MoMo Estonia: mobile advertising
Some notes from the Mobile Monday Estonia event Mobile Marketing & Advertising which I visited last monday.
- Global Trends on Mobile Marketing: Most interesting slides as they had actual and factual information from a survey listing different trends and technologies which are used in marketing. Notice that LBS has a HUGE growth potential ("planning to use in next 12 months vs have used in past 12 months") and that majority of marketeers still rely on messaging. LBS drum has been hammered for years now as The Next Big Thing. But to me it comes with no surprise that iPhone does not have MMS support - it is expensive, cumbersome and mobile/closed (vs web/open) technology apparently invented (read: sucked out from a pencil) only to bring you junkmail. Multimedia exchange between peers feels much more potent via social services running over the (mobile)internet using internet methods (http, e-mail, social sharing services) than via monstrums like MMS. From my ignorant point of view, MMS represents a greedy mockup by operators who hope that it will follow the success of SMS (which, unlike ugly-CORBA-successor-SOAP based MMS, is a neat and clever hack on top of existing GSM network). I hope MMS dies soon.
- Estonian Operators Mobile Advertising Reach Package: Rrrright. After reading "2/3 of mobile internet traffic comes from operator portals" I understood that I've never given much thought to the difference of Mobile Internet and Mobile Broadband. For me mobile broadband internet is just a Pipe going through the Air into some Processing Device. Sometimes the device is attached to a computer, sometimes the processing device itself has input-output and user interaction capabilities and sometimes the broadband comes in sub-GPRS speeds. And operators are fighting hard not to become mere Pipes, hoping they could maintain their walled gardens. I still don't believe that 2/3 of handset browsing only goes to the operator portal, but then again, most people don't use technology the way I do or they don't use it at all. After getting a glimpse of what the global trends are (technology, attitude and the unique right place-time-location mantra) it came a little shocking that the only thing they provide is a way to buy wholesale 'dumb pixel squares' on mobile 'web' portals. No demographics, no advanced features. Nothing. A suggestion to operators who are evaluating their location based services (and advanced marketing) strategies for Mobile *Broadband*. Mix LBS with web technologies such as Gears Geolocation API to give location aware ads and web content to desktop browser. A good (also a bit scary) example was JoikuSpot, which turns your 3G Nokia phone into a WiFi hotspot. The landing page of the hotspot displayed a Google map with the location of your mobile...
- Mobile Marketing Case Studies: There have been moments when I've thought that operators exist only because of football, because different big football events are very often natural stress-tests for mobile messaging technologies - spikes in traffic are guaranteed during New Year and world cup. Life in mobile messaging revolves around football, so did the Snickers campaign launch just hours before an important match. Does some big operator (Vodafone? Telefonica?) already own some FCs? If not, they should!
Isn't Elisa one of the main sponsors of Estonian national football team?
Yup, football is a big business: Elisa is sponsoring EE footie as is the whole Vodafone group that Elisa is bound to. Also Telefónica of Spaniards, owning British O2 as well, sponsors 2 Spanish football clubs (Real Zaragoza and Valencia). T-Mobile aka Deutche Telekom is sponsoring the best of Scotts, Rangers and Celtic as well as Bayern Munich, one of the top German clubs.
So the estimation looks to be right but reversed. Telecom owns the footie. The whole thing is dosh-driven.
Similarly to football there is another high-budget sport with the same symptoms. Formula One. As EU banned tobacco advertising, sponsorship shifted to the ICT sector. Telefónica, Vodafone, AT&T and T-Mobile are all there.
I really mean owning like if mcdonalds would own a gym chain around the world. That would make the picture much more transparent and fun. The fact that generally sports and big sponsors have connected money-driven interests is of course no surprise.