Mobiya co-founder to present at DPA Annual Conference

London – Mobiya announced today that Sacha Vekeman, VP Business Development, will present at the Data Publishers Association Annual Conference in Brighton on Thursday, October 23, 2008.

Look who else is speaking: Download DPA_conference_brochure.pdf.

Mobiya presentation at the PPA Business Media Mobile Forum in London

Mobiya presented at the PPA Business Media Power of 3 forum yesterday. The forum covered:

• Business Media companies are discovering new revenue opportunities through the medium of mobile.  How can this opportunity be seized to create new services and distribution channels?
• Can Business Media companies effectively distribute their content through mobile services?
• How should content be prepared for this delivery channel?  What's the commercial angle?

The presentation can be downloaded here: Download SachaVekeman-Mobiya.pdf

Mobiya mentioned as acquisition target for eBay’s buying spree in the classified market

Greg Sterling, senior analyst for Local Mobile Search, and founding principal of consulting and research firm Sterling Market Intelligence wrote an appealing article mentioning Mobiya regarding eBay's plans to snap up classified companies to power the Kijiji brand.

The Wall Street Journal first reported about eBay planning classified buyouts to expand its global classified-ad business. From the article: Jacob Aqraou, general manager of eBay's global classified business, said he expects the company will take over a "fair" number of companies in the next six months or so. He said eBay's strategy was to target classified-ad sites that have leading positions in geographies and industry segments in which eBay doesn't currently compete.

Mobiya is definitively a category leader in the mobile classified segment with a strong footprint in Europe and connections to an emerging Indian and African classified market with a seriously high mobile user penetration. Greg Sterling also mentions Oodle as another potential acquisition target, given their strong search integration and classified distribution model. Mobiya and Oodle have recently launched a fully integrated mobile classified service. Mobiya connects offline media classifieds with the world's most powerful classified meta-distributor and search company, Oodle.

Complete article: "eBay Plans Classifieds Buying Spree"

More information about Greg Sterling: Sterling Market Intelligence and Local Mobile Search.

Helping print advertisers to mobilise ads

Two US companies partnered to provide agencies and advertisers with a turnkey service for buying contextual ad placement on SMS text messages with interactive response services.

Pudding Media and Impact Mobile are the companies behind the service (press release). Idea is similar to what Mobiya currently offers in the European market: mobile advertising inventory with the ability to select demographic and interest-based categories.

Quote: “This is high-value inventory as it opens a world of exciting possibilities for a brand. Our goal is to make it simple for the media buyer to buy inventory and the ongoing engagement,” says Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile.

Interesting to see how overseas companies with a less SMS-friendly culture are creating a similar value proposition as Mobiya in Europe. Mobiya is UK’s market leader for mobile advertising inventory for sms marketing. Our Campaign Navigator helps media buyers to create sms marketing campaigns in hours, not days.

Quote: “SMS is one of the most ubiquitous communication channels and is a very effective medium for advertising,” says Ariel Maislos, CEO of Pudding Media. This time we did not deliver the quote.

Need to demystify mobile marketing | CTIA Wireless

As CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment is wrapping up a three day conference, interesting panel sessions were organized around mobile advertising and the importance of context and location; measurement and KPIs and the complexity of the mobile marketing landscape.

I've summarised a lot of quotes into three critical success factors; drivers of mobile advertising:

1. Context and location
2. Measurability
3. Simplicity

Cost of content and privacy underpin these three drivers.

"There are opportunities to reduce the cost of content and improve the quality of content subsidized by advertising. When you offer premium content at a reduced cost or even free, advertisers get a medium that’s in super-high growth mode, and consumers get a good opportunity to interact with the brands and products they are interested in.”

“BUT campaigns must be targeted and relevant so consumers want to engage in advertising.”

1. Context and Location

• "Mobile is all about context, which is the advertisers' Holy Grail, and location is the most important aspect of context. All successful marketing campaigns take context into account."
• "Location is the ultimate context, and it's very important if you want to deliver an ad. That ad is worth 50 times more than one that's not targeted."
• "The CPM structure for mobile advertising can range from 2 to 3 times Internet rates up to 50 time if it is targeted using a number of factors, including location."

2. Measurability

• "Success metrics for mobile marketing campaigns would include unique visits, conversion rates, handset types, screen sizes, etc. Most people I've talked to can't even measure unique users yet."
• "We need to have a simple solution, so that we know what the audience for SMS is in the U.S., what it is in Japan, etc. Brands want to measure their ROI, which is tough but can be done with things like pop-up surveys."
• "Brands want to know how mobile campaigns integrate with their other activities and they want evidence that mobile marketing works."

3. Simplicity

• "Today mobile is tremendously difficult, and the complexity of the mobile ecosystem is a factor, the time it takes to launch a mobile campaign is a serious concern."
• “Mobile marketing is about building a relationship between the consumer and the brand and simple, clear calls-to-action with specific incentives are the most effective strategies.”
• "Successful campaigns are easy for consumers to participate in, and there’s not necessarily a distinct brand message but definitely a dialogue and a focus on utilizing that dialogue to let consumers speak back to the brand."

Quotes come from Mobile Marketer articles "Is LBS Holy Grail for mobile marketers" – "Measurability to drive mobile marketing" – "Brands, ad agencies want simplicity in mobile advertising" – "Aggressive mobile advertising may jeopardize subscriber base: AT&T exec"

Major UK brands are failing to monetise digital strategies

Our mobile infrastructure partner Oxygen8 Communications (formed from the management buyout of Opera Telecom) ordered an interesting study and found that major UK brands are failing to monetise digital strategies and compete with thier own traditional advertising (read article).

What are the findings for mobile advertising and SMS marketing:

• consumers are interested in accessing more services from organisations on their mobiles
• corporates and media companies are failing to make the most out of digital opportunities
• 2/3 of organisations recognise that consumers are less receptive to trad. advertising
• 83% of the respondents of media companies feel that SMS and email is more effective than traditional channels.

Problems: budget (40%), lack of skill and experience (28%). The latter issue is resolved by mobile advertising experts forming specialist companies such as yodel Digital and RingRing Media.

Mobiya is in the business of creating a cost-effective and highly-contextual mobile advertising inventory for sms marketing purposes. Mobiya creates downward price pressure for mobile advertising campaigns, freeing up more margins for companies such as yodel Digital and RingRing Media, but also making sms marketing relevant and accessible for brand advertisers.

Magic Local online advertising campaign

MMS picture classifieds sell extremely well – proven value for advertisers

Since we introduced an MMS picture classifieds service with Metro newspaper last week, we've seen all the listed items being sold in less than 7 days. This means extreme high turnaround from listing the advert to selling the item = happy users! Important to mention, Metro was still running on summer circulation, means Monday, Wednesday and Friday editions only.

Results: Second-hand car for sale and Winnie the Pooh push-bike - ads appeared in the newspaper last week:

Both items were recently listed as sold by the advertisers: