May 20 2008
Digital Trend Day - live update
I’m currently at the Digital Trend Day - Effective Mobile Business held by INMA and IFRA. I’ll try my best to give you some updates during the day.
General note: I have some problems with the connection (digital media seminars…), I will update as soon the problems are fixed.
Speakers, subjects and updates:
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Trends and best practives of the mobile publishing business
Kristina Büren, Business Development Manager, IFRA Sweden
Kristina talked about:
- 3 billion mobile subscribers globally (est. 2008: 50% of the Earths popuation)
- 76% had pohone with mobile Internet access (32% used it)
- general stuff like the iPohone
- problems with transcoding
Mobile trends:
- Local search growing rapidly (even faster than web search)
- Reader pictures - still going strong
- Content importance, what the users want: Wether (53%), Sports (49%) , News (36%)
- Svenske Dagbladet testet bambuser for live streaming from different happenings using mobile phones
- Referred from Pontis about user attitudes towards mobile advertising
A case study from Sweden:
Negotiations with mobile carriers gave results. With clear win-win argumentation they agreed on the following in a trial period:
- lower fixed costs
- more beneficial revenue split
- higher transactions possible
- variable VAT possible
Sum-up: Nothing new but a good introduction (and day-starter) on the topic.
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Understanding the consumer
Henrik Pålsson, VP & Head of Consumer Lab, Ericsson SN
Henrik talked about:
- Differences in Internet and mobile phone usage
- Differences in premises: Internett on mobile phones is NOT the same as on a laptop (and we can categorize apps as mobile originated and Internet originated)
- Categorizing the digital arena: Content (key driver for usage: interest), Applications (key driver for usage: access), Habitats (key driver for usage: socalising)
- Willingness to pay (in a consumer perspective): Key drivers are interest, no alternative, urgency, convenience, peer pressure, novelty and status. Key barriers are the culture of the free, skepticism toward digital products and services, uncertainty of usage and security matters
- Consumer expectations on payments models: fair, transparent, consumer in control
- Advertising principles: agreement, optional, relevance (in that priority order)
- The role of the mobile phone in advertising: niche segmentation, one-to-one targeting, availability
Conclusions:
- Advertising will enter into the mobile phone
- The mobile phone should the handled with care
- The mobile phone is currently a supplementary channel
Live stream [Shot] from Henrik’s talk (with the help of Bambuser and my Nokia N95 8GB):
Henrik ended with a quote from Per Holmkvist, the CEO of Mobiento (who owners are my firm):
The website is your supermarket and the mobile site is your 7eleven.***
Success with mobile advertising & classifieds
Sharon Knitter, Senior Director of Consumer Products, Cars.com (joint veture)
About cars.com:
- Leading online automotive destination
- Joint Venture of Belo Corp, Gannett CO. Inc, The MacClatchy CO, Tribune CO and The Washington Post Co
- Launch 1998
- 10 million unique monthly users
Their expansion strategy:
- The mobile opportunity: deliver the best content from cars.com on the mobile phone (optimized for the mobile environment)
- Develop a new advertising channel
Further she talked about:
- They believe there are two broad categories of mobile site usage: On the lot (late stage shoppers), on the train (early stage shoppers)
- Launched mobile site in april 2007, began promoting from own web site and contextuelle areas
- They redirect traffic from www.cars.com to mobile site when using a mobile phone (except iPhone). Comment Håvard: The norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (with others) does exactly the same.
- Implementation strategy, three key characteristics: Speed to market, modest initial investment, use products insights to guide future development
Options for implementation:
- Create downloadable mobile applications for cars.com’s mobile site (PRO: richer graphics, permanent branding, easy to use, complex integration)
- Create WAP site which is optimized for the mobile browser (PRO: Viewable from any mobile browser, no download necessary, can optimize content)
- Use code conversion to translate our web site into lowest common denominator xhtml (PRO: Fast to develop, little need for internal tech resources)
They choosed:
- Use WAP to drive initial mobile sites
- Use outside vendor to develop mobile site (APIs)
- their checklist: Cost, handsets supported, advertising integration, technology, carrier relationship, metrics, company stability, experience, references, future growth
Live stream [Shot] from Sharon’s demo (with the help of Bambuser and my Nokia N95 8GB):
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Developing a mobile strategy
Johan Brandt, Mobile Director DN, Dagens Nyheter
- They launched a revamped version of their mobile site in Q3 2007: mobil.dn.se
- They use Mobiletech as development partner
The DN mobile:
- The DN mobile, in cooperation with Telenor and Nokia: A mobile branded with Dagens Nyheter (DN)
- Special made from Nokia factory
- You can get directly to Dagens Nyheter mobile site with one easy click (their own button on the phone)
- Factory installed DN bookmarks in Nokia’s N82
Strategy with the basis of mobil.pastan.no, a mobile edition of their popular guide to Stockhold:
- [Social] Ratings: Give instant feedback
- [Social] Comments: share your opinion
- [Contextual media] Local search: Find venues where you are, easy drop down menu, search by area, street name etc (Where do you want to eat? Choose area!)
- [Personal] A unique mobile user is really unique (transform user and usage data to relevant content), anticipation has greater value in mobile (surfing is difficult).
- [Challenges] Getting paid: Banner advertising, premium push services paid by the user, revenue sharing, sponsorships
- [Challenges] Adapt our process for our new channels
- [Challenges] Reader involvement: Where, when and how?
- [Changes] Standardization of technology
- [Changes] Standardization of advertising and measurement
- [Changes] Flat fee mobile browsing
Johan got a question about whether he had to pay Nokia for the DN mobile, and how many was sold. He didn’t want to talk about the deal or any numbers regarding it, but made the following statement: I’m quite happy!
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Lunchtime
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Panel Discussion: Newspapers and mobile operators get together to discuss the future of mobile services: content and business models
Dr. Stefan Volck, Vicepresident Content sourcing and Media Cooperation, Deutsche Telekom
Indra Åsander, Senior VP & Head of Product Management, Teliasonera
Morten Holst, Head of Mobile, Verdens Gang
Urich Lingnau, Verlagsgeschäftsführung WELT Gruppe / Berliner Morgen Post
Due to problems with the Wi-Fi i can’t stream the whole 90 min panel discussion (3G abroad is expensive). I’ll embed the live Bambuser channel here, so when i go live you’ll find the stream [Shot from panel discussion]:
***
A better mobile internett experience
Anat S. Amir, Senior Mobile Marketing Management, Google Mobile
Anat started the talk with some mobile insights which included what she means is the winning formula for mobile Internett:
- Full browser
- Flat data plan
- Great user interface
Based on this Google has developed their own mobile strategy which can be summarized with the following three points:
1. Bet on the web
2. Super fast search
3. Location, location, location
All this leads to, you guessed it, Android (take a look at Open Handset Alliance as well). She did’nt have anything new to tell, but gave us some examples on other products which can be seen as a step further in the development of Android:
- iPhone Grand Prix: An app for iPhone which has the “full Google package” of services
- myLocation: An app that calculates where you are without GPS (based on the cell towers your phone connects to)
Anat then moved on to talk a bit about search statisticts. On the top of “what users search for on their mobile phones (by categories) you find:
1. Adult stuff (lets say it loud and clear - PORN) 22%
2. Entertainment 14%
3. Comparing/Economic guides
4. Local stuff (based on where you are/where you come from)
She ended the talk with some promotion for their products. Starting with what advertiser can do with Google on phones (adWords, AdSense for mobile, Syndicated Search Ads and Google Mobile Image Ads) and ending with a list of Google products available on your phone; Search, Maps, Mail, SMS, Youtube, Calendar, News, Picasa, Blogger, Reader, Docs, Sync and finally Notebook.
After the presentation the presenter asked the audience whether they believed Google would make an impact on their business the next 12 months. Before the presentation about 60% believed it would, after the presentation a smaller share of the audience meant Google would be important the next 12 monts. Confusing presentation?
Anat is a good speaker, but she really needs to stop saying “ahm…” five times every sentence. Just a kind advice 
***
VG - a mobile success in a dysfunctional market
Morten Holst, Head of Mobile, Verdens Gang
VG is the largest newspaper in Norway, both on print, web and mobile phones. Morten started with stating there’s 2 ways to be number one:
- The VG way; combine hard working and good ideas
- The easy way: being an operator (Comment by Håvard: This is a clear remark to portals like Telenor Entry in Norway)
He then spent some minutes presenting VG:
- The largest website i Norway (over 2 mill UV/week in a country with about 4.5 mill people)
- Largest mobile site as well
- VG got even numbers of page impressions during the day (not that many peeks)
A little bit about VG and mobile representation:
- They are building VG as a mobile brand using the paper edition and website
- They want to give the following important message to their readers; set VG as a startpage on your mobile phones
About phones and mobile Internet:
- Its not a phone, its the perfect narrator (storyteller) in all formats (BUT we aren’t there yet)
- The perfect advertising channel
- The graphs (statistics) was like a hockeystick in the early 2000-2002, something the boardmembers loved. Then the graphs started to flatten.
Morten continues his reasoning with a questing, and giving the answer himself: What happened? Operators!
Warning: The rest of Mortens presentation have a certain underlying irony / bitterness (Comment by Håvard: I support Morten)
According to him the operators basic instinct are:
- to control everything
- prohibitive pricing
- to constantly keep the consumers insecure
- defensive and wishful thinking
Point: There is a bunch of good services out there, but people are affraid to use it (because of prices)
Morten mean this is a normal day in the Telco business:
- high churn
- expensive to get new costumers
- low ARPU
- wrong position in the value-chain
- lower paid for the core service
Some people may call it paranoia, but this is their pyramide:
- Network
- - Billing
- - - Terminal
- - - - Portal
- - - - -Try to controll content
How to build a operator portal (according to Morten):
- control the terminal (configuration, hardcore keys, soft-keys, startpages, bookmarks…)
- push new OTAs continously to ensure that no one succeed to choose a new one
- entensive use of others content (feeds)
- make the media-houses dependent of the traffic (force them to integrate “back to” links on every single page)
Case from Norway:
A gathered Norwegian content-market made a pact about stopping their feeds to the operator portals, if they didnt made it easier to set a start page on your mobile phone. Case results; so far success, will be launch as soon as possible.
What we [content-market] would love to see:
- low traffic costs
- operators without portal ambitions
- operators that doesn’t act as competitors in the content market
- mobile advertising
Morten keeps on asking himself questions: What do we need to win the user?
His answer: Trust!
Conclusion: At the moment we don’t have that trust.
! Mobile content revenue in Norway 2007: NOK 1.000.000.000
Morten means: Whats free on the net will eventually be free on the mobile!
- free fotball live
- free weather
- video to traffic costs
- free news alerts on sms
Conclusion: VG focuses on free mobile services, and will launch a free service with news alerts within the next two weeks( if they solve a tech problem with sending 250.000 sms within some minutes). Morten asks rhetorically: What if 250.000 users get free breaking news (alerts on sms) from VG? It will drive traffic!
To end his presentation Morten has the quote of the day: To cooperate with an operator is like having oral sex with an piraja!
Question from audience: When do free news alerts become spam?
Mortens answer: Depends on how often you use it. VG will send about 1 sms a month (12 a year), and really breaking news only!
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IFRA have their own blog from the conference. Take a look at the IFRA Magazine Multiblog - Digital Trend Day 2008.
On Sunday I’m getting on a plain to 
My main work these days involves Internet on mobile phones. From time to time I have the need to present some of the stuff live (screenshots are dull), and found out that one of the few mobile phones supporting a direct connection to the average projector is my Nokia N95 8GB. The only thing needed is the cable (mini jack supporting both sound and picture) sold together with the phone.
This is most interesting for the Norwegian readers.