Colin's Corner

Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media

Just becoming available,Tomi Ahonen's book "Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media" crisply describes how mobile devices will change the media landscape and presents new thinking about how brands and advertisers will communicate with consumers in the future.
The book will be available from Amazon UK in September and Amazon US in Oct.

I'm a huge believer in the future of mobile. Mobile devices bring together mobility, location, imaging, communications and the internet. Mobile devices are personal, always on, always with you, they know where you are, they allow you to capture, creative and share content and to interact via the camera with physical objects, to communicate with your mobile social and business networks and they operate as a digital wallet - the opportunities are just enormous.

Mobile internet devices from smartphones, to netbooks and mobile tablets, to ultra mobile multimedia computers, to light weight computers will embrace and extend the internet while moving more power and control to the consumer.

Already, there are twice as many cellphones as TV sets, three times as many cellphone subscribers as internet users, four times as many cellphones as PC sets and five times as many cellphones as automobiles.

Now even embraced by a potential future President, Barack Obama, recognizing its communications power, used SMS to announce Joe Biden as his Vice President selection. The world record campaign reached an audience of 2.9 million setting a world record.

As I note in the book endorsement:

“Tomi's book takes us through the changes and opportunities in this new converged world of voice, data and broadcast media. With fascinating examples from around the world he lays out the potential for an industry that could become one of the largest in the world. Anyone who is interested in the future of mobile should read this book.” Colin Crawford, Executive VP Interactive, IDG Communications USA

The foreword (By Pekka Ala-Pietila of Blyk), intro chapter, fourth chapter, and one case study (Flirtomatic) are available to preview.

I highly recommend reading Tomi's book but even more importantly, I encourage you to think about and join the conversation about the impact of mobile on your personal and business lives.

Guide to mobile search published by MMA

As noted by UTalkMarketing, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)has launched a white paper on mobile search.

The white paper, which was developed by the MMA’s Mobile Search Task Force, provides an overview of search on the mobile Internet, outlining how it differs from traditional web-based search, how it meets the needs of consumers and the opportunity it provides to operators and marketers. It also discusses mobile search challenges, strategies and business models, incorporating case studies from JumpTap and Medio Systems Inc.

The white paper is just one of the MMA’s extensive library of information and resources from basics such as the Mobile Marketing Industry Overview and the more advanced MMA International Journal of Mobile Marketing.

The Dawning of Mobile Advertising

Good overview from Chuck Levine

Chuck Levine's Mobile Presentation

view presentationtags: mobile advertising

Mobile browsing varies by region

According to a report recently released by Nielsen entertainment, gaming and music websites rank among the top five categories visited in all four BRIC countries, but do not have a place among the top US and Europe rankings. Users in mature markets such as America and Europe look to information and news

Email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users; in the US, entertainment, music, and games place eighth, ninth, and tenth respectively. The findings suggest that mobile Internet users across BRIC countries are more reliant on mobile phones to provide them with entertainment content, while users across the United States and Europe view their devices as a resource for information.

“In the U.S. and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialized devices like iPods, to meet consumer’s entertainment needs,” said Jeff Herrmann, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen. “Users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets haven’t had the benefit of broad-based content distribution thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing mobile’s transition into a personal entertainment platform.”

The report also covers mobile internet penetration - showing the US leading at 15.6%, followed by the UK at 12.9%

A Mobile Advertising Overview

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has recently released the IAB Mobile Platform Status Report which focuses on mobile display advertising, examining this dynamic market as it stands during the summer of 2008.

The report illustrates mobile advertising considerations and outlines advertising opportunities for mobile devices, from the perspective of established interactive advertising on the Web. It will focus on the following questions:

• WHAT IS MOBILE ADVERTISING? Understand the mobile landscape, who is using mobile applications, and the key mobile interactive advertising opportunities that exist today.

• WHAT DOES THE ECOSYSTEM LOOK LIKE? Learn about the chain of intermediaries that connect advertisers with consumers, and how it is similar to, and different from, the PC-based Web.

• HOW CAN MARKETERS REACH THE MOBILE CONSUMER? Differentiate the technical and market factors of mobile advertising to identify the best opportunities for different brands and campaign goals.

• WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? Identify key trends on this evolving platform, with an eye to how mobile advertising opportunities will expand over the next five years.

Download IAB Platform Status Report: A Mobile Advertising Overview

A focus on mobile media

Over my career in media, which stretches back to 1987, most of the time I've been involved with print publishing both in the UK at Dennis Publishing and with IDG in the US. However, over the last several years I've focused more on online opportunities, assisting IDG Communications move from being a print centric to a mobile centric organization - my post in February 2007 got a fair amount of coverage thanks to a pick-up by Jeff Jarvis. Today IDG has around 45% of its US revenues coming online and it's been exciting to watch all the developments around search, advertising, lead generation and most importantly the engagement and interactivity of the audiences.

Today IDG focuses not only on developing great content at the brands' sites but also has a major effort syndicating content around the web - ensuring the content reaches audiences that are more and more dispersed and fragmented. Our goal is "user generated circulation" , a term coined by IDG's Frank Cutitta, who runs IDG Connect at the Circulation Management Conference and Expo. While there is still a major focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) the volume of traffic being received from SMO (Social Media Optimization) is nowvery significant. Create great content - but make sure you market it to the correct places and make it easy to be distributed via RSS. Tools such the one from ShareThis should be on virtually every piece of content. Audience development has now pushed out circulation management.

Coupled with our focus on content syndication, IDG has launched the IDG Technology Network - a Vertical Publishing Network for the IT industry. Anchored by IDG's core brands IDG has carefully selected and vetted sites that complement our brands' sites with those that also have a high affinity with the brands' audience. Through the network IDG provides marketers with unparalleled reach to highly quality and active IT buyers. Details on these initiatives can be found at the IDG Knowledge Hub.

During 2008 I've been more and more focused around mobile opportunities trying to understand exactly what the mobile platform means for publishers. In many ways it feels similar to when I arrived in the US in 1993 - the web was in its nascent stage - although a clickable ad appeared in 1993 r - banner ads did not appear until October 1994 when HotWired ran one for AT&T. But, even back then many of us realized that we were witnessing the beginnings of a massive upheaval to our industry and new revenue streams. We just had no clear ideal of how it would develop. If we had, we'd have launched a search engine with paid text ads.

Fifteen years on I feel similarly about the mobile space - while at a nascent stage in many areas - there are already significant revenue streams via SMS and MMS. Now we just have to crack the code on mobile advertising in a way that engages not aggravates and interrupts the mobile user.

If you want some great insights into Mobile Advertising read Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market by by Chetan Sharma, Joe Herzog and Victor Melfi.

The launch of the iPhone enabled easy navigation of the web via a mobile screen and now with a developer environment coupled with a distribution and payment platform for these mobile applications Apple has redefined the space. 60 million applications have been downloaded since launch ! It has raised the bar high, so I await with interest the responses from Nokia and the other major players.

Going forward, I'm going to be focusing my energies more an more on mobile and in particular what it means for media organizations. As Tomi Ahonen has noted, mobile is the 7th Mass Media - capable of the elements of all previous mass media but also a lot more.

I'll use this blog to highlight interesting trends, people, products, applicatons and services in the mobile environment. To start off I'll provide a link to those sites I have on my iGoogle Mobile Tab - I find it a useful resource so keep abreast of this fast moving environment. It's not comprehensive so please feel free to send details of other interesting sites.

I'm sensing that the moment is coming very soon where all major publishing companies are going to have to take mobile seriously - too may failed to appreciate the upheaval caused by online - mobile is going be even more traumatic as we move from one PC era - that of Personal Computer to another one - that of Personal Communications. It's going to be an exciting journey I how you join me in the conversation.