Zillion Business Review interviews Mobiya’s CEO
The Dutch Business magazine Zillion Business Review has interviewed Martin Davis, CEO of the Anglo-Belgian startup Mobiya. Click to Download zbr_article__mobiya.pdf. The title is 'Controlling Classified Content' and provides an overview of Mobiya's technology and service platform. And more importantly, how mobile classifieds can seriously benefit both the classified publisher from a content controlling and revenue perspective and the individual consumer from a mobile user experience.
Schibsted buys a third of Metro Sweden
Not only has Schibsted seriously strengthened its online classifieds portfolio due to the acquisition of Kapaza, but it has also bought a third of Metro Sweden, the leading free newspaper. Schibsted Sweden EVP Gunnar Stromblad said the JV is formed “to meet the challenges in the newspaper market today and tomorrow”. In other words, the rise of the modern freesheet, led by Metro, is proving increasingly attractive to advertisers, while paid newspapers have been losing ad revenue to the web. (source Robert Andrew, paidContent:UK). Classifieds and freesheets, way to go!!!
Benelux online classified site Kapaza sold for EUR 20M
BenThe Norwegian newspaper group Schibsted Classified Media (SCM, 1.5 billion turnover) has acquired 100 % of the shares of the Belgian online classified site Kapaza.be for EUR 20.25 million (announcement). Kapaza was launched in 2003 and has become an extremely popular free online-only classified site. Some numbers:
According to the ABC of Belgium (CIM MetriWeb) Kapaza.be has 4 million page requests per day:
- 25x more than Spotter.be (Corelio)
- 10x more than Koopjeskrant.be (Concentra)
- 6x more than Hebbes.be (Concentra)
- 3x more than Vlan.be (Roularta)
Kapaza is a hard figures based market leader in the Belgian online classified and has a strong position in the automotive market segment. To put the Belgian online car classified market into perspective:
- 18x more than Vroom.be
- 9x more than Autozone.be (Persgroep)
- 3.5x more than Autoscoot.be (Germany)
What a shame that an international oriented company with strong online activities in Belgium, but also in France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Suisse, and market leader in the Belgian online classifieds market is not being acquired by a Belgian based media group. What is the problem here, a too high valuation, a lack of vision or a cultural gap between the Dutch site owners and the Belgian media owners.
Mobiya’s presentation at Fit for the Future Magazines 2008 conference
Today I presented at the ‘Fit for the Future’ Magazines 2008 Conference, the annual conference organized by PPA. PPA is the association for publishers and providers of consumer, customer and business media in the UK.
The topic of our session was Data on the Move and the was hosted by Jerry Gosney, chairman of Data Publishers Association (DPA) and RBI Search. DPA is promoting and protecting the interests of all companies operating in the directory and data publishing and search sector.
Speakers in our session include Ajit Jaokar, Futuretext, Douglas Macdonald, Sponge and Robert Thurner, Incentivated. In a very balanced and complementary way we walked the audience through a mashup of 120 slides about mobile market knowledge, experiences and cases. Some highlights:
Golden rules for mobile marketing, according to Douglas Macdonald (things to know):
- It’s about psychology, not technology
- It’s about permission, be invited, don’t intrude
- Understand when to push and when to pull
- When you open a channel, "you open a channel!"
Ajit Jaokor broke a few mobile myths (things to be aware off…):
- Mobile youth is a myth
- Content is not king, context is king!
- Brands are not enough
And Ajit continued (things to watch…)
- Location based services: local can work.
- Snack culture and content (i.e. Wired March 2007).
- MMS, Mobile web and widgets
- India and China
Robert made it very easy for us and shares his excellent overview of real life cases as following: send an SMS with the word PPA (space) you@yourmail.com to 62233.
And what about us? Well you can download the presentation here: Download Mobiya_PPA.pdf
Mobile extends web reach: opportunity for classifieds
The mobile internet increases the audience reach of leading websites by an average of 13%, according to Nielsen. The increase in audience varies by category. An overview:
- Weather: 22%
- Entertainment: 22%
- Games: 15%
- Music: 15%
- Email: 11%
- Sports: 10%
- Business/Finance: 4%
- Social Networking: 3%
- Search: 2%
- Shopping/auctions: 1%
It’s no surprise to see the shopping/auctions (and classifieds) category hanging at the bottom of the list, as I hardly know any serious mobile shopping initiative driven by a traditional publisher. This demonstrates the opportunity to drive our mobile classified platform in the market and enable classified content owners and publishers to dominate the mobile shopping channel.
In addition, the latest announcement of Vodafone UK to incorporate mobile internet pricing into its monthly plans will boost the access. Unfortunately the consumer has no choice and is following its online brands to the mobile space. Vodafone’s top 4 searches and part of the top 10 most visited sites in the UK are:
- Bebo
- eBay
- Windows live Hotmail
Note that eBay is listed in the top searches results, but it is not amongst the 10 most visited mobile sites…