BKI Media in the press

Technology Weekly Bena Roberts on Mobile Podcasting as The Next Big Thing

05 February 2007 00:00

Bena Roberts, founder and senior analyst at BKI Media, argues that mobile podcasts are the next big thing.

It’s a good rule of thumb that if services haven’t yet entered the mobile environment, they weren’t originally designed for it. The most obvious example is the mobile internet versus SMS, which is native to mobile phone technology. The mobile internet is struggling to become a mass medium whereas some 1.13 trillion SMS messages were sent worldwide in 2005, and the number is rising all the time.
Podcasting could be, finally, the so-called killer application to propel mobile internet into the mainstream. Unlike all the other mobile internet functions (TV, web browsing, email, search, MySpace and other social networking sites) which are about trying to move fixed location activities on to mobile, podcasting is designed for use on the hoof. It is the only true, new, made-for-mobile service on the market. Mobile podcasting provides audio and, as such, has a lot of parallels with the undisputed killer application of mobile overall – phone calls.

Consumers can listen to a mobile podcast in a number of ways. Users can dial up to listen to podcasts, just as though they were making a call. They can download podcasts or stream them - that is just listen to them ‘on air’ once. Podcasts can be accessed via a mobile portal, hosted by their network provider or a third party such as the BBC, or customers might sign up for podcasted SMS alerts that they listen to rather than read.

In the US, bucket mobile phone rates are commonplace and mobile podcasts are already popular. Instead of listening to the radio, US users are dialling in to listen to podcasts on their mobile devices when driving to work. This allows them to hear what they want to hear instantly, instead of having to tolerate everything on the radio to get the bits they’re interested in.

It is unlikely that this dial-up to listen style of podcast will be as popular in Europe because consumers are confused about what they will be charged; mobile price plans are littered with small print. The average podcast is three minutes long. Those three mobile call minutes can cost from nothing (as part of a monthly bundled package) to 40 pence per minute in the UK.

Instead, in Europe mobile voicemail podcasts is likely to be the winner. This is because users can sign up and listen to alerts as part of their flat rate deal, removing the fear of runaway bills that still mutes the uptake of new mobile services in Europe. 3 in the UK has offered a subscription type of podcast service with its Gold X-Series membership package.

In Asia too, the subscription model for mobile podcasts has already emerged. Here far fewer people have access to a PC, so mobile is many Asians’ primary internet access device - hence in Singapore, mobile service provider MI already offers podcasts as part of a bundled package for only US$5 a month. This is brave. In Europe it would be seen as suicidally cheap, but podcasting is combined with a host of other services, such as free Skype, which disguises podcasting’s true subscription cost.

Innovative ways of podcasting are being introduced via social networks, such as YouTube and Flickr, but the biggest jump forward will be when podcast RSS (the family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, including news and blogs) comes to mobile; subscribers will be able to listen to highlights of their favourite RSS feeds on their mobile phone instantly.

Alternatively, they will be able to get instant messaging (IM) alerts to audio RSS. Once the service is set up, it will be hard to leave. Audio, in the form of mobile podcasts could be the sticky (loyalty-generating) service mobile operators are desperate to find.

Later this month, most of world’s mobile industry will gather at its annual congress, 3GSM, in Barcelona. There will be lots of movement on the podcasting front. 3 UK was the instigator, O2 Ireland has joined in and operators in France and Spain are on the verge of launching new mobile podcasting offers. Mobile podcasting is not yet near the tipping point, but we expect it to be within two years, with new players emerging rapidly to join the likes of Melodeo, Mobilecast, Pod2Mob, UpSnap, Kimia, Voice Genesis and Voice Indigo.

Analysts Welcome 3’s Flat Rate Plan

Posted by James Quintana Pearce

Fri 17 Nov 2006 02:06 PM PST

Hutchison’s 3 Group announced plans for flat-rate mobile broadband yesterday, and it seems to have received a warm reception from the analysts—with the caveat that a lot depends on the price.
”A spokesperson for 3 told ZDNet UK on Friday that pricing details would be made available closer to the UK launch date of 1 December (other countries will get the service next year). What is known is that the full service will be priced lower than £18 a month (on top of the user’s standard mobile subscription) a figure roughly equivalent to that of entry-level fixed-line broadband.”
Andrew Orlowski at The Register started by saying that “it’s not often the press gets an opportunity to say nice things about a mobile operator”, but 3 was in the unusual position of being praised..."3 yesterday promised to do everything critics have asked a mobile operator to do for years - enable VoIP, IM, and the full web - and added what may be the clincher, access to the user’s own home media via the handset.” He goes on to take a dig at Google, comparing Orb’s offering with the Verizon/YouTube deal. “YouTube would add “50 to 100 of its most popular videos” to its V-Cast service. By contrast, Orb not only offers the entire YouTube catalog - for better or worse - but makes the metadata (such as tags) searchable, and also makes it easy to subscribe using RSS feeds...That makes Verizon’s news sounds like Dr.Evil holding the world to ransom for “one million dollars”. He goes on to say that while Google’s individual mobile efforts are great, it’s only a piecemal strategy. “Infrastructure plays don’t just spontaneously “emerge”, and Orb has just eaten Google’s mobile infrastructure strategy.”
Bill Thompson at the BBC gives the effort the thumbs-up, though with a few reservations about the details—which he said aren’t really important. “Their success is less important than the fact that a mobile phone network has finally realised that the future lies in making the mobile network a genuine extension of the internet rather than a separate gated community...Now that someone has admitted it, other networks may decide to follow the lead.”
TechDirt has questioned why—if 3 is opening its network—it needed to sign so many deals with web companies. “It’s not at all clear why 3 would need to announce support from these companies if all they’re offering is a data connection. Once that’s there, it’s up to the users who they work with, whether it’s Google, Yahoo, Sling, Skype or someone entirely different.”
Bena Roberts at BKI Media is disappointed with the fine print: “Free calls only if you are not roaming...Flat rate Internet but only within “fair usage limits”...This puts a wet cloth on the X-Series immediately...Terms such as “free” or “all-inclusive” don’t work on mobile and don’t exist. Any mobile operator that touts them will be shooting itself in the foot.”
Ian Fogg at JupiterResearch also had something to say… mostly positive, but he did point out that “many of the solutions discussed and demo’ed today were not especially revolutionary or exclusive”.

FEATURE: Relevancy is key to mobile advertising success

October 6, 2006

Relevancy is key to mobile advertising success
By Bena Roberts

The desperation involved with trying to squeeze revenues out of mobile data is showing again. This time, it's mobile advertising's turn on the podium. Paid search is expected to be the revenue spinner in mobile. Apparently, carriers, content providers, new players and search engines are "really" sitting on the mobile goldmine and this time it will take-off.

Wrong. Mobile advertising is about to fall into the same bottomless pit as its predecessors, which were all also tipped to revolutionize mobile. WAP, i-mode, GPRS, data cards or mobile TV ring any bells? The marketing blunders that whitewashed the success of other mobile services are once again being repeated. The hype surrounding mobile advertising is already promising too much--and the misdemeanors that trumped WAP will do the same for advertising.

Why? Because mobile simply isn't ready for advertising. The uptake of content services has been, and remains, dismal. Apart from a few boasts from 3 UK about the success of the odd service (SeeMeTV)--it's difficult to find an application that is making money in mobile. More importantly, it's hard to find fans of mobile data and regular users of mobile content.

Ringtones continue to fuel the success of mobile content because of the nature of the music market and the fact that records have a life span of only a few months. Mobile gaming uptake is muted by the poor user interface of the device, and reading news on the mobile phone is only a time-filler for the mobile snacker.

Mobile content--I hate to say it--is really still in its nascent stages. The advances in mobile services haven't been matched by the user interface of the terminal and the experience of using the mobile Web or applications remains strenuous. To inject advertising into mobile now will only make things worse. Consumers aren't ready and neither is the business model.

Bango and Yahoo! recently announced a mobile collaboration for paid search. Relevancy was not included in the discussions with advertising. In a bid to finally secure a return on investment, any advertiser could bid for the top spot for any word on mobile. Sushi companies could bid for the word "pizza" and vice versa. This might make money for carriers on paid search--but it will not assist the user experience or offer consumers anything they actually want.

Similarly, location based (LBS) services are allegedly set to make a comeback with advertising. This again, is highly unlikely. Few devices or services offer the accuracy for LBS services that advertising demands. In major metropolitan areas, there are so many restaurants and café's that it will be difficult to pinpoint the location of the shop that is advertising to within 10 or 20 meters. Unless, of course, other non-advertising shops were missing from the search or location map.

What kind of user experience would this give to consumers? A selective search experience where only advertising parties are found. Is this good enough? Is this worth paying for? Not likely. It will only deter uptake of the new services and hinder, not propel the uptake of mobile data.

In short, the mobile cash cow is coming. But players in mobile advertising need to open their eyes. If they forget relevancy, they can forget the acceptance of mobile advertising.

Bena Roberts is the founder of and senior analyst at BKI Media, an analyst firm specializing in mobile content, portals and search. She was formerly the senior analyst for the Wireless Services Europe Module at Current Analysis, tracking wireless voice and data services.

Mobile offers a search window of opportunity

September 28, 2006

When Vodafone signed a deal with Google to develop a mobile search service in February it seemed that everything was falling into place, and that the mobile Web would be dominated by Google and other large search engines.

But since then there has been persistent speculation that some of the network operators aren't happy with the big search engines. Smaller search rivals have been sensing an opportunity to dent Google's position, in a way that no company could hope to do on the Web. They feel that companies would welcome the chance to make sure that Google doesn't become a quasi-monopoly on mobile as it has on the internet.

Their opportunity is slim. Eric McCabe, vice president of marketing at one such company, Jumptap, thinks that all the mobile operators will have deals in place by next year. To date Jumptap has signed up to provide search services with two operators in North America, with three more in the pipeline, but it is also now pushing for deals in the UK market.

With more people using mobile phones than PCs, and mobile internet access climbing, the stakes are high. Research company Informa Telecoms & Media predicts that mobile advertising spend will more than double over the next year to over $1.5bn (£800m). Within five years over $11.35bn (£6bn) will be spent on advertising on mobile channels, and there will be close to 4 billion mobile subscribers.

Others are even more bullish. BKI Media, an independent analyst house, predicts that mobile search alone will be worth $13bn (£6.9bn) in 2011 and become the biggest driver of the mobile internet in the process. Mobile operators who don't plan their mobile search strategies carefully could lose out on revenues it says.

So can the online search giants repeat their dominance in the mobile field? Dennis Woodside, Google's newly-installed managing director for the UK, Ireland and Benelux, is confident. "We see our traffic from mobile increasing more and more. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but the technology has to be there."

Yahoo! has also been signing deals to increase its mobile search traffic too. Most recently it signed a deal to deliver search marketing products with Bango, which runs a network of thousands of mobile sites for clients such as The Sun and EMI. The companies intend to deploy the service worldwide from next month.

However, some industry observers think that search won't be as important in the mobile world as it is on the internet. The restrictions of a small screen mean that the number of sponsored links can't be as numerous as on a web page, and there is likely to be a smaller range of things that people will want to search for while on the move.

Nicky Walton, senior research analyst at Informa and author of a recent report looking at mobile advertising between now and 2011, says: "Towards the end of the period mobile television is going to attract most of the advertising revenue, whereas now it is SMS," she says.

However, Jumptap's McCabe thinks that mobile has some unique properties which the search market can exploit. They include the ability for consumers to quickly contact advertisers by hitting the call button on their phone when they see a message of interest. "There are big opportunities in the pay-per-call space. That's going to be one of the main differences, because of that it will be more valuable to advertisers."

Brands such as Coca-Cola and Peugeot have already been involved in mobile advertising for several years, attracted by the chance of marketing to people when they're most able to act on a message. With mobile connections passing the 2.5 billion mark in the past month, and content becoming ever more sophisticated, more are likely to follow. The ability for, say, a pizza chain, to get in front of consumers just as they are looking for a bite to eat should prove compelling.

The same argument about getting a brand in front of consumers when they're actively looking for something is what attracted so many advertisers to search marketing on the internet before now. As a result of their success Google, Yahoo! and MSN have established relationships with many of those advertisers and their agencies - something that could make life difficult for the independent mobile search companies vying for deals with the operators.

But, more than anything else, Google rose to its current dominant position because it offered the most user-friendly and effective tool in the eyes of most consumers. If it can repeat that on mobile then it could dominate a whole new area of search.

Alltel launches JumpTap mobile content search

September 12, 2006

Alltel is getting increasingly aggressive in the mobile content game, today launching a mobile content search application from JumpTap. The JumpTap application allows users to find any piece of mobile content available via Alltel's service or from applicable off-deck providers, the idea being to make it easier to find the content you want without having to navigate multiple decks and sites. Additionally, the solution includes the ability to preview content before buying and provides recommendations based on purchase history and more.

There's also an advertising revenue stream for carriers. This is only the first carrier announcement since JumpTap launched its Mobile Search Index and Advertising Suite. Frankly, I'm surprised that it's taken carriers this long to implement such content search capabilities. At the MECCA conference yesterday, one of the prevailing themes I heard from both content providers and carriers is that both must find ways to make it easier for consumers to not just find content, but to find the content they want. This is a step in that direction. Meanwhile, analyst group BKI Media has pegged the mobile search market to hit $13 billion by 2011 and will be the biggest driver of mobile Internet by that time.

For more about the Alltel deal:
- check out the JumpTap site

Check our Web site for live coverage of CTIA IT, sponsored by mBlox

THE SEARCH RACE IS ON

September 13, 2006

Content search & discovery

Winning is no longer about accumulating huge stockpiles of content; it’s about helping users find what they like – perhaps even before they know what they want. Peggy Anne Salz examines the race among operators and content owners to enable mobile search and encourage content discovery.

Smart retailers know that they can drive sales by placing hot-selling items where consumers can see them. Operators, however, put the burden of finding content squarely on users' shoulders, forcing them to navigate confusing menus and sift through catalogues to find the content they want to purchase.

Recent usability studies argue this modus operandi not only results in an unsatisfactory end-user experience; it is the chief reason why content sales continue to disappoint. Mobile devices – with their screen-size limitations and restricted input capabilities – only exacerbate the problem.

Indeed, a new survey of UK consumers, commissioned by web hosting provider Hostway, found that nearly three quarters of users still don't access the Internet from their mobile phones because of problems associated with displaying or navigating the content. Common sense – and a rule of thumb in the fixed Internet – dictates that content providers generally lose half of their audience to frustration or boredom with every additional click it takes users to find and purchase content they want.

Research by companies, including Sweden's Mobile Matrix and Informa Telecoms & Media, show the vast majority of content is invisible to users because it is buried deep in confusing – often times counter-intuitive – hierarchical menus and positioned too many clicks from the portal home page. A recent Informa benchmarking study found that users typically have to click through 10-40 screens, and spend more than two minutes to download some of the most popular ringtones or games.

To complicate matters, the exponential rise of direct-to-consumer content schemes – that effectively bypass the operator portals to sell content to users – turns up pressure on all players in the mobile industry to make finding and buying content a no-brainer.

Against this backdrop, it is no wonder operators and content providers are scrambling to boost their search capabilities. To this end Vodafone and T-Mobile have teamed up with search engine giant Google. More recently, NTT DoCoMo selected nine partners – including MSN – for its new keyword search feature. Located at the top of the i-Mode homepage, the service enables users to search the some 6,200 official i-Mode sites as well as the wider Web.

Short-cut to content

Yahoo! has also established an impressive presence in the space, delivering its mix of entertainment, messaging and search services to operators including Cingular, Sprint and Rogers in the U.S. In Europe Yahoo! sealed a world-first global agreement with 3 Group, in July 2006, to provide services such as Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mobile Web, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Go for Mobile, a client application Yahoo! will deliver on 3 devices.

In addition to taking the top-notch position as the default Internet search engine on 3 handsets and on Planet 3, the operator's mobile portal, Yahoo! will also transcode Web content for optimized delivery and presentation on mobile phones.

“It's not just about providing search; it's about content adaptation and providing [users] a quality experience when they visit the pages connected with the search results,” says Mark Joseph, 3 head of content products. “The key is bringing services to the mobile in a way that works and in a way that is familiar to users in terms of their experience in the fixed-line environment.” For 3, this translates into branded search, properly rendered pages and services that allow users to connect around content.

Yahoo! will also deliver a mix of on-portal content offers promoting 3's own content partners and the wider Web in search results. The business model will first focus on making the content offered by 3's some 300 content partners easier to find, says Geraldine Wilson, vice president of Connected Life, Yahoo! Europe, the business group responsible for the company's “beyond the browser” strategy.

Moving forward, the focus will be on generating additional revenues from mobile advertising, sponsored search and other models that combine content and promotion. “As we design the monetization model, we will focus on preparing 3 content first, then on paid placements and then on the wider Web,” Wilson says.

Getting personal

Mobile search is indisputably a potent way to generate value. Users find what they want, marketers gain traffic by providing offers and advertising with the search results and mobile operators and service providers capture more revenue from increased mobile content purchases.

However, operators and content owners are also turning to software solutions to automate and personalize the delivery and display of mobile content directly on users' mobile phones. This new breed of so-called on-device portal providers – whose ranks have swelled to some 20 vendors in the last 18 months including Abaxia, Action Engine, Alatto, Cibenix, Nellymoser, Onskreen, Openwave, Qualcomm, RefreshMobile, Silk, SurfKitchen and Zi Corporation – deliver users 24/7 direct access to content as well as updates, promotions and special offers.

More importantly, because they are located directly on the user's device, these solutions make it easier for users to understand access and discover mobile services and content. A prime example is Alatto Tribes, a solution that effectively turns the phone into a “something akin to a TV remote control,” according to Neil Flanagan, Alatto CEO. With Tribes users can zap between content with the click of a button, feedback that allows operators and content providers to bundle services to match their tastes and deliver users more of the content they like and less of what they don't.

Another company convinced of the power of content discovery is NMS Communications, a US-based provider of technologies and solutions for mobile applications and infrastructure, best known for its MyCaller ringback offer. Using the insights the company has gained into user purchases and preferences, NMS is gearing up to enable customers to deliver users relevant content before they ask for it through a solution that combines software on the device and intelligence in the network.

“If a user chooses a Black Eyed Peas ringback tone, then they are raising their hand and saying 'I'm a fan.' It's a signal to the operator to ask if the user might not also like a screensaver, a ringtone or tickets to an upcoming concert,” explains Mark Grindeland, vice president and general manager of NMS Communications' Mobile Applications business. “All of a sudden we have a contextually relevant offer and the operator can engage users in a dialogue instead of spamming them.” The pitch is also more likely to end in a sale because it delivers relevant content to the user instead of forcing the users to search trial-and-error through a list of links.

“The challenge for operators, as they roll out more services, is getting users to find out about them let alone use them,” Grindeland says. Rather than wait for users to ask, providers need to serve up content that is timely and relevant to the user. “The exciting opportunity is the impulse buy – and that's what discovery delivers.”

Search & Discovery 2.0

Is mobile search a must-have for operators and content providers to monetize their content? Or will content discovery schemes clinch the sale? While some observers believe the approaches compete head-on, a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media, Mobile Search & Content Discovery, argues that they are both characteristics of winning content services and sales strategies going forward.

While search does assist in delivering a better end-user experience, “search paired with personalization and recommendation is a much more powerful combination,” the report says. The lucrative business opportunity is in combining these capabilities to provide users with personalized and relevant results – as well as the tools to discover content they might not have otherwise known existed.

An increasing number of companies – as well as search engine providers – can read the writing on the wall. They have developed or deployed artificial intelligence and other technologies to collect and collate the clues users leave such as usage patterns, content preferences and download history to match the right content with the right user.

Many others have harnessed so-called recommendation engines to deliver users relevant content. This technology – modeled on the approach of online bookseller Amazon – suggests content on the basis of the individual user's past preferences or on the basis of what a user's peers consumed, or both.

Recommendations based on customer information such as page views and downloads will be an important part of content-selling strategies going forward. But it may well be the recommendations from the tight-knit communities users know and trust that matter most.

Indeed, a recent survey from Jupiter Research shows 64% of users will try a service or content recommended by a friend, and 69% will pass what they like along to between two and six friends.

Against this backdrop, the real power of search and discovery may be about much more than encouraging users to interact with content; it may be about enabling them to create mobile communities around the content they seek and share together.

Brand names such as Google and Yahoo! will not keep the mobile search market for themselves. Fast Search & Transfer, InfoSpace, JumpTap and Medio Systems are just a few of the white-label search providers gaining traction among mobile operators and content providers.

Their value proposition is based on leveraging information on users’ profiles, preferences and past click-history to help operators and content providers deliver relevant results and drive content revenues. “The increasing emphasis on personalization exposes the fatal flaws of popular search engines such as Google,” observes Bena Roberts, senior analyst at BKI Media, a UK-based independent mobile content and services consultancy. “They were designed from the ground-up to treat all searches – and searchers – equal. It’s a plain-vanilla approach that ignores the needs of individual users for results that matter to them.”

White-label search solutions may also be the only weapon at operators’ disposal in the battle to own and keep the customer, Roberts says. “The aggressive moves of the search engine companies are a major concern to mobile operators who fear disintermediation.”

Indeed, users could – and increasingly are – changing the current default setting from the mobile operator portal to point to a search engine home page. As users find their way directly from a search home page to off-portal mobile data services, mobile operators face the challenge of being relegated to the position of pure network provider and bit pipe. Owning search by deploying a white-label solution effectively positions operators to retain direct advertising revenues generated by pay-per-click and pay-per-call schemes.

Moving forward, personalized search will pay dividends, allowing the companies that deploy them to better segment their customers and ultimately tailor content to “perfectly fit their multiple mobile personas,” Roberts says. The result would be content served up to users based on their actions and where they are. For example, a searcher on the way to work may want news, weather and driving directions, while the same searcher may want video entertainment while relaxing on the sofa at home.

“Search is foremost about understanding the needs of the user and delivering relevant results,” notes Mike Brady, Senior Director for Product Development at FAST Search & Transfer, a white-label mobile search platform provider whose deployments include 3 in Italy and Amp’d Mobile in the US. Eventually, search, if operators get it right, could disappear and become what Brady calls “zero term search.” In this scenario implicit personalization is so refined that the system knows precisely what content is appropriate to deliver to each individual user at that moment in time.

Brady believes personalized search also provides the basis for a convergent offer that can both collect data from and deliver content to any platform – be it a set-top box, a mobile device or a PC. “It’s all about being able to offer users a consistent user experience via search to all their content and the content out there.”

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