Mogae Digital Launches Mobiya Trader in India

Mogae Digital has partnered with Mobiya to launch a suite of mobile classifieds services in India using the Mobiya Trader platform.

Designed as a scalable full service platform, Mobiya Trader has been specifically developed for India and other countries where text messaging still dominates mobile communications and mobile advertising. The initial services will launch nationwide focused on the domestic jobs marketplace and there are plans to launch a property service, a matrimony service and also a wider industry jobs service too.

Job seekers can use the new DomJobs service using SMS text messages to search for jobs and will receive daily updates about any matching adverts. Employers can also advertise by simply texting their advert into the Mobiya Trader service. Revenues are driven by user subscriptions and mobile advertising.

Tanya Goyal, Executive Director, Mogae Digital, says: “Our new DomJobs service will, for the first time in India, help in the creation of jobs among blue collar workers through mobile phones. This service reaches job seekers in “rurban” (rural-urban) communities as well as the employers in the towns and cities and serves as an effective marketplace for bringing together blue collared workers and potential employers.”

The vast majority of mobile phone users in India do not have a smart phone or broadband Internet access; therefore, texting remains their primary communications method. Until now these types of domestic jobs were advertised locally in newspapers or by word of mouth.

Goyal added, “The Mobiya Trader platform is flexible and allows us to configure and roll out new classifieds services rapidly, in some case even within minutes. This is important in a country with multiple languages, religions and cultural preferences; we need to be able to create marketplaces that accommodate these differences whilst maintaining ease of use, speed and of course being fun to use”.

Mobiya’s CEO Martin Davis commented, “We are delighted that Mogae Digital has chosen to partner with us and use our Mobiya Trader platform to launch a variety of mobile marketplaces in India. With a mobile population approaching 900 million we are excited about the potential size of the customer base we will serve and the growing opportunity to deliver new services as India’s mobile technology adoption accelerates.”

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About Mogae Digital Mogae Digital is a joint venture between the Mogae Group and Astro Malaysia. Mogae Digital has major telecom operators and content providers as its partners. It has a large repository of original Value Added Services content and is a major innovator for online and mobile social networking and gaming.

About Mobiya Mobiya specialises in the development and operation of mobile services for the global classifieds advertising industry. Mobiya Trader is a full service platform to enable media partners to create and operate local and national marketplaces with mobile and online user engagement. Mobiya Trader also provides marketing agencies with an inventory to connect with consumers directly on their mobile phones.

Mobiya surpasses all expectations: 2.4 million mobile numbers actively trading at Mobiya’s marketplace

Without spending a single dollar in advertising, Mobiya has now over 2.4 million live phone numbers in its database. This result is achieved in less than 30 months of trading in the UK!

The platform has been scaling beyond anything else. Thanks to our brilliant technology team keeping a live system growing while expanding the business and platform availability in new regions.

Users have been extremely satisfied with the privacy and security approach while trading in Mobiya’s marketplace. Both sellers and buyers keep returning to trade more goods in what is said to be UK’s safest marketplace.

Furthermore, Mobiya recently launched its platform in India. After several months of production testing, following classified categories are live: domestic jobs in Delhi, matrimony contacts and property in Delhi.

Mobiya still has the lead above and beyond Google’s Trader system, currently only active in Africa. This motivates the team to go beyond any boundary and remain world-class in its category: mobile classifieds.

 

Google Trader launched in Africa – Copycats Mobiya

Google is launching a free online classified service driven by SMS. The new service allows Ghanaians to buy and sell products and services, as well as search for jobs or just about anything else using SMS text messaging. The service is catching on fast with traders as many of them are listing livestock and clothes using their mobile phones.

Stories in local newspapers report happy customers: “This is incredible. You mean I can really advertise my coconut selling business on the net?” says Stephen Agyapong, a coconut seller at Osu queried after he was given a handout explaining how the service works. Also amazed by the fact the service was free of charge.

According to Google, Trader can be used by anyone in Ghana, but is expected to have the biggest uptake in major towns and cities across the country. “Individuals can post short ads to buy and sell items and services, whilst businesses of any size can also use the site to reach more customers and increase their sales,” a statement read.

Google Trader is an exact copy of Mobiya. The difference with Mobiya is that it has a secure exchange of contact details between buyers and sellers, while Google publishes mobile numbers directly and isn’t interested in the privacy of people! Mobiya has also a fraud protection service using SMS authentication, which is very important in countries with high poverty and massive fraud.

Deeper in Africa, Google is also demonstrating Google SMS. Google SMS is part of an effort to reach people who don’t have Internet access at all, starting in Uganda.

The opportunity in Africa is serious. According to a report from the International Telecomunication Union, 28% of the population has basic mobile phone voice and SMS services. This seems not much, but less than 5% have Internet access. So, as an online search giant looking to make money in Africa, phones are the obvious route.

Similar to what Mobiya is doing in India, Google SMS is also a way for people to use SMS text messaging to request information like local jobs, weather, sports, etc. But, the most promising service remains Google Trader, a marketplace built around SMS. In the event that Uganda and Ghana go well, Google will seriously expand these services across the continent.

It is time for Mobiya to step up. Also Microsoft and IBM see these regions as potentially huge markets too. Mobiya has the advantage of having developed a telco-grade platform through its European operations, and is now looking to operate the service in Africa. Mobiya’s patent protected platform connects buyers and sellers via secure SMS text messaging and allows the service to be free of charge for consumers subsidised by the embedded mobile advertising service.

 

Sources:

• Africa News: “Google Trader lauch stuns Accra“
• The African Reporting Project: “Will Google Trader help farmers in Africa?“
• VentureBeat: “Google aims for less developed nations with Google SMS“
• YouTube: “Google Trader Uganda AppLab“
• YouTube: “Interview with Eric Cantor, AppLab Uganda Manager, Grameen Foundation“
• Google: “What is Google Trader?“

SMS stats and forecasts: $1 Trillion over next 7 years

SMS is now more than 16 years old, and it has been an incredible success. Worldwide, Portio Research forecasts that there are almost four billion SMS users in 2011. Compared to this, we forecast that there are roughly one billion smartphones in use around the world in 2011, roughly 800 million mobile broadband subscribers and approximately 100 million mobile apps users.

SMS has generated revenues for operators worldwide of approximately $585 Billion USD since services were launched in the mid-1990s. According to our forecasts, we calculate that it is still set to earn those operators another $726 Billion USD over the next five years, to year-end 2015. MNOs should focus on the fact that SMS will generate more than 1 TRILLION USD over the next seven years. In 2010, we estimate that SMS generated revenues of $220,000 USD per minute all year for the mobile operator community.

Source: Mobile Messaging Futures Report 2011-2015. Analysis and growth forecasts for mobile messaging markets worldwide: 5th edition. Download PDF.

Analysts forecast a $70bn market for Mobiya in 2016

Juniper Research’s new report forecasts that revenue from Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS will exceed $70bn by 2016. Revenue from these types of messages will overtake that of Person-to-Person (P2P) SMS during that year as the strategic focus for players within the mobile messaging ecosystem shifts from communciation between individuals, to sending and receiving service-enabling messages.

Application driven text messages

Service-enabled platforms such as Mobiya’s enable application-to-person text messaging within classified media systems. This unique mobile-interactive service is currently helping major newspaper groups to access new revenue streams for their classified content. Furthermore, the report finds that A2P messaging in general, defined as those messages which are sent to or from an application, has an even wider variety of use-cases. Classifieds being one, these also include financial services, advertising, marketing, business administration, ticketing, television voting and any other service where information needs to be sent to, or received from a large number of users in text form.

Getting the message with SMS

The report finds that while SMS is one of the oldest value-added services, it has an enduring appeal for a number of reasons. In terms of text communication it is unrivalled on the mobile device in its ubiquity. Virtually every handset in the world can send and receive it. This makes it extremely appealing for brands who want to enable communication with their customers, as unlike other messaging mediums, they know it will reach almost its entire intended audience.

Source: Juniper Research press release, Hampshire, UK – 4th May 2011. Read here.

Mobiya.co.uk has 1.5 million unique mobile numbers

In only 18 months Mobiya.co.uk has collected 1.5 million unique mobile numbers within its online classified advertising platform. This is the biggest mobile number database with buying/selling trading history in the world. These mobile numbers can be accessed by mobile advertisers looking for SMS advertising inventory. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions.

Mobile advertising revenues to reach $2.9B

It’s no surprise that the mobile advertising market is growing like gangbusters. Today, BIA/Kelsey is releasing a new report that shows that U.S. mobile advertising revenues will grow from $491 million in 2009 to $2.9 billion in 2014.

The study evaluates any advertising placed in mobile search (text advertising applied to search queries on mobile devices), display (display advertising applied to app and mobile Web inventory) and SMS (commercial SMS messaging). During the forecast period, BIA/Kelsey expects U.S. mobile search ad revenues to grow from $59 million to $1.6 billion, U.S. mobile display ad revenues to grow from $206 million to $803 million, and U.S. mobile SMS ad revenues to grow from $226 million to $562 million.
In terms of the local breakdown, BIA/Kelsey expects U.S. mobile local advertising revenues to grow from $213 million in 2009 to $2.03 billion in 2014. This represents 44 percent of total U.S. mobile ad revenues in 2009, growing to 69 percent in 2014. BIA/Kelsey defines mobile local advertising as ads that are targeted based on a user’s location.
In a statement, the company said that as mobile advertising movies to the SMB and mid-market segments, there will be an increase in advertisers adoption as well as a growth in geo-targeted (i.e. local) ad spends.

It’s interesting to see that mobile search advertising has the biggest potential to grow over the next few years. This represents a huge opportunity for Google, who dominates web search advertising. Of course, Bing could also stand to reap the benefits of mobile search ads as well.
It’s important to note that steady increases in the use of smartphones and new innovations in mobile ad formats also are contributing to an rapidly growing market.

Operators predict SMS messaging will dominate mobile marketing

Coupons issued via SMS and MMS will be the dominant form of mobile marketing by 2015, according to 61% of people surveyed by messaging company Airwide Solutions.

The study, conducted by research company MobileSquared, quizzed employees from 31 mobile operators across EMEA about mobile marketing trends over the next five years.

It found 58% of respondents predicted SMS and MMS ads would be the most widely accepted form of mobile advertising by 2015.

Jay Seaton, chief marketing officer at Airwide Solutions, said, “The widespread use of mobile messaging creates a far-reaching and significant marketing opportunity for brands, which in turn, creates a revenue opportunity for mobile operators.”

UK mobile operators Orange and O2 have rolled out permission-based mobile advertising offerings Orange Shots and O2 More with brands such as L’Oréal launching campaigns on the platform.
The study revealed that 53% of respondents believed subscribers should have the ability to opt out of receiving ads via their mobile.

The findings by Airwide Solutions reflect a joint study by the DMA and IAB, which found that brands are failing to make the most of consumers’ willingness to be targeted through mobile messaging.

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 | By Ronan Shields New Media Age UK

http://www.nma.co.uk/news/operators-predict-coupon-messaging-will-dominate-mobile-marketing/3020452.article

Resurgence in mobile messaging is proof it simply works

While smartphone use is growing, SMS is the only medium that can get your brand to every mobile consumer.

Last week I felt like I’d stepped through a magic door and gone back in time. I was chairing an event hosted by the Internet Advertising Bureau and the Direct Marketing Association about SMS marketing. And I’d spent the evening before with O2 Media MD Shaun Gregory, in large part discussing the effectiveness of SMS as a marketing channel.

Text messaging was the original mobile marketing channel. It has been helping brands reach consumers for longer than a decade. But recently there has been a swell of renewed interest in the channel. This is nothing but good news. SMS was kicked out of the limelight by the explosion of mobile apps, in particular on the iPhone. Apps’ technicolour success threw the dowdy SMS into the shade.
But it’s all too easy for brands to get caught up chasing the latest digital innovation and forget to focus on channels that have been proven to deliver. This is compounded in mobile where platform schisms are prone to occur, as Reuters global head of mobile Ilicco Elia discusses in this week’s Profile.

Mobile messaging can undoubtedly deliver. While smartphone use is growing, SMS is the only medium that can get your brand to every mobile consumer. Research from the IAB and DMA offers compelling evidence of SMS’s effectiveness for brands. Although marketers are often wary of using SMS for fear of being seen as intrusive, the research found consumers welcomed brand contact. In fact, commercial messages from a user’s operator were almost as welcome as those from friends and family. Also clear is the role mobile messaging can play in influencing consumers’ use of complementary media. Marks & Spencer found MMS messages increased visits to its mobile site by 81%.

So the renewed interest in mobile messaging by marketers is heartening. The IAB/DMA event was packed and operators are reporting huge success with their SMS marketing arms like O2 Media and Orange Shots. Messaging should be a core component of any brand’s marketing strategy and will continue to provide effective, measurable results.

By Justin Pearse, New Media Age

SMS continues its dominance over the next 5 years

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