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.