m.Net Blog

Posted by Marisa Maio Mackay, Director of Research

Advertising on the mobile phone is an ambitious attempt by the industry to increase the use of non-voice applications by the masses. But what does the mobile consumer really think and expect as advertising makes a move on the mobile phone?

Research consistently shows that the regular use of the mobile phone beyond voice and text remains primarily contained among a small group of very high users – a group of consumers who seem to be using more and more data services and anything else new on the mobile phone and in doing so are gradually increasing the gap between them and everyone else (AIMIA Lifestyle Index Survey 2007, Worldwide Mobile Data Survey, 2006).

Some industry experts argue that mobile-phone users will become more-active customers of mobile data services as the market matures, but the trend both here and overseas remains remarkably consistent regardless of market maturity. Does advertising on the mobile phone present a viable channel to re-engage the customer when that customer primarily uses his/her phone for voice and texting because of a belief that using the phone for anything else will incur huge costs?

Mobile phone users are more and more frequently accessing content and services for free. They don’t like being locked into service contracts. They expect their favourite brands to be in the mobile phone space. And they don’t expect to pay for it. The users believe that it should be part of the brand’s service, and their mobile offering should complement the brand offering in other media channels. And of course, any mobile offering should provide real value based on existing customer behaviour and should tap into the customer’s personal interests. These views and behaviours have underpinned the response to advertising on the mobile phone.

As stated by a respondent during a recent m.Net research project, “I would definitely put up with ads for something entertaining. Like Cricket scores or whatever it might be. Or movie offers. Or something like that. Or astrology, whatever it might be. I’d more so put up with ads if I was getting a free service rather than paying for it. ”

Almost 70% of Australians claim they would accept ads for free content. On a worldwide scale, almost 50% claim they would accept mobile ads in exchange for a free service or the chance to win a prize. Around one third of respondents have actually purchased a product after seeing an ad on their mobile phone. Most importantly, however, is that 71% say ads would not cause them to stop using their phones!

In line with consumer views, mobile ads should not be the focal point of the interaction. They should rather relate specifically to the mobile moment. This is in direct contrast with the traditional push ads exemplified by the TV advertising experience where your favourite program is interrupted by invasive ads that have no relevance to you or your viewing preferences. The personal nature of the mobile provides the perfect counterpoint to this experience. Unique user identifiers can be used to track individual click-through behaviours and preferences to determine ad relevance. Ads can be created for a particular region or network or handset. Real-time databases can target consumers at any time and place and are less susceptible to click-fraud than online advertising.

So the message for companies is positive: mobile advertising has the power to move users to the exciting world beyond voice and texting! In fact, click-through rates on mobile ads are already higher than click through rates for on-line ads! The consumer is also clearly ready – but to engage the masses and keep them engaged the company has to be willing to treat the mobile like no other advertising channel before it.

“Online and off-deck media will become huge and change the way people behave and their relationship with marketing…“

Matt McGrath – CEO, Young & Rubicam Brands

This is particularly apt when we take into account emerging mobile video and TV services like vodcasts.

So when you are designing your next mobile ad remember to target and tailor your ads, because for consumers it’s all about the four key questions.

• Does it mean anything to me?
• Does it give me anything?
• Does it cost me anything?
• Does it lock me into anything?

Good luck!

Posted by Paul Daly, Director of Innovation

The mobile phone has become incredibly pervasive. Leading research company Informa has announced that there are now 3.3 billion active mobile accounts in the world. This means that there is approximately one mobile phone account operating for every two people on the planet! There are now 59 countries where mobile penetration exceeds 100%, with a significant number of people maintaining more than one mobile account.

The mobile phone has joined keys and wallet/purse as one of those things that one simply does not leave the house without. Indeed, there has been some speculation about its potential to replace those other two must-haves in the future.

In this–my first post to the m.Net blog!–I aim to discuss some of the things that differentiate the mobile screen as a new medium for content, and acknowledge some of its limitations.

Here at m.Net have identified the following differentiators for mobile: omnipresence and accessibility. Very soon the mobile phone will be everywhere, and everyone will have access to one. However these are not the only differentiators!

Other differentiators include:

• The mobile phone is more personal. There is a much stronger level of assignment between the consumer and his/her mobile phone than exists with a home phone or an Internet connection, where other users in the family may share the same connection or device. There is also an expectation on the part of subscribers that messages they receive will, in general, be of higher relevance to them.
• Meaningful context as a result of location. For many years there has been talk of location-based services for mobile phones as a possible killer application. Finally, the pieces are beginning to fall into place for new services that take advantage of the user’s location in order to provide value.

  Telstra has a model that allows service providers to provide access to information and other services based on the location of the handset. The subscriber must have opted in to this service and Telstra charges a fee to the service provider for each location request.

  Google has just announced a feature in Google Maps that allows a mobile subscriber to locate his or her own position within an on-screen map. If the handset has GPS capability it will source the location from there and, if not, it uses an algorithm that calculates approximate position based on signal strength from one or more mobile-phone base stations. While resolution is not perfect, it is certainly accurate enough for many applications.

  Today, the Google system only works with certain handsets; however it provides some really interesting insights into the scope for location-based services in the near term.

• Value added by other elements of context. The use of location as a variable is just one form of context that makes the mobile experience more interesting and relevant. If we know that the user of a particular mobile is unique, then we can assume that their browsing and purchasing behaviour provides a more accurate view of their preferences than it does when several people were sharing a connection to the Internet (e.g. from a home computer). This allows us to improve the relevance of the information and services that we offer them and provides a greater return on investment for our promotional spend. Our ability to leverage contextual information is very important in providing access to a better user experience. The better we handle this context the more likely it is that we will maintain an effective relationship with the consumer and the easier it will be for them to navigate to information and services of interest to them.
• The ability of the mobile screen to complement existing media. Because of its portability the mobile screen provides an ideal way for consumers to maintain a connection with sources of news entertainment and information while they are on the move. This is best implemented as a complement to their existing patterns for consuming content – via television, radio, print and the Internet. Early work in using the mobile as an interactive back channel for television through voting applications and the use of SMS response for participation in competitions and other forms of product promotion has been remarkably successful. The most successful campaigns involving a mobile element have been complemented by promotion in other media and this is certainly the way we at m.Net see the landscape well into the future.

Of course mobile does have its drawbacks as a medium for content. We speak of mobile as the very small screen and although the quality and resolution of mobile displays is constantly improving, it its still a much smaller window for navigating and viewing content. For this reason, we develop mobile Internet sites in ways that are significantly different from those used to develop traditional Web Internet sites. We also pay particular attention to the size of graphics, videos and animations so that screens of varying size can render them well. We also aim to keep page size down in recognition that until the tipping point for mobile data arrives, the carriage cost of data can be a major issue for consumers of mobile Internet content.

Perhaps the biggest problem faced by people developing and implementing content on mobiles is the lack of any real standardisation for access devices. Mobile phones have screens of all shapes and sizes, wildly-varying resolutions, different models for accommodating input from the user, different operating systems, and different amounts of memory.

The job of delivering content that renders consistently-well across a wide cross-section of the most popular handsets has become an area of specialisation. It is an problem to which companies like m.Net are able to provide an effective solution, removing a major headache for people looking to the use of mobile as an exciting new medium for content. With this type of specialist help mobile can become a powerful complement to traditional media in extending brand relationships with consumers.

Posted by Horden Wiltshire, Chief Executive Officer

m.Net was pleased to be ranked number 5 in the Deloitte Australian Fast 50 awards announced last week and we were particularly pleased to be ranked number 1 in South Australia. To anyone thinking of joining m.Net: all I can say is we don’t expect things to slow down any time soon!

One of the interesting things to note from the awards was that of the ten fastest-growing companies in Australia three were mobile companies. The Rising Star award was also won by another mobile player (Amethon Solutions) providing further evidence of the opportunities in the mobile space.

So have we peaked and will we see the number of mobile players experiencing higher rates of growth plateau, or does the mobile industry still have a long way to run? Of course the reason we are in this business is because we think the latter but there is plenty of evidence to support this view.

If you have been following this blog you will be familiar with the concept of the off-deck tipping point. Scott, Marisa, and I have talked about the factors that impact on the ubiquitous uptake of mobile services that are outside the carrier portals. With data prices coming down, carrier portals opening up, and almost 50% of consumers now with a 3G phone in Australia the only factor remaining is user behaviour. All the signs are positive that customers are becoming more familiar with off deck services but it is still early days and we see plenty of growth over the next 3-5 years. Outside of North Asia, Australia has one of the higher adoption rates of 3G services because of the early launch of the services by “3″ in 2003 and the aggressive rollout of 3G by the country’s largest carrier, Telstra.

In my view Australia will reach the off-deck tipping point before many other countries in the world, which means we still have a few years until the global tipping point is reached. As we look to opportunities in global markets for new services we hope that there will many years in the Deloitte Fast 50 ahead!

Posted by Horden Wiltshire, Chief Executive Officer

I spoke recently at the latest in the Mobile Mondays series of events hosted by South Australia’s Mobile Entertainment Growth Alliance (mEga|SA) and the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA).

I spoke in an informal setting to the attendees regarding the tipping point for off-deck mobile services – those mobile services that you don’t get through your carrier’s portal. The meeting was well-supported and it’s good to see that the Adelaide mobile scene is alive and well.

The basis of the presentation was discussion of the factors that I think are required to get to the tipping point for the use of off-deck services… to get to the point where these services become ubiquitous. The factors in my opinion are:

• Data Pricing
• Carrier Access
• User Behaviour
• Uptake of 3G

Marisa Maio Mackay will provide some updates in future blog entries regarding consumer behaviour and Scott Johnson posted recently about the uptake of 3G in Australia. Scott estimates the penetration in Australia at around 22% and Marisa’s research with the AIMIA Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index revealed that 30% of respondents had a 3G phone. (The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that some people have more than one phone).

I think one of the most important trends is the move towards capped data plans. If you look at the casual rates for data roaming on your phone with Australia’s two largest carriers, Telstra and Optus, users are still paying more than $15 per megabyte. However, if you look at the top plans for each of the carriers the price comes down quite dramatically.

• Vodafone: $2.99 per MB ($15 plan)
• Telstra: $0.41 per MB ($29 plan)
• Optus: $0.29 per MB ($30 plan)
• Hutchison: $0.02 per MB ($40 plan)

But what does 1MB on your phone get you? Here is a summary of some of m.Net’s client WAP sites and their sizes:

So 1 MB of data will get you 250 m.Net pages, 60 Nokia pages and 40 Home and Away pages. When you are paying 2c per MB that’s pretty close to free for each page! When all the carriers are at that price point we will indeed have reached the tipping point as far as data pricing is concerned.

Posted by Marisa Maio Mackay, Director of Research

Mobile phones have had a profound impact on the way that Australians communicate and interact with each other and their environment. But the world of communication, information, and entertainment isn’t limited to that accessed through a mobile phone. Rather, it encompasses media through all channels — including the World-Wide Web, television, and print.

The challenge for mobile marketers is to leverage the unique strengths of each medium, and to understand the power of the today’s mobile phone. The television has a large screen, magazines are nice and glossy, and the World-Wide Web is fairly easy to navigate… so what do today’s media consumers want out of their mobile phones?

m.Net research suggests that mobile phone subscribers are most positive and receptive to services that:

• are practical;
• have intrinsic value;
• are free;
• are easy to use;
• are transparent — that communicate what the product or service is upfront; and
• are immediate in terms of delivering benefit.

Underlying all of these points is the need for the service or product to complement that which can be accessed through other channels. A common assumption is that people want the ability to access on their mobiles exactly that which can be accessed via computer web-browsers; however, the reality is that people want the mobile phone to enhance their lifestyles, not change or direct their behaviours.

So, providers – when creating the next ideal mobile service, remember that the mobile phone is a powerful force in the entertainment, information and communication space – but not the sole force. So give the people want they want: innovation, not replication!