U.S. mobile usage to exceed 100% by 2013
How important is the USA to Mobiya? 84% of U.S. population will have mobile phones by end of 2007 (SNL).
Google puts its money where its mouth is
How important is mobile to Google? 8,000,000,000 (billion) dollars! (WSJ)
Free is no longer free in the free online classified world
De Koopman reported that Marktplaats.nl, acquired by eBay in 2004, has started to monetize 5 classified categories (boats, motorbikes, etc.). The placement of a classified will cost the consumer €9 (more…).
Question remains: how can you differentiate without providing a true premium in an online world where the competition such as Speurders.nl is only one click away?
Opinion piece: eBay’s bet on classifieds – Craigslist reality
eBay is reaching the boundaries of the once ultimate-and-unlimited gross merchandise volume, at least within its existing online auctioning markets (source: OnlyEBAY). A recent series of posts demonstrate eBay’s activity in the classified space using its brands such as Gumtree and Kijiji. Their 25% stake in Craigslist is also put into the classified domination race.
While analysts write that "the longer-term opportunity for classifieds is very large and eBay may monetize it in a variety of ways" I am a very skeptical about the ‘longer-term’ success. The three horses in the race, led by Craigslist, have no true differentiator besides providing another ‘free’ service with low value:
"The major flaw of Craigslist is that it is overloaded with crap" according to Henry Blodget. Even more, Craig Newark is certainly not considered as eBay’s role model: "Craigslist is run by socialists who appear to have no interest in turning it into a real business."
Paul Kedrosky says the same with more words (opinion piece), ultimately questioning the leadership of Craigslist: "eBay doesn’t think it will ever see any liquidity from the nutters at Craigslist — they’ll likely turn the whole company over to some Che Guevara preservation society or something — so it’s calling it quits on the thing."
Dominating the classified industry, a $100B dollar industry according to Classified Intelligence LLC., will require more than providing a free service. Even worse, the cold war between eBay and Google doesn’t provide eBay with a monetization model for its free classified listings. Poor shareholders…
Ben Schachter sees the solution that could mitigate the damage: partnerships between newspapers and eBay. According to Schachter such a deal is not beyond the realm of possibility, considering the successful cross-media initiatives from Yahoo and Monster.
Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst, does acknowledge the value of newspaper partnerships but has a serious concern "Over the years, eBay has approached newspapers episodically, but they didn’t have people who have knowledge of the business." This is exactly where Mobiya is playing a significant role, connecting newspaper classified and online classifieds over a new and innovative mobile user experience.
Mobiya’s Early-Access Fact Sheet: Beta release results
Mobiya recently released its beta version outside the organization through a pilot project in Belgium. Readers of the daily newspaper Metro could try the mobile classified service. Mobiya and Metro decided not to provide free access to the classified service, and charged beta testers between 1 and 3 euro to post an advertisement and 50 cents to respond. This is very unique, as most users of beta releases can access service for free.
The first results are encouraging and the users are extremely happy with the current functionality. Our developers had to fix a number of bugs (e.g. counters did not work properly), but no major complaints have been reported, nor any outages. During the second half of this year Mobiya is launching 5 additional beta channels, mainly in the UK, growing our beta release for further demonstration and preview to consumers.
Download mobiya_early_access_fact_sheet_jun07.pdf
Operator mobile spam alienating phone users
"A new survey says 64 percent of respondents admitted to annoyance with marketing offers received from mobile operators, with 70 percent of subscribers finding the offers in question irrelevant. (more)"
Time for the operators to work with companies such as Mobiya that allow them to serve relevant mobile ads within a buying and selling context of their users. If not, all those investments in mobile ad serving technology on mobile operator network level will soon melt as snow in the sun.
Mobiya’s World’s First achievements
We receive a lot of questions from investors how we differentiate and intend to keep a leading-edge position in the mobile classified sector. Here is a starter, a World’s First for each day of the week:
- World’s first company that launched an end-to-end mobile classified platform, capable of aggregating self-serviced classifieds over a short number and delivering these classifieds in a fully automated way to various offline and online media outlets for publication. No human intervention at all: no back-office, no call center, no invoicing department, no IT staff needed.
- World’s first to introduce mobile advertising within the global classified advertising industry, allowing us to serve ads during the mobile interaction of a consumer with our application.
- World’s first to use location based services (LBS) as geo-tagging information for mapping purposes and location identification of the advertisers and responders using the Mobiya service.
- World’s first to use rich media functionality of the camera-phone for classified posting including pictures and video through a fully automated media conversion on the fly: 3GP to Flash and immediate online distribution: SMS to RSS.
- World’s first to introduce the concept of a classified brokering system for mobile classifieds acting as classified exchange network for various media partners, also using m-payment.
- World’s first to use tagging and indexing as a way to dynamically organize content and categorize the classifieds, instead of sticking to a 20st century human-invented taxonomy system.
- World’s first company that closed deals within the newspaper industry, television and broadcasting sector and with major online media players for the launch of mobile classified advertising.
Mobiya Belgium back from holidays
Introducing Mobiya’s Benelux team, from left to right: Stefan – sales manager, Anthony, financial director, Annemie, community manager and me in front of an overpacked display unit full of Classified papers.
Mobiya announces partnership with Rapid Mobile | enters into mobile advertising
Rapid Mobile and Mobiya today announced their partnership in which they will jointly introduce mobile advertising into the global classified media industry.
The collaboration with with Rapid Mobile allows Mobiya to provide mobile access to classified listings with integrated advertising through Ad360. The new service has been launched today and is the world’s first classified service using mobile advertising.
Martin Davis, CEO of Mobiya said "as of today, users of the Mobiya service are not only able to post a classified ad using their mobile, but are also able to view the listing directly onto their mobile." Dr Richard M Marshall, CEO of Rapid Mobile continues "the Ad360 platform serves mobile advertisements while the user is interacting with the classified listings, a great way to monetize the classified content."
Rapid Mobile is leading developer of intelligent mobile phone monetization and advertising solutions. In February 2007, Rapid Mobile launched its Ad360 intelligent mobile advertising platform.
Contact us to receive a free demonstration and to explore the potential of mobile advertising within the classified media industry.