Amethon Insights

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!

Viral Marketing Demo at Mobile Monday Sydney by Michael Stone

A few of us attended Mobile Monday last night where it was open mike night i.e. anyone could get up an talk about their company, their views on the industry etc. I took the opportunity to talk a bit about Amethon and our products but also used the occassion to demonstrate a mobile viral marketing campaign.

I had downloaded a few clips from YouTube which I though would be entertaining for the crowd and then put together an MMS which included a video followed by some comments around Amethon, our logo and then a link to our .mobi site. Receivers were also able to download more videos from the .mobi site.

The audience was asked to provide me with their mobile numbers and I then sent it to about 12 different people.

Of course the underlying message was that if Content Fingerprinting was available, we could track the video as well as the ones from the .mobi site every time it was forwarded.

The demonstration also highlighted a few key components we think is required for a successful viral marketing campaign i.e. some compellling content, subtle branding, a call to action and a relevant reward.

So, how successful was my demonstration? Unfortunately without Content Fingerprinting we will never know...