Alarm:Clock: Mobile Classifieds Enabler Wins Newspaper Client – Seeks Funding

Last posting for the month of April. We have made it into our favorite VC newsletter, the Alarm:Clock. We have been picked by the Alarm:Clock through our visibility at KillerStartups.com (Mobiya is listed in the global top 10 – position #10). Very positive message, the editor has checked the sources!

• Title: Mobile Classifieds Enabler Wins Newspaper Client – Seeks Funding
• Alarm:clock Permalink to article: click here
• Alarm:clock Euro news: click here

Newspapers’ ad growth online slows, erosion in classifieds

We have spent  a lot of time with media marketing people, product teams and media executives in various meetings discussing their interactive strategies and classified innovation. All of them, without exceptions, are on a single mission: capturing the online advertising market, moving the print business online. Well, this article by Total Content + Media puts it all in perspective again: Newspapers’ ad growth online slows.

The blue ocean of deep online advertising pockets is quickly turning into a red bloodbath of portal giants, newspapers, TV stations, magazines and thousands of user generated content sites all fighting for the same banner impression income.

For all the Mobiya watchers and classified aficionado’s I would like to provide this extract from the article: "One major issue for many newspapers online: Roughly 70% to 80% of their online revenue is tied to a classified ad sold in the print edition — known as an "upsell," says Paul Ginocchio, a newspaper analyst at Deutsche Bank. And as newspapers see a sharp erosion in classified advertising for real estate and jobs, their web sites are being hit as well. Analysts say papers need to find new categories of advertisers."Newspapers need to move beyond the traditional classified sources they’ve relied upon," says Borrell’s Mr. Cassino."

Mobiya’s advice to everyone: (1) Read the article (requires registration) and more importantly (2) back to innovation. Re-invent your business in a unconventional manner. Create another blue ocean of revenue opportunity, such as mobile classified advertising.

Another first: mobile classified ad with 100 responses

Loosing weight is very popular in many Western countries. The first mobile classified advertisement that received 100 responses is an advert for a weight control program (click here). 100 responses in less than a month and these are not page views, but real people requesting information through sms! Talk about lead generation!

Mobiya at Killerstartups.com

Please vote for ‘Mobiya’ at Killerstartups.com: click here. I am sure that you think Mobiya has a killer application, so  just click + to give us your vote. Additionally you can choose if we go IPO, get VC money or  be bought. When we get to a 100 votes, we organize a party. Within the comments to this post, you can choose the location. Thanks!

Oxford, UK | The Future of Mobile

Yesterday saw the inaugural ForumOxford Future Technologies Conference hosted at Oxford University, Engeland and attended by a high calibre international audience including speakers and attendees from Finland, USA, Korea, Hong Kong and Qatar to name a few.

This has to rank in the top ten of any industry networking event I have attended over the past 20 years with an excellent profile and mixture of attendees and presentations, and fast paced discussion – vibrant and engaging all thanks to the preparation and chairmanship of the event.

Headlined by Google alongside representatives from Vodafone, Hutchinson Whampoa (three), mobile application vendors, academics, opinion makers and industry experts the discussions were focused around Mobile and Web 2.0 and emerging business models with topics including mobile commerce and technology futures.

Thanks to Ajit Jaokar at Futuretext, industry expert Tomi Ahone and host Peter Holland for a terrific event… I am looking forward to the next one, meanwhile I will be watching the international leaders shape the future of mobile online at ForumOxford.

Mobiya sings up to deliver mobile classified ad system for Metro

It is amazing how quickly information travels globally these days. We have wired our first international announcement 3 hours ago and it has been syndicated to Google News, while editor’s of two important blogs on the mobile/wireless industry have posted the story!

The press release can be found as following: http://www.pressdispensary.co.uk/releases/c991136.php.

Following blogs have picked up the release: The site Pocket Picks has featured Mobiya. Stuart Dredge says "If you thought Craig’s List had killed off the humble newspaper classified ad, think again. Classifieds aren’t dead, they’re just evolving. And one way is to expand onto mobile phones."

Furthermore GoMo News made made a good comment on capturing the mobile phone number and use it for mobile advertising purposes. To quote the editor: "Sounds interesting; but there should be spam filters in place. It might just be one way of getting mobile phone numbers. But this is a very interesting concept – user generated mobile advertising with a twist." Looking forward meeting these people IRL.

More newspaper companies report serious declines in classified ad revenue

According to Total Content + Media (link requires registration) the US newspaper industry woes poised to further deepen for Q1. Advertising recently has deteriorated largely due to a decline in classified advertising, which, according to the Newspaper Association of America, makes up roughly one-third of newspapers’ total ad revenue.

That advertising category already had been pinched for at least a year as ads for cars and jobs moved online. Until recently, though, the third major type of classified ads – real estate – picked up the slack as the hot housing market sent builders and homeowners to fill up classifieds pages. According to the article, the key to future recovery lies with finding new sources of revenue, particularly online.

Mobiya’s platform allows for newspaper companies to easily integrate new classified revenue streams via an offline call-to-action (in print) and a direct mobile-to-web placement (online) of mobile classifieds. Mobiya takes a small mobile transaction fee on each interaction between an advertiser and a responder. Contact us for more information.

The underlying economics of the newspaper world are crumbling

These are the wise words of Warren Buffet about the newspaper industry: "Not all of our businesses are destined to increase profits. When an industry’s underlying economics are crumbling, talented management may slow the rate of decline. Eventually, though, eroding fundamentals will overwhelm managerial brilliance. (As a wise friend told me long ago, "If you want to get a reputation as a good businessman, be sure to get into a good business.") And fundamentals are definitely eroding in the newspaper industry, a trend that has caused the profits of our Buffalo News to decline. The skid will almost certainly continue….

Source: see page 11 & 12 of the Berkshire Hathaway annual investor’s letter.

Does ‘gratis’ accelerate end-user adoption?

When launching a new innovative service like mobile classifieds you need to respect the end-user adoption. The pickup of Mobiya’s service has been immediate, but we remain modest and don’t consider it as a Big Bang.

Now that we have passed the introduction stage, our minds start to shape a couple of acceleration scenario’s. Mobiya has always opted for the ‘phased adoption’ which means that we’ve launched the platform with the core functionality: posting of and responding to classifieds using sms.

Today we are preparing the next phase, the introduction of rich media through camera phones capable of transferring images and video. More importantly, and on a different topic is the relation between end-user adoption and the ‘gratis’ model. A recent series of announcements demonstrate that big companies and startups play around with a ‘for nothing’ approach. Some examples in classified complementary markets , the directory services:

• Google released it’s Google Voice Local Search service. A free number to get directory assistance (click here)
• 8108.com debuts urban free SMS-based service for local-event-related content in 15 urban US cities (click here)

According to Rob Adler, CEO of 8108.com the focus of his company is initially on growing a significant user base before settling on a revenue model. Anyone in for some comments?

SMS Deal: first house sold over Mobiya platform

Mobiya and Metro are just over a week in production with the new classified service, SMS Deal. Our transactional systems have been very busy, aggregating  hundreds of sms’s per day and serving a few thousand web pages last week. The initial user feedback is very positive and encouraging. The first sellers have struck deals with buyers that responded to the ads. Real estate seems to be a very popular category. This is the first house sold over Mobiya’s mobile classified system.