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Caltech event recap May 12, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Applications , add a comment

University events are fun. They are quite focused and the audience is very engaged and ask out-of-the-blue questions. After doing the Stanford University event last month, I was looking forward to the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum event in Pasadena this weekend.

Thanks to Lynn Foster of Greenberg Traurig for inviting to give the keynote. It was an honor to share the stage with Tim Cadagon, a real pioneer in the digital advertising space with stints at Overture, Yahoo, and now OpenX,

I talked about the evolution of Mobile Advertising in the context of advertising history evolution, what the future holds, the challenges and the opportunities in the space. Discussed some of the case studies from the book.

Tim, despite his raspy throat, gave a brave and insightful keynote on display advertising on the Internet. Having been involved in the medium for over a decade, his insights were awesome.

Next, we joined John Babcock, Greg Market, and William Quigley to do a panel Q&A on a broad range of issues - from vertical search to impact of Clearwire/Sprint deal to advertising in emergency response to multi-language/cultural opportunities to many other related/unrelated topics. There was a lot of discussion on vertical search as segments where one can differentiate from Google and still make money in search. One of the stats was pretty revealing - Kayak - an online search engine for travel (which i use quite extensively) is in line to make $500 million this year with a focused effort around travel.

Before starting the moderator did a show of hands on how many entrepreneurs are looking to build businesses that will be monetized by advertising and to my surprise, 50% of the audience had their hands up. That has been the challenge with a number of startups, without building scale, advertising becomes less effective source of revenue.

The audio from the event should be online shortly, i will post a link when it is.

After a week’s break, will be heading down again to San Diego to two events, one being hosted by CommNexus at Qualcomm Campus (Joe - my coauthor of the Mobile Advertising Book and I will be giving a talk and participate on a panel discussion on Mobile Advertising) and the other one is Future in Review - something I am really looking forward to. I will be moderating a brilliant panel on Future of Mobile.

On the road to Pasadena May 9, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, Worldwide Wireless Market , add a comment

Have been traveling all this week. From Memphis to Seattle to leaving for Pasadena in a little bit. Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum is organizing the event on advertising tomorrow.

Online Advertising - Getting Up Close and Personal: How will new avenues for advertising influence the buying decisions of consumer?

Tim Cadogan, CEO OpenX, former SVP of Global Advertising at Yahoo! and I are giving keynotes and then joining the panel discussion with John Babcock, Partner, Rustic Canyon, Greg Market, Founder, Infuse Creative, and William Quigley, MD, Clearstone Venture Partners.

If you are in the area, would love to see you. Details of the event here.

Thanks to Lynn Foster and Joe Jasin for inviting me to the event.

Recap of Sacramento and Stanford events April 29, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Indian Wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem , add a comment

I am starting to lose count of how many events I have done related to the Mobile Advertising book but each one of them has been fun as I meet new friends and colleagues and get to visit with the old ones.

Had a pretty tight iten in sunny CA last week. Warm weather of bay area was a welcome change to the cold winter of Seattle which doesn’t want to go away. I have driven past Sacramento a couple of times before but never stopped there. Gopan, President of Techcoire (a high-tech networking organization in Sacramento) invited me to present the research from the book. The title of the talk was “Mobile Advertising: The $20B Opportunity?” The essence of the discussion was how do we move from the buzz of $20B to the biz of creating $20B in actual revenue. What are the sticking points? Where are the opportunities? and how do we go about creating a vibrant ecosystem? While there is justifiable skepticism in the advertising industry, mobile presents a very compelling conversation medium. The question is not about “if” but “when.”

After driving back and forth from bay area to Sacramento and coming late night, had a morning class with Prof Tom Kosnik’s “Global Entrepreneurial Marketing” students at Stanford University. It is a very popular course taught by a great teacher. On Prof. Kosnik’s suggestion, I skipped the standard presentation mode and straight away launched into the Q&A session and we went on for an hour. I used the slides and data to answer the questions. Frankly, I wish I could present and engage the audience this way more often. It is far more fun and both the audience and the speaker can get the most out of the session. The students were sharp, curious, and asked thought-provoking questions. Compared to other events, there were a lot more questions around privacy in mobile advertising and how to make sure the ecosystem doesn’t violate the trust of the users even accidentally. As an industry, we haven’t done all we can to ensure that, just yet. We also talked a lot about the fragmentation and differences in various market taking a more global view of the opportunity.

BookTour - Southern California

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I started doing the book events in Jan with the first presentation in Vancouver, BC and after doing several events on west coast, will be doing three events in SoCA in May, Pasadena and San Diego to be precise. Hope to see some of you at these events.

CommNexus San Diego

CommNexus event registration details are now online

Wireless Content & Applications SIG Presents…

Mobile Advertising

-Hear it from the Experts!-

WHEN:
May 20, 2008
TIME:
5:30PM Registration/Networking
6:00PM Event Starts
7:30PM Event Ends

Join us for an exciting evening where we talk about this hot, multi-billion dollar phenomena, called Mobile Advertising. And who better, than the authors of the new book: “Mobile Advertising: Supercharge your brand in the exploding wireless market”. Here is an excerpt from their book: “Mobile advertising is the stuff of which great cocktail party conversations are made. Some research houses are telling us to expect a $12 billion market by 2011. Online advertising has grown to look like a business to print money, so it’s only natural for there to be a little envy among us all. But that shouldn’t cause us to forget that online advertising didn’t exactly happen overnight it was tough sledding. And while there are obvious winners today, we all tend to forget the carnage left in the wake of unrealistic expectations.”

HIGHLIGHT:

This event is also the book launch event for the authors in San Diego, so, if you are looking for your copy of this book, do come and attend!


PANELISTS:
Chetan Sharma
Founder and President     Chetan Sharma Consulting
Author

Chetan is a recognized industry expert in strategy and implementation of wireless data and pervasive computing solutions. He has a strong background in developing and launching technologies, products, and solutions for the wireless Industry, including extensive experience in managing and delivering all phases of the product development cycle. Executives from leading wireless companies around the world seek his accurate predictions, independent insights, and actionable recommendations. He has served as an advisor to senior executive management of several Fortune 100 companies in the wireless space. Some of his clients include NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, Disney, KTF, Sony, Samsung, Virgin Mobile, Sprint Nextel, AT&T Wireless, Alcatel-Lucent, KDDI, Cincinnati Bell, Reuters, Qualcomm, Reliance Infocomm, SAP, Merrill Lynch, American Express, Infospace, BEA, and HP.
Chetan is the author or co-author of five books: Wireless Internet Enterprise Applications (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), VoiceXML: Strategies and Techniques for Effective Voice Application Development (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), Wireless data services: Technologies, Business models, and Global markets (Cambridge University Press, 2004),  Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), and Wireless Broadband Technology: Conflict and Convergence (IEEE Press, 2008). His books have been adopted in several corporate training programs and university courses at New York University and Graduate School of Tokyo University. Chetan has patents in wireless communications, is regularly invited to speak at conferences worldwide, and is an active member in industry bodies and committees.

Joe Herzog
Senior Director, Search Products     Infospace
Biography coming soon.
LOCATION:
TBA

COST:
$10.00 Pre-registration (Please pre-register by noon on May 19, 2008)
$20.00 At the Door
SIG CO-CHAIRS:
Pattric Rawlins, Procopio
Atul Suri, Qualcomm

Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum April 23, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising , 1 comment so far

I will be giving a keynote at the Caltech/MIT Enterprise forum in Pasadena on May 10th. Registration details are now online. There will be good discussion on advertising.

Online Advertising - Getting Up Close and Personal:
How new avenues for advertising will influence
the buying decisions of the consumer?

Saturday, May 10, 2008
at the California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California

As the Web rolls onward in Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0?) the business models and infrastructure of online commerce and advertising continue to evolve rapidly. With more and more advertising dollars shifting to the Web and mobile applications, will advertising become more targeted to the individual and their physical location? Will localized search and targeted advertising be able to track advertising intelligently to you, your mobile device and your proximity to products and services? Today’s program will examine coming advances in Web 2.0 and other key issues in technology and business impacting the future of online advertising, new media and mobile commerce. Is mobile advertising the next major landgrab in online commerce? Who will be the winners in the convergence of the Web, television and mobile? Are the Big Players or small nimble startups the best bet?
Today’s event will feature presentations from key industry executives, longtime wireless industry advisors, serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. It will start with keynote presentations and company presentations from cutting edge startups and be followed by a panel discussion and plenty of audience Q&A. Please join us to find out where the industry is headed first hand.

Keynote Speakers

Tim Cadogan
CEO
OpenX
Former SVP of Global Advertising Marketplaces at Yahoo!

Chetan Sharma
President
Chetan Sharma Consulting and Author
Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in
the Exploding Wireless Market

Presenters and Panelists

John Babcock
Partner
Rustic Canyon Partners

Gregory Markel

Founder/President

Infuse Creative

William Quigley
Managing Director
Clearstone Venture Partners

Producers/Moderators
Lynn Foster
Emerging Technologies Director
Greenberg Traurig LLP

Russell M. Frandsen, Esq.
Partner
The Business Legal Group

Date
Saturday morning, May 10, 2008

Location
Registration and Continental Breakfast:
8:00 a.m. at Baxter Hall, Caltech
Program:
9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Baxter Lecture Hall
Networking:
11:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon at Baxter Hall, Caltech

Cost
$40 on-line registration fee.  $50 at-the-door.  $10 for students with full-time student ID (must show at door); free to Caltech students. Registrations are taken on-line up to 5:00 p.m., May 8th. There are no refunds for no-shows.

SPONSORS FOR THIS PROGRAM

FOUNDING SPONSORS


Caltech Industrial Relations Center

Caltech Alumni Association


MIT Alumni Association

In Bay Area for the week

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising , add a comment

Spending some time in relatively warmer weather in CA. Tomorrow speaking at Techcoire in Sacramento and on friday at Stanford University.

MIT/CalTech Enterprise Forum Talk in Pasadena April 9, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements , add a comment

I got invited by the good folks at MIT/CalTech Forum to give a talk on Mobile Advertising on May 10th in Pasadena, CA. If you are around, please stop by.

The two events this month are at TechCoire (Sacramento) and Stanford University.

CTIA Wireless 2008 Roundup April 4, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Enterprise Mobility, Speaking Engagements, M&A, 3G, Devices, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mergers and Acquisitions, International Trade, Location based Services, MVNO, Indian Wireless market, BRIC, WiMax, Mobile Gaming, ARPU, Japan wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile TV, Mobile Applications, Smart Phone, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem, Speech Recognition, Mobile Search, Wi-Fi, Wireless Value Chain, 4G, CTIA , 2 comments

CTIA Wireless 2008 Roundup

http://www.chetansharma.com/ctiawireless.htm

The Sin City hosted CTIA Wireless 2008 earlier this week. On Wednesday morning, just before leaving for the convention center, I caught some portion of Ben Bernanke’s congressional testimony on the US economy woes. Few minutes later, strolling the show floor, talking to various companies, and hearing the keynotes, it seemed like I was on a different planet. Either someone failed to deliver the memo or the wireless industry is resilient enough to weather the turmoil in the financial and housing markets with some ease. The show was bigger with more attendees, the booths were returning to their glamorous heydays of the past, and the general buzz and energy at the show all seem to indicate the industry is going to do just fine and is primed for further growth. The general themes were around open network and access, user experience, and bandwidth.

This note summarizes our impressions from the show.

CTIA Wireless in Pictures

First let’s do the numbers: CTIA released their semi-annual statistics on the US market. In summary: For 2007, $23B in data revenues, 2 trillion in MOU, $139B in total service revenues, 48B txt messages/month. (We released our US Market and Global Market updates last month)

Keynotes: In terms of style, Sir Richard Branson stole the show with his pompous exuberance and pep talk (the talk of imaginary flight to Mars was hilarious; investors in Microgin and Viroo must be upset). For substance, Marco Boerries, President, Yahoo Mobile gave a nice compact overview of Yahoo initiatives and products in the market which are pretty darn good. (Marco wrote an opinion piece for our Mobile Advertising Book – “The future of Advertising is in the Consumers’ Pockets”). Yahoo has sewn together a number of deals worldwide that gives them a potential reach of over 600M users.

Vodafone is one operator which has been quite vocal in stating its positions on future infrastructure roadmap and data opportunities. Arun Sarin is probably the only CEO of major global operator who has publicly stated that Mobile Advertising will constitute a significant portion of their revenues in the coming days (Arun’s point person on the initiative Richard Saggers also wrote an opinion piece for our book “Opportunities for Mobile Advertising.” Let me know if you are interested in reading these two opinion pieces).

Microsoft’s Robbie Bach had the tough task of following the Branson-fest. He announced the arrival of a full-blown browser (finally!) for windows mobile. Also, the new windows mobile device from Sony Ericsson (Xperia) looks pretty darn cool. FCC Chairman Martin announced the rejection of Skype petition on the carterphone principle (to Skype’s dismay, it was not an April fool’s joke). Clearly, the definition of “open” is in the eye of the beholder. It means different things to different people. It has also been clear from the various activities and keynotes that the industry is trying its utmost to remain a “Self-regulated” industry and stay away from the clutches of eager politicians.

Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless conducted a panel with CEOs from Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nortel and probed them on the 4G migration path, trends in applications and services, and contrasts in adoption and introduction of new technology in various parts of the world. Final day was marked by what is now becoming a trend - keynotes from politicians. This time around Sen. Edwards and Sen. Thompson graced the podium.

Mobile Advertising: In talking with numerous players in the value chain from small developers to large operators to ad networks to media companies, the impression was that things have matured over the last six months. It was gratifying to hear that some companies are adopting strategies and recommendations we propose in our book. Still, some of the basic problems remain – majority of the inventory remain unsold indicating weak demand, CPM rates are still over-rated though they are starting to come down, and fragmentation continues to remain an issue.

The good news is that the size of the mobile campaign budgets are getting bigger with several seven figure RFPs floating around. While some companies are still trying to throw a lot at the wall in the hope that something sticks, others are maturing as companies and are more focused in their positioning and product roadmaps. Integration of various channels is starting to appear on the horizon and the integration with the publishers is becoming tighter. The issue of measurement and auditing standards remains a big issue and unfortunately not much progress to report. There are carrier initiatives and various industry bodies are taking the challenge to rally the ecosystem, but, frankly, consolidation of such efforts is necessary, we can’t afford yet another layer of fragmentation in an already complex ecosystem.

We were interviewed on Mobile Advertising prior to the show by several publications. Some of the articles were published this week to coincide with CTIA

Wireless Wave (CTIA) – Moving Targets: Mobile marketing reaches consumers on their terms by Lynn Thorne

BrandWeek – Mobile Marketing – Fantasy vs. Reality by Ken Hein

Wall Street Journal – Personalized promotions: Sending the right ads to your phone – Peggy Anne Salz

NFC: There were many more NFC-enabled devices on display this time and vendors were talking and demoing NFC and Biometrics based payment solutions. While there are handsets on the roadmap, this market is still very nascent in North America and Western Europe.

Inspiration: The inspiration for new and creative services still comes (at least for yours truly) from Japan (and Korea). I love spending time in DoCoMo’s booth for it gives a glimpse into what’s to come. No other company better understands the development of devices, services and applications that overlay on lifestyles than DoCoMo (e.g. a wellness handset that is a pedometer, heart rate monitor, body and bad breath monitor and yes, you can make voice calls too). They view wireless air-interfaces as nothing more than enablers to solutions that enhance daily lives. Various device manufacturers also displayed some really cool devices. The quality and diversity of handsets that have been introduced into the global markets over the last four quarters is just astonishing. The cycle of innovation and time-to-market keeps on accelerating.

Femto Cells: A number of players like Airwalk, Airvana, and others are bringing Femto cell solutions to the market and carriers are starting to pull this into their strategy as well and look forward to deployments beyond the trials.

4G: LTE vs. WiMAX (vs. UMB): Since the decision of Vodafone and Verizon to support LTE, UMB has been disappearing from the discussion. The 4G discussion is convulsing around LTE and WiMAX now (though Nortel did indicate its support TD-SCDMA as a 4G candidate). Without a doubt the operator community is rallying behind LTE and there might be an opportunity to finally converge to a single standard (haven’t we seen this movie before) but frankly, the advances in silicon to integrate multiple radios has made the standards debate less relevant. WiMAX has forced acceleration of LTE standardization process but is starting to lose its time (and cost) advantage. All eyes are on Sprint’s XOHM business rollouts in the coming days and months.

Accessories: I have never seen so many accessory and reseller outfits at a CTIA show. Business must be booming.

Best Booth: Thought there were several good layouts, LG and Samsung continue to impress with their creativity and “art of marketing.”

Developer and Publisher woes: Along with John Philips (Astraware) and Peter Baldwin (Cellmania), I helped facilitate a few developer session at the Mobile Jam Session organized by WIP. The issues of distribution, discovery, and monetization remain challenging for the small developers worldwide. Even with million user base, they are finding it difficult to monetize but we did discuss a number of success stories. The core elements of success that emerged from the discussion were: choosing the right market, embedding viral component into everything you throw out there, there is no room for mediocrity, and personalizing and customizing go a long way to get traction. An interesting tidbit: the number of page views for mobile MySpace app is a magnitude higher on off-deck vs. ondeck. Several of the companies are trying mobile advertising with varying degrees of success. After spending 4 hours with the developers, I sat on a carrier panel discussing mobile advertising. The contrast between the two worlds was so apparent. Clearly, more needs to be done to help both sides understand each other a bit better.

Green CTIA: There is a stronger emphasis on recycling and contributing to save the environment. The show itself is a big resource hog, so every bit helps.

Alternate Mobile Devices: The universe of alternate devices is expanding. Companies are buying wholesale data packages from the operators and integrating broadband chipsets into hardware to do digital signage (ICG), M2M (Sensorlogic), PND and much more. The definition of being “mobile” keeps on changing.

On Being “Open”: Obviously, given the recent activity around openness, getting a penny for each time the word was uttered by a speaker would have paid off for a lifetime of CTIA trips. While talk is cheap, demonstrable progress is being made by the likes Yahoo, Apple (btw, 3G iPhone is on its way), and AOL.

Another MVNO experiences turmoil: Movida - a Spanish focused MVNO which has garnered almost 300K subs filed for chapter 11.

Voice is becoming mainstream: With the product launches from Nuance, SpinVox, Vlingo, Jott, Yahoo, and many others, voice based navigation and its tighter integration with data services is becoming mainstream.

Where are the opportunities? Last week, I was moderating a panel with executives from AOL Mobile, T-Mobile, Motricity, and Formotus and the themes that emerged were around platform play, user experience, and productivity. At CTIA, in addition to these areas, there was a lot of discussion around social networking (though the market is being saturated with the MoSo noise). It is also clear that we are moving into the phase of “aggregation of fragmentation” with initiatives from Yahoo, AOL, and Google dominating the landscape.

Home Screen Effect: I have been talking about using the home screen for driving data usage for the last 8 years. I think we will see good innovation this year on that front starting with Yahoo’s One Platform. There are several other initiatives in the works where operators and OEMs will be deploying frameworks and technologies to bring information to a “click-less” idle screen environment.

Overall, no major news but industry stays vibrant, healthy, and exciting.

Your feedback is always welcome.

Chetan Sharma

Disclosure: Some of the companies mentioned in this note are our clients.

WTIA Event - Mobile Mania, Where’s the Money? March 28, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Indian Wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile Applications, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain , 2 comments

Had a terrific turnout at the event and it was very well organized by WTIA. Jai Jaisimha, VP, AOL gave the keynote around their Open Initiative which seems like a comprehensive program compared to some of the other initiatives in the market place.

wtia1

wtia3 wtia2

After that I moderated the panel with Jai, Brendan Benzing (Motricity), Ian McKerlich (T-Mobile), and Joe Verschueren( Formotus). We delved into where the opportunities lie in the coming years. Jai and Brendan emphasized platform, Ian talked about user experience and simplicity, and Joe put some emphasis on enterprise applications.

Global Wireless Data Market Update 2007 March 27, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Infrastructure, Carriers, Security, Speaking Engagements, M&A, 3G, Partnership, Devices, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mergers and Acquisitions, Location based Services, MVNO, Indian Wireless market, India, BRIC, WiMax, Mobile Gaming, Networks, ARPU, Japan wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile TV, mobile users, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Speech Recognition, Mobile Search, Wi-Fi, Wireless Value Chain, 4G, CTIA , 7 comments

Global Wireless Data Market Update 2007

Download PDF  (2.3 MB)

Download PPT  (1.3 MB)

http://www.chetansharma.com/globalmarketupdate2007.htm

As you read this End of Year (EOY) 2007 Global Wireless Data Market update this week, somewhere in India, a new subscription will catapult India over the US as the number 2 global wireless market. 2007 was a banner year for global wireless data market. The global service revenues for the year touched $700 billion, the data service revenues were more than $120 billion, China signed its 500 millionth subscription, and both India (in feb 08) and the US crossed the 250 million subscription mark. 2007 continued to enhance mobile data’s role in the operator ecosystem with approx 17% of the revenue is coming from data services.

For some leading operators, data is now contributing up to 35% of the revenues however increase in data ARPU is not completely offsetting the drop in voice ARPU. From the true and tested SMS messaging to new services such as Mobile TV, Enterprise apps, and others, different services helped in adding billions to the revenues generated for 2007. Japan and Korea remain the envy of the global markets and the countries to study and learn from w.r.t. new services and applications. The US market has been steadily making strong comeback and for the first time exceeded Japan in service revenue generated from mobile data.

Chetan Sharma Consulting conducted its semiannual study on the global mobile data industry. We studied wireless data trends in over 40 major countries - from developed and mature markets such as Japan, Korea, UK, and Italy to hyper growth markets such as China and India. This note summarizes the findings from the research.

Your feedback is always welcome.

Chetan Sharma

Disclosure: Some of the companies mentioned in this note are our clients.

Washington Technology Industry Association Event March 25, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements , 1 comment so far

If you are in Seattle, there is an event coming up on Thursday. Jai will be giving the keynote and I will be moderating the panel after that.

March Technology in Focus Series: Mobile Mania – SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Westin Hotel, Seattle
3/27/2008
4:30 PM to 8:00 PM

Last Chance to Register - Don’t Miss this Event! Click Here to Register Today!

Join us as we kick-off 2008 with Mobile Mania!

M-commerce is a multi-billion-dollar industry – and it hasn’t even come close yet to peaking. How can you tap into this emerging marketplace? Mobile advertising, content, open access … what does it all mean? Where are the opportunities and how will new developments affect your business? Our expert panel will shed light on the key trends, how the real money will be made, and what you should start planning for now to be ready for the future. Whether you are an entrepreneur, business owner, investor, developer, or a sales, marketing or product manager, this event should be on your agenda for 2008!

Make sure to arrive at 4:30 to check out the Mobile Mania Pavilion – from the latest devices to the area’s hottest m-companies, you’ll want plenty of time to check it all out.

Mobile Mania Pavilion Companies
Formotus - Lilipip - Positive Motion - MGD

Speakers:

Recap of Mobile Advertising Events - Stanford and Seattle March 22, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Middleware, Speaking Engagements, M&A, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Indian Wireless market, Mobile Gaming, ARPU, Mobile TV, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain , add a comment

This week I had the opportunity to moderate two distinguished panels on Mobile Advertising in two days, one at Stanford University and the other one in Seattle. This post summarizes the issues and points discussed during these two sessions.

Stanford University by Mobile Momentum

The first one was part our book tour and was organized by Mobile Momentum, an organization lead by Prof. Tom Kosnik and his student Mohit Gundecha. The event was sponsored by three of the pioneers in Mobile Advertising space - AdInfuse, Admob, and Rhythm New Media. My co-author Victor Melfi and I walked through some of the salient points of our book. We discussed the history of advertising, the digital revolution of the Internet, delved a bit into the definition of mobile advertising, the challenges and accelerators of this nascent industry, pondered over the business models, illustrated some of the successes using the case studies and our five-points framework (reach, engagement, targeting, viral, and transactions), briefly touched on the technology issues and gave our 2c on what it will take for the industry to go from its current state of “cautious optimism” to promise of “contextual nirvana.” Some of the key points were:

P3203384 P3203393
P3203379 P3203373

Our talk was followed by a panel discussion with Ujjal Kohli, CEO, Rhythm New Media, Tony Nethercutt, VP, Admob, and David Staas, VP, AdInfuse. All these guys have had distinguished careers in mobile, advertising, and digital evolution of our industry and hence the depth of knowledge on the panel was just great. Each of them has had successes with campaigns around the world, not just in North America. Admob with its billions of impressions every few weeks has blazed the way in the off-deck world. Rhythm has been quite successful with advertising with mobile video snacking at 3 in UK.

AdInfuse has been running some interesting campaigns in Europe like with Swisscom.They were achieving 8% CTR on WAP banner campaigns, 50% of users who clicked through to the WAP landing page completed a purchase. Recall rates were as high as 27%, more than 80% of the users rated the model of “free video content in return of advertising” positively vs. 2% who didn’t like the idea. Rhythm has also experienced similar numbers with their 3 UK campaigns. It is remarkable that 40% of the subscriber base is using the service and one can still watch the ad subsidized videos even if they have run out of prepaid minutes. The reach provided by Admob to its advertisers is phenomenal. Coca-cola’s campaign touched 125 countries. We cover Rhythm’s and Admob’s case studies in more detail in our book as well.

We touched on a wide variety of topics and I was struck by something that Ujjal said. He was previously CMO of AirTouch Cellular so brings in a very unique perspective to the table. He said, “For the carrier, No amount of Mobile Advertising Revenue is worth the risk of losing a customer.” The issues around privacy, customer satisfaction, customer care costs are critical for an operator to assess as they dive deeper into this new emerging medium.

There are a number of developers who are interested in exploiting the opportunity of mobile advertising but don’t want to deal with the complexity of the ecosystem and ad networks. There is an opportunity for some of the existing players to open up the APIs to broaden the reach.

Seattle by TiE

Next day, TiE Seattle organized a panel discussing “Mobile Advertising: Making the most of the next generation in advertising.” The panelists were Scott Silk, CEO, ActionEngine, Brian Lent, CEO, Medio Systems, Eric Hertz, CEO, Zumobi, Jeff Giard, Director, Alltel, and Jason Guenther, Director, Disney. Again, a pretty diverse panel representing various players in the value chain.

I started by probing the panelists on how we go about defining “Mobile Advertising.” Brian, not surprisingly, thought Mobile Search is going to take a lion share of the revenues just like how things evolved in the online world. Eric and Scott articulated their view around On-Device Portals, Widgets, and User Experience. Action Engine has been having good success with many of the large media brands such as MSNBC and WSJ while Zumobi has come out with a platform that takes user experience at the center of its strategy.

Though at number 5, Alltel has been introducing innovations quicker than some of its peers. Its Celltop application is yielding significant results with over 400% increase in usage if the application is within Celltop framework. Next, they are going to be putting the Celltop as a Home Screen (Idle Screen) app like what Koreans and Japanese have been doing for some time. It was refreshing for Jeff to right away state that this industry is not going to move forward if we don’t solve the “fragmentation” problem. I have said before that “Fragmentation is the biggest enemy of the mobile industry” and w/o solving the issues of fragmentation at different layers, we won’t get into the hypergrowth mode that will take the industry from $2B today to $20B in five years. Jeff thought that mobile advertising presents significant opportunities for the industry including the carriers but we need to be mindful of the issues around privacy, customer care, and customer satisfaction.

Disney is world’s premier consumer brand and very few companies understand the three screens better than Disney. Jason’s perspective on how mobile fits into the larger picture was an important one. He views mobile as a critical channel for any content company but reminded that a lot of work needs to be done in terms of standardization, metrics, auditing, and  privacy before mobile advertising becomes a thriving industry.

In both places, audience was well informed and highly engaged. Questions ranged from business models to technology intricacies. People didn’t think some of the newer MVNO models like that from Blyk will last too long and that for the trends will different for different geographies. For example, in emerging markets, mobile is going to be the only means to bring digital advertising to the masses, a point we make in our book as well. Will high-end phones be free subsidized by advertising as Eric Schmidt had proclaimed, well, don’t bet your life on it, at least not just yet though if someone like Google makes up its mind, it can, as Victor says, “make the market.”

I really enjoyed engaging with the panelists and the audience. Plenty of questions, we could have gone on for hours if not days. It was quite hectic but fun. Next week, I am moderating a panel “Mobile Mania - Show me the Money” at Washington Technology Industry Association and then facilitating a developer forum “Mobile Jam Session” at CTIA on 31st. On 24th April, I will be giving a class on Mobile Advertising at Stanford University (Prof. Kosnik’s course) and the same evening, I head to Sacramento to give a talk being organized by TechCoire on “Mobile Advertising: A $20B Opportunity?” In May, on the 13th, I will be in NY giving a talk on mobile advertising to the advertising executives, on 20th will be doing a book event being organized by CommNexus in San Diego, and on 21st will be moderating a panel discussion on the promise of mobile advertising at the highly regarded Future In Review Conference.

Hope to see some of you on these sojourns.

Had a terrific event March 20, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising , add a comment

at Stanford University last night. The response was great and the turnout superb. Thanks all for coming. Heading back to Seattle now and will be moderating the TiE event this evening.

Will have reports from both the events later in the week.

Thanks again to AdInfuse, Admob, and Rhythm New Media for sponsoring the Stanford Event and to Mobile Momentum for being generous hosts.

Mobile Advertising Events March 14, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mergers and Acquisitions, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain , 1 comment so far

It will be a very busy next few weeks

March

Next week on 19th, we are at Stanford University being hosted by Mobile Momentum to do a book event. Details here. RSVP at stanfordevent at chetansharma dot com. Bring your friends and colleagues.

The book discussion will be followed by a panel discussion with some of the smartest brains in the business - Ujjal Kohli, CEO, Rhythm New Media, Brian Cowley, CEO, AdInfuse, and Tony Nethercutt, VP, Admob.

AdInfuse, Admob, and Rhythm New Media are also the generous sponsors of the event. So, many thanks again.

The next day (20th), I fly back to Seattle to moderate a panel on Mobile Advertising being organized by TiE. Event and Registration details here. Panelists are Jeff Giard, Director, Alltel, Brian Lent, CEO, Medio Systems, Scott Silk, CEO, ActionEngine, and Jason Guenther, Director, Disney.

The following week on the 27th, I will be moderating a panel being organized by Washington Technology Industry Association. The topic is Mobile Mania - Show me the Money. Event and Registration details here. Speakers are Jai Jaisimha, VP, AOL, Brendan Benzing, VP, Motricity, F. Joseph Verschueren, CEO, Formotus, and Ian McKerlich, Director, T-Mobile USA.

April

Then, I head off to CTIA in Vegas.

In late April (24th), I will be giving a talk in Sacramento - Mobile Advertising - The $20B Opportunity?. The event is being organized by TechCoire - Sacramento region’s only business-technology education and networking organization. More info on them here. Thanks Gopan for the invite.

I got to know two wonderful people at Stanford University last year - Prof. Tom Kosnik and his student Mohit Gundecha. It was in context of the event that Mobile Momentum organized on the Indian Wireless Market. I serve on the advisory board. In fact, Mohit is single-handedly organizing our Stanford event next week.

Prof. Tom Kosnik has invited me to give a class to his students on Mobile Advertising which is great honor. His course - Global Entrepreneurial Marketing is a very popular course at Stanford and always gets full very quickly.

May

After a brief break, we head down to San Diego on 20th for another book event being organized by CommNexus - a very active High Tech and Communications Industry association.

The same week, I will be at FiRe (Future in Review) conference being organized by SNS and Mark Anderson and will be moderating a brilliant panel on Mobile Advertising. Event and Registration details here.

SNS: Mobile Advertising - from cautious optimism to contextual nirvana March 12, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Worldwide Wireless Market , add a comment

Long time readers would know that this blog is named (AORTA) after a term Mark Anderson coined in 1997. I have been reading Mark’s work since the mid-nineties. His newsletter “Strategic News Service” was the first paid newsletter subscription model on the Internet and is read by the likes of Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer, Mark Hurd, Sol Trujillo, Paul Jacobs, and a whole list of luminaries from around the world. You should check it out. You might also want to check out his blog to get a taste.

Mark has this unique ability to look at trends across multiple industries and different diverse segments from energy to finance, from IT to wireless, from politics to trade and use that to make very accurate predictions much before the mainstream press comes to the realization of what’s happening.

Needless to say, his work is of the highest order. That’s why I am extremely delighted and humbled by the opportunity to write for the SNS. My piece which was adapted from our Mobile Advertising Book and titled “Mobile Advertising: from cautious optimism to contextual nirvana” was published in SNS yesterday as a Special Letter. Over the years, several prominent authors have written for SNS and I am grateful for the opportunity. Thanks Mark.

Mark has also invited me to moderate a session on Mobile Advertising at his annual “Future in Review (FiRe 2008)” conference in May. We are putting together a pretty exciting panel. The Economist called this conference “The best technology conference in the world” and is perhaps the only conference of its type where such diverse technology and industry topics are discussed. It is known for the participation of high profile visionaries, noble laureates and prominent technologists from around the world and is truly an intellectually stimulating experience. Check out the list of who is coming.

MSearchGroove podcast is online March 11, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain , add a comment

you can listen it here. Thanks Peggy.

Highlights

As he put it: “They have a different view of the advertising space. And their view of the competition is that the competitors aren’t really [other] operators, but other mediums. So if a dollar is going to TV, then that’s their competition, not a dollar going to their rival [operator].

Other highlights:

Operator assets: Operators should “focus on the unique capabilities that they have from their network and devices and expose that to the ecosystem.” That model is more compelling - and potentially more profitable - than “trying to control and become an agency themselves.”

Google & Co: Operators have the analytics - but time is a luxury they don’t have. Figure it’s 2-3 years before other providers close the gap to offer profiling, presence and location, and the metrics advertisers demand. “In the long run, the challenge will be: Will it [customer data etc…] come from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and some other companies [as they] will have these unique characteristics [and capabilities] as well.” In three years, Chetan reckons “online brands will start to dominate the ecosystem….But if carriers are able to pool together their resources and make a very compelling offer to the media industry…they [carriers] can put up very stiff resistance to online brands.”

Mobile search: Mobile search will play an important role on mobile, but it won’t dominate the mobile Internet or advertising experience. “I think the idle screen plays this role in the long run on the mobile. And I think you’ll see more friction and fights [as companies] try to capture the idle screen user.

We should not think of search as a box, “but rather an intelligent [bot] that searches for relevant content for you and presents that content with relevant ads on the idle screen. If you think of search in that way, then search has a very important role to play. But just searching by key words will probably have a smaller role to play in the long term.

The ones to watch: Chetan and I ran through some case studies and stats from the likes of NearBy Now, which gets high marks for engagement, and mobile Posse, which gets high marks for targeting. I’ll take Chetan’s comments as a cue to line up an interview with each - in fact, I already reached out to NearbyNow for a podcast timed to their next announcement (under embargo)…In the meantime, it’s interesting to note that no company got high marks across all five metrics: reach, engagement, targeting, viral and transactions. (Transaction is the “Holy grail” of mobile advertising, where an ad delivers a sale). As Chetan observed: It’s just early days.

Upcoming Events March 9, 2008

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Here are some of the events I will be participating in. Hope to meet some new friends and colleagues and revisit with old ones.

19 March
Book Event and Mobile Advertising Panel, Stanford University. Our Seattle event was a great success. More details here.

20 March
TiE, Bellevue, Mobile Advertising

27 March
Washington Technology, Seattle, Mobile Mania, Where’s the Money?

1 - 3 April
CTIA, Las Vegas

20 May
CommNexus, San Diego, Mobile Advertising Book Event and Panel

20-23 May
Future In Review, San Diego, Mobile Advertising: From Buzz to Biz

25 Jun
Structure08, San Francisco

26-27 Jun
Global Wireless Security Conference, Kuala Lumpur. Chetan will be giving a talk to leading CTOs and CIOs on Mobile Security trends and opportunities

Book Tour: Stanford and San Diego

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After doing events up north in Vancouver BC and Seattle, we move south to Stanford University on 19th March and San Diego on 20th May. Mobile Momentum is organizing the Stanford event and CommNexus extended the invitation for San Diego. Thanks.

If you are in town, please do join us. For the Stanford event, please rsvp to stanfordevent at chetansharma dot com. More details here.

Details for CommNexus event will be available shortly.

There are a number of other events coming up where I will be participating. I will provide a complete list soon.

Opportunities and Challenges March 8, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Strategy, Speaking Engagements, US Wireless Market, Mobile Applications, Mobile Ecosystem , add a comment

Earlier this week, I gave a luncheon keynote at the Northwest Wireless Association - a WA state organization representing interests of the local ecosystem. Amongst other things, I talked about the opportunity areas and things that are challenging for the industry. Here is the list.

  • ¨Mobile Payments
  • ¨Convergence
  • ¨Mobile Advertising
  • ¨Connected-Home
  • ¨Security on device, Biometrics
  • ¨User Generated Content and Social Community
  • ¨Network Testing
  • ¨Enterprise applications
  • ¨Battery, Fuel Cells
  • ¨Mobile Agents

    • Essentially, Device becomes the remote control of our lives

    Challenges for companies, especially startups

  • ¨Fragmentation
  • ¨Noise
  • ¨Time-to-market
  • ¨Reaching Scale
  • ¨Attacking Global Markets

    • There is a myth percolating in the US industry that there is no growth left as we are approaching 85% subscriber penetration. Last year, we added almost 21 million new subscriptions. Though it dropped 7% from 2006, 21 million ain’t bad. Subscribers will continue to grow as cellular gets embedded in consumer electronics and consumers start owning multiple radios and we will continue to do 15-20M/year for the next few years. Also, the replacement market is very strong and people are replacing handsets at a much faster pace now given the onslaught of smartphones.

    More on the US market in the US Q407 and 2007 update coming up next week.

    Keynote next week February 28, 2008

    Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements , add a comment

    I must admit I have never given a talk to Tower and Utility folks in our industry. They do all the nitty-gritty stuff to get towers in place before the network is lighted up. Am looking forward to the discussion and the questions. Will be talking about the future of our industry and what can we expect in the next 2-3 years and how that might impact the infrastructure industry.

    The talk is being organized by the Northwest Wireless Association. More details here.