[by Jemima Kiss] From the the PMN Mobile User Experience conference in London last week:
Jim Souders, senior VP, Worldwide Field Operations, Action Engine, said mobile advertising can drive widespread adoption of mobile content. “Mobile advertising will deliver the business model that will allow people to get content at the price point they want – which is pretty much zero.” This is the preacher preaching to the converted of course, but it’s nice to hear some zeal. Again, people have been conditioned by TV (with obvious exceptions…) and the internet and “can’t get their heads around” why mobile should be different. And operators need large revenues, so have to take advantage of their biggest asset – their large customer base. Mobiles serve a more captive audience, allow better targetting and can reach someone anywhere at any time. But usability is critical to acceptance, said Souders. Discovering information is a problem, there’s no keyboard, too many keystrokes are demanded of the user and the connections themselves are inconsistent. He quoted research that found usability is the biggest problem for 76 per cent of users and cost for only 10 per cent.
Mobile advertising would be more attractive to brands if it could reach a specific target audience, if there was information on how the user responded and proof that the ad has been received by the user’s handset.
Souders said users don’t want to pay for content so they certainly don’t want to pay for advertising, in terms of paying for data downloads for example. But they are prepared to receive ads if they are in the context of what they are doing and aren’t intrusive.
Need motivation? A revenue stream based on impressions: With 250,000 subscribers, a low-ish rate of $40 per CPM, 20 uses per subscriber per month and 3 ads per use – that’s a monthly impressions revenue of $600,000. Based on click-throughs: $3 per click-through, a 2 per cent CTR and 300,000 clicks per month produces a monthly revenue of $900,000.
Summing up, PMN editorial director Marek Pawlowski said the three themes of the conference had been understanding customers, understanding the context in which services are provided and also that customers need ‘delight’. “It’s not good enough to provide something that is good enough or interesting or compelling. There’s huge competition and to succeed, whether you’re a handset manufacturer, an operator or a content provider you’ll have to be able to delight your customers.”
Barely made a dent in the Haribo. If anyone’s anywhere near Liverpool Street station they can’t give them away.
This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.
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