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DD Three Ways to Market on Mobile (Article by CEO of Enpocket, which is believed to be an acquisition target by Neomedia)
August 04, 2006
By Mike Baker
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/10604.asp
In his first piece of a regular column, the CEO of Enpocket outlines three types of campaigns suited for mobile devices, and how each can support your specific marketing objectives.
By now you've no doubt heard the hype: The mobile phone is the most ubiquitous and personal digital device in the history of the world. According to the CTIA, there are more than two billion mobile accounts globally and U.S. consumers are sending over 10 billion text messages on their phones a month.
Has your head stopped spinning yet? Most brands I talk to ask the same question: What can we do now with mobile marketing to advance our interactive advertising plans?
To answer the question, it's helpful to review the three campaign mechanics used today in mobile marketing and how each supports typical marketing objectives. The three campaign types are (1) text messaging ("SMS," which is short for short messaging service), (2) picture messaging ("MMS," which is short for multimedia messaging service), and (3) mobile internet advertising ("WAP," which is short for Wireless Application Protocol, and refers to special formatting of internet content for mobile browsers).
But before delving into the mechanics, let's take a look at the size and demographics of the audience using their phones for more than voice calls. According to findings from the latest Enpocket and Harris Interactive quarterly Mobile Media Monitor, while there are almost a quarter of a billion wireless subscribers in the United States today, only about 71 million or 33 percent currently use some form of mobile media, beyond messaging. Twenty nine percent of female subscribers and 36 percent of male subscribers have accessed some form of mobile content in the past three months. Demographically, mobile data usage skews high in youth (18 to 24) and ethnic groups, such as African American, Asian American and Latin American. Users of media services tend to be higher income, with 38 percent of mobile web users earning more than $75K and users of advanced-features consistently using more multimedia services.
Text Messaging (SMS or Short Message Service)
Text messaging, hugely popular in Europe and Asia, is on a serious upswing in the United States. Ninety million Americans have sent or received a text message, with a high usage rate among younger Americans (up to age 24 more than 80 percent regularly text message), according Mobile Media Monitor findings.
The majority of those messages are person-to-person, but increasingly Americans are using SMS to interact with brands for such activities as interacting with TV shows (voting on "American Idol", trivia contests about program content on CNBC, program alerts for History Channel shows), on-pack promotions (texting an under-cap code on a Pepsi bottle for a chance to win an instant prize), driving buyers to retail outlets with mobile coupons (discount vouchers for Dunkin Donuts Lattes and EA games) and so on. Think of text messaging as the email -- sans graphics -- of the mobile world. Like the early days of the internet when email drove online activity, text messaging is the on-ramp to the mobile media world.
However, marketers can't just blast out promotional text messages to consumers without an opt-in. To secure consumer permission for push messaging, a brand invites the consumer to engage via mobile by texting into a five-digit number, called a short code. The mobile call-to-action is typically promoted in other media: TV or radio, a website, on a billboard, print ads or product packaging. This opens a world of push/pull interaction where the brand entices the consumer to engage, and the consumer then uses his/her mobile to get more information, express an opinion, download promotional content like a screen saver or a ring tone, purchase something, opt-in to receive alerts as part of a continuing push campaign or respond in some other form. It allows the interactivity of the internet wherever and whenever the consumer wants to engage with a brand, and not just during PC-face time.
Like an email, once a text message is received, it is stored on the phone until the user deletes it. This makes SMS useful for tactics like couponing where the deliverable needs to persist on the handset even when the network is not available. Text messaging's Achilles heal is that it is limited to160 characters, and does not support graphics. But when it comes to reach, there is no better way to engage with consumers on the most personal of devices.
Response rates depend on the program, but expect generic opt-in rates to range from one to five percent, with focused compelling programs (e.g., in-venue, on-pack promotions, affecting the outcome of a broadcast) to attain rates of 10 percent or higher. For example, a recent on-pack promotion that we ran for Pepsi drove almost one million text entries in the first couple months of the promotion.
In another example, Panasonic wanted to target the digital generation when launching its new state-of-the-art Oxyride battery designed for digital cameras.
To reach college-aged consumers, Panasonic sponsored the Jason Mraz concert series in 15 different venues last fall and invited attendees to text the word "POWER" to 69973 (OXYRD) for a chance to win a Panasonic prize package including a digital camera. The response rates to the Oxyride mobile campaign averaged 10 percent and were as high as 14 percent.
Picture Messaging (MMS or Multimedia Message Service)
MMS functions mechanically like SMS, but supports pictures, graphics, animation, video and audio-- it makes it possible to push a rich media advertisement to a consumer. And, like SMS, it is interactive so the recipient can respond to the message to purchase, sign up or opt in to future communication.
While MMS has about half the reach that SMS has -- 21 percent of all American mobile subscribers use picture messaging, according to the Mobile Media Monitor -- promotional MMS packs a much bigger punch in terms of activating a consumer. To see an example of what an MMS ad looks like, check out this recent Vodafone MMS campaign to promote mobile game downloads.
The ROI on MMS is quite compelling-- five percent is considered a low response rate to an MMS campaign. We have seen purchase conversion rates over 20 percent on well targeted MMS programs.
As an example, Samsung initiated a campaign to drive trial and download of the widely acclaimed "Skipping Stone" mobile game.
Using the rich graphics and animation, Samsung sent Samsung "Fun Club" members an MMS so they could preview the game, including a link to download a free demo of the game, and the option to purchase the full version of the game. The campaign generated an impressive 15 percent response rate. Check out this example of the MMS creative.
Since the U.S. mobile data capabilities lag behind other parts of the world, we are just beginning to see the first pilot campaigns here. But MMS has been a growing marketing phenomenon abroad and represents an interesting near-term way to leverage video until mobile TV penetration hits critical mass in the next 18 months or so.
Mobile Internet (WAP or Wireless Application Protocol)
The general sense of "wapathy" is subsiding in the United States with 30 million consumers now surfing the mobile web for news and information, sports scores and mobile content, according to Mobile Media Monitor findings. Advertisers are taking notice and are starting to extend branding and response campaigns to this desirable audience with mobile internet banner ads. Like banner ads on the web, mobile ads are small, clickable links that can take the browser to a landing page, where the user can interact with the brand, often with the option to click-to-call a merchant, receive a voucher or coupon, or even purchase mobile content.
One of the greatest benefits of mobile display advertising is that it provides a richer albeit small palette for brand advertising, while avoiding the need for an opt-in or consumer-initiated reply message. Clickthrough rates in the United States are generally between three percent and five percent but average up to 10 percent in markets like India, China and Japan, where more people rely on their mobile than PC for internet access.
While each mode -- whether push or pull, rich media or text -- has its advantages and challenges, best practices for mobile marketing often require integrating messaging with mobile internet for maximum reach with the greatest impact. Stay tuned for more on how these campaign mechanics can be orchestrated for maximum impact in my next column.
Mike Baker is chief executive officer of Enpocket. Read full bio.
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tbonaces80, Neom's pps is being held back by dilution. I believe the 2Q financials to be released within a few days will be better than the prior quarter. Improving financials and the hard launch of qode later this year will eventually propel the stock's pps.
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DD Send In the Ads
by Steve Smith, August 2006 issue
Mobile content hasn’t caught on as quickly as expected. Can Madison Ave. save the wireless future?
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=4584...
In 2004, the business pitches for wireless data services almost always started the same way. With a phenomenal installed base of 200 million subscribers, the mobile platform seemed to fix all of the Internet’s early problems by finding viable business models.
People were already accustomed to paying for additional services on phones: The penetration was enormous at the get-go, and the networks had built-in micro-payment systems. To make the model work on wireless phones, all a mobile game or video producer needed to do was get a “percent of a percent” of that massive base to buy into a $2.99-a-month fee. Then you’re talking some serious margins, right?
Um, maybe not so much. When Versaly Entertainment launched its “Hollywood Insider” video channel on Sprint, fewer than 5,000 subscribers showed up to pay the $4.99 monthly fee. “Of course we were hoping for a larger subscriber base,” concedes Steven Burke, media director, Versaly Entertainment. “We found that growth does occur, but it’s not tremendous, and our subscriber numbers are fairly standard. It’s basically slightly more than break-even for us.”
So Versaly turned to the perennial patron of content: advertising. Its Fast Lane video channel is slated to launch free to Sprint users this summer, with short mid-roll video spots inserted into each two-minute “mobisode.” Blockbuster Online and 16 other advertisers are lined up. Burke contends that the channel’s profitability is “almost immediate” and adds, “The amount of money we are seeing come in from ads is five times what we see from subscriptions.”
And so it goes. The mobile ecosystem is getting over its early reticence toward banner ads and video spots on handsets, and seems poised to embrace the same ad model that subsidized every mass medium before it. For some members of the value chain, it is none too soon. Mobile content is not taking off in quite the meteoric way many prognosticators foresaw even a year ago.
For several months running, wireless data purchases have been flat across major categories like games and ringtones, according to researcher M:Metrics. Even after substantial promotion of wireless data packages and billions invested in 3G high-speed networks, the major carriers lure less than 10 percent of their customers to access news or buy a ringtone on their handset. A measly 2.4 percent download a new game each month.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Robert Tercek, cofounder of MultiMedia Networks, commented recently in Forbes. “The mobile content market has hit a speed bump.”
Opinions differ about the actual health and growth rates in mobile content, but it is clear to everyone that incremental wireless fees are not enough to support a robust content ecosystem. “For mass adoption, we basically need advertising as a core part of the mix,” says Louis Gump, vice president, mobile, The Weather Channel Interactive.
There will always be room for premium downloadables like The Weather Channel Interactive’s fee-based weather applications, but on the whole, most people don’t want to pay extra on a phone for content they get free online. Banner ads that are already running on Weather.com mobile pages and forthcoming video pre-rolls are the real drivers for the company’s substantial investment in wireless. “It is very likely that advertising will be our largest source of revenue,” Gump says.
Making Mobile Mass
Ultimately, advertising on mobile platforms is about distribution, not just dollars. The high penetration rates for TV, radio, and the Internet, as well as the potential for growth in video-on-demand and satellite radio, provide an important historical turning point, says Brian Wieser, director of industry analysis, Magna Global. “Mass deployment will depend on ad support,” Wieser says. The evolution and growth of other new media platforms underscores that observation.
The larger world of marketing communications will ultimately drive consumers to mobile, says Mark Kaplan, chief strategy officer, Assembly. The New York-based mobile marketing and m-commerce boutique is a spinoff of Anomaly.
“I believe the most important fact is that unless mobile is integrated into an overall marketing campaign, consumers simply do not discover the content,” Kaplan says. Among other mobile ad initiatives, Assembly is working on location-based promotions that could geo-target coupons based on where a user and his phone are located.
The promise of location-based wireless services still feels somewhat elusive. The idea of receiving an alert for 20 percent off at Banana Republic while you’re walking down the street near a store seems sensible. But for now, fee-based wireless services and content are more prevalent.
Even so, fee-based services like MobiTV, which claims more than 1 million subscribers to its wireless video service, still represent less than 1 percent of the addressable audience. By moving from fee to free, for instance, Versaly is expecting to increase its reach twentyfold for Fast Lane over previous premium offerings. If the mobile industry wants to get to scale and move beyond the early-adopter niche, where digital video recorders and video-on-demand continue to languish, then it needs the sort of wide distribution that advertising makes possible.
Wireless data services continue to face obstacles in making their case to consumers and advertisers. According to a recent report on a survey of mobile customers conducted by JupiterResearch, 71 percent of wireless users say they don’t purchase mobile content because they just aren’t interested, and another 32 percent balk at the prices.
Ad support could enable a much broader range of pricing schemes. And more ambitious marketing and education programs by major brands could spur more subscriptions to wireless content. Taking a page from the cable TV business, wireless providers could use a hybrid revenue model, a mix of subscriptions and advertising, to get more mobile content into more hands.
“I would probably have three or four more ringtones if there were some model where I paid for one and then listened to an ad once a week that covered the others,” says Dan Flanegan, CEO, SoapBox Mobile.
Show Me the ARPU
Wireless carriers remain duly concerned about how consumers, most of whom say they don’t like ads on phones, will react to marketing messages of any kind. Some operators now worry that ad support could go too far and gore their golden goose: the pay-to-play model that continues to sell a lot of ringtones, wallpapers, and messaging services.
“They are paying for this stuff, and they see the value,” Cingular’s content chief, Jim Ryan, told marketers at the Mobile Marketing Forum in June. “To trade ads for content devalues the relationships.”
On the other hand, after an expensive high-speed network build-out and declining rates for voice plans, carriers need the data channel now more than ever to spout multiple streams and grow their languishing Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).
Carriers see marketers lining up to find and pay dearly for more direct and personal routes to those elusive consumers. In 2005, marketers, content providers, and wireless carriers raced past any tipping point in their attitudes toward wireless marketing’s potential.
“The overall enthusiasm for mobile advertising is the belief that because the device is so intimate, you should be able to do targeted advertising at a CPM [cost per thousand] rate that will blow all previous media out of the water,” says Mark Donovan, analyst, M:Metrics.
Mobile operators are not about to leave that kind of money on the table, but none of them is talking in anything but the vaguest terms about how they test ads and whether they are staffing up. “The biggest thing I can say is that they are a lot farther along than a lot of people think,” says Tom Burgess, CEO, Third Screen Media, a mobile ad-serving network that is helping carriers test dynamic advertising to the handset. The only question now is which major carrier will be the first to deploy the models publicly.
But are wireless providers actually ready to be media companies? Can they serve and measure campaigns efficiently, carve their audiences into lucrative targets, and generate services that meet specific marketing goals? To accomplish these objectives, networks need to build a different infrastructure, massage piles of customer data into usable marketing tools, and integrate accountability measures.
Carriers are finally looking at their customer base as an audience and as an asset, says Flanegan. They don’t just want content — they want co-marketing deals from publishers that can help push that content to broader audiences and promote both the carrier brand and greater usage of wireless content. But the carriers themselves are not always able to execute these co-marketing relationships efficiently because they haven’t invested properly in editorial staff, and the lead times are long.
“It’s far too cumbersome now. The whole process of applying for marketing campaigns and getting something kicked off has got to change,” says Flanegan.
Still, at least now it’s clear to all parties in the food chain that wireless marketing needs to change — that the money, motives, and means are in place to turn what has been a telecom/technology industry and culture into a new media sector. After all, Donovan observes, “At one point, Google was just a tech company.”
Contributing writer Steve Smith is a longtime new-media consultant and columnist, and current editor of Wireless Business Forecast for Access Intelligence at TelecomWeb.com. Contact him at popeyesmith@comcast.net.
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DD Sandwich Maker Launches Trial Mobile Marketing Run
› › › CLICKZ NEWS
By Kate Kaye | August 1, 2006
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623032
In Buffalo, where wings and beef on weck reign supreme, sandwich maker Subway will launch a mobile marketing effort today. Franchise locations owned by QSR Brands will push real-time alerts and discounts to customers' cell phones using MobileLime’s technology.
Buffalo-area consumers will be able to register for free for The Subway Mobile Alerts Club at the 12 participating Subway shops, or by sending a text message to the campaign-affiliated number. Those who opt-in to the program will receive coupons, special offers and event notifications via their mobile phones.
The restaurant company aims to achieve a competitive advantage over other quick-fix food establishments around the Nickel City, hoping to gain more than the standard 2-3 percent response rates garnered through other promotions. QSR Brands will have access to the database of people who have signed up.
The mobile marketing firm has worked with other food purveyors to enable mobile marketing campaigns, including Chicago's grocery chain Potash Bros. Markets, and Cape Cod's Ring Bros. Marketplace.
MobileLime competes with mobile marketing platform companies including ipsh, Verisign's m-Qube, Motricity's GoldPocket Wireless and branded mobile content distributor AvantGo.
According to mobile infrastructure software provider Airwide Solutions, 89 percent of brands will use text and multimedia mobile marketing by 2008, and in five years 52 percent of brands plan to spend between 5 and 25 percent of their total marketing budgets on mobile efforts.
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DD Mobile Marketing Association Adds Three New Board Members
Newest Board Members Further Reinforce Industry Leadership and Caliber of Companies Engaged in Growing Mobile Channel
BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 3, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com) today announced that it has appointed three new members to its board of directors. The new members include: Alltel Communications, The Coca-Cola Company and Soren Schafft. The Board has also presented Isobar with a two year founding member appointment. The new appointments follow record-breaking membership growth, with more than 100 companies from around the world joining the MMA within the past six months.
The representatives from each company serving on the MMA North American Board of Directors include:
-- Craig Kirkland, Director of Messaging and Voice, Alltel
Communications, MMA Sustaining Director
-- Tom Daly, Group Manager, Strategy & Planning, The Coca-Cola
Company, MMA Honorary Director
-- Soren Schafft, General Manager, Singlepoint, MMA Individual
Honorary Director
-- Gene Keenan, VP of Mobile Services, Isobar, MMA Founding Director
"We welcome the three new board members to continue the association's legacy of offering strong leadership for a thriving industry," said Louis Gump, chairman of the MMA and VP mobile of The Weather Channel Interactive. "The MMA continues to lead in the development of a consumer-friendly, professional and sustainable mobile marketing industry, and these new additions will help us move forward even more quickly. We also extend our appreciation to Isobar for their ongoing support of the MMA."
"Alltel has been a strong supporter of the MMA and its initiatives," said Craig Kirkland, director of messaging and voice at Alltel. "We look forward to helping MMA members capitalize on this exciting opportunity."
"As Coca-Cola develops new tools to engage consumers in a dialogue one of our most important options is to embrace all forms of mobile technology. We believe it is a vital part of our marketing portfolio and we look forward in supporting MMA in developing the full potential of mobile marketing," said Tom Daly, group manager, strategy & planning at The Coca-Cola Company.
"Isobar is committed to making brands relevant to consumers, even when they're away from their TV or PC," said Gene Keenan, VP mobile services at Isobar. "Mobile marketing is an ideal way for companies to remain an important part of their lives."
"I'm honored to have a second opportunity to serve on the MMA board," said Soren Schafft, general manager at SinglePoint. "Mobile marketing has quickly emerged as one of the most powerful, effective ways to reach consumers."
The MMA is the premier industry trade association that strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing world-wide. For information about the MMA, please visit www.mmaglobal.com.
About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global association which strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing. The MMA is an action-oriented association designed to clear obstacles to market development, to establish standards and best practices for sustainable growth, and to evangelize the mobile channel for use by brands and third party content providers. MMA members include agencies, advertisers, hand held device manufacturers, wireless operators and service providers, retailers, as well as any company focused on the potential of marketing via the mobile channel. The Mobile Marketing Association's global headquarters are located in the United States. For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com
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JP, interesting! EOM
Re: Scanbuy litigation case. Don't forget that our CEO, Chuck Jensen, went out of his way at the SHM to mention that Scanbuy's new CEO had flown to Ft. Myers to meet with Neomedia. That comment definitely implied that settlement talks were being discussed. I am not surprised the court hearing was delayed, and further, I wouldn't be surprised if Neomedia and Scanbuy develop some sort of mutual win-win business agreement.
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Ihub StarbucksSummer Survey questions update:
See this link for my post with the questions: http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12357052
So far, I have responses from Qcurt, Runinonice, Schep, GONEOM, Whattheheck, Success622, Yellowjacket, Crusher, Joshua1vs8, Cody4 and MrC.
The total number of individuals that have participated in the Starbucks promotion is 36.
64% of the respondents sent in text only, while 36% of the respondents sent in both text and photos.
If you haven't responded yet, please do and I will add your responses to these totals.
Thanks,
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Ihub StarbucksSummer Survey questions update:
See this link for my post with the questions: http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12357052
So far, I have responses from Qcurt, Runinonice, Schep, GONEOM, Whattheheck, Success622, and Yellowjacket.
The total number of individuals that have participated in the Starbucks promotion is 27. Two-thirds of the respondents sent in both text and photos.
If you haven't responded yet, please do and I will add your responses to these totals.
Thanks,
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StarbucksSummer Survey questions...please respond and I will tally the results in a few days:
How many individuals do you know (including yourself, relatives and friends, but excluding others that you know that post on this board) have participated in the StarbucksSummer mobile phone SMS contest?
Did you (or others you know) reply to the contest with text messaging only or did some of your responses include both text and photos?
Thanks in advance,
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DD Mindmatics Facts and Figures / Awards / Management
http://www.mindmatics.com/en/index.html?flash=1
Founded by Ingo Lippert and Christian Hinrichs in March 2000, MindMatics has a staff of over 130 employees, and offices in Munich, Cologne, London, Vienna and New York. Aside from the management, the principle investors behind MindMatics are:
- T-venture Mobile
- Nova Capital
- holtzbrinck networXs
As a full-service mobile agency, MindMatics is divided into four different departments:
* Messaging and Payment (e.g. Sending, Receiving and Billing for SMS, MMS and Voice)
* Applications (e.g. Content Manager, Campaign Manager, Couponing Manager)
* Content (e.g. Images, Games, Videos, Music)
* Marketing (e.g. Creation of Mobile Marketing Campaigns, Mobile CRM)
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According to “Forrester Research,” MindMatics is the European market leader in the field of continued dialogue: no other company is better at building applications that allow you to interact with your customers. We have received several awards for our creative work and technical competence.
MindMatics handled 3 of the top 10 mobile marketing campaigns in the UK in 2002
Leading UK advertising magazine “Campaign” selected 3 of MindMatics’ campaigns for the following creative works:
Wrigley’s Extra (130 million on pack campaign in co-operation with MTV)
Müller Love (Cross media campaign for Valentine’s day)
Hasbro (The World’s First MMS Campaign)
Horizont New Media Award 2003 for the best Mobile Marketing campaign 2002
This award was received for our innovative Mobile Couponing solution that first went live in s.Oliver stores. MindMatics can send unique, and fully traceable, mobile coupons to customers’ mobile phones. These coupons can then be read, and redeemed by a special system called the M-Scanner, at the point of sale. The M-Scanner prints off a coupon that can then be scanned through the partner’s EPOS system. This concept found great acceptance and response among the customer’s dynamic, young target group. You can find more information in our showroom. .
Horizont New Media Award 2002 for the best Mobile Marketing campaign 2001
This award was received for our campaign called “4gewinnt” – developed in conjunction with Coca-Cola and the theme park, Warner Bros Movie World. MindMatics received the New Media Award for “Mobile,” announced by Horizont, T-Online and Interactive Media. The campaign featured accurate regional targeting, an intense sales promotion, and an enticing viral effect. With a response rate of 12% the campaign proved to be a great success.
German Multimedia Award 2001
MindMatics received this award for our opt-in marketing community that can be viewed at www.RedAlertz.co.uk. Members provide a full range of sociodemographic data and a detailed breakdown of their hobbies and interests. Each member opts-in to receive SMS or email advertisements. Advertisers can directly select and contact their desired audience through the Red Alertz database.
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Board of directors:
Ingo Lippert: Chief Executive Officer
Ingo Lippert founded MindMatics AG in March 2000 together with Christian Hinrichs. As CEO he is responsible for the overall business strategy and operations as well as product development and PR.
Prior to founding MindMatics, Ingo worked as Project Manager for management consulting company Roland Berger & Partner, gaining more than 5 years experience in planning and executing E- and M-Commerce strategies for leading players in the telecommunication and retail sectors. Ingo holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering from University of Darmstadt and an MBA from University of Florida, USA, and Hong Kong University of Science & Technology.
Christian Hinrichs: Chief Financial Officer
Christian Hinrichs is responsible for Finance, Accounting, Controlling and Investor Relations at MindMatics. Christian previously worked as Project Manager for management consulting company Roland Berger & Partner and headed up several telecommunication and e-commerce projects. Additionally he has a wealth of experience in the banking sector with companies such as Commerzbank, Dresdner Bank and Delbrück&Co, Privatbankiers.
Christian holds a Masters Degree in Business from Georg-August University, Göttingen
Armin Barbalata: Chief Technical Officer
Armin Barbalata is one of the leading software developers in the field of Wireless Communication Technology in Germany and is responsible for all technical development at MindMatics.
Before joining MindMatics, Armin led the WAP & Internet Services team at VIAG Interkom (now O2). Armin also worked as Project Manager, Information Systems & Technology, for Bertelsmann Music Group.
Armin holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen and Denver University, USA
Oliver Beckmann: Chief Marketing & Sales
Oliver Beckmann is responsible for Marketing, Sales and Creation at MindMatics. Prior to joining MindMatics Oliver worked as a Project Manager for management consulting company Roland Berger & Partner and managed several national and international projects within the Telecom and Internet industries.
Oliver holds a Masters Degree in Business from University of Münster and has studied at University of California, USA
Hans Henkes: General Manager, MindMatics LLC
Hans joined MindMatics in September 2004 and opened the company’s New York office in January 2005. As General Manager of the North American operations, Hans is responsible for the company's management, operation and business strategy as well as launching the company’s full range of mobile services.
With over 10 years of international management experience, Hans has built and led businesses in the mobile communications and software industries in the United States and Europe. Hans is fluent in English and German and holds a degree from Cornell University.
Extended Management Team (Germany)
Dr. Paul Hettl: Director Technology
Harald Munte: Director Sales
Steffen Ruppert: Director Business Development
Extended Management Team (US)
Monte Burris: Vice President Sales North America
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DD Mobile Marketing Links - MMA Articles
Most of these articles have been posted here before, but this link puts several of them all in one place in case you missed them when first posted.
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=experts/ad/mobile
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DD Panelists Talk Soaring Mobile Platform
By Dianna Dilworth
July 26th, 2006
http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/shows-assns/37626.html
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CHICAGO -- Mobile marketing is on the go, say participants at an ad:tech Chicago panel July 25 titled "Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: Framing the Market and the Value Chain."
Panelists Cam Balzer, director of search strategy at Performics; Peter Fuller, managing partner at i-Jump; and Courtney Jane Acuff, associate director at Denuo, discussed the emerging space of the mobile marketing platform.
"One of the most powerful things about mobile marketing is that you can reach the consumer anyplace, anytime," Mr. Fuller said. "No other medium gives you that power."
Mr. Fuller and Ms. Acuff offered facts and figures on the rise of mobile communication. In the second half of 2005, 48.7 billion text messages were sent in the United States. Panelists described all forms of mobile communications including text, wireless Web, multimedia MMS, wireless banner ads and video.
Examples of successful mobile campaigns include Starbucks' text messaging trivia game, which let the coffee retailer communicate with customers in a fun way.
Because mobile messaging campaigns face the obstacle of dealing with carriers -- Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon -- most companies work with agencies or directly with aggregators to ensure delivery.
Most text-generated campaigns are for youth-oriented products like Sprite and American Idol and for Hollywood movies. But marketers should not limit the audience for mobile marketing to young people.
"You have to train your consumer," Ms. Acuff said. "Everybody has a phone, so the potential is there."
Mobile campaigns also can be a revenue source.
"You can actually make money on texting campaigns by providing a service which subscribers sign up for," Mr. Fuller said. "For example, for $1.99 consumers can receive weather predictions. If you provide a service that consumers want, then you will have loyal customers."
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StarbucksSummer Game Buzz
http://www.starbuckssummer.com/buzz.cfm
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Crusher, I was with you at the SHM and subsequent NMPR demonstration. I second your comments.
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An excellent article: DD Mobile Marketing: An Agency Perspective
(Be sure to click on the ad link as well)
By Laura Marriott | July 27, 2006
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3622971
Check out this great ad from Optimus in Portugal http://www.adforum.com/creative_archive/2006/lastweektop5/reel_detail2.asp?ID=53069&TDI=VDyu70ly.... ,
which demonstrates the viral power of mobile. A woman discovers a beached whale and, via mobile, sends video and picture messages to all her friends. This results in a large gathering, and, somehow, they actually manage to push the whale back into the ocean.
A stretch in terms of plausibility, perhaps, but the story illustrates the power of this highly personal, immediate, and intimate device. The mobile phone, unlike any other medium, has been able to merge lifestyles and consumers together. It's one-to-one dialogue from friend to friend and, ultimately, brand to consumer. (The ad, by the way, demonstrates the power of 3G mobile data).
This column has focused a lot on wireless media types and case studies, so I thought I'd highlight the agency perspective on mobile marketing by talking with Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) board member and Isobar's VP mobile, Gene Keenan. I spoke with Keenan about brand perceptions, mobile successes, and overall inhibitors to mobile channel growth.
Keenan agrees mobile turns advertising, once static, is now interactive. Mobile can turn traditional exposures, such as billboards and print, into instantaneous consumer engagements. Consumers needn't remember a call to action from a traditional media type. They can immediately connect to the brand, wherever and whenever. Mobile will continue to have a tremendous effect on traditional media channels as it helps revitalize each of these media, turn it interactive, and in a way blur the lines between what is and what isn't digital.
Industry conferences and published case studies are a great start in educating brands on the mobile channel's power. Keenan feels the industry needs more transparency from an overall effectiveness and traceability perspective. Studies like MMA's "Mobile Marketing Effectiveness" research and other leading industry studies will be key to providing solid quantitative data on the medium's power.
Mobile is often viewed as very abstract and tough to get one's arms around. Although the industry has created a baseline set of rules and guidelines, each vendor in the community will outline its method for engaging the brand, often in very different and sometimes confusing ways. If the brand understands its goals from a specific campaign, finding and selecting the right partner should be fairly seamless (just don't get overwhelmed).
There are three inhibitors to brands engaging the mobile channel at the agency level:
* Where does mobile fits in an agency, in offline or digital? In many cases, agencies establish mobile-specific divisions or practices to get around this issue.
* There's a lack of hard data on what works and what doesn't. Today, agency statistics vary widely, depending on campaign type, cross media integration, and so forth. Greater transparency is required to see broad scale adoption (as mentioned earlier).
* Mobile is abstract -- and changes the model for consumer interaction. As an advertising industry, we've been geared toward interruption or campaign-based advertising. With mobile, we're moving away from a push model toward a pull model. Consumers are now in complete control of their interaction with the brand. Consumers now form and dictate the relationship. This is outside many advertisers' comfort zone.
The goal is to create new models that work for mobile, not merely to move models that have been applied to other media types. This is the challenge for agencies and their brands, and one they're stepping up to.
What does Keenan see as the future of mobile? Due to increasing popularity of social networking tools, such as My Space.com, Keenan believes the killer applications will be those that merge lifestyle applications and services with consumer experience. Ideally, this will be a world in which it's difficult to separate lifestyle from brand. A good example of this is the iPod. There are many MP3 players in the market today, but with the iPod you don't buy the product, you buy the lifestyle. Try separating the two. You can't.
According to Forrester Research, mobile marketing adoption rates continue to increase, with 43 percent of U.S. marketers using, piloting, or expecting to pilot mobile marketing in the next 12 months. So if you haven't already engaged the mobile channel, try it. Adding mobile to your mix isn't a case of experimentation, it's one of refinement. That means launching a mobile program, then continuing to refine based on your target demographic and overall campaign goals.
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I tried Coke, Ebay, Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN, qode, chocolate, Nestle, Starbucks, 12snap, Mobot, ESPN and Disney...all were available.
The only 2 words I could find as "currently in use" were Neomedia and Paperclick.
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OTT, I agree with everything you said but IMO these recurring errors are indicative of the lack of attention to detail by Neomedia Management and Personnel. And, a Company that doesn't pay attention to the details will not survive in the long run!
JMHO.
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I agree. One of my pet peeves is document accuracy. The amount of mistakes in Neom's SEC filings and PR's is embarrasing. If I were running Neom, I would be holding the responsible individuals accountable. Error elimination needs to be a higher priority for Management!
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Streetstylz, Excellent post! EOM
DD Rewriting the Web for Mobile Phones
Google, Yahoo Offer Services Tailored to the Small Screen
By Kim Hart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 26, 2006; Page D04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072501517.html
Internet access has become a standard feature on most mobile phones, but navigating a Web page over a tiny screen or a slow connection has kept consumers from flocking to their phones to check e-mail, read news stories or consult a map.
Now, the powerhouses of the Internet, including Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., are introducing programs specifically tailored for the mobile phone, hoping to create an experience that puts the devices on a level playing field with the personal computer.
Google yesterday unveiled a mobile version of its personalized home page for subscribers to its service and updated its mobile Google Maps feature to include live traffic updates. Yahoo Inc. last week announced that its Yahoo Go for Mobile, a Web application that combines e-mail, search, address book and local information programs, would be preloaded on millions of Motorola handsets.
Mobile Web applications have been around for several years, but only recently have companies started to jump over the hurdles that initially kept them from reaching a larger share of the mobile market.
"With mobile Web, we don't try to just plop PC-based services onto the phone," Yahoo spokeswoman Nicole Leverich said. "The network speeds are different, the device capabilities are different and what consumers want from us is different."
Still, Mark Donovan, a senior analyst with the research firm M:Metrics Inc., said the demand for advanced mobile Web services would increase as the handset technology improves.
In May, 25 million people, or 13 percent of wireless users, accessed news and other information from a mobile phone.
"There are a lot more mobile phones in the world than there are computers, and they're the most personal and intimate of these devices," Donovan said. "Google and Yahoo can't view PCs and the wireless world as disconnected silos. We live in this grid of connectivity, and we want to connect wherever we may be."
For the past year, the two Internet companies have offered text-messaging services that allowed mobile phone users to search for such information as weather forecasts, restaurant locations and movie times.
Other businesses, including retailers and media channels, are looking for ways to make mobile Web applications profitable.
Television channels ABC and HBO, for example, have launched services that allow mobile users to watch episodes of TV shows or download images. Unlike other mobile services, the content is not published through a wireless carrier. Instead, it is offered directly to the customer who uses the phone's Web connection to navigate to that site.
"A lot of companies are trying to cash in by going directly to the consumer as opposed to publishing through a carrier," Donovan said.
And that trend is only going to continue, said Matt Booth, an analyst with the market research firm Kelsey Group Inc.
"These are still the early days of the mobile Web," he said. "There's going to be a big, big market, and there are some huge players who are going to put a lot of resources into this area."
Simplifying the navigation experience, as Yahoo and Google are doing with their new mobile offerings, is a first step.
Lewis Ward, an analyst at the market research firm IDC, said consumers need to be educated about how to access the Web over their phones before the mobile surfing experience reaches the mainstream audience.
"There isn't quite enough eyeballs yet," he said. "There are a lot of adjustments to make it as user-friendly as possible. We're still a substantial distance from where we need to get."
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Mudrez, Thanks...I been away vacationing in the Colorado Rockies with the family...returned home this evening and just getting caught up with the board. My thoughts are still exactly the same today as what I wrote (and you reiterated) in my post-SHM report.
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JP, Look at slide 35 of Copus' SHM presentation (Mobile Marketing) and slides 23 and 24 of Jensen's SHM presentation (Overview) - link http://www.neom.com/corporate/investor_relations.jsp
First of all, you are right that Qode eliminates the need for the network aggregator (see slide 24 of Overview ppt). This is what will be one of the key differentiators of Neom's Qode vs. other SMS campaigns. It is why Qode has the potential to become the Mobile Marketing Standard in the near future.
Second, IMO slide 23 of the Overview ppt is very telling...if you think about the December SHM presentation and then what subsequently happened, it is a pretty good bet that Neom will try to acquire both Enpocket and Mindmatics to bolster their Application Provider portfolio of companies.
Third, today's PR along with many other previous dots is a strong indication that Nokia will be the cell phone OEM.
Fourth, look at slide 66 of Copus's Mobile Marketing ppt...there already is already a good relationship started with News Corp - one of our Media Moguls.
Now, my guess on the wireless service provider is either Vodafone or T-Mobile...both European based companies which I believe Nokia will favor.
Brand partners...look for McDonalds, Coke, Starbucks, Frito-Lay/Walkers, and various P&G brands to lead the initial campaigns.
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in4it / success622, That is correct...the quiet period is due to the S-3 registration. Don't know for sure, but it seems to be less restrictive than when we had the quiet period for the BSDS acquisition.
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More PR coverage for Starbucks - this one extracted from an email I receive from fiercewifi.com:
5. Starbucks launches Summer Scavenger Hunt
Have nothing to do this summer? Starbucks has the solution: The company yesterday launched its Starbucks Summer Pursuit, also called Scavenger Hunt--a game players play using their cellular phones or PDAs. The game relies on intelligent image recognition which reads, or understands, the player's responses to clues. Players will have to decipher a series of clues and answer trivia questions sent to their phones and PDA--and their responses will have to be given either in images or in text messages. The game engine's intelligent image reader will determine whether the image a player submitted as an answer to a clue constitutes the correct answer.
The game will last for five weeks and will end in a real-time final in New York in an event for which the company will select five contestants from those registering for the game and answering at least one clue correctly. The winner and his/her companion will earn a trip to Costa Rica, where Starbucks buys much of its coffee.
For registration to Summer Pursuit:
- here are the registration forms at Starbucks' Web site
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Streetstylz, nice work. Thanks for sharing. EOM
GONEOM, Great idea! EOM
Suggestion: Let's support our company by entering and playing the Starbucks Summer promotion. The more response, the better it will be for Mobot's future.
http://starbuckssummer.com/comingsoon.html
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DD Starbucks Promotion Website - Coming July 10th
http://starbuckssummer.com/comingsoon.html
1. To Enter: (A) To enter, go to www.starbuckssummer.com and complete the official entry form. You will receive one entry into the Sweepstakes for each Question answered, whether correct or not, for a chance to win a trip to NYC to participate in a scavenger hunt (the "Semi-Finalist Prize"). The winner of the scavenger hunt (the "Grand Prize Winner") will receive the Summer Pursuit prize (the "Grand Prize") described in further detail below. To receive your first Question, send the text message to "Summer" to the short code "66268". When your message is received, within a minute or so, you will be sent the first Question (in the form of clue). If the Question (and any subsequent Questions) can be answered with a picture*, snap the picture with your phone's camera and e-mail it to starbucks@mobot.com. If your cell phone is not camera enabled or the Question can be answered with a text response, text your answer to 66268. If you have correctly answered the Question, you will automatically receive your next Question within five [5] minutes, and if your answer is correct, you will automatically receive your final (third) Question for the Weekly Period within five [5] minutes. If your answer to a Question was incorrect on your first try, you will have one (1) additional chance to correctly answer the Question. A clue will be sent to you immediately after the incorrect reply is received. If your answer to the first Question is still wrong after the second attempt, you will not receive any more clues; instead, you will receive Question #2, which will be sent to you within five [5] minutes. If you have not correctly answered the second Question after the second attempt, you will receive Question #3 within the five [5] minute window and if you have not answered Question #3 correctly after the second attempt, you will not receive any more Questions and the game is over for that Weekly Period.
Note: you can request a re-send of the most recent clue you received by text messaging the word Clue to 66268, if you have not already sent your answer to the Question.
(B) The balance of the game (Questions 4-9) are played exactly as described above. All answers to all the Questions (1-9) must be received no later than 11:59:59 PM PT on August 11, 2006.
(C) If you joined the game on any other day but July 10, you will still be able to receive all 9 Questions. For example, if you decide to play the game on July 19, 2006, send the text message "Summer to the short code "66268". You will immediately be sent six [6] Question (1-6) on that day starting with Question #1; Questions will be released only after 1PM ET of the day you join the game.
You will be charged for each text message sent and/or received by your handset according to the terms in your Service Agreement with your carrier (standard or other messaging rates apply). All players must have a text messaging two-way capable handset and digital service in order to enter the Sweepstakes using the text messaging method. Text Messaging is not available in all areas. You can choose to stop playing the trivia game any time by sending a text message with the word "QUIT" to the short code 66268. If Text Messaging is not available in your area, you may enter via the alternate method. See paragraph D below.
Remember: If you haven't already registered to enter the Sweepstakes be sure to go to www.starbuckssummer.com and complete the online entry form.
5. Eligibility: Sweepstakes is open to all legal residents of the fifty (50) United States (except Hawaii), the District of Columbia, and Canada (except Province of Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their home state, province or territory of residence at time of entry.
6. Limitation of Liability: By participating in the Sweepstakes, players agree to release, indemnify and hold harmless Starbucks Corporation, Starbucks Licensed Concepts and Business Alliance partners, Marden-Kane, Inc. Edelman Public Relations, Mobot, and all their affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and promotions agencies, and each of their respective agents, representatives, officers, directors, shareholders, and employees (collectively, "Releasees") from and against any injuries, losses, damages, claims, actions, or liability of any kind resulting, in whole or part, directly, or indirectly, from or arising from participation in the Sweepstakes or acceptance, possession, use, misuse or nonuse of any prize (including any travel related thereto) that may be awarded in the Sweepstakes. The Sweepstakes shall be governed by and construed in accordance with U.S. & Canadian laws without regard for any applicable conflicts of laws rules.
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The next 10Q must be filed with the SEC by August 14.
See this link: http://www.sec-edgar.com/2006-calendar.pdf
SS9173
Nice find, Success622. Looks like another great addition to our world class mobile marketing team. :>)
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OT DD MySpace in its own space? Commentary: It's tempting, but not worth it
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Jul 6, 2006
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B5DDEE133%2DE4D0%2D446D%2D8A16%2D5958F6825F9...
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A year ago this month, when News Corp. purchased MySpace, the $580 million deal looked questionable, if not foolish.
MySpace seems to be the media company's crown jewel. News Corp. says that MySpace is adding 230,000 new members each day and has more than 90 million members. That's nearly 4 times the 23 million members MySpace had on July 19, 2005, the day News Corp.announced it was buying the social network.
MySpace is the fastest-growing property across the top Web brands, drawing 42 million unique visitors in May, up 329%, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
Monthly pageviews grew nearly 400% to 19.3 billion. Among the top Web properties, MySpace's pageviews are second to Yahoo's 32 billion pageviews. Google has far less inventory, with 12.8 billion pageviews, followed by eBay at 12 billion, Microsoft's MSN at 11.9 billion, and Time Warner's AOL at 6.7 billion.
Clearly, MySpace -- if it were a standalone company -- would be the hottest kind of stock, one that every sell-side analyst would gladly hawk. After all, with the exception of Google, Internet stocks have fared poorly this year. Institutional and retail investors both would love a growth story.
Investment bankers would also love the business. After last year's flurry of acquisitions, such as eBay's purchase of Skype, and Yahoo's investment in Alibaba, this year is pretty boring as far as Internet merger activity is going. There are also few Internet IPOs out there, besides Vonage , which is giving IPOs a bad name. After debuting on the New York Stock Exchange in May at a price of $17 a share, Vonage is now trading at half the price. Shutterfly, which recently filed to raise $92 million in an IPO under a proposed ticker "SFLY," is about the only Web property that looks promising. Shutterfly generated $17 million in sales in the first quarter. But that's far less than the $50 million a quarter MySpace is estimated to be doing.
Many analysts estimate that MySpace will generate $200 million in sales this year. Bear Stearns estimates that MySpace could grow those sales to $413 million next year and $528 million in 2008. Apply a 30% cash flow margin, which is an assumption based on Yahoo's 40% margin and CNet's 23% margin, MySpace could earn $158 million in 2008.
Google currently trades around 20 times next year's cash flow. Smaller Internet companies that just went public, such as , also trade at 20 or high-teen multiples. So, applying that kind of multiple to MySpace would mean the social-networking company could be worth $3 billion. Now, it's hard for MySpace to get anywhere near that multiple while inside News Corp., which trades at about 7 times cash flow.
Now, all this said, let me just point out that News Corp.has never said anything publicly about spinning out MySpace or Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace and Fox's other Internet properties, such as IGN and Scout Media.
But it's very likely the thought has crossed the minds of executives as well as MySpace founders. Prior to the sale to News Corp., MySpace founders had considered an IPO, according to someone close to the company.
It's also my sense that the discussion of MySpace and its value will come up during investment bank Allen & Co.'s annual retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, later this month. News Corp's Rupert Murdoch is a frequent attendee of this event.
MySpace upside
But the potential billions in upside don't seem to outweigh the downside, which is the time that would have to be expended to sell such an asset. Others agree.
"The opportunity is to leverage it [MySpace]," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research. "The last thing you want to do is separate the company.... let it play out in a few years."
If News Corp. were to sell MySpace, it would not only raise questions about News Corp's Internet vision, it would put a big question mark on synergies between new media and old media and whether media companies can ever really create them. Apparently, many investors don't believe Time Warner and AOL ever made any sense together.
Secondly, if MySpace were to sell, they'd likely be distracted from building their future as they spend more time explaining to Wall Street that they, well, actually have a future.
And, despite what naysayers say, I do believe there is a future.
For one, MySpace is becoming an even bigger traffic contributor to Google, giving the social network far more leverage in negotiating any search contract with the major search engines. I doubt that higher search revenue fees are baked into any figures.
According to Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, for the week ending July 1, Google received 10.34% of their traffic from Myspace.com, Yahoo Search received 2.12% and MSN Search received 2.9%. When I first wrote about MySpace's power to send a significant chunk of traffic to Google, MySpace accounted for 8%.
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DD Carriers try to wring cash from text games
Movie, TV tie-ins lead customers to other downloads, content buys
By Eric Benderoff
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 3, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/local/chi-0607030089jul03,1,6400615.story?coll=chi-technolo...
R U 1 of the 44% of US ppl who txt msg?
If not, Verizon Wireless and Chicago's Vibes Media want that to change.
Building on the strong gains of text messaging in the United States, which nearly doubled in the last two years, Verizon has launched a text-based adventure game to entice customers to buy more-pricey content, such as ring tones and songs.
It's the latest experiment in mobile-phone tie-ins that have proven to be a successful ways to engage viewers of shows like "American Idol" and "Deal or No Deal."
Cingular Wireless recorded 64.5 million text messages sent during the most recent season of "American Idol." Those totals include votes, trivia and sweepstakes offers. In 2005, 41.5 million texts were recorded for the hit talent show, up from 13.5 million in 2004 and 7.5 million in 2003.
It's a language younger people know how to speak.
"I religiously send text messages," said Ross Mash, a 26-year-old Chicago entrepreneur. He uses texts to chat with his 14-year-old twin sisters, business associates, friends and even to flirt.
"You don't have to have a complete conversation with texting," added Gina Glembin, 21, a student at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee. "You can just get what you want to know. If I need to have a conversation, I use my house phone."
Like Mash and Glembin, 44 percent of Americans with mobile phones use text-messaging services, with the vast majority being young adults and teenagers.
But far fewer buy other content, like songs.
Carriers get roughly 10 percent of their revenue from data services, said Julie Ask, an analyst with JupiterResearch. Ask said nearly half of mobile-phone users send text messages, but only 5 percent of wireless customers have downloaded a game or a ring tone.
Data services contributed $1.13 billion in additional revenue in 2005 for Verizon, with the bulk of activity coming from text messaging. In 2004, Verizon customers received 10 billion text messages, jumping to 21.5 billion last year.
On the other hand, the number of mobile downloads, such as songs or ring tones, didn't grow nearly as much, reaching 139 million last year, up from 100 million in 2004. Yet songs and ring tones, which can cost $1.99, are more profitable than text messages, which cost 10 cents to send.
Hence, carriers are turning to companies like Vibes to extract additional data revenue from customers in new ways.
Verizon is using the tie-in strategy to help promote the new Disney movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which opens Friday, and to see if customers will opt for pricier content.
With the "Pirates 2 Text-Ur-Adventure" game, developed by Vibes, the messages players receive include "rich" media content--songs, pictures, wallpaper or ring tones--embedded into the text.
With a click, customers can download that content directly to their phones, bypassing the cumbersome and not very effective method of going to the carrier's online store.
"If you reach a certain level in the game, you will receive a piece of content automatically," said Dave Oberholzer, Verizon's associate director for content programming. "There's complementary and premium content available through the game."
Verizon is encouraged that text-based promotions can draw new users. In a recent promotion tied to the prime-time game show "Deal or No Deal," Oberholzer said, a different set of its customers interacted with the game. "We got a lot of subscribers to participate who didn't do so before," he said.
For Vibes, the game promotion is the latest in a series of significant deals. It also provides text services for radio stations, concert venues and television shows.
"The idea for the game was hatched from old adventure novels," said Alex Campbell, co-founder and chief executive. More than a year in development, the game includes 562 unique messages. "It's practically a novel-worth of content," he said.
But because the game was designed for users to make decisions for the characters, there are 20,736 different paths a user potentially could take.
Each user will be offered a chance to buy other content along the way, as well as get free prizes when they get to certain levels in the game. Additionally, each message a user sends during the game automatically enters him or her into a sweepstakes for a larger prize.
Vibes' fortunes have mirrored the growth of text-messaging trends. Campbell and Jack Philbin, Vibes president, started the company in 1998 and struggled as few people understood what text messaging could do.
Now, however, the privately held company has more than 40 employees and revenue has doubled each of the last three years. For 2006, the company is on pace to generate $6 million in revenue, which Campbell called a "conservative" estimate. He said Vibes has been profitable for the last four years.
In 1998, the company used pagers for its messaging services, and did its first promotion in 1999 with Pizza Hut.
But Campbell and Philbin realized the real value was in the two-way dialogue that was beginning to emerge among European mobile-phone users.
"That was the painful part for us," Campbell said. "We knew it was coming here, but we were ahead of our time."
Vibes' breakthrough came in 2002, when carriers allowed users to send text messages to anyone, rather than, for example, a Verizon customer only being able to receive a message from another Verizon user. That put the U.S. market on par with Europe, which years earlier allowed such interoperability.
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ebenderoff@tribune.com
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DD MapQuest Mobile and the Weather Channel Are the Top Revenue-Generating Downloadable Mobile Applications, According to Telephia
Wednesday July 5, 10:03 am ET
Maps/Directions Applications Drive Revenue Share for Repeat Purchases, While Entertainment Applications Drive Revenue Share for First-Time Purchases
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060705/20060705005518.html?.v=1
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 5, 2006--MapQuest Mobile was the top revenue-generating downloadable mobile application, according to Telephia, the leading provider of performance measurement information to the mobile industry. The Telephia Mobile Applications Report for Q1 2006 shows that MapQuest Mobile secured 21.9 percent of the total share of revenue for mobile applications, excluding mobile games and mobile TV (see Table 1). The Weather Channel came in second, with 5.7 percent of the total revenue share, while Verizon Superpages 2.0 came in third posting a 5.3 percent share. Two music applications, Music Choice and Sirius Music, rounded out the top five with revenue shares of five and 4.8 percent, respectively.
"Local maps/directions and up-to-date weather are well-suited to delivery via mobile phones because they are information needs characterized by immediacy, location-specificity, and time-sensitivity," said Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President of New Products, Telephia. "Downloadable mobile applications present a significant opportunity for higher ARPU, with more than 3.3 million mobile consumers downloading these applications during the first quarter of the year."
Table 1: Top 10 Downloadable Mobile Applications by Total Revenue
Share (U.S.)
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Application Publisher Share of Revenue
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1. MapQuest Mobile Zingy 21.9%
2. The Weather Channel Weather Channel 5.7%
3. Verizon Superpages 2.0 Verizon Directories 5.3%
4. Music Choice Music Choice 5.0%
5. Sirius Music Sirius Satellite Radio 4.8%
6. Accuweather.com Premium AccuWeather 4.4%
7. eBay Bonfire Media LLC 4.3%
8. Backup Assistant FusionOne 2.8%
9. America's Best Mobile Pix FunMail 2.6%
9. Yahoo! Photos Yahoo! 2.6%
10. ESPN Bottomline Pro ESPN 2.1%
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Table 2: Top Downloadable Mobile Applications by Repeat Purchase
Revenue Share (U.S.)
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Repeat Purchase First-Time Purchase
Category Revenue Share (%) Revenue Share (%)
1. Maps/Directions 39.5% 16.8%
2. Weather 18.9% 8.7%
3. Entertainment 12.0% 29.9%
4. Sports 8.9% 3.9%
5. Personal Organizer/Tools 7.4% 4.3%
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DD Dreams of a Truly Mobile Web
Net Needs to Escape Its Computer Cage,
But Best of Luck Freeing It in the U.S.
July 3, 2006
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115144210174092228-Iun5syjbOByYJp2qERJt4SsxLdQ_20060801.html?...
It's a longstanding maxim of this column that the future generally doesn't arrive with a lot of flash and noise -- instead, it sneaks up on you. One day you notice you're reading your news online, banking via PC and downloading stuff from eMusic, and try to remember the last time you flipped through the physical newspaper, wrote a paper check or bought a CD.
But not always. Last week the New York Times' John Markoff and Martin Fackler wrote about a Japanese service that allows people to use their cellphones to guide them to hotels and other services: For instance, select a nearby hotel and your phone will use GPS technology and a built-in compass to guide you there. GeoVector (www.geovector.com), the San Francisco company at the heart of the service, touts other "location-aware" services, such as the ability to aim smart binoculars at racing yachts and get the name of the boat and its current statistics.
"Our goal is to let people access information when they need it most -- when they're in the real world," says Peter Ellenby, GeoVector's director of new media.
GeoVector's services are an effort to solve an increasingly vexing problem: Too many of the Internet's more-advanced functions still aren't truly mobile. Sure, the Net is exploding with wonders and is increasingly good at offering local information -- but for our purposes those wonders remain largely caged in PCs and laptops. Sit at your computer and you can study up on bars in the West Village, Revolutionary War landmarks in lower Manhattan or Chelsea antique stores. But take that knowledge out into the real world and you'll probably be stuck with scrawled notes or a sheaf of printouts -- which instantly become useless if there's a change in plans or you come across something unexpected in your travels. After researching and planning online, being cut off from the Net is painful: It's as if your home and office PCs are air pockets you wind up swimming between, hoping you can hold your breath long enough.
There are whizzy PC applications that attempt to bridge the gap. Google Earth comes preloaded with local-search capabilities, letting you hunt for bars or antique stores or anything else and plot them on a satellite photo. Google has made it easier for developers to tinker with Google Earth, and any number of organizations and hobbyists have marked up data to work with the program, letting you overlay the God's-eye view with, say, real-estate listings you can further explore, or information about historic sites.
Still, Google Earth doesn't work quite so well when you zoom down to street level, which is where it's ultimately needed most: It has a feature that turns on "buildings" for some geographic areas, but the buildings are featureless gray monoliths. Amazon's A9 search engine offers a feature called Block View that shows street-level photos of your destination and the surrounding blocks. (You'll find Block Views, where available, when you search via A9's Yellow Pages.) Sounds great in theory; in practice, not so much: When I hunted for one lower Manhattan bar I know all too well, I got a photo of a vacant lot several blocks to the west. The bar had been photographed, but when I found it, the facade was almost completely blocked by a parked UPS truck.
Imagine a mash-up of Google Earth and an improved Block Views and you've got something pretty compelling -- a link-ripe "virtual city" that would overlay whatever real city you happen to be in. Unfortunately, such a program would be stuck on your PC, where it wouldn't do you much good -- in the U.S., surfing the Web via cellphone or PDA is painful if you're doing much beyond seeking a simple answer to a specific question.
Broadband services for cellphones, PDAs and host of other objects could help free the Net's advanced functions, and location-based services like GeoVector's could help merge them with the street-level real world: Point a "location-aware" device with a GPS receiver and a compass at an object, and all sorts of things become possible, beyond navigation and concierge-style services. A digital camera could record information about the landmark it's shooting. Aim your cellphone at the third baseman (who has a GPS-enabled chip in his uniform), and you can review his stats. Or play "Doom" in a real city, with virtual monsters waiting at certain coordinates. (GeoVector has helped gamers do just that in Auckland, New Zealand.)
"Our philosophy is the world itself is a gigantic database and almost everything out there has some kind of geolocated reference," Mr. Ellenby says, adding that "I think it will be second nature for people to pick up any kind of mobile device and point it at something and get information from the real world. Just like now it's second nature to turn on your PC and pick up the mouse."
Sounds cool -- but something was nagging at me. Where had I encountered this idea before? Then I remembered: In William Gibson's 1994 novel "Virtual Light," bike messenger Chevette Washington swipes a pair of virtual-light glasses that send information about what the wearer's looking at directly to his or her optic nerves. As one character notes, a landscape architect wearing them would go for a walk and see little labels identifying every tree and plant. (GeoVector's founders were inspired by their own experience: As they told the Times, they thought of their idea on a 1991 sailing trip while struggling to match up navigational landmarks with maps. Why couldn't you just point a device at a geographical feature and be told what it is?)
Chevette Washington's VL glasses turn out to be loaded with secret business information, which puts her life in danger. (Saying more would risk ruining the book.) But if you'll indulge me in a bit of science fiction, imagine smart glasses that know where they are, what direction you're facing, and have a broadband connection and can show you maps, reference photos of what you're apparently looking at, or just about anything else you could find online.
Mr. Ellenby says Mr. Gibson's glasses are about 20 to 30 years away ("Virtual Light" is set in 2005 -- oh well), but that doesn't stop him from musing about the possibilities. Imagine looking at the Acropolis or Gettysburg and seeing a recreation of what happened there, giving yourself a tour of a city's history at your own pace and inclination, or looking at a construction site and seeing a visualization of the finished building. To say nothing of how easy it would be to get directions, find a retailer, or perform a host of other mundane functions that are now easy on a PC but can be aggravating in the real world.
"If you want to find out about your surroundings, you'll turn on your glasses," Mr. Ellenby says.
(Incidentally, GeoVector's current services don't require devices that see -- it's the combination of a GPS receiver and a compass that lets a device deduce what you're looking at. Potential results are ordered by distance and by category: If you were at a baseball game, you could indicate whether you wanted to buy a replica jersey like the one worn by the fan in front of you, review the right fielder's stats, or look at famous plays in stadium history by focusing on the outfield wall.)
If even GeoVector's current services sound like science fiction, to an unfortunate extent they are -- in the U.S. Why does it seem like our cellphones and PDAs do so much less than Japan's? Blame a combination of factors -- but above all, blame the four big U.S. wireless companies.
The carriers have the final call on what hardware can use their networks and what software can be downloaded onto their phones, and their track record isn't one of encouraging innovation beyond what they can control and extract ready profit from. (Walt Mossberg wrote the definitive lament for this state of affairs.) A byproduct of this wireless sclerosis: A great deal of cellphone advertising focuses on boasts that Company A's service stinks less than Company B's. That doesn't exactly encourage customers to try whatever whizzy new services are allowed to reach to market -- if your cellphone can't reliably get a signal, why would you think it could point you to a boutique hotel?
Mr. Ellenby doesn't hide his frustration with this situation, arguing that "the carriers need to be a lot more creative in how they deal with content and application makers in the U.S., I think, for things to take off over here."
Mr. Ellenby thinks MVNOs (telecom slang for mobile virtual network operators, companies that target niche markets and have lease arrangements with a big carrier) will be the first to offer location-based services in the U.S. In the meantime, while GeoVector keeps talking to carriers world-wide, its focus remains on Japan -- leaving Mr. Ellenby to accentuate the positive.
"We have 90 million customers, potentially," he says, adding: "That's a lot of customers."
What's your vision of a truly mobile Internet that could be accessed from cellphones or PDAs? How would it interact with the real world? Write to me at realtime@wsj.com -- comments will be posted periodically in Real Time. If you don't want your comments considered for Real Time, please make that clear.
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DD InfoSpace targets wireless delivery
By Tricia Duryee - Seattle Times technology reporter
Monday, July 3, 2006
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003101287_infospace03.html
If you haven't noticed, InfoSpace did not win the Internet war.
Its properties, including Dogpile, WebCrawler and Switchboard.com, never gained the status of a Google, a Yahoo! or even a Microsoft.
That is why the Bellevue company is now emphasizing its wireless business, and this time the results may be better.
It started the big leap earlier this year when it merged its Web and mobile divisions to bring to its wireless operations what it has learned in its online business. In doing so, InfoSpace hopes to sustain the fragile lead it has gained in the ultracompetitive and rapidly developing market for wireless content.
"We have a leadership position here [in mobile] and we don't online, and that's just a fact of the matter," said InfoSpace's Chief Executive Jim Voelker. "We are starting from a much better position [in wireless] than we hold today [online]."
The leadership comes in the business of helping wireless carriers sell ringtones, wallpapers and games for mobile phones. InfoSpace also provides search capabilities that reside on the phone to assist customers in finding content or local listings, such as the nearest pub, bank or dry cleaner.
InfoSpace's early strides in mobile include contracts with more than 40 wireless carriers, including the top four — Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless, SprintNextel and T-Mobile USA.
With those big-time connections, it claims to have 60 percent of the portal, or wireless storefront business, and to have assisted more than 150 million content downloads in 2005 for an estimated 45 percent market share.
For all this activity, sales of mobile content are only starting to take off. That places InfoSpace in a good position to take advantage of a potentially huge market.
Global revenues from mobile entertainment and content are expected to rise from $26.4 billion in 2005 to $91.8 billion in 2009, according to Strategy Analytics.
The focus on wireless is not a dramatic shift for InfoSpace, which has dabbled in mobile-phone applications almost since its inception in 1996.
In the company's early days, it grew quickly through acquisitions and, at one point, its market capitalization was higher than Boeing's. But the company came crashing down in the tech bust and became the subject of suits alleging that company officers misled shareholders about InfoSpace's prospects while profiting from selling its stock.
The company underwent an overhaul when Voelker came on board in 2002. He hired new management and settled a long-lasting feud with InfoSpace founder Naveen Jain, who was forced to pay the company $77.3 million.
Voelker focused the company on two divisions and now has narrowed it down to one — leveraging the online properties into mobile.
"It doesn't mean that our online business isn't important to us, or even aspects of it don't work together," but the growth is in wireless, he said.
In the first quarter, InfoSpace reported about $45 million in mobile revenues, compared with only $5 million a couple of years ago. "The growth trajectory is much greater," he said.
Voelker has committed to being a dominant player in the business and has pledged to spend up to $7 million a quarter on mobile initiatives. The company also expects to add 100 jobs to its work force of 620.
Share of success
With the growth of the wireless-content business, InfoSpace has had some success. But because the industry is so young, the company's foothold rests on thin ice.
For instance, a year ago, InfoSpace took a beating when it lost a large contract online and told Wall Street that its mobile-phone margins would be squeezed. The announcement led its stock to fall almost $11 a share to $23.95. It still hasn't recouped. On Friday, its stock closed at $22.67.
Although it has replaced some of the online business, it still grapples with how the mobile industry will play out.
Take ringtones, for example. Consumers are beginning to switch from popular polyphonic ringtones — a synthesized version of a song — to real tones, which use snippets of MP3 music.
But those are less profitable than the polyphonic versions. For InfoSpace, the impact is magnified when you consider 80 percent of its total content sales come from the ringers.
InfoSpace is also dependent on the carriers. Sales made through the company's top five customers represented 84 percent of its revenues in the first quarter. Cingular totaled more than 10 percent alone.
Although having relationships with carriers benefits InfoSpace, they aren't set in stone. Carriers control much of the network so they can give and take business freely.
"They own the networks, they own the subscribers and they, in large part, pay for the devices, so they have tremendous influence, and should by virtue of those things," Voelker said.
"I think I'm only hesitating because every day is a new day. We've been proving ourselves since 1999, and we do have good relationship with the carriers, but they are multifaceted," he said.
Sasa Zorovic, an analyst at Oppenheimer who has a "sell" rating on the company, said carrier control makes it a tough business.
If an InfoSpace does too well, carriers will demand a larger cut. If it doesn't do well enough, it could get cut off.
"Wireless carriers are just like cable operators," he said. "They own the customers. If they see you are starting to make money, they will squeeze you. They don't have to share their revenue."
With such tenuous relationships, InfoSpace has looked for ways to protect itself from a potential major revenue loss.
Last week, it launched Moviso, a Web site that sells directly to the wireless subscriber. By doing so, InfoSpace builds one of its first businesses not directly dependent on the carrier.
The site sells ringtones, graphics and games, and in the future may sell videos and search applications.
The service is considered "off-deck," meaning that content is not sold through the cellphone, but on a Web site.
To buy a ringtone, customers enter a phone number online and receive a text message describing where they can download the song to their phone. The charge, ranging typically from $1.99 to $2.99, appears on the customer's monthly cellphone bill.
Sprint, T-Mobile and Cingular subscribers can use the service, and InfoSpace pays a portion of the proceeds to the carrier for access to the subscribers.
The move by InfoSpace was a smart one, said Linda Barrabee, an analyst at the Yankee Group.
In 2005, she said, off-deck revenue represented only about 20 percent of the market. By the end of this year, she expects it to grow to 25 percent and over the next few years to 40 percent.
Although Moviso has promise, analysts say it won't be easy.
To start, there's plenty of competition. In the U.S., VeriSign operates a site called Jamster.com, Fox Mobile Entertainment has Mobizzo.com and several other smaller players, including Seattle-based Blue Frog Mobile, have offerings.
And, of course, there are the carrier's own portals. That's particularly difficult for InfoSpace, given that carriers are its largest customer. But Voelker said the carriers are warming up to the idea.
Until recently, they were reluctant to open up their networks to third parties like Moviso, but now they view them as a potential revenue source.
Stephen Fletcher, senior product marketing manager at Sprint, said his company's thinking is changing.
"We are of two minds," he said. "We do see it as revenue we may be missing out on and a threat, but this is a fairly young market and space, and anything out there that helps educate customers on how to personalize their phones is good."
Building a brand
Another question for InfoSpace involves building Moviso as a consumer brand.
Zorovic, the Oppenheimer analyst, said going directly to the consumer can be costly, often in the form of radio and television commercials.
"It was very expensive for VeriSign, and it hasn't worked out that well," he said.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign reported marketing expenses increased $226.4 million as a result of promoting its brands in the U.S. and Europe during the first nine months of 2005.
Voelker said InfoSpace has an easy and inexpensive way to advertise Moviso, one that combines its online experience and wireless properties.
The way he sees it, InfoSpace would direct traffic from Dogpile and its other search engines to Moviso. The cost to the company is virtually free.
To Voelker, this is InfoSpace's advantage in the mobile industry. Not only does it know what is popular because it sees what people are searching for online, it can also direct consumers to its own site.
"It's a great way to leverage one business on to the other," he said.
How well it can bring the two together will go a long way to determining whether InfoSpace's big bet on wireless pays off in the end.
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InfoSpace
Founded:1996
Headquarters: Bellevue
Operations: Washington, California, Massachusetts; U.K., the Netherlands, Germany.
Employees: 620, with 100 job openings.
Brands: Dogpile.com; WebCrawler.com; MetaCrawler.com; InfoSpace.com; Switchboard.com; Moviso.com.
2005 financials: $340 million in revenue; $159.4 million in profit
Source: InfoSpace
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Dr. Mike, you can add my 1,539,500 to the total. EOM
OT Vines3, actually I voted for him twice, but not very happy with him now.
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Clawmann, personally I have got mixed feelings about Scanbuy. On one hand it would be great to have a final court judgement upholding Neom's patents. On the other hand, I believe Scanbuy is doing a better job marketing themselves and their products. IMO, they are one of the front-runners in evangelizing mobile marketing. They have a new CEO who can change how they behave going forward. The fact that he traveled to Headquarters recently might signal that he too understands the strength of Neom's IP and therefore, wants to find a way to develop a cooperative working relationship. I think there is merit to partnering with them if that's what make sense to both parties. Personally, I like win-win agreements whenever possible.
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OT Gleanings, Glad you and your lurker husband arrived home safe. I enjoyed meeting both of you. You two are fine folks. While I didn't get to enjoy the company of Chas Fritz during lunch, all that I talked to that did expressed similar sentiments. Hope we cross paths again. Enjoy the holiday weekend.
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