Carnival of the Mobilists #25

Wow! - What a week! Ok - I admit it - I'm a complete slacker missing 2 weeks in a row with my own contribution. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go over to Golden Swamp to read the rest of this weeks contributions by the Carnival of the Mobilists. Judith has done a great job this week - so be sure to check it out!

If you have questions about the Carnival - or would like to know more about how you can join in - please drop me an e-mail (contact information in my profile). We are always on the lookout for new talent!

Submit your blog article to this edition of “carnival of the mobilists”! Use our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Carnival of the Mobilists #24

Wow! - What a week! With the Easter holiday and a few other key projects I didn't even have a chance to get any articles written or submitted for this week's Carnival of the Mobilists. But not to worry - the Carnival goes on. Be sure YOU find the time to read this weeks Carnival, written by Jim Hughes at Feet Up!

Carnival of the Mobilists #23

Be sure to read the best blogging on mobile from this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists host, Read the full posting here!

And we're always looking for new mobilst talent! So be sure to submit your article for the next Carnival!

Submit your blog article to this edition of “carnival of the mobilists”! Use our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

FILIPINO mobile phone subscribers can now breathe a sigh of relief

NTC, operators agree to temporarily stop SMS ads - INQ7.net

Some marketers will continue to push the limits as far as they can for as long as they can - and as a result the legitimate marketing companies will suffer.

Although the shutdown is initally only for 30 days it is clear that a significant change in business practice must happen or the guillotine may come down with more permanence.

TXT//AD™ - the new Pay-Per-Text mobile marketing product from MIVA and 118 118

TXT//AD™ - the new Pay-Per-Text mobile marketing product from MIVA and 118 118

I first saw a reference to this in a New Media Age article and really didn't think much of it. Then saw a reference to it in the next week's NMA.

What is a 118 service?

For those not in the UK - 118 is a directory service similar to 411 in the U.S. There are lots of 118 providers and you can chose who will provide you directory service by using the full 6 digit number. One of the biggest brands in directory listings is 118 118.

When you dial 118 118 you can receive directory information including the phone number or address of a business - and in some cases additional services are available such as bookings, tickets, table reservations and more. Upon completing the phone call portion of the service you can receive a text message sent to your mobile phone with all of these details for later reference.

118 makes its money based on a fixed price of each call and then a per minute fee. Taking from the 118118.com website:

Calls to 118118 cost 14p per minute (charged per second) + 49p per call from most landlines. Costs from mobiles vary.Click here for accurate pricing for your network.

(Although they use a 6 pt font...)

Until now that is…

What I meant to say was that 118 118 made their money according to the terms and outlined above until now. Now 118 118 has found a new way to make money and that is by selling advertising to the consumers who are using the service.

I mentioned that you can receive a text message with information related to your recent inquiry such as the business telephone number – but now you get something extra – you get an advertisement that promotes a similar, related and/or even a competitive service embedded as part of the text message sent to your mobile phone. In one case consumer’s who asked for the number for Home Base got the number back but also included an ad with the number for Home Base competitor B&Q.

Sounds great! Not.

Not to me. When I’m paying 49p per call plus 14p per minute I’m already paying a premium for the directory service and the last thing that I want is to have further marketing messages sent to me.

By the scenario’s very nature the message sent to me is Timely and Relevant – it’s arguable if it will be Valuable but it most certainly was not Requested (TRVR) – even if somewhere buried in the terms and conditions it states that they can provide me with marketing information as part of the service (btw – I looked at the 118118.com Terms and Conditions but did not find any reference to this new content)

Opt-in permission can be implied by the “existing business relationship” exemption that implies that you can send a consumer marketing messages if they have or have expressed an intent to engage in business with you so long as the content is for similar or related services. And clearly – providing you an extra number for a similar or related inquiry would surely qualify – but here’s my beef.

I’ve already paid full price for this service – and I don’t want any ads!

I have written to 118 118 to ask how I can opt-out of receiving any future marketing and am awaiting a response. Until this matter gets cleared up I’m not going to use 118 118.

If MIVA want to make money from a service like this they must offer the 118 directory inquiry at a heavily reduced rate and/or FREE. The subsidized content model has worked for years.

What 118 118 is doing is basically the same thing that happened to cable television 15 years ago. You bought cable so you could avoid having to watch commercials. And now you pay for the privilege of having satellite and/or cable and you still have to watch commercials. 118 directory services used to be services you paid for to get just the information you wanted. Now you get them, but with advertising too.

What should MIVA and 118 118 do?

One of my first bosses told me, “Never come to me with a problem without a solution attached.” – I’ve always tried to live by that – so here’s the solution.

118 118 should offer consumer’s the opportunity to opt-out of receiving marketing messages as part of their text message responses. They keep enough information on me as it is, this should be a simple thing for them to do.

Alternatively, 118 118 should launch a second 118 type service at a reduced or FREE price where the directory queries are advertising supported.

What do you think?

Carnival of the Mobilists: 22

Well done to this weeks carnival host, Helen Keegan! I got to meet Helen this past Monday at the Swedish Beers networking event.

Be sure to check out Carnival of the Mobilists: 22
over at Helen's Technokitten blog(great name!)

Submit your blog article to this edition of “carnival of the mobilists”! Use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Do not use Network Solutions for .co.uk domains

Well - following on from my recent posting about terms and conditions and the fact that people get stung when they don't read them - I just got stung by Network Solutions because I didn't read the Service Agreement.

I have been a Network Solutions customer for quite a while. They aren't the cheapest provider by far, but they have always had good customer support and I've generally grown to trust them over the years.

Recently I had a problem where I could not change the DNS servers for one of my .co.uk domains. I called their support line and they couldn't change them either - so the call got escalated to engineering.

Network Solutions does NOT provide technical support by phone for DNS changes.

That's right - I was told that an engineer would try to fix the problem in 1-3 business days and that there was no way that I could actually speak to someone in tech support. Oh well. It's only my business - right?!

After 3 days the problem had not been corrected and there was no indication of when it would be corrected so I decided that it was time to transfer my domain to a new registrar that could actually help me. Guess what?

.co.uk domains cannot be transferred away from Network Solutions

That's right - buried in their Service Agreement is a tiny reference to the fact that .co.uk domains cannot be transferred. Once you're with Network Solutions on a .co.uk domain - you're stuck.

From Schedule B part VII #4 of the Service Agreement:

"4. No transfers or legal name changes are allowed for .co.uk, .org.uk., .me.uk., .de, .jp, .be, .at, .co.nz, .net.nz, .org.nz, or .mx country-specific domain name registrations, which includes, but is not limited to, CRA, RNCA, channel transfers, account consolidation by 2 or more users."

Ok - so I am stuck. They won't let me transfer this domain away and they haven't been able to fix the problem.

So - my consumer preference here is:

DO NOT REGISTER .CO.UK DOMAINS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS

I'd hate for someone else to get locked into a company that can't provide technical support AND won't let you leave.

And don't worry - my trust and confidence in Network Solutions is such that I will be transferring all the rest of my other domains to another service immediately.

WAP Browsing Statistics - UK

According to text.it, mobile Internet usage is definitely on the rise with some absolutely crazy figures – like 1.3 billion page impressions per month in the UK in December 2005. Now I’m personally a bit sceptical of numbers like these as they are given largely out of context. What I’d be interested in is a first level separation between traffic from mobile browsing – and traffic from content downloads.

It turns out that most all digital content these days is delivered via WAP Push and that the average content download is the result of at least 2 WAP page impressions. If 100% of the traffic was content downloads we could expect 650M content downloads. At an average value of £1.50 per download that’s revenue of £975M per month. That doesn't sound unreasonable - but it doesn't leave much WAP traffic for regular content browsing.

One of the biggest content feeds for mobile operator O2 is their sports content. Sporting content has been drawing an average of 17-18M page impressions per month across 1.8M unique users. O2 is currently generating between 800-900M page impressions per month (Compared with nearly 1B WAP page impressions per month when browsing was free) from there 14M subscribers. The average sports content consumer accesses 10 WAP pages per month.

So - what do you think? Does the average user check their phone once or twice per month for sport content? And how many of those 1.8M users are constant and how many change every month? By that I mean - How many get discouraged after having used the service only once and as a result they never come back again?

Let's do the maths...

Assumptions: 20% of consumers have accessed the mobile internet
So 20% of O2's 14M consumers is 2.8M subscribers
2.8M subscribers access 20 pages per month or 56M WAP Page impressions
56M WAP Page impressions of the 900M total page impressions leaves 844M pages for content downloads or 422M pieces of content. (Assuming 2 WAP page impressions per download )

Nobody wants to talk about these numbers - and I'm sure there is a good reason wny. But if you can shed some light on these assumptions and point out where I'm on target - or completely off base - then please either leave me a comment or drop me a mail. I believe the information is out there - if we can just get everyone to contribute their piece of the puzzle.

And yes - there will always be Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics!

What will make mobile marketing GO!?

Do you know when Pay Per Click really started to take off? It wasn’t when Google came up with it. It wasn’t when a few brands started to use it. Pay Per Click really took off when it hit the desks of the media planners as something they could include in their media planning schedules.

It’s quite possible that media planners could hold one of the most significant keys to the success of mobile advertising. And yet I don’t know of many people that are spending time educating this group of fast paced sales people and planners to the types of mobile media that are available and the kind of results that kind be expected.

Media planners sell their wares to advertising agencies – and ad agencies sell their wares to brands. In order for mobile advertising to really take off, we have to get mobile into the minds of the media planners.

In a recent meeting here in London I had a short discussion with a media buyer and was avidly discussing the merits of using mobile as a relationship tool and a response mechanic. I had further asserted that mobile was a poor choice for acquisition - especially if it involved sending unsolicited text messages to people. The feedback that I got was both definitive and actually quite terse.

"Mobile is never going to go anywhere until we can spend money on it as a customer acquisition tool. Relationship management is fine - but the money is in acquiring new customers. Show me how mobile can be used to acquire new customers and I'll show you how mobile marketing can go."

Media Planners

Now – a media planner wants a few things: He/She wants to be able to offer a definite ROI (Return on Investment) to the client for advertising spend, they wants to know that they can make some money as part of the transaction, and because they are fundamentally lazy (just kidding!), they want it to be easy to buy. That last requirement means that mobile has to be integrated into their purchasing system.

This snapshot from Marketing Pilot shows that there is no entry for mobile. Although some would argue that you could include mobile with the online category.

Will mobile banner ads be considered part of the online marketing spend? After all, banner ads are indeed from special websites – WAP sites – and isn’t that still technically part of the online business just accessed from a mobile terminal?

That’s true – but only if you limit mobile advertising to WAP sites. What about streaming content? What about mobile TV? What about SMS/MMS and WAP Push marketing?

I’m a fan of having mobile as its own category and being separate from online. If the soothsayers are right – that mobile will take over from television as the predominant choice for media spend – then mobile should have its own category.

Third Screen

Third Screen Media in the US is making the first inroads into this area with their own separate tool – MADX/Agency. It’s a start – but it’s not as easy as if it were integrated into a mainstream media planner’s platform. But again, this is strictly limited to WAP banner ads via mobile devices. We’ll have to see how well Third Screen can keep up with the evoloving mobile technology and expand their platform to include things like mobile TV and streaming content.

Pull based marketing

One of the key elements in all of this is the fact that there are no permission issues around mobile marketing when you are talking about streaming video, mobile TV and/or WAP banner ads. Each of these different types of marketing exists in an environment where the consumer has requested content and the content is being ad supported. It is a model that is tried and true and well understood by both consumer and advertiser.

If mobile browsing continues to grow and if mobile TV and streaming video continue to have increased adoption - there exists a real opportunity for mobile marketing to take off and experience the type of growth that has recently been seen in the Pay Per Click search marketing arena - for new customer acquistion. And one of the knock on effects of this is that there will be more interest in using mobile as a response channel and a relationship channel going forward.

Media Planners are Key

From what I can see it is very likely that the media buyers really are one of the keys to making mobile marketing take off. So - if you know of any media buyers out there it's time to start taking them out for lunch, coffee or down to the pub. Figure out what they need and start giving it to them. Getting the media buyers on board is one sure fire way to make mobile marketing GO!

Americans And Their Cell Phones

Americans And Their Cell Phones - Broadband and Wireless "Other overall findings – interruptions, deception, texting spam and "American Idol" In this survey of adult cell users, more than a third say their cell phones have enabled some type of unwelcome intrusion in their lives."

Another excerpt from the Pew study.

N.B. - Americans call them cell phones - UK'ites call them mobiles - German's call them Handy's -- they are our mobile telephone!

Movie downloads an evolutionary idea?

Movie downloads an evolutionary idea?

It may be an evolutionary idea - but is there really a demand for downloading rights managed copies of movies? I'll be interested to watch this one.

I also saw in New Media Age this week they talked aobut a mobile version of the service - but they quickly pointed out that operator data tarrifs made this service impractical at best.

MediaPost Publications - Mobile Spam Flourishes - 04/04/2006

MediaPost Publications - Mobile Spam Flourishes - 04/04/2006
Be sure to read the entire article - there are some good statistics beyond the opening salvo about SPAM!

Mobile Spam - is it going to be a real problem?

It's probably one of the questions I get most often. And the answer is a very definite maybe.

Will Mobile SPAM ever reach the deafening proportions of e-mail SPAM? - not likely. The economics of e-mail make it virutally free to SPAM people all over the world - not so with mobile. And access to the Internet means that anyone with a sense of greed and an absence of morals can setup a SPAM shop anytime anywhere... not so with mobile.

However - we need to be carefully aware that not everyone means the same thing when they say SPAM. To most consumers a mobile message will be SPAM if it is something that they don't want at that moment. It doesn't matter if they have given an opt-in permission to receive it or not. If the message isn't timely, relevant, valuable and requested (TRVR) they are likely to consider the message SPAM.

So - while mobile SPAM will never reach the same proportions as e-mail SPAM, the sensitivity of reaching someone on their mobile will make the number of complaints about SPAM all the louder from more people possibly giving the perception that the mobile SPAM problem is bigger than it really is.

Mobile Links of the last couple of weeks...

I finally had a chance to get caught up on some of my reading...

Tyson Foods "gets it" and invites the consumer to participate rather than pushing messages to them. 57% response rate speaks well to the creative promoting the service. Read more...

An interesting study about the fact that young men are more receptive to mobile marketing and more engaged with mobile content than girls and/or older adults. This is not news to the EU. I'd agree with most of what they said, except the part where they claim the US to be an established market. Maybe in comparison to Pakistan – but not certainly the US is not nearly so established as any of the EU countries and/or the Asia Pacific countries. Read more...

Mobile Marketing - more than text - branded applications. A nice piece talking about the evolution of mobile marketing from text messaging to more engaging consumer environments. But still I think they are jumping the gun by saying the mobile will replace TV. Read more...

These guys are the type of guys that worry me... Young and aggressive. They know all the right things to say and they know how to spin a story. But will they really act responsibly? Is their marketing truly going to be opt-in? They will push every limit and sail very close to the wind and they just might make it. But one mis-step and they'll be dead in the water. Tread carefully guys... Read more...

And the MMA Press Office has been busy...

Laura Marriot of the MMA does a 3 part series over at ClickZ on ABCs of Mobile Marketing. Read Part I

MMA and Digital Marketing - 2 separate events in June in NYC: Read more here.

MMA provides updated best practices for mobile marketing in the US.