TELEMEDIA360 MANCHESTER – Moving the media on

November 16 and TELEMEDIA360 Manchester draws near and, with the line up complete, there is much to look forward to. As you will see from our round up of the week’s news (below) there is already much discussion about the issues tackled in the conference as the media and telemedia industries look at how to embrace m-commerce and start monetising what they do across all media platforms.

The among the key things that the event is looking at are how print and TV companies need to look these days at such a complex array of options when looking at how to exploit new channels.

From a print point of view, delegates will hear from Inge van Gaal from INMA that newspaper publishers are still locked in some old ways of thinking and that the market  is moving on.

“In general the main problem for at least the newspaper owners is that they still think of their newspaper as a product to put online, on mobile devices and get money from it,” she tells Telemedia-news.com ahead of her keynote panel appearance. “This of course is the old way of thinking and it doesn't look into the real problem: what is it that they offer that would create unique value people want to pay for?”

In van Gaal’s view its not just about sticking a paywall in between consumer and content, but is a complex balance of what people will pay different amounts of money for and on what devices.

“The coming of smart phones and the tablets have changed people's behavior but also have and will make them more and more demanding. And many more of these devices will come into the market next year. The smart phones have showed a radical shift in how people are using their phone. Many of the tasks done via smart phones used to be done via the computer,” she says.

“The content providers will soon have services related to where you are with your smart phone.  Question is how will we pay for that? Will advertisers see a use, maybe.”

From a broadcaster and wider media point of view, fellow keynote panellist Stephen Petheram, marketing director at MGt, it’s not just a question of how do you monetise multiplatform, but how do you first create a homogeneous view of your content and services across devices and platform.

“Once this is in place the services are much more compelling and you can look at how to monetise them,” Petheram says. But here there is also a challenge: “there is no compelling micropayments system that can handle subscriptions and one off micropayments across all these channels”, he says.

This will be a bone of contention at the show and is why TELEMEDIA360 MANCHESTER exists – to bring together media companies and billers who do offer the kind of payment and micropayment tools that will suit the complex array of pricing and business models a pay-for-content environment will unleash.

That is why the event on 16 November not only features seminar sessions on monetising media, the impact of new devices, the role of gaming and social media, as well as the opportunities in live events for cross platform, but also it has in depth drill down sessions on billing, payments and m-commerce that will show the media industry that the tools do exist to monetise complex cross-platform media and content business models.

Featuring a stellar line up that includes:

THE TELEGRAPH MEDIA GROUP ▪ TALK SPORT ▪ LIVERPOOL FC ▪ ENTERACTION ▪ MGt ▪  RUSSELLGRANT.COM ▪  INTERACTIVE NEWSMEDIA MARKETING ASSOCIATION ▪ O2 ▪ ASSOCIATION FOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT ▪ MOBILE INTERACTIVE GROUP ▪ SPONGE ▪ BEMOKO ▪ FUSION TELECOM ▪ QUESTICO ▪ ORCA DIGITAL ▪ INTERACTIVE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES ▪ OXYGEN8 ▪ STAN JAMES ▪ ATLAS PREMIUM BRANDS ▪ OPENMARKET ▪ BOKU ▪ TXTNATION ▪ NETCOLLEX ▪ ZED ▪ ROULETTECRICKET.COM ▪ M LAW ▪ MAKE IT RAIN ▪ MONTY MUNFORD ▪ GUAVA ▪ GP BULLHOUND ▪ 2EGRO ▪ MBLOX ▪ OFCOM ▪ C3 ▪ WIN ▪ GLOBAL TELECALL ▪ MOBILE FORMATS ▪ PHONE PAY PLUS ▪ ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY ▪ RIBOT ▪ NET MOBILE ▪ TELEBILLING ▪ BCH DIGITAL ▪ ADVANCED TELECOM SERVICES ▪ KCOM ▪ SQUARE ONE COMMUNICATIONS ▪ CELLCAST ▪ 24SEVEN

TELEMEDIA360 MANCHESTER is the one-stop-shop boutique event for uncovering the true meaning of m-commerce and multi-platform content monetisation. Book YOUR PLACE now here

Text for success – its the consumer lingua franca

The launch last week of O2More, the carriers location and time targeted advertising service marks something of a watershed in how mobile marketing works. Now consumers can, when they enter a ‘geo fence’ around a brand offering something they have pre-opted into, will get a message offering money off or other inducements to engage with that brand. Such offers can also be targeted around time of day also and are showing how mobile in retailing and commerce isn’t just about buying stuff via the mobile channel, but is also about retailers using mobile to drive footfall into the stores they have already heavily invested in.

But what makes it all the more exciting for the telemedia industry is that it uses text. Yep, good old SMS. OK, if you are a smartphone user you get a graphically enhanced MMS, but the service is designed to use SMS wherever possible as that is useful to the vast majority of people with mobile phones.

This move ‘towards’ SMS in retailing and marketing is clearly driven by expediency among those wanting to reach the widest audience possible. It is also the lingua franca of the people right now.

A survey by mBlox has found that 71% of consumers in the UK want mobile coupons sent to their phones while they are out shopping and 59% wanting retailers and brands to contact them using SMS.

Looking specifically at the role of SMS for business communications, 59% of UK and 17% of US consumers surveyed stated SMS as their preferred choice when being contacted about appointment reminders.

“More and more people are turning to SMS for important communications because emails can easily get lost or overlooked in an email inbox,” says Brian Johnson, senior vice president of sales and marketing for mBlox. “Mobile phone penetration in the US is now catching up to the UK and mBlox is experiencing a hockey stick effect in growth for business-to-consumer messaging. Businesses are beginning to give their customers the option of how they want to communicate with them and increasingly consumers are realizing the power of mobile messaging.”

For payment reminders, such as credit card and utility bills, the consumer research showed that more than one in three consumers chose SMS as their preferred communication channel in the UK, but just one in 10 chose SMS in the US.

“To stay ahead of our clients demands in key verticals such as Finance, Communications, Pharmacy and Travel we will launch 15 unique SMS programs this year,” agrees Jennie Hanson, SVP of West Corporation’s Alerts and Notifications business. “We see many companies adding SMS to their customer contact strategy for payment reminders, order ready notices, appointment reminders, customer care, promotions and a variety of other notifications as consumers begin using text messaging to communicate with businesses and not just family and friends.”

So text is firmly on the agenda again driven by retailers. But it is also looking likely to gain credence in the business sector too and, should it ever return to TV, in the voting stakes as well.

Personally I use text all the time and think that its an easy and cheap way of marketing and of developing communications between business, brands and consumers. We don’t need all the flash ‘flash’ graphics; we need simple messaging. It is also cheap to do and everyone can do it.

In these straightened times we are likely to see a lot more text based services happening as brands reach out to the maximum number of people with the minimum amount of outlay.

Find out more on how SMS and MMS marketing are going to effect the market at Telemedia360 in Manchester on 16 November, when we have keynote presentations from mBlox and OpenMarket.

Register here 

Lipsmacking thirstquenching acetasting motivating goodbuzzing cooltalking highwalking fastliving evergiving coolfizzing IVRdriven mobilemarketing Pepsi

In this day and age of apps and mobile web, canny cross platform marketing, multimedia video downloads, social media and all the other things that gets people in the telemedia space hot and panting, you’d think that there wasn’t any room for such prosaic services as IVR and ringback tones – they are so 90s and early 00s.

But you’d be wrong. IVR and ringback tones look set to get a new lease of life. Both technologies are still widely used, but both have lost their sex appeal years ago. IVR in particular is like death and taxes, boring but important and totally unavoidable (unless you are Tory donor Lord Ashcroft, in which case you can safely dodge one of them, if not the other). Ringback tones are up there with Strictly Come Dancing as the king of cheese.

But they both have a hugely important role to play in the development of mobile marketing, as ably demonstrated by Pepsico (makers of, to my mind the far superior of the colas) Pepsi in Turkey.

Cola wars are intense in all regions and Pepsico, having seen its market share hit by a new kid on the block – Cola Turka – in 2003, looked at how it could use the then nascent mobile marketing – among other things – to take on this rival and to try and chip away at Coke’s lead in the market too.

Fast forward to 2009 and the company had seen off Cola Turka, and was gunning for the big red ‘un and was seeing some stunning results with mobile marketing campaigns that offered those that texted or called the numbers inside the lids of Pepsi bottles free mobile minutes and the chance to win prizes etc.

So far all pretty standard. But Pepsi had a challenge on its hands. Between 2003 and 2009 it had successfully used mobile to target youngsters. Now it wanted to use mobile marketing to get itself in front of the primary shopper – mums. And this was a whole different ball game.

So the company turned to Turkey’s answer to Oprah to start getting the message across to this crucial, multipack buying demographic. And how did it do this? Well it used TV ads of course, but it also used IVR and ringback tones. When anyone entered to get free minutes, they got an IVR call back from Turkish Oprah telling them how great it was to get free minutes and to tell their friends a number to call to also get free minutes.  When the friends called they got a ringback tone message from Turkish Oprah telling them how great Pepsi was and so on.

Thanks to this canny use of IVR and ringback tone advertising, the offer spread virally like wildfire, notching up 25.8million calls, more than 5million of them uniques. Pepsi even claims that it out performed Coke in the market in the Spring of 2009.

Pepsico upped the ante again in 2010, using IVR, ringback tones and MMS videos to create an even more in depth – and totally mobile – spring marketing campaign (it saved money for the big summer push, when cola wars are at their height, by not investing in TV ads). This time it used the star of Turkey’s leading soap to do the IVR and ringback tone message and to create an MMS video advert too.

Again the campaign spread virally like, well a pretty contagious virus, and soon the company was again getting more than 6million unique interactions and sign ups and sales went through the roof.

And it is thanks, in part, to the use of IVR as part of the marketing mix. This lesson, learned today at the MMA Forum in London from Ugur Oglu, marketing director at Pepsico Turkey, shows how mobile marketing is a mixture of channels, technologies and some good old fashioned outside-the-box thinking. It also shows that IVR has a huge roll to play in turning static mobile marketing campaigns into celeb driven interactive campaigns that can spread, if you get it right, like the plague (well, they do call it viral marketing).

So take heart IVR providers: the future is yours to take – just get your message out there to those brands and mobile marketing agencies and show them how its done.

BlackBerry comes out to play

Apple has, until now, held all the cards around tablet computers, the latest device sub-genre to get developers excited/overworked. Then came Samsung, with some shortlived fanfare. Now BlackBerry has joined the throng with its delightfully named PlayBook (not BlackPad as most of the media called it) and the game is truly on.

The device is highly capable, looks good and, like iPad and GalaxyTab, does loads. There is no denying that it is a superbly engineered bit of kit. All that the media can find to knock it on is the choice of OS – not really something that impactful so long as it works.

But perhaps this device long tail that is emerging is something of a phoney war. There is no shortage of hype around tablets and how they are going to revolutionise the media and content market, but will they?

OK, many will be sold on the back of the hype and there are always enough people out there with money to chuck at the latest fad, but, once the dust of publicity has settled, will people really actually use them or will they be dug out in five years time when people start moving house again to the bemused smirk of “Darling, do you remember this?”

The experts thing that tabs are here to stay. The newspaper barons think so too. And the content providers really hope so.

Already these devices are having an impact.

Research by eMarketer suggests that these devices – along with the wealth of music players and games consoles now getting wifi and smarts – are making the content market, especially for games, music and movies, boom, hitting $1.54billion this year in the US alone.

“The continuing advance of smart devices—including tablet-style computers, led by Apple’s iPad—and the growing ubiquity of mobile broadband networks mean that consumers have to make fewer compromises when it comes to the consumption of games, music and video,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Mobile Content: Games, Music and Video Take to the Cloud.”

eMarketer estimates combined revenues from three principal streams—subscriptions (streaming music and mobile TV services); direct and pay-per-view downloads (full music tracks, games and TV/movie/event programming); and advertising-supported (games, music services and video)—will more than double from 2010 to reach $3.53 billion in 2014.

Gaming is by far the leader in terms of usage and revenues: The number of US mobile gamers is expected to reach 64 million in 2010, driving revenues of $849 million.

Meanwhile the number of US consumers who watch mobile video or television on their mobile devices is expected to reach 23 million this year and draw revenues of $719 million. By 2014, however, mobile video revenues are expected to reach $1.3 billion.

The main factor driving revenues to game, video and music publishers is still paid or subscription-based content, though ad-supported revenues are expected to grow at more than double the rate of paid mobile content through 2014.

“The rules have not been written—yet,” Elkin said. “The ongoing digitalization of media and the increased emphasis on monetization spells opportunity for mobile game and music publishers as well as producers of video content.”

But there still remains a niggling doubt in my mind that as the phone gets smarter, the need for tablets starts to disappear. Couple this with web enabled TV hitting homes now – and that all new TV’s will be wifi enabled by 2013 – and the role of the tablet as a media and content consumption device starts to look really shaky to me. It just doesn’t fit anywhere.

I am sure millions will be sold and used, but in a few years time this market segment will be dead and buried and we will be back to looking at the TV screen, our laptops or our phones if we want to engage and it will all depend on where we are.

This will be one of the key themes at Telemedia360 in Manchester on 16 November, where we will have a panel of experts, lead by Sponge and Bemoko, to talk about what impact new devices will have on the market and whether we are right to get in a lather about tablets.

Book your place now at www.telemedia360.com

Practice what we preach

I, like many of you, went to Ad:tech at Olympia this week and was surprised. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised that it was a lot busier than last year and really pretty up beat. Surprised too that there was a lot of emphasis on mobile, which until this year has tended to be something of a curio rather than part of the main event. But I was most surprised by the fact that, for a show about electronic marketing – taking in mobile and social networking – no one was actually using any of the tech available to get through to people on the show floor.

I was expecting Bluetooth shots from stands. I was looking for some SMS and MMS contact from exhibitors. I was hoping for some sort of in-show social network that took the meeting system idea to the next level. What I got was a trade show. With stands. Often empty stands. With some poor signage.

Now, to be fair I did learn a great deal from the on-floor seminars and I did meet some really interesting people and got some real insight in to social media marketing, where mobile marketing is heading and some great stats and stories. They even laid on the sponsored airship to cruise majestically about the hall. It was on this level a great show.

But for an advertising/marketing event, especially one that is aimed at the e and i sectors (e-commerce and i-whatever) the overall display from most of the exhibitors was awful. Stand after stand with nothing more than a pop up featuring way too many words. Many with no staff on them. Others that had no branding to speak of at all, just a few flyers (again, generally pretty poorly designed). Very few had any gimmicks.

I know times are tough and, as David Cameron and Nick Clegg make us all embrace dour economic realism there is no space for showyness and extravagance, I was really amazed to find that no one Bluetoothed me with a teaser, or used bump to give me their details, or had QR codes on their stands so that I could get some bumpf from them electronically.

No one was there collecting my data either apart from the organisers. Hats off to DMG and the Ad;tech team for getting their electronic badge scanner to work. I was mightly sceptical as I stood in the queue on arrival with my ‘badge’ on the screen of my iPhone waiting to scan it and get my proper badge, but lo, it worked a treat. I even used the e-badge on my phone for the data gathers at the door.

But that was it. Why weren’t any of the exhibitors actually using what they sell to not only demonstrate that it works, but to get those that are visiting from the ad industry and from the brands to buy into what the technology companies expect consumers to adopt?

While there was so much going on on the show floor and it was a really great show, the exhibitors let themselves down. I signed it with FourSquare when I arrived and got my Swarm badge as there were more than 50 other people logged in. I fired up Facebook places and saw quite a few familiar faces come up on that. But no one thought to leverage it at all.

And this isn’t just me whinging. A survey carried out by the MMA last week found that, across Europe, 25% of consumers want to have a mobile response channel to adverts in any medium – and if they had it, they would use it.

A quarter of consumers out there WANT to get in touch with you from your adverts using their mobile phones. Its doesn’t even have to be a QR code or anything fancy: an SMS shortcode is all they are looking for.

So with this in mind, it is doubly disappointing that the industry can’t even be bothered to use mobile cleverly to market to itself at its own event. What hope giving consumers what they want?

So I am going to do it. It’s time that we in this industry practiced what we preach. Trade shows are social gatherings of a finite number of people interested in the same thing – they are a social network. So Why don’t we treat it as such and harness all the powerful marketing opportunities social networks offer? Anyway, I am going to make this happen, so watch this space. Trade shows will never be the same again.

TELEMEDIA 360 MANCHESTER Gearing up for social gaming and drilling down for facts

Telemedia360, the leading event for the interactive media, marketing and online industries, has revealed the conference programme for the forthcoming event on 16 November in Manchester, and is looking heavily into not only media monetisation through alternative channels, but also the role of gamification, social media (and social games) and the device long tail.

The conference is split this time into three parts: an interactive seminar programme covering all the main media interaction issues of the day, a set of drill down seminars that will look in depth at key telemedia topics and a series of expert workshops that look at a range of regulatory and industry issues with panels of experts.

So what’s lined up on the seminar front?

INTERACTIVE SEMINAR SESSIONS 
T360’s in depth, panel lead, case-study heavy seminars put the media, marketing and branding experts at the centre of our multi-media learning experience, offering insight and debate into key areas of the tie-up between media and telemedia that brings about money making new channels and better audience interaction. These will cover:
• MEDIA MODELS 
Everyone’s talking about monetising media content, ads, classifieds and call TV services, but what’s the secret? Discuss the pros and cons of three accepted models – Freemium, paywall and ad funding and build a framework for making the right decision with a panel of experts. 
• ESSENTIAL TELEMEDIA IN THE DRIVING SEAT 
This well established industry has long been the source of valuable incremental “premium rate” revenues. Traditional services such as chat, dating, psychic, horoscope and infotainment can perform very well in a multiplatform / multimedia environment and have also never been more important to new market entrants. 
• SOCIALISING MEDIA
Its not about how to make money on Twitter and Facebook anymore, it’s how to turn TV shows or channels, brands, products and interests into commercial social groups that demand value added services and content; with subsequent advertising potential it’s “the inch wide sectors of the long tail that are a mile deep. 
• THE CORE: ALL APPLE?
With a “long tail” of devices it’s not just about making money online or on mobile and there is more to it than Apple’s App Store and iPhone. With smartphones tablets, consoles, feature phones, old phones, laptops, desktops and TV boxes. Media and content owners must maximise the opportunity of reaching customers wherever their eyeballs happen to be. 
• PLAY TO WIN: “GAMIFICATION”
Everyone wants to turn content, ads, marketing and services into games these days! But how can they be leveraged to generate eyeballs, brand awareness and sales? So what should you develop, how do you develop it and how do you turn it into a viable premium strategy? 
• A NEW TELEMEDIA AGE Innovative new services and technology plus the latest incarnations of popular media formats will certainly improve the opportunity to generate additional revenue streams in this ever changing media landscape. On the agenda: the future of call & quiz TV, taking print “multichannel” and how to make ads and marketing interactive. 
• OPEN FORUM & SURVEY RESULTS - DRINKS
This informal session brings together all of our panellists and delegates to reveal the results of several live mobile polls (taken throughout the show) providing a unique “finger on the pulse” of our industry and hopefully some clues as to what the future might have in store.

TELEMEDIA DRILL DOWNS 
For the hardened telemedia exec, or for those in the media who really want to get under the skin of new channels and revenue generating opportunities, our unique Telemedia Drill Down sessions offer a deeper look at the key issues and developments around key telemedia markets, channels and technologies. These drill downs will dig into: 
• CASH UP: BILLING & M-PAYMENTS
The key to monetising media services and content IS of course billing and collection. We set the established world of WAP and PSMS billing against the latest “young pretenders” that can offer one click, credit card and other creative new ways to pay for mobile, online and real world goods and services.
• CHECK OUT: M-COMMERCE 
With a specific targeted and profiled audience the media has an incredible retail opportunity through m-commerce and social networks combined. Here we take a look at the mobile retail applications for both digital and real-world goods and services – it’s “shopping from the comfort of your own phone”. 
• CUSTOMERS: WHO? WHEN? WHAT?
One of the key advantages with mobile is that it is personal and that personal information can be gathered seamlessly as part of providing a services or transaction. This customer data should be a valuable asset, so here is where we discover how to collect it and more importantly how to monetise it within the current rules and regulations.

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME 
Run in association with some with key partners and led by leading industry specialists, preregistered delegates will really benefit from this “up close and personal” range of practical workshops. 
• AGGREGATOR FORUM 
Details to be announced 
• M-WEB & APPS WORKSHOPS 
Want to go down the m-web route or perhaps develop a killer app for any mobile device? Don’t miss these two workshops which include live demos and an opportunity to discuss the specific issues associated with both these red hot commercial areas.
• RULE OF ENGAGEMENT - REGULATION FORUM

It’s all change for the regulation of premium rate and interactive services in the UK, with some very different definitions of editorial and advertising. As media outlets go cross platform, this is an opportunity to understand how to work within the latest rules whilst generating important new revenue streams.

To find out all the latest speaker detailers, events details and to register to attend this must see event, go to  http://www.telemedia360.com

Media firms’ systems are unable to support more interaction with readers and viewers, Oracle warns

Media firms focused on deepening customer intimacy and richer content are being hindered by lack of insight into customer behaviour and overlooking smart billing. So finds a study by Oracle and revealed at IBC in Amsterdam this week.

Oracle’s research reveals that while the vast majority of media companies are focused on developing deeper relationships with customers, the systems they have in place are currently unable to support these goals. The study, entitled State of Readiness, also found that while media firms had plans to create richer and more specialised content, they were overlooking the management of the resulting complex revenue streams.

According to the study, the top five priorities for media firms all revolved around providing a reassuring and compelling customer experience: information security was highlighted as a major focus by 76% of respondents; fostering deeper levels of trust with consumers (72%); providing a compelling user experience (68%); tailoring offerings to customers’ needs (66%); building value-added services around content (62%).

The study goes on to suggest that fewer than half the firms surveyed (48%) were able to monitor customers’ interactions with the organisation across all channels. Only one in six (16%) media firms is able to provide insight into individual customer behaviour while less than a fifth (20%) are able to provide recommendations to customers based on their interactions across all digital channels.

The report revealed a huge appetite for providing customers with richer content through partnerships and the introduction of new offers – 72% of media companies are currently developing new areas of content around their core specialism.

However, while media firms acknowledged the importance of being able to deliver this content across multiple channels with 78% currently taking steps to do this, there was less of a focus on the systems involved in managing the resulting multi-channel revenues – only just over half (56%) had developed billing systems to collect and allocate payment for additional content provision.

Indeed, the research revealed that a large number of media firms lacked the capability to bill customers for content and value-added services when the opportunity arose - 46% of media firms were unable to process micropayments, 26% couldn’t cater for subscriptions and 18% couldn’t handle one-off payments.

A quarter of media firms (26%) fully lacked the agility to respond to rapid change in business models and accommodate new revenue streams.

Gordon Rawling, Director of EMEA Marketing, Oracle Communications, told delegates at IBC: “Media companies appreciate that it’s no longer enough to put the content out there and trust that people find it. The results show that they’re taking very seriously the need to get closer to their consumers. While they have the right intentions, it doesn’t seem they have the building blocks in place to provide the personalised service they’re hoping for. Media firms need to move quickly to remove the barriers to gaining deeper customer insights.”

Rawling added: “For media firms, content is of course king and the report shows a great deal of ambition in developing richer, more compelling content and extending its reach through partnerships. While this is of course the very core of their business, they should also take care to prepare for the additional complexity that this approach entails. If you have the chance of encouraging consumers to spend money on your value-added or specialised content, you need the systems in place to collect and manage it”.

Commerce crazy

I hope you all enjoyed your summer sebatical, though I suspect many of you have been beavering away pretty much all through ‘le grand vacance” much as we have here at Telemedia Towers.

So, before we get on to what we’ve been doing, let’s have a look at what some of you have been up to. If a trend has emerged over the summer within the telemedia sector is that everyone has, while not dropping interactive media, gone m-commerce crazy.

Industry body AIME, in conjunction with the IMRG and IAB, put out a lengthy bit of research on the subject, Sponge conducted a survey with Internet Retailing magazine and now Netsize has conducted its own poll on the subject.

In fact, m-commerce and in particular, m-retailing, have become the growth areas for the mobile telecoms and telemedia industries, powered by more and more consumers coming in to retailer and brand websites via smartphones and looking to shop.

So what have these in depth surveys of the m-commerce landscape concluded? Well, unsurprisingly they have all concluded that there is big business to be done. I won’t bore you with the figures here, you can read the stories for yourselves below (I don’t write them just for fun you know!), but chief among their findings are that retailers are lagging behind consumer demand with their m-retailing offerings; consumers are tending to want to have mobile-optimised websites, rather than apps, as the way into retailers; retailers are failing to understand the difference between apps and m-web; and that almost all consumers are willing to pay at least €25 through mobile for goods and services, provided the billing tools are there.

All this adds up to one big opportunity for the telemedia community. Billing tools are not being picked up by retailers and many commercial organisations are still floundering trying to find someone to help them make sense of the m-web vs apps debate.

PayPal and Amazon are poised to grab a huge slice of the nascent mobile billing market, but there is still room for the innovative billing solutions offered by the telemedia community to get some traction in this huge market. You just have to get yourselves in front of retailers.

Which brings me neatly on to what we’ve been up to over the summer. Among the usual tanning, beach volleyball and embarrassing swimwear parade, we have been putting together our next event: Telemedia360 in Manchester on 16 November. Taking place the day before the Manchester Media Festival, T360 is looking to bring together media companies, brands, marketers and advertisers with the telemedia community to explore how telemedia can bring innovative services and exceptionally good micro-billing to these communities.

And in line with the huge move towards retailing we are also bringing in retailers to discuss their needs and to help them finds the solutions they are looking for.

Details of the event are here http://www.telemedia360.com/ and the conference programme and speakers will be finalised and present by next week – and there are some corkers, I can tell you. So why not come along: in this climate you can’t afford to miss it

Counting the cost of regulation

It should be happy days for the PRS business, if PPP is to be believed, because its consumer survey – carried out independently by ThinkTank – finds that consumers welcome the new code of practice on PRS and that having a clear and fair regulatory regime will give people the confidence to spend more money through such services.

Just as well really, since PPP’s annual report also seen by Telemedia-news this week reveals that the PRS sector in the UK is currently worth £730million: 11.4% down on 2008 and a whopping 54% lower than the industry peak in 2006, when it was worth an estimated £1.6billion.

The annual report puts this drop down to the recession and there can be no denying that it probably has had some sort of an impact – but to see the industry cut in half in three years is really quite something.

Industry body AIME, which has assessed PPP’s figures in detail, has found that the cost of regulating the industry has gone up from £3.6million in 2006 to £4.8million in 2009. That’s a doubling in cost to the industry per £1000 of revenue from £2.25 in 2006 to £5.28 in 2009.

AIME’s study of the numbers also suggests that despite the reduction in revenues from PRS, complaints have dropped even more dramatically – representing about one compliant per 50,000 PRS transactions.

Now, you could argue that its money well spent as the complaints to PPP are falling dramatically: something seems to be working. However, you could also argue that, while the cost of regulation has gone up, the value in terms of revenues from services that it has delivered to consumers and the industry has, in fact, gone down.

Of course, this is all under the old, 11^th Code regime, so I don’t think its right to be too critical. PPP is shifting how it regulates the industry and is embracing many of the ideas put to it by industry body AIME over the past four years into its new code of practice – we may yet see a shift towards the nadir of light and fair regulation that delivers value to the industry and encourages consumers to use the services.

The new code, as most of you know, will see AIME suggestions of a much more proportionate apportioning of blame along the value chain, a more open approach to trying to correct errors in services, rather than let them run then instigate actions, and the introduction of a registration scheme come into play.

All great news for the industry, in theory, and it has being warmly welcomed – not least by the public if the survey is to be believed. But the proof will be in the pudding. PPP believes that the new code will have a soft launch early next year and will be properly in force – all teething troubles overcome – by the summer of 2011. I guess we won’t then know until the summer of 2012 how well it has worked.

But those teething troubles, many of which will be thrown up by the overlap from 11^th to 12^th codes are already causing headaches for some in the industry. As we reported in our monthly Telemedia360 newsletter last month, there are concerns as to how the registration scheme will work long term. PPP is confident that it is listening to these concerns and adjusting how systems will work as we speak and it would be foolish to assume that they won’t get it right for the soft launch.

But what no one can foresee or answer now is whether it offers better value for money regulation or not. The PPP survey suggests that consumers welcome clear, yet not overly nanny-ish, regulation and that this would persuade a significant number to use PRS than do at the moment.

Whether this comes about or not remains to be seen, but for now the traditional two way tug of war between PRS industry and the regulator has now taken on a new dimension – consumers pulling in a third direction. Watch this space (or at least watch out for the July issue of T360 which will have an in depth look at the how the new code is shaping up and what it all means for the industry).

iPhone 4 bad, World Cup good

Suddenly not being bothered to queue up like a mug for an iPhone 4 seems to be one of my better decisions: it looks like they are going to be recalled anyway. OK, this means that it will be even longer before I get my grubby paws on the new ‘Jab Screen’, but hey, I am still enjoying my old iPhone to be honest. It fits better into the curve of my hand and I think it looks more stylish – the new one looks like something Nokia might come up. I am disappointed.

Anyhoo, enough about the travails of Apple and my Pyrrhic victory over its idiotic strategy of making their devices so hard to come by that, rather than creating a fervour of desire they just p**s off their loyal fan base. What is really more intriguing is how the World Cup played out on mobile.

It seems that, after all the hype, this World Cup did indeed turn out to be ‘the mobile world cup’, with mobile broadband use rocketing upwards by 24% during the tournament, web browsing on mobile during the games growing by 35% and YouTube hits looking for the goals and highlights post-match scoring a whopping 32% rise.

The study by Allott Communications (who, it has to be said, does provide mobile broadband equipment – so something of an own goal? Did you see what I did there?) backs the notion that more and more people are watching TV (or ‘event TV’ as some would have it) with their smartphone clutched in their hand and are using this extra screen to interact with friends and content and services while watching programmes.

Some of the games at the World Cup were so dull that the numbers may admittedly be skewed (I am sure a lot of browsing went on during England’s dismal display), but the findings demonstrate that the way people are using mobile and interactive technology around TV has changed.

While there is much to be said for PSMS text voting coming back to our screens – and its return still seems to be set on ‘imminent’ as it has been for nearly two years – things have moved on. The smartphone – and even the iPad and similar – mean that the role played by ‘small screens’ while watching the telly has become one of constant interaction and idle surfing, texting, social networking and even shopping.

People who vote on Britain’s Got Talent will of course continue to do so, but what the World Cup has demonstrated is that many more people will now interact in some way using the mobile web while watching stuff on TV. And this presents a huge opportunity. We have already in these hallowed pages reported on how ITV sees mobile as a brilliant way to sell ads and content while matches are on, because the game itself only allows for ads at the start, half time and the end.

I think that now we have seen how people behave with their mobiles during the World Cup, it is time to totally reappraise media interaction and look at how they can shape programmes, view adds and content and even buy goods and services all targeted around what they are watching and who they are talking to.

It’s the idea of social TV, that I know companies such as Starling is looking to exploit. The World Cup, while a disappointment for 31 of the 32 countries involved, has certainly been a revelation to the media and mobile industries.  All you guys have to do know is work out how to monetise it.

Media paywalls – really such a great idea?

This week is a very special week for the industry as the Times and Sunday Times have finally gone live with their paywall. It was meant to happen in May. Then June. It finally came to pass on 2 July and, one amusing upshot has been that none of the staff at News International were given any way to by-pass the paywall, so they have all been having to register their credit card details to access their own site.

And they might well turn out to the only ones who do, since most users of online news are likely to not bother. I mean, why would you? For starters at £1 a day and £2 a week it is very expensive (the newspaper itself costs £1 a day). Also, there is plenty of free, quality news out there on the web, so brand loyalty is likely to go out the window. Couple this with the fact that, had you been a loyal reader of the Times online for many years, the affront that they want to shake the lose change out of your pockets irks somewhat too.

And this is backed up by research too. A study by Sixth Sense finds that UK adults do want to pay for quality journalism, but are more likely to do that in the form of buying a newspaper than pumping cash into the web, which they still see as a free medium.

The fact that the web is still largely free for all other news outlets – and is likely to always be free for BBC news – and that many newspapers, such as the London Evening Standard are also free, means that as Rupert Murdoch tries to charge for content, everyone else is giving it away. And it won’t wash.

The newspaper industry really needs to think again about how it operates. I have absolutely no doubt that they have to charge for content and believe that quality content can carry a fee. But it is all about looking at the platforms available and how consumers use those platforms and THEN looking at how to monetise them.

It’s the old Free-mium model again. Only this time, things like the iPad mean that there is finally a platform the rival good old fashioned paper – and that means that a charge can be levied.

As a news consumer I have no interest in plugging paid for media, but as part of the telemedia industry I do – we need new payment models for content to be developed so that our billing tools can be put in to play. My biggest fear is that the News International experiment, that will end in no one reading the Times online in my view, will put consumers off paying altogether for online news content and we will have lost a huge revenue stream opportunity.

Time to stand up for freedom on the web – what Skype is saying about the open internet

Jean-Jacques Sahel, Skype’s European Director of Government & Regulatory Affairs, has caused something of a stir around network operators looking to charge internet companies for using the web... here is what he is saying:

You’ll be forgiven if you missed a rising stir in recent weeks about freedom and choice on the Internet as it becomes something used on mobile devices.

In essence the French and EU authorities are havingformal consultations around the open Internet. We’ve long talked about this and share many of the same views asNeelie Kroes, the EU commissioner for the Information Society, and her predecessor Vivian Reding: that EU regulations should (and now do) protect net neutrality and net freedoms.

What’s worrying us is that some very large telecom companies are starting to say Internet, especially when accessed with mobile devices, is a drain on their networks and they want to charge Internet companies fees to run its data on “their” network.

As we’ve made some major steps to bring Skype to mobile users recently you’d expect we object to that. And we do. Here’s why:

The first point is that not ‘their’ network - the Internet does not belong to anyone – it has grown thanks to more than 40,000 networks voluntarily interconnecting to form an open, decentralised network of networks. The operators making the complaints right now only carry the data for a small part of its journey around the web. The rest of the Internet ecosystem is based on a successful business model that does not and never had such subsidising of infrastructure companies by content providers. Should water companies be allowed to charge garden centres, pasta makers and coffee producers for encouraging demand for water consumption?

Second, and we think more worrying, is that this idea of charging online companies threatens the very innovation that will drive people and businesses to start using the Internet on their mobile device. In Europe and across the world there are teams of software developers creating apps and services that will drive demand for data plans sold by operators. These are not get-rich-quick-teenagers making millions of dollars every day. They are hard working small and mid-sized companies that are fighting for survival in a tough environment.


Alongside these heroes of the (mobile) Internet are thousands upon thousands of companies, big and small, who rely on the Internet to distribute their goods and services.

It is an affront to ask all these engines of economic growth to pay a fee to large multinational telecommunication companies.

The last point to stress is that mobile customers are already paying operators for Internet access. There has been a big increase in sales of data plans, thanks only to the appeal of all kinds of online content, services and applications like Skype, Wikipedia, Spotify, or Facebook. Innovative content and app developers are the raison d’être for the mobile Internet. Without them operators would not sell a single data plan. Smart operators like 3 in the UK get this and it is proving to be a successful business for them.

At the other extreme, we are baffled to see that many of the operators that supposedly ‘allow’ VoIP on mobile at last, such as Orange in France, actually reserve the use of VoIP only to those consumers with the most expensive packages, or require payment of a VoIP-specific prohibitive charge in addition to a user’s basic ‘Internet’ fee, which seems to imply a double-payment by consumers for their Internet use. That’s not the way to ensure rising consumer demand for mobile Internet packages and customer satisfaction, but a sure way to kill off European SMEs by making it artificially difficult and expensive to use their innovative content and apps.

We should be encouraging entrepreneurs and innovators so that Europe can be globally competitive, with high and rewarding employment. It makes no sense to threaten an entire ecosystem with artificial barriers and a (private!) tax affecting innovation and entrepreneurship.

If you agree it’s important to join us in putting this case to the regulators. Here are the links to the French government consultation (PDF): Discussions are also heating up in the Netherlands where the draft revised telecoms laws put forward by the outgoing government do not contain a clear principle protecting net neutrality apparently. Please subscribe to this blog (links to the right) if you want to hear more on this and we’ll send through details of the EU consultation when it starts so you can express your views and help protect the open Internet in Europe and ensure jobs and innovation are fostered and protected.

Apple all set for mobile payments? Read the patent application abstracts and decide for yourselves

A series of patent applications in the US field by Apple point to the company exploding into the mobile payments, mobile couponing, NFC and mobile advertising markets in a big way. Together, the patent applications describe a comprehensive end-to-end mobile payments, mobile retailing and mobile marketing service that would put Apple at the centre of a major new mobile commerce business — and provide clear evidence that the company has a solid business plan in place for the introduction of NFC services.

Here are the patent application abstracts for your delictation.

The abstract for the Smart Menu Options application explains that it primarily covers methods for choosing which payment option to use at the point of purchase:

Systems and methods are provided that allow for a portable electronic device to provide smart menus to a user based on a context of a transaction. Specifically, the method of using a portable electronic device may include opening a near field communication (NFC) channel with a point-of-purchase device and providing a smart menu based on a determined context.

The portable electronic device may be configured to determine the context based at least in part upon acquiring sales transaction information for the point-of-purchase device. Additionally, the portable electronic device may be configured to determine the context based at least in part upon acquiring vendor identification information.

The concept of a data manager, a manufacturer database, retailer database and consumer database are introduced alongside the concept of fees being charged to retailers and product suppliers by "the manufacturer of the device" for the delivery of coupons and other promotional services to consumers:

The manufacturer database may hold information such as brand name, model number, serial number, UPC code, product types or classifications, product descriptions, suggested retail prices, stores where the product may be available, a media file regarding the product, a web page address for obtaining more information about the product or purchasing the product, among other things. Furthermore, a manufacturer may chose to add information such as coupons, promotions and the like on a fee basis that may be taken into consideration by the device as part of the context of a particular transaction. The coupons and incentives may result in the affect the order (sic) in which payment options are presented or suggested to a user.

The data manager may also be coupled to a retailer database which may hold retailer specific product information. As with the manufacturer database, the retailer database may hold information that pertains to the products. Additionally, the retailer database may contain information relating to accepted forms of payment, preferred payment options (for which there may be an incentive for a user to use the preferred payment option), coupons and incentive information, among other things. The information contained in the retailer database may similarly affect the determination by the device of preferred payment methods. In some embodiments, a retailer may pay a fee to the manufacturer of the device, for example, to be included in the retailer database or to be able to modify the information in the retailer database to reflect current information.

In some embodiments, both the manufacturer database and the retailer database may contain advertisements that may be sent to the electronic device in response to the information request packet. The advertisements may either be presented directly to the user through sensory media reproducible by the device or indirectly by influencing the determination of suggested payment options. The advertisements may include promotional material related to the purchase of a product and/or marketing partners. For example, the promotional material may provide incentives to a consumer for purchasing the product using a particular payment method. Alternatively, the promotional material may provide incentives, such as a discount, for example, if the purchase of the product is combined with the purchase of another product from the manufacturer or from a manufacturer's partner.

The data manager may also be communicatively coupled to a consumer database which may hold information related to the user of the electronic device. For example, the consumer database may include a preference profile of the user of the electronic device. The preference profile may include such information as specific retailers that the user prefers and/or specific modes of payment and products that the user prefers. The consumer database may also include information relating to terms such as interest rates for payment options available to a user. Additionally, the database may be populated based on information exchanges between the data manger and the electronic device which may indicate the shopping habits of the user. Additionally, the consumer database may also be populated by personal preferences identified by the user, an embodiment of which is described in relation to FIG. 19. In other embodiments, the information contained in the consumer database may also be included in the memory of the electronic device.

The abstract for the Real-Time Bargain Hunting patent application, meanwhile, provides details of a comprehensive mobile shopping system, again including the 'iCoupons' concept:

Systems and methods for providing shopping-related information to a consumer are provided. Embodiments of the system provide a consumer with shopping-related information, such as pricing information, product quality, consumer ratings, and other information that may help a consumer make an informed purchasing decision. Other embodiments allow a consumer to obtain and compare retail prices offered by several retailers for a specified product. Still other embodiments allow a seller to send targeted product information to a consumer who has indicated an interest in purchasing a specific product.

Further details on how Apple would generate fees from the provision of the manufacturer, retailer and consumer databases are then provided, along with details of how a consumers' shopping habits could be used to automatically identify the kinds of promotional offers they would be interested in:

In some embodiments, both the manufacturer database and the retailer database may contain advertisements that may be sent to the electronic device in response to the information request packet. Such advertisements may include product related data, and/or media files such as picture, video, and audio files.

The data manager may also be communicatively coupled to a consumer database which may hold information related to the user of the electronic device. For example, the consumer database may include a preference profile of the user of the electronic device. The preference profile may include such information as specific retailers that the user prefers and/or specific brands of products that the user prefers.

The consumer database may be populated based on information exchanges between the data manger and the electronic device which may indicate the shopping habits of the user. Additionally, the consumer database may also be populated by personal preferences identified by the user, an embodiment of which is described in relation to FIG. 5. In other embodiments, the information contained in the consumer database may also included in the memory of the electronic device itself.

In some embodiments, the data manager and the databases may be a part of a system owned and operated by a single entity, such as a manufacturer of the handheld electronic device. In this embodiment, the operator may populate the manufacturer database and the retailer database with information provided to the operator by various product manufacturers and retailers in exchange for a fee.

GUEST BLOG: 4G – the flavour of the month

A guest blog by Ned Taleb, CEO, Nexius

The first quarter of 2010 has just come to an end and a colleague at Nexius recently asked me what seems to be the hot topic with our operator customers and the technology press and analysts this year. My simple answer: 4G.

From Apple previewing the 4th generation of its revolutionary iPhone today to operators racing to launch their 4th generation networks, 4G is the marketing term of the moment.

At CTIA Wireless in March, I saw 4G news everywhere. Every major US wireless operator spoke about their 4G plans at the show:

·         Verizon said they expect to roll out LTE in nearly 30 markets to cover 1/3 of all Americans by the end of 2010. The biggest LTE rollout and the first to market in the US.

·         Not to be outdone, however, AT&T announced that their 4G vendor trials are underway and that they plan to begin commercial rollout early in 2011.

·         While, T-Mobile didn’t dive deep into 4G but they did announce plans to make a faster HSPA+ network available in markets that serve 180 million people by the end of the year. Since HSPA+ is backwards compatible with T-Mobile’s current 3G technology its customers can continue to use their existing handsets to enjoy considerably faster network speeds.

·         Sprint made perhaps the biggest 4G news at the show showcasing America’s first 4G smartphone, the HTC EVO 4G, which they will launch on the Clearwire WiMAX network. Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, said in his address “"LTE will be the larger of the two standards, but we couldn't wait. We have enough spectrum that we could add other techs later."LTE will be the larger of the two standards, but we couldn't wait. We have enough spectrum that we could add other techs later."LTE will be the larger of the two standards, but we couldn't wait. We have enough spectrum that we can add other technologies later."

·         Even MetroPCS, a smaller operator, announced that it will launch its 4G LTE service in the second half of 2010. They are also working with Samsung to launch the first LTE handset, the SCH-r900, on their network later this year.

But it isn’t just operators and Apple talking 4G. Even Avatar director, James Cameron, recently jumped on the 4G bandwagon by pointing out that faster 4G networks would be the key to delivering 3-D applications on the phone. (To be precise, he actually said faster “G4” networks would be the key…but he makes movies, not cell phones.  His audience is Generation-X, Generation-Y, and beyond. He cares not for the enabling technology platforms but what they can do to bring media such as “Avatar” into the palm of the next generation of audience. So G4 it is, in as far as it really matters to our clients and customers. :-) )

Clearly 2010 is all about speed: 1.) Getting to market quickly. 2.) Launching faster networks and faster devices. 3.) Delivering content to consumers at the speeds they demand. It really does not matter which 4G wireless operators deploy, be it WiMAX in the interim or LTE in the longer term, the objective is the same: to enable the realization of the future of wireless services and applications. Everyone from wireless operators to Apple to James Cameron want to deliver these services by uniting the best technology platforms with the fastest networks and the next generation of smart devices.

We feel fortunate that Nexius has had the opportunity to work with so many of these leading companies to develop their 4G network rollout strategies as well as create, deploy, and integrate the services and applications that these networks enable. It’s great to be at the center of such fast-paced innovation. Only time will tell who wins this battle for 4G dominance. Let’s check back at CTIA 2011 to find out.