Check the Small Print

At first glance, BT’s Broadband Anywhere offering looks an interesting proposition. A combined home broadband and Smartphone proposition, complete with talk time, texts and all-you-can-eat data. There are, however, a couple of problems with the proposition.The first is the way BT has chosen to market it.
“From £23.99 per month, only £5 more than the price of BT Total Broadband Option 3” declares the press release. But when you scroll down and see what the little '1' next to the price relates to, you find that the £23.99 tariff is just a three-month promo. After that, the price bumps up to £29.99. Or in other words, only £11 more than the price of BT Total Broadband Option 3. Doesn’t sound quite as exciting, but with a minimum 18-month contract, it’s a more honest representation of what the service will cost for the vast majority of that contract.
The second relates to the data usage. At 10MB, this is not so much all-you-can-eat as a bit of something to nibble on. According to stats released by Vodafone last week, 10MB equates to 500 Internet pages, or three 3-minute movie trailers from Odeon, with 1MB to spare. For sure, you can use all those wi-fi hotspots, but even so, compared to other networks' offerings – 3, for example, offers 1GB, Vodadone, 500MB – it looks paltry.
So while the idea behind BT Total Broadband looks a sound one, it doesn’t look quite so good on closer inspection. If you’re going to launch such an apparently attractive proposition that tries to be all things to all people, it should be equal or better than the competition in all aspects. From where we’re sitting, this one isn’t.

David Murphy
Editor

Novarra – An Apology, To Our Readers

With apologies to Private Eye…
Over the past couple of years, we may have given the impression that we were a trusted and authoritative source of information on the mobile marketing industry. Last week, judging by the comments received on our interview with Novarra, it became clear that some of our readers, at least, thought that impression was complete hogwash.
While the vitriol in most of the comments (read ‘em) was aimed at Novarra, a couple accused us of sloppy journalism, with one suggesting that the interview consisted of nothing more than a set of written questions supplied to Novarra for them to fill in the answers. On that point, I am happy to clarify that the interview was conducted over the phone, over the course of around half an hour.
One part of the interview that has been met with particular derision was the reference to the non-existent ‘.wap’ URL. And rightly so. On this point, I can only say, mea culpa. Schoolboy error. I should have realised that was nonsense, and didn’t. Whatever brickbats anyone wants to throw my way as a result, be my guest.
On the accusation of accepting Novarra’s point of view unquestioningly, however, I plead not guilty. We try to cover the mobile marketing business in its entirety. We don’t claim to know everything, and clearly, we don’t know as much about any aspect of it as the people on the coalface. I knew we were getting Novarra’s side of the story, but I knew also that if anything Novarra President and COO, Jayanthi Rangarajan, had to say smacked of puffery or spin, there would be plenty of people queuing up to pick her up on it. On that point, my instincts were right, though I regret the fact that some of the criticism of the points she made in the interview has become somewhat personal.
Novarra has taken issue with one part of the interview, concerning Sprint’s Openwave deployment. The company says that the 60-70 seconds load time reference was not a reference to the Sprint Openwave deployment, but was “a generic speed for a non-Novarra (or other optimised solution) versus a Novarra server deployment.” We are happy to make this clarification. The company also says it does not recall saying that Internet use in Vodafone UK is now around 1,000 times what it was before the Novarra deployment, but we can only refer to our notes, and according to these, it did.   
If we did let our standards slip during the Novarra interview, I can only apologise to our readers. From the day I launched Mobile Marketing Magazine, we have tried to report the facts honestly and impartially, while at the same time not taking ourselves too seriously. We plan to carry on in the same vein. At least we know that if we mess up in the future, we’ll soon know about it.

David Murphy
Editor

At Last - Debate!

It’s ironic really. We spend two and a half years putting up five or six posts a day and asking people to stick their thoughts in, and typically, we get, er, none. Then we take a day off and the comments come flooding in thick and fast.
Perhaps it’s because we’ve never claimed to be a mobile blog. There are some excellent mobile blogs out there. Take a bow, SMS Text News and MobHappy, to name but two, but here at Mobile Marketing Magazine, we try to do something different.
This is not the mobile marketing world according to us. We see ourselves more as an aggregator of mobile marketing news, views and opinions, pulling them together in one place, and occasionally, when something gets us sufficiently impassioned, having a bit of a rant about it.
Even so, we have to admit, when we interviewed Novarra President and COO, Jayanthi Rangarajan, a few weeks ago, we knew that what she said was likely to ruffle a few feathers. Even more so, once the interview was concluded, and we’d heard what she had to say.
Novarra had pitched us with an interview based on various new operator deployments. We said we’d we'd be happy to talk, but would prefer to concentrate on the furore surrounding Novarra’s deployment with Vodafone UK. The company agreed, the interview ran last Friday, and then came the long Bank Holiday weekend, which found me yesterday at Legoland with my family. Checking the web stats in the evening (after I’d put the kids to bed, I promise), I found the Comment count was up to 10 (and we’re not talking one-liners here) with the vitriol coming thick and fast.
In case the point needs making, the fact that we gave Novarra a platform to air its views does not mean we endorse them any more than the views of any of the other companies we run interviews with. That’s why we spend so many hours a day rewriting press releases, changing phrases like “the world’s leading developer of…” to “a developer of” and removing similar puffery. We ask the questions, they give the answers. In most cases, the answers we get don’t tend to cause much of a stir. In this case they have. To find out why, read the comments, and make your own mind up.

David Murphy
Editor

Downtime

It’s a bank holiday here in the UK today, so we are taking the day off. We’ll be back tomorrow with more news and views. In the meantime, with around 100 new posts on the site every month, there’s probably a ton of stuff you haven’t seen yet, so click around and enjoy.

David Murphy
Editor

All-you-can-eat Data is a Recipe for Success

We seem to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Vodafone here at Mobile Marketing Magazine, either praising them or damning them. Today’s news is definitely cause for praise.
Vodafone’s decision (see story below) to include all-you-can-eat data (or 500MB per month, at least) in its price plans as standard, is the best news that brands looking to market in the mobile channel could wish for. It’s great news for Vodafone customers too, of course, meaning that they can browse advertisers’ mobile and full websites, safe in the knowledge that they are not running up a huge bill.
All-you-can-eat data plans are not new of course. Most of the UK networks have been offering them for a year or so, and the pattern is being repeated around the world. The problem has been one of promotion. It’s one thing to offer a good deal, another to make people aware of it, so making it a default part of the monthly tariff is a great move on Vodafone’s part.
A bold move too. For in doing so, it risks losing customers who have no desire to surf the web, mobile or otherwise, on their handset, to other networks whose price plans don’t include the premium for the  all-you-can-eat data bundle. That shows a commitment to the mobile web that many may have doubted, given the furore that erupted last summer due to the way Vodafone’s transcoding solution handled dedicated mobile sites.
That solution was provided by technology company Novarra, who bore the brunt of the criticism. Tomorrow afternoon, we have an interview with Novarra President and COO, Jayanthi Rangarajan, in which she puts Novarra’s side of the story. It’s a fascinating interview, in which the company comes out fighting. Check in after 2pm tomorrow to read it.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed – Part 30

It’s the start of another month, and time, once again, to look back at the highlights of the last few weeks in the world of mobile marketing. As ever, it was an action-packed month, and as ever again, mobile advertising featured prominently.
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), released its global Mobile Advertising Guidelines, which are designed to encourage the uptake of mobile advertising by brands worldwide, while enhancing and protecting the customer’s experience.
Meanwhile, media analyst Screen Digest released its report, ‘Mobile media advertising opportunities: The market for advertising on TV, video and games’. The report concludes that the market for rich media advertising on mobile will reach $2.79 billion (£1.4 billion) by 2012, with global Mobile TV advertising accounting for the lion’s share at $2.44 billion.
Ad-funded mobile network Blyk revealed that it had signed up its 100,000th member, five months ahead of schedule, while mobile social network itsmy.com announced that it had signed up its 1 millionth registered user.
Bango released mobile ad statistics that showed that banner and text ads on mobile websites typically have a click through rate of 2-8% with a conversion rate of 2-5% rising to as high as 12% on some networks. Furniture retailer Harveys would be unlikely to argue with those figures. It published results  from its mobile vouchering trial in association with soap opera, Coronation Street, which the brand sponsors. Over a 13-day trial period, 30% of viewers who requested a mobile voucher went on to redeem in one of Harveys stores, peaking at 50% on some days. Nice.   
The mobile web was in the news too, as the findings from the third Orange Digital Media Index Shows showed the mobile Internet becoming a part of day-to-day life, with a 35% increase in page impressions.
Jewellery retailer Fameo will be pleased with those figures. It announced the launch of the first British mobile jewellery catalogue, a new mobile service that’s designed to allow anyone with a GPRS or 3G phone to browse Fameo jewellery offers, monitor their order status, research information and get customer service on the go.
And if you haven’t got round to building your mobile website yet, there’s really not much excuse, as  Refresh Mobile unveiled Mippin Maker, an entirely free service that creates a perfectly-rendered mobile edition of a publisher’s website and allows the publisher to generate revenue from mobile immediately. Refresh also introduced a free games service for users of its Mippin portal, offering users access to a portfolio of over 800 free mobile games.
Elsewhere, mobile back up service Mobyko launched its dynamic online gallery for storing and sharing mobile photos, videos and texts, from the mobile phone. Enterprise marketing software company Neolane announced the availability of MMS and WAP-push communications within its multichannel customer marketing platform, adding to traditional channels such as email, direct mail, telemarketing and SMS.
Esendex announced the launch of the ‘SMS Developer Challenge 2008’. The competition gives developers the chance to show off aspiring ideas in the world of text messaging with the winning entrant receiving a cash prize of £1,000, and a chance of commercial success.
Microsoft unveiled the latest version of Internet Explorer Mobile, which adds “desktop-grade” web browsing to Windows Mobile phones. Microsoft also announced Windows mobile 6.1, an update for its Windows Mobile software that includes new time-saving features, easier phone navigation and management, and increased security safeguards.
Velocity Mobile, a collaboration between one of the world’s largest notebook computer manufacturers Inventec Corporation, and a team of veteran wireless designers and engineers, took the wraps off its first Microsoft Windows Mobile phones, the Velocity 103 and Velocity 111. The company says it aims to shift the way people view and use Smartphones, combining Western design philosophy and Eastern manufacturing efficiencies to bring no-compromise experiences and value to consumers.
And GoldSpot Media announced the launch of ‘Trial-in-a-Box’, which it says is the first rapid prototyping platform providing a controlled environment for evaluating the profitability of targeted, interactive mobile broadcast TV advertising models
Phew. And believe us, we’ve barely scratched the surface of everything that’s been going on these past few weeks. If you want to keep up with all the mobile marketing news in the next few weeks, you know where to come.

David Murphy
Editor

Clever Stuff

At the IDMF (International Direct Marketing Fair) and Internet World show at London’s Earls Court, where a couple of mobile applications caught my eye. The first is SnapNow, a mobile visual search solution. This looks very clever.
The idea is simple. You take a photograph of something with your phone, a CD cover for example, and send it to a shortcode via MMS. A few seconds later, you get either a page of search results, or a link to a site where you can buy the item in question, returned to your phone. What’s clever is that it doesn’t need any application download to your phone. The intelligence is programmed into the item you’re photographing at the back end.
For example, it could be an ad in a magazine, or a billboard that you take a photo of to be sent a link that takes our browser to the company’s mobile website. Photographing a magazine interview could take you to a video download of the interview.
Managing Director Mark Sait told me that the company is aiming to build a library of over 2 million CDs and DVDs by Christmas, so that UK consumers will be able to snap any mainstream CD or DVD cover and get a link to a mobile site where they can buy it sent back to their phone.
The company says it is working with creative agencies to build its initial inventory, as these tend to act as the major advertisers’ brand custodians. It is also talking to network operators, though Sait says the company’s ambition is to build SnapNow into a global brand, not to act as a white-label offering for the networks. He admits, however, that he would love to have the SnapNow application preloaded onto handsets as an alternative to MMS. 
What I like about SnapNow is the simple way it drives consumers to mobile content without keying in shortcodes and keywords, and without the need to download a barcode reader to their phone. True, it requires someone to populate the catalogue of items that can be photographed and take someone somewhere, and someone to educate consumers to the fact that if they take a picture of this ordinary-looking CD cover with their phone, something will happen. But after seven years developing the technology, SnapNow is clearly in this for the long haul, and the technology looks to have considerable promise.
The second application that caught my eye was Wimob. This enables consumers to transfer multimedia content from websites to their mobile phone via Bluetooth, infrared or USB, without paying network data charges. Relevant content is identified on the publisher’s website with a Wimob icon. The user then clicks on the icon to open up the Wimob window and transfer the content. The first time the user tries to download something, they are invited to enter their phone’s details so that the content can be rendered in the most appropriate format.
Once again, it doesn’t require any application download to the mobile phone, though interestingly, it could be used as a means of transferring a mobile application from a website to a phone. Or to send a QR Code or barcode to act as a discount voucher, enabling a consumer with a non-QR-enabled phone to use a QR Code.
Wimob says it is talking to some major companies about the technology, including Nestle, 20th Century Fox and Google. A call to YouTube is also on the company’s To Do list. These big brands would pay a licence for the professional version of the application. A ‘lite’ version, ideal for bloggers and small publishers, is available for free from the Wimob website. This is another thoughtful application that could have legs.

David Murphy
Editor

Advertising on Mobile Marketing Magazine

If  you’re interested in advertising on Mobile Marketing Magazine, and reaching the 22,000 unique visitors who check in to the site every month, hungry for news about who’s doing what in mobile, you may like to know that we are opening up bidding for the prime advertising slots in the site, beneath the masthead, and at the top of each sidebar.
Bidding for the slot beneath the masthead begins tomorrow, 1 May, and ends on 15 May. If you would like more information about the reserve price for the space, send an email to mail@davidmurphy.org and we will send you an Invitation to Bid by return.
In the meantime, stay tuned for all the latest news from the world of mobile marketing.

David Murphy
Editor

Advertising Opportunities

We will shortly be changing the way that the ad space is sold on Mobile Marketing Magazine, to give any company interested in securing one of the three prime positions – beneath the masthead, and at the top of each sidebar – the opportunity to secure those positions.
We will be auctioning off each of these slots on a 3-month cycle, with a reserve price on each slot. The first round of bidding, for the spot below the masthead, currently occupied by Incentivated, opens on 1 May.
If you would like the opportunity to bid for one of these positions, please send an email to mobilemarketingeditor@googlemail.com so that we can include you on the ‘Invitation to Bid’ list.
In the meantime, a big thank you to all our advertisers for their continued support. With the exception of one advertiser, Mobile TV company ROK, who supported us in the very early days, when traffic on the site was much lower than it is today, we have yet to lose an advertiser. We are proud of that record, and we know that the only reason our advertisers continue to rebook is because their ads on Mobile Marketing Magazine do a great job in driving traffic and enquirers to their websites. If you’d like to get involved, you know what to do.

David Murphy
Editor

Clever Stuff

You don’t always thing of mobile operators as the most innovative beasts, or at least I don’t. They’re more supertanker than speedboat, more juggernaut than sports car. But fortunately, they don’t always have to be, because there are some smart companies out there doing a very good job of making them look very clever indeed.
Yesterday at the Mobile Marketing Forum, I heard a presentation from Buongiorno and Vodafone Egypt about a mobile advertising programme Buongiorno is running for Vodafone in Egypt. 96% of the country’s mobile phone users are pay-as-you-go, and among the poorer sections of the population, it’s common for users to run out of credit and go several days without topping it up, which of course means they can't make any calls or send any texts. The solution? The credit-less user can send a free, ad-funded SMS from their mobile to the mobile of the friend they want to get hold of, asking them to call them. They can get hold of their friend, the friend gets the ad, the advertiser gets the eyeballs. Neat.
Just now, I’m fresh out of a demo of Comverse’s mobile advertising platform. Comverse sells the platform into operators. Companies who want to run a mobile campaign then access the platform over the web and build the campaign, selecting the customer segments they want to target by age, gender, handset type, types of mobile sites visited, location, and various other parameters.
Next, they select the tools they want to use to target the customers, from a palette that includes mobile web browsing, messaging and voice. Each of these breaks down into numerous sub-categories. Voice, for instance, includes ringback tones, multimedia ringback tones, voicemail and visual voicemail. Web browsing encompasses banner ads and, a really neat one this, interstitials, which appear in between sites when the user is surfing from one off-portal site to another, generating revenue for the operator from off-portal activity. When the campaign has been built, the advertiser can fix a budget and see how many impressions it will deliver, based on historical browsing data from the operator.
Comverse Director of Product Marketing for the Mobile Internet Solutions Division, Meidad Sharon, explained to me that while the company’s main focus is on the operator community, the company is starting to try to position itself to the ad agencies. And so it should. Because if the Comverse platform doesn’t quite make running a mobile campaign child’s play, it certainly simplifies the process enormously, which is exactly what’s needed to kick-start the mobile marketing business.
Talking to some of the delegates after yesterday’s Mobile Marketing Forum, the one thing we agreed on was that the operators are definitely starting to get mobile advertising and marketing, as evidenced by the ad-funded music and video download services from 3 UK and others. And with the operator taking around a 60-70% revenue share from the Comverse ad solution, so they should. Advertising, in one form or another, is going to play a big part in the future of mobile, as the operators are slowly starting to realise. And as the Comverse solution shows, there’s more to it than banners.

David Murphy
Editor

Show Me The Money

An interesting morning session at the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum in London, where speakers queued up to explain why the assembled delegates should be putting mobile on their media plans, if it’s not there already.
Some stats presented by M: Metrics caught my eye. First, as a medium for reaching 18-34 year olds, mobile scores. This age group represents 29% of the UK population. On TV, you can reach 29% of them. Magazine advertising gets you to 31%. With mobile, it’s 56%.
If you want to reach cash-rich, time-poor consumers, again, mobile scores, indexing 143 for consumers earning more than £50,000 per annum and agreeing with the statement: “There are not enough hours in the day.” This compares with 103 for TV and 129 for the Internet.
The stats also showed the growing propensity of consumers in the US to interact with mobile marketing campaigns. 11% of US consumers who receive a marketing text message will reply to it, compared to 10% of UK consumers. And that’s from a lower proportion of mobile owners in the US who have received a marketing text, compared to the UK. Equally surprising, to me at least, was the revelation that 3G penetration in the US stands at 23.9% of the population, compared to 23.6% in the UK. The US is catching Europe up fast, if indeed it hasn’t already done so.
For all the positivity, however, Simon Andrews, Chief Strategy Officer, Worldwide, for WPP-owned media agency Mindshare, brought a sense of reality to the proceedings. In his presentation, titled 'Show Me The Money’, Andrews made the point that money follows audience, but wondered how many more times he would hear that this year will be the year of mobile, just like last year, and the year before that.
While conceding that the opportunity for mobile is huge, Andrews lamented the fact that mobile campaigns are not profitable for the companies who put them together.
“A mobile campaign is unprofitable because it’s a cheap medium and it takes a long time to put together,” said Andrews. Andrews went on to say that branded utilities -  things like a brand-sponsored bar or restaurant guide for example – would be important in mobile’s future, while the role of banner advertising would be to drive people to download these branded applications.
And despite his earlier comments about the cost of putting mobile campaigns together, Andrews said it was incumbent on delegates to accelerate the move to mobile. 
“Don’t come to this conference next year if you haven’t run a mobile campaign,” he said. “I keep going to conferences and talking about it, but we’re not doing enough of it.”
After all the talk that you hear at any conference, this one included, about mobile’s potential, his words were a breath of fresh air. Let’s hope the delegates and the marketing directors and budget controllers out in the wider world, hear them and act on them.

David Murphy
Editor

Byte on This

Just out of a meeting with Byte Mobile, a technology company whose Unison platform is used by 87, mainly Tier 1, operators worldwide to deliver a range of services, from content adaptation and mobile advertising to content filtering and parental controls.
When Chief Marketing Officer Adrian Hall, pausing between mouthfuls of sausage and mash, which, as a Brit exiled in California these last 10 years, he admitted was going down rather well, told me that Vodafone UK was one of the company’s customers, I wondered for a moment whether Byte was involved in Voda’s website transcoding “solution” which attracted so much criticism last year for effectively making dedicated WAP sites invisible to Vodafone UK users. In fact, it isn’t. That’s all the work of another company, Novarra, and Hall was happy to say that he thought the criticism was entirely justified.
His colleague, Marketing Director Dr. Graham Carey, then demoed the Byte adaption solution to me, using the YouTube and BBC websites to do so. The pages rendered quickly, and looked about as good as full-blown website can on a 2” screen. Carey was even able to play back a YouTube video on his Sony Ericsson handset, thanks to a licensing deal Byte has with Adobe for Flash video files.
Carey was keen to stress that the real estate of the website remains untouched, though despite this, the company can top and tail the content with mobile banner advertising, generating revenue for the network. It’s possibly the only way you’ll see the BBC homepage with an ad on the same screen, albeit sitting above the website frame.
The adaptation solution has only been available as part of the Unison platform for around 12 months, and Hall says that around 15-20% of Unison operator clients have so far deployed it, with others running tests on the technology. Where it has been deployed, he says, the results are good. Vodafone Ireland, for example, reported a 2-3x increase in off-portal web browsing within a couple of months of launch.
As flat-rate data becomes more prevalent, and as more people become comfortable with the idea of surfing the web, mobile or otherwise, on their handsets, solutions like Byte’s will have a bigger part to play in optimising the user experience. As Hall was keen to point out, the solution does not require the user to download a client to the handset, and works on any browser-equipped mobile.
The web is opening up to mobile devices. But with adaptation solutions like Byte’s, and Mippin’s RRS-feed based conversion engine, I just wonder how much of a need there will be in the future for dedicated mobile websites. Discuss.

David Murphy
Editor

Fools' Gold

It’s been kind of hard to concentrate today, with all the wonderful April Fools' stories doing the rounds. Top marks to the BBC for its Flying Penguins spoof, which at least one online news portal devoted to all things marketing managed to take at face value, praising the “staggering footage” of penguins flying. Could be ironic, but I don't think so. Full marks too, though I never thought I’d hear myself say this, to the Daily Mail, for its mocked-up photo of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, buying a scratchcard. The way the economy’s going, that’s more than plausible.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the fake stories, and our own modest efforts to lighten the tone with a couple of spoofs of our own. If you read them and didn’t spot the fakes, please, go and lie down in a darkened room for a couple of hours. The clue is in the names, in one of the stories at least.
Today is also significant as the first day of the CTIA show in Las Vegas. The event could hardly be more timely. In conversation with Incentivated boss Jonathan Bass the other day, he told me that when people ask him if 2008 will be the year of mobile, he tells them that actually, 2007 already was, with mobile advertising spend overtaking cinema ad spend, and requests for proposals, from blue chip brands, coming out of the company’s ears. It certainly feels like there’s more interest from more companies out there. Let’s hope this translates into a profitable year for companies in the mobile space.
There are some fantastic applications out there too. We were asked recently to help judge a couple of categories in the Mobile Entertainment Forum awards, the Meffys. We can’t prejudge the outcome of the process by saying too much, but in the course of going through the nominations, we were hugely impressed by some of the mobile search and discovery solutions out there.
No doubt more will be unveiled at CTIA over the next few days, and with the doors to the exhibition opening in a few hours time, we’ll bring you any early news this evening (UK time), with more to follow tomorrow. And we promise – no flying penguins.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 29

It’s 1 April, April Fools' day. A day for pranks, tomfoolery and associated nonsense. Not from us though. We’ve got too much news to bring you, starting with the highlights from March, another mad month in the world of mobile marketing.
There were lots of new campaigns and applications to report on. NIVEA updated its ‘Beauty Is…’ mobile site with a new campaign that harnesses user-generated content. Users now have new opportunities to interact with the brand by creating wallpapers containing their own definition of beauty.   
The British International Motor Show, which takes place in July, revealed that it had appointed digital communications agency Glass to handle all mobile activity for the event. MSN Mobile launched a Horoscope Channel, for people who really do have nothing better to do on their phone. And Mobile Systems and Dorling Kindersley (DK) teamed up for the launch of Dorling Kindersley Mobile Travel Guides, with an initial 10 titles covering Barcelona, London, Paris, Rome, New York, Amsterdam, Las Vegas, Prague, Madrid and Vienna.
Meanwhile, love was in the air at mobile and online flirting service Flirtomatic, as it revealed that the virtual engagement ring promotion it ran at the end of February shifted 14,278 virtual rings at a cost of around £0.40 each. Cheaper than a bunch of flowers we suppose, or indeed, the real thing, made of gold, silver or something else expensive.
Yahoo! took the wraps off Yahoo! onePlace, a “revolutionary” mobile content management solution which puts everything in which a consumer is interested into a single location and then serves it up in the most personally-relevant manner. It also found time to announce the upcoming availability of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for a number of European countries, as well as several new European-based widgets that will be accessible across Yahoo!’s mobile browser and client-based offerings. 
Bango released statistics that showed a shift in mobile web traffic, from the mature mobile markets of Europe and the US to the developing markets of China and India. According to the stats, the top six countries accessing the mobile web via Bango in January 2008 were the UK, India, the US, South Africa, Indonesia and China, with China rising from 19th position six months ago
There were more stats from Juniper Research, whose report on mobile ticketing estimated that over 2.6 billion mobile tickets will be delivered to just over 208 million mobile phone users by 2011.
And from Apple, which revealed that more than 100,000 iPhone developers had downloaded the beta iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in the first four days following its launch on 6 March. The iPhone SDK provides developers with the same set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools that Apple uses to create its native applications for iPhone and iPod touch.
There were lots of deals in the offing too. Qualcomm acquired Xiam Technologies, an Ireland-based pioneer of wireless content targeting solutions, for around $32 million (£16 million), while 3BILL, the mobile division of Symbios Group, acquired another social network, Faces.com, to go with the one it bought the previous month, Profile Heaven.
LiveWire Mobile bought Groove Mobile, the mobile music solutions provider. And Local Matters, Inc., a US-based media technology solutions provider, merged with mobile search company, mobilePeople. We’ll have the full story on this later today. Meanwhile, one of the original mobile marketing agencies, Flytxt closed its London operations.
Finally, things got very noisy on the music front, as O2 tied up with Napster to offer the UK’s largest full-track mobile music download service, providing access to over 5 million songs. Not to be outdone, 3UK launched the first ad-supported, commercial mobile music video service, in conjunction with Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK). The service offers 3’s customers in the UK free music videos in return for watching short, targeted video ads. 
And all this is just a micro-sized sample of all that was going on last month. Stay tuned for all the latest news going forward.

David Murphy
Editor

Survey Time

If you’re reading this, you can’t fail to have noticed the Survey pop up box that appeared when you arrived on the site this morning/afternoon/evening (the joys of having a global readership).
If you’ve already hit the ‘Never’ button, then I guess you can skip to the next story. But if you didn’t, this is a plea to take a couple of minutes to complete the survey when you can.
There are just six multiple choice questions, designed to give us more of an insight into the make-up of our audience. The main thing we want to know is which URL (.com or .co.uk) people tend to use to access the site, but we thought we should also take the opportunity to find out a bit more about our readers. It’s all anonymous and it will help us improve our offering to you, so please, if you can, take a couple of minutes to reply.
Thanks in anticipation of your co-operation.

David Murphy
Editor

Happy Easter

To all our readers. We’re bunking off over the long Easter weekend to recharge the batteries, eat lots of chocolate, etc, so we’ll be back next Tuesday with more from the world of mobile marketing. However you’re spending the Easter weekend, have a good one, and whatever you do, be sure to take your mobile with you.

David Murphy
Editor

Blind Dates

We are experiencing a (hopefully) temporary problem with our Date Archives, which should take you through to stories from any of the previous months since we began publishing Mobile Marketing magazine in October 2005.
At present, for reasons we haven't yet established, these are generating a '404 Not Found' error. We are working on the problem and hope to have it fixed very soon. In the meantime, you can still access archived stories via the Category links in the right-hand sidebar. 

David Murphy
Editor

Voda Data Card User? Check Your Bill

A couple of months back, we raved about Vodafone’s new flat-rate tariff for using your 3G data card in around 40 countries. £8.50 for any 24-hour period of use, (with a 50MB/day fair usage cap), sounded fantastic to us. So we used the card with alacrity while on a press trip in Prague, only to come back to a bill for £115.68, plus VAT. A quick phone call was enough for Vodafone to realise the error of its ways and credit us with the overcharged amount.
Fast forward a few weeks, and the next data card bill arrives, this time including four days’ use at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. So that’s four lots of £8.50, which makes £34. Er, no. This time round, the bill is for £144, including £119.44 for the data used while aborad. So another phone call, another admission from Vodafone that the bill is wrong, and a promise once again to credit the overcharged amount of around £85.
I think it’s appalling that a network of Vodafone’s size can’t get something as simple as a bill right on two consecutive months. More to the point though, I dread to think how many people there are who have been using data cards abroad for years for work, so don’t notice anything untoward in a bill of this size and pay it without question.
The man in the call centre assured me that my concerns were unfounded and that these were isolated incidents, but as I pointed out to him, I’ve only used my data card abroad on two occasions (several times on each) since the flat-rate data roaming tariff was introduced, and each time, I’ve been overcharged.
So I end this rant with two pleas. The first is to anyone with a Vodafone data card who has used it abroad in the past couple of months, or who plans to in the future, to check their bills when they arrive to make sure that they have not been overcharged for use in any of the countries covered by the flat-rate tariff.
The second is to Vodafone, which should, as a matter of urgency, check all the data card bills it has issued since the flat-rate roaming tariff was introduced, and immediately credit all those customers who have been overcharged.

David Murphy
Editor

What's in a Name?

And so after an evening of good food and drink, good company and good insults, the winners of the mobilemarketing awards 08 can nurse their hangovers and look longingly at their gongs.
The insults came courtesy of comedian Bob Mills, the MC for the evening, who kicked off by admitting he knew less than nothing about mobile marketing, and then spent the next 30 minutes humiliating guests by running through the names of some of the companies represented at the awards: Golden Gecko, Rivers Run Red, Maverick Planet. And very funny it was too. It almost goes without saying that if you’re in the business of being creative, your company name will either be plain daft, or made up of the surnames of the five founding partners and hence virtually impossible to remember.
The event organisers say they would be happy to reinstate the associated conference if the sponsors would stump up the money. I, for one, hope they do. Vantage is less well known than some of the other conference organisers operating in the telecoms sector, but their two previous mobile marketing conferences were as good as any I’ve attended, and it was a real shame that all we had this year were the awards, staged in association with Vodafone and Yahoo!
But the awards are what we were there for, so here, in no particular order, are the winners.

Most innovative use of technology in mobile marketing – Nokia Ad Business for Vodafone ‘Shoot & Score’ campaign

Best use of content in mobile marketing – BBH for the Lynx ‘Get in There’ campaign

Best use of mobile in customer relationship marketing – No winner

Best use of mobile in brand building – BBH for the Lynx ‘Get in There’ campaign

Best use of mobile as part of an integrated campaign – Dare Digital for Vodafone Mobile Internet campaign

Best use of mobile in driving sales and revenues – No winner

Best use of planning and insight in mobile marketing – Aerodeon for Procter & Gamble mobile advertising effectiveness research

Best creativity in mobile marketing – Nokia Ad Business Vodafone ‘Shoot & Score’ campaign

Best new offering from a mobile services provider – Blyk

Mobile as a B-2-B tool – MindMatics for Drayton in Touch

Best use of mobile in events – Mobile Interactive Group for The O2

Grand Prix Award – Dare Digital for Vodafone Mobile Internet campaign

Agency of the Year – BBH

That last award may be a defining moment for the mobile industry, won not by a mobile specialist, but by a mainstream ad agency that is taking mobile seriously. Let’s hope it encourages more mainstream agencies, and brands, to do the same. In the meantime, our congratulations to all the winners.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 28

Another Monday, another month, and time for our usual look back over the mobile marketing highlights of the past few weeks.
This being March, the main event of the past few weeks was, of course, Mobile World Congress (MWC)  in Barcelona, which saw the entire mobile marketing industry – or what seemed like it at least – descend on that beautiful Catalan city for four days of briefings, demos, parties and foot-slogging its way round thousands of square metres of exhibition halls. It’s virtually impossible to sum up the show in a piece like this, but if you want to see our coverage, just use the Calendar function in the right hand side bar to see what we had to say. Our reports from MWC began on 9 February.
So what else was new? Not content with putting MWC together, Informa Telecoms & Media produced a report that painted a bright future for mobile social networking. The report concluded that concluded mobile social networking is now a global phenomenon, with expansion in all directions.
As if to prove Informa’s point, 3BILL, the mobile division of Symbios Group, revealed that it had bought  Profile Heaven, a UK social networking platform aimed at 15-24 year olds.
Bango launched Bango Analytics, aiming to deliver the mobile-focused web stats that the company believes are essential to understanding how people interact with mobile websites and which marketing campaigns are most effective.
Music services provider Shazam launched a Facebook application that enables Shazam users to access recent songs they have identified using Shazam’s mobile service on their personal Facebook profile, and share their favourite tracks with friends.
Mobile content portal Mippin teamed up  with blueapple.mobi, a direct-to-consumer mobile search and transcoding video delivery company, in order to add video functionality for its global community of users, delivering the millions of clips referenced in RSS feeds to mobile data users worldwide. 
And local mobile search provider mobilePeople introduced its liquid Advertising Suite, which aims to improve monetisation opportunities through the presentation of contextually and geographically relevant mobile advertising to mobile users.
Mobile TV company ROK Entertainment Group revealed the names of the first advertisers on its FreeBe TV service, including Cadbury Creme Egg, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment’s ‘24’ and Codemasters
Mobile agency Incentivated teamed up with 20:20 London to create a location-based campaign for Virgin 1 to promote its upcoming series ‘Terminators’, claiming that this is the first time such a campaign has been devised.
Voice-to-screen messaging company SpinVox announced the launch of SpinVox for BlackBerry, which enables Blackberry to receive their voicemail messages converted to text and delivered as an email direct to their device, allowing them to see who called and what they said, and then reply with just one click.
And professional network LinkedIn launched a beta mobile Internet version of its site for its 19 million members, promising a full release later in the spring. The beta is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese, with additional languages to follow.
It was triples all round at mobile interaction management company SNAPin Software, which announced a global deal with Vodafone Group to deploy its SelfService software as part of a global initiative to increase customer satisfaction, and grow customer loyalty.
And another company with reason to smile was ad-funded mobile games company Greystripe. It revealed the results of a two-month US ad campaign for Yahoo!’s oneSearch mobile web portal. The campaign generated an average clickthrough rate of 4.2%, which, the company noted, is considerably higher than the average rates for mobile WAP-based ads of 1-2%.
Just a few of the highlights from another non-stop month in the world of mobile marketing. If you want to stay abreast of all the latest moves, you know where to come.

David Murphy
Editor

Bacon and Texts

Congratulations to destination marketing agency Fox Kalomaski and mobile network O2 for an excellent 'Introduction to Mobile' breakfast seminar they laid on this morning. In fact, it’s still going on.
O2 Head of Interactive Nigel Dean gave attendees a 20-minute guide to mobile, outlining some of the barriers to adoption – it’s low on marketers’ agenda; the perception that it’s hard to deliver; poor understanding of the channel among agencies; previous poor results – before explaining how many brands are now using mobile, and outlining the opportunities that exist.
Dean ran through some stats on SMS and MMS usage, then went on to cover the mobile web, mobile advertising, and mobile barcodes and ticketing, including O2’s NFC (Near Field Communications) trial, currently taking place in London.
Dean was followed by tireless mobile expert and evangelist Helen Keegan, who gave her own informed take on how brands can and should use the mobile channel.
The key point about the seminar really comes down to the people attending. Whenever I attend mobile seminars and conferences, I am always keen to see how many client-side marketers are there, as this is a good barometer of the level of interest in the channel from the people who count – those with budgets to spend. I’m routinely disappointed at how few turn up.
Today, out of an audience of around 55, made up of agency people, network people and client-side marketers, around half were clients. I didn’t get sight of the full list, but Paddy Power, VisitDenmark and Thai Airlines were three of the brands I saw represented.
I imagine, though I don’t know for sure, that most of the brand marketers there were Fox Kalomaski clients, but who cares. The more client-side marketers not currently using mobile that get a chance to find out what they could be doing with it, the better, and on this basis alone, the event can be judged an unqualified success.

David Murphy
Editor

One Step Forward…

Sorry if this sounds like a demented rant, probably due to lack of food and sleep the last few days, but I just got my latest data card bill from Vodafone. The bill includes a period of a couple of days earlier this month when I used the card in Prague, safe in the knowledge that Voda had introduced a flat-rate tariff of £8.50 for any 24-hour period of use, provided that you don’t bust a 50MB/day fair usage cap. So if you add two lots of £8.50 to the £25 per month line rental, that comes to, £42, right? Er, no. According to the bill sitting on my desk, it’s actually £115.68, before the VAT.
A 10-minute phone call to Vodafone and the company admits it’s a mistake and will send a revised bill. But it’s just so predictably rubbish that one half of the company comes up with a great tariff to encourage data usage abroad, and doesn’t tell the bit of the business that sends the bills out. Or whatever the reason was. I dread to think how many other data card users will be experiencing the dreaded ‘bill shock’ when their next bill arrives. And how much time will be legitimately wasted ringing the call centre to sort it out.
Having just given the card a reasonable hammering in Barcelona the last few days, I’ll be interested to see what they come up with on the bill next month. So 10 out of 10 for the tariff. 10 out of 10 too for the way they sorted the problem out this morning. But did it really have to happen in the first place?

David Murphy
Editor

Heading Home

So we’re now sitting in the lounge at Barcelona Airport enjoying a hard-earned glass of wine and once again singing Vodafone’s praises for making it so cheap to use your data card abroad that we can file copy from airports, taxis and hotel rooms, without paying through the nose for wi-fi access and without worrying about what the next bill’s going to look like.
The general consensus on MWC was that it was good, it was big, but there were not really many groundbreaking announcements. Sure there were some cool handsets unveiled (see here for details) but beyond that, it was hard to get too excited. 
A couple of things have happened while we’ve been away. Firstly, Yahoo! officially rejected Microsoft’s bid for the company, saying it substantially undervalued the business. Secondly, and there’s nothing like timing, on Monday afternoon (EST) Blackberry users in the US and Canada found the service was down for around three hours. Three hours without your email on your phone. Can you imagine it? At least most of the US mobile marketing industry was by then safely ensconced in one of Barcelona’s many fabulous restaurants, blissfully unawareof the problems their colleagues were experiencing back home.
And finally, what did we say about timing? In between starting this piece and finishing it, we’ve received a message from mBlox and OnePoint Surveys containing what the companies call ‘Alternative Congress Stats’ for day 2 of the show. It’s so daft, we have to share it with you.
In no particular order, the stats reveal that on day 2 of the show, black was the predominant delegate hair colour (40%), closely followed by brunette/brown (37%), and blonde (10%). 15% of delegates are women, rising to 20% in Hall 7 for no apparent reason.
75% of respondents have more than one mobile, but alarmingly 2% left theirs at home. And as Valentine’s Day is approaching, mBlox and OnePoint quizzed delegates as to whether they had brought their partner to MWC, to which the overhwelming response was that the whole thing is stressful enough without bringing your partner.
Finally, the companies asked delegates how much coffee they had drunk today. 29% of respondents had drunk none, 30% had drunk between one and two cups, and even more, 40% had drunk between three and five cups. Who said market researchers (and mobile aggregators) don’t have a sense of humour?
If you want to take part in tomorrow’s survey, text MBLOX to 85001 from a UK mobile, or to 7606 from a Spanish mobile. They don’t tell us what the rest of the world needs to do to take part, but who cares. After two days wearing out the shoe leather at the Fira, a little light relief is just what the Doctor ordered.

David Murphy
Editor

Idle Talk

And so to Celltick, which specialises in so-called ‘Idle Screen’ advertising. According to VP Marketing Stacy Fassberg, we look at our mobiles around 30 times a day. Celltick capitalises on this by running ticker-style ads across the bottom of the screen. The company works with 25 operators around the world, and is particularly strong in South-east Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Operators make the final decision on whether they invite their customers to opt in to receive the advertising, or opt out if they are so bothered by it that they want to turn it off.
The one part of the world where Fassberg concedes the company has not so far had much success is Western Europe.
“I think the problem is there are so many companies who want to work with Tier 1 operators in Western Europe that the operators just get bombarded,” she says. So will 2008 be the year they wake up to the idle screen opportunity? “I think so, running through into 2009,” she says. “Mobile marketing is something no-one can afford to ignore. ARPU is falling, even data prices are falling, so operators need to change their business models.  They tend to like proof that something works before they will try it. Well we have the proof, though working with 25 operators around the world.”
According to Fassberg, consumers like the idle screen advertising approach. She says that more than 80% of consumers who are given the service by their network keep it. 35% click on the ads “regularly”, and there are an average of 10 transactions (clickthroughs) per user per month.
The company recently signed a deal with GroupM, which serves as the parent company to several WPP media agencies. The collaboration will see Celltick deliver eyeballs, while GroupM delivers the advertisers, in South-east Asia. All Celltick needs to do now is convince some of those European operators that idle talk can be a good thing.

Stranger Than Fiction

If you’re going to put on a show, at least have the decency to put it on somewhere worth visiting. The Consumer Electronics Show takes place every year in Las Vegas. Nice. The nearest Europe has to CES, called IFA, takes place in Berlin ever year. Also worth a visit. In years gone by, 3GSM, now to be called Mobile World Congress, used to take place in Cannes. More recently, it’s found a home in Barcelona. And Barcelona, at this time of year, is a sight to behold. It’s almost worth starting a mobile business just for an excuse to come. Let’s hope the organisers never decide to stage it in the UK, and face the choice of the NEC or Excel.
A word first about the organisation. On arrival at the airport, there was an MWC Information Desk telling me about the free shuttle bus running to and from the exhibition venue, the Fira. So far so good.
On visiting the Fira yesterday to get my press pass, I was given a Travelcard to get me round on the Metro and the buses for the duration of the show, together with login details for the free wi-fi. It hasn’t started yet, but already, I’ve got a good feeling about MWC 2008.
That feeling was confirmed on the underground when I read one of the articles in the Informa magazine included in the press pack. On 1 April last year, we ran a spoof story - in England, 1 April is known as ‘April Fool’s Day – about a dog you could control via SMS. Reading the magazine, I learned to my amusement that Swedish network Telia Sonera has started fitting SIM cards to dogs, in an attempt to counter the problem of the 15,000 dogs that go missing in Sweden each year. Stranger than fiction. If you’re reading this Telia Sonera, could you at least have the decency to stump up some money for the IP around the idea.
We’ll be spending the next couple of days running around the show, trying to pick up on as much of the action as possible. We’ll be filing copy as and when we get the chance, so Mobile Marketing Magazine won’t look quite the same for the next couple of days. We’re sitting on literally dozens of press releases, but for now, we just want to focus on bringing you as much of the news from MWC 08 as we can.
If you see us (we’re the ones blatantly wearing the ‘Golf Sale’ type T-shirts with the magazine’s URL emblazoned on the front and back), please feel free to stop us, swap cards/buy us a beer as you see fit. And if you’re at MWC and have some news you think we should hear, please email  it to the usual address. (See left-hand sidebar for details).
Enjoy the show.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 27

After a thankfully quiet few days between Christmas (remember Christmas?) and the New Year, the people who make the mobile marketing industry tick were back at their desks at the beginning of January, attempting to make things tick as much, if not more, than they did last year. So what's happened so far in 2008 that's worthy of note? Read on...
Zyb kicked things off in helpful fashion with the launch of a free service for people who received a new mobile phone at Christmas, enabling them to easily and securely transfer all the Contacts and Calendar information from their old mobile phone to their new one. Nice one Zyb.There was a lot of festive cheer kicking  around, in fact. Figures from Acision revealed that global SMS traffic over the 2007/2008 New Year period increased by 30% compared with the same period last year, as a staggering 43 billion text messages were sent from phone to phone by people wishing each other a Happy New Year or trying to establish which pub everyone was meeting in. It was a great start to the new year for mobile solutions provider 2ergo, which was handed a five-year contract for the provision of mobile marketing services by mobile network O2.
Elsewhere, the networks were under fire on several fronts. First, a study from research from  Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software revealed that churn within the mobile sector had risen from an already-bad 33.4% in 2005 to 38.6% in 2007. That, in case you need telling, is almost 40%, and is a shocking indictment of the mobile network's attitude to its existing customers. There may be some small signs of change, but come on guys, it's time to stop hiding behind those IVR systems; your customers are voting with their feet. To make matters worse, another study from price comparison website moneysupermarket.com found that the mobile networks were making more than £8.45 billion in revenue per year from customers on the wrong tariff. Moneysupermarket.com later revised  its figures downwards to £2.5 billion, but even so, that's probably still £2.5 billion too much. 
It wasn't the busiest month ever for new launches, but there were a few. Myxer launched a UK website housing a library of ad-supported digital content for mobile phones, while Huron PM unveiled Barcle.com, a free, mobile comparison-shopping service designed for use on web-enabled mobile handheld devices by shoppers in store. On the gaming front, mobile game developer Jump Games announced an exclusive global deal to design, develop and distribute mobile games with Manchester United Football Club, while mobile games portal Game Mobile launched the first weekly Top 20 mobile games chart.
All this, and we're only a few weeks into the new year. There's lots more to come, starting with a raft of announcements at 3GSM, sorry Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. If you're out there, keep an eye out for us. We'll be the ones running round like headless chickens trying to find a plug socket to keep our laptops alive.
In the meantime, check back soon for all your mobile marketing news.

David Murphy
Editor

Essential Maintenance

We have a little essential maintenance to do on the site over the next 24 hours, which may mean that the .com domain may be temporarily not visible to visitors using Internet Explorer. If this does prove to be the case, the .co.uk domain should be unaffected, so either switch to Firefox, Safari or your browser of choice, or use the .co.uk domain, for uninterrupted coverage of the mobile marketing scene.
With thanks in anticipation of your understanding.

David Murphy
Editor

Lighting Strikes Twice

Not so much lighting, actually, as common sense. Only last week, we were raving about Vodafone’s flat-rate data card roaming tariff, which enables Voda’s data card users to surf the web in 40 countries around the world for under £10 for 24 hours. Now we find ourselves singing O2’s praises on the tariff front.
In truth, the new tariffs unveiled today by O2 could not come quickly enough for those users sufficiently seduced by the iPhone to have signed up to an 18-month contract. At £35 for 200 minutes and 200 texts, the existing entry-level O2 iPhone tariff seemed to be designed more to compensate for the data revenue share with Apple, than to attract new customers. “If you’re one of those people that has to have an iPhone, then you’re just going to have to pay through the nose for it” seemed to be the logic. So the new tariffs are a vast improvement. 600 minutes and 500 texts looks like a lot more for your £35.
I was also pleased to see the introduction of a £1 a day flat-rate for occasional data users. As O2 rightly points out, this threatens to make bill shock a thing of the past. What I urge the company to do now is to shout it from the rooftops, with TV advertising, statement-stuffers, and whatever other means they have at their disposal. Because it’s one thing having access to a flat-rate tariff, another actually realising it and making use of it. Hopefully, some of those occasional users will like what they find on the O2 Active portal and beyond so much that they will sign up for the £7.50 a month bolt on, which will be good news for them, good news for O2, and good news for all those companies trying to make an honest buck out of the mobile web.

David Murphy
Editor 

Hats Off to Vodafone

I'm writing this in the foyer of a hotel in Prague, where I find myself on a press trip. The rates for using the hotel's wi-fi are fairly exorbitant, starting at around £20 per 24 hours for the slowest speed, and increasing if you want to go faster. But that's still cheaper than using a data card at  £4 per megabyte of course. Er, not any longer it isn't.
Vodafone, in fact, with whom I have a data card contract, have had a flat-rate tariff available on their data cards for some time, which enabled you to go online in several countries for a reasonable 24-hour fee, so long as you told them in advance where you were going and when you wanted it to start. But it's not one I have ever seen them publicise. I only found out about it by chance from a friend.
Then last week, as I was about to ring them to tell them about this trip and get the flat-rate tariff, a letter arrived informing me that from now on, I could use my data card in around 40 countries around the world for a flat fee of under a tenner for each 24 hours, subject to a fair usage limit of 50MB of data in any 24-hour period.
It's only a few days since we ran a story saying that the average churn rate for UK mobile networks is a approaching 40%, which is a quite staggering figure if you stop to think about it. Vodafone's data card initiative looks suspiciously like a case of common sense breaking out. Someone at Vodafone has clearly sat down and worked out that the way things were, no-one will use their data card abroad unless they really have to because they know they will get completely and utterly stung, even if there's a company picking up the tab. So rather than rake in the odd few hundred quid every now and again from someone who either has no choice or doesn't know better (with the associated damage to the brand when the bill arrives), they have obviously decided to make it a) easy and b) affordable for their customers to use their data card when they are abroad.
The result? People like me and thousands of others with Vodafone data cards who find themselves out of the country on business a few times a year or more will now use their data card rather than the hotel's wi-fi to get online. Vodafone makes another 20 or 30 quid out of me every time I go abroad on business, but guess what, I couldn't be happier about it.
If the mobile networks really want to do something about churn, they need to start paying as much attention to their existing customers as they do to those they are trying to lure from other networks. Voda's flat-rate roaming data tariff suggests they may finally be waking up to this fact.

David Murphy
Editor

Winning Hearts and Minds

Just out of a very useful meeting with Chris Astle from mobile company m-send. The company is three years old but has kept a pretty low profile until now. As Astle explained, the reason for this is that it has been busy building its platform, ‘The Messaging Platform’, and proving the business case for mobile with its clients. Having done so, Astle told me, m-send is now ready to take its light out from under that bushel.
Astle ran me through a few examples of the company’s work. For fleet hire company Lex, it is providing a service which tracks the mileage of Lex fleet cars for a couple of Lex clients. It also tracks the car’s service requirements, and maps this to the mileage, in order to alert the company and the driver when the car is due for essential maintenance. It also uses dedicated keywords such as CRASH and TYRE, tied to a shortcode, so that in the event of an accident, or a bald tyre, the driver can get details of his or her nearest approved repair centre without having to call a call centre.
m-send’s work with Good Hair Day is also designed to reduce call centre volumes. Good Hair Day styling products are only available through professional hair salons, and traditionally, 62% of calls coming in to the company’s call centre have been from consumers wanting to know where they could go to buy the company’s products. A message on the IVR system inviting callers to text the word SALON to 81025 to get this information has reduced the pressure on the call centre so successfully that the company is now also promoting the shortcode through press advertising in women’s magazines. For HBOS, meanwhile, m-send is using mobile to filter job applicants based on a series of questions to identify core competencies, enabling the HR department to fast-track the most suitable applicants.
Much of this work has come from m-send pitching the company concerned and explaining how mobile could do a job for them. In almost all cases, Astle told me, clients have been amazed to hear someone trying to convince them that mobile could help do things like reduce call centre volumes or weed out unsuitable job applicants. Having proved that it can, Astle says m-send is now looking to show clients how mobile can be used for customer retention, cross-selling and up-selling. He also told me that on the odd occasion where it could see no useful role for mobile, m-send has had the good sense to say so.
What impressed me about the applications Astle demonstrated to me was not so much what I saw (though that was very good) as what I heard. It’s the thinking behind the work that caught the eye. There’s more to mobile than text & win, and mobile specialists who take the time to win the hearts and minds of sceptical clients and show how mobile can help in unexpected places deserve all the new business they get.

David Murphy
Editor

Don't Mention the 'P' Word

And so to The Hospital, not because I'm ill, but because that's the trendy London venue where the Mobile Marketing Association has chosen to release the results of its ‘Mobile Attitude and Usage Study’ for five markets in Western Europe.
The MMA has conducted similar studies in the US and Asia Pacific, which were released in Q4 2007, but this was the first European study. Like the previous studies, it was conducted by Synovate, a global market research firm, on behalf of the MMA, and is available, free of charge, to all MMA members. The study will be repeated annually.
Presenting the results, Synovate Director, Telecom & Technology, Ian Maggs, said the study had been designed to establish who is doing what with their mobile phones, and the degree to which they would be prepared to be marketed to on their mobile devices. The results, he said, clearly demonstrated mobile marketing's considerable potential. 
The study surveyed 1,535 participants in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain online, and, the MMA says, provides actionable insights into the region’s consumer mobile usage by demographic group and awareness. The report also identifies usage of mobile phone features and services, and interest in and concerns about specific applications.
The study found that one in 10 mobile users in the Western European markets is highly interested in mobile marketing, while another three in 10 indicate moderate interest. This level of interest translates into an overall growth opportunity for mobile marketing, the MMA believes. MMA President Laura Marriott told Mobile Marketing that she did not have comparative figures to hand from the other studies, but her recollection was that these figures were higher in the US.
Italian and Spanish consumers are most interested in mobile marketing. Over half of all users in Italy and Spain are at least moderately interested in mobile marketing and similar proportions express potential to opt in.
2-way text messaging is the most important mobile feature across all age groups. The ability to send and receive SMS was at the top of the list for all age groups except teens, for whom it ranks second to camera functionality. Across the Western European markets surveyed, seven in 10 have experience with text messaging, with the most text-savvy consumers in Italy and Spain. Over half of all users surveyed use SMS at least weekly and 37% are daily users. Daily use is most common among 13 – 24 year olds.
Western European consumers are poised for an increase in mobile marketing, the study found. 15% of all consumers surveyed have had some experience of mobile marketing. Mobile phones are almost universal, and most phones are equipped to receive mobile messages. More than half use text messaging at least weekly, and seven in 10 are familiar with the technology.
Interactive voting, receiving ads and product or service information are the most common applications of mobile marketing. 18 - 34 year olds have the highest rate of participation in mobile marketing efforts. However, age is not strongly predictive; interest levels are similar across ages 13 - 54.
Across all regions surveyed, mobile coupons, status alerts about accounts/purchases and special sales have greatest appeal. Over half the users have increased data usage to some extent in the past year, compared to just under half of the respondents reporting an increase in voice usage.
Richard Saggers, MMA EMEA Chairman and Head of Mobile Advertising, Vodafone Global Services, said the study confirms that mobile users in Western Europe already appreciate mobile marketing and have a desire to opt in to receive relevant product and services. He said:
“These results indicate Italy and Spain are significantly advanced users of mobile, and already have the most experience with mobile marketing and are therefore more likely to participate. At least 60% in all age categories surveyed have experience with text messaging, indicating a big opportunity for marketers.”
Marriott said she believes that Western Europe represents a significant opportunity for mobile marketers. She said:
“One in three consumers surveyed indicated that their mobile phone is highly important to them and they are very dependent on it. With consumers acknowledging their mobile is always on them, brands need to begin integrating mobile into their marketing campaigns ASAP. Clearly, mobile is proving its potential value as a marketing tool.”
In his preamble, Saggers said the MMA would continue to focus on education, evangelisation and communication in 2008, in order to build awareness of and confidence in the mobile channel. As part of this process, he announced that the next MMA Forum would be staged in the UK, which he described as: “a key market in this region”. He also said it was significant for the mobile channel that over the past 18 months, several specialist mobile agencies have been bought up by mainstream agencies, including the big boys like Publicis and WPP.
Saggers and his colleagues at the MMA had an extremely busy and productive year in 2007. Based on what we heard today, it looks like being equally busy in 2008, and that can only be good news for everyone. Who knows, by this time next year, we might even be in a position where we can stop talking about mobile marketing's potential and celebrate its arrival in the mainstream. 

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed – Part 26

A slightly different round-up this month. First up, the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that we’re a day early. That’s because we’re not looking back at the events of the past month, but of the past year, and in true ‘Review of the Year’ style, we’re doing it on the last day of the old year, rather than the first day of the new one.
What we’ve done is chosen one story from each of the past 12 months that we think throws some light on how the mobile marketing sector is developing, in an attempt to paint a picture of a typical year in the world of mobile. So if you’re sitting comfortably, we’ll begin…
Back in January 07, mobile ad marketplace AdMob reported that it had served no less than a billion mobile web ads in the previous six months. The figure compared favourably with that of 30 million ads for the six months prior to that, and no doubt made a few people sit up and look at mobile advertising a little more seriously.
February saw the mobile marketing industry decamp en masse, as usual, to Barcelona for 3GSM, and we took the opportunity to sit down and talk at length to Anil Malhotra, VP, Marketing & Alliances at Bango, one of the original mobile marketing pioneers. It was six years since Bango had launched its Bango Numbers concept, and while that failed to catch the imagination, it was great to hear how the company had re-invented itself and retained its position on the mobile marketing front-line.
In March, mobile Internet site developer Wapple launched Wapple Canvas, a DIY kit for building mobile websites. There are a few of these around now, and a number of automatic solutions that create a mobile site from a website’s RSS feed, but Wapple Canvas was the first that came to our attention, and remains one of the best.
In April, there was further evidence of the automotive industry’s enthusiasm for mobile when car maker Mercedes-Benz  appointed mobile and web engagement company Ymogen to create, implement and manage all its passenger car mobile marketing and communications in 2007.
There’s something about mobile that the automotive industry likes, and when you have brands like Mercedes-Benz retaining an agency to run mobile campaigns, that’s got to be good news for the whole industry.
May saw the launch of Google Maps for the mobile phone. This looked like a killer app from the moment we first saw it, and half a year later, nothing has happened to change our mind. The joy of being able to get off a train or a bus in London with a vague idea where you’re going and pull up a detailed map on your mobile to help you navigate the last half a mile has to be experienced to be believed. You’ll never hunt for that dog-eared A-Z again.
In June, UK recruitment company Head Resourcing introduced what it claimed was the world’s first mobile-based recruitment service, HEADMobile. Users download a small Java application to their mobile phone, and can then get instant access from Head Resourcing to the latest listings in their sector, which can be viewed and forwarded to friends.
What we liked about this was the fact that it’s one more thing you can do with your phone. For all the hype about mobile advertising, we still firmly believe that useful everyday applications are what will get the great unwashed to start using their mobile for more than calling and texting. Once they get in the habit of doing so, it’s a slightly shorter leap of faith to expect them to start surfing the mobile Internet and clicking on the ads they see there.
Talking of useful applications, July saw the launch of a ‘Text a Tradesman’ service. The service, provided by Problem Solved, the UK directory of recommended and vetted tradespeople, and delivered by mobile agency Incentivated, enables consumers to text the name of the required service (e.g. PLUMBER) followed by their postcode, to a shortcode, to receive a message with the contact details of three reliable local tradespeople. Or you could just dig out the local paper and take your chances…
Once again, there’s nothing mind-blowing about this service; it’s just another good, common sense mobile application, and that’s why we like it.
On a less encouraging note, later the same month, Virgin Mobile announced that its Virgin Mobile TV service was to be pulled, following BT’s decision to axe its Movio service, which provided the bandwidth for the Virgin service. Proof if any were needed that you shouldn’t trust the phrase: “Build it and they will come” or anything else you hear in the movies for that matter.
In August, mobile email company Emoze unveiled what it claimed was the first true push mobile email service for Gmail users worldwide. Emoze made a lot of noise about its mobile email solutions in 2007, and no doubt will make a lot more in 2008. A lot of people still associate mobile email with one particular family of devices, but Emoze, and others, are on a mission to prove that there’s more to life than a Blackberry.
One of the most significant launches of the year came in September when Blyk, the world’s first ad-funded mobile network, went live. The concept is simple: agree to receive a couple of ads a day on your phone and you can have free talk time and texts. User numbers are still pretty small, and it’s too early to say what the future holds for Blyk, but the company certainly talks a good game, and the idea of targeting ads to self-profiling consumers is an interesting one. It will be interesting to see where Blyk is nine months from now, a year after launch.
October saw the Information Commissioner''s Office decide to update its guidance for marketers on the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. The updated guidance removed Bluetooth from the list of communication methods that require the user’s opt-in permission, opening up mobiles everywhere to a wave of Bluetooth marketing campaigns, or spam, depending on your point of view.
I can’t say I have noticed a massive ramp up in Bluetooth activity since the decision – maybe I don’t hang around the right bus shelters – but I did go through a period of a few days where I couldn’t walk through Waterloo Station in London without getting a message from Bose, which did start to annoy me,  the second time it happened.
Last month, the Internet Advertising Bureau made its first serious move into the mobile space, with the formation of a dedicated Mobile Council, and a raft of other initiatives, including the first joint industry report: ‘Mobile Advertising: the Emerging UK Market’, produced in partnership with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). The IAB has been a prime mover in driving online ad revenue growth. Its entry into the mobile space should be wholeheartedly welcomed.
Finally, earlier this month, mobile search and advertising solutions provider Medio Systems announced the availability of its performance-based Medio MobileNow Ad Network to advertisers and mobile publishers in the UK and beyond.
So mobile advertising, as at the beginning of the year, was in the news at the end of it. It’s where the hype is, and where some of the money is, thought perhaps not as much as everyone involved would like. Will 2008 be the year that mobile advertising becomes mainstream? Who knows, but if you want to find out, you know where to look…
A very Happy New Year to all our readers. Check back on Wednesday when we’ll resume our coverage of the mobile marketing ecosystem.

David Murphy
Editor

Signing Off

That’s it for this year folks. We’ll be back on 1 Jan with a round-up of the past 12 months, or maybe just all the stuff that comes in between now and then, we’ll play that one by ear. Then we’ll take up our keyboards in earnest again on 2 January and focus once more on bringing you all the latest news and moves from the world of mobile marketing. For the next few days though, we’ll be focused mainly on mince pies and wine.
We’d like to thank all our readers for your continued support and the completely unsolicited comments we get from time to time saying how much you enjoy the site. If you enjoy reading our coverage of the mobile marketing world half as much as we enjoy bringing it to you, then you must be having a great time.
Thanks too, to our advertisers, without whom the site could probably still function, but we wouldn’t eat much. We wish them, all our readers, and anyone else who has stumbled across us today, a very merry mobile Christmas and all the best for 2008.

David Murphy
Editor

What You (may have) Missed - Part 25

It’s 4 December, and as regular readers will know, on the 4th of every month (OK, it’s usually the first, but what with the hype around the iPhone and the hassle of trying to track down a Wii, we, er forgot). Anyway, better late than never, so enjoy this last round up of the year of all that’s been happening in the mobile marketing space these last few weeks.
The big news of the month was the launch of the iPhone in the UK. Not since the days of The Beatles, or at least the launch of, well, the iPod, have the UK’s retailers seen such feverish activity on the High Street, with eager consumers queuing round the block to get their hands on Apple’s latest toy. We hear that the handset is not flying off the shelves in quite the same way it did in the States, where it sold a million in the first 12 weeks, but at least it’s getting the ad agencies excited about mobile, and that can’t be a bad thing.
Google’s response was not the much anticipated G-Phone, but instead, Android, which Google and its partners, who include T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm and Motorola, say is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.
In fact, “response” might not be the right word, as Android was announced a few days before the iPhone launched in the UK. In any case, response is not something Google seems to be much good at. Once again in November, we approached the company’s UK PR division in the hope of getting Mobile Marketing Magazine registered on Google News Alerts. Once again, they forwarded our request to the big cheeses in the States. Once again, that was the last we heard of that. Still, at least they continue to send us their press releases, so at least they acknowledge our existence and appreciate/expect the coverage…
On a brighter note, Trinity Mobile announced that it was powering a mobile ticketing service for one of the UK’s largest nightclub chains, The Syndicate, while mobile agency MediaBurst was behind a mobile voting service at this year’s Northwest Football Awards Dinner. Mobile technology has also been deployed in an innovative way at Kew Gardens for an exhibition of sculptures by Henry Moore. We’re constantly amazed here by the clever stuff people do with mobile. Long may it continue.
Also last month, mobile media measurement company M:Metrics launched what it claims is the first competitive tracking service for mobile advertising, M:AdTracker, while Bango unveiled the Bango Button, which makes it easy for anyone publishing a social website, media sharing site, forum or blog to make their content available to mobile phone users worldwide. 
The Mobile Marketing Association announced the results of the Third Annual Mobile Marketing Awards. Winning brands included Toyota, adidas, Nike and the Parisian underground system. Another awards ceremony, this one the 2007 IMA (Interactive Marketing and Advertising) Awards, saw Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) and O2 honoured for 'Best use of Mobile' for the ground-breaking interactive mobile services at The O2. And finally on the awards front, Sony Ericsson announced the launch of the inaugural Sony Ericsson Content Awards, which are designed to recognise the “outstanding achievements” of the company’s existing content development partners, and underscore its commitment to forge and strengthen its relationships with the global, third-party mobile content creation community. Winners will be announced on 18 December.
By that point, we’ll probably be tucking into the mince pies and sherry, but until then, stay tuned for all that’s happening in the non-stop world of mobile marketing.

David Murphy
Editor

Trial no Error

Thank goodness for O2. While some mobile networks seem to have gone backwards in recent years, O2, thanks to some astute marketing and consistent branding, looks nothing like the crusty old behemoth it once was. Today’s announcement of a 6-month NFC (Near Field Communications) trial in London shows that the company has substance, as well as style.
I’ve been travelling up to London quite a bit recently and often find myself alighting at Goodge St. Underground station, where there are no escalators, just lifts – or the staircase, if you’re feeling brave. As I stand in the lift listening to the fizz and crackle of other people’s iPods, watching the other passengers rummage in bags and pockets for their ticket or Oyster card, while doing the same myself, it has occurred to me more than once that putting the ticket on the phone would make perfect sense. Now, it seems, O2, working with Nokia, Transport for London, and a range of other partners, is trying to make it happen. Given the music capabilities of many modern handsets, it may not be long before all you need to get round London on public transport, complete with musical accompaniment, is your phone.
The reason I’m so excited about this is not simply that it makes it a bit easier to get around town and gives you one less thing to misplace. It’s the reach of a campaign like this that I like.
People involved in the mobile business quite naturally get excited about some of the mobile applications and services out there. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people use their phone to talk and text, and wouldn’t know a mobile ticket if it slapped them in the keypad. But an application like a mobile Oyster card, that could potentially be used by millions of people travelling around London every day, puts the intelligent application of mobile technology in front of a huge audience, and can only help to advance the cause of everyone involved in mobile marketing, ticketing, commerce, whatever.   
Here’s hoping the trial is a success, and that the sight of Londoners waving their phone over the Oyster card reader to gain access to tube stations is soon a familiar site.

David Murphy
Editor