MCW: Q&A with Brendan Dowling, founder of iO Global

Dowling set up the first pan-European MVNO as CCO of Metero Mobile Communications and operated Ireland’s first ISP for mobile through his purchase of Meridian Communications. As non-executive chairman of Digital Versatile Media he focused on translating traditional media content for the new environments of mobile and online, and is the founder of the BT-backed platform iOGlobal.
What needs to happen for mobile TV to open up to a wider audience? If you want to supply any service, be it TV, music, movies, anything, you’ve got to look at how the consumer consumes these products today and ask how to add some value to the experience. For example, I shouldn’t have to pay for a movie trailer – that’s rubbish. But I’m happy to pay for the movie because it’s premium content. So help me browse movie trailers on my mobile during my downtime for free. If I want to purchase it let me pay for it on my phone, but then allow me to watch it through my cable set-top box and on my plasma screen when I get home.
I might buy a music album on impulse and I’ll pay whatever the full retail price is for it. Help me buy it on my phone, but don’t deliver it to my mobile because I don’t want to pay 10 times the price of the connectivity – deliver it to me on my DSL. Or I might take one track from the album right now on my phone, and then wait to get the whole album when I get home.
So it’s about the value add, the price people will pay and also the advertising – a lot of the content we consume today is all paid for by advertisers.
So we’ll see more and more ad-funded content? Oh, definitely, there’s no doubt.

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

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