Delighted to say the presentation I was due to give at Mobile Advertising in Brussells on Monday is gaining a wider audience.
I had to cancel my speechifying at quite late notice so decided to share the slidedeck and what I was going to say here.
And that post has been selected as part of this week's Carnival of the Mobilists.
The Carnival celebrates the best of blogging about mobile and is hosted at a different blog each week.
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
Showing posts with label mobile advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile advertising. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Using mobile social networks to target advertising... one day
I was due to be in Brussells on Monday to present on the subject of using mobile social networks to target advertising.
For a variety of reasons I can't make it. My good friend Jonathan Macdonald is going to fill in for me. Many thanks for that.
Still, I'd done all the prep work so I'd rather share that than waste it. Right below you'll find the slide deck and then below that my notes to go with them. It's not quite the real thing - but if it gets you thinking and makes you want to take the conversation in various directions, I'd be delighted to read your comments.
In summary:
First things first.
The company I work for, Bauer Consumer Media, is one of the few media brand owners to sell its own mobile advertising, at least in the UK.
We can do this because we have long term excellent relationships with key operators. Our brands include FHM, Grazia, Heat, Motorcycle News, Angling Times, Mother & Baby, Your Horse, Zoo, etc.
In mobile our best known brand is Eyevibe – the video mobile social network which operates across 3, 02 and Vodafone in the UK.
Selling our own advertising reveals two significant truths for us:
1. A lot of people still don’t know where to start if they want to place an ad on mobile.
Is it with the operator, the agency, the media property, the handset maker even. So just to be clear: If you want to place an ad on any of our properties come and speak to us!
2. We’ve learned a bit more about the scale of the opportunity than most media owners. And right now, that opportunity is small.
At the moment we are stuck with selling our services, and the eyeballs gathered by whatever community features we deploy.
That may sound impressive, and in mobile internet terms, it is. But it’s not enough to start dicing and slicing for the average media buyer.
We know for example that our core age group on eyevibe is 18-25. 18-25 year olds who are heavy users of mobile internet are a pretty focused group right now. That’s focus enough to offer advertisers without going too much further.
Targeting broad channels within a mobile social network, rather than tightly targeting individuals within it may be the best fit for today’s media buyer. In fact that’s an approach we are working on with eyevibe – the sponsorship of channels.
In short, it is too early to be deploying highly targeted advertising on mobile..
We are not yet at that volume and your business plans for the short to medium term must take account of this.
Pains me to say it, but it's important to understand the reality of now before examining how value will be created in the near future.
So no wonder Google’s Eric Schmidt now predicts more ad revenues from mobile internet than fixed line in a few short years.
What I'm going to talk about speaks perhaps to the understanding google has arrived at. Google are focused on services – where ads and content meet. They also see a new slicing and dicing niche emerging from location based services.
When we reach scale then we have the possibility to create more value with real relevance. Ads have the opportunity of moving from interruption to engagement – from lowest common denominator to being focusedm useful content for the user.
Is it right to lump these together? Perhaps not. Here’s why.
broadcast and total communities.
Youtube and wikipedia and our own eyevibe are great examples of UGC-powered broadcast models.
1% of users contribute. 99% consume.
Let me be clear. This is not a bad thing. The 99% now have something they want to consume, created by that busy 1%. It didn't exist before. It's been carved from that cognitive surplus that Clay Shirky introduced us to. New value has been created.
It’s actually a very good thing if you’re an advertiser of the old school. Youtube, for example has some videos which have been viewed by 1m plus. That’s an audience – and it’s one in consumption mode.
Users in these worlds soon spot straight-forward 30 second spots though – and turn on them. Yes they are ready to consume content on youtube, but not to be spun at.
Consuming your ad as a part of their selected experience can work.
There are, for example videos on youtube which reach multi-million audience. eyeballs matter when you have this scale – for branding purposes at least. an ad for a web2.0 conference on a great bit of web2.0 thinking could work well.
The greatest aggregate value will of course be achieved by activating advertising in the long tail in self-formed audiences.
So UGC-powered broadcast models can deliver value and are relatively easy for traditional agencies to understand.
Think of twitter. If you don’t create a profile you can’t take part. And if you don’t contribute some thoughts through microblogging you’ll get little value.
These are models which aren’t architectured to be accessible to large consuming audiences – they are for small communities to form around shared purposes and interests – facebook, myspace, secondlife… social networks/mediums.
Itsmy is a fine example in the mobile world.
And in these cases I’m going to suggest traditional ad models will prove less effective.
In Total Community models ads as content models are king.
Itsmy allows users to choose if they want to display ads, and if they do, they get to choose which ads to display. It changes the relationship with the brand. Now your choice of relationship with your brand says something about you, it’s now your content.
Even in huge networks like facebook and myspace, we know response rates even to relatively targeted banner ads is poor.
I believe this has much to do with the mode of thought people are in when they are using Total Community sites – they are more creative than consuming.
They are also looking at each other, rather than at you.
Give them an opportunity to join in the creation of an ad message and they are not only more likely to respond, they are also more likely to share.
As Mark Earls, author of Herd, says, “give them something to do together”
To be successful viral marketing must follow the rules of a networked world – and they are rules that appeal to people in creative mode, the mode we find people in in total communities:
Speak in an authentic voice (close the gap between creation and marketing)
2. Lose the TV envy (think relevance over quality)
3. Give people tools to make it their own (that which we create, we embrace)
4. Don't bother with urls, links or 'brand messages'. (We don't do spin) If people are interested they will search. Buy the keywords if you want to make it easier for them.
Number 1 is down to you.
For a variety of reasons I can't make it. My good friend Jonathan Macdonald is going to fill in for me. Many thanks for that.
Still, I'd done all the prep work so I'd rather share that than waste it. Right below you'll find the slide deck and then below that my notes to go with them. It's not quite the real thing - but if it gets you thinking and makes you want to take the conversation in various directions, I'd be delighted to read your comments.
In summary:
- First we need ubiquity
- UGC-powered broadcast models and Total Community models require different approaches
- Viral is something we do together
- Be ready to give up control
- Slide Two
First things first.
The company I work for, Bauer Consumer Media, is one of the few media brand owners to sell its own mobile advertising, at least in the UK.
We can do this because we have long term excellent relationships with key operators. Our brands include FHM, Grazia, Heat, Motorcycle News, Angling Times, Mother & Baby, Your Horse, Zoo, etc.
In mobile our best known brand is Eyevibe – the video mobile social network which operates across 3, 02 and Vodafone in the UK.
Selling our own advertising reveals two significant truths for us:
1. A lot of people still don’t know where to start if they want to place an ad on mobile.
Is it with the operator, the agency, the media property, the handset maker even. So just to be clear: If you want to place an ad on any of our properties come and speak to us!
2. We’ve learned a bit more about the scale of the opportunity than most media owners. And right now, that opportunity is small.
- Slide 3
At the moment we are stuck with selling our services, and the eyeballs gathered by whatever community features we deploy.
- Slide four
That may sound impressive, and in mobile internet terms, it is. But it’s not enough to start dicing and slicing for the average media buyer.
We know for example that our core age group on eyevibe is 18-25. 18-25 year olds who are heavy users of mobile internet are a pretty focused group right now. That’s focus enough to offer advertisers without going too much further.
- Slide five:
- Slide six
Targeting broad channels within a mobile social network, rather than tightly targeting individuals within it may be the best fit for today’s media buyer. In fact that’s an approach we are working on with eyevibe – the sponsorship of channels.
In short, it is too early to be deploying highly targeted advertising on mobile..
- Slide seven
We are not yet at that volume and your business plans for the short to medium term must take account of this.
Pains me to say it, but it's important to understand the reality of now before examining how value will be created in the near future.
- Slide eight
So no wonder Google’s Eric Schmidt now predicts more ad revenues from mobile internet than fixed line in a few short years.
What I'm going to talk about speaks perhaps to the understanding google has arrived at. Google are focused on services – where ads and content meet. They also see a new slicing and dicing niche emerging from location based services.
When we reach scale then we have the possibility to create more value with real relevance. Ads have the opportunity of moving from interruption to engagement – from lowest common denominator to being focusedm useful content for the user.
- Slide nine
Is it right to lump these together? Perhaps not. Here’s why.
- Slide 10:
broadcast and total communities.
Youtube and wikipedia and our own eyevibe are great examples of UGC-powered broadcast models.
1% of users contribute. 99% consume.
Let me be clear. This is not a bad thing. The 99% now have something they want to consume, created by that busy 1%. It didn't exist before. It's been carved from that cognitive surplus that Clay Shirky introduced us to. New value has been created.
It’s actually a very good thing if you’re an advertiser of the old school. Youtube, for example has some videos which have been viewed by 1m plus. That’s an audience – and it’s one in consumption mode.
- Slide 11
Users in these worlds soon spot straight-forward 30 second spots though – and turn on them. Yes they are ready to consume content on youtube, but not to be spun at.
- Slide 12
Consuming your ad as a part of their selected experience can work.
There are, for example videos on youtube which reach multi-million audience. eyeballs matter when you have this scale – for branding purposes at least. an ad for a web2.0 conference on a great bit of web2.0 thinking could work well.
The greatest aggregate value will of course be achieved by activating advertising in the long tail in self-formed audiences.
So UGC-powered broadcast models can deliver value and are relatively easy for traditional agencies to understand.
- Slide 13
Think of twitter. If you don’t create a profile you can’t take part. And if you don’t contribute some thoughts through microblogging you’ll get little value.
These are models which aren’t architectured to be accessible to large consuming audiences – they are for small communities to form around shared purposes and interests – facebook, myspace, secondlife… social networks/mediums.
Itsmy is a fine example in the mobile world.
And in these cases I’m going to suggest traditional ad models will prove less effective.
- Slide 14
In Total Community models ads as content models are king.
Itsmy allows users to choose if they want to display ads, and if they do, they get to choose which ads to display. It changes the relationship with the brand. Now your choice of relationship with your brand says something about you, it’s now your content.
Even in huge networks like facebook and myspace, we know response rates even to relatively targeted banner ads is poor.
I believe this has much to do with the mode of thought people are in when they are using Total Community sites – they are more creative than consuming.
They are also looking at each other, rather than at you.
Give them an opportunity to join in the creation of an ad message and they are not only more likely to respond, they are also more likely to share.
As Mark Earls, author of Herd, says, “give them something to do together”
- Slide 15
To be successful viral marketing must follow the rules of a networked world – and they are rules that appeal to people in creative mode, the mode we find people in in total communities:
Speak in an authentic voice (close the gap between creation and marketing)
2. Lose the TV envy (think relevance over quality)
3. Give people tools to make it their own (that which we create, we embrace)
4. Don't bother with urls, links or 'brand messages'. (We don't do spin) If people are interested they will search. Buy the keywords if you want to make it easier for them.
- Slides 16-18
- A willingness to relinquish control.
- Toolkits users can play with.
- Creative users.
Number 1 is down to you.
- Slide 19
- First we need ubiquity
- UGC-powered broadcast models and Total Community models require different approaches
- Viral is something we do together
- Be ready to give up control
Thursday, May 29, 2008
What Google means when it says mobile internet ad revenues will outstrip web
When Eric Schmidt says mobile will be the next big advertising platform AND that within a few short years it will outstrip ad revenues from the web, it might be time to take a fresh look at your own predictions and assumptions about what advertising is.
Schmidt is Google CEO. He knows a thing or two about ad revenues, and particularly about those coming from the web. He has deals in place for advertising on MySpace and, of course, ad revenues from YouTube.
He has tricks up his sleeve for new and improved search and, and, and... but what he has identified is that the mobile internet is the right medium for the most personal of advertising. And the most personal of advertising is the most effective.
The mobile is the most edge-in, networked device we currently have. It is what makes it such an exceptional fit with the way the network works, and how groups form. I wonder if it's this that Google has identified when Schmidt says in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
"Some things work, and others just don't – but the mobile internet always works."
If he's talking about response rate, places where the ad is the content and the content is the ad have a tendancy to high response rates. Where perfected the response rate ought to be 100%.
Google is working towards cost per action models. Where that action is purchase (and isn't that where all measurement is intended to lead?) then you can have 1:1 relationships between ad and content and charge accordingly.
I'll make a wild guess that Schmidt isn't predicting that there will be more display advertising or even more text-link advertising on the mobile internet compared to the fixed line.
He is predicting that ad models that take advantage of the personal nature of this edge-in device, which offer ad as content rather than as interruption, will prove way more valuable precisely because it will be way more effective.
He is predicting that ad models which are a better fit for the networked world will win.
He's not alone.
Schmidt is Google CEO. He knows a thing or two about ad revenues, and particularly about those coming from the web. He has deals in place for advertising on MySpace and, of course, ad revenues from YouTube.
He has tricks up his sleeve for new and improved search and, and, and... but what he has identified is that the mobile internet is the right medium for the most personal of advertising. And the most personal of advertising is the most effective.
The mobile is the most edge-in, networked device we currently have. It is what makes it such an exceptional fit with the way the network works, and how groups form. I wonder if it's this that Google has identified when Schmidt says in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
"Some things work, and others just don't – but the mobile internet always works."
If he's talking about response rate, places where the ad is the content and the content is the ad have a tendancy to high response rates. Where perfected the response rate ought to be 100%.
Google is working towards cost per action models. Where that action is purchase (and isn't that where all measurement is intended to lead?) then you can have 1:1 relationships between ad and content and charge accordingly.
I'll make a wild guess that Schmidt isn't predicting that there will be more display advertising or even more text-link advertising on the mobile internet compared to the fixed line.
He is predicting that ad models that take advantage of the personal nature of this edge-in device, which offer ad as content rather than as interruption, will prove way more valuable precisely because it will be way more effective.
He is predicting that ad models which are a better fit for the networked world will win.
He's not alone.
Friday, May 23, 2008
War! What is it good for? Mobile marketing, actually...
Check out this video to get a taste of how the mobile and engagement marketing is changing the face of spicy snack marketing in that there Japan!
2D barcodes, mobile phones, kids who want to have fun, spoken to in their language (and I don't mean Japanese, dude) - and all to get them hooked on a new snack.
The recruitment is a bit 'facebook zombies' but, you know, this stuff works for the short-lived community. And if playing this game is its purpose, then the tool is a pretty good fit. To join in you have to buy a packet of snacks - so kids who can influence end up getting more people to buy, who get more people to buy, etc etc.
The same kids even used other social networks they were already members of to meet and organise battle strategy (there's that latent community thing, see below) - and no doubt to recruit, too.
Genius. Evil perhaps, but it's being explicit (honest and upfront) about that!
This is all about tapping into a latent community (you ain't likely to recruit someone you don't already know), not using a set of tools to build one. It's why it has worked.
It has, as Clay Shirky would request, the plausible promise (it'll be a bit of a laugh, and one you can have with your friends), it has the right tools - and ones which the latent community was using anyway (the mobile phone) and it has an outcome that all parties agree is ok with them (buy the snack, join the party).
Via the genius of Tomi Ahonen and Communities Dominate Brands.
Will they still buy when the war is over? Will they still buy when they are bored of the game? That's the risk - but they will have at least bought and paid for the snack. If they like it they'll stick with it. It's only marketing when all is said and done.
The clever bit would be to take those armies and get them involved in suggesting new flavours, helping to shape the next products - make them an evil army of snack creators.
Now I can hear the evil laughter...
2D barcodes, mobile phones, kids who want to have fun, spoken to in their language (and I don't mean Japanese, dude) - and all to get them hooked on a new snack.
The recruitment is a bit 'facebook zombies' but, you know, this stuff works for the short-lived community. And if playing this game is its purpose, then the tool is a pretty good fit. To join in you have to buy a packet of snacks - so kids who can influence end up getting more people to buy, who get more people to buy, etc etc.
The same kids even used other social networks they were already members of to meet and organise battle strategy (there's that latent community thing, see below) - and no doubt to recruit, too.
Genius. Evil perhaps, but it's being explicit (honest and upfront) about that!
This is all about tapping into a latent community (you ain't likely to recruit someone you don't already know), not using a set of tools to build one. It's why it has worked.
It has, as Clay Shirky would request, the plausible promise (it'll be a bit of a laugh, and one you can have with your friends), it has the right tools - and ones which the latent community was using anyway (the mobile phone) and it has an outcome that all parties agree is ok with them (buy the snack, join the party).
Via the genius of Tomi Ahonen and Communities Dominate Brands.
Will they still buy when the war is over? Will they still buy when they are bored of the game? That's the risk - but they will have at least bought and paid for the snack. If they like it they'll stick with it. It's only marketing when all is said and done.
The clever bit would be to take those armies and get them involved in suggesting new flavours, helping to shape the next products - make them an evil army of snack creators.
Now I can hear the evil laughter...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Mobile advertising: The brands and publishers view
I was in Cannes a week or so back for MeM where I joined Prinz Pinakatt, head of interactive in Europe for Coca Cola and James Davis (who was also at Mobile Internet Portal Strategies this week) Head of Mobile Commercial Development for News Group Digital on a panel titled: “How Brands and Publishers See the Mobile Advertising Market”.
The panel was chaired by Jim Cook of MobiAd News who has just published what we had to say.
Feel free to comment where you choose.
More from MeM
More from MIPS
The panel was chaired by Jim Cook of MobiAd News who has just published what we had to say.
Feel free to comment where you choose.
More from MeM
More from MIPS
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Mobile predictions for 2008 - wisdom of crowds-style
Chetan Sharma surveyed a number of mobile industry types towards the end of last year to get our views on how 2008 will pan out.
So rather than my one-man-band predictions for Digital Media in 2008, here's the results for mobile when I joined with 195 other mobile movers, shakers and industry insiders (Chetan's words...) to gaze into the mobile year ahead. You can read the full analysis here. The graphic which sums it all up is from Chetan's blog. A larger version (and others) can be found there.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Mippin: Satisfying the long tail - extending the reach of the stumpy dog
Some time ago I asked for the moon on a stick.
Today I saw something which might not offer the entire lunar body, but I think it gets us into orbit. Mippin is in beta right now. Next week it'll be shown in public and go into public beta.
I was lucky enough to get a pre-preview preview, if you like - and VP, product management, Prashant Agarwal is happy for me to share. So go check it out for yourself.
It's the latest thing from Refresh Mobile - the former T-mobile management buy-out team which previously gave us Mobizines.
And it ticks a lot of the boxes from my moon-on-a-stick list.
As I said once before ...the fixed line net was initially grown by content providers of the mass industrial age, the mobile web will explode as a direct result of User Generated Content.
And because of the social nature of 2.0 I expect the growth to be exponential - and to dominate the way the mobile web develops in a faster and more pervasive way than we saw with the original fixed-line internet.
The long tail will wag the mobile internet dog more vigorously than it has the fixed line internet."
And I identified these drivers for the long tail to go truly exponential.
1. Really easy creation of mobile pages (on fixed line and on mobile)
2. Really easy ability to change the design to our tastes (and I'm thinking icons/desktop style as well as background colours and layout)
3. Ability to add and create rss feeds
4. Ability to add code snippets (ie YouTube video, google adsense)
5. Really easy share/ creator propogation (ie socially networked)
6. Enabled for social trade.
7. It has to be free to the site owner.
8. Option to offer as an application-based widget.
Mippin gets a long way along the route. It's really easy to create mobile pages (from rss feeds from your current content - your blog for example, or your website, if you are a publisher). So it also ticks number 3 on the list. FasterFuture is, of course, already available on it!
There are both sharing and rating functions (5) and community scoring edits the 'hits' you find on your portal home page.
Critically it integrates with ad services such as admob (or at least it will very soon) which allows the UGC creator to benefit from their efforts. The ability to monetise long-tail content was a huge driver for the explosion of the fixed web (eg google adsense, the most powerful widget yet!)
Mippin is free (that's no7) and there are plenty of widget plans (they've even got a bit of an in with facebook... watch that space).
This is Widsets on steroids. Where Widsets doesn't allow you to make cash from your rss feed in, the admob integration (Screen Tonic for bigger publishers if you prefer) means you benefit from your labouts.
And powerfully, while you have to download a client to your phone to make Widsets work, there's no need for this with Mippin.
How do they make their cash? Ads on the aggregated elements (users create their own portal of content they want to have fed to them, they get to rate it and share it too (though the share via sms function is too clunky at the moment - but it is early days).
There are no ads on the publisher's content - other than the ones the publisher selects AND which that publisher is earning cash from. This trumps the peperonity model, for example.
They take no revenue share from your arrangement with Admob, google adsense or whoever, either. They expect to make money from their introduction of your content to the likes of Admob. Which seems fine and reasonable to me.
In a nutshell, what Mippin does is allow individuals to create their own mobile portals of content they care about and rate and share that content.
Their marketing plan involves mobile ad campaigns of their own. It remains to be seen how effectively they can position themselves as your first-choice mobile portal.
The publisher (be it users creating their own mobile sites from their blog feeds etc, or publishers of bigger websites seeking to move into the mobile space) are simply extending their reach.
We shouldn't confuse Mippin with something which allows the creation of mobile-focused services fitting the 6Ms of mobile to perfection - as described by Tomi Ahonen (and those who attended Mobinar will be clear on these).
It also doesn't carry links from the original content, nor videos (though it does manage images from the rss feeds.)
What it does do is radically simplify the process of extending reach into mobile - and monetising it.
To publishers, I do not recommend Mippin as your long term mobile strategy - but it does seem an ideal quick fix to get you on the road and to use as part of your strategy. Create new mobile services alongside this - but perhaps use this to extend your reach and make a little revenue - free.
To those who are about to create the long tail - this is going to help a whole lot of shaking happen faster.
Today I saw something which might not offer the entire lunar body, but I think it gets us into orbit. Mippin is in beta right now. Next week it'll be shown in public and go into public beta.
I was lucky enough to get a pre-preview preview, if you like - and VP, product management, Prashant Agarwal is happy for me to share. So go check it out for yourself.
It's the latest thing from Refresh Mobile - the former T-mobile management buy-out team which previously gave us Mobizines.
And it ticks a lot of the boxes from my moon-on-a-stick list.
As I said once before ...the fixed line net was initially grown by content providers of the mass industrial age, the mobile web will explode as a direct result of User Generated Content.
And because of the social nature of 2.0 I expect the growth to be exponential - and to dominate the way the mobile web develops in a faster and more pervasive way than we saw with the original fixed-line internet.
The long tail will wag the mobile internet dog more vigorously than it has the fixed line internet."
And I identified these drivers for the long tail to go truly exponential.
1. Really easy creation of mobile pages (on fixed line and on mobile)
2. Really easy ability to change the design to our tastes (and I'm thinking icons/desktop style as well as background colours and layout)
3. Ability to add and create rss feeds
4. Ability to add code snippets (ie YouTube video, google adsense)
5. Really easy share/ creator propogation (ie socially networked)
6. Enabled for social trade.
7. It has to be free to the site owner.
8. Option to offer as an application-based widget.
Mippin gets a long way along the route. It's really easy to create mobile pages (from rss feeds from your current content - your blog for example, or your website, if you are a publisher). So it also ticks number 3 on the list. FasterFuture is, of course, already available on it!
There are both sharing and rating functions (5) and community scoring edits the 'hits' you find on your portal home page.
Critically it integrates with ad services such as admob (or at least it will very soon) which allows the UGC creator to benefit from their efforts. The ability to monetise long-tail content was a huge driver for the explosion of the fixed web (eg google adsense, the most powerful widget yet!)
Mippin is free (that's no7) and there are plenty of widget plans (they've even got a bit of an in with facebook... watch that space).
This is Widsets on steroids. Where Widsets doesn't allow you to make cash from your rss feed in, the admob integration (Screen Tonic for bigger publishers if you prefer) means you benefit from your labouts.
And powerfully, while you have to download a client to your phone to make Widsets work, there's no need for this with Mippin.
How do they make their cash? Ads on the aggregated elements (users create their own portal of content they want to have fed to them, they get to rate it and share it too (though the share via sms function is too clunky at the moment - but it is early days).
There are no ads on the publisher's content - other than the ones the publisher selects AND which that publisher is earning cash from. This trumps the peperonity model, for example.
They take no revenue share from your arrangement with Admob, google adsense or whoever, either. They expect to make money from their introduction of your content to the likes of Admob. Which seems fine and reasonable to me.
In a nutshell, what Mippin does is allow individuals to create their own mobile portals of content they care about and rate and share that content.
Their marketing plan involves mobile ad campaigns of their own. It remains to be seen how effectively they can position themselves as your first-choice mobile portal.
The publisher (be it users creating their own mobile sites from their blog feeds etc, or publishers of bigger websites seeking to move into the mobile space) are simply extending their reach.
We shouldn't confuse Mippin with something which allows the creation of mobile-focused services fitting the 6Ms of mobile to perfection - as described by Tomi Ahonen (and those who attended Mobinar will be clear on these).
It also doesn't carry links from the original content, nor videos (though it does manage images from the rss feeds.)
What it does do is radically simplify the process of extending reach into mobile - and monetising it.
To publishers, I do not recommend Mippin as your long term mobile strategy - but it does seem an ideal quick fix to get you on the road and to use as part of your strategy. Create new mobile services alongside this - but perhaps use this to extend your reach and make a little revenue - free.
To those who are about to create the long tail - this is going to help a whole lot of shaking happen faster.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Video: Tomi Ahonen on Mobile as the 7th Mass Media and more...
As promised - and with thanks once again to motorcyclenews.com's Angus Farquhar and Dan Thornton (for the recording and uploading of the videos) here is Tomi Ahonen speaking at Mobinar - an essentially internal emap event with invited guest contributors.
Tomi has very kindly agreed to allow us to share the videos with you all. A reminder - video was very much an afterthrought on this occasion, so we didn't mike-up. Sound ain't great, therefore - and my apologies for any difficulties that causes. Always best, on these occasions , to listen on headphones.
But Tomi is a great workshop and seminar performer, so I hope you'll enjoy these.
There are two presentations. The first is on Mobile as the 7th Mass Media - a concept you'll find expanded on at Tomi's blog Communities Dominate Brands. It's also the title of his next book.
The second is an excerpt (it might end a little oddly, the memory card filled up!) of his presentation on how the future is happening right now - inspired by his latest book Digital Korea (highly recommended - I'm reading it right now).
At the end you'll find links to my presentation on The Power of the Network, which preceded Tomi as the warm-up act for the day!
MOBILE AS THE 7th MASS MEDIA
THE FUTURE IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
Tomi has very kindly agreed to allow us to share the videos with you all. A reminder - video was very much an afterthrought on this occasion, so we didn't mike-up. Sound ain't great, therefore - and my apologies for any difficulties that causes. Always best, on these occasions , to listen on headphones.
But Tomi is a great workshop and seminar performer, so I hope you'll enjoy these.
There are two presentations. The first is on Mobile as the 7th Mass Media - a concept you'll find expanded on at Tomi's blog Communities Dominate Brands. It's also the title of his next book.
The second is an excerpt (it might end a little oddly, the memory card filled up!) of his presentation on how the future is happening right now - inspired by his latest book Digital Korea (highly recommended - I'm reading it right now).
At the end you'll find links to my presentation on The Power of the Network, which preceded Tomi as the warm-up act for the day!
MOBILE AS THE 7th MASS MEDIA
THE FUTURE IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Mobile internet: A new media - no wonder Google gets it wrong
I was lucky enough to stumble on Informa's mobile web2.0 conference at Lord's in London yesterday. I'm indebted to Ajit Jaoker (for the invite) and the good people at Informa for letting me gate-crash.
I caught the last few presentations and final panel of the day (the event continues today). As a result I'll recommend you check out mystrands.com which was presented by Atakan Cetinsoy as an exceptionally well thought-out mobile community play. And I was delighted to catch up with Ajit and Tomi Ahonen, talk with Ken Blakeslee and at least say hi to Jouko Ahvenainen.
But the bit that stayed with me was Russell Buckley's (admob and Mobhappy) scathing analysis of the launch of Google Adsense for mobile.
He pointed out adsense will start appearing on mobilised sites whether the site the ad links to has been designed for mobile or not.
In other words click the adsense link and you could get a very poor experience. That's bad enough for the user. Imagine being the poor sap who is paying per click?
It's astounding really that even Google can't get this right. But as is often pointed out, there's hardly a brand from the old media forms that has successfully transferred to the internet.
So why should we expect the 'experts' on the internet to be able to move smoothly to being the experts on mobile?
How many are really making the effort to understand the vital differences between Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's 6th and 7th mass medias (internet being the sixth, mobile the seventh)?
As Russell points out people might get excited by 450,000 people accessing MySpace from their mobiles but the leaders in the mobile social space are NEW and MADE FOR MOBILE - such as peperonity. They have way more page impressions than the old guard (amusing to think of MySpace as the old guard...).
Russell should know - Admob is currently serving mobile ads at the rate of 1.7bn a month and gathering more data about what the mobile internet accessing public are doing than almost anyone else along the way.
In the evening I was Admob's guest (and many thanks to Ivanka for that) at the Mobile Entertainment Awards - where Admob deservedly picked up the award for Best Marketing and Advertising Provider. Interesting - at this Nokia-sponsored event - to see Admob getting the nod over Enpocket (Nokia's latest squeeze).
A Google rep (picking up some search-related award, obviously) said there was much more from them to come in the mobile space. On the evidence of the adsense effort so far, there had better be.
I caught the last few presentations and final panel of the day (the event continues today). As a result I'll recommend you check out mystrands.com which was presented by Atakan Cetinsoy as an exceptionally well thought-out mobile community play. And I was delighted to catch up with Ajit and Tomi Ahonen, talk with Ken Blakeslee and at least say hi to Jouko Ahvenainen.
But the bit that stayed with me was Russell Buckley's (admob and Mobhappy) scathing analysis of the launch of Google Adsense for mobile.
He pointed out adsense will start appearing on mobilised sites whether the site the ad links to has been designed for mobile or not.
In other words click the adsense link and you could get a very poor experience. That's bad enough for the user. Imagine being the poor sap who is paying per click?
It's astounding really that even Google can't get this right. But as is often pointed out, there's hardly a brand from the old media forms that has successfully transferred to the internet.
So why should we expect the 'experts' on the internet to be able to move smoothly to being the experts on mobile?
How many are really making the effort to understand the vital differences between Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's 6th and 7th mass medias (internet being the sixth, mobile the seventh)?
As Russell points out people might get excited by 450,000 people accessing MySpace from their mobiles but the leaders in the mobile social space are NEW and MADE FOR MOBILE - such as peperonity. They have way more page impressions than the old guard (amusing to think of MySpace as the old guard...).
Russell should know - Admob is currently serving mobile ads at the rate of 1.7bn a month and gathering more data about what the mobile internet accessing public are doing than almost anyone else along the way.
In the evening I was Admob's guest (and many thanks to Ivanka for that) at the Mobile Entertainment Awards - where Admob deservedly picked up the award for Best Marketing and Advertising Provider. Interesting - at this Nokia-sponsored event - to see Admob getting the nod over Enpocket (Nokia's latest squeeze).
A Google rep (picking up some search-related award, obviously) said there was much more from them to come in the mobile space. On the evidence of the adsense effort so far, there had better be.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Mobile Advertising: Will Hype Give Way to Real Business in 2008?
I promised a link to the notes from the Nokia Mobile Advertising Thought Leadership Meeting I attended in London last week.
They are now available online, along with 10 industry predictions arising from the meet.
Find it all at MobiAdNews.com
And you're welcome of course to comment either here or there!
They are now available online, along with 10 industry predictions arising from the meet.
Find it all at MobiAdNews.com
And you're welcome of course to comment either here or there!
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The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
