On Technology and the Future: Education, IoT, AI, Mobility, Games

Month: April 2007 Page 2 of 4

Mobile Ads for PrePay Credit works with Teens

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On 20/04/2007

Here is some interesting research on mobile advertising. According to a recent survey, a staggering 82% (!) of 11-20 year-olds would be happy to receive advertising in exchange for top-up credit (76% for discounts/special offers). There was more to report on the survey of course, which you can read e.g. here.

The most interesting conclusion is that the kids apparently fully understand the mechanics of advertising: advertising business is paying for eyeballs. If you want my eyeballs, you have to pay me.

They do not really seem to give a hoot WHAT ads they actually receive (although at least 71% would not mind to receive ads on things of interest to them) but more what they get in return for allowing it. This would appear to create a small dilemma because it is somewhat difficult to communicate to the advertiser that one wants it to subsidise the youngsters’ top-up credits (“so who was that ad from?” “Can’t remember but was worth 2 quid”). At the very least, advertisers would have to take a different approach to the messages (as in brand message, not as in SMS) and the type of campaigns they create in order to take this into account.

Blackberry Platform Failures…

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On 20/04/2007

So, now we had it: no Blackberry connections for “millions” of users. Thousands of appointments unconfirmed because of the inability to get this last-minute change of plan out via e-mail, millions of leading executives severely disturbed and seriously troubled as they could not actually do anything on their way to work (a wonderful little account is here).

So what was it? RIM said it related to a disobedient “new, non-critical system routine” that had to be installed (cf. NY Times). Now, non-critical might sound soothing to an engineer. It will give every the overwhelming majority of Blackberry users, all the politicians, lawyers, marketing executives, bankers, etc the jitters: how bad will it actually be if it is critical???

The outage showed the weakness of the otherwise pretty compelling hard/software combination: it seems to contain so much hard-coded “stuff” that it entangles hardware, network and device so closely that one OEM-side error triggers outage across all networks and all devices, and that is not good! But then: according to Nasdaq, this “not good” is “only” worth $1.88 per share – that’s how much the shares lost on Thursday.

Using the Power of Mobile for Good Causes

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On 12/04/2007

In Social, Thoughts

The New York Times has an article on “cellphone fundraising”, which unfortunately focuses on the wrong points: They mainly report about PR-needy consumer-protection associations that quarrel about the fact that users who want to donate $20 to the Red Cross are being charged 4x 15c SMS charges as the agreed maximum donation is $5 (and they would probably be quarreling if there wasn’t a maximum for it would drive people into certain poverty).

Folks, you need to get out more! Isn’t it great that you can donate money to the Red Cross like this? The administrative costs for a mobile campaign will arguably be lower (and hence the return for the charity higher) than with the use of traditional means. The Red Cross gets more money. Everyone wins!

The concept of cause-related mobile campaigns – and that doesn’t only include actual fundraising – is fantastic:

  1. As has been mentioned a gazillion times, mobile phones have the capacity to being the most targeted marketing approach known today. Conversion rates should be very high and acquisition cost per capita therefore very low. E.g. did Rights Group’s collaboration with U2 and the ONE campaign exceed 25% response!
  2. People tend to part easier with their money for causes they believe in. In particular calls for smaller amounts as they are already customarily being paid for via mobiles would appear to be attractive.
  3. Premium SMS is one of the most efficient micro-billing tools in the world. It is globally available and simple to use.
  4. The overall cost of premium SMS would need to be lower than those for traditional fundraising.

More power to mobile charity work!

Amp'd ARPU >$100, >$30 on data, >$15 on content

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On 10/04/2007


Now, this should be welcome news to the mobile content folks: more than $30 ARPU on data consumption vs the industry average $6.74 (which is what IDC reported), and more than half of that are from content (more than double the industry average).

These are the figures MVNO Amp’d has released. Some juicy mobile content stuff in there:

– 5% of original content sees 30% of all downloads.
– The niche lives: ultimate fighting and super-cross see a lot of traction.
– Amp’d subscribers download more full music tracks than ringtones (which nicely confirms my explanation of that trend set out a few days ago here).

Congrats!

Crazy numbers: mobile marketing worth $19bn by 2011?

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On 10/04/2007

According to ABI Research, mobile marketing will be worth a staggering $11bn by 2011. Apparently, by the end of this year, it will already be a rather honourable $3bn market.

Now, I don’t have the means (or inclination) to buy the underlying report but at least they divulge that the amount is to include proceeds from mobile search and mobile video, and I suppose one could predict that, in 4 years time, there may well be more advanced devices that will actually make it fun and worthwhile to use them for more elaborate surfing and rich media consumption. Not very specific though. Other than some foggy reference to the wealth of data carriers sit on and “due in part to mobile broadcast networks’ presence in all major markets” (doh!), all the rest is apparently, well, apparent…

To me, it’s a whole lot crystal ball-type assumptions.

GPS mobile phone showcase – 30% take-up with the right service!!!

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On 09/04/2007

And the pretty news comes from Disney Mobile. The MVNO shared some insight on usage patterns of its subscribers, and there is some interesting little pieces of information that would suggest that the combination of a consumer value driver (here: security) with a technology (here: GPS) might make a business:

Allegedly 30% of the their subscribers use its GPS location tracking services (parents can locate their kids via the handsets’ GPS functionality), and parents who do so use the feature 14 times per month on average.

56% of Disney Mobile subscribers are adults and 44% are children.

A take-up rate of 30% of a relatively novel service with high service usage (every other day) is pretty impressive for any media!

Final blurb: 30% of location requests were made from the Web and 70% from the handset, demonstrating the cross-platform nature of the application – and the huge potential of mobiles.

US ringtone sales down: Novelty wearing off? Nah!

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On 09/04/2007

Broadcast Music (BMI) projects that U.S. ringtone sales will dip to $550m in retail sales in 2007, down US$50 million from calendar year 2006.

Here’s why according to BMI: “We believe that the ringtone market’s growth has leveled off and the novelty phase has ended.” You can read more of it here

I do not think this explanation is accurate. I suspect that it is not novelty wearing off but the kids and technology smartening up: 1) phones and computers often come equipped with Bluetooth now, 2) new phones usually are MP3-capable. The kids have figured out how to transfer their favourite tunes to their phones via Bluetooth.

This might result in sub-optimal loops being cut (i.e. the tones not rolling as nicely as a ringtone as a professionally-made one might) but on $1.99 saving per tone (when the full track costs you a mere $0.99 on iTunes), that is a no-brainer. Also: with programmes like Garage band et al, every kid can cut loops into MP3s, too.

This last bit is perhaps the one that killed it off: if a product is unique in that it is defensible against similar products on other media, pricing is not under direct pressure as it is not directly comparable (e.g. monophonic ringtones and recorded music). If it becomes comparable (e.g. MP3’s on mobile phones vs. iTunes), there has to be something special justifying a higher price-point. The higher the difference in pricing, the better that USP has to be. 20-second loop cut by a pro? Not good enough…

Conclusion? Bad piece of pricing policy and marketing, I would suggest. Elementary, isn’t it? You’ve screwed up your own market, folks…

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