Does The Mobile TV Market Need A Makeover?

Does The Mobile TV Market Need A Makeover?

by Amy Vale

Mobile TV is a hot topic right now. It isn’t hot because it’s something new in the marketplace; it’s hot because it poses a unique opportunity to reach consumers where they are at any moment. But is it reaching its full potential? Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicted that the number of people viewing mobile TV in the U.S. will grow to 52.5 million in 2015, a significant boost from 17.6 million in 2010. Mobile-TV ad spending in the U.S. will grow to $1.4 billion in 2015 from $370 million last year. It’s clear that Smartphones and tablets are, and will continue to be, the catalyst for new innovation and growth with mobile TV.

However, despite the exponential growth of mobile across a wide range of industries in recent years, fewer than 25 million Americans watch video on mobile devices today, according to IE Market Research Corp. For broadcasters and networks, mobile TV presents a great opportunity to reach consumers who want to access television content on multiple platforms.

As I’m sure you know, mobile TV refers to television watched on a mobile device. It can be a pay-TV service broadcast on mobile phone networks, received free-to-air from regular broadcast or a special mobile TV transmission format. Some can also download TV shows from the Internet, including recorded programs and podcasts which are then downloaded and stored on the mobile device.

According to the Harvard Business Review, the growing adoption of Smartphones allowed users to watch as much mobile video in three days of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics as they watched throughout the entire 2008 Beijing Olympics- an increase of 564%. As of January 2012, 120 stations around the United States are broadcasting using Mobile DTV. These numbers paint a very clear picture. Mobile isn’t disruptive to the traditional TV market; it’s additive and can extend the reach of a TV campaign to places and times where users would otherwise not have access to it.

A few years ago most people believed that Mobile TV was going to keep growing exponentially. According to a Report Linker study, in 2008 the general consensus was that the mobile TV market was going to grow at a rapid rate with a staggering 50-55% CAGR. By the end of 2008 there were around 75 million estimated users in the mobile TV market and 45% of them were reported to be South Koreans or Japanese.  Over the past year, however, critics have revealed that Mobile TV isn’t growing as fast as they would hope and needs a significant overhaul if it is to stick around and be truly successful.

We cannot reinforce enough the importance of the user experience and handset style for the success of mobile TV. This is one of the major challenges. Power consumption and memory of mobile devices itself are two critical issues.  Reports are saying that current memory capabilities available are not suited to long hours of mobile TV viewing. Many operators are offering mobile TV services, using 3G streaming, but these are constrained by lack of coverage, relatively poor quality of service and 3G capacity limitations. Another issue is that a large number of mobile phones do not support mobile TV due to the actual interface and users may have to purchase new handsets with improved wider LCD display and user interface that support Mobile TV.

The Mobile TV industry requires content specifically tailored for watching television on your mobile device. People need to realize that watching television on your phone is a completely different experience than watching it on an actual television. There is a need for more mobisodes, that is mobile episodes which are shorter (3 to 5 minutes), modifying the content to suit mobile TV.

There are two mobile TV trends to keep an eye out for in 2012. The first is “TV everywhere,” which is the idea of getting a library of TV content to users across multiple screens. And the second is using mobile as a second-screen experience – users watch content on a primary TV and tap into their mobile for an additional experience. If you look at highly-rated television events like the Super Bowl and Olympics, brands should be looking to mobile to complement their TV campaigns. Mobile doesn’t have to take eyeballs away from these TV campaigns; it can be a smart, engaging and “secondary” way to reach those TV viewers. But, this is where broadcasters and networks still have a long way to go in how they perceive mobile. Once they see it as an “additional” tool in their marketing wheelhouse, it’ll be interesting to see what types of innovation and creativity will occur.

Finally, we cannot continue this conversation without considering mobile measurement. We know consumers want to, and do, watch content on their mobile devices and tablets. But do they prefer 30 or 60 second advertisements? Do they typically watch mobile content in their homes, or while outside the home? Do users prefer and recall shorter clips better than longer advertisements? Understanding these factors and identifying where mobile TV is working, and where additional improvements need to be made, will be crucial in mobile TV forward over the next few years. It will also give television broadcasters and networks a sense of “comfort” that mobile doesn’t have to compete, or take eyeballs away from their TV campaigns. It’s additive and should be tapped into if they want to see their advertising revenue rise exponentially.

A Week of Product Launches, Mobile Workshops and Media Buzz

by Amy Vale


The past week at Mocean Mobile has been filled with many events and happenings. We kicked off with the launch of our new ad-network ready ad serving platform – MAST for Ad Networks. The launch has been met with some really positive feedback from our customers. In an interview with MediaPost last week, our CEO David Gwozdz elaborated on the “why” behind this new ad serving product. Simply put, we recognized there was an incredible need in the industry to help ad networks monetize the millions, if not billions, of ad requests they receive each month. If you look at how the mobile proportion of global Internet traffic last year doubled to 10%, with that share expected to grow even more, the timing of launching MAST for Ad Networks couldn’t be better.

At the same time, our San Francisco-based General Manager, Tony Nethercutt, headed east to lead a publisher workshop at this year’s MMA Mobile Forum in New York City. The three-hour intensive session delved into the key components of what it takes to bring a revenue-based mobile property to market and how to effectively sell media space. And to keep the monetization conversation going, Tony authored an article in MMA’s SmartBrief, comparing and contrasting the unique monetization opportunities presented by mobile sites and mobile apps. If you missed this event, you can watch Tony Nethercutt and his fellow panelists here.

To cap off the week of excitement at Mocean Mobile, Business Insider bestowed a great honor on our CEO, David Gwozdz. No stranger to digital and mobile innovation, David is now seen in the industry as “one of the 18 most important people in mobile advertising.” We are incredibly proud of this accomplishment and see an even brighter future for Mocean Mobile and the entire team behind it. What’s most interesting to note in this article is the déjà vu feeling of how mobile today feels a lot like the web ad space did back in 1997. Mobile is everywhere, but there is still a great deal of “unknown” that needs to be answered before we will see mobile advertising achieve its true potential. With Dave Gwozdz at the helm and one of the most talented technology and product teams in mobile, we’re definitely tackling those “unknowns” head on to help our clients, current and future.

5 Important Mobile Targeting Parameters To Understand

by Amy Vale

Mobile is everywhere, everyday. It’s fast becoming the primary source of engagement for users with brands. comScore reports that 101.3 million U.S. mobile phone subscribers are using Smartphones, which is up from 97.9 million in the previous period. When you look at the increasing number of downloaded applications (48.6 percent of subscribers), browsers (48.5 percent), access to social networking sites and blogs (35.7 percent) and game-playing (31.8 percent), it’s clear that how brands and publishers target mobile users can result in greater user engagement and greater control over their campaigns. But knowing you want to engage users via mobile isn’t enough. Recognizing and understanding the unique capabilities of mobile is vital to a successful mobile campaign. We’d like to outline 5 “hot” tips for mobile targeting that should be considered in any mobile advertising campaign.

Day-Parting

Just as with other mediums (e.g. online, TV, radio), mobile advertising poses an opportunity to segment your advertisements by time of day. Depending on the type of promotion, offer, or service that a brand would like to put in front of its audience, day-parting can be an effective tool in driving clicks and conversions at specific times of the day. For instance, targeting young executives between the hours of 12:00 pm and 3:00 pm with mobile ads for lunch foods/products is a good example of day-parting. And as always, look at your analytics to see what times of the day your brand, product or service is generating the most traffic, and determine what ads and audience to target at those times.

Geo-Location

Just as time of day can determine your mobile campaign’s effectiveness, so can the location of where your users are, and where they’re going. Geo-targeting creates a “real-time” opportunity to deliver ads that are geographically relevant to users, depending on where they are at any given moment. As you know, we as consumers tend to be driven by “spur of the moment” impulses, especially when it comes to purchases. Using mobile coupons, businesses can further cement their customer loyalty and “hook” purchases, both online and offline. This form of targeted mobile advertising allows brands to only reach consumers in the area where businesses are located, thereby creating new revenue opportunities for any business looking to increase brand awareness and sales in any DMA, city or state.

Contextual Keywords

Context is king. According to eMarketer, contextual targeting is so smart and effective that it’s outperforming online display ads. So what’s the reason for these increased click-through rates? By placing a mobile ad within relevant content on a mobile website or application, the ad then becomes more engaging to users. That’s a win-win for both users and brands/publishers.

 

Device Type

In addition to location, time of day and keywords, it’s important to understand the varying types of mobile devices being used by consumers, whether it be iPhone, the myriad of Android powered devices or the range of tablets now on the market. The important learning here is that most mobile devices attract different types of demographics. Understanding the demographic of the users of a specific device or device type will allow you to include or exclude the users of that device seeing your ads. That’s a powerful tool to keep in your arsenal.

Device Feature

One of the biggest advantages of mobile as an advertising medium is the features available on Smartphones and tablets, such as accelerometers, cameras, longitude/latitude, GPS, payments, group messaging (BBM/iMessage) and screen capture. All of these features can result in greater engagement in a number of ways, including an increase in impressions, videos viewed, apps downloaded, social influence, among other key performance indicators.

Mobile Monetization – Are We There Yet?

by Amy Vale

Mobile advertising campaigns don’t hold value for publishers, developers and app stores unless they are tied to monetization. Monetization is why our customers value and use Mocean Mobile to serve up and deliver millions, if not billions, of ad impressions each month. It’s what translates to increased revenue and bottom-line growth.

It was also the subject of a comprehensive 100+-slide presentation last week on 2012 Internet & Mobile Trends at D10 by Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. There are 1.1 billion mobile 3G subscribers worldwide, which marks a 37% growth year over year but is only 18% penetration. That’s compared to 2.3 billion global Internet users, with growth of just 8 percent from last year.

The former Wall Street analyst revealed that mobile e-commerce represented 8 percent of the total e-commerce market in the U.S. Plus, payments for and within applications today account for 71 percent of revenue versus 29 percent for mobile advertising. Above all, she pointed to an obvious and clear gap between time spent on mobile (10%) versus mobile ad spend (1%) in the U.S. So what does all of this mean for mobile monetization? In what some might call a “light at the end of the tunnel,” there’s a genuine opportunity for content publishing companies to see their average revenue per mobile user surpass those on the desktop over the next three to five years. Whether it’s by serving ads based on “where” users are located, “what” they are searching for, or “when” they are searching, the future of mobile monetization is looking bright.