, and Buongiorno Marketing Services UK unveiled a mobile advertising division, Buongiorno Mobile Advertising, representing premium inventory for publishers across Europe.
There was no let-up during September, as Orange and T-Mobile announced plans to merge, with the two brands co-existing for 18 months after the merger, slated for the first half of 2010, if it goes through, before a decision is made on what to call the combined company.
O2 had an up-and-down month, as it revealed that it had secured the exclusive rights to sell the Palm Pre in the UK from October, but also lost its exclusivity on the iPhone, as it was revealed that both Orange and Vodafone would begin selling the iPhone family, Orange in 2009, Vodafone in 2010. Vodafone also unveiled Vodafone 360 on an unsuspecting world.
On the mobile advertising front, YOC secured a contract to sell advertising on 3 UK’s highly-used pre-loaded ‘Favourites’ application’, while 4th Screen Advertising struck a deal with messaging service eBuddy to integrate and roll out a range of mobile ad formats within the eBuddy mobile platform. And Phonevalley announced a strategic agreement to create customised mobile advertising solutions, technology and metrics that will run across Microsoft’s mobile web properties.
In October, we celebrated our fourth birthday, but while we were celebrating, Nokia was in fighting mood, launching a lawsuit against Apple for allegedly infringing its patents for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards in its iPhone handsets.
ROK Entertainment Group acquired mobile gaming company Player One, and also found time to strike a deal with football content website Goal.com to deliver Goal.com’s most popular online services to mobile phones in selected territories worldwide.
Digital measurement specialist comScore unveiled comScore Plan Metrix Mobile, the next generation of its Plan Metrix media planning tool, for use with mobile consumer segments, and mobile ad network 4th Screen Advertising struck a Europe-wide mobile advertising deal with mobile music discovery provider, Shazam.
The Mobile Entertainment Forum’s (MEF) released its third Business Confidence Index (BCI), compiled by KPMG, which predicted an average revenue growth of 33% for 2010 for the mobile entertainment industry, a 6% increase on the corresponding figure for 2009. And application developers welcomed Apple’s move to allow them to offer in-application purchases within free iPhone apps. Previously, Apple had only allowed in-app purchases in paid-for apps.
The highlight of November was Google’s announcement of its plans to buy AdMob for a cool $750 million (£470 million). There are various theories as to Google’s intentions, but the general consensus was that the move could only be good for the mobile channel.
Orange began selling the iPhone, while IT security and data protection company Sophos issued a warning
to iPhone users that the world's first iPhone virus was spreading in the wild in Australia. The virus, dubbed the ikee worm, breaks into iPhones, changing their lock screen wallpaper to an image of 1980s pop star Rick Astley with the message: ‘ikee is never going to give you up’.
Mobile Interactive Technology (MIT) revealed that Children in Need had raised £1.75 million via mobile through £5 donations in just under a month since launching SMS donations. MIT powered the SMS donations via its MIDAS platform.
And UK bus operator Arriva rolled out an m-ticketing service for all of its regional services in England, Scotland and Wales. Customers can buy daily, weekly and four-weekly tickets via their mobile phones. The service has been created using mBlox Sender-Pays Data, which enables consumers to buy data-rich content via their mobile, and pay only the price of the content itself, without incurring any data download charges to their mobile.
And so to December, which saw Orange become the latest operator to launch an app store. The Orange App Shop offers Orange customers over 5,000 applications, games, ringtones and wallpapers. Google unveiled Google Goggles, a visual search application for Android devices that allows users to search with a picture instead of words. When you take a picture of an object with the camera on your phone, Google attempts to recognize the item, and returns relevant search results.
Tesco Mobile launched the iPhone to its customers at the lowest-ever monthly contract price for the device, just £20 a month for the iPhone 3GS. The Mobile Data Association hailed BBC Radio 1’s Free Picture Messaging Day, which was staged on Friday 11 December, a success, after attracting the equivalent of five months’ picture message traffic in one 24 hour period. Produced as part of the BBC Radio 1 Access All Areas week, listeners were invited to take pictures of their faces using their mobile phones, then send them to the Shortcode, 81199.
And in the true spirit of the festive season, Apple responded to Nokia’s legal action against the company by filing a countersuit claiming that Nokia is infringing 13 of Apple's own patents. Bah humbug indeed.
While that particular corporate battle rumbles on in the background, there will be plenty more to report on in the weeks and months to come. Our full coverage of the mobile marketing business resumes on Monday, 4 January, so please, join us then, and in the meantime, our best wishes to all our readers, advertisers and friends for a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2010

David Murphy
Editor

Signing Off

Phew. A couple of days ago, we thought we could call it a day for Christmas, but the news just kept coming and coming, so we felt duty bound to bring it to you. But we are winding down here now for the holiday period. We’ll have our usual round-up of the year on New Year’s Eve, and if there’s any big news between now and 4 Jan, we’ll have it for you. Other than that, we have a redesign of the site and our Mobile World Congress print edition to keep us occupied. If you'd like to get involved with that, send an email to: [email protected] and we'll be happy to run through the advertising and sponsorship opportunities available.
So it only remains for us to thank our advertisers for their continued support, our readers for their, er, continued support, and the companies and their PRs who ensure that whatever’s happening in the mobile marketing world, more often that not, we get to hear about it, and ensure that you do too.
And of course, to wish everyone reading this, whether you clock in every day or stumbled across us by chance through a mistyped search term, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 
 
David Murphy
Editor

Questions Please!

We are commissioning research to be carried out by Lightspeed Research into the services and applications that consumers would like to have on their mobile phones.
We have already come up with a few questions of our own, but this is your chance to ask the panel what you want. If there’s a question you’d really like to ask around mobile applications and services, send it in an email to me and we’ll use the best ones that we get. The results of the survey will be published in our Mobile World Congress special edition in February.

David Murphy
Editor

Unfinished Business

Mobile marketing agencies are tapping into a new line of business, according to the Chief Executive of one of the UK’s leading mobile agencies. It’s called, ‘Digging the digital agency out of the brown stuff’.
At a meeting with the agency boss in question, he told me his firm has recently been called in on no less than four occasions to finish an iPhone app that a digital agency had started creating for a brand client, and then found it was unable to complete. When I asked whether, in these situations, he questioned the logic of creating the app in the first place or just finished the job off, he told me honestly that it was the latter. It’s all income, after all.
But he agreed with me about the obsession with iPhone apps that exists among brand marketers and digital agencies. It’s an obsession that’s driven by a couple of factors. One is the need to be seen to be doing “something” in mobile. The other is the desire to associate the brand with something as cool, iconic and sexy as the iPhone. So whatever the demographic of the brand’s target audience, an iPhone app is deemed to be the way to reach them. Even if the target audience is kids and teenagers, as evidenced by a presentation given by one of the world’s leading kids’ movie companies at a conference recently.
Later in the meeting, the agency boss walked me through the process of designing a mobile Internet site for a client, explaining the steps that are taken to ensure that the site will display appropriately on different handsets, from the iPhone at one end of the spectrum to low-end feature phones at the other.
He described this process as the agency’s DNA; the reason why it is able to design great-looking apps and great-looking mobile sites, while some of the digital agencies fall at the first, or maybe the second hurdle.
I doubt very much whether any of the digital agencies his firm have dug out of a hole will acknowledge the firm’s contribution to the finished product. But an hour in his company convinced me that if I was a brand manager about to make my first move into mobile marketing, I’d want to talk to someone like him, rather than a digital agency with an iPhone app to sell.

David Murphy
Editor

Another Day, Another Platform

I’m at Vinopolis in London, where Samsung Mobile has just officially launched its bada platform, wheeling out a procession of big cheeses, both from its own company and from partners including Twitter, Gameloft and Blockbuster, to herald the launch of what Samsung is calling ‘An invitation to adventure’.
Samsung says the idea behind bada is to bring Smartphones to everyone, with a range of handsets, at a  range of different prices, that are easy to use and distributed globally. It aims to encourage developers with a dedicated website, SDK and a Developer Challenge, with $2.7 million (£1.7 million) prize money up for grabs. The touch-screen handsets, meanwhile, will benefit from stylish design, an intuitive user interface, and neat features like location-based social networking facilities. The first handset will arrive in the first half of 2010, with more to follow later in the year.
So far, so upbeat. And yet, is it just me, or is that the sound of a developer groaning I can hear in the background? As a maker of mobile phones, Samsung is probably not too concerned about the world of mobile marketing, but at the Heroes of the Mobile Screen conference yesterday, when I canvassed opinion among delegates as to what the big issues in mobile currently are, the word fragmentation came up again and again.
So as a developer, you have the iPhone, you have Android, you have Symbian, you have Windows Mobile, you have Linux. And now you also have bada. And there are a few more proprietary platforms for good measure too. So just how is anyone supposed to make a sensible decision about which platform or platforms to develop for? For a brand looking to get into mobile, meanwhile, bada, whatever the intrinsic merits of the platform, is one more reason to spend their money somewhere else. It does make me wonder whether, in the apps versus browser debate, every new platform that comes along is another nail in the apps camp’s coffin.

David Murphy
Editor

Teenage Kicks

I’m at the Heroes of the Mobile Screen conference in London, where the afternoon session is in full swing, with a Dragon’s Den type session, the difference being that the Dragons being pitched to here are six teenagers.
Five companies are each being given a 5-minute slot to pitch their idea to the panel, who are then invited to give their reactions. The idea being that if you're pitching a service at young users, they should know, probably better than you do, whether it has legs or not. It's the brainchild of Julia Shalet, who works with companies targeting consumers in the youth sector.
Perhaps the most surprising thing so far is how articulate the members of the panel are. No monosyllabic grunts here; instead, some considered responses to what they are hearing.
The first guy up, Matt Millar from Live Talkback, pitched his idea of a live mobile voting service, but left the panel feeling distinctly underwhelmed. The second, Liam Lowe from Pay by Mobile, a mobile payments service, fared slightly better, but still had had to put up with one of the panellists, a guy named Chivz, telling him: “You personally you wouldn’t catch me using this.” Chivz did at least have the decency to add: “No disrespect.”
Martin Rigby, representing the third company, Psonar, is in the process of being grilled as I write this. Like the two before him and the two yet to come, they deserve respect for putting themselves in this position. These teenagers seem far scarier to me than Theo Paphitis, James Caan et al.
As do the organisers of the event for including a session like this. It’s certainly different, and seems to be working well, but it was a brave move, because you can imagine, if the teenagers had not been as confident as this lot seem to be in saying their piece, it could have gone horribly wrong.
And compared to the usual death by PowerPoint nature of industry conferences, it’s certainly a lot more entertaining. Good effort.

David Murphy
Editor

One Step Forward

The news that Sony Ericsson is to preload NeoMedia’s barcode reader on its handsets is good news for more than NeoMedia. Because while mobile barcodes are undeniably cool, the fact is that most phones don’t have the scanner needed to make sense of them.
In one sense, it’s only a matter of time, you would think, before barcode readers are preloaded on all new phones, so the Sony Ericsson move is a step in the right direction. There are two more factors that need to be addressed, however. The first is educating the people who buy these phones that there is a barcode reader on them, because I guarantee that most people won’t realise. You would think it would be just the sort of whizz-bang technology a sales assistant would want to use in store to the demo the handset and close the sale, but I don’t remember anyone flagging the barcode reader up to me as a selling point when I traded up to my Nokia E71.
The second factor is that old bugbear of data. Yes, flat-rate data plans exist, and yes, even pay as you go customers can go online on their mobile for not much money. The problem is that not enough “ordinary” people realise this, so live in fear of bill shock. Their phone may have a barcode reader, they may like the idea of scanning a QR code on a poster or a tin of beans, but they won’t do it if they think it’s going to cost them a fortune, or if, worse still, they just don’t know how much it will cost them.
This is not just my gut feeling. In conversation David Tymm, CEO of digital voucher specialist i-movo a few weeks ago, he told me: “The biggest single issue is the fear of what it will cost them to redeem the data”. So much so that when the company ran a mobile couponing campaign for Coca-Cola, rather than sending respondents a link to a mobile site to download a coupon, i-movo simply sent them a PIN which was shown to the retailer, who then keyed it in to their PayPoint terminal. Nothing like as cool as a QR Code, but a much safer option, in the brand’s eyes.
I applaud operators for their efforts to reduce the cost of mobile data. The next step has to be to put some real money behind promoting these tariffs. Otherwise those barcode readers will just remain buried deep in the phone’s menu system, and mobile barcodes, which do have great potential, will never fulfil it.

David Murphy
Editor

Less is More

Now that O2 has officially taken the wraps off O2 More, we have written again to the company to ask them the questions we asked them four weeks ago, namely: 

• How many people are on the database?
• How were they recruited?
• How were they incentivised to join?
• Are they all contract customers, or a mix of contract and non-contract?
• What sort of profiling can you offer brands - age, location etc?
• How are you planning to market the database to brands?
• Are there any limits on the number of marketing messages someone on the database would receive in a given time period?

Having had no response to our emails about the database the first and second time round, who knows whether we’ll get any answers this time, but if and when we do, we’ll we happy to share them with you. Personally, I'm all for this type of up-front, transparent relationship between a network and its customers. So long as the customers know what they are opting in to, then where's the problem? It would just paint a much fuller picture of what the O2 More offering is if the network would fill in the gaps in the story.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 49

So here we are in December already, and parents around the world are trying to figure how to tell the kids that Santa has had to lay off half his elves so things might look a bit light on the present front this year. In the world of mobile marketing, however, things are as busy as ever. Time, then, for our regular start-of-the-month recap of the highlights of the past few weeks...
By far the biggest story of last month (or any other, for that matter), was the news that Google was to buy mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million (£448 million). There’s been much speculation about the real reasons behind Google’s move, and much talk about what it will mean for the mobile advertising business, but the consensus seems to be that it can only increase the industry’s credibility. It’s also another weapon in Android’s armoury, of course, and with the new breed of Android devices receiving rave reviews, an interesting battle is shaping up between Google and Apple.
Back in iPhone land, Orange began selling the device on 10 November, while Tesco Mobile, a 50:50 joint venture between Tesco and O2, said it hoped to release the iPhone for its customers before Christmas. Apple also revealed during November that there are now over 100,000 applications available in its App Store, while on a less positive note, IT security and data protection company Sophos warned iPhone users that the world's first iPhone virus was spreading in the wild in Australia. The virus, dubbed the ikee worm, breaks into iPhones, changing their lock screen wallpaper to an image of 1980s pop star Rick Astley with the message: ‘ikee is never going to give you up’. Pretty unpleasant.
A report from research firm mobileSQUARED revealed that the number of mobile broadband connections will exceed that of fixed-line broadband connections during 2011.The company forecasts that by 2011, the number of active 3G devices in the UK will be 36.3 million, as well as 6.4 million dongles/embedded devices, taking the total number of mobile broadband connections to 42.7 million, versus an expected 42.5 million broadband Internet users.
Meanwhile, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a study that found that  95% of digital budgets now include spend on mobile, and that 73% of marketers believe mobile will be the medium to see most growth over the next five years.
Mobile payments firm paythru published a Whitepaper which concluded that charities are missing a trick if they are not using mobile phones to raise funds. The document advises charities of all sizes to consider how one-on-one communications via mobile phones can reach new donor groups that span generations and socio-economic groups.
One charity that is already using mobile with a vengeance is BBC Children in Need. Mobile Interactive Technology (MIT) revealed that Children in Need had raised £1.75 million via mobile through £5 donations in just under a month since launching SMS donations. All money raised via the donations went directly to BBC Children in Need, thanks to mobile network operators waiving their usual fees and the Treasury levying no VAT charges. MIT powered the SMS donations via its MIDAS platform.
Samsung announced the launch of its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada, which it will release this month. Samsung says it is launching the platform in order to make a rich Smartphone experience accessible to a wider range of consumers across the world.
And UK bus operator Arriva rolled out an m-ticketing service for all of its regional services in England, Scotland and Wales. Customers can buy daily, weekly and four-weekly tickets via their mobile phones. The service has been created using mBlox Sender-Pays Data, which enables consumers to buy data-rich content via their mobile, and pay only the price of the content itself, without incurring any data download charges to their mobile.
Today, bus tickets, tomorrow, the world. As ever, check back in regularly to keep up with all that’s happening in the mobile marketing universe.

David Murphy
Editor

Sign Up for Breaking News

There appears to be a temporary problem with the email signup form we were plugging in this post, so for the moment, we have removed the form. As soon as we have the problem fixed, we will let you know and put the form back up.
Original post:
Just a quick reminder, if you haven’t already done so, to please sign up with your name and email address to go on our database, which we'll be using in the future to keep readers abreast of breaking news stories, special events and other important happenings.
You can enter your details in the two boxes to the left of this story, just below the Incentivated Skyscraper ad. It will take but a few seconds, and we promise not to pass these details on to any other company. It will just enable us to contact you when there’s something we think you would want to know about sooner rather than later. Please take the time to share your name and email address with us today.

David Murphy
Editor

20 Seconds of Your Time Please

Over the past four years, traffic to Mobile Marketing Magazine has risen steadily, and the site now attracts over 28,000 unique visitors every month. We know from anecdotal feedback that some of our readers check in several times a day, others once a day and others less often than that. However often they check in though, our readers keep coming back because they want to know what’s happening in the mobile marketing universe.
To make sure that you get all the mobile marketing news that matters, we’d like to start emailing you with details of breaking news stories and special events. The only thing we’re lacking is the email addresses to enable us to do this.
This is easily solved. If you’d like to go on our email database, just fill in your details on the form to the left (below the Incentivated ad) and we’ll do the rest. It will take around 20 seconds of your time, and in return, we will ensure that you’re among the first to hear about breaking news stories. It’s a one-time thing that you’ll benefit from for years to come. Please take the time to fill in the form today.

David Murphy
Editor