Is location-based mobile marketing a step too far?

Posted on 3 / 02 / 09 by Sarah Keefe
Is location based marketing a step too far?

Is location based marketing a step too far?

There was an interesting debate on location-based mobile marketing at last week’s R/GA event , held in the agency’s New York office. The focus of the event was mobile analytics and the role it plays given that the established web analytics vendors can’t provide mobile tracking.

More on that later.  During question time, the topic was raised on whether location-based marketing was taking off.  This is the deliver of advertising and offers based on your current location – could we see the day when you’re bombarded with offers as soon as you arrive in the mall?

The view from Steve Siegel at Microsoft Advertising was that its just too expensive to get the necessary data from the mobile carriers and was it what people wanted?

Adam Kerr from Bango emphasised that the advertising should be user-centric with the consumer in charge, pulling down any ads that were relevant to them.  The classic case would be seeing ads for nearby restaurants in a Google Maps search.

Google has a significant advantage using its triangulation GPS system which does not rely on information supplied by the carriers.  In fact,  apps developed for the gPhone using Google Gears will be able to use this GPS information to enhance the functionality of the app.  Thankfully, the user can choose whether to opt in so once again, they are in control.

Regarding, the main part of the evening., Adam Kerr from Bango North America explained why the current tools web tools can’t track mobile analytics – predominantly because they rely on JavaScript and cookies which don’t work well on mobile browsers.  He also illustrated the detailed metrics available in the site and campaign analysis features within the Bango mobile analytics product.

Thanks to hosts R/GA for a great night.  See the photos and get another perspective on the evening on the Web Metrics Guru blog from Marshall Sponder.

Share add to del.icio.us Add to Blinkslist add to furl Digg it add to ma.gnolia Stumble It! add to simpy seed the vine TailRank post to facebook

Filed under: Mobile advertising, Mobile analytics, Mobile web, Trends, mobile marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Privacy complaint should not hold back mobile marketing

Posted on 23 / 01 / 09 by Sarah Keefe
Protecting consumer privacy rights

Protecting consumer privacy rights

Last week, a complaint was filed by two consumer rights groups in the US regarding privacy issues, claiming deceptive practices were prevalent throughout the mobile advertising industry.

The Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group filed their complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and an answer is expected in the coming weeks.

First, it has to be said that the list of companies featured in the complaint reads like a Who’s Who of the mobile industry with Google, Yahoo and Nokia named alongside 40 other companies.

Bango is one of those featured. So what does Bango have to say about the accusations? Here’s what Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango said on the subject.

“The company does not provide personal information about consumers, except where a user actively opts-in to request information from named third parties in which they are interested. Our mobile identity technology is designed specifically to enable mobile analytics without ever compromising consumer privacy.

“We follow all network operator and industry guidelines on mobile consumer privacy – for example as provided by the Mobile Marketing Association in North America and through the Payforit scheme in the UK. Advertisers and content providers use the Bango analytical tools with the confidence that data analysis provided is done according to industry best practice.”

There’s an excellent analysis of the implications of this privacy complaint on the mobile marketing industry by Peggy Anne Salz in today’s Mobile Marketer. She so aptly sums up the debate with the following: “Mobile, unlike the PC Internet, enables individuals to co-create their mobile advertising experiences, dictating the terms on which they will accept marketing messages and the grounds on which they will reject it as spam.”

Through our mobile analytics product, Bango helps businesses understand the effectiveness of their ad campaigns and how users interact with their mobile websites. At no point, is user privacy compromised.

Filed under: Bad practice, Mobile advertising, Mobile web, mobile marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Apple ends music restrictions – as predicted by Bango

Posted on 8 / 01 / 09 by Sarah Keefe
Apple ends music restrictions

Apple ends music restrictions

We welcome the news this week that Apple has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software. At present, most music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store can only be played through an iTunes interface or iPod.

In our predictions for 2009, we said that “Online music retailers will follow Amazon and Napster’s lead and meet consumer preference for DRM free music.” In addition, we said “Mobile phones will become the dominant platform for listening to music, boosted by their portability, the high storage capability of the latest phones and the ability to play the ubiquitous MP3 format – DRM free of course!”

So what next? Well, we predict that Apple will allow downloads of music to iPhone from other sites but we may have to wait until 2010 for that!

Filed under: Mobile music, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Dear Santa – All I want for Xmas…

Posted on 12 / 12 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

Dear Santa,

It’s been over 20 years since I last wrote to you, but it’s taken some time to get over the disappointment of not getting the Cabbage Patch doll I wanted, you know.

Santa, I'm looking for content like this

Santa, I'm looking for content like this

This Christmas, though, I’ve only got one simple wish: I created a mobile site called Mobislim (you can visit it from your mobile typing in your mobile browser http://mobislim.wap.com) and I would love to fill it with funny content to make people laugh.

It’s all for a good cause, Santa, as any money we make from the site will go to Save The Children charity. My kind bosses at Bango have agreed to match the money made from the sales – I’ll never call them Scrooge again!

I’m sure you’ll agree that laughter is the best way to stay healthy, so anyone who contributes to Mobislim will be promoted for free, and get the opportunity to test their content using mobile analytics.

So please, Santa, can I get some fun content – images, videos, jokes, articles and games – to put on my mobile site, this Christmas? You can send them to me at maria@bango.com and I’ll put all the best ones up. If you want to find out more, please visit the All I want for Xmas site in the Mobislim Blog.

With lots of love,
Maria x x

PS – I’ll leave extra chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of milk for you by the Christmas tree.
PPS – If you can arrange for a shiny new 3G iPhone or a date with George Clooney, I also really wouldn’t mind!

In case you are wondering what mobislim is, it’s an experimental mobile site, setup by the Bango team to demonstrate what mobile analytics can do and how to get started in mobile marketing. It provides humorous tips and tricks on slimming and dieting and the best exercise of all; laughter.

Everything that happens in the Mobislim mobile site is blogged in the Mobislim blog, for the benefit of the mobile community.

Share add to del.icio.us Add to Blinkslist add to furl Digg it add to ma.gnolia Stumble It! add to simpy seed the vine TailRank post to facebook

Filed under: Cool mobile stuff, Mobile analytics, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

42% of mobile social networking users never go online

Posted on 5 / 12 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

Well, I nearly fell off my chair when I saw this fact in Itsmy’s survey of 15,000 users of its mobile social networking community.  Nearly half of its users (42%) only use mobile to connect with their friends via a social networking community while a much higher proportion use mobile most. 

Surely this is a sign that mobile is the way of the future.  The next generation is growing up wedded to their phone and don’t see the need for a PC to communicate and get the information they need when they have the internet on their mobile.

Itsmy survey on social networking activities on mobile

Here’s what else the survey revealed:

  • No matter whether they are from London or San Francisco, the average user is surfing astonishing 160 mobile internet pages per day.
  • Heavy users log in up to 10 times a day with an online time of up to 2.5 hours to write and check their mails and personal messages, find out where their friends are and what they are doing at that moment or upload latest pictures and videos to their personal mobile site.
  • 99% of all respondents have personal content on their mobile phones. This fast growing worldwide phenomenon is just as valid for high class phone owners, like the ones with Nokia N95 and iPhones, as for people with low-priced models.
  • Even the current economic situation does not stop most of them  using mobile internet, despite the high prices: only 1/3 of all respondents tend to reduce their mobile internet time to save money.

Have your ever wondered whether high levels of mobile internet surfing leads to m-commerce transactions?  Read our Billingonmobile blog to find out more….

Filed under: Mobile web | Leave a Comment »

Everything you need to know about Payforit

Posted on 24 / 11 / 08 by Vanessa Daly
An insight on Payforit Single Click with Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing & Alliance at Bango

An insight on Payforit with Anil Malhotra from Bango

Single Click is the most talked-about new feature of the Payforit scheme since it first launched. This feature offers a number of important benefits for content providers, helping them get more repeat visits and improving their conversion rates.

Mobile users are offered a very similar approach as shopping online at sites such as Amazon and iTunes. As a result they enjoy a faster and better purchase experience.

Read more »

Filed under: Mobile web, Payforit | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Stormtroopers compare interplanetary web with Earth’s mobile web

Posted on 21 / 11 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

Imperial Stormtroopers, on a quick break from protecting the Galactic Empire, have a quick demo of Earth’s mobile web so they can see how different it is from their own virtual world. Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Harris, SVP of Sales at Bango, shows them the live feed of mobile web traffic from www.bango.com/live.

So, the question is how long before Earth’s mobile web goes Interplanetary and Bango sees the first ringtone purchase from Tatooine?

So that’s it – Bango’s reputation is spreading from planet Earth into the Solar system and beyond.

Share add to del.icio.us Add to Blinkslist add to furl Digg it add to ma.gnolia Stumble It! add to simpy seed the vine TailRank post to facebook

Filed under: Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Living with a super model – the HTC Touch HD

Posted on 18 / 11 / 08 by Andy Bovingdon
HTC Touch - the new kid on the block

The new HTC Touch HD

The first 5 days with a HTC Touch HD

I had my first Windows Mobile phone when I worked at Microsoft – an original Orange SPV that I hated because of its poor UI and short battery life. But here I find myself with another Windows Mobile handset, this time the new HTC Touch HD. But does this new super model live up to it’s “smartphone” name or is it the same old dumbphone with a new dress as it totters its way down the catwalk?

I had been looking at the latest range of smartphones for some time before opting for the new HTC. I loved the format of the Apple iPhone, its lovely big screen, great UI and growing number of cool apps to download. But ultimately I did not want to be restricted by the closed Apple system.

Read more »

Filed under: Business, Cool mobile stuff, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Will Smartphones come to dominate the mobile web?

Posted on 14 / 11 / 08 by Sarah Keefe
18.9 percent of US mobile consumers now use a smartphone

18.9 percent of US mobile consumers now use a smartphone

It’s interesting to see a recent consumer study of US mobile phone users which shows that 18.9% of mobile consumers now use a smartphone. However, this research, conducted by The Kelsey Group with research partner ConStat and reported in Mobile Marketer, is at odds with Gartner research which reveals that in Q2 2008, 10.5% of all phones sold worldwide was a Smartphone.

Of course, the Gartner figure is a global picture but would you expect the US figure to be almost double that of what you see around the world?  True, US consumers generally have more disposable income and want to have their email on the move.  It’s in the US that the iPhone has become the darling of the smartphone market, ahead of say Nokia’s N95 which is also a great smartphone.  The N95 has sold particularly well in Europe but doesn’t quite have the same s*x appeal as the iPhone for US consumers. 

For the time being though smartphones don’t dominate the mobile web and anyone addressing an international market should bear in mind the current dominance of the mass market phones in comparison to smartphones.  Take a look here at the top mobile devices we see here from users around the world surfing the mobile web.  We believe the market is will gradually move up to more sophisticated smartphones in time.  Do you have any thoughts on when you think they’ll come to dominate the mobile web?

Share add to del.icio.us Add to Blinkslist add to furl Digg it add to ma.gnolia Stumble It! add to simpy seed the vine TailRank post to facebook

Filed under: Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

PC world not keeping up with the mobile web

Posted on 3 / 11 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

When Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC websites (according to Nielsen Online), we found that half of the sites did not work well on leading mobile phones. Tests were carried out on the Motorola V3 Razr and Nokia 6300 on the AT&T network in the US and Vodafone in the UK. The full results are detailed below.

This is a worrying trend given that typically 5% of visitors to PC websites now come from mobile devices, up from 1% a year ago.  The problem is that PC websites are not adapting fast enough to match mobile browsing trends and are failing to present mobile-friendly versions of their sites.

Top 20 most trafficked PC websites, July 2008, Nielsen Online:

 

Works well on mobile Does not work well on mobile
eBay
www.ebay.com		 Fox
www.fox.com
YouTube
www.youtube.com		 Microsoft
www.microsoft.com
AOL
www.aol.com		 Wikipedia
www.wikipedia.org
MSN
www.msn.com		 Apple
www.apple.com
Yahoo
www.yahoo.com		 About
www.about.com
Google
www.google.com		 Ask
www.about.ask.com
Amazon
www.amazon.com		 Blogger
www.blogger.com
Weather
www.weather.com		 Real Networks
www.realnetworks.com
Facebook
www.facebook.com		 Glam Media
www.glammedia.com
CNN
www.cnn.com		 Craigslist
www.craigslist.org

Some of these sites may have mobile versions - in which case, why didn’t they direct me to the mobile site? Bango’s research reveals that between 3-10% of on-line traffic to a PC website now comes from users entering web addresses on their mobile device.  If you have a mobile site then make sure your PC site detects a mobile device and presents the made-for mobile version. If you don’t have a mobile site but want to find out how much mobile traffic you get to your PC site, then our Bango Analytics for PCs helps you do just this.

When an AT&T user in the US visited the Fox, Microsoft or Apple PC sites, they were simply presented with a 413 error “Page cannot be displayed”.   The experience for a UK user on Vodafone was somewhat better because the transcoder did present the PC site but as to you see with the Wikipedia example, it requires a lot of scrolling to get to the part you want and this is definitely not a good user experience. 

I was particularly impressed with the Yahoo mobile site as it recognized my device and presented me with a great user experience, as did the MSN service (so not all bad news for Microsoft!).

Poor experience:

The Apple PC site for an AT&T user

The Apple PC site for an AT&T user

The poor Wikipedia user experience

The poor Wikipedia user experience

 

Good experience:

Yahoo detects my mobile device and even knows which one

Yahoo detects my mobile device and even knows which one

The MSN service on my mobile

The MSN service on my mobile

Share add to del.icio.us Add to Blinkslist add to furl Digg it add to ma.gnolia Stumble It! add to simpy seed the vine TailRank post to facebook

Filed under: Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »