Mobile Marketing Blog by InMovil Media

PUNE: Now, you don’t have to make rounds of the municipal office or go on-line to find out about your property tax bills. Help will be available on your mobile through an SMS.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is launching a new system in which citizens would get details of their property tax bills through an SMS service. Trials have already started and to be a part of it, one has to type ‘eaa’ give space, mention your property number and sms it to 54646. The details of the tax will be sent on your mobile within a few seconds. The PMC will later announce whether it would continue with the same code or change it when the project is finally launched.

“The on-line billing facility is already there, but we wanted to reach all sections of the society and mobile is the best medium to do so,” municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi said.

The formal announcement of the project would be made in a week. The PMC is also working on a plan in which citizens can receive property bills on mobile and pay them on-line. “This is the second phase which would take some time. However, the SMS project will start immediately,” he added.

Dnyandeo Thube, deputy commissioner (tax assessment and collection), is the man behind the latest initiative.

Please contact us to see how can make a SMS solution for you.

To help brands and marketers identify key market trends, mobile subscriber usage patterns, and success metrics for mobile marketing in Western Europe, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) announced the results of its inaugural Mobile Attitude and Usage Study for five markets in Western Europe. The study surveyed 1,535 participants in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain and provides actionable insights into the region’s consumer mobile usage by demographic group and awareness. The report also identifies usage of mobile phone features and services, and interest in and concerns about specific applications.

The study’s key findings include:

One in ten mobile users in the Western European markets is highly interested in mobile marketing and another three in ten indicate moderate interest. This level of interest translates into an overall growth opportunity for mobile marketing.

Italian and Spanish consumers are most interested in mobile marketing. Over half of all users in Italy and Spain are at least moderately interested in mobile marketing and similar proportions express potential to opt-in.

2-way text messaging is the most important mobile feature across all age groups. The ability to send and receive SMS was at the top of the list for all age groups except teens, for whom it ranks second to camera functionality. Across the Western European markets surveyed, seven in ten have experience with text messaging, with the most text-savvy consumers in Italy and Spain. Over half of all users surveyed use SMS at least weekly and 37% are daily users. Daily use is most common among 13 – 24 year olds.

Western European consumers poised for an increase in mobile marketing. 15% of all consumers surveyed have had some experience with mobile marketing. Mobile phones are almost universal and most phones are equipped to receive mobile messages. More than half use text messaging at least weekly and 7 in 10 are familiar with the technology.

Interactive voting, receiving ads and product/service information are the most common applications of mobile marketing. 18 – 34 year olds have the highest rate of participation in mobile marketing efforts. However, age is not strongly predictive; interest levels are similar across ages 13 – 54.

Across all regions surveyed, mobile coupons, status alerts about accounts/purchases and special sales have greatest appeal. Over half the users have increased data usage to some extent in the past year vs. slightly under half reporting an increase in voice usage.

“This study confirms that mobile users in Western Europe already appreciate mobile marketing and have a desire to opt in to receive relevant product and services,” said Richard Saggers, MMA EMEA Chairman and Head of Mobile Advertising, Vodafone Global Services. “These results indicate Italy and Spain are significantly advanced users of mobile, and already have the most experience with mobile marketing and are therefore more likely to participate. At least 60% in all age categories surveyed have experience with text messaging, indicating a big opportunity for marketers.”

“Western Europe represents a significant opportunity for mobile marketers. One in three consumers surveyed indicated that their mobile phone is highly important to them and they are very dependent on it. With consumers acknowledging their mobile is always on them, brands need to begin integrating mobile into their marketing campaigns ASAP. Clearly, mobile is proving its potential value as a marketing tool,” said Laura Marriott, President of the MMA.

Contact us, to see how we can help your business take advantage of this opportunity.

It was a week with a lot of mobile search news from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and again Yahoo, eMarketer has produced a report on the rise of mobile search and mobile search advertising revenue - as mobile search advertising is following a similar trend to normal search marketing revenue predictions.

“The number and variety of searches on mobile phones jumped during the second half of 2007, causing eMarketer to raise its global mobile search revenue forecast up from $83 million in 2007 to $3.8 billion by 2012.”

Furthermore, eMarketer believes that mobile search spending in the US will grow from $34 million in 2007 to over $1.4 billion by 2012.

Click here to see how we can help you appear on top of the mobile search engines, or how you can advertise on the mobile web.

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.