Mobile Marketing Issue 10, June 2012

Issue Ten | June 2012

News | Views | Analysis

MIDDLE MANEKTRON’S TOM WENTWORTH ON

PUTTING MOBILE AT THE CENTRE OF YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY

CHARITY CASEHOW THE THIRD SECTOR IS

EMBRACING MOBILE

CASHLESS SOCIETYGETTING READY FOR MOBILE MONEY

ANGER MANAGEMENTHOW ROVIO TURNED ANGRY BIRDS

INTO A MOBILE SENSATION

GET RICH QUICKTAKING RICH MEDIA MOBILE ADVERTISING MAINSTREAM

MACHINE HEADSTAKING MOBILE CONNECTIVITY

BEYOND THE PHONE

FULL DETAILS ON OUR BRAND NEW EVENT INSIDE…

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com www.mobilemarketingmagazine.comJune 2012

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Editorial director: David Murphy – [email protected] +44 (0)7976 927 062 Commercial director: John Owen – [email protected] +44 (0)7769 674 824Business development manager: Richard Partridge – [email protected] sales director: Shelley Dowsett – [email protected] +44 (0)20 7183 5308 Sales executive: Lisa Slavin – [email protected] +44 (0)20 7183 5285Editor: Andy Penfold – [email protected] +44 (0)7824 645 995Staff writer: Alex Spencer – [email protected] +44 (0)20 7183 5925Contributors: Rob Buckley, George Cole, Helen Keegan, Rene Magri, Rob Thurner, Mike ZarrilliDesign and production: Alistair Gillan, AQ2 Mobile – [email protected]: Advent Print Group [email protected] thanks this issue to: Jo Murphy, Rowan Chambers, Alistair GillanFor a paid subscription please email: [email protected] One Year Subscription Rates – UK: £30.00; ROW: £40.00Mobile Marketing is published by Dot Media Ltd., 114-116 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AH www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Here at Mobile Marketing,

mobile technol-ogy has been the centre of our world for some time. But mobile is fast becoming central for people other

than hacks working in the technology industry – and therein lies the huge opportunity for marketers and people working in other industries.

You only have to look at this issue – our 10th – for proof. In our cover interview (p.30), Ektron’s Tom Wentworth puts for-ward a compelling argument for brands scrapping the digital marketing rulebook and placing mobile at the centre and start of all their marketing activity.

Elsewhere, you’ll find evidence of mobile conquering more real-world fron-tiers. On p.22, we investigate the machine-to-machine (M2M) phenomenon, looking at how the world is moving on from the concept of the smartphone, to that of the smart device – whether that’s a phone, a fridge, a TV, or a vending machine.

Charities can use mobile to engage people with their work in a personal way that’s just not possible with other market-ing (p.12). And the payments industry, for which mobile has been a technologi-cal enigma for years, is on the cusp of embracing smartphones fully and bring-ing mobile payments to the masses (p.6).

Less serious, but no less lucrative, Rovio has proved with Angry Birds that if enough mobile consumers like your prod-uct and your brand, you can be very suc-cessful indeed. We talk to the company’s CMO about the brand’s next steps.

Issue 10 also sees us welcome mobile expert Russell Buckley as our new colum-nist (read his account of his experiences investigating mobile in China on p.17). Add Mr Buckley to the ever-insightful Helen Keegan (p.50), and a host of guest voices from across the mobile industry and around the world, and Mobile Market-ing 10 shapes up to be an essential read. We hope you enjoy it.

Andy Penfold,

Editor

If you want to be sure of receiving your copy of the print edition of Mobile

Marketing four times a year, you can subscribe today to go on our controlled

circulation list. It costs just £30 (UK); or £40 (rest of the world). To take out a

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Subscribe today and guarantee your copy

Cover story

30 Mobile at the CentreTom Wentworth, CMO at digital strategy company Ektron, on mobile-centric marketing

Thought leadership5 Weather With You

The Weather Channel’s Mike Zarrilli on the company’s mobile roadmap

17 Buckley On…Our new columnist Russell Buckley checks out the Chinese mobile market

35 Aggregate ScoremBlox GM Rob Malcolm explores the evolution of A2P messaging

50 Off-Deck Helen Keegan salutes the FT’s

approach to mobile

Technology6 Payment Plan

Mobile payments are edging ever closer to the mainstream – is 2012 the year?

Business models12 Mobile in the Third Sector

How charities can use mobile for fun-draising and supporter engagement

26 Angry MobRovio on how Angry Birds became the hottest brand in mobile gaming

43 Wide Angle View

Henric Ehrenblad of ad network Widespace on the premium model

45 That’s Rich from InMobiHow mobile ad network InMobi has embraced rich media advertising

47 Upwardly MobileInsight from Propel’s study into sala-ries in the mobile services industry

The real world18 Get Rich, Quick

How rich media ads are helping mobile rival TV when it comes to consumer engagement with brands

22 Rise of the MachinesWhy consumer devices could be the next frontier for M2M comms

Best practice10 It’s Awards Time!

Entries for the 2012 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are now open – find out how to enter here

32 Mobile Marketing LiveBook your place at our essential new event slated for 1-2 October – MM Live!

36 Campaign ShowcaseWe check out three of the best apps to take on your travels

38 Winning with AppsRob Thurner of the Mobile Training Academy explains where apps fit in to the marketing mix

Issue Ten | June 2012


MIDDLE MANEktroN’s tom WENtWorth oN

puttiNg mobilE At thE cENtrE of Your mArkEtiNg strAtEgY

ChArIty CAsEhoW thE third sEctor is

EmbrAciNg mobilE

CAshLEss sOCIEtygEttiNg rEAdY for mobilE moNEY

ANGEr MANAGEMENthoW roVio turNEd ANgrY birds

iNto A mobilE sENsAtioN

GEt rICh QUICKtAkiNg rich mEdiA mobilE AdVErtisiNg mAiNstrEAm

MAChINE hEADstAkiNg mobilE coNNEctiVitY

bEYoNd thE phoNE

FULL DETAILS ON OUR BRAND NEW EVENT INSIDE…


Mobile presents unique opportunities when it comes to weather. Consumers

demand localised, up-to-the-minute data, and they need that data to help them make all kinds of decisions.

At The Weather Channel, we recognised these opportunities early – we believe mobile is the route to becoming the worldwide leader in weather. We launched our first mobile website in 1999, following the launch of weather.com in 1996 and building on the company’s foundations as a cable network, which began in 1982.

Already, our mobile platforms in the US attract 32m unique monthly users, ranking fifth behind Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and MSN/Windows Live/Bing, so we’re heading in a very positive direction.

Outside of the US, the UK market is vitally important to us, due to smartphone penetra-

tion, cultural interest in weather and the advanced advertising industry.

In addition to the UK and Western Europe, we are looking to fuel this growth through global partnerships with handset manufac-turers, operating systems and portals, and our plans encompass South East Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Global potentialSouth East Asia is a promising territory because mobile penetration and access to the internet via mobile is high and continues to grow. Furthermore, in many cases the mobile platform is the sole internet access point. China recently surpassed a billion mobile users and India is poised to do the same, so the global potential is enormous.

We take a localised approach to weather delivery. Our data is tailored to be cultur-ally and locally relevant to specific markets – it’s important that weather content is both global and hyperlocal. Weather affects virtually everyone in the world, but it affects everyone differently based on their specific location and lifestyle.

The approach is to build a standalone global brand, maximising partnerships and opportunities for The Weather Channel app to be distributed and promoted globally. We recently announced a global partnership with Nokia, for example.

In the US we reach 153m people across TV, mobile, and web properties every month. This is more than half the US population. 109m of them access our content through more than one platform. We have 56m

unique visitors on the web each month and 12m per day.

Mobile is the clear digital growth platform globally. Cisco’s projection of more than 10bn smartphones and Tablets by 2016 – more mobile devices than people on the planet – is yet another sign for us that the future is on a global scale.

Going hyper-localTwo thirds of the world’s mobile users want to be found so they can receive targeted information – anything from movies to sport – and of course weather data. Users want to be found so that they can receive targeted content and advertising based on geo-location, behaviour or weather conditions. We can offer an advertiser timely access to consumers’ planning and decision-making processes.

When people are searching weather condi-tions, there is a highly relevant opportunity to put an ad in front of them based on their location, searched location, the current weather conditions or the forecast.

For example, we recently ran a winter-themed advertising campaign for British Gas on weather.com that contained live temperature and location data in real time to reflect and respond to live weather conditions and create deeper, richer brand engagement.

We are one of the biggest location-based companies in the world with a content set that is highly relevant. The mobile platform allows us to be everywhere for our users, delivering useful data and relevant, helpful advertising.

weather with you

5thought leadership

the weather Channel’s international VP, Mike Zarrilli, explains how the brand has approached the opportunities presented by the mobile platform

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com www.mobilemarketingmagazine.comFebruary 2012June 2012

The Weather Channel’s mobile apps offer highly localised information – so the company’s mobile ad proposition can reach consumers with relevant, localised marketing messages

technology6


When it comes to mobile pay-ments, you’d be forgiven

for thinking the future might have arrived by now. Mobile payments have been touted as the next, imminent revolution-ary use for your mobile phone for a couple of years, and as an emerging technology for even longer than that.

So why the hold up? Why are we not zapping our mobile phones all over town to pay for the goods and services we buy? The answer is complicated, but after numerous false dawns, the industry now appears to be gearing up for a mobile pay-ments revolution.

Part of the apparent slow progress has been down to the fact that the market is a sprawling web of companies working on various innovations in various sectors. Near Field Communications (NFC) contact-less technology tends to take the headlines, but to take mobile payments mainstream, you need point-of-sale technologists, device manufacturers, credit companies and banks, and mobile operators all on board. Not to mention the hun-dreds of companies developing payment apps.

“What we’re seeing at the moment – which is lots of dif-

ferent providers developing lots of different services – isn’t necessarily what we’d expect to see over the long term,” says Richard Martin, head of innova-tion at the Payments Council. “Ultimately it will be the con-sumer who decides which ser-vices flourish and which fall by the wayside. It’s such a competi-tive space it’s hard to imagine that customers won’t continue to enjoy lots of choice.”

Competitive is the right word. Anyone who is anyone seems to be making their play in the mobile payments space, from established mobile ad networks like InMobi, to startups such as

the Carphone Warehouse-backed Mobile Money Network. And in recent months, the competi-tion has intensified, as more major players have revealed their hand. Big names such as MasterCard, Visa, Google, and numerous operators are just some of the companies that have recently laid down their ideas to bring mobile payments into the mainstream.

The next few months will see both MasterCard and Visa trial major shakeups to their pay-ment infrastructure to accom-modate mobile, while Google and ISIS have trials running in the US already.

payment planSummer 2012 is shaping up to be a watershed moment for mobile payment technology. andy penfold reports on the imminent arrival of mobile money

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Olympic effortVisa is leveraging its sponsor-ship of the 2012 London Olym-pics to trial its mobile payments solution, payWave – a move that will surely raise awareness among consumers of mobile payments. Ordinary punters at the Olympics won’t be able to use the NFC terminals, though – the trial is limited to athletes and other VIPs (who will be kitted out with a limited edition Samsung Galaxy S III). These devices will be the only phones on Earth with the Visa payWave app installed. After the Olym-pics, and assuming the trial goes to plan, Visa says it will start to roll out payWave services to con-sumers by the end of the year.

“The global partnership we have with Samsung is helping us to create the technology and drive the availability of commercial mobile payments around the world,” says Caroline Hawkett, VP of innovation at Visa Europe. “The Olympic phone trial is a showcase device designed to demonstrate the full

potential of mobile payments at this unique global event. We are also working with mobile network operators and our member banks in a number of different countries to accelerate commercial availability, so that consumers can access the Visa mobile payment service.”

Demonstrating the poten-tial of mobile payments is a key point in terms of driving takeup. For vendors, embracing mPayments means investment in new kit, while consumers have a tentative enthusiasm for the idea of mPayments. On the one hand, their mobile phone is the central item in their life and they demand to be using it in all areas of life. On the other hand, they are uneasy about security.

“We’ve all grown accustomed to relying on our phone for more than talking and texting,” says Tom Gregory, head of digital payments at Barclaycard. “Many of us rely on them for everyday tasks such as checking emails, organising our social lives, and keeping up to date with current affairs. It is our belief that we’ll all be using them in the future for paying for things.”

However, the industry does have a job on its hands to convince consumers to embrace mPayments. “There is always fear with new services,” says Hwan Chung, CEO of eCommerce and mCommerce company Danal CS&F. “When the ATM deposit feature was

first introduced, consumers were wary of making deposits because they were worried about the risks involved. The same was also true for online banking. Consumers are clearly still uncomfortable being asked to re-send personal payment data via perceived insecure channels such as mobile web and mobile apps, so the industry needs to be doing its utmost to assure them that the payment method is secure. It is a constant balancing act between security and ease of use that must be carefully managed to minimise against breaches but ensure the tool is not so hard to use that it puts people off signing up.”

Standard issuesThis points towards the develop-ment of standards, and several efforts have been made to do

just that. MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet, announced in May at the CTIA trade show in New Orleans, is a wide-reaching effort to standardise mobile payments. As well as a consumer front end that will allow for one-click online purchases and NFC mobile payments, it also offers a digital wallet that will support any credit or debit card, and APIs for partners to create their own branded digital PayPass wallets.

“This product is the perfect fit for an internet payment solution but also for physical stores,” says Jean-Noel Georges from analyst company Frost & Sullivan. “The other good point is the possibility to use differ-ent devices for payment (such as the Tablet or mobile phone) by using a single infrastructure. MasterCard is a little bit late in

Following the trial at the Olympics, Visa says its payWave app will be available to consumers before the end of 2012

“the industry needs to be doing its utmost to assure consumers that

the payment method is secure”hwan chung, danal cs&F

Olympic athletes and VIPs will be able to trial mobile payments on a limited edition Samsung Galaxy S III at Games venues this year

the race compared to Google, O2, PayPal, Visa et al, and a little late in terms of strategy. But the product fits the market expectations perfectly in terms of security, reliability, flexibility and ease of use.”

UK network operators have also got together to work on a

standardised mobile wallet system. ‘Project Oscar’, a col-laboration between Vodafone, O2 and Everything Everywhere was announced in June 2011 – much to the chagrin of Three.

However, Project Oscar now has more than Three’s out-of-joint nose to worry about – the EC has announced that it is to investigate the venture in terms of competition regulations. The investigation will delay any roll out of cross-network mobile wal-let schemes.

Mark Beccue, senior analyst on mobile money and NFC at ABI Research, says this is a stumbling block that the US market hasn’t had to worry about. “The US market for mobile payments at physical retail is advancing faster than the UK’s, thanks to the regula-tory challenge of the EC,” he says. “Otherwise, the two markets would be even.”

But while the hold up puts the UK ‘behind’ the US in terms of roll out, industry

response has been mixed. “The news that the European

Commission is to delay plans for a mobile phone payments platform will come as a disap-pointment to a number of tele-com operators,” says Richard Britton, MD at cloud-based enterprise solutions company, CloudSense. “However the delay is necessary to ensure the long term success of mobile wallet schemes, and will have a posi-tive impact on UK business.

“Before consumers embrace a new way of paying and start swiping phones instead of credit cards, it is imperative that all operators sign-up to a common set of protocols that allow for mobile payments to be used across a range of industries. Banks, merchants, wireless carriers and phone manufacturers all need to come together and commit to one platform that provides a secure payment architecture for mobile payments to truly take off.”

Danal CS&F’s CEO Hwan Chung disagrees. “Many in the industry believe that until there are standards and agreed

technology8

June 2012

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 was the first phone from RIM to boast an NFC chip

“the olympic phone trial is a showcase device designed to demonstrate the Full potential oF mobile payments at this unique global event”caroline hawkett, visa europe

The lack of NFC-capable handsets on the market is often cited as a barrier to adoption of mobile payments. However, Frost & Sullivan analyst Jean-Noel Georges argues that this could be overstated.

Noting that most newly launched phones will be NFC-ready, he says: “We estimate that in France, Sweden and the UK, sales of smartphones already account for more than half of total handset sales. Germany is also exhibiting astonishing growth. According to Bikom, almost 12m smartphones were sold in 2011. We believe that in 2012 the sales of smart-phones could total around 55 per cent of the handsets sales.”

ABI Research analyst Mark Beccue says consumers in developed markets such as the UK and US generally “turn over mobiles in less than two years”, which puts a two-year marker on mass adoption. However, he mentions one phone giant that has so far been silent on the matter – Apple. “New iPhones could accelerate [adoption] if they have NFC, but generally it will take some time to get NFC-equipped mobiles in the hands of enough consumers,” he says.

The Handset Conundrum


Should Apple build NFC into a future iPhone model, it could accelerate take-up according to some analysts

June 2012

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processes in place, the high number of different payment technologies and industry par-ticipants means that the roll-out and adoption of mobile payment services will be slow,” he says. “Historically however, standards have proved too sluggish to keep up with the fast pace of tech-nological change in the mobile industry, and are out of step with consumer demand.

“However well-intentioned, Project Oscar will probably be no different. Far from wait-ing for standardisation of the mobile payments market, we should be looking at ways we can eliminate the need for col-laboration, so that the mobile phone can be used to make a payment of any kind, using any payment method, limited only by the user’s preference. This would allow consumers to receive the benefits of the tech-nology now, rather than years down the line.”

Consumer benefitThe perception of consumer benefit is a key factor in driving adoption, too. There is the sense in some quarters that NFC is technology for technology’s sake, with more benefits for marketers wishing to use it to gather data than for consumers.

“The technology is ready, cer-tified and approved,” says Frost & Sullivan’s Jean-Noel Georges. “The problem for a mass adop-tion is the benefits that end-user consumer may have. For most users, the advantages are not visible. This is a new service, but it’s a ‘nice to have’ at best. Mobile payment players should find a way to attract end users – with coupons, special prices or real added services.”

ABI’s Beccue says mobile operators and financial institu-tions are licking their lips at the opportunities presented by mPayments.

“With the exception of fast food merchants and transit players, other merchants are less interested in the speed of payment enabled by NFC and more interested in ‘payments plus’ opportunities – a chance to develop rich, customised offers and loyalty programs and enhanced in-store shopping experiences – such as expedited customer service or enhanced product information,” he says.

And from a marketer’s point of view, intelligent use of these capabilities will benefit consumers as well as brands. “Operators, banks and technol-ogy providers are all invest-ing heavily in this channel to open up new revenue streams but there is a distinct lag in end-user adoption,” says Danal CS&F’s Chung. “Part of the problem is that the options being offered to consumers at the moment are too limited. Operators are asking end users to set up mobile wallets so that the CSP can leverage their exist-ing relationships.

“Over the next few years I think we’ll see that the most successful services are those that not only strike a careful balance between ease of use and security, but make life a lot simpler for the consumer. After all, at its heart, mobile payment should be primarily about convenience.”

“the us market For mobile payments at physical retail is advancing Faster

than the uk’s, thanks to the regulatory challenge oF the ec. otherwise, the two

markets would be even”mark beccue, abi research

payTag – Stick to What You Know


The Barclaycard PayTag is essentially an NFC chip in a sticker. The idea is that you stick it on your phone to create an NFC-ready phone without upgrading.

“Barclaycard predicts that by 2016 more than half of contactless transactions in the UK will be made with a phone – however at the moment only a small num-ber of mobile phones allow you to do this,” says Tom Gregory, Barclaycard’s head of digital payments.

“We have recognised that there is likely to be a large number of our customers who want the convenience of

mobile payments but do not want to trade in their cur-rent handset at the moment or who are waiting for differ-ent handsets,” he says.

ABI Research analyst Mark Beccue says the move is more about getting customers used to contact-less payments. “PayTag is a chance to gauge con-sumer interest in advancing contactless,” he says. “A contactless sticker could be stuck to anything, including your forehead, and work. I don’t consider it ‘mobile payment’ unless it interacts/leverages a mobile phone’s capabilities via an app.”

The PayTag offers contactless payments by sticking an NFC chip to a handset

For more information, head for www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/awardsAny queries, address them to: [email protected]

IT’S AWARDS TIME

•20 categories

•Global competition

•No entry fee

•Multiple entries allowed

The 2012 Effective Mobile Mar-keting Awards are officially

open for business. As ever, we are looking for the most effective mobile marketing campaigns and solutions on the planet, across 20 categories.

This year, there are three new categories: Most Effective Mobile Affiliate Campaign/Solution; Most Effective Mobile Augmented Reality Campaign; and Most Effective Mobile Search Campaign.

As ever, our judges will be looking for hard evidence of suc-cess, whether that’s in increased signups, sales, awareness, or whatever objectives the cam-paign or solution was tasked with meeting.

And what a panel of judges it is. Once again, we have recruit-ed the best and brightest minds in the business to help us assess the entries, including Russell Buckley, the leading practitio-

Campaigns at the ready – it’s time to get your entries in for this year’s Effective Mobile Marketing Awards


best practice10

A selection of last year’s winners (l-r): Flexion, Rippl and The Guardian


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ner, speaker and thinker on mobile and mobile marketing; mobile specialist and Mobile Marketing contributor Helen Keegan; Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and founder of Mobi-leGroove; Stuart Dredge, who writes The Guardian’s Apps Blog; Jon Mew, head of mobile at the Internet Advertising Bureau; and Andy Favell, editor of mobithinking.com. To name but a few.

The Awards Ceremony takes place on 29 November at the London Film Museum. Before that, though, there’s some hard judging to be done, and one or two entry forms to be filled in. As in previous years, there’s no fee to enter, entries are welcome from anywhere in the world, and you can enter a campaign or solution in more than one category, if appropriate. Head for www.mobilemarketingmaga-

zine.com/awards to enter today.

Award Sponsors

Categories for the Most Effective:

Mobile Application – b2c

Mobile Application – b2b

Tablet Application

Mobile Advertising Campaign

Mobile Advertising Platform/Network

Mobile Affiliate Campaign/Solution

Mobile Augmented Reality Campaign

Mobile Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign

Campaign from a Mobile Operator

mCommerce Solution

Mobile CRM/Enterprise Messaging Campaign

Location-based Service/Campaign

Mobile Search Campaign

Mobile Couponing or Barcode Campaign

Mobile SiteMobile Charity Campaign/Solution

Mobile Ticketing Solution

Mobile Payment Solution

Mobile Publishing Solution

Mobile Travel & Tourism Solution

Entry Deadline 10th August


business models12

Mobile in the third sectorhow is the charity fundraising industry taking advantage of the mobile channel? Alex spencer investigates

if you’re wondering to what extent the third sector is using

mobile as a fund-raising tool, you only have to look around you the next time you’re on public transport for the answer. Posters with SMS calls-to-action are everywhere. And by all accounts, they’re very successful too (see Christian Aid Engages Mobile Users Outdoors, p14).

“SMS remains an important mechanism for charities,” Save the Children’s strategic innovation manager, Joe Mor-rison, tells Mobile Marketing. “There is still potential to increase our ability to reach new donors through this estab-lished and well-understood channel, as well as using it to deepen our relationship with existing supporters.”

But is SMS the only way that the mobile channel can be worked into charities’ fundrais-ing strategies? Not according to Macmillan Cancer Support, which created a mobile site in 2011, and has developed both promotional and enterprise apps. As with any organisation, as a charity sees more and more people coming to it via mobile, it gets harder for them to ignore it as a fundraising and promo-tional channel.

That’s a large part of the reason Macmillan was so quick to create a mobile site. “Macmil-

lan recognised very early on that they were getting a lot of hits from non-PC devices,” says Phillip Clement, sales director of mobile web and app company Bemoko, which developed the charity’s mobile site. “But the drop-off rate was quite high, and they understood the user journey wasn’t a good one.”

Since the launch of its mobile site, Macmillan has seen mo-bile’s share of web traffic shoot up from 10 per cent to 24 per cent – with traffic to the mobile site accounting for 11.5 per cent of total traffic.

User journeyIt’s clear that some charities, at least, are thinking strategically when it comes to mobile – and given their limited budgets in comparison to, say, retailers and banks, it could be argued that it is imperative for them to do so. But, for budget-conscious organ-isations, why risk spending money on the mobile channel, which is arguably less proven than more traditional channels such as online and even, for the third sector, direct mail?

In terms of collecting dona-tions, mobile’s direct calls-to-action are priceless – it’s easy to see the value of donors being able to make an immediate text donation the moment their heartstrings are pulled. Macmil-Marie Curie takes to the streets – but the cancer charity also leverages mobile


13

June 2012

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lan sees “very high levels of people making calls to our Sup-port Line directly from the site, or leaving it to make text dona-tions”, according to Andy Nash, digital media project manager (mobile) at Macmillan.

“It also grants us access to two hard-to-reach audience segments,” Nash adds. “Younger people, between 15 and 34 – a group that is quite active in terms of fundraising challenge events, for example – and the economically challenged; those people without a computer in

the house, but who do tend to have a mobile phone.”

Added to this, mobile remains the most personal of channels. For charities, that means the chance to build relationships, which can then be revisited.

“The hardest thing is to get someone to give,” says Bemoko’s Clement. “The next hardest is to keep them and get them to give again. Mobile gives charities the chance to remind donors on a regular basis, we’re still here, still doing good things.”

One of the most successful mobile donation campaigns of

recent times was organised by mobile aggregator OpenMarket, working in partnership with the Disasters Emergency Committee to raise money for those affected by the floods in Pakistan. The campaign has, to date, raised £1.5m on mobile alone, and deservedly took the award for the Most Effective Mobile Char-ity Campaign/Solution at last year’s Effective Mobile Market-ing Awards.

High rewardsA fantastic result, but according to Andrew Darling, associate director of marketing and com-munications at OpenMarket, that’s not even the best part: “A few years ago, charities were worried that SMS donations would stop people giving in other ways,” he says. “But, inter-estingly, it didn’t cannibalise the other streams at all.”

The SMS donations didn’t just draw new donors in – they also attracted additional donations from some of those already giv-ing by direct debit. “The success of that campaign certainly laid to rest any remaining scepti-cism as to whether texting works as a fundraising mecha-nism,” says Darling.

Digital agency Profero, meanwhile, received a Highly Commended in the category for its work with Marks & Spencers and Oxfam on the One Day Wardrobe Clearout, which asked customers to recycle old clothes in return for a money off voucher. Banner ads informed people about the event, but also asked if they’d like to have a re-minder placed into their iPhone calendars – a perfect application of mobile’s unique properties.

The week-long campaign gen-erated over 3.5m impressions, and reached over 422,000 unique users. Of the 35,000 that clicked through, 73 per cent consented to having the event added to

their calendar. Overall, 400,000 pieces of clothing were donated, and Oxfam raised over £1m in a single day – a tremendous effort.

The breadth of approaches to mobile giving shows that there’s no one solution for charities looking to use mobile. Like the rest of the industry, it’s still growing and evolving, and it’s encouraging that charities acknowledge that fact.

“I don’t think any digital journey, mobile or other, has an end,” says Laila Takeh, head of digital engagement at UNICEF UK. The aid agency is cur-rently working on optimising its main site and donation pages for mobile, and launched its first mobile campaign – Speak Up for Children – in 2011. This combined a mobile site, SMS gateway, and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) phone line, and was promoted via mobile ads.

“Specifically with mobile we know there’s more to explore,” says Takeh. “We’re changing the way we work so that mobile is always considered in our approach to projects. We want to be there when our supporters want us, where and when it suits them – so mobile is an obvious choice for us.”

Earning trustWhile charities continue to evolve their mobile strategies, there are plenty of learning points, challenges, and obstacles. Trust is a common concern. For most charities, the ‘product’ is intangible, and that requires a leap of faith from donors.

Macmillan’s website now gets 24 per cent of its traffic from mobile devices

third sector in Numbers

2Percentage of the £2.9bn donated annually to charity that’s given online

£10,000At it’s peak, the amount OpenMarket’s DEC campaign was raising every second

62 Percentage of non-profit organisations that don’t know how to market via the mobile channel, according to a market survey from Kaptivate

58Percentage of 18-24 year olds that expressed interest in using their mobiles to give to charity, according to research by the Charities Aid Foundation. However this age group makes up only 7 per cent of donations on the JustGiving platform

£10.6bnAmount raised by the 28m Britons who make charitable donations every year

56Percentage of the UK adult population that donates to charity in a typical month

8percentage of the population that contributes 47 per cent of total charitable donations

“we’ve got to act now to make giving a central part of how we consume and use technology” david erasmus, givey

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com June 2012

business models14

“Some people are sometimes concerned as to where their donations are going. Some may think that the operators are taking their cut, without faith that the charities are getting 100 per cent,” says Darren Daws, managing director of Textlocal, a mobile messaging firm that works with over 60 charities, including Marie Curie Cancer Care, Christian Aid and St Richards Hospice. This isn’t the case, however, as UK operators started covering network and third-party costs themselves in 2010.

The third sector is, of course, affected by many of the same

issues and pitfalls as any other in mobile. In fact, they might even be more vulnerable, as they lack the infrastructure to move over entirely – and in some cases don’t want to. As Bemoko’s Clement points out: “Shaking a tin under someone’s nose in a shopping centre is still more likely to get people to dig into their pockets, as opposed to a poster with a QR code. There’s going to be a long crossover pe-riod – they can’t stop doing what they’re doing and just switch over; they have to do it all.”

It should come as no surprise that transitioning operations into mobile isn’t easy for chari-ties. But what about organisa-tions designed with mobile giving in mind from the ground up? David Erasmus, founder of mobile giving plat-form Givey, says that should be the aim.

Charity reinvention“Our action won’t be seen im-mediately, but in five, 10 years,

when cash, cheques and direct debits start dying out, then the inability of some charities to in-novate and reinvent themselves will show itself,” says Erasmus, whose Givey ‘central giving platform’ ties together SMS and Twitter-based mobile donations into a single account.

“What I’ve realised is that a truly mobile attitude is about identity,” he says. “Mobile is about you, it’s your personal de-vice, and when you give through carrier- or bill-based methods, that’s not integrated with the rest of your life. They offer a bit of ad hoc giving here and there, but it’s not joined up.”

Initially, Erasmus and his team built an iOS app, called Get Giving, which enables one-click donation for users. It was blocked due to Apple’s issues with in-app donations, but Erasmus says this was a blessing in disguise. Givey eschews a single approach, letting users make donations by sending a text or tweet including

SMS was used successfully as a call-to-action for donors in Christian Aid’s Nets Now campaign. Following a couple of tests in June 2010 with print ads in The Independent, The Guardian and The Telegraph, Christian Aid rolled out a third phase in March 2011, which moved to outdoor advertising – placing posters on trains and in motorway service station toilets. “At that stage we were the only charity in there,” says David Conway, supporter engagement manager at Christian Aid. “And we basically cleaned up.”

The campaign has seen 35,000 responses. The charity gets in touch with 50 per cent of those, and converts 10 per cent of those they contact to regular payments, averaging £80 a year. “It’s one of the few exercises that saw a positive ROI in year one, at least in the washrooms,” Conway adds.

Christian Aid has also been able to go back to those who don’t sign up for regular

donations, in one-off circumstances such as the East African Food Crisis in July last year, with an average 5-7 per cent success rate. “Mobile is definitely the most significant recruitment and fundraising device that we’ve come across. There’s an immediacy in how people react to an SMS, it’s an emo-tional response and that’s what makes it so powerful,” says Conway. “But it’s just a mechanic. Without a strong proposition, it won’t work, whatever the medium.”

The Speak Up For Children campaign was UNICEF UK’s first on mobile, and brought together a range of digital mediums and technologies

“i don’t think any digital journey,

mobile or other, has an end”

laila takeh, unicef uk

christian Aid engages Mobile Users outdoors

the name of the charity and the amount they want to give, which is then charged to their PayPal account. Givey accounts can also be tied into Facebook profiles, and there are plans to expand into further channels.

“My mantra is we’ve got to act now to make giving a central part of how we consume, and use technology,” says Erasmus.

That point, at least, certainly isn’t one in contention. Mobile is the future, and everyone in-volved wants to make sure chari-ties don’t fall into the past. “We have to keep pace with society and learn to evolve,” says Save The Children’s Morrison. “For example, if initiatives like Pin-git and technologies like NFC re-sult in less people carrying cash, we need to find ways to enable our volunteers and staff to col-lect donations in ways that are relevant to supporters. Charities owe it to their cause to evolve with the times, otherwise the public will naturally gravitate away from them, towards those that are able to keep pace.”

The Nets Now campaign encouraged consumers to donate to buy mosquito nets in areas where malaria is prevalent

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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17thought leadership

Mobile marketing expert (and our new columnist) Russell Buckley reports on the burgeoning mobile marketing scene in China


I’m on a fact-finding tour of China at the moment – basically, I’m having a look

around and meeting people. It’s clear from the outside that China is a big opportunity, so I wanted to explore it a little for myself. Here’s some first impressions if you want to find out a little more about the “riddle wrapped in an enigma”, with the added complexity of the Great Firewall.

I’m going to start with the obvious. Yes, China is big. With over 1.3bn people, it’s the biggest country in the world, with about four times the population of the US and 20 times the UK. It’s a very mobile-centric market too and that’s only going to accelerate. China has just passed the 1bn subscription milestone, though many people have multiple phones, so it’s not accurate to use that figure to reflect market penetration. In contrast, landline penetration is in freef-all and currently stands at less than 300m.

My preconceptions of China, gleaned from the media, were of an “emerging market” in a fairly oppressive society. I’d read about the success of the middle classes, but had assumed that it was a small elite. But that’s not my impression having spent a few weeks in the country.

I ought to add at this point, that I’m not being given some sanitised tour. It is true that I’ve only been to Shanghai, Beijing, and Zhejiang province – all in the most progres-sive and wealthy areas. They’re not going to be representative of all of China and I’m not suggesting that they are, just putting my impressions into context.

Luxury society China is a vibrant, successful and sophis-ticated place. Great infrastructure (roads, rail, airports and hotels), cars in abundance

(including many ultra-expensive ones such as Bentleys, Rolls Royces, and Ferraris) and many consumer goods on sale ranging from the basic up to high-end luxury. If you hang around, say, a Louis Vuitton store, there’s a steady stream of ordinary looking people coming out clutching as many bags as they can carry.

So if you’re thinking that China is a fairly basic place with some future poten-tial, think again. The future seems to be here already. If you moved here, you’d enjoy a lifestyle akin to that of the US – not some hardship posting.

One trip I made was to the province of Zhejiang, generally one of the wealthiest and progressive provinces. I met with mem-bers of the local government and had a tour of the tech park that they’re building. When complete in a few years, it’ll provide housing and offices for 700,000 people – about the size of the UK’s second city, Leeds, or just

February 2012

smaller than San Francisco. And not only are they building a new town that size, it is just devoted to tech businesses.

The Great Firewall On the downside, there is no Twitter, Face-book, or YouTube, and Google only works intermittently (for me anyway). While the local equivalents Weibo, Tencent and Ren-Ren do exist (and locals are just as addicted as we are) they are censored and can go offline if something controversial happens.

Otherwise, mobile marketing practices are remarkably similar and on a par with the best of the West. SMS marketing is in decline, mobile advertising is rampant and highly competitive, branded apps are big and many brands are building mobile websites.

For app developers, the story is less inter-esting. Nearly all paid-for apps are pirated almost immediately and eCPMs are low, mak-ing it hard to generate advertising revenues.

In the last 20 years, many western com-panies have lost billions investing in China, but the business climate that caused this is changing. Many more are doing very well today – especially those in a luxury con-sumer goods industry. My view is that any company with any kind of consumer focus has to consider China as a serious market and I’ll certainly be continuing to study it very closely. You should too.

“China iS a vEry mobilE-CEntriC markEt, anD that iS only going to aCCElEratE”

June 2012

BuCkley On ...

ChIna

If you think hiking the Great Wall of China is hard, try getting around the infamous Great Firewall

Mobile Marketing Live - Taking Mobile Marketing to the World


the real world18

If you haven’t seen a mobile ad in the last 12 months, then

you probably don’t know what a modern mobile advertising campaign looks like. Gone are the days of the static display ad, when advertising on mobile meant being restricted to a small thin banner which, if you clicked on it, might lead to a mobile-optimised site, if you were lucky.

Because while this type of advertising still exists, brands now also have the choice of deploying a new type of mobile ad unit – something broader, sleeker, and more engaging. Something richer.

Click on a mobile ad today and any one of a number of things

could happen. It could lead to an image carousel, video content, a map, or even an entire bespoke game. It could initiate a phone call, place a diary entry in your calendar, or generate a ‘Like’ on a Facebook page. It could even do more than one of these things. All of which is great news for advertisers, who can now use mobile to deliver the same sort of rich engagement experience that they’re used to delivering online, and on TV.

As a result, mobile advertising is no longer the exclusive domain of mobile content

companies and handset makers. The, er, richness of rich media mobile advertising has attracted the attention of brands – and creatives – who once wouldn’t have been seen dead working on mobile. Today you’re just as likely to see an ad for a car, a beer or a movie on mobile, as you are for a ringtone.

“When Celtra got involved in rich media advertising, a couple of years ago, we looked at what was available on mobile and thought, we should be hoping for a little more than this,” says Jonathan Milne, general manager, Europe at Celtra, which builds rich media mobile ad units. “When you have that

Mobile advertising is growing up, and the consumer experience is getting richer in the process. Alex Spencer investigates

get rich quIck

Rich media ads offer a greater level of engagement between the consumer and the advertiser brand


19

rich touchscreen interface, the medium offers a much bigger and better opportunity.”

Smartphone catalystThe growth of rich media mobile ads started, as is so often the case in mobile, with the first smartphones – in particular the first iPhone in 2007, and the popularisation of apps and touchscreens that followed. The launch of the App Store a year later saw the amount of potential ad inventory – and the number of eyes on it – rocket.

As the number of platforms and app stores increased, however, the issue of fragmenta-tion reared its head. It’s likely to be a familiar story to anyone involved in mobile marketing – the range of non-standardised SDKs available led to inconsis-tency between publishers, and limited measurability.

In response, platform-agnostic standards were developed – first ORMMA (Open Rich Media Mobile Advertising), and now the IAB’s MRAID (see MRAID Raises Standards).That’s not the end of the story, though.

“There’s no one ad that can run everywhere,” says George

Dixon, mobile and digital media manager at Mediacom. “There are still problems with standardisation, especially in terms of tracking and ad-serving – we have to wait to get reports from the publisher, so most of the time you’re wait-ing a day to pull a report. As an industry, we should have learned from digital advertis-ing’s mistakes a lot quicker.” And MRAID? “As I understand it, it’s still a work in progress.”

But all in all, rich media mobile advertising has undoubt-edly gone mainstream. Rich media ad units are now sup-ported by virtually all of the major mobile ad networks. A recent report from mobile ad network Mojiva showed a 235 per cent spike in impressions for rich media ads between Novem-ber 2011 and January 2012. The continued growth of the apps market increases the amount of available inventory and, together with adoption of the mobile web, drives the number of impressions into the billions.

Rich media, rich dataWhile rich media ads might be more expensive to create and

serve, it seems that there’s an increase in the ROI to match the price tag. Ad network Greystripe recently found that full-screen ads – which rich media can deliver through expandable banners or interstitials – earn five times as much revenue as standard banner ads.

According to Smart AdServer, rich media banners see an aver-age 8.9 per cent clickthrough rate (CTR) – 22 times that of a standard mobile banner, and 68 times that of an online ban-ner. And the audience that can be reached via mobile is, of course, huge.

“It’s now probably fair to say that most big apps draw in larger audiences than TV shows,” says Paul Childs, CMO at mobile ad network Adfonic. “That’s an established base of users which will only increase.”

Numbers like that make for a pretty convincing argument. But rich media ads offer a much wider selection of data to be played with than simply clickthrough rates. Depending on the exact content of an ad, a peek at the analytics might be able to tell you what users did in the ad, how long they spent with it, where and when it was

“Most big apps draw in larger audiences than tv shows. that’s an established base of users that will only increase”paul childs, adfonic

Engaging Results – Two Mobile Rich Media case StudiesVampire WeekendPop band Vampire Weekend saw impressive results from a rich media ad campaign to promote its Contra album. The ad, which featured on the NPR app, drove multiple levels of engagement. 26 per cent of users viewed the video, while 23 per cent shook the phone, which changed the video content. 18 per cent viewed details of the album, while 4.5 per cent clicked through to iTunes.

True BloodThis campaign promoted the start of season three of vampire TV drama True Blood. The ad delivered more than 1m impres-sions, and achieved an 11 per cent engagement rate. Viewers spent an average of 20 seconds with the creative, and 9 per cent of viewers clicked to watch the preview video. The campaign also generated significant buzz in social media and ad circles.


the real world20

accessed, and whether they came back and interacted with it again later on. These metrics are beginning to attract more attention, as they represent a user’s engagement with an ad – and it’s here that rich media ads can truly excel.

“If it’s done right, with creative intelligence, and uses some unique functionality, like LBS [location-based services]or accelerometers to engage the consumer, there’s the opportu-nity for much deeper engage-ment than a standard banner ad,” says Mojiva CEO Dave Gwozdz. “If you understand the consumer and the device, rich media ads can be an extremely rewarding experience.”

Of course, it’s not a guarantee – as Gwozdz points out – “you pick apart any campaign, rich or not, and there’s 20 reasons it does or doesn’t work” – but a well-handled rich media ad tends to hold the attention of a user much more closely.

Take for example Mobext’s in-app campaign for Volvo, promoting its S60 Sedan. The ad presented users with a video clip and an option to click through for more content, including an interactive model

of the car. 3.91 per cent of users chose to access the additional content, and those who clicked through spent an average of one minute with the ad.

Quantative to qualitativeRich media also provides brands with an opportunity beyond the initial interaction with the con-sumer – an On Device Research

study on behalf of Sparkler and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) found that participants shown an expandable banner were 25 per cent more likely to remember rich media advertis-ing than a static ad. These kinds of metrics are much less tan-gible than mobile’s traditional dependence on CTR; they repre-sent a move towards softer and less directly measur-able concepts of success, like brand awareness. In fact, they’re closer to the way ads are evaluated in other media – such as television, for example.

“Mobile ads need to take a step towards telling more stories and giving consumers more of an emotional experience,” says Scott Seaborn, mobile tech-nologist at full-service agency Ogilvy. “TV, as a medium, is very emo-tional. Rich banners are very interactive – they offer a direct response: ‘Click me for a test drive’. Whereas TV can say: ‘Buy this car and you’ll get laid’. That’s why brand dollars go

that way – brands want to tell stories and get people to love the brand.”

Rich media, if handled right, offers the opportunity to take mobile ads into that space. Where banners have tradition-ally been about broadcasting a message to consumers, the best

Volvo’s rich media campaign for the new S60 Sedan achieved an average of one minute’s ‘playtime’ when consumers engaged with the ad

In August 2011, the IAB, in partnership with On Device Re-search, carried out a study on a John Lewis mobile ad campaign. Using a live clearance sale campaign, man-aged by Manning Gottlieb OMD

for the department store, half of the 1,000 participants were

shown a static display banner, and half an expandable rich media ad.

Roughly two thirds of both groups found the ad they saw initially eye-catching, with rich media proving only marginally more successful in this regard.

In terms of consumer recall and awareness of the brand, however, the rich ad saw much better results. Those shown the expandable ban-ner were 25 per cent more likely to remember the advertising than those

that saw the static ad, and the rich ad gave a 30 per cent uplift to unprompt-ed brand awareness.

The rich media ad proved to have a stronger effect on those in the 18-34 and over 45 demographics, as well as men, who were just as likely to recall the static ad than women, but 45 per cent more likely to recall the rich media.11 per cent of all consumers, though, said they found the rich media ad annoying – nearly double that of the non-rich ad.

John Lewis Brand Benefits on Mobile

This Starbucks ad, used to promote the coffee shop’s Signature campaign, enabled users to draw on the cup using their finger – and followed it up with a gallery of signatures and video content


21

rich media mobile ads move towards engaging them in a dialogue with the brand.

“With a rich media ad, you can engage an audience physi-cally – through touch – and emo-tionally. The way you do that is using innovative ad formats and features,” says Celtra’s Milne. “The consumer has a high expectation for their experience on a smartphone, where they’re used to cool apps. If we can meet that expectation, then the brand can deliver a much better perception to consumers.”

Creative inspirationThe opportunities rich media ads have started to unlock have attracted the attention of more and more creatives, who might have been previously turned off by how restrictive the mobile format can be.

“The real estate from a standard advertisement is very small,” says Ogilvy’s Seaborn. “The most volume is about 10-20 characters of text, and a logo – you can’t do anything from a creative perspective.”

Such a limited format doesn’t offer much chance for creatives to get, well, creative. Rich

advertising, by contrast, pro-vides more space to breathe – once opened, an ad can encom-pass almost endless space, and the full range of media. Rich media ads are, as Adfonic’s Childs puts it: “a blank piece of paper for you to do what you want with”.

With the opening of more creative shops specialising in mobile, that means more talent being aimed at the medium. And if that in turn raises the bench-mark for what’s being done on mobile, then it could be the answer to mobile marketing’s biggest concern.

“The real challenge that’s left to solve is brands becoming more serious about wanting to reach a mobile audience,” says Celtra’s Milne.

That’s the most exciting opportunity rich media ads provide, for everyone who’s spent years evangelising mobile’s potential as a mar-keting medium – to draw in everything great about mobile, from location-based targeting to touchscreen interactivity, and beat online and television at their own game.

“Rich media mobile adver-tising combines the best of all channels – the emotion of TV, the quality of press and the social and interactivity of digital, all combined with the power of physical touch,” says Mark Brennan, head of mobile at media agency Carat.

Rich media mobile ads, then, are cooler, smarter, and more engaging than the traditional mobile display ad, but with all the accountability that makes digital marketing so appealing to advertisers. Many mainstream brands have already seen the light and are mining rich media mobile ads for all their worth. For those that haven’t yet, the question surely has to be: What are you waiting for?

MRAID Raises Standards

Rich media advertising has been a somewhat fragmented space up until now. “There’s an issue with mobile where it moves so quickly that no-one wants to stand still and worry about polishing the foundations, and getting it right,” says James Chandler, head of mobile at Mindshare. However, with its MRAID (Mobile Rich-media Ad Interface Definitions) initiative, the IAB

has tried to overcome issues of standardisation by defin-ing a common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media ads.

“The problem was that there were loads of SDKs, and each was written in a different way, meaning that each ad would have be rewritten again and again for each publisher. That’s a lot of unnecessary leg work,” says Amit Kotecha, IAB senior mobile and networks manager. “What MRAID is doing is defining a common language for rich media mobile ads, across those SDKs.”

HTML5 and JavaScript rich media ads written to the MRAID specification will run across all apps from any compliant publisher. And, even as the number of com-panies applying MRAID 1.0 is growing, the IAB has been working on its successor.

“MRAID 1.0 was kind of the starting point,” says Kotecha. “The MRAID 2.0 document brings in standards for if you’re using audio and video, a device keyboard, or location-based functionality, and a range of screen sizes.”

At the time of writing, the standards are undergoing a month-long process of public comment, where ad servers and networks have the option to raise any issues, before launching officially – but that’s still not the end of the line.

“Any further changes we need, we’ll make them as we go along,” says Kotecha. “With these documents, they’re always works in progress.”

This Celtra-created rich media ad for Pepsi Max featured an animated banner, which could be expanded to watch the TV ad, or purchase and download the Calvin Harris single which appeared in the ad


22

In the US, owners of Ford Focus Electric cars can down-

load an app onto their smart-phone that lets them ‘manage’ their cars. They can check the battery charge level, locate the nearest charging station, plan journeys, receive alerts when the charging process is not work-ing correctly, and even remotely lock or unlock the car doors.

The MyFord Mobile app is an example of what many see as the next big development in the mobile world: M2M or machine-to-machine communication. At its most basic, mobile M2M involves using a wireless con-nection to transfer data from one device to another, where the data can be displayed and analysed.

“M2M has been around for a long time,” says Gilli Coston, head of M2M at Telefónica UK (O2). “But in the past, it was about connecting things that were effectively dumb, like energy meters. It’s also essen-tially been a B2B phenomenon – but not any more.”

All the pieces are in place for an explosion in mobile M2M. Millions of smart mobile devices are now in the hands of consumers, and mobile broadband is widely available. Many services are now based in the cloud, and advances in technology mean that sensors and wireless modules can be crammed into smaller and smaller devices – Tablets,

eBook readers, digital cameras, televisions, and digital photo frames for example. Sony’s PlayStation Vita portable games console even offers optional 3G connectivity.

“The ‘internet of things’ is coming together,” says Kim Bybjerg, Vodafone’s head of M2M, Northern Europe. “In three to five years, our homes will be full of connected devices – M2M is going everywhere.” Mobile M2M also opens up new ways of connecting with customers, and could become a powerful mobile marketing tool for manufacturers, brands and retailers. Imagine get-ting instant feedback from the user of your product or the purchaser of your service, and being able to engage with them.

The Swedish business intel-ligence company Berg Insight estimates that M2M devices currently represent 3 per cent of worldwide wireless connections, although this figure is closer to 10-15 per cent in some advanced markets, like Japan. “There are around 30m connected devices in Europe, and we expect that figure to grow by 20-30 per cent on an annual basis,” says Tobias Ryberg, the company’s senior

analyst. “The volumes will be in B2C and B2B2C markets, and a lot of this volume is being driven by the automotive sector.”

Motor cityIn the US, General Motors’ OnStar service uses a wireless module (which can be built into a car mirror) to provide drivers with numerous services and information, including roadside assistance and automatic crash response (if your car is involved in an accident, a call to the emergency services is automati-cally activated). An app, OnStar RemoteLink, provides smart-phone users with information such as the amount of fuel left in the tank and the tyre pressure, as well as the ability to remotely unlock doors, switch on lights and sound the car horn. Other car manufacturers, including BMW and Mercedes-Benz, offer similar M2M features on their premier models.

Marc Overton, vice president wholesale and M2M for Every-thing Everywhere (the company behind the Orange and T-Mobile brands), says his company is focusing on a handful of M2M vertical markets – logistics, automotive, consumer con-

Rise of the machInes

the real world

Mobile is the perfect platform to take machine-to-machine (M2M) communication mainstream. George cole reports

“in three to five years, our homes will be full of connected devices – m2m is going everywhere”Kim bybjerg, vodafone


23

nected devices, energy (such as smart utility meters), plus health and well-being. Mobile M2M could touch almost every aspect of our lives, from being able to defrost the car wind-screen from our bed on a cold winter’s morning, to enabling a doctor to monitor our health remotely (and send advice back

to us on our smartphone), and from tracking our pet’s move-ments to using smart meter data to reduce our energy bills.

We’ll also encounter mobile M2M services and products on the street: Everything Every-where and Nokia Siemens Networks have demonstrated a smart vending machine, which

uses NFC (Near Field Commu-nication) short-range wireless technology to enable consum-ers to pay for items with their smartphone – and then tell their friends on Facebook where they are and what products they’ve just bought.

Pricing optionsThe potential for mobile M2M is huge, but there are challenges for mobile operators. “We are at an early stage and the busi-ness models are not clear,” says Ryberg. “For example, if you’ve got lots of connected devices in the home, you don’t want to pay a subscription for each of them.” But mobile operators have developed new business models for mobile M2M, which are designed to help the market grow.

Vodafone for example, has developed a SIM card that can be switched on and off by the device manufacturer, allowing the cost of connectivity to be built into the price of the prod-uct. “This is already happening with eBook readers,” says Byb-jerg. “When you download an eBook, you are using a wireless connection, and the price for this service is built-in. Consum-

ers want predictability when it comes to costs.”

Another trend that’s helping reduce the manufacturing cost of mobile M2M devices is the development of global SIM cards that can be used on a wide range of networks around the world, allowing the same SIM card to be used for devices destined for multiple territories. New price plans have also been developed so that, for example, the mobile operator only receives payment whenever the M2M SIM card is engaged, or the operator takes a small slice of every transaction made on the mobile M2M device.

There is a danger that net-works will become swamped by data generated by millions of devices connected to them, but mobile operators point out that the data produced by today’s M2M devices is relatively low, and runs on 2G.

“Mobile operators can avoid the risk of network overload by putting in place smarter approval processes and specify-ing how devices should behave on the network,” says Bybjerg.

Some point out that mobile M2M could mean that mobile operators simply provide the data pipe for the connectivity

Ford’s MyFord Mobile app lets you manage your electric car using your phone


the real world24

between devices, with most of the value going to the device manufacturer or service provider, but mobile operators dispute this scenario. “For M2M to succeed, you need to have an ecosystem in place, and mobile networks are a significant part of this. We are also working with many other players in this ecosystem,” says O2’s Coston.

“It’s not just about providing connectivity,” adds Everything Everwhere’s Overton. “You have to ensure that the devices are interoperable with the network, and potentially, other networks. It’s also about providing fault management and other services – you need an end-to-end view.”

Corporate machinesMany mobile operators around the world have developed mobile M2M platforms that are designed to help brands, manufacturers and service providers enter the market quickly and easily. Mobile operators have adopted a multi-channel approach, and formed partnerships with app developers, brands, manufacturers, system integrators, aggregators and others involved in the

M2M ecosystem. In the US, for example, AT&T is Ford’s network partner in the MyFord Mobile programme.

“Our M2M technology allows businesses to sense issues with their machines, analyse the prob-lem using back-end software, and respond to the situation in a quick and cost-effective man-ner,” says Eric Krauss, director of M2M product management, advanced mobility solutions, AT&T business and home solutions. “Our goal is to drive wireless capabilities into a wide variety of devices beyond tra-ditional handsets, allowing our business customers to reduce operational costs and enable new revenue opportunities.”

AT&T sees potential growth in the healthcare market and utili-ties sector through the use of smart metering – the company currently has 13m electricity meters on its wireless net-work. Krauss also sees mobile operators being much more than just connectivity provid-ers. “Businesses are interested in developing and integrating overall M2M solutions, rather than just receiving raw data from machines. Many compa-nies want applications that will

Olly and molly

social m2m idea births lovable robotNot all M2M devices are designed for serious applica-tions. London company Mint Digital (http://mintdigital.com) has developed Olly – a “web-connected smelly robot”, which can generate scents that are triggered by your Twitter activity. Olly (short for ‘olfactory’) is a non-commercial product that can be constructed by downloading plans that come with Creative Common Licence conditions. You also need to purchase some off-the-shelf components, and download an app and other software.

You decide the smell or smells you would like Olly to produce. After con-structing Olly – a small white box that houses a fan – the robot is con-nected to your PC via a USB port. Olly is signed into your Twitter account and can then be configured to generate a scent whenever you receive an @mention; search for a particular term or are retweeted.

Mint also offers Molly, a robot which dispenses sweets according to your Twitter activity. Olly developer Ben Redford says reaction to Olly has been positive – it won the Ideal Home Show’s 2012 ‘Ideal Home Inventor’ award. “Olly is a bit of fun, but we have plans for more internet-connected devices, some of which will be for serious use,” says Redford. http://ollyfactory.com

USB-connected Olly will dispense smells when you get retweeted or other interaction on Twitter

Mark Overton of Everything Everywhere with the company’s smart vending machine – a collaboration with Nokia Siemens Networks


25

help them quickly and efficiently interpret the information trans-mitted via M2M connections.”

Everything Everywhere has developed the M2M Manage-ment Platform, which includes a self-service profile for com-panies offering M2M solutions. The portal includes facilities for creating connection profiles; managing tariffs, accessing customer records and ordering SIMs. There are also plans to offer an API that will enable customers to integrate their M2M operations into existing CRM systems and other busi-ness applications. “Companies of all sizes are asking for solu-tions that are easy to deploy, with a self-service platform that puts the control back into their hands,” says Overton.

Vodafone’s Global M2M Service Platform also has a customer self-service portal

offering a suite of functions, such as the ability to centrally activate, suspend and deactivate devices. In the US, Vodafone has formed a partnership with Boston Scientific Corporation to develop a remote health moni-toring system, and in Europe, Vodafone works with the in-car navigation company, TomTom on M2M solutions.

M2M appsOther partnership announce-ments are expected later this year. Telefónica has launched its Wayra technology initiative in nine countries, which offers entrepreneurs support and finance to develop new products and applications, which could include M2M apps, says Coston.

It’s easy to see why mobile operators are keen to offer a one-stop shop for potential M2M cus-tomers, but the fact that there are so many different platforms means there could be issues around standardisation and interoperability in this market. Bybjerg says that mobile opera-tors like AT&T and Vodafone are working with the GSM Associa-tion to develop M2M standards, and he’s confident that progress in this area will be fast.

Everything Everywhere’s Overton is also optimistic about the potential of mobile M2M. “It’s not just a bunch of engineering applications that are enabling smart logistics,” he says. “This area is going to go mainstream and will drive the development of the con-nected life; the network life that everyone is talking about. By having connectivity in all these consumer devices and in every-one’s homes, we’ll be able to manage our lives better and our businesses better, based on all this information and the ability to communicate with things. For us, as an operator, that has to be where we take this business.”

Zeo sleep manager

m2m in action in consumer heathcareAn example of a health and lifestyle consumer M2M device is the Zeo Sleep Manager, which has recently been launched in the UK. It’s a sleep management device, initially designed for Apple mobile devices, although an Android version is under development.

The £89 product works by using a headband that tracks your sleep stages throughout the night and then transfers your sleep data to a bedside unit or wirelessly to a smartphone. In the morning, Zeo shows you how much time you spent in the various levels of sleep (such as Light sleep and REM sleep) and produces a sleep graph with your sleep patterns.

Users can then upload their data to Zeo’s website (www.myzeo.co.uk) and view their nightly Zeo sleep score, a customised sleep quality score that allows

users to compare their sleep data with others in their age group. This information can then be used to create a personal target, as well as pro-duce a personal coach-ing programme to alter the lifestyle behaviour that affects sleep qual-ity – such as caffeine and alcohol intake, stress, bedtime routine and bedroom environment.

“our goal is to drive wireless capabilities into a wide variety of devices beyond traditional handsets”eric Krauss, at&t

The Zeo Sleep Manager comprises a headband that tracks your sleep and an iOS app that shows you the data and suggests how you can improve


business models26

THE ANGRY MOBIt seems that the sky’s the limit for Angry Birds – Rene Magri meets Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka and finds out how the simple bird-slinging game became a global sensation

The Angry Birds brand is one of the biggest success

stories to emerge from the app explosion. No other game has taken the mobile world by storm in quite the same way – spawn-ing a franchise of four games – not to mention a Hollywood movie tie-in.

Rovio, the studio behind the mania, has struck gold. A recent valuation – based on revenues for 2011 and an investment by Atomico and Accel Partners – values the company at a whopping €2.25bn (£1.89bn).

The company isn’t the overnight success it’s often portrayed to be, though – Rovio was founded back in 2003, and created 51 games for other com-panies before it struck upon the hit that is Angry Birds.

Indeed, in just over two years, and essentially four games – An-gry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio (a tie-in with animated children’s movie Rio from 20th Century Fox) and the new Angry Birds Space – the company has cemented itself as one of the essential games for millions of smartphone-toting fans. Along with the Rio movie, it’s also just opened Angry Birds Land – a dedicated

space at Finnish theme park Sarkanniemi Amusement Park.

So, what did Rovio do so well to accomplish so much brand penetration in so little time, with so little money?

Brand excellence Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio’s CMO, gives the impression that the company has a clear strategy for developing the Angry Birds brand. No stone is left unturned when it comes to managing and growing the brand, and he’s very clear as to what makes the brand stand out. He says that the buzz so far is just “scratch-ing the surface”.

Vesterbacka joined Rovio in March 2010, just weeks after the first Angry Birds was launched

on iOS. Jaako Iisallo, a game designer at Rovio, was working on a number of designs for the company. Rovio, after making a total of 51 games for the likes of EA, had decided to take a bold step in developing a game of its own. The advent of the iPhone, and the platform which made the distribution portion of the business free from the control of big operators, gave a fighting chance to companies the size of Rovio to go it alone.

Before Apple came into the picture, indie game developers had very few channels to get picked up, as games followed the Hollywood model – where typically for a game to have any chance of making any money, a sum in the millions had to be

“the budget for Angry birds wAs limited – And it

wAs done between producing gAmes for hire. but we

knew we hAd to do something thAt would mAke the

brAnd stAnd out”peter Vesterbacka, rovio

Angry Birds is a simple game, but it has global, mass appeal


27

June 2012

27

thrown at its marketing. This priced out the small companies that had innovative ideas, but not enough cash.

Social gaming The advent of Apple’s App Store in 2008 didn’t just change the game for developers when it came to global reach, but also for the target audience. The iPhone made casual, simple games popular again. And, since it was relatively cheap to produce and design such games, they flourished on the iOS platform.

As a result, games became the most competitive category of

apps on the App Store, so small companies such as Rovio in 2010, with no marketing budget had to be smart when it came to creat-ing a successful brand.

Rovio turned this into a sci-ence. Vesterbacka says: “We had no money to speak of with regards to marketing. In fact, the budget for Angry Birds was limited – and it was done in-between producing games for hire. But we knew we had to do something that would make the brand stand out. In and of itself, we capitalised on the fact that the name ‘Angry Birds’ begs a question – why are the birds angry? That is very good

for branding and attention grab-bing. In addition, we worked on the colours that would make the game stand out among hun-dreds, and thus we chose a red bird icon. We had more than 60 icons made before we came up with the one that worked.”

In these days of social media and social recommendation, it’s also key that your brand engages with fans where pos-sible. Vesterbacka explains that at Rovio, despite the size of their fanbase today, they still take time to answer tweets and messages, and take in every idea that makes sense from fans. Social interaction with fans is extremely important for emo-tional engagement – an essential element of branding, he says.

In the latest iteration of the franchise – Angry Birds Space – Rovio partnered with the likes of NASA and National Geo-graphic to produce one of the most successful game launches in recent history. It netted Rovio around $10m in the first three days.

Taking on TVIn terms of competition, Vester-backa says that he doesn’t see any big brand to be a competitor in the direct sense of the word. Disney comes up in conversa-tion often with Vesterbacka – mainly as a way to drive the main point across that “we are not a games company, but an entertainment franchise… We compete [with Disney], but it is also a role model”.

The real direct competitor is television, says Vesterbacka. “Since in a given month an average person in the US spends over 158 hours watching television, and only two hours on Angry Birds, we are compet-ing with them for big brand budgets. Then again, we will soon be on TV thanks to our animated series.”

Chinese ideasThe Angry Birds story is a masterclass in growing revenue and brand awareness through exploiting good intellectual property. In terms of the growth

Angry Birds Land – an area within the Sarkanniemi Amusement Park in Tampere, Finland, shows just how far the brand has come

of Rovio, China has formed a key part of the company’s strategy. “We want to be more Chinese than the Chinese,” says Vesterbacka. Rovio has opened an office (its second, after its HQ in Helsinki) in Beijing, and has been active in recruiting talent in China – for both offices.

Vesterbacka even says Rovio has played a role in bringing China to the West. “We have

been a very good Chinese citizen,” says Vesterbacka. “We have helped bring China to the world, as much as we have brought Rovio – and Angry Birds – to China. Thanks to our Moon Festival game update on Angry Birds Seasons, we brought the Moon Festival – a Chinese feast – to the world, with tens of millions of people in the West getting familiarised with the festival.”


The Angry Birds Land theme park has 12 rides, various games, and an adventure assualt course

June 2012

business models28

1. Ambition Peter Vesterbacka: “We have always believed and viewed ourselves as an entertainment franchise and not just a games company. We started with games, but we had the intention of capitalising and expanding our reach to toys, comics, animated series and more.”

2. A simple story The simpler the story, the better it is for growth. This gives you freedom of movement to add new layers and complex-ity at a later stage. This helps to create a four-quadrant brand – a brand that applies to everyone, from boys to girls, men and women.

3. Stand outRovio went through more than 60 icons before they chose the red bird. Colour and emotion – in this case, anger – are key to the brand. Finding an edge when money is limited is essential to have a fighting chance of building a good, last-ing offering for users in the mobile space.

4. Care and reach outRovio cares about the fans. It responds to tweets, sug-gestions and comments made by fans. Communication is ongoing. Reaching out to the community is essential for long-term engagement and growth for small indie develop-ers. Rovio’s first game launch was mostly aided by bloggers and other inexpensive coverage.

5. Partner upRovio partnered up with Chillingo to get to Apple and get featured on iTunes. When it came to expanding into physical form, or launching new games – it partnered up with the likes of 20th Century Fox, National Geographic, and NASA.

Rovio’s 5 lessons on brands and franchises:


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thought leadership30

Mobile At The CenTreektron CMo Tom Wentworth tells Andy Penfold that mobile should be the cornerstone of any marketing presence – and outlines how ‘mobile first’ thinking will enhance every area of a consumer’s interaction with a brand

Ask anyone who works in the mobile space, and they’ll tell

you – mobile is fast becoming es-sential to the marketing strategy for any brand. But for web con-tent management and marketing company Ektron, mobile is more than essential. Tom Wentworth, the New Hampshire-based company’s CMO, says it’s time to make mobile the cornerstone of any marketing strategy.

“The growth of mobile devices is probably the most sig-nificant advance to computing since the mouse, and potentially even more significant than the mouse,” says Wentworth. “We’ve revolutionised how people consume content but also how they interact with it. We’re no longer pointing and click-ing, we’re flicking and swiping. This has huge repercussions for marketers, and what we’re advocating to our customers is really adopting what we call a ‘mobile first’ mindset where you really need to think about how your consumers interact with your brand across Tablets and smartphones as your primary interaction type.”

First-tier channelWentworth says Ektron approaches marketing with mobile as a first-tier marketing

channel. However, he says that while the company’s customers benefit from this approach, the wider industry has so far largely failed to ‘get it’.

“Most organisations today think about being mobile friendly, which basically means that their website has to simply render on mobile devices – it has to be just good enough to not embarrass the brand, but they aren’t thinking about the oppor-tunities that mobile presents.”

Wentworth sees a four-step scale in terms of a brand’s mobile maturity, which he calls the ‘four Fs’. The first of his ‘Fs’ sounds like it’s lifted from the lexicon of the Twitter genera-tion: ‘mobile failure’. “Unfor-tunately this is still a reality,” he says. “This is the site you go to that has a big Flash movie in the middle and the site just doesn’t operate. There’s still a fair number of marketers at the failure level.”

Post-PC directionAnd while many marketers find convincing their boss to embrace mobile is the main bar-rier, Wentworth says that from the consumer’s point of view, it’s a no-brainer. “We’re in this post-PC era, with the so-called ‘millennial generation’ entering

the workplace with an iPhone in their hand. They’re now the ones with disposable income. If you’re not prepared for that shift, as a company or brand, it’s a pretty significant impedi-ment to business. And if your competitor is… I wouldn’t want to be in that position.”

Moving through the ‘Fs’: the next two stages are where most brands find themselves operat-ing. Next is a mobile ‘focus’. This is when a company takes the key 10 per cent of the pages on its site, and ensures they render on a mobile device. “It’s dipping the toes in the water,” says Wentworth. “It’s doing the minimum to make your site work on a mobile device.”

Then comes mobile ‘friendly’. “Mobile friendly is really about organisations that want their content to render fully on a mobile device, but they’re really not taking full advantage of it,” says Wentworth. “You can almost do more now with mobile devices than you can with desk-top devices because they’re more capable platforms. Very few organisations are doing well.”

Mobile experienceWhich brings us to the ulti-mate stage of Ektron’s mobile maturity scale: mobile ‘first’.

“the impetus is on marketers and brands to be smarter about what they provide to people on mobile”tom wentworth, ektron


31

For Ektron, marketing strate-gies should revolve around the consumer’s mobile experience – and that should be the goal for any brand.

Wentworth says that consum-ers now demand mobile as the primary means of interaction with a brand. Analysts agree – Gartner says that mobile brows-ing will eclipse desktop brows-ing by 2013, while Forrester Research has predicted that by 2016 there will be 1bn smart-phones in use on the planet.

So given these forecasts, what does ‘mobile first’ mean? “The thought behind mobile first is when you start thinking about mobile devices, it requires you to put the user at the centre of the discussion,” says Wentworth. “I’m not sure if you in the UK have seen the show Hoarders? [we have]. It’s a TV show about these people whose houses become overwhelmed with stuff. It’s crazy. Websites have become like an episode of Hoarders. You have all these departments of an organisation trying to put their content or their promotion on the home page. so what you end up with is this mishmash of content. It’s more driven by the marketing team’s requirements that it is by the user experience requirements.”

Core purposeWentworth says that the screen real estate of the mobile device, and the ‘infosnacking’ behaviours that consumers demonstrate on mobile, forces marketers to hone in on the core purpose of their brand’s mobile presence. “When you think about mobile first, and you put a premium on mobile screen real estate, you have to think about the three or four things that the user wants to do,” he says.

“My belief is that if you think mobile first, and you design first for the lowest common denomi-

nator screen size, you’re going to deliver something that works better for everyone – not just your mobile users.”

Rather than taking your desk-top site and hobbling it until it works as a functional but unam-bitious mobile site, Ektron ar-gues that you start with a mobile site, and progressively enhance for the desktop. “If you always start with the user’s tasks first, you’re going to have a happier user that’s going to do more on your site,” says Wentworth.

Responsive web designMobile is essentially ushering in a new set of principles in terms of web design – Wentworth terms it “responsive web de-sign” – and that’s where Ektron fits in. “No technology in the world is going to prevent a web-site designer from turning their site into a episode of Hoarders,” says Wentworth. “What we can do is ensure your entire site is mobile friendly. When you build your site on top of Ektron web content management, you’re immediately going to be at a minimum ‘mobile friendly’. We will detect different devices and screen sizes automatically.”

Ektron’s content management tools allow an organisation’s site to automatically detect the device types and the screen sizes that are coming to the site, and then adaptively render the site in a mobile friendly way across all those diverse screen sizes and types of devices.

“The good thing about respon-sive web design is that you can start looking at the kinds of devices someone is using, and the kinds of ways they’re using your site, and you can make it very relevant to that device,” says Wentworth. “We help our

customers get really smart about what they deliver to their users. For example, someone on a Tablet is going to be more inter-ested in a rich media experience – more video – whereas smart-phone users are more about text and actionability. That’s some-thing that our tools achieve.”

With this approach, Went-worth says brands can drive forward mobile as the primary marketing channel. He believes consumers have made their intentions clear when it comes to mobile adoption – now brands need to deliver, or let their com-petitors deliver.

“Every consumer across every demographic and across all ages is ready to think about mobile as the primary way they do com-puting. So I think the impetus is on marketers and brands to be smarter about what they provide to people on mobile.”

With Ektron’s ‘mobile first’ mentality, Wentworth is certain he has the formula to really engage consumers through focusing on their behaviour and desires. “It’s about putting the user at the centre of your site design, not your marketing team,” he says.

Ektron’s four Fs of Mobile Maturity

Ektron’s responsive web design principles have delivered strong results for US college Morehead State University



best practice32

Join our Mobile Marketing party – Mobile Marketing Live takes place in London on 1-2 October 2012, and conference tickets are available at Early Bird prices before 31 July

Join us in London on 1 and 2 October 2012, for Mobile

Marketing Live, our new two-day exhibition, conference, training and networking event for the global mobile marketing busi-ness. Event sponsors include Textlocal, Prinovis, TradeMob, OpenMarket, and InMobi (Gold); and Mojiva, Fiksu, Celtra, Messmr, and Cogenta (Silver).

We can promise you two ac-tion-packed days of knowledge transfer, interactivity, case study success stories, and the chance to meet face-to-face with some of the smartest solutions providers who are helping global busi-nesses to successfully take their brands into the mobile channel.

The exhibition encompasses 500 square metres of floor space, with stand sizes to suit all budgets. Our Mobile Training Academy will also be on hand, offering free mobile marketing training to conference delegates in a dedicated area of the show.

The conference programme is split into two streams, one looking at mobile marketing by Vertical, the other by Discipline.

The Verticals stream breaks down into eight key sectors: Retail; Travel; Finance; Pub-

lishing; Automotive; Charity; Healthcare; and Sport, Lei-sure & Entertainment. We are inviting well-known figures in each sector to speak, explain-ing what they have done in the mobile channel, what worked, what didn’t work, the lessons learned, and what they plan to do next.

The Disciplines stream breaks mobile marketing down into eight core disciplines: Apps; Sites; Mobile Advertising; Social; Gamification; Financial Services; CRM; and Location-based Services, explaining what each is, and showcasing examples of best practice and successful campaigns.

We’re busy putting together a stellar lineup of speakers – so far we’ve confirmed: David Chan, CEO of Barclaycard Europe; Steve Wing, business director, mobile at The Guard-ian; Ian Carrington, EMEA head of mobile at Google; Paul Francis, head of commercial systems at Domino’s Pizza; Sarah Baillie, mobile commerce manager at Debenhams; Jona-than Stephen, head of mobile product at JetBlue Airways; Bob Schukia, global head of mobile

technology at Thomson Reuters; Alex Kirmse, head of mobile at Zappos; Christine Kellogg, mo-bile marketer (Acquisitions) at Betfair; and Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast.

You can attend the exhibition for free. A one-day Conference Pass costs just £295, or just £195 if you book before 31 July. And if you bring a colleague or col-leagues along, they come half price, even if you buy tickets at the Early Bird rate. So if you book before 31 July, four people from the same company can get a one-day Conference Pass for a total cost of under £500 – that’s less than a single ticket to most events. A two-day Conference Pass costs just £495, or just £395 if you book before 31 July. And the same 50 per cent discount applies to tickets bought for colleagues.

Mobile Marketing Live is the show this fantastic industry has been waiting for, and we can’t wait to bring it to you. For more information, head for www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/live. Or, call Lisa Slavin on +44 (0) 20 7183 2920, or email lisa.slavin@mobilemarketingmag azine.com

Media Partners


33

Gold Sponsors

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For conference tickets, contact Lisa Slavin on:

020 7183 2920 Email:lisa.slavin@ mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Confirmed speakers include:

David Chan, CEO, Barclaycard Europe

Steve Wing, Business director, mobile, The Guardian News and Media

Ian Carrington, EMEA head of mobile, Google

Paul Francis, Head of commercial systems, Domino’s Pizza

Sarah Baillie, Mobile commerce manager, Debenhams

Jonathan Stephen, Head of mobile product, JetBlue Airways

Bob Schukia, Global head of mobile technology, Thomson Reuters

Jon Mew, Head of mobile, IAB

James Chandler, Head of mobile, Mindshare UK

Ben Wightman, Senior PPC strategist, Latitude Digital Marketing


June 2012 www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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Danny DoyleCommercial Ad Operations Team Leader, The Guardianon Workflow Systems

It’s the must attend event of the year for me. To the point I’ll consider self funding it if I can’t get budget sign off.

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35


thought leadership

Mobile messaging has become a key tool for communication between brands

and consumers on the move over the last decade. It includes a variety of different communication channels, including SMS, MMS, instant messaging, email, and more recently, push notifications.

In total, the volume of this application-to-person (A2P) traffic is estimated by mBlox to be roughly made up of 1trillion messages globally on an annual basis, of which SMS constitutes around 35 per cent. This makes A2P SMS messaging the most successful mobile application ever to run on a mobile handset in terms of monetisation to the application provider (the mobile network operator in this case), consumer adoption, and value to the enterprise.

Even as smartphone penetration increases in mature markets, and Peer to Peer (P2P) messaging starts to decline due to cannibalisation by over the top (OTT) applications, A2P mobile messaging volumes continue to grow by double-digit percentages year on year.

mBlox started as the pioneer of A2P SMS aggregation in 2000, when it recognised the need to simplify the sending and receiving of SMS to hundreds of mobile operators in a reliable, SLA (service level agreement)guaranteed, secure, and cost effective way.

Personal deliveryIn these 12 years, mBlox has delivered more than 20bn A2P SMS messages to over 200 countries within an average time of less than 10 seconds per message. Those 20bn messages have included services from every vertical, driving real material value to

enterprises and brands globally. The market has grown to be a 350bn A2P SMS per year business, engaging more than 3bn consum-ers on a regular basis.

Back in 2000, one might have predicted that the fragmentation of the global market and the complexity of global messaging would have decreased. The reality has turned out to be very different, in part due to the need for carriers to monetise A2P mes-saging, but primarily as a result of the need to prevent unsolicited messaging and fraud.

This has led to a trend known in the industry as ‘blocking and filtering’ whereby the carriers compel messages to be injected directly into them via a dedicated direct connection, rather than passing through the transit connections between mobile opera-tors using GSM standard interoperability links and contracts. This allows the MNOs to fully monetise and control the messages entering their networks.

Although building new connections can be expensive and time-consuming, mBlox is supportive of this trend, simply because we’ve learnt that the level of unsolicited messages and fraud is inversely propor-tional to the market price.

In regions where the market price for SMS is significantly lower than the UK (for exam-ple, India) the volumes of unsolicited mes-sages are so vast that consumers fail to read any of them. The situation in India became so severe that local regulators stepped in with draconian measures to reduce the volume of unsolicited messages, making it extremely difficult to use SMS for commercial purposes in the powerful and flexible way we have become accustomed to in the UK.

Despite the positive effects of blocking and filtering, SMS fraud continues to be the biggest issue facing the operators and SMS aggregators alike. Fraud has the ability to crash SMS market prices, defraud operators and aggregators of millions of pounds annu-ally, and ultimately lead to very poor service quality for enterprises.

Number portingThe second largest challenge for aggrega-tors in the UK is the absence of a central and accessible mobile number portability (MNP) database, allowing aggregators and enterprises to determine to which network operator a mobile number belongs – a problem North America and most of Europe has solved. mBlox, along with a number of operators, aggregators and MNP companies, is working to address these two challenges.

mBlox continues to invest heavily in its messaging business as we see a growing trend for increased adoption and interac-tion between consumers and the enterprise, in real time and in a highly secure way. We see push notifications as an exciting addi-tion to the world of mobile messaging and, although similar to SMS, it will co-exist alongside SMS without replacing or materi-ally cannibalising it.

Push notifications have a long way to go in solving fragmentation, penetration, stan-dardisation, and quality before they reach their maximum potential. Most importantly, we believe that until they are monetised in some way, they may be destined for the same future as email – important in your overall marketing mix but not something to use if you need to ensure your message is read.

AggregAte Scorerob Malcolm, general manager of messaging at mBlox, explores the evolution of Application to Person (A2P) messaging aggregation and the challenges it faces

June 2012

best practice36

APPLICATIONShowcaSeMobile apps make ideal travel companions. With summer upon us, alex Spencer checks out the latest apps that enhance your travels

T ripAdvisor has squashed the majority of its user-

generated tourist review site into a sleek, presentable app. It offers reviews of hotels, restaurants, and things to do, as well as a flight-checker, local map, and access to the TripAd-visor forums. These functions are all laid out on a minimalist home screen as buttons centring around a large search bar.

The flight-checker function searches numerous airlines for cheap flights, which can be filtered by airline, on-board ame-nities, or even type of aircraft. Selecting a flight leads onto the airline’s website. The forums section, meanwhile, lays out Tri-pAdvisor’s message boards in a clean and easy to use fashion.

However, the meat of the app is in the reviews section. All

attractions are shown as pins in an interactive gesture-navigated map, powered by Bing. This can be viewed as a plain map, a satel-lite image, or from an angled bird’s eye view.

The pin for each location can be tapped once to see its name, address, and average review score; or twice to see its ranking, user images, and full reviews, where you’ll find the usual mix

of praise and nitpicking. Each location can be marked as a favourite, to be accessed later.

Overall, the app provides a streamlined version of the Tri-pAdvisor site, and demonstrates some of the keys to good mobile design – it takes every oppor-tunity to incorporate location services and touch controls, and squeezes in a lot of content while still being intuitive to navigate.

essentially a newsstand-style one stop shop for all

things travel, Lonely Planet comprises an in-app store, and a browsable collection of purchased guides. It’s all very simple to use, though the store could benefit from a filter or search function to pick between the various offerings, which include phrasebooks for foreign languages (each costing £3.99); travel guides, for individual cit-ies (£3.99) and whole countries (£6.99); and a handful of audio walking tours (£1.99).

The phrasebooks offer a few hundred English phrases, trans-lated into the language, with a phonetic guide, and the option to play the translated phrase aloud. With all content stored on the device, it could be a good

TripAdvisor (iPad, free)

Lonely Planet (iPhone, free)


June 2012

37


Most travellers have experi-enced the stress of a menu

in a foreign language – and ordered something by mistake. If that rings a bell, Word Lens is for you. The app uses text recognition to translate any printed text you point your device’s camera at, and overlays the translated words on the live video feed, matching the origi-nal font and perspective.

It’s a great idea, with some impressive technology powering it – but, at least on the iPad, the execution is still some way from perfect. The lack of autofocus on the Tablet’s camera means that the text recognition is rather twitchy. It struggles to pin down words for long, meaning words jump in and out of translation, or repeatedly re-translate as the app changes its mind.

Understandably, it seems to fare better in direct sunlight – great for al fresco lunches as the sun is shining, but not so

useful at dinnertime. As with any image recognition app, trying to hold an iPad perfectly still while it gets a bead on the text proves difficult.

To combat this, there’s a pause button, which freezes the video feed and translated words, which can be interacted with to examine alternative transla-tions. However, it only presents the translation as it was when the pause button is pressed – a ‘best of’ display including all of the words it has so far recog-nised would be more useful.

There’s also a search func-tion that provides translations of words typed into it, which is a useful and powerful tool on its own, especially given that the dictionary is stored locally. This means that the app doesn’t require an internet connec-tion – particularly useful given network roaming charges.

Word Lens currently offers French and Spanish, but the

way to learn the basics on your flight. The phrases are limited by space, though, and can only be searched by English.

The content of each travel guide isn’t too different to a linked series of PDFs, with text and the occasional image on a plain white background, but they’re easy to navigate. The page for each restaurant, attraction, or hotel can be found by browsing by area, type of activity, or using a map – which, with its location-based function-ality, is the only mobile-specific feature of the guides.

Most distinctive are the walk-ing tours, which combine audio from the BBC archives, split into individual tracks for each land-mark on the tour, and a location-based map with the tour route

Word Lens (iPad, free)

app itself, while free, is only a shell without the purchasable language packs (£5.99). That’s not too costly but, unfortunately, each only translates in one direction, meaning English to Spanish and Spanish to English must be bought separately.

If you’re careful and patient, it’s possible to get the gist of most sentences you point your camera at, but that’s not ideal in

an app which sells itself on con-venience. It’s undeniable that Word Lens has potential – and on other devices its problems might be lessened – but on iPad, the image recognition software doesn’t quite work. It really needs the hardware to catch up with the software. For now, it’s an impressive futuristic-toy, but probably shouldn’t be relied on as your holiday’s only translator.

marked on it. There is a limited selection, mostly focused on London – but they provide an informative, if slightly cheesy, way of experiencing new places.


best practice38

Put the champagne on ice – it’s only

a couple of months till the mobile app celebrates its fourth anniversary.

Apps have enjoyed a meteoric rise to prominence in a short lifetime, having first appeared on the screens of early adopting iPhone users back in July 2008. By March 2012, Apple reported 25bn app downloads, with around 1bn per month, a number matched by its major app store competitor, the Android Play Store (previ-ously known as Android Market).

Applications have also made a healthy contribution to Apple’s revenues, generat-ing an estimated $6bn (£3.8bn). This figure includes the 30 per cent Apple takes in its share of app download spend, charges from in-app payments, and revenue from iAd, its in-app advertising business.

Today’s smartphone users – who now outnumber non-smartphone users in the UK, the US, and other leading mobile markets – have a choice of around 1m apps in the app stores hosted by Apple, Android, Microsoft and BlackBerry.

For the marketer, the logic for investing in apps is compelling. There are three key reasons to get involved.

• Personalisation

Mobile is the ultimate personalised mar-keting channel. We don’t share our hand-sets, and most of us never part company

with our phones. When I download an app, it becomes ‘mine’, creating an easy, convenient, instant one-to-one shortcut to the chosen brand through a book-marked icon on my handset or Tablet. This can be accessed 24/7, in all locations, with or without internet access or cellular signal.

• Paymentchannel Through iTunes, Apple established a convenient, secure and trusted channel for music lovers to download and pay for music. iTunes users set up their ac-counts online, added credit card details just once, and agreed T&Cs authorising Apple to charge them via their mobile bills for multiple purchases, typically at low transactions costs (79p to £3). iTunes then added books, videos and apps, to be paid for using the same payment channel. This payment model has since been replicated by Android and Microsoft.

• Nocrediblealternative For many years, the mobile internet fell well short of its potential in deliver-ing a satisfactory internet-based engage-ment channel for information-hungry mobile users. This created a vacuum for apps to gain traction and multiply, unopposed. The phenomenal app success story has been turbo-charged by slick marketing by the app stores, and by the emergence of advertiser-friendly special-ist app companies that talked the right

language when appealing to client- and agency-based creatives, developers, and C-level staff.

Success factorsWhatever the business sector and consumer proposition, apps are all about delivering a clear consumer benefit and engaging con-tent, thus maximising download volumes, and ensuring frequent use. This explains why the biggest app categories are games and social networking, which account for 62 per cent of all app usage.

Unless you tick one or more of the fol-lowing boxes, your app is unlikely to hit the mark with download volumes or frequency.

Consumer benefit Examples

Utility Accessto socialnetworks, bankdetails, identifymusic

Entertainment Games,musicor filmdownloads

Information News,sport,travel, weatherupdates, currencyexchange

If you get it right, the rewards are sensa-tional. Take Angry Birds, Rovio’s legendary app, which achieves 1m downloads every

winning wIth aPPs Rob thurner, mobile specialist and adviser to the Mobile Training Academy, explains how to avoid the pitfalls and deliver successful apps


39

day, occupying the world’s smartphone users with the cumulative play time of 25 years’ gaming every day, and generating monthly in-app ad revenues of $1m.

Consider the phenomenal success of Shazam, the audio-tagging application, which has achieved 200m downloads. There are two strands to Shazam’s success. First, its accurate, user-friendly audio recognition software allowing music lovers to identify and buy the music they’re discovering at festivals and in clubs, tagging their favou-rites and sharing via social media. Second, extending the service to recognise TV and radio ad jingles, taking app users directly to corresponding sites and apps.

The result? It took Shazam 10 years to log its first billion tags, and 10 months to log its last billion tags.

The 2012 Super Bowl proved to be a watershed for Shazam, which ran an experi-ment in audio tagging 50 per cent of the ads broadcast. Viewers Shazam’d ads as much As they commented about the brands on all social media channels combined. But Shazam’s real success lies far beyond the tag numbers: on average all Shazam TV campaigns have seen 65 per cent or more ‘post tagging’ engagement. And critically, Shazam interactions convert to sale: an Old Navy campaign resulted in a 27 per cent conversion to sale.

CEO Andrew Fisher says consumer use of Shazam to respond to TV ads far exceeded expectations, no doubt easing negotiations to sign an exclusive deal with ITV in the UK.

Native apps bring a range of consumer benefits and revenue streams for B2C and

B2B business. As a rule, the apps that enable users to access other native functions on the handset to create a highly personalised experience are most likely to encourage repeat usage.

Consider the cameraphone, photo-library, contact book, calendar, social media profiles, GPS, accelerometer, calculator and browser. API plug ins, including Google Maps, weather updates and Facebook Connect are all popular, allowing the app to aggregate and compile highly personalised data, fed in realtime. The app then provides a con-cierge service.

Proving the ROIThe true measure of success with apps lies far beyond the download numbers. 85 per cent of apps are only used once. This

Ifthey’rehonest,mostmarketers,andtheagenciesthatadvisethem,willadmitthattheircherishedapphasnotliveduptoexpectations.Herearethemainchallengesandtips.

Challenge

Audiencereach

Discovery

Cost

Revenue

Projectmanagement

Issue

50percentofmobileusershavenot(yet)migratedtosmart-phones,soyouraudienceiscappedwithapps.

With1mappsavailable,creatingstand-outintheappstoresiscritical.AppleandAndroidprioritiseappsbasedonpopularity(downloads)andquality(ratings&reviews).

Therearenoestablishedwaystodesignandbuildonceandrendertheappacrossdifferentoperatingplatforms,whichmeansdevelopersneedtore-codetheappmultipletimesforeachoftheplatforms’differentSoftwareDevelopmentKits(SDKs)–iOSforApple,Android,BlackBerry,Java–therebyescalatingcosts.

Trustedbrandsfromgaming,media,entertainment,retailandtravelsectorsaregeneratingsignificantrevenuesfromapps.Themajorityofappsfailtodoso.Remembertheappstorehostskeepahealthyportionofthedownloadcost(forexampleAppletakes30percent).

Thisoneisfundamental,asweakprojectmanagementresultsinarushedandstressfulappbuildprocess,resultinginsloppytesting(50percentofappsarelaunchedwithbugs),leadingtonegativereviews,hencepoorvisibilityinthestores.

solution

ResearchthehandsetownershipandmobilebehaviourofyourtargetaudienceagainstFlurryandcomScoredata.Buildamobile-optimisedsitefornon-smartphoneusers.

Marketingyourappisessential.Usetraditionalchannels(aboveandbelowthelinemedia,wordofmouth,PR)digitalchannels(onlineads,email,socialmedia)andmobilechan-nels(mobilesites,mobileads,mobilesearch,appstoremarketing)todriveawareness.

Asaruleofthumb,youshouldexaminemobiletrafficonyourmobilesitetoconfirmthehandsetsbeingused,andprioritisethecorrespondingSDKinyourappbuildplan.HTML5isemergingasabrowser-basedalternativefor“webapps”

Evaluatetheoptions–forexampledownloadcosts,in-apppayments,in-appadvertising,sponsoredapps–andbearinmindthat95percentofallappuserswon’tpayforanyappactivity.Freeappswillachievehigherdownloads,butmostareusedinfrequentlyanddeletedquickly,whilstpaidforappshavegreaterperceivedvalue,hencelongevity.

Buildsufficienttimetodeterminehandsetownershipofyourtargetaudience,defineappfeatures,hireexpertiOSandAndroidcoders,testonmultiplehandsets,andallowenoughtimeforapprovals(upto10weeksforApple).

Potential pitfalls

June 2012

best practice40

is where you need to dig into the detailed reporting now available. Market leader www.flurry.com now tracks 37bn app ses-sions each month (1.8bn daily) based on over 20m live app users worldwide.

This analysis allows you to view active users, session length, frequency, rolling retention, and user paths into multiple layers of engagement. You can then cross reference the data against age, gender, and consumer clusters and benchmark your app’s performance against category norms. The intelligence derived helps brands optimise their budgets in delivered content which users find genuinely engaging.

What next for apps? Two predictions• Prediction1–Lowcost,self-serveapps

A new breed of high-end self-serve app tools is emerging that allows brands and organisations with limited technical capabilities to build their own apps for multiple-platform hosting and down-load (iOS, Android, Microsoft etc). One example is Appsplash (www.appsplash.co.uk), which allows easy content import and geo-location-based offers and coupons to attract new customers and stimulate repeat visits through targeted in-app push notifications.

• Prediction2–AppleandAndroid

willfacechallenge One of the key trends this year will be the arrival of newcomers who are

likely to challenge the dominance of Apple and Android in the application space, according to Forrester’s 2012 Mobile Trends for CPS Professionals report. The main players – Amazon and Facebook – will leverage their strengths in using social recommendations and personalisation to create new tools, which could facilitate app discovery and pose a challenge to the established app stores.

Amazon’s challenge is based on cloud-based capabilities and the ability to personalise content; while Facebook brings a massive

mobile audience and experience in working with web developers to distribute content virally on its ubiquitious platform.

ConclusionsApps have emerged rapidly as a major force in the mobile landscape, and account for a disproportionate share of brands’ mobile marketing budgets, considering the ROI they deliver. This is because the majority offer little if any consumer benefit, and will be used just once, which renders many of them a vanity item.

The importance of apps and their place in the marketing mix can be explained by the ease and convenience for consumers to have a ‘buttonised’ shortcut to their favourite brands, and apps have assumed the opportunity to provide immediate ‘brand in hand’ access. Critically, apps have established a secure, convenient and popular payment channel which will con-tinue to appeal to brands and organisations aiming to monetise compelling content.

Apps have taken the initiative, and brands’ budgets, as the mobile internet had a slow start and for many years offered a sub- standard user experience. However, with the advances in HTML5 browser technology and enhanced mobile search, I predict the mobile world will turn rapidly in coming months, and the importance of apps will diminish. After all, there is only one inter-net, to which every mobile user has access. www.mobiletrainingacademy.com

Apps offer brands a personal connection to consumers via their mobile phone

“The imporTance of apps and Their place in The markeTing mix can be explained by The ease and convenience for consumers To have a ‘buTTonised’ shorTcuT To Their favouriTe brands”rob Thurner, mTa

16 OCT Brand & Agency, San Francisco

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Erudite speakers shared views and raised questions in a convivial environment that created a real sense of anticipation amongst delegates; this made for effortless networking with the brand owners in attendance and I would not hesitate to recommend the event to anyone charged with building relationships with senior marketing executives."

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42

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Try it out for yourself FREE at www.textlocal.com/mm

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text: MM to 66777

• Simple online mobile messaging

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• Free trial with no obligation, give it a go!

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Mobile messaging solutions

97.5%of all text messages are read within five seconds of being

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business models 43

When it comes to consumer engagement on mobile,

Sweden-based premium ad network Widespace has plenty of experience in delivering suc-cessful campaigns. And Henric Ehrenblad, the company’s co-founder and chairman, says its success is down to putting the advertisers in control of their campaigns, and the publisher in control of who can advertise.

“We have a slightly differ-ent focus compared to other ad networks,” he says. “We’re almost hesitant to use the word ‘network’ because that usu-ally implies low-quality and uncontrolled ad campaigns and uncontrolled inventories, with advertisers not knowing where their ad goes. We work very openly with our advertisers and publishers in order that they get the right reach and the right demographic.”

Focus on quality Widespace’s focus is on quality, according to Ehrenblad. “We only work with quality apps and brand-name apps,” he says. “Likewise, we only focus on quality advertisers. Old style mobile content with banners that, if you click, will charge your bill every week – we don’t get involved in that. So we focus very much on the quality segment. Both in terms of the publisher and the advertiser.”

The focus on quality inventory and quality advertisers means that advertisers can be confi-

dent their campaign results are meaningful. “Brands like brands – big advertiser brands prefer to be seen on premium brands,” says Ehrenblad. “Some develop-ers develop their own little bots that generate a lot of traffic and clicks, we make sure we don’t deal with any of those.”

Getting engagedEhrenblad says that a lot of Widespace’s advertising clients seek engagement as a key mea-sure of success, and the company offers a range of metrics that assess the level of engagement. In many cases, what comes after the click is what is important.

One Widespace campaign for VW, for example, saw an average engagement time of 48 seconds. The campaign, which was part of the launch of the Passat in 2011, delighted the client. While the overall aim of its wide-ranging multichannel campaign was to sell more cars, VW was pleased that mobile consumers spent time learning about the new product.

“A lot of our advertisers want a long engagement time on their landing page,” says Ehrenblad. “We measure that and the reach and depth of campaigns. Whether it’s a movie premiere or a car launch or concert tick-ets, we have developed a lot of templates that work really well when it comes to engaging mobile consumers.”

The company has also become well known in the radio industry,

thanks to running hugely suc-cessful campaigns on branded ‘listen now’ apps. “Here in Scandinavia, we deliver as much revenue to a radio station, per day, as the station does on its FM stream. We effectively double a radio station’s revenues through their apps.”

The company’s base in an advanced mobile market such as Sweden means it has a lot of experience in premium mobile. Scandinavian mobile markets tend to be comparatively mature, with historically early adoption of the mobile internet, and high smartphone penetration. “We’ve had a bit of a head start, we believe, when it comes to analys-ing some consumer behaviours,” says Ehrenblad. “We’ve been fortunate to be in a very mobile place, and what we’ve learned here is what we can now expand outside. We’ve spent five years now doing nothing but mobile campaigns. We have run thou-sands of different campaigns, and we’ve delivered ads in 100 countries and we’ve learnt a lot.”

As a result, Ehrenblad says Widespace is a safe pair of hands when it comes to mobile strategy. “We offer much more of a ‘consultative selling’ kind of approach to our customers. Most customers haven’t done a lot of mobile advertising – we have a very solid understanding of what we can suggest; what will work and what won’t work, both in terms of clicks and in terms of engagement.”

Wide Angle VieWAndy Penfold discusses mobile ad engagement with Henric ehrenblad, co-founder and chairman of Swedish premium mobile ad network Widespace

“We Work very openly With our advertisers and publishers in order that they get the right reach and the right demographic”henric ehrenblad

Sponsored Feature

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text: MM to 66777

• Simple online mobile messaging

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• Over 86,000 happy customers

• No software to download

• Faster and more effective than email, direct mail or advertising

• Free trial with no obligation, give it a go!

textlocal

Mobile messaging solutions

97.5%of all text messages are read within five seconds of being

received

Also trusted by:

‘Messenger’ lets you communicate with customers in seconds for pennies by text.Send promotions, booking confirmations, reminders or news to drive your business and best of all it only takes minutes to set-up.

If I’m your customer, why don’t you text me?

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Check out our video content

Here at Mobile Marketing, we’re ramping up our online video coverage of the mobile marketing

industry, from interviews with CEOs developing cutting edge solutions, to ‘on the street’ reports

showing how retailers, restaurateurs, car makers and others are harnessing the power of mobile.

Each of the QR codes below links to one of our video reports. Scan the code with the QR code

reader on your smartphone or Tablet, sit back, and enjoy.

See highlights from the 2011 Effective

Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony

We take Café Rouge’s mobile app out

for a quick coffee

Our report on Marks & Spencer’s

in-store mobile shopping innovations

What’s car firm Ford doing at Mobile

World Congress? We find out

Check out the highlights from our

Brand & Agency Mobile Masterclass event

Check out the solutions on show at

the Ogilvy Retail Lab Day


business models 45

As the huge potential of rich media comes into focus,

independent mobile ad network InMobi has taken decisive steps to position itself as a leader in the field. Since the acquisition of the Sprout platform in 2011, it has developed a full-service advertising proposition, built around the flexibility of HTML5.

The InMobi rich media ad creation platform, Sprout, is a platform for building and delivering rich media ads to mobile devices. “By simplifying the creation process, Sprout’s cloud-based platform makes the process of creating engaging mobile ads faster, simpler and more efficient,” says Rob Jonas, InMobi’s VP and MD Europe and the Middle East.

And Jonas says that Sprout’s roots in HTML5 make it the ideal technology for brands to reach consumers. “HTML5 allows ad-vertisers to reach a global audi-ence because it runs across iOS and Android operating systems,” he says. “The capacity to build once, and deploy everywhere is incredibly important and means that HTML5 is much more efficient for advertisers than previous methods. This alone is a powerful reason for the growth of HTML5 from here onwards.

“HTML5 rich media also provides great design flexibility and creative potential via a com-

bination of HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript tools, which enable advertisers to create the most immersive and engaging brand experiences to enhance how consumers interact with and perceive their brand.”

Flexible serviceBy combining Sprout’s platform with the reach of its own global mobile ad network, Jonas says InMobi is able to offer a compel-ling proposition for advertisers. So much so that MediaCom, one of the world’s biggest ad agen-cies, has signed an EMEA deal to leverage Sprout-created rich media ads in the region.

“MediaCom selected us because our technology is ven-dor and device agnostic – Sprout creates ads that run across all ad networks and mobile device platforms,” says Jonas.

Of course, the ability to deliv-er cool rich media ads is noth-ing to big companies such as MediaCom without the ability to quantify ROI, and measurement is an important part of InMobi’s offering through the Sprout platform. The platform enables advertisers to track user events that occur in the ad, to offer a myriad of metrics that assess the success of a campaign.

Sprout offers full rich media engagement reporting and is compliant with MRAID, the

IAB’s proposed standard for mobile rich media ads. “Sprout’s reporting function offers topline summaries as well as very detailed metrics, and the technology can track customised events that occur in-ad to help optimise future campaigns,” says Jonas. “The dashboard displays data on the number of impressions and engagements achieved, plus engagement rates and impressions by device type. Users’ in-ad actions can also be reported, including swipe, page change, tilt, GPS found, form errors, and many more.”

Brands that have taken advan-tage of InMobi’s Sprout offering include Disney, Nike, Paramount Pictures, HTC, SEGA, and Nokia. Disney’s work for the film TRON: Legacy, allowed consum-ers to tap an interstitial ad to bring up a full-page menu con-taining options to view charac-ter profiles or the full film trailer. “This is the sort of immersive experience that makes rich media content so engaging for consumers,” says Jonas.

Publishing propositionSprout is also beneficial to com-panies on the other side of the advertising coin – publishers. Jonas says publishers can expect higher ad yields, better response rates through increased engage-ment, and a better consumer

ALL ABOUT SPROUTInMobi’s Rob Jonas tells Andy Penfold how the company’s Sprout platform is leading the way in rich media advertising

Sponsored Feature

experience, by embracing rich media opportunities.

Hearst Digital Media is one publisher that has done just that. The company uses Sprout on a licensed SaaS (software as a service) basis, giving it access to a self-service platform that allows it to create, manage, and optimise display advertising on smart-devices. “Hearst will use the Sprout platform to develop high-engagement HTML5 ad units for their brand advertisers to run on its mobile-optimised websites,” says Jonas.

Brands and publishers alike stand to gain from rich media’s ability to really stand out from the crowd. “Creating eye-catch-ing, engaging ads makes consum-ers more likely to interact with your brand, and rich media deliv-ers precisely that,” says Jonas.

“Sprout’S cloud-baSed platform makeS the proceSS of creating engaging mobile adS faSt, Simple and efficient”rob Jonas


46

Accelerate yourmobile career

0207 004 0550www.propel-mobile.com

[email protected]

We work with fantastic brands, creative and mobile-speci�c agencies, technology businesses,

and media types, helping them to �nd the best talent to work on their mobile offerings.

They’re a diverse bunch of people, but they share one thing in common - the desire to get more and

more involved in the exciting world of mobile.

If you’re looking for an exciting new career challenge in the

mobile advertising industry then get in touch with Propel Mobile. We can give you free, impartial

advice in complete confidence - whether you’re dipping your toe

in the water, or ready to start your job hunt in earnest.

Our recent salary report shed light on the changing

demand for the wide range of skills in the digital industry. Analysing data from more than 5,000 vacancies, it took a wide-angle view of the digital talent market over the last three years.

Perhaps the biggest story to come out of the report is the explosion in demand for mobile talent: between 2009 and 2011 the number of new mobile vacancies we recorded rose by 1,500 per cent (Figure 1). New vacancies in digital as a whole rose by 150 per cent in the same period.

Our data also shows that the range of salaries offered for mobile vacancies has broad-ened dramatically. The range of salaries offered for mobile client services vacancies, for example, changed from £30k-£35k in 2009 to £18k-£80k in 2011.

Broad salary spectrums can result from increased activity levels in a given sector and the formation of large, multi-tiered teams. In the example of mobile client services vacancies (Figure 2), it indicates the rapid expan-sion of agency-side mobile teams and the emergence of specialist mobile third parties.

It’s abundantly clear from our data, and from the feedback we receive from our clients in the industry, that the mobile talent

market is in a high state of flux. During such periods there are challenges and opportunities for job seekers and employers alike.

Talent poolsRapid growth in a sector creates gaps in talent pools. Demand for experienced talent outweighs the supply of it. This effect is defi-nitely happening in the mobile space, and it’s hardly surprising. Mobile is, after all, a fast-moving new market – indeed, many of the now common vacancies in mobile were rare or unheard of as little as two years ago.

In a mobile talent market that’s consistently challenging, what can employers do?

Hiring with the long-term in mind can give a business significant advantage. It’s easy to get caught in the short-term ‘we need experience and we need it now’ mindset, especially in growth markets. A regular intake of junior talent is a smart move – learning on the job and gaining experience can rapidly turn a fresh graduate into a cornerstone of the team.

It’s also helpful to keep an open mind when seeking out fresh talent. Right now there are plenty of very smart and capable individuals who want to get in-volved in the mobile revolution. What they lack in direct experi-

ence, they make up in transfer-able competencies, enthusiasm, and fresh perspective.

Hiring isn’t the only challenge created by a growth market. Retention is equally important.

Regularly appraising individ-ual performance and reviewing salaries is crucial. Like it or not, employees are motivated by money, so regular compari-son with competition and the wider market is really helpful. Whilst it’s not always essential to be at the top of the range, it’s definitely best not to be near the bottom. Don’t give your staff a reason to look elsewhere.

Employers should also look at their competitors and objec-tively assess the opportunities

that they offer. Getting an edge with additional training, career progression, a high-quality work-ing environment or excellent benefits can help them to attract experienced staff.

There’s never been a more exciting time to be involved in mobile, and the mobile talent market. Salaries are strong and there are fantastic opportuni-ties. Growing teams in booming markets can be challenging, but it’s a chance to shape the future direction of the business. It’s also a great indicator that your busi-ness is enjoying real success.

Download Propel’s Digital Salary Insights report at bit.ly/Propel-2012-Digital-Salary-Insights


47

James Webb, commercial director at mobile recruitment company Propel, discusses the company’s recent research into salaries in the mobile industry

UPwardly MObile

Sponsored Feature

Accelerate yourmobile career

0207 004 0550www.propel-mobile.com

[email protected]

We work with fantastic brands, creative and mobile-speci�c agencies, technology businesses,

and media types, helping them to �nd the best talent to work on their mobile offerings.

They’re a diverse bunch of people, but they share one thing in common - the desire to get more and

more involved in the exciting world of mobile.

If you’re looking for an exciting new career challenge in the

mobile advertising industry then get in touch with Propel Mobile. We can give you free, impartial

advice in complete confidence - whether you’re dipping your toe

in the water, or ready to start your job hunt in earnest.

business models

Fig 1: Mobile client services vacancies 2009-2011

Fig 2: Average salary and salary range for mobile vacancies 2009-2011


mobile ad network directory48

Type of business Ad network/marketplace Ad network, content discovery platform Ad Network, Rich Media Creative and Platform, Mobile Payments Ad network Mobile ad network Mobile Advertising Provider Premium Mobile Advertising Network

LAunCH DATe July 2009 August 2011 January 2007 July 2010 May 2008 December 2006 June 2007

opeRATes Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Europe - Limited US

sALes offiCesLondon (HQ), Madrid, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore

India, Korea, London, New York

San Francisco, New York,Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Mos-cow, Dubai, Singapore, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Sydney, Bangalore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul

Sydney, Los Angeles London, New York, San Francisco,Los Angeles

Berlin (HQ), Austin, Texas Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Paris

bLinD/TRAnspARenT Blind, Transparent Targeted Premium, Prem Blind, Semi-blind Blind Blind and premium transparent Semi-blind Transparent to Premium Advertisers

Cpm/CpC/CpA(%) 8/90/2 10/90/0 10/90/0 20/30/50 n/a n/a n/a 0/0/100 80/20/0

in-App ADveRTising? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

AD foRmATs Banners, rich media, expand-able banners, video, text links, interstitials, 3rd party ad serving tags, IAB & MMA formats, Inter-stitials/fullpage

Banners, textual, rich media, video, full-screen banners, audio, apps, social

3D, rich media, video, social media, banners, text, full range of MMA and IAB formats

Banners, text ads, app sponsorships,interstitials, animated GIFs,advanced interstitials, rich mediaads including text ads, content unlockers, splash ads, pushnotifications, capture forms, videoads, app walls, offer walls, overlays,linkouts, app icon

Text, banner and rich media Text ads, banners, HTML5-based rich media ads for smartphones and iPad, Flash-based banners for Android tablets. Dimensions: stand-ard MMA sizes, smartphone-specif-ic sizes e.g. (e.g. 320 x 48, 320 x 50), standard web sizes for tablets (e.g. 728 x 90). Calls-to-action: redirec-tion to (mobile) website, redirection to mobile application store, click to call, call-back

All standard and rich media ad formats plus some exclusive to Widespace. Some examples of formats are: Splash, Take-Over, Panorama, Text-ads, Videobanner, Calendar banner

TARgeTing Country, geo-location, platform, device, day-part, mobile operator, demographic, channel.

Contextual, real-time, keyword, location, age, gender, channels, demographics, operators, device, operating system, applications, phone/Tablet/Smart TV/PC/net-book

Category, handset technology (e.g. manufacturer, device, OS), demographic, location-based

Country/geo-targeting, platform, category, content type, placement, time, carrier

Contextual keyword, publisher channel, location, platform/OS, model, operator, day-part

Country and city, mobile carrier, internet service provider when using wi-fi, operating system, oper-ating system version, device brand, device model, screen size, feature phone vs. smartphone vs. tablet, day/time of day

Optimization: Unique yield algo-rithms automatically optimizing and improving CTR over time.Targeting: Depending on country: Geo, Demography, platforms and all other standard targeting param-eters.

ResTRiCTions No adult, violent or generally offensive content None No adult, culturally sensitive,

political, offensive None No adult No adult No adult

min spenD (us$) 50 50 n/a 50 10,000 1,000 €25 - €1,000

no. of pubLisHeRs/siTes/Apps

10,000+ n/a 10,000+ 10,000+ 3,000+ 6,500 above 2,000 ad spaces

unique pubLisHeRs n/a n/a 50% n/a n/a n/a 95% are exclusive to Widespace

monTHLy impRessions Total: 35bn requestsUS: 8.2bnUK: 3bnFrance: 900mGermany: 600mItaly: 400mSpain: 1.6bn

Total: n/aUS: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/a Italy: n/aSpain: n/a

Total: 93bn US: 10bnUK: 3bnFrance: 900mGermany: 700mItaly: 350mSpain: 1bn

Total: 2bn+ US: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/aItaly: n/aSpain: n/a

Total: 3bn+ US: 2.6bn+UK: 192m+France: 23m+Germany: 46m+Italy: 39m+Spain: 22m+

Total: 11+bnUS: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/aItaly: n/aSpain: n/a

Total: 1bnUS: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/aItaly: n/aSpain: n/a

AveRAge fiLL RATe n/a n/a n/a 95% n/a 100% n/a

3 ReCenT ADveRTiseRs Amazon, Groupon, eBay On request John Lewis, Lloyds, Carphone Warehouse Amobee, Outblaze, Snap Interactive n/a Gameloft, iLove, Buongiourno McDonalds, Volkswagen, Red Bull

ConTACT ADDRess [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

THey sAy Global mobile advertising marketplace, Adfonic, enables advertisers to run display advertising campaigns across mobile sites and applications, reaching an estimated 200m mobile unique users, and publishers to monetise their mobile traffic. Advertisers can run performance, rich media and video ad campaigns to drive direct response, increase consumer engagement and build brand awareness. For publishers Adfonic offers access to top brand campaigns, high fill rates and competitive eCPMs. The SDK version 2.0 for iOS and Android includes MRAID support for rich media campaigns, alternative options for UDID and full-page ad units.

The company is headquartered in London with further operations in Madrid, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Singa-pore. To learn more visit adfonic.com or blog.adfoinic.com

Hoopz is the disruptive force behind the rapid growth of digital advertising and auto information discovery. Our management team comes from the leading online ad networks, mobile and device carriers and manufactur-ers, the largest brands and mobile technology companies.Hoopz’s patent-pending, next-generation contextual and real-time digital marketing and auto information/content discovery platform (based on keywords in any application, without interfacing with the application) is set for innovation and thoughtleadership in digital marketing when deployed on phones, smartphones, Tablets, PCs, netbooks, Smart TVs, set top boxes, and any internet-connected device. Our platform offers unique benefits to consumers, brand owners, advertisers, telecom service providers, and device manufacturers.

InMobi is the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on five continents InMobi provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. The network is growing and now delivers the unprec-edented ability to reach 578 Million consum-ers, in over 165 countries, through more than 93 Billion mobile ad impressions monthly. The recent acquisition of Sprout, a leading HTML5 authoring platform for mobile rich media, helps expand InMobi’s offering to creative agencies and brands. InMobi was re-cently named “The Best Mobile Ad Network” at the 2011 MOBI Awards and was selected as a 2011 AlwaysOn Top 100 Mobile Company in Silicon Valley.

LeadBolt is an innovative online and app content monetization company. Recognising that app consumers have vastly different likes and habits, we provide the largest range of traditional and premium ad formats. These interactive ad formats deliver better ROI to both advertisers and publishers by creating higher response rates from consumers, and better eCPMs to app developers.

Mojiva is the mobile ad network that reaches more than 30m users in the EU5, over 750m unique users globally, and represents over 3,000 mobile publisher and apps. Through deep and open integration with all major rich media providers and ad servers, Mojiva can provide ad agencies with every imaginable mobile creative execution across mobile web sites, apps and devices. Founded in May 2008, Mojiva is led by a team of advertising and media veterans from Google, DoubleClick, Yahoo and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in online and mobile advertising and technology.

Sponsormob is a leading mobile advertising provider. Founded in 2006, Sponsormob helps advertisers and agencies gain reach with highly targeted mobile ads using data-driven technology. It also offers publishers strategic integration opportunities, with a variety of attractive mobile campaigns available.

Connecting premium advertisers with pre-mium publishersFor Advertisers: Engaging ad formats and premium placements on well known apps and sites mean better mobile ad performance.

For Publishers: With a single focus on brand name advertisers and quality campaigns, the impact on your app experience is never nega-tively affected. It just means better revenues.


49

Type of business Ad network/marketplace Ad network, content discovery platform Ad Network, Rich Media Creative and Platform, Mobile Payments Ad network Mobile ad network Mobile Advertising Provider Premium Mobile Advertising Network

LAunCH DATe July 2009 August 2011 January 2007 July 2010 May 2008 December 2006 June 2007

opeRATes Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Worldwide Europe - Limited US

sALes offiCesLondon (HQ), Madrid, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore

India, Korea, London, New York

San Francisco, New York,Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Mos-cow, Dubai, Singapore, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Sydney, Bangalore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul

Sydney, Los Angeles London, New York, San Francisco,Los Angeles

Berlin (HQ), Austin, Texas Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Paris

bLinD/TRAnspARenT Blind, Transparent Targeted Premium, Prem Blind, Semi-blind Blind Blind and premium transparent Semi-blind Transparent to Premium Advertisers

Cpm/CpC/CpA(%) 8/90/2 10/90/0 10/90/0 20/30/50 n/a n/a n/a 0/0/100 80/20/0

in-App ADveRTising? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

AD foRmATs Banners, rich media, expand-able banners, video, text links, interstitials, 3rd party ad serving tags, IAB & MMA formats, Inter-stitials/fullpage

Banners, textual, rich media, video, full-screen banners, audio, apps, social

3D, rich media, video, social media, banners, text, full range of MMA and IAB formats

Banners, text ads, app sponsorships,interstitials, animated GIFs,advanced interstitials, rich mediaads including text ads, content unlockers, splash ads, pushnotifications, capture forms, videoads, app walls, offer walls, overlays,linkouts, app icon

Text, banner and rich media Text ads, banners, HTML5-based rich media ads for smartphones and iPad, Flash-based banners for Android tablets. Dimensions: stand-ard MMA sizes, smartphone-specif-ic sizes e.g. (e.g. 320 x 48, 320 x 50), standard web sizes for tablets (e.g. 728 x 90). Calls-to-action: redirec-tion to (mobile) website, redirection to mobile application store, click to call, call-back

All standard and rich media ad formats plus some exclusive to Widespace. Some examples of formats are: Splash, Take-Over, Panorama, Text-ads, Videobanner, Calendar banner

TARgeTing Country, geo-location, platform, device, day-part, mobile operator, demographic, channel.

Contextual, real-time, keyword, location, age, gender, channels, demographics, operators, device, operating system, applications, phone/Tablet/Smart TV/PC/net-book

Category, handset technology (e.g. manufacturer, device, OS), demographic, location-based

Country/geo-targeting, platform, category, content type, placement, time, carrier

Contextual keyword, publisher channel, location, platform/OS, model, operator, day-part

Country and city, mobile carrier, internet service provider when using wi-fi, operating system, oper-ating system version, device brand, device model, screen size, feature phone vs. smartphone vs. tablet, day/time of day

Optimization: Unique yield algo-rithms automatically optimizing and improving CTR over time.Targeting: Depending on country: Geo, Demography, platforms and all other standard targeting param-eters.

ResTRiCTions No adult, violent or generally offensive content None No adult, culturally sensitive,

political, offensive None No adult No adult No adult

min spenD (us$) 50 50 n/a 50 10,000 1,000 €25 - €1,000

no. of pubLisHeRs/siTes/Apps

10,000+ n/a 10,000+ 10,000+ 3,000+ 6,500 above 2,000 ad spaces

unique pubLisHeRs n/a n/a 50% n/a n/a n/a 95% are exclusive to Widespace

monTHLy impRessions Total: 35bn requestsUS: 8.2bnUK: 3bnFrance: 900mGermany: 600mItaly: 400mSpain: 1.6bn

Total: n/aUS: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/a Italy: n/aSpain: n/a

Total: 93bn US: 10bnUK: 3bnFrance: 900mGermany: 700mItaly: 350mSpain: 1bn

Total: 2bn+ US: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/aItaly: n/aSpain: n/a

Total: 3bn+ US: 2.6bn+UK: 192m+France: 23m+Germany: 46m+Italy: 39m+Spain: 22m+

Total: 11+bnUS: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/aItaly: n/aSpain: n/a

Total: 1bnUS: n/aUK: n/aFrance: n/aGermany: n/aItaly: n/aSpain: n/a

AveRAge fiLL RATe n/a n/a n/a 95% n/a 100% n/a

3 ReCenT ADveRTiseRs Amazon, Groupon, eBay On request John Lewis, Lloyds, Carphone Warehouse Amobee, Outblaze, Snap Interactive n/a Gameloft, iLove, Buongiourno McDonalds, Volkswagen, Red Bull

ConTACT ADDRess [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

THey sAy Global mobile advertising marketplace, Adfonic, enables advertisers to run display advertising campaigns across mobile sites and applications, reaching an estimated 200m mobile unique users, and publishers to monetise their mobile traffic. Advertisers can run performance, rich media and video ad campaigns to drive direct response, increase consumer engagement and build brand awareness. For publishers Adfonic offers access to top brand campaigns, high fill rates and competitive eCPMs. The SDK version 2.0 for iOS and Android includes MRAID support for rich media campaigns, alternative options for UDID and full-page ad units.

The company is headquartered in London with further operations in Madrid, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Singa-pore. To learn more visit adfonic.com or blog.adfoinic.com

Hoopz is the disruptive force behind the rapid growth of digital advertising and auto information discovery. Our management team comes from the leading online ad networks, mobile and device carriers and manufactur-ers, the largest brands and mobile technology companies.Hoopz’s patent-pending, next-generation contextual and real-time digital marketing and auto information/content discovery platform (based on keywords in any application, without interfacing with the application) is set for innovation and thoughtleadership in digital marketing when deployed on phones, smartphones, Tablets, PCs, netbooks, Smart TVs, set top boxes, and any internet-connected device. Our platform offers unique benefits to consumers, brand owners, advertisers, telecom service providers, and device manufacturers.

InMobi is the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on five continents InMobi provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. The network is growing and now delivers the unprec-edented ability to reach 578 Million consum-ers, in over 165 countries, through more than 93 Billion mobile ad impressions monthly. The recent acquisition of Sprout, a leading HTML5 authoring platform for mobile rich media, helps expand InMobi’s offering to creative agencies and brands. InMobi was re-cently named “The Best Mobile Ad Network” at the 2011 MOBI Awards and was selected as a 2011 AlwaysOn Top 100 Mobile Company in Silicon Valley.

LeadBolt is an innovative online and app content monetization company. Recognising that app consumers have vastly different likes and habits, we provide the largest range of traditional and premium ad formats. These interactive ad formats deliver better ROI to both advertisers and publishers by creating higher response rates from consumers, and better eCPMs to app developers.

Mojiva is the mobile ad network that reaches more than 30m users in the EU5, over 750m unique users globally, and represents over 3,000 mobile publisher and apps. Through deep and open integration with all major rich media providers and ad servers, Mojiva can provide ad agencies with every imaginable mobile creative execution across mobile web sites, apps and devices. Founded in May 2008, Mojiva is led by a team of advertising and media veterans from Google, DoubleClick, Yahoo and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in online and mobile advertising and technology.

Sponsormob is a leading mobile advertising provider. Founded in 2006, Sponsormob helps advertisers and agencies gain reach with highly targeted mobile ads using data-driven technology. It also offers publishers strategic integration opportunities, with a variety of attractive mobile campaigns available.

Connecting premium advertisers with pre-mium publishersFor Advertisers: Engaging ad formats and premium placements on well known apps and sites mean better mobile ad performance.

For Publishers: With a single focus on brand name advertisers and quality campaigns, the impact on your app experience is never nega-tively affected. It just means better revenues.



June 2012

Helen Keegan salutes the FT’s enlightened approach to digital in general and mobile in particular

OFF-DECK

When you live in a world, and work in an industry,

that’s driven by technology, it’s very easy to obsess over that technology. It’s one of the rea-sons that so many mobile apps gain so little traction with their intended audience. A brand cre-ates something it thinks is really clever, leveraging the phone’s accelerometer, camera or GPS, but in reality, it offers no on-going utility for the consumer, so after the excitement of the initial couple of uses, the app is left, buried on page six of the phone’s app screens, never to see the light of day again.

So it was refreshing to hear Rob Grimshaw, the manag-ing director of FT.com, speak recently about the newspaper’s experiences in the digital world. He spoke openly and frankly about FT’s approach to online and mobile, and what struck me as he talked was that harness-ing the power of this brave new world is not about the techno-logical change, but rather the cultural change required.

The reason most media owners have not yet embraced mobile, Grimshaw explained, is that they lack the confidence to feel that they could charge for their content online. They also don’t know how they would go about going mobile, so they put it to one side, and go back to

working on one of the projects that’s more in their comfort zone, where they are less likely to make mistakes.

Technological changeBut the harsh reality is that rapid technological change is now a fact of life for any busi-ness. It’s not something that can be left to the geeks in the IT department – it’s something everyone in the organisation

has to learn to embrace, or face the consequences.

It’s no coincidence, of course, that it should be the FT talking about these issues. Among media companies, it has prob-ably done more than anyone to push the envelope in embracing new distribution channels and revenue models. It was one of the first media outlets to put a

paywall in front of its online content. When I first met the FT formally in 2006, it had already launched a mobile Java app. Even back then, the app had a fair degree of intelligence built into it – it learned your reading habits, in order to present you first with the articles you were most likely to want to read.

It staged its first hack day recently in London, and opened up its APIs to developers so

that they can experiment and create new ways to use some of the FT’s rich data. In January this year, it also bought special-ist HTML5 company Assanka, to build its web apps. And it has thrown down the gauntlet to Apple by abandoning its native iPad app and opting for a web-based version, having tired of the 30 per cent cut Apple

leverages on apps distributed through the App Store.

Undoubtedly, in doing all these things, the FT has made mistakes along the way. But in doing them early, while most of its competitors were too scared to contemplate them, it has made those mistakes at relatively low cost and in relative privacy, and managed the culture change that was required. Admittedly, that was perhaps easier for the FT, hav-ing started on its digital journey in the 90s, with one of the first ever online newspaper subscrip-tion services. Now, both online and on mobile, it is enjoying the fruits of its labours while others contemplate the task ahead, fearing both the death of print and the mobile future – and no doubt wishing they had grasped the nettle many years ago.

One of the points Grimshaw made when I heard him speak was that the print side of the FT’s business would not be its principal focus within the next 10 years. Those publishers just starting to dip their toes in the mobile waters may find that a hard statement to swallow. Those, like the FT, who enjoy first-mover advantage, are not only ready for the disruptive revolution that’s taking place right now; they are already busy planning for the next one.

The FT abandoned its native iPad app in favour of a web app in order to avoid giving Apple a slice of the profits


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Mobile Marketing Issue 10, June 2012