iPhone 3.0: upgrade income, upgrading products

It was already clear how mobile micro-payments for ‘micro-contents’, ready to be consumed directly on small mobile phones screens was the main trend in digital sales. In mobile phone history this trend is been consolidating through years, competing with traditional market products: we’ve seen how music sales in Japan are firmly better on mobile than in stores.

Now it’s iphone time. Brand new iphone 3.0 firmware guarantee groundbreaking possibilities for software developers: to upgrade their incomes just upgrading their softwares. Steve Jobs&co have realized a new income recipe that has the potential to be outstanding. The ‘one-click’ payment formula, expecially through itunes and app store, evolves itself and allows the consumer to buy even smaller pieces of media products. However in this case consumers can buy directly within the application without entering Apple’s virtual store. Application’s upgrades will became the main products, as new contents like game levels, maps or book’s chapters.

A brand new system to distribute, and to sell, that will extend the ‘micro-sales’ trend. The main idea is to divide products in small portions and make them avaiable promoting a new level of exchange that points to a long-term relationship with customers. Except world’s economic situation, customers are increasingly favoring many small purchases rather than a big and expensive one. This formula is even more effective when customer is more involved in impulsive purchases wich will lead to immediate satisfaction.

Micro sales will determine Apple victory over mobile carriers and software developers for revenues sharing: Apple in fact claim the 30% of every sale.

We’ll wait for this summer, when iphone’s firmware 3.0 wil be avaiable, to verify the effectiveness of Cupertino’s strategy.

credit: last100

Call to action. A new breed of (mobile) advertising

A brand new category of advertising is born, and promises big revenues within a few years. ‘Call to Action’ advertising is the result of the combination of mobile TV and the unique cellphone feature that allows instant response.

For the first time in advertising history, users has the ability to truly interact with advertisements. This new feature allows one to communicate with the advertiser while advertisment is playing, promoting the establishment of a dialogue between consumers and brands. People who just need some extra information, or want to report his personal feedback to the company, has just to press the ‘call to action’ button and a SMS text could be sent directly to their phones with the right answers at the right time. It’s quite amazing cuase finally marketers has new tools, the new media mobile, to really interact with customers and engage them in conversations.

Weinberger points out in ‘Cluetrain Manifesto’ how people seek conversations, and marketing has to evolve and ‘take a step back’, rejoining consumers and producers voices. The ‘ancient market’ formula is raising again, and when people decide to actually meet producers instead of their brand’s images, producers have to be ready to reply.

According to Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer for MultiMedia Intelligence: “However, the cell phone is inherently a superior portable communications platform. It allows the possibility for TV advertising outside the home as well as creating a new form of advertising, Call to Action advertising. Call to Action leverages the built in return channel of the handset to deliver advertising beyond the capabilities of the existing living room TV experience.” Recent Multimedia Intelligence reported Call to Action growth: it was virtually non-existent in 2007, but the specialty advertising market will grow to $419 million in worldwide advertising revenue by 2012.

Maybe next time that you receive an advertisement, instead of immediatly discard the message, you’ll decide to ‘answer the call’.

credit: marketingcharts

Mobile social networking will rise subscription revenues

According to ABI Research’s study on ‘Mobile Social Networking’, the use of social networks on mobile phones is increasing at a fast pace. By 2013 more than 140 million users will access to social networks on their mobile phones, generating more than $410 million in mobile subscription revenues.

These research’s big numbers are confirmed by other two recent studies: Juniper Research, in August 2007 estimated that the number of social networking users would rise worldwide to 600 million by 2012, while Pyramid Research, in February 2008 estimated that there would be 950 million users by 2012. It’s easy to observe how social networking is going to follow the ‘mobilizing trend’: the unstoppable force that’s driving information retrieval and application utilization ‘on the air’, as mobile communication adoption increase. This boost is based also on giant markets that are emerging worldwide, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

We belive that mobile communication will supply a great platform for the development of social networks, employing its unique ‘anytime, anywhere’ characteristics.

credit: emarketer

VSS forecasts a brighter future for alternative media

Veronis Suhler Stevenson has recently published the results of his research on the future of communication spending. According to the New York based firm, total communication spending will expand in next years, despite economy and traditional ad declines.

U.S Communications spending will growth from 876.29 billion in 2007, to 1,183.37 in 2012. This result, challenging economy and consumer media usage decline, will be driven by strong gains in alternative advertising, marketing and institutional spending. Communication spending will increase 8.6%, meanwhile marketing services will increase of about 5.8%. The research also report how communication spending will shift from traditional media to alternative vehicles. Fragmenation, advanced technology and mobile-metrics will drive the main change, carring budgets from traditional media to digital advertising and marketing channles. Nothing ‘out of the ordinary’ for next few years, but another confirmation that media scene is shifting to the ‘digital side’, progressively adopting new technologies and developing alternative marketing campaigns.

Numbers are supporting mobile media: it’s time to go ‘on the air’.
The next big thing will be to get the train in time, before it is already gone.

credit: Marketing Charts

Vogue lowers ads presence (and bets on viral)

September issues of fashion and style magazines are getting thinner. Compared to a year ago fashion magazines are losing from 3% to 18% of ad pages this fall. The Vogue viral case.

Till 2008 sixteen of the top style and beauty magazines issues were fed up with massive amount of glossy, well-paid, ads. Vogue was last year’s biggest with 725 ads pages and 4.9 pounds in September, but this year is a different story. Vogue is a great example of how decreasing ad spends are getting magazines on a diet: the all-important September issue has ‘only’ 674 pages of ads, 7% less than last year. It’s a global tendency that’s affecting many middle-market clothing and cosmetics firms that are paring back ad pages as a colling economy quiet their cash registers and as Internet opportunities allow more valuable shift spending. At this moment marketing executives facing 2009 aren’t optimistic about a turnaround in the number of advertising pages. Prices for one full-page ad can climb to $120,000, an amount that can discourage investors and that can hard-hit magazines for every missing page.

If magazines aim to acquire more attention from marketers, they nedd some fresh new ideas to prove to be still on track. Vogue Italia has taken the challenge: and won brilliantly. The editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, Franca Sozzani, decide to rock the boat, taking her risks, in a controversial way. She decided to create the July issue of the magazine featuring all black models, igniting a worldwide conversation. Let the numbers speak: the July issue of Vogue Italia is probably the most requested magazine in recent times, with 30,000 reprints in the US, 10,000 i the UK and 20,000 extra in Italy. Viral success cames from the use of Internet and social networs (as Facebook) to amplify a conversation about an issue, inspired by conversations surrounding Obama’s candidacy, that really engage people. At a time when magazine circulation is shrinking and ads sales are declining, Vogue showed how a great, and most important, engaging idea can turn upside-down market tendencies.

Maybe fashion magazines are losing some their  well-paid ad pages, Internet is gainig attention day-by-day. Challenge is up and, at least for now, the ‘engaging idea’ is winning.

credit: Wall Street Journal

Anytime, anywhere (watching you): the iPhone privacy issue

We have always looked at the bright side of the coin, when mobile comes to play it instantly became synonymous of endless possibilities through constant connection, anytime anywhere.

With these brand new characteristics, mobile media allows users to do a lot of activities ‘on the air’ as communicate with their friends, receive news on the go and spend some time watching videos. Marketing specialists is  adopting the new, outstanding, ‘tool’ as soon as possible, developing services that meets users needs. In the research of the perfect application most developers has started to use customer’s pesonal information to deliver a service shaped by his interests, his anagraphical references and his location. That’s a complete new way to begin a relationship with customers that leads to amazing possibilities on one hand, and to privacy issues to the other.

Now is the case of Apple and its new iPhone. The most popular smartphone worldwide, that’s selling services for over $1 million/day, has some skeletons in the wardrobe. Rumors about the possibility of online remote control of the device by Apple, have been confirmed (by Steve Jobs personally). Appealing to the purpose of a security (and hidden) service to secure users data: ‘an application that had to be used only in emergency cases, like the spawning of a virus inadvertentily distributed through the App Store’. Seems the old story that we heared some years ago with Microsoft’s Word, or recent rumors about Facebook using our data to make accurate marketing statistics and databases. Privacy is becoming day-by-day more important and customer information has never been so valuable. At that time, when mobile media is still evolving, and both customers and companies are evaluating its exclusive characteristics, users information play a center role.

Maybe it’s not important if we decide to ’sell’ our information for better services, or if we decide to keep our ’secret garden’ for oursevels. It’s more important to being aware of what we’re doing.

credit: CorriereDellaSera

ShotCode: shoot, click, connect

Finally a real application taht uses your cameraphone (smartly). The OP3 has developed a brand new application that allows, with their own words, ‘to make the world clickable’.

ShotCode is a graphical-encoded internet address that refers exclusively to one website, basically allowing direct access to web content on your mobile. Originally developed at Cambridge University (UK) , called SpotCode, it became quickly the ‘benchmark’ of interactive marketing. User has just to download a tiny application to their mobile phones (already compatible with more than 350 different devices), and they’re redy to interact with the phisic world. Representing the realization of interactive marketing, ShotCode allows customers to choose what their prefer from ‘traditional’ media communication, and ask for more.

Potential is enormous: from the requests of more information, to the actual purchase of a product, just few clicks away, anywhere, anytime. Mobile is showing brand new possibilities, and most of the biggest brands (Nike, BBc, Volkswagen Italia) has already adopted this technology for promotional purpouses.

ShotCode Is definitely another proof that mobile marketing’s fundamentals are set. We just has to decide when start using it. Proficiently.

credit: shotcode

Mobile topping Japanese digital music sales

We had always known that Japanese mobile scenario is permanently a step forward. From the implemention of 3G networks , NttDoCoMo mobile services and dazzling phones, Japan is the fastest growing mobile market worldwide. Now it’s showing how far mobile distribution can go.
We’re speaking of mobile music.

Digital distribution is experiencing a huge growth due to mobile capabilities. For the first time mobile distribution is really competing with online distribution, showing big numbers. In Japan mobile music accounted for 92% of all digital music sales, according to RIA of Japan, with revenues of about $641 million. Is from the full-track downloads that’s coming the greatest news: 46% of full-track downloads revenues comes from mobile operations. This numbers are very important to evaluate the state of mobile evolution. If first ringtone was introduced just in 1998 (by Jipii Group), after only a decade mobile has added the possibility to download a real track, complete and high quality. Consumers seems to appreciate the effort, buying half of their digital music from mobile. More statisics is supporting mobile revenues success: the GReeeeN has alredy sold over 1 million full-track downloads of the single “Aiuta”; and Utada Hikaru has sold over7,2 milion digital units, from ringtones to ful-track, of “Flavor of Life”. Worldvide conditions of mobile development are widely different but Japanese experience is a good pointer to the future of other countries.

The Japanese simplicity, at both consumer and industry level, hit again.

credit: eMarketer

NBC bet on mobile for Beijing Olympics coverage

NBC Universal announced it would provide online, live coverage across 25 sports on NBCOlympics.com, for at least 2200 hours.
But the best is yet to come.

According to the american network, Beijing Olympics would be the most comprehensively covered event on a mobile platform. For that reason NBC will provide mobile access to news, video and text alerts. That’s not enought: considering the value of mobile entertainment, NBC sign an exclusive partnership with Microsoft for use of the ‘Silverlight 2′ technology, ensuring mobile video on-demand and mobile gaming. The decision to extending the coverage to mobile media is the direct consequence of marketers interest in 2008 Olympics: NBC has already sold 90% of ad time with more than $1 billion spent on ad inventory.
Use of mobile platform is becoming a must on Nbc network, in fact in 2006 it already developed a mobile website for ‘Torino Winter Oplympics’.

As space on traditional media runs out and networks discover more services via mobile, we’ll certainly see a progressive adoption of this new media.

credit: mediabuyerplanner

Two words (literally) with Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson in ‘The Long tail’ has pointed out how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to millions of niches, due to the rise of digital distribution (finally freed from small shelves capacity). In his next book he’s going to show us how companies get rich by charging nothing, and every month (as editor in chief) writes on Wired about newest technology, innovation and culture.
Today we’ve asked him a few questions about his relation with mobile media, and the possible impact of mobile technology on the Long Tail.
Here’s the questions and relative answers:

1- Many times you stated to be online 24h a day. Your list of gadgets includes many devices that can connect to the Internet wirelessly (Pda, Tablet PC). How much did the wireless experience change your behavior ?

In all the obvious ways, involving where I work (everywhere) and when (anytime).

2- On ‘The Long Tail’ you focused on how new digital distribution techniques are shifting our culture and economy from mass markets to million of niches. Do you think that the introduction of the mobile media, as media of the niches, will have great impact on this shifting?

Perhaps to the extent that it extends out to the physical world: the Long Tail of places combined with the Long Tail of time (Example:GPS + web connectivity means that places and the record of how people interacted with them are all available to anyone visiting)

3- First approaches to mobile marketing suggest that the right way to reach customers is to provide valuable information to them, such as special offers or ‘freemium content’. In this way companies can finally communicate directly with each single customer, who is becoming a sort of ‘niche of demand’. Do you think that this strategy will give more power to companies?

You could just as easily argue the reverse…

4- On the other hand consumers, with the introduction of mobile media, will have another ‘democratic’ media in hand. Will this have a positive impact on peer production? Will we see even more ‘creative commons’, or even completely free, projects?

…as you indeed did I lean toward this second one.

A brief insight of Anderson’s view on mobile media that allow us at least to state:
- mobile revolution is changing our habits about being connected, that is complaining with the statement ‘anytime, anywhere’.
- mobile technology, extending to the economics what is extending in the physical world, could have a great impact on the evolution of the Long Tail.
- at this time we can’t know for sure if mobile media will privilege companies or customers, but it’s certainly one of the greatest democratic media.

Mobile revolution has shown brand new challenges, now it’s just a matter of when and where we decide to face it.
Maybe, anytime anywhere.