Brian Prows’ Interview of Mobile Discovery’s : David Miller

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Today’s marketers are searching for new, innovative methods to increase marketing campaign results, whether for lead generation, branding effectiveness, events and direct sales. By combining multiple media channels, including mobile, marketers and advertisers can boost their overall effectiveness substantially.

In our Web 2.0 age, advertisers are finding ways to generate impact through integration of traditional off-line media, such as print, broadcast, billboards and email, with social media, mobile and other technologies. This increases the possibility of marketing campaigns going viral.

David H. Miller, President and CEO of MobileDiscovery, an integrated multi-channel advertising company, shares his views in this podcast about multimedia advertising, product branding, FaceBook, MySpace and other social media channels, media tags and more.

David explains how to integrate mobile applications with advertising and discusses how the Mobile Discovery platform has been successfully used for QVC, U.S.A Today and other clients.

Moreover, he outlines Mobile Discovery’s applications and campaigns with FaceBook, MySpace and other social media sites, portals and RSS feeds.

Commenting on “channel shifting” (enabling consumers to move among PC’s, mobile phones and other communication channels), along with “time shifting” (consumers using media content at their own leisure), David outlines a vision of the future that’s compelling and fascinating, including the embedding of mobile devices in the human body!

Listen to this futuristic podcast with David Miller.

For further information, see the links below:

Implementing a Multi-Channel Mobile Advertising Platform (Mobile Advertising Alliance)

For further reading, click here.

For other articles and interviews by Brain Prows please visit MobileBeyond

Excellent article from our friend at :

If the big story in the mobile web in 2008 was the growth of CPC and CPM based mobile advertising through platforms like admob the NEXT BIG THING for 2009 is looking likely to be the emergence of critical mass in mobile internet affiliate marketing or CPA (cost per action) based advertising.

Affiliate marketing is well established on the PC web with a number of big networks like Xanox, Trade Doubler, Affiliate Window and Buy.at linking publishers to thousands of merchant programmes across sectors including Travel, Electronics, Finance and so on.

Believe it or not the mobile web has had affiliate programmes since the early days of wap and mobile internet. For example, there were several adult services and personalisation content providers who developed affiliate programmes in the early 2000’s.

However, with the growth in usage of the mobile internet, mobile affiliate marketing is now really beginning to develop. As the mobile payments and services company Bango have noted, mobile web is now becoming the key sales channel for mobile content and services, whereas previously a lot of transactions and customer acquisitions were driven off PC web-based channels.

Also the emergence of new types of mobile content and services such as mobile casino games is also driving new growth.

Here are some examples of mobile affiliate marketing programmes currently available.

Mobile affiliate platforms

A couple of companies have started to emerge to provide mobile focused affiliate aggregators similar to Trade Doubler and others on the PC web.

MobPartner is probably the most advanced mobile web affiliate platform out there with links into a range of merchants including Jamster, Wild Jack Mobile Casino and Nexva (mobile games). Mobpartner provide all the mobile web XHTML store-fronts and links and tracking and manage payment settlments with the various merchants. If you are looking to start off in mobile affiliate marketing then signing up to mobpartner is the first place you should start.

Belboon is a German affiliate platform that mainly serves the PC web but it is now moving into mobile web affiliate marketing services. At the moment they have a couple of mobile web services available including Jamster but unfortunately only in the German language and market at the moment.

Media Plazza

Casino

The emergence of mobile casino applications is a major driver of the current wave of growth in mobile affiliate marketing. The mobile marketing agency Welovemobile have written an excellent blog post about this which is worth a read. Here are some of the casino mobile affiliate services currently available:

Ladyluck’s is run by the mobile games specialist Probablity Plc and they have an affiliate programme which looks to be one of the best of the bunch as it is backed by a really solid company.

Others include:

Euro partners Casino Max – http://adv.europartners.com/index.php?Casinomax

Gold mobile casino – http://www.incomeaccess.com/registration.asp?mid=32

Wild Jack/ Brightshare – http://www.brightshare.com/index.php?bTag=bsaff3118_6

Gobetya – http://www.gobetya.com/

Adult

There are a number of adult affiliate programmes out there. It is worth noting that you need to be careful adding this sort of content to your mobile site even as a link as it risks getting caught in content filters. Also mobile ad networks like admob often state in the terms and conditions that you can’t run them alongside adult content or adult links. However, if you are interested in running this kind of affiliate service then here are a couple of examples of available programmes – warning some of these links are not worksafe:

Sex Goes Mobile – https://www.sexgoesmobile.com/

Xobile – Not Work Safe – http://www.xobile.com/pc/webmaster.cfm?

Sexobile – Not Work Safe – http://www.sexobile.com/web/?__redir=1

Ringtones, games and personalisation content

Playfon – http://www.playfon.com/ have a fantastic affiliate programme for ringtones, games, video and screensaver content – they pay out monthly via paypal – recommended

The major aggregators like Jamster, Celldorado and co. all run web based affiliate services through the likes of Xanox and there are no doubt a few of them moving to offer mobile web extensions of these. This is something we are currently investigating – if you know any that do offer mobile web affiliate services let us know in the comments!

So that’s the current state of play. What will really help to grow this market is when new sectors like retail, travel and finance start to open up on the mobile web. There are already some signs of this with companies like Digby emerging (provides mobile commerce stores on Blackberry).

If you know any other mobile web affiliate programmes please let us know in the comments – we will be updating this list on an ongoing basis.

Update 1: Arran from the mobility.mobi forum pinged me about his new forum Pocket Affiliates, which is dedicated to mobile affiliate marketing – a great resource and well worth checking out.

Dynamic Logic, a leading marketing research company with expertise in measuring advertising and marketing effectiveness, has released new research which indicates that mobile advertising can be “an effective medium for raising brand metrics throughout the purchase funnel.”

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Dynamic Logic completed over 30 AdIndex for Mobile studies. These are survey-based research that are conducted in a live, in-market environment, and ran simultaneously with specific mobile advertising campaigns. This approach is used in order to isolate the impact of the mobile ads on key brand metrics. (read more about AdIndex for Mobile).

When comparing people that have been exposed to a mobile ad with those who have not been exposed, the results indicate that mobile advertising can be very effective for brand building purposes. For example, an observed increase in ad awareness of over 29% indicates that these campaigns “generally cut through and grab the users attention”. An increase in Brand favorability of over 5% shows that mobile ads have the capability to influence people’s attitudes.

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The study was quite broad-based, and it included information from brands in many industries. These industries included Alcohol, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, CPG, Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Telecom, and Travel.

Read the full release on the Dynamic Logic site.

Bango and Millenial Media have announced a partnership that will allow mobile advertisers to better understand the traffic that is being exposed to their ads, and so optimize for better performance.

Millennial Media has announced that it has integrated Bango’s mobile analytics into its Decktrade marketplace platform. Decktrade is a performance-based, self-service network for mobile advertising, featuring a simple-to-use auction environment.

Bango’s analytics platform was recently upgraded, and now provides the two metrics most sought after by website owners: the number of unique visitors browsing the site and conversion rates from mobile marketing campaigns (see post with more details on Bango Analytics.)

Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango said “this partnership gives mobile website owners the tools to target exactly the right audience across multiple markets and to increase their success on the mobile web”.

Eric Eller, Millennial Media’s SVP of products and marketing explained further, “Our Decktrade customers will benefit from being able to leverage the response of each campaign to then reinvest where they see the strongest performance.”

The advertising world continues to pay attention to the iPhone, which is beginning to represent a significant share of mobile web page views. JumpTap and Pinch Media will combine efforts to allow advertisers to place ads in iPhone applications.

“” “”

The new offering will utilize JumpTap’s mobile ad network with Pinch Media’s analytics and ad serving technology. Developers of iPhone applications can now easily integrate advertising into their apps, thus bringing in a new revenue stream and keeping consumer prices low (or free!). And on the other hand, this will provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach the desirable iPhone user base, and benefit from the rich user experience the iPhone provides.

JumpTap is a mobile focused search company that has a worldwide mobile ad sales team.

Pinch Media has a network of iPhone application developers who use Pinch Analytics in their iPhone apps. The analytics module provides a comprehensive view into the number of unique users, length of time the application is being used, geographic location and other valuable data.

Since Apple launched its 3G iPhone July 12th, more than 800 applications have become available. iPhone applications are growing extremely rapidly, with the most popular free applications having over 250,000 unique users in less than two weeks. Individuals are extremely engaged with their applications – on average, spending almost five minutes a session.

For an excellent interview of the CEO of JumpTap : Dan Olschwang see MobiAD.

LONDON, UK — (PRESS RELEASE) — BrightShare Ltd, the exclusive affiliate network of the Jackpot Factory today announced a partnership with TexoMobile, enabling independent wapmasters to get seamless access to the leading mobile casino, Wild Jack Mobile Casino and in turn, enabling them to turn their traffic into revenue.

As one of the first and most popular mobile casinos to launch, Wild Jack Mobile Casino features 14 fun and exciting casino games including the recently launched Scratch ‘n’ Score, 3 Card Poker, Jacks or Better, Pub Fruity, Baccarat, three progressive jackpot slots; Major Millions, Treasure Nile and Fruit Fiesta, and the awesome Tomb RaiderTM, as well as eternal favourites, Roulette and Blackjack.

Wild Jack Mobile Casino’s award winning application boasts one of the best and easiest to use interfaces and uniquely allows all transactions to be conducted via the mobile.

TexoMobile has some 20,000 wapmaster members in its MobPartner scheme, which provides a community forum and a crucially central network to centralise all members’ affiliates, stats and earnings into a convenient interface.

“The expected, and potential, growth of mobile casinos is vast,” said Candice Evans, Mobile Account Manager of BrightShare. “Wild Jack Mobile Casino, together with BrightShare, is well positioned to offer end-users and affiliates an ultimate offering. Teaming with the immensely successful TexoMobile network is a significant move and we look forward to a long and beneficial partnership.”

“We are very excited to work with an affiliation network like BrightShare,” said Vianney Settini, CEO of TexoMobile. “Wild Jack Mobile Casino’s game play is world class and will definitely be something that our end-users will love. As always with TexoMobile, we have listened to our wapmasters and given them something they know their communities want.”

Robbie Guy, Marketing Manager for Wild Jack Mobile Casino commented, “As a world leading mobile casino, we’re delighted that our outreach will be extended further through this partnership. We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of mobile gambling, always offering our players new, exciting games and constantly enhancing the user experience. TexoMobile’s clients can be guaranteed a superb service from WJMC and BrightShare, we hope that this partnership flourishes and that many more people can enjoy Wild Jack Mobile Casino.”

About BrightShare:

Founded in 2002, the BrightShare Network is a leading online casino affiliate program, featuring extensive reporting capabilities and offering among the highest commission levels in the industry with its unique six-level structure.

About TexoMobile:

TexoMobile is a creator of mobile communities such as iGloo.mobi. TexoMobile also manages the largest wapmaster community on the mobile internet with Mobpartner.mobi.

About Wild Jack Mobile Casino :

Wild Jack Mobile Casino (WJMC) is among the first ‘fully functional’ mobile casinos to be launched on a wireless platform, providing mobile phone users the ability to play exciting casino games directly and instantly from their handsets.

Nokia Interactive, the mobile advertising arm of Nokia, has announced a new alliance aimed at making mobile advertising easier for brands. The alliance will integrate advertising solutions from multiple companies into a single Nokia interface.

The intent of the program is to bring together a variety of mobile advertising formats to give brands a better way to increase consumer engagement. Through the alliance, advertisers will be able to plan, execute, and measure campaigns that include a wider variety of customer engagement points.

Several companies have already been certified as Members of the alliance, including i-movo, Mobile Acuity, Mobiqa, and uLocate. These companies provide a range of mobile advertising technologies, including digital coupons, image recognition, mobile barcodes, and location-based targeting.

This effort directly addresses one of the biggest issues in mobile advertising:
• a key strength of mobile is that it is very flexible and can actively engage a consumer in many ways at many times of the day.
• one of the biggest challenges often cited by advertisers and their agencies is the difficulty of running mobile campaigns, and the fragmented nature of the industry.

This objective has been appreciated by people in the industry. Scott Heron, Director of Digital Services at Wunderman said “To realize truly integrated advertising, it’s imperative that major brands can make use of a range of mobile services. The Advertising Alliance brings together the most innovative technologies in the market, and brings trust to brands who want to use them.”

Brian Bos, Senior Vice President, Convergence Director at MindShare-Team Detroit said “Mobile is maturing into an effective advertising medium, however, the fragmentation of certain technologies makes it hard for some programs to scale. We applaud Nokia’s efforts to streamline this evolving market and make it easier to manage our clients’ mobile advertising investment.”

Who says you have to share marketing space? Stand out from the crowd with a mobile campaign.

by Mike Baker – VP and head of Nokia Ad Business

An hour of television is sometimes taken up by 20 minutes of commercials; a page of the internet can often contain up to 16 ads; and almost every mile of highway has at least one billboard. With over-saturated advertising like this, it’s no wonder consumers have learned to just block advertising out.

Advertisers are fighting for share of voice in traditional advertising media, where they are forced to share space with their competitors and end up just being part of the white noise in the background of consumers’ minds. However, there is one channel where advertisers can achieve a greater share of voice in an uncluttered environment — mobile.

The mobile web page can’t be cluttered the way the traditional internet page can, so each ad unit is more meaningful or, at the very least, more likely to burn into a consumer’s synapses. Mobile simply delivers a share of voice that just isn’t possible in most traditional media.

Take, for example, mobile campaigns that ran during Super Bowl XLII. The Super Bowl represents complete over-saturation of advertising. Everyone is trying to make the most memorable impression, but some brands were able to do this simply by leveraging the mobile device.

For example, Budweiser held the “Bud Bowl,” and asked viewers to text in to vote for their favorite commercial; Hyundai’s mobile advertising campaign ran on Super Bowl Sunday to coincide with the auto manufacturer’s television ads featuring its new luxury vehicle, the Genesis.

Hyundai’s program featured banner ads that ran on an operator’s mobile portal and clicked through to the Genesis mobile website, where consumers could download wallpaper featuring the new vehicle, as well as ringtones featuring its engine’s “rev.”

The campaign received a 3.41 percent clickthrough rate, which is more than double what most traditional internet campaigns receive, and 11 percent of people who clicked through the Hyundai banner ad downloaded the “RevTone.”

The one-page, one-ad environment guaranteed Hyundai a share of voice the auto manufacturer just couldn’t achieve on other media. Additionally, Hyundai was able to capitalize not only on Super Bowl Sunday, but thanks to downloadable content, it also continued to make an impact even after the ads stopped running!

So where next?

Some industry observers (most of whom are not mobile specialists!) have predicted that clickthrough rates and returns from mobile advertising will level off once the medium becomes more mainstream — citing what happened online as evidence.

We’ve yet to see this transpire. Mobile keeps performing, thanks to the lack of clutter. With screen sizes growing, the canvas is expanding, and the temptation is there for mobile publishers to cash in as more brands enter the space. However, this would devalue the medium for publishers and advertisers alike, and drive consumers away in droves.

In the short term, publishers must strive to make the mobile medium as accessible to consumers as possible. Consumers realize that quality content cannot always be free, and that advertising is necessary. So instead of replicating the internet by having 10 simultaneous messages competing for your attention on a page, the ideal on mobile is that just one rewarding and relevant brand appears.

As the medium grows, innovative mechanics will be introduced that make mobile work harder than any other part of the marketing mix. The mobile device will remain uncluttered, as long as media networks continue to enforce strong user experience principles, and it therefore presents an unrivalled place for brands to stand out from the crowd.

Ford drives interest in new Ford iKool model through mobile advertising with Nokia.

Mobile advertising has proved to be the perfect way to target the music-loving audience that Ford in India was going after with its new model, the iKool. The campaign delivered for the client with average click-through rates of almost 9 percent reports Nokia Ad Services

Ford iKool case study can be viewed here.

Shaun Zelber

Is mobile advertising going to save AOL from its long slide down ? A recent article written by Colin Gibbs and published by RCR Wireless News gives an interesting snapshot of AOL’s recent activities in mobile advertising. It shows that while AOL has been losing ground to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in the online advertising market, they are actually doing well in the mobile advertising market.

AOL has had some difficulty in combining the business operations of all the advertising companies it has acquired in recent years – Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, AdTech, Tacoda, Quigo, Perifilliate, and Advertising.com. However, Gibbs points to the two recent deals that AOL’s Platform A has concluded as evidence of AOL’s growing prowess in the mobile market.

* An agreement with Verizon Wireless to be their exclusive display advertising and sales partner for mobile web inventory.
* A similar agreement with Virgin Mobile, which is especially important as the MVNO targets the teen and young adult market that is particularly receptive to mobile advertising. On top of this, Virgin Mobile has already seen big success with the Sugar Mama program that rewards users who opt in to receive mobile ads.

Also they have recently made an announcement that the Platform A is opening in Europe where mobile advertising is already hot.

For a more in depth article please go here.