Mobile Marketing Blog by InMovil Media

Advertisers recognized the current iPhone as a new marketing platform and some even developed campaigns targeted to iPhone users. Although it was a it is a good looking device, the phone’s slow Internet speed was a real shortcoming. However…

The new iPhone, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to unveil next week, will be a high-speed 3G model. With the new iPhone connecting to the web is faster and less frustrating, this will improve the user experience for example for downloading music and videos.

Another great prospect are rumors that the iPhone will come equipped with GPS, this makes it possible to pinpoint where the device is being used. The ability to target users in this manner is particularly appealing to marketers.

“Both from the marketing side, as the consumer side, there is the promise of location- based targeting,” said Tim Ruisbroek, director of InMovil Media, a mobile marketing firm. “Marketers get re ally excited about this.”

For years, the advertising business has been waiting for mobile marketing to catch on. Mobile Advertisers have to work with an array of service providers and device makers with different capabilities. Therefore making mobile campaigns for large audiences is diffucult job.

While the 3G iPhone won’t solve all these problems, however marketing experts believe it will help advertisers to deal with mobile phone shortcomings.

Moreover, Apple is putting pressure on other hand set companies to come up with “iPhone killers” that make the whole mobile phone experience faster, easier and more userfriendly.

Rivals are also making mobile-ad moves. For instance, Finnish phone giant Nokia purchased mobile-ad company Enpocket last year, while Google is expected to rock with their open-source software “Android”, for mobile phones in the fall.

All in all the conclusion is the mobile industry is moving fast powered by the urge for marketers to use the mobile channel ready to deliver highly targeted ads and create the best advertising medium so far.

Contact us to see how we can help your business to monetize this mobile advertising medium.

After having received more and more request from businesses that are interested in mobile 2D barcodes, I have devoted some time to give a practical explanation what 2D barcodes entail for making media interactive by using a mobile device.

To basic thing is to create the data matrix and QR codes (2D mobile barcode) to link print media to the mobile web. What does this mean?

It is now possible to make traditional print media interactive by linking it directly to the mobile web. Our solution generates a unique data matrix code and QR code for each mobile web page created related to the printed information or advertisement. This code can be printed on advertisements, magazine articles, or even posters to provide an immediate call to action. When the 2D mobile barcode is scanned with the camera of a mobile phone it links straight through to the related mobile webpage - where you can; get further information and register interest, to a competition entry, buy concert tickets or other products directly with the mobile phone.

Datamatrix and QR codes are 2D barcodes consisting of a totally unique pattern of black and white squares that act as a quick link through to a specific mobile web page. When using InMovil Media to create and publish QR codes, these codes are automatically generated and can then be printed wherever required. Once the codes are scanned by the mobile device, consumers can quickly and easily access promoted content any time and any where they are. And unlike SMS or MMS triggers it is a free service.

Adding Data matrix or QR codes to print media meets a market demand for offering an easy and effective way to facilitate instant customer interaction with consumers on the move for a truly interactive marketing campaign. For example a consumer, waiting for the bus, a train journey or simply reading a paper or magazine becomes more interesting with the ability to purchase products, respond to articles or enter competitions without having to be back in front of a PC and search again for the product or information. And for your business it does not only provides an immediate call to action but a new and effective way to directly measure the success of print campaigns. Besides print media the codes can also be put on your normal website, if you want that people bookmark you mobile version of the website via this barcode.

Consumers love the opportunity for instant response and discovery of what this new technology can provide. This adds a completely new dimension to print media, which from our experience is good news for marketing campaigns.

Contact us to see how we can help your business use 2D mobile barcodes in an interactive way.

M:Metrics has published mobile marketing data which reports that young males are a rich target for mobile advertisers, as among mobile phone users 36 percent of 18 to 34-year-old men accessed mobile media in February. Men in this age group are also highly receptive to SMS advertising and marketing, with 9 percent response rate, versus a 4 percent market average.

In Western Europe, the male population is inclined to browse and download content on the mobile Web. A quarter of all male mobile phone users accessed mobile media, like for example mobile websites, compared to just under 19 percent of women. The audience is also quite young: 28 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds consume mobile media, only 12 percent of those 55 and older do.

“Reaching the 18 to 34-year-old age demographic is a real challenge to advertisers, as this group is spending less time consuming print and broadcast media,” observed Paul Goode, senior analyst. “According to TGI M:Metrics data, in Great Britain, young consumers are redirecting that attention to mobile, as 18 to 34 year olds comprise 56 percent of mobile media users, compared to only 29 percent of TV viewers.”

Interestingly, U.S. mobile users are more active consumers of mobile media and they use the mobile medium in a different way. As unlike Europeans they use SMS less frequently for news and information retrieval and are more likely to have data plans, which impacts mobile content consumption directly. Among Europeans, the UK has the highest percentage of mobile media users, at 26.8 percent, while Germany and France lag, at 18.4 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.

“In Great Britain, mobile media is attracting a highly desirable audience that is 44 percent more likely to be defined as ‘cash rich, time poor’ than the market average,” said Goode. “In fact, data from TGI M:Metrics confirms that one third of all UK mobile media users agree they are tempted to buy products they’ve seen advertised.”

“Since the early days of mobile marketing an advertising, SMS advertising has been an effective way to reach the masses, but advertises are now actively looking at the mobile web to access new audiences,” said Goode. “According to TGI M:Metrics, adding mobile to a media plan increases the efficiency of reaching key target groups, a metric that will continue to improve with the growth of 3G and smartphone ownership.”

Contact us to see how we can help you to reach your target group via SMS or the mobile web.

To give some more information about mobile marketing campaigns, I herewith show you 10 mobile marketing campaigns anounced by the MMA. These are interesting not only for brand promotion, but also for building communities at any organization.

1. Nike ID. Nike erected a large, interactive billboard in Times Square. Passers-by could use their cell phones to text in their own custom design and receive a free pair of Nike IDs. In Wheeler and Keenan’s video, individuals went nuts when they saw their own shoes posted live on the jumbotron in front of them. Though Nike gave away 3000 pairs of shoes in this promotion, I had the distinct impression that users were just as excited by their design on the billboard as they were by the free footwear.
2. Dove ‘Campaign for Real Beauty.’ Dove erected a large billboard of a happy, fresh-looking older woman with a text-to-vote number so that pedestrians could choose between ‘wrinkled’ and ‘wonderful.’ The billboard’s live ticker showed the combined results from both text and online voting.
3. Pontiac G6. This cameraphone promotion for the G6 encouraged consumers to look for G6es out on the street. By snapping a photo of a G6 and sending it in, a consumer was entered into a drawing to win $1,000,000.
4. American Express Wimbledon Sponsorship. The Wimbledon bleachers contain a captive audience of ticketholders. American Express promoted a contest in which any audience member could guess at the winners of the next day’s event, and thereby be entered into a contest pool. Wheeler noted that those people who entered were much more likely to come back for all 14 days of the competition. (Or was it simply that those who had planned to attend all days were more likely to participate in the contest?) Even better than brand awareness, American Express had a meaningful number of card applications submitted as a direct result of consumer participation in the mobile contest.
5. Lenovo Mobile WAP. After its aquisition of the IBM PC business, Lenovo ran banner ads on the USA Today WAP (mobiel website) site. The campaign’s clickthrough rate of 6.6% was roughly double the industry average. Lenovo also had an impressive 487% lift in aided brand awareness among consumers who clicked through to the WAP site.
6. NBC ’s Deal or No Deal. The Lucky Case Game integrates mobile into the TV show experience. Viewers can text in lucky case numbers and win cash prizes if there’s a match. NBC has also had some success with its model wallpaper for mobile. The multiple products are not only a good way to access viewers on multiple screens, but also a way to generate additional revenue. According to Wheeler, this mobile content revenue pays for the entire show’s production - and as a result, all of the normal TV advertising becomes gravy.
7. Axe. The company’s ‘little black book’ applet is a ringtone giveaway. Guys can choose tunes that they like, and then associate the tones with particular contacts (presumably, women) in their address books. This provides something of value to the consumer while reinforcing brand associations.
8. Nike Airmax. This aspirational advertising campaign shows athletes getting up early and doing their thing. The mobile campaign worked from this theme, enticing customers to sign up for a recorded wake-up call from a famous athlete such as Maria Sharapova. The campaign managers saw single users setting up multiple calls, and initially thought they were being used for crank calls - instead, they discovered that coaches and team managers were signing up their entire roster. This 8-week promotion exceeded its total target participation by 300% by the end of the first week alone.
9. Adidas 2D barcode Tagging. Mobile 2D barcodes, which turn your phone into a bar code scanner, are everywhere in Japan and Korea. Adidas used these codes on retail merchandise tags and clothing imprints. Potential customers could take a photo of the color code on a sleeve, and the handset would then load up the manaufacturer’;s WAP (mobile web) site. Over the course of the test run, 60,000 people participated in the Korean Adidas program, and Adidas had over 2,000,000 page views. (Note: It’s up to carriers as to when this technology becomes available in the US.)
10. Snakes On a Plane. This inventive mobile promotion may be my personal favorite. Users can generated a customized voice call from Samuel L. Jackson. To set it up, go online to select the recipient’s personal attributes from pull-down menus and submit the necessary phone numbers. As a recipient, it looks like the phone call is coming in from a friend, but when they pick it up, it’s Mr. Jackson. This was phenomenally successful in raising movie buzz, with over 4,000,000 phone calls made during the core promotional period.

Although all of these programs were highly interactive, it was mentioned that WAP (mobile website) banners, bought via CPM, are significant in driving people to promotions and loyalty programs.

Why are these campaigns worth notice? They integrated all or most of these key success factors:

• Relevant to the consumer
• Welcome invitation to participate
• Entertaining
• Drives a specific action
• Integrated where appropriate
• Connects what was previously disconnected
• Simplicity

If your company has mobile on the agenda for 2008, please let us inform you how we can help you to make your mobile marketing campaign a success.

JupiterResearch says that it has found that introducing portable media players (PMP’s) with internet browsing capabilities are likely to stimulate significant growth in the amount of people accessing the mobile web and will create additional opportunity for mobile advertisers, who are expected to spend $2.2 billion on mobile messaging, display ads, and search via mobile technology by the year 2012.

Adoption of internet browsing on mobile phones is expected to climb from 16 percent at the end of 2007 to 19 percent at the end of 2008.

Their new study was completed in cooperation with mobile advertising service provider AdMob.

According to the report, the majority of page views and advertising impressions on mobile phones and portable media players are on a small screen with a mini-browser. Impressions and click-through rates (CTR) per device, however, are higher for mobile devices with full browsers.

“Mobility is adding a time and space dimension to media and advertising that has the potential to drive up CPM’s significantly. We are finding ads with location tags are selling at five to tenfold premiums over basic ads,” said Julie Ask, Vice President at JupiterResearch and lead author of the report. “The ability to tag users with location, demographics, and behavioral data complemented by devices that support rich media to avoid having their role in the advertising value chain made obsolete must continued to push forward.”

In order to be truly successful, mobile carriers must continue to enable access with affordable portable media players, mobile devices and innovative business models while protecting their stake in the value chain by adding information layers to user profiles.

“New mobile devices such as portable media players available on the market with dramatically improved user interfaces and capable of fully rendering HTML web sites are driving consumer demand for Internet access on mobile devices,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. “Carriers should continue to enable consumers by rolling out more devices that look like portable media players at affordable prices – perhaps even as a second device – and continue to break down economic barriers of pricing and application restrictions to consumer adoption.”

 Contact Us to see how we can help your company to access the mobile internet.

New Research from InsightExpress Identifies Three Mobile Behavioral Profiles. According to new research from InsightExpress, a leading provider of digital marketing research, mobile consumers can be segmented into three new and distinct behavioral profiles: Mobile Pioneers, Mobile Wannabes and Mobile Traditionalists. This research, the third installment from the company’s ongoing mobile research program, indicates that when it comes to usage, two ends of the mobile spectrum exist.

Internet, unique applications, and/or video. The majority of Mobile Pioneers are under 35 years old, one third of them have a smartphone*, and they skew male, single and minority. The Mobile Wannabe (25 percent of the market) has tried some advanced features and would like to use them more. Less than half are under 35, and only 5 percent own a smartphone. The Mobile Traditionalists (60 percent of the market) are content to use their mobiles for phone calls and texting, and two thirds of them are over 35 years old.

Which behaviors separate the Pioneers from the rest of the pack? Almost two thirds (62 percent) had sent a text message to someone in the same room, compared to 39 percent of Wannabes and 26 percent of Traditionalists. A healthy 57 percent of Pioneers had taken a picture of a product using their phone and sent it to someone to get an opinion, compared to 30 percent of Wannabes and 16 percent of Traditionalists.

While the Pioneers set the trends, the Wannabes popularize them, making these individuals particularly interesting to marketers. This group is likely a barometer of future usage trends that will be adopted on a wider scale. For example, while 79 percent of Pioneers had taught someone else how to use their mobile phone features, Wannabes were not far behind with 65 percent having done so.

Staying ahead of the mobile curve can also be dangerous. Mobile Pioneers were most likely to have walked into something or someone while using their device, and most likely to have thrown their mobile phone at someone or something. Luckily, all three profiles stated that they had added ICE (In Case of Emergency) to their phone’s contact list (35 percent of Pioneers, 25 percent of Wannabes and 22 percent of Traditionalists).

Advertisers should be interested in Pioneers and Wannabes because these groups are more likely to agree that:

• Most advertising is relevant to them
• They believe that products that are advertised are a lot better than ones that are not advertised at all
• Advertising keeps them up-to-date on products they would like to have
• They have told someone about an advertisement they liked

“Knowing which type of mobile consumer you are contacting, or want to contact, is a big piece of the mobile marketing puzzle,” said Joy Liuzzo, Director of Mobile Research at InsightExpress. “The Wannabes are especially fascinating since they are eager to learn about and use advanced features. With this research, we continue to drive the conversation about current usage profiles and where mobile behavior is headed.”

About The Research

InsightExpress fielded an online survey to 1,516 mobile device owners age 18+ in January 2008. The survey data has a margin of error of between 3-6 percent, assuming a 95 percent confidence interval.

* Defined as Blackberry or smartphone (iPhone, Treo, etc).

If you want to know how we can help your company to reach for “Mobile Pioneers and Wannabes”, please Contact Us.

Anyone who doubts how important mobile phones are and will become as a platform and marketing medium needs only to look at the latest Pew Internet & American Life report. Cellphones are now more important to US adults than the internet, television, landline phones, and email. In addition, an increasing number of consumers are using their mobile phones for things other than voice communications, including accessing mobile internet content.

Pew conducted a telephone survey of 2,054 US adults in December, 2007 (500 were reached on their cellphones) and found the following:

Pew segments the data by race, age, and, in some cases, income. Among younger uses, as one might expect, the trends become even more pronounced:

18-29 year olds: Ever done (%) Typical day (%)

Send or receive text messages 85 60
Take a picture 82 31
Play a game 47 16
Send or receive email 28 10
Access the internet 31 14
Record a video 34 6
Play music 38 16
Send or receive instant messages 26 9
Get a map or directions to another location 18 6
Watch video 19 6

Just a day earlier, comScore reported that the number of users who access the Internet through mobile broadband connections (predominantly using a PC) had grown by 154 percent in a year. Currently, roughly 1 percent of the US online population uses mobile broadband to get online but those numbers should increase dramatically as the mobile infrastructure continues to develop — and more people use 3G mobile networks on their cellphones for internet access.

Do you want more information about how we can help your company to use mobile marketing  and mobile internet to connect to your customers please contact us.

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a “huge revolution”, Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Friday.

“It’s the recreation of the Internet, it’s the recreation of the PC (personal computer) story and it is before us — and it is very likely it will happen in the next year,” he told a panel at the World Economic Forum.

Current estimates for mobile advertising are cautious, with consultancy Forrester predicting revenues of under $1 billion by 2012.

But Schmidt said this figure was too low and failed to take into account the fact the mobile Web was reaching a tipping point.

Google aims to be a prime mover by bidding for coveted airwaves to launch an open U.S. wireless network, pitting it against established telecommunications players. The move will take the Silicon Valley-based company well beyond its core Web search and online advertising franchises.

Some analysts are worried at the high costs involved but Schmidt said he was confident location-based advertising — which could, for example, direct hungry travelers to nearby restaurants — would be “a very, very good business”.

Content providers, already struggling in the modern world of music and film downloads, are less convinced that mobile Internet is a minefield.

“It is not going to be easy to hang on the price of content,” said Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony Corp.

Marketers hail the mobile phone as advertising’s promised land

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

ADVERTISING on mobile phones is a tiny business. Last year spending on mobile ads was $871m worldwide according to Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, compared with $24 billion spent on internet advertising and $450 billion spent on all advertising. But marketing wizards are beginning to talk about it with the sort of hyperbole they normally reserve for products they are paid to sell. It is destined, some say, to supplant not only internet advertising, the latest fad, but also television, radio, print and billboards, the four traditional pillars of the business.

At the moment, most mobile advertising takes the form of text messages. But telecoms firms are also beginning to deliver ads to handsets alongside video clips, web pages, and music and game downloads, through mobiles that are nifty enough to permit such things. Informa forecasts that annual expenditure will reach $11.4 billion by 2011. Other analysts predict the market will be as big as $20 billion by then.

The 2.5 billion mobile phones around the world can potentially reach a much bigger audience than the planet’s billion or so personal computers. The number of mobile phones in use is also growing much faster than the number of computers, especially in poorer countries. Better yet, most people carry their mobile with them everywhere—something that cannot be said of television or computers.

Yet the biggest selling point of mobile ads is what marketing types call “relevance”. Advertisers believe that about half of all traditional advertising does not reach the right audience. Less effort (and money) is wasted with online advertising: half of it is sold on a “pay-per-click” basis, which means advertisers pay only when consumers click on an ad. But mobile advertising through text messages is the most focused: if marketers use mobile firms’ profiles of their customers cleverly enough, they can tailor their advertisements to match each subscriber’s habits.

In September Blyk, a new mobile operator, launched a service in Britain that aims to do just that. It offers subscribers 217 free text messages and 43 free minutes of voice calls per month as long as they agree to receive six advertisements by text message every day. To sign up for the service, customers must fill out a questionnaire about their hobbies and habits. So advertisers can target their messages very precisely. “Britain is the largest, but also the trickiest European ad market, so if it works here it will work everywhere,” says Pekka Ala-Pietila, chief executive and one of the founders of Blyk.

Last year America’s Virgin Mobile tried something similar with its “Sugar Mama” programme, which offers subscribers the choice between receiving an ad via text message or viewing a 45-second advertisement when browsing the internet in exchange for one free minute of talk time. Those who spend five minutes filling out a questionnaire online get five more minutes. Sugar Mama is proving popular: at the end of August Ultramercial, the company that manages the scheme, reported that Virgin Mobile had given away more than 10m free minutes.

Vodafone, a big mobile operator based in Britain, sees mobile advertising as a potentially lucrative source of additional income. For the time being, most of the ads on its network are still text messages, although it has begun displaying ads on Vodafone live!, its mobile internet homepage, through which subscribers access the internet and download videos and music. Vodafone is also running several pilots, says Richard Saggers, the head of its mobile advertising unit, in which subscribers receive free content in exchange for viewing ads. Earlier this year, subscribers in Britain were given the option of downloading footage from “Big Brother”, a reality-TV show, in exchange for viewing a promotional video clip. The firm has also offered free video games punctuated with ads to customers in Greece, and free text messages to Czech students who agree to accept ads in the same format.

Most mobile advertising strategies now rely on text messages, since few customers have taken to more elaborate services that allow them to download music, games and videos and to surf the web. Only 12% of subscribers in America and western Europe used their mobiles to access the internet at the end of 2006. Most people think mobile screens are too small for watching TV programmes or playing games, although newer models, such as Apple’s iPhone, boast bigger and brighter screens.

That is not the only problem. While consumers are used to ads on television and radio, they consider their mobiles a more personal device. A flood of advertising might offend its audience, and thus undermine its own value. Tolerance of advertising also differs from one market to another. In the Middle East, for example, unsolicited text messages are quite common, and do not prompt many complaints. But subscribers might not prove so open-minded in Europe or America.

Another hitch, says Nicky Walton-Flynn of Informa, is that operators have lots of databases with information about their clients’ habits that would be of great interest to advertisers. But privacy laws may prevent them from sharing it. Moreover, advertisers, operators and middlemen have not agreed a common format for this information, nor worked out how to share the revenue it might yield.

Some think these obstacles will confine mobile advertising to a niche for years to come. But others see a whole new world of possibilities, as more people use their phones to access the internet and consumers grow used to the intrusion. Mobile phones, some of which are now equipped with satellite-positioning technology, could be used to alert people to the charms of stores or restaurants they are walking or driving past.

Tying ads to online searches from mobile phones is another potential goldmine. A subscriber typing in “pizza” for instance, could receive ads for nearby pizza parlours along with his generic search results. Such a customer, mobile operators hope, is likely to be more grateful than annoyed by the intrusion. What could be more relevant than that?

Source: The Economist, Oct 4th 2007

2008 will be another year for the mobile internet. More and more applications are getting developed, to make use of the mobile medium. An overview of mobile internet applications that you can use at the moment.

1. Find mobile websites, mark them for later use, and even build a mobile web page with your favorite links for quick access.
2. A search and start page for mobile browsing.
3. Discover, submit, and rate mobile sites to share with others
4. A mobile search engine for all sorts of information including MySpace.
5. A site that allows you to publish videos, photos, and more to both the normal web and mobile devices.
6. trip a site or RSS feed down to the bare bones to make it easier on your phone, also use the site as search engine on the go.
7. Access to email, feeds, update your friends and more.
8. Sync your Google Calendar with your mobile phone or PDA.
9. Access any and all of your email accounts from one centralized mobile mailbox.
10. A widget service for mobile devices that has over 20,000 widgets at your disposal.
11. Publish a mobile blog directly from your phone using SMS or email.
12. Publish your camera phone pictures directly to the web.
13. Publish your photos from your phone quickly to the net.
14. Shoot your video in 3GP format and publish it directly to the web.
15. Publish videos and pictures from your phone to the web.
16. Publish your on-the-go pictures as a life blog and then use it on any number of other websites.
17. Share videos and pictures from moments in your life.
18. A custom RSS reader for your mobile phone that will also allow you to sync with your online subscriptions.
19. Ever feel like you really need to read your RSS feeds on the go? Then this is the service for you. It can be accessed with any phone with 2G or 3G access, and they recommend an XHTML browser.
20. Subscribe to the feeds you want and then access them from your mobile device.
21. Convert any website or RSS feed into one readable by your phone.