What You (may have) Missed - Part 22

Despite the fact it was August, and half the industry was on holiday, surreptitiously checking their Blackberrys for new email while the rest of the family were busy building sandcastles, last month was another busy one in the mobile marketing world, so take a few minutes to enjoy, with us, the highlights.
There was lots happening on the campaign front. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival got its own WAP site for the first time, while mobile agency Sponge developed a point-of-sale mobile promotion for children’s drink brand Capri-Sun. The promotion offered consumers the chance to win a weekend at Center Parcs.
Magnet Harelquin announced that its mobile picture recognition technology was being used to promote the launch of the Universal movie, ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’. A picture recognition algorithm was used to turn the mobile device into an interactive ‘mouse.’ Readers could ‘click’ on the ad by taking a photo of it with their mobile, and send it via MMS to Jason Bourne’s mobile shortcode to get free mobile content.
Also on the movie front, mobile agency Candyspace was tasked with creating a mobile portal offering to support the launch of Momentum Pictures’ latest DVD, ‘The Messengers’. As well as exclusive mobile content created by Candyspace from images, interviews and scenes from the hit film, the portal offers users the opportunity to pre-order the DVD, via PayPal, direct from their mobile phone. And mobile agency Incentivated teamed up with The Children’s Society to offer music fans attending the Rock the House’ event at Harewood House in Leeds last Friday, the chance to meet Iggy Pop & The Stooges backstage after the gig.
Infomedia Services was appointed by Chelsea Digital Media, the digital division of Chelsea FC, as its exclusive mobile partner for the UK and Ireland for the next three years, and Dialogue Communications announced the launch of 2shop4, which the company describes as “the UK's first mobile shopping mall.” The mall will enable users to buy products instantly through the mobile Internet and text codes. The mall is powered by Microsoft Certified developers, Hero Solutions and Evevoy Developments, a Mobile Tier One Microsoft Partner, exclusively operated by Dialogue Communications.
Voice-to-Screen messaging company SpinVox announced a deal with Skype to offer its voice-to-text service for its Internet communication software. The service enables Skype users to have their voice messages converted and sent directly to their mobiles as an SMS when they are not at their PC. Meanwhile, that other giant of the Internet world, eBay, switched on an SMS re-bidding service for its customers in the UK, France and Belgium. The service is powered by mobile transaction network mBlox.
User-generated mobile content company Wattpad launched FeedM8, which turns a blog or feed-enabled website into a mobile site so people can follow it on mobile phones with mobile-tailored advertising inserted.
And interactive data solutions provider Lightspeed Research launched a mobile research solution that offers its clients the ability to conduct highly targeted surveys that capture data almost immediately from respondents fitting the selected profile and location.
Rumours of the Google Phone surfaced again, but while Google followers wait for it to appear, mobile email company Emoze announced the launch of what it claimed is the first true push mobile email service for Gmail users worldwide, including Google Mail users, as the service is formally known in the UK, Germany and Austria.
It was a memorable month for mobile advertising marketplace AdMob, which revealed that it had served its 5 billionth mobile ad since its launch lass than a year ago in December 2006. A good month too for ad-funded mobile games company Greystripe, which revealed that it had achieved 14 million downloads  of its free mobile games in under 12 months.
Not quite such a good month for the operator community, however. A GfK NOP survey commissioned by marketing delivery platform provider Pontis revealed mobile users' dissatisfaction with the way mobile operators are currently marketing their voice and data services. The survey found that 70% of mobile phone users consider the marketing offers they receive not to be relevant to them, while 64% of these say they are annoyed by them. Only 11% of those surveyed had ever bought an item, or signed up for a special promotion or bundle as a result of an online promotion or offer from their mobile service provider.
To compound the operators’ misery, a separate report from Continental Research found that mobile phone users are showing little interest in advanced features such as accessing the Internet or downloading and watching TV programmes on their handset. The research found that the percentage of mobile users using advanced features had decreased in eight out of 11 activities tracked over the past 12 months. Only the percentage of people sending photo messages and downloading games has increased. Something for the operators to think about as they gear up for the peak pre-Christmas season perhaps...
Stay tuned for more news throughout September.

David Murphy
Editor