Mobiya’s growth: 50 new classifieds per day on a single channel

Mobiya achieved another important milestone. In a single classified channel : SMS Deal / French-only, we aggregate over 50 new classified ads per day over SMS. After moderation, we publish 50 ads directly into print (next day) and online (almost real-time). Just realize that 50 a day, means 20.000 new ads per year. On average, a leading classified publisher in Belgium deals with 200.000 ads a year. Mobiya comes from nothing to about 10% of gross merchandise volume in less than 9 months.

In Belgium alone, we have lined up 10 channels to market over which we will aggregate 200k to 300k ads a year. In a couple of months we will compete on a common denominator = aggregated volume of classifieds. Examples of recently released channels are 123 Contact, SMS Deal in Dutch and Mobiya.be direct. Imagine the scalability and leverage of our patent pending service in large single-language markets such as the UK (x10), the USA (x30) or India (x100).

More importantly, these ads are distributed on a real-time basis over our classified network into our managed portals and widgets. The real-time aspect has become very important to our end-users. Through RSS feeds and constant monitoring of our widgets, some price-buyers are very quick to respond to a newly published item. Real estate in particular is heavily tracked, see the apartment below: it was published 4 hours ago and already received 4 responses.

Mobiya Exclusive: The Long Tail of Mobile Classified Advertising (Chart)

This is a world’s first analysis of The Long Tail in classified advertising. Traditional publishers have abandoned the diversity of classified advertising and concentrated their activity on narrowly defined verticals such as automotive, real estate and recruitment. This chart demonstrates the new truths about what consumers want and how classified publishers can monetize the tail instead of only the head alone.

For confidentiality reasons this is a time-windowed extract out of our database of advertising and response SMS data to demonstrate The Long Tail in exact numbers. It shows how a classified publisher can easily monetize the responses of a huge volume of classifieds using mobile services (premium rate sms or mobile advertising) to allow thousands of consumers to make a micro-payment in response to a classified ad.

Mobiya continues to change the economics of classified advertising and forces transparency. As Chris Anderson, the author of the brilliant book "The Long Tail" correctly asked himself: “What happens when everything in the world becomes available to everyone?” In our language, what happens when the combined volume of hundreds of thousands of classified ads that may get a response only once equals or exceeds the response volume of the few ads that get many responses… well, you make money!

Mobiya hits the 100,000th SMS text message!

Hurray! Over the weekend Mobiya transacted its 100,000th SMS text message only 12 weeks after becoming available to 70 million consumers in the UK and Belgium.

Mobiya has been busy launching its "Print-Classified-Interactive" service with Sport Newspapers (UK) and introducing our Mobiya branded free classified service over the Belgium short code 4050. Our next objective: 1 million SMS text messages before the end of this summer!

Beta testing results of the video classified service "BUZZ" in collaboration with Reed Business Information are going very well. Consumers are impressed with how easy it is to upload a video classified over MMS in less than 1 minute – from taking a 30 second video with a camera phone to full publication on Buzz.

Last but not least, a simultaneous launch of Mobiya’s mobile dating service in the Koopjeskrant newspaper and our "123 Contact" website has already seen an encouraging increase in users.

South-African pioneers shaping the mobile opportunity for classifieds

"The Mobile Opportunity for Classifieds" is a must read article featuring Felix Erken, Managing Director of Junk Mail Publishing Group. I had the honor to meet Felix just before Christmas and got amazed by the massive volumes of classified content Junk Mail Publishing Group is handling: 100.000 ads a week!

Junk Mail Publishing  is SA’s largest classified publisher and currently employs many hundreds of people across South Africa. Although still in their early development, mobile is already generating revenue that contributes to about 5% of its annual profit. It has to be said, SA has a 75% mobile penetration.

To end with a quote from Felix about mobile classifieds: "Do it now while you still want to, when you have to, it’s too late." Thanks Felix!