Amethon Insights

Australian Mobile Internet Insights - Q3, 2008

The iPhone is one of the most talked about mobile handsets ever released. Searching for iPhone in Google returns around 326 million entries and entire industries have been created around iPhone websites, applications and accessories. The Apple logo was always going to guarantee its success given the following this brand has build through generations of Mac computers and iPod music players but it is fair to say that the iPhone has made some significant changes to the way in which mobile devices have traditionally been used.

The innovative, high resolution touch screen, the customisable, icon based user interface, and the cut down Safari browser provide a much more intuitive and integrated user experience compared with the traditional Nokia or Sony-Ericsson menu system and browser. The real question, however, is whether these features have resulted in measureable changes in how people use the iPhone compared with traditional mobile devices, especially for mobile web browsing.

This question was the key focus of Amethon’s first Mobile Internet Insights report, a quarterly examination of trends and insight into mobile internet usage leveraging its installed base of Mobile Analytics platforms which analyse more than 100 million mobile page views per month. One of the key features of Mobile Analytics is the ability to filter traffic based on the specific handset type and with the recently launch of the iPhone 3G in Australia, we were keen to see how it is being used compared with traditional handsets.

The first area we looked at was data consumption which is another metric that Mobile Analytics is uniquely able to measure. Experience from the first generation iPhone suggested that it used a lot of data and the iPhone 3G was expected to be even more data hungry.

We found that the average iPhone user consumed more than 2 MB of data per browsing session compared with the traditional mobile user with only 300 kB. A lot of this was video downloads but iPhone users are also browsing richer websites with larger pages.

The average page size for iPhone users was around 54kB compared with only 20kB for traditional mobile users. We believe that this is because iPhone users are browsing websites designed for desktop users rather than mobile or iPhone specific sites. For example, the home page of the Sydney Morning Herald desktop site is around 1.2 Mb of HTML, images, JavaScript and Flash, compared with around 20kb for the mobile version.

iPhone users are also browsing around 73% more pages per site than traditional mobile users and spending more than a minute more on each site.

Both iPhone and traditional mobile users show similar trends in terms of when they browse over the course of the day although there are some interesting differences. iPhone browsing outpaces traditional mobile browsing in the morning (most likely during the commute to work) but is not as pronounced during the evening. This is most likely representative of the different demographics and working patterns of iPhone owners.

During the first 2 weeks of August we found that iPhone browsing traffic was growing at an average of 9.3% per day. This is obviously from a low base given the iPhone’s recent launch in Australia and is not sustainable but the 1.7% daily growth for traditional mobile devices suggests that mobile web consumption is growing strongly in Australia.

The final area we examined was content discovery through search. It is clear from our results that Google has a dominant position in mobile search and that this is even more pronounced with iPhone users.

There are big differences between the specific version of search engine used by iPhones and traditional mobile devices. iPhone users overwhelmingly favour the desktop version of search engines while the mobile version is generally used by traditional mobile users. This is due to the fact that the iPhone Safari browser has a Google desktop search engine toolbar but this also means that search results will invariably be in the form of desktop sites rather than mobile or iPhone optimised sites.

Our overall conclusions were that the iPhone has truly changed the way people access the internet from their mobile devices. They are browsing longer, looking at more pages and consuming more data, but we also believe that the iPhone will have more far reaching changes on our industry.

Firstly, iPhone users will show their friends what can be done on a mobile phone which will prompt more traditional mobile users to explore the internet on their own devices. Secondly, the publicity around the iPhone will raise awareness amongst content publishers and advertisers as to the potential of the mobile device as a channel to market resulting in more compelling content and brand investment. Finally, the ‘coolness’ of the iPhone will mean that accessing the internet on your mobile phone is no longer just for geeks.

Prepared for AIMIA Mobile Industry Group newsletter.

iPhone - Catalyst for the Mobile Internet?

We have just released the first of our Australian Mobile Internet Insight reports which has focused on the recently released (in Australia) iPhone 3G. In comparison to other mobile devices, iPhone users are browsing more pages, spending long online and consuming significantly more data that the rest of the mobile browsing population.

Here are some of the key statistics:

• The average page views per visit for the iPhone were 73% higher than other mobiles and 30% higher than desktop browsers. 
• iPhone browsing seemed to be proportionally greater in the morning, around 8am and did not exhibit as large an evening peak, between 9pm and 10pm, than the average mobile user.  
• iPhone users were found to be almost twenty times more likely to use desktop versions of web search engines than the average mobile user who is predominantly using the mobile version.

You can read the full press release and request a copy of the report here.

Although these number are very interesting, I believe the iPhone will have an even greater impact on the broader mobile internet for three main reasons:

1. The publicity that the iPhone has generated over the past 2 years has raised the profile of the mobile device as channel to the consumer and business which will drive investment in mobile content and mobile advertising.  This will create more compelling reasons for everybody (not just iPhone owners) to use the mobile internet.

2. The iPhone user interface is an order of magnitude easier to use than any other device on the market. Hopefully all of the other handset vendors are re-thinking UI design and we have already seen both HTC (TouchFLO 3D) and Sony Ericsson (Xperia X1) take some of these ideas on board. This will make the more advanced functionality of every mobile device more accessible and easier to use for everyone.

3. With so many iPhone users browsing the internet on their devices, what was traditionally a very 'geeky' thing to do has suddenly become cool. Both 'The Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell and 'Crossing the Chasm' by Geoffrey Moore describe the importance of appropriate 'references' in the take up of trends and technologies.

We will be keeping our eyes on the iPhone in future reports along with other smartphones so be sure to go to our website and register your interest in receiving future editions.

Mobile Internet Portal Strategies (MIPS) Wrapup

Just got back from a whirlwind week in London having participated in the MIPS 08 conference as well as meeting with a number of customers and potential customers. It was inspiring but also tiring as I spent 2 of 7 days at the back of a Boeing 747!

The conference was disappointing in terms of attendance given the strength of the agenda and speaker list. There was around 40 participants made up of operators and content publishers with a few vendors thrown in for good measure.

There was cautious optimism on the growth of mobile internet use but general agreement that useability was a key issue which covered a range of potential barriers such as price perception, handset configuration, content rendering and user interface design.

Operators and content publishers parried over the role of the operator portal vs the attractiveness of off-deck content but both parties acknowledged the importance of each other in the

A number of other themes were also discussed including:

• The need to dynamically and intelligently optimise content depending on the handset
• The emergence of mobile advertising as a geniune monetisation strategy, for both operators and off-deck content publishers
• The opportunity presented by emerging countries such as India and China where people have more ready access to the internet via their mobile phone compared with a fixed PC
• The need for accurate and relevant analytics to support ad-funded business models as well as help content publishers to understand how subscribers are interacting with their sites

From a personal perspective, I also met some great people who are doing really interesting things in mobile!

Mobile Internet Portal Strategies

I am pleased to advise that I have been invited to participate on a panel discussion at the Mobile Internet Portal Strategies conference in London on 20 - 21 May.

The topic of the discussion is as follows:

INTERACTIVE ROUND TABLE: Creating Usable Content for the Mobile Web and its Portals: Understanding Mobile-Optimised Sites, Content Translation and Adaptation... and How these Technologies Affect Your Strategy

• Realities of working within the complex mobile web environment - browser/portal variation, divided interests, nascent standards
• Understanding the challenges posed by content translation and rendering:
  • White-listing
  • user agent changes, - communication between operators and developers
• Best practice for mobile optimised sites
• HTML and xHTML in the mobile sphere - roadmaps, current realities, and what this means to your strategy

The conference agenda looks fantastic and they have secured a great selection of speakers, especially from the operator community.

I am particularly pleased that this particular topic is on the agenda as it emerging as a bit of a David vs Goliath battle between some of the big operators (Vodafone UK, Sprint Nextel) and the broader mobile content development community.

If you want to know the full story, check out the campaign that Luca Pisani is running over at WURFL. Better still, understand the issues and sign up to the manifesto!

Drop me a note if you are attending this conference as I am always keen to meet and discuss.

CTIA Wireless Wrapup

Its been a whirlwind past few weeks starting with CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas followed by trips to New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

CTIA Wireless was a great experience and I had a chance to talk with lot of companies who are doing great things in mobile. My focus was on content and services that could benefit from our Mobile Analytics solution and there were plenty of those!

The two largest categories were Mobile Social Networking and Mobile Site Builders. Both require analytics to support their business models:

• Social networking sites need to understand how people are using the site and need to provide accurate and relevant metrics to advertisers.
• Site builders need to be able to provide their clients with analytics since client will be unable to implement their own system.

A lot of these companies are now looking for an analytics solution and they were pleased to hear that we had a solution that fits both of these business models. It was surprising that they had gone for so long without an analytics solution but the simple fact is that there has not been a mobile specific package available up until now.

Most companies realised that Google Analytics won't work and have tried analysing log files but soon realised that standard log analysis packages do not take into account the complexities and challenges of measuring mobile browsing activity.

Some companies are gathering relevant usage data within the database but do not have the skills, experience or resources to develop the reporting front end. They typically have a few queries to provide the most obvious metrics but realise the work involved to report on a full suite of analytics.

My other trips within the US were meetings with some of the 'big guys' within the broader online space who are now starting to mobilise their content. It was interesting to see that none of these companies are using mainstream, commercial web analytics solutions, even for their web assets. They have all developed internal tools which they are starting to apply to their mobile content but realise there are differences between web and mobile that will need to be addressed. 

See you at CTIA Wireless!

The USA is a key market for Amethon, especially given the strong interest from operators, content publishers and digital agencies on mobile advertising.

I am heading over to the US to attend CTIA Wireless and would be keen to catch up with anyone interested in discussing the wireless content and mobile advertising industries in the US.

After CTIA Wireless, I will be heading over to New York and then back over to the West Coast.

Drop me a note at michael.stone(at)amethon.com and hopefully we can catch up!

Is Social Networking the Killer App for Mobile?

Quite a few start ups seem to think so if a recent article in the New York Times is anything to go by.

If you think about it, the mobile device is the perfect medium for social networking for a number of reasons:

From the end user's perspective, the mobile phone is always with you. Why wait until you get to a PC to learn that "Matt is contemplating lunch"? I myself am guilty of updating my status to "Michael is using Facebook on his mobile!". It also means that cameraphone shots can be uploaded immediately and from a business perspective, a client's personal life can be investigated just before you walk into a meeting.

From the startup's perspective, it is about the potential advertising revenues. Mobile phones are highly personal compared with a PC which may be used by multiple people in the same family. Combine this with the demographic and preference information you provide when signing up to a social network site means a perfect channel for targetted advertising.

A recent study by Nielsen Mobile shows just how prevalent mobile advertising has now become with 23% of US mobile subscribers having seen an ad on their screens in the previous month and almost half of those claiming to have responded to at least one mobile ad. While these numbers sound impressive, they are based on a survey of  22,000 "active mobile data users who used at least one non-voice mobile service in the fourth quarter" so perhaps it is not really a statistically representative sample?

Now don't get me wrong, I am not skeptical about mobile advertising and its ability to drive investment in compelling applications, services and content. What I am highlighting is the missing piece in this puzzle - accurate numbers.

Mobile social networking sites will not be able to properly monetise their subscriber base without accurately communicating subscriber activity to advertisers. Everyone can talk about 'registered users', but this will overstate the potential audience if the number of social network sites that I have signed up to  (but never visit) is anything to go by.

What advertisers need are measures such as page impressions, average session time and unique visitors, and most importantly, these need to be accurate!

Since many mobile devices will not support cookies, unique visitors and sessions times can be problematic. Tracking pixels also tend to under count due to image caching by both the handset and the WAP gateway - we typically see errors of around 30% - 35% when comparing our wireline capture technique with page tagging of this type...

So where does this leave mobile social networking? Their biggest competitive threat is not from each other but from the established web players - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. They all now have mobile versions of their sites, they have existing advertiser relationships and they have enormous and active subscriber bases.

 

Mobile Analytics Hots Up!

It is amazing how quickly this industry moves! While we have been heads down, bums up, launching our Mobile Analytics solution, securing customers and rolling out new releases, analytics for the mobile internet has suddenly matured to the point where there are 4 specialist players in the market and people are doing product reviews.

So why Mobile Analytics from Amethon?

• Optimized for Mobile: We have done a lot of research into how mobile devices and mobile networks differ from the fixed internet in order to maximise accuracy in areas like unique visitor counts, handset identification, operator identification, bot detection and filtering, and filtering PC browsing from mobile browsing.
• Mobile Specific Metrics: With the wide variety of mobile devices, mobile browsers and capabilities, it is important to know what sort of phones are using your site and what capabilities they have. We also breakdown mobile operator and country of origin which is critical for assessing the success of on-deck referrals, etc.
• Search Terms and Referrers: Page tagging solutions using a image tag or similar cannot capture referrer and search term information. Our solution tracks and reports all of this information to help you calculate the ROI from affiliates, ad placement and paid search.
• No Page Weight or Latency: Our off the wire capture method relies on analysing a mirrored copy of the HTTP traffic requiring no additional code to be added to the page. Once our system is deployed, it automatically starts analysing all of your pages without having to go through the effort of tagging them. Page tags also add 'weight' to the page which slows download speed and increases the data cost to the end users. The end users also has to wait for the tag to be delivered so what happens if the page tag server is busy...
• Near Real Time Reporting: Rather than waiting 24 hours for you stats, how about 5 minutes? That is the refresh cycle for our Mobile Analytics platform, irrespective of traffic levels. We are also able to provide 'live' visitor information i.e. who is browsing the site now, what pages have they viewed, what search terms brought them to your site, etc.

This is definitely a positive step for everyone in the industry as it raises awareness of how different the mobile internet is from normal PC based browsing and why AWStats, Google Analytics and other web-centric analytics solutions just won't give the right results or relevant information.

‘So how big is it?’ – The challenges and opportunities of measuring off-deck by Michael Stone

In my previous blog article, I mentioned mobile banner ads as one of the key forms of Mobile Advertising. What I forgot to mention was that it be a key driver in the growth of mobile internet outside the Operator’s portal, known as off-deck.

As mobile operators open up the walled garden and allow their subscribers to browse any site on the internet, we are seeing all of the major internet publishers scramble to ‘mobilise’ their existing content assets providing a much larger range of content and services to the mobile subscriber compared to their operator’s portal. The question is, are subscribers actually going off-deck and where exactly are they going?

This question is not asked out of curiosity but because understanding the size and extent of off-decl mobile browsing is fundamental to growing our industry. It starts with the content and media owners who gauge their investment in mobile based on its perceived effectiveness as a delivery channel to consumers. It then drives agencies and brands to pay content and media owners to host mobile advertising or sponsor services on the assumption that they can engage potential customers. You only have to look at the structured approach to television ratings to realize how independent and transparent measurement drives investment in both the content itself (TV shows and movies) and the associated advertising.

Measurement can also assist us as an industry to identify areas for improvement to drive uptake and usage of the mobile internet even higher. In particular, it can help to uncover the problems and barriers to mobile browsing which can be addressed through consumer or industry education campaigns.

So it is pretty clear that being able to measure off-deck browsing activity is fundamentally important for our industry – the next question is how do we do it?

The answer is that it is much easier than for the internet or even TV, and the results of this measurement is potentially much more accurate and informative.

All off-deck and on-deck mobile browsing in Australia goes through four points, the networks of our mobile operators (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison), compared with the hundreds of ISP’s and millions of televisions measured by internet and TV ratings.  Both internet and television measurement rely on representative samples to develop industry statistics, however by measuring at these four points, we are able to see and measure every mobile browsing event in the country.

The personal nature of a mobile phone also increases the validity and accuracy of this type of measurement. Whereas all family members might use a given PC or watch the same television, each mobile phone invariably corresponds to an individual subscriber.

Furthermore, every operator has extensive demographic and segmentation information on their customer base, especially post-paid subscribers. Information gathered during signup of the subscriber typically includes gender, age, address and employment status. Combined with their usage patterns, each mobile subscriber can be categorised within the operator’s specific segmentation model which may include types such as early adopters, mature achievers or young sociables.

All this sounds fantastic but what do we need to do to make this happen?

The Mobile Industry Development group within Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) has established a Mobile Measurement initiative to further explore these possibilities and work with the operators and the rest of the industry to realise this opportunity. It will also focus on ensuring that the privacy and rights of consumers are protected given the sensitive nature of this information. Technically there are a number of options including aggregating statistics already gathered by the operators or deploying specific platforms such as Amethon’s Portal Analytics solution. It is early days for the mobile internet and our Mobile Measurement initiative but stay tuned for more information on both!

In conclusion, the mobile industry has the potential to provide measurements and statistics to media publishers, content owners, advertisers and brands with greater completeness, accuracy and relevance than any other communications channel. This will drive both investment in our industry as well as improvement to the services and products being offered to consumers, which are exactly the sorts of outcomes that the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group is seeking.

Big plans for the small screen by Michael Stone

Mobile marketing and advertising has really started to gain some traction in the broader media over the past few months. In 2006, Yankee Group forecast the mobile ad market to more than quadruple to US$275m in 2007 and eventually increase to US$2.2bn in 2010, up from an estimated US$60m in 2006. A more recent forecast from Strategy Analytics is even more bullish suggesting that advertisers will spend US$1.4 billion on mobile media this year, rising to US$14.4 billion by 2011. They predict that mobile media advertising will account for a fifth of global spending on Internet advertising by 2011. Abi Group has also forecast some impressive numbers with their 2011 figure topping US$19b including mobile search and video advertising.

As a key application and driver for both Content Fingerprinting and Portal Analytics, this has definitely been music to our ears but it is worth taking a step back to try and put some of the hype into perspective.

We are seeing a number of general themes emerging in terms of how to leverage mobile phones as channel for advertising and marketing.

1. SMS to win/SMS to register interest: Allows brands to solicit interest from potential customers and typically complemented by print media, packaging, etc. This is now very common and has a well established business model

2. Mobile Portal banner ads: Very similar to the banner ad model on the internet today but constrained by device capability and consumer use of mobile devices for browsing the internet. Both of these are improving which will speed industry growth. Check out the Toyota ad on wap.drive.com.au as an example. The traditional media players are leading they way by simply adding a mobile channel to their existing print, TV or internet rate cards. This has also led to the birth of intermediaries such as Admob which is positioning as the Google Adwords of the mobile domain linking mobile site publishers with advertisers.

3. Mobile Search: Similar to the internet model and will increase rapidly as consumers use mobile search engines from Google and Yahoo to navigate off-net content. It will be typical pay to get to the top of the list stuff and even more important when there is only a small screen.

4. Branded Content: Most operators are offering mobile services such as news alerts, video streaming, etc. These are now being sponsored by brands so you will increasingly see pre- and post-roll adverts. For the 2007 Superbowl, Pepsi partnered with Sprint Mobile in the US on a range of mobile marketing initiatives including sponsorship of the live highlights mobile videos.

5. Viral Marketing: This is our speciality as we provide technology to operators that allows them to track mobile content as it is shared/forwarded P2P. The key application is to allow branded content (viral video or animated gif) to be seeded to a small target group and then leverage their social network to distribute it further.

Of course, we see these mixed and matched, for example, allowing consumers to use an SMS shortcode to  request rich media content delivered via MMS which is also viral. Location based information is also being used to improve the relevance of the message to the end user.

It is also heartening to see a number of organisations trying to develop guidelines for agencies and brands on mobile advertising to ensure that the end user experience is as compelling as possible. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) in the US is leading the way others such as the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group in Australia are not far behind.  Everyone in the industry is keen to ensure that many of the mistakes made on the internet are not repeated on mobile!

Ultimately the most successful mobile advertising strategies will be those that try to hold a conversation with the consumer. As with any conversation, it needs to be informative, relevant and two-way, and the mobile is the ideal vehicle.

To finish off, something funny but incredibly relevant to this topic. Enjoy!