Friday 26 April 2013

Counting the cost of falling in love with mobile


As the week of the FT Digital media conference, the mGaming and mSports Summits draw to a close, the word of mobile lies in an interesting position. After years of anticipation of this year being the “year of mobile”, it seems that the backlash, to some degree, has started.
Its like a newly dating couple: the worlds of media, retail, commerce, sport, gambling and gaming have all blurted out “I love you” on the second date and now they are suddenly having second thoughts. And like many relationships, that real problem is cost and getting on with each others friends.
Let me explain. One of the key messages coming out of the crop of mobile events this week is that mobile is the key to not just delivering a new sales channel, but rather it is the tool to gather vast amounts of data on consumers and use that to personalize down to an almost individual level.
But with this comes the problem that every vertical market looking to use mobile in some way is now looking in very realistic terms at how much all this is going to cost.  And its not a good look.
The thing about using mobile to gather data and to slice and dice and expertly market and control consumer behaviour is that it requires so much work – not least to connect all the databases for all the other channels these companies already use.  To achieve any meaningful results from doing this, compared to the level of extra business it might deliver, delivers no real ROI.
I go to a lot of these mobile conferences – heck, I chair most of them – and the message is getting ever more frenzied from the mobile technology community, showing cornucopia of things that can be done with mobile, data and CRM. The problem is that no one is listening to what the customers of this tech are saying. They want a cheap, new way to sell more stuff and they don’t want to spend much to achieve it.
Two years ago, the argument to get an app or m-website (or both) was reasonably clear and the cost relatively minor. Extending this first foray into mobile into actually trying to create omni-channel businesses and use the data and technology to any great end is a very different proposition.
One thing that has become clear to me over the past month is that what is going to happen is that ‘digital’ companies – the Amazons, the online games and gaming firms, eBay and so on – are all going to steal a march. They are starting from a digital standpoint. An established bricks and mortar business will struggle.
As one wag at mGaming Summit put it to me, its like Europe after World War Two. The countries that were bombed to oblivion now have super fast railways and highways as they basically got to build them in straight lines over the ruins. In the UK – analagous here to traditional businesses – we can never achieve that as we have to build our roads and railways and airports around thousands of years of history and sacred monuments.
This is what is happening in the mobile world. Long on promise, but to deliver it, it is going to take a lot more than the likes of, say, Weve, claiming to have 50million opted in mobile users to market to. That is immaterial. Making it happen is too expensive for the results it can, currently, yield. Maybe this year is the year that mobile starts looking online for a new lover? 

Sunday 14 April 2013

Ads boom, while social declines... inevitable?


With the mGaming and mSports Summits just around the corner on 24 April, it is interesting to see that two big things have happened that will have an impact on both these industries – and of course beyond – that perhaps take everyone in the telemedia industry by surprise: mobile advertising is actually starting to boom and established social media is starting, ever so slightly, to wane.

Mobile advertising has been growing slowly for the past decade but, much as has been the case in retail and commerce, it has finally come into its own. Brands are really getting it now and thanks to consumers doing every more on mobile rather than PCs, its reach is extending.

This of course is great news for anyone running any sort of premium mobile service as it offers a perfect storm of offering access to punters at the point of use.  But for gambling and sports in particular it offers the way to reach out to users, create new service – and to develop a lucrative revenue stream of their own based around the services they offer on mobile above and beyond just the content.

Much of what will be covered in the mGaming and mSport Summits will centre on the commerce and marketing paradigms offered up by mobile and for once this won’t be pie-in-the-sky, but will be grounded in something tangible.

No wonder then that Weve – the joint venture between the networks in the UK to pool their databases to offer a better marketing platforms – is essentially telling businesses they are going to be left out if they don’t sign up… or is that just marketing? I’m a cynic about Weve, but they will be at the mGaming Summit on 24 April, so I shall ask them.

But perhaps tempering the joy of mobile marketing finally breaking the £500m mark, is a worrying global study that suggests that “the kids” aren’t “down” with Facebook, Twitter and the like any more. No this doesn’t spell the end of social media as we know it, but it does give pause to those that are betting the farm on social. They can reach a lot of people, but unless you seed the youth market, you will be using social to reach ageing gits like me… and we have cash, but are as tight as you like.

The whole realm of social will be tackled on the 14 April at the summits, but it wil be vital that the experts on hand get to tell us all where the next social media platform is lurking…. Let’s hope their teenage kids have shared this with them and not just grunted incoherently from beneath Harry Styles hair while staring disconulately at their Vans.

To find out the answers to these tricky questions – and much much more – sign up here for the Summits