Cricket and Fox Interactive Media Sign Mobile Content Distribution Agreement

Unlimited Wireless Pioneer To Bring Cricket Customers Array of Content from FIM’s Leading Web Brands

Cricket Communications, Inc, a leading provider of unlimited wireless services and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leap Wireless International, Inc. and Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corporation, today announced a content distribution agreement, which will enable Cricket customers to access FIM’s portfolio of leading sites.

“This is a significant milestone in Cricket’s efforts to form strategic relationships with industry leaders who can provide rich content and exciting applications to our customers,” said Doug Hutcheson, President and CEO of Leap. “Research shows that Cricket’s young and diverse customers are already heavy users of mobile content and applications, by providing them with a vehicle for expressing themselves in a mobile environment, their wireless handsets become much more than a simple phone. We look forward to working with Fox Interactive Media to bring their exciting portfolio to our customers and maximize the resulting business opportunities.”

“Our goal is to extend the reach of FIM’s leading Web brands across all platforms, and we’re already seeing tremendous demand for mobile access to our sites and content,” said Peter Levinsohn, President Fox Interactive Media. “By forging this relationship with Cricket, we’ve taken another important step in ensuring that consumers can enjoy our popular content and applications wherever they are and on whatever device they are using.”

mywaves Announces 2008 Second Quarter Growth and Surge in iPhone Usage

Up to 300,000 daily unique users watch free mobile video on mywaves; iPhone use grows 500% over the first quarter


mywaves, the largest mobile video destination for consumers, today announced that second quarter traffic to the mywaves mobile site grew by 25% over the first quarter. Now, up to 300,000 daily unique users visit m.mywaves.com, to access a broad choice of free, short-form video entertainment, watching up to 255 videos every minute. In addition to overall traffic growth, mywaves saw iPhone users increase in record numbers, 500% over the first quarter. Music, celebrity, comedy, and sports videos continue to be extremely popular with the mywaves global user base.

“It is clear from our growth and the popularity of videos from content partners including MTV, Sports Illustrated and Fox, that high quality, short-form professional entertainment is far more engaging for mobile consumers than the user-generated video anyone can find on the Web,” said Rajeev Raman, CEO and founder, mywaves. ”And when consumers can enjoy the video entertainment they want on a large, mobile screen like that of the iPhone’s, the experience is unmatched.”

mywaves offers the broadest choice of free mobile video for consumers. Leading content partners such as MTV, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, CBS, Fox, SpikeTV, VH1, and more have dedicated channels on mywaves. mywaves direct-to-consumer mobile Web site enables consumers to tune into video free of charge on more than 500 different mobile phone models in more than 100 countries.

mywaves attracts leading advertisers and content providers interested in using video entertainment to connect with the mobile consumer. Industry experts from eMarketer forecast that worldwide mobile marketing and advertising spending will reach $19 billion by 2012.

Limbo’s Social Community Exceeds 2 Million Members – Limbo Community Generates 44 Million Text Messages in June 2008

Limbo announced today that it has exceeded 2 million opted-in US members only six months after passing the one million mark. Limbo adds a new member with a registered US cell phone number every 12 seconds. This announcement comes shortly after Limbo's release of a new iPhone application that helps members more easily connect with their friends in the real world using their mobile phones.

Since 2005, Limbo has been expanding the mobile entertainment options for members though games, text message alerts and mobile community interaction. Limbo reaches over 5 million people each month through their mobile phones via text messages and mobile web. In June, Limbo members generated over 44 million messages, averaging over 1.5 messages per second.

"Limbo’s tremendous growth over the past six months is a direct result from our continued commitment to add mobile entertainment applications that add value for our members," says Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner. "Limbo members are actively engaged in the Limbo community and have strong relationships with other members and the products advertised.

"Over 30 percent of Limbo community members are active each month. Earlier this month, Limbo added location features to its social networking tools. The new features enable members to set what activity they’re doing, where they are, and who they're with, through mobile phone applications, text messages, Internet or mobile web.

Limbo also added a group messaging tool which allows members to send a text message to multiple friends who can then reply to the entire group, further enhancing the interaction of the community. Limbo's community is open to all members, regardless of carrier or mobile phone model.

"People are choosing Limbo as their mobile social network because of the variety of mobile tools offered, and the interactivity of the members," says Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner. "Limbo members are actively engaged. They invite their existing friends, make new ones, chat to one another, and do the things that make a social network come to life."

Agency Execs Tout Mobile ROI, Growing Budgets

by Mark Walsh

Citing case studies for household brands ranging from Vicks DayQuil to Tide, mobile experts gathered at an industry conference Monday said the medium is increasingly going mainstream and is proving more effective than traditional channels.

For marketers, "the key is to figure out 'what am I providing to the consumer that's useful' and they will follow you," said Vladimir Edelman, CEO of Ansible, Interpublic's mobile marketing agency, speaking on a panel spotlighting mobile success stories at the Interactive Advertising Board's Leadership Forum: Mobile seminar in New York.

Panelists stressed utility as an important feature of mobile campaigns, taking advantage of the cell phone's role as an always-on, on-the-go device. In that vein, Eric Bader, president and co-founder of mobile marketing firm Brand in Hand, highlighted a mobile campaign for Tide offering tips on how to treat certain stains. Another, on behalf of Pringles, featured a tool for creating a mobile shopping list.

Edelman pointed to an application Ansible created for Verizon in connection with the Tribeca Family Film Festival that allowed users to appear as movie or cartoon characters via green screen, with finished videos delivered to cell phones.

These types of interactive campaigns lead to higher engagement and higher return on investment for advertisers, according to panelists. "Interactions per dollar have been very competitive with other media," said Bader, noting that mobile campaigns still have far smaller budgets--typically far less than $1 million--than traditional marketing outlets.

Keynote speaker Maria Mandel, a senior partner and executive director of digital innovation at Ogilvy, cited average click-through rates of 2% for mobile banners compared to .20% for their counterparts on the PC-based Web. While acknowledging that click-through rates will likely decline as mobile advertising matures, Bader noted that marketers are gaining more confidence in the medium.

"What we're finding is that brands are all re-signing for programs because they've found audiences," Bader said. "For the dollars they're spending, it's worthwhile."

Panel moderator Julie Ask, a research director at JupiterResearch, noted that half of marketers surveyed by Jupiter say they are spending $50,000 or less on mobile campaigns. But Bader and others said they're increasingly seeing mobile budgets in the range of $250,000 to $750,000.

Ansible's Edelman said $50,000 was the minimum to be able to do "something interesting" with a mobile campaign.

Using mobile ad dollars to focus on Hispanic consumers was especially encouraged because that demographic is overrepresented among cell customers. Hispanic and African-American audiences index 30 to 50 times higher mobile users overall, said Jupiter's Ask.

Some 56% of English-speaking Hispanics with a wireless handheld device use a non-voice data or information application on the average day, according to a recent study of mobile use by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"You're making a big mistake if you're overlooking mobile activity among Hispanic audiences," Bader said. "They're great audiences to reach and getting very good interaction rates."

Underscoring the large Hispanic mobile presence, Edelman noted that Ansible launched a mobile companion site for BabyCenter en Espanol, the Spanish-language version of the parenting site, before an English-language one.

Admob Mobile Analytics Beta

(Posted by webanalytisbook.com after attending a Webinar by Admob)

The expected launch is within the in August 2008. Admob will be open to all mobile website owners for free and I could not hear anything about charging their users (following in the steps of Google Analytics).

The deployment of mobile analytics software is not comparable with web based analytics solutions. Admob has to be installed server side, but their team is planning to add a 1×1 Pixel tracking some time later (problem is the accuracy which comes with that).

Admob Tracking can be used also for full website.

Admob Analytics is not only used to provide data to mobile webmasters, but it will be used to optimize the advertising that is spent with Admob’s PPC platform.

Main functionalities that are offered:

Dashboard overview: Tracks Pageviews, Visits, Pageviews per Visit and Average Time spent. (Change data range posssible. Also Top5 Content URls, Top 5 Events (e.g. login attempt) and Top 5 Keywords are available. Additionally Pageview by source (organic, Referrals, search, advertising).

Visitors : Visitors on daily bases, BPagevieww, PVs/Visit, Bounce Rate and Average Time Spent. Segmentation with different sources possible (Advertising: Admob/Adwords, Search traffic, Direct, Referral, …or just all)

Engagement: Length of Visit, Depth of Visit, Loyalty, Visit Interval(=Numbers of Days since last visit.

Geo Stats: Shows traffic by Region (visits/pageviews/PV/visit. Segmentation down to country possible

Operators: List of operators that send traffic. Segmentation also available.

Device Details: Manufacturer, Model, Browser, Operating system, Markup Language, Screen resolution. Starts are sortable with different tabs (e.g. Models that create most page views).

Sources: Overview, Advertising, Referrals, Search Engines, Keywrors, Track Sources

Site Usage: Top Content, Page Titles, Entrance Pages, Exit pages

Events: Top 10 Events by Occurrences (custom build events = goals). Setting up events can be done within the system. Up to 25 events possible. All there has to be done is add a little piece of code in the URL.

Overall I am really impressed with the capabilities of Admob Analytics. I am sure they still have to figure out the fine tuning, but it looks very promising so far.

I also think it is really smart to put the user’s interests before financial interests (the product is free for anybody!).

After viewing the webinar, I am sure that Admob, which already has a strong brand and a lot of coverage from the tech media, will be the top runner for becoming “the”Mobile Analytics solution. Competitors like Amethon, Bango or Mobilytics need to improve their game in order to compete with Admob Analytics. This can be done by distinguishing themselves e.g by offering better functionalities (e.g. API) and/ or placing themselves as a high-end solution in the market place (kind of like Omniture does it in order to compete with Google Analytics).

Ericsson IPX First to Enable Launch of Services on Payforit in the UK

The Ericsson Internet Payment Exchange (IPX) WAP billing solution is the first mobile payment system to host a live payment service on T-Mobile and to meet the requirements of four other major mobile operators in the UK.

The Payforit scheme provides a safe, trustworthy environment for mobile content purchases. The “Trusted Mobile Payment Framework” rules define how merchants, accredited payment intermediaries and operators co-operate to make mobile payments a secure and seamless process. The framework will firstly deal with off-portal WAP session mobile payment mechanisms for mobile content.

Further to developing trust in mobile payment, Payforit aims at creating transparency and ease of use for consumers. A set of “screen style” rules govern how payment pages look and function, simplifying and securing how users purchase content via a standardized interface presented on their mobile phones.

Gavin Dent, Group Manager – Commercial Partners at T-Mobile UK, comments “We are excited at the huge opportunity Payforit represents in the mobile payments space. T-Mobile has now accredited several Payforit service providers including Ericsson IPX, who were the first on the T-Mobile network to launch a live Payforit service called wap.logogo.com”

Peter Garside, Regional Manager, Ericsson IPX, says, “We are proud to have established this early position with Payforit. We have launched similar WAP Billing services in 12 countries already and because of this, we were able to adapt our service to react quickly to UK network operator requirements.” This is another of Ericsson’s steps to secure a leading position in the growing sector of multimedia, content and payment solutions. Via IPX content providers are now connected to more that 650 million subscribers worldwide who can use their mobile subscriptions to pay for content.

In the Payforit scheme all payment pages are hosted by Accredited Payment Intermediaries (aggregators) and not the merchant; hence the payment mechanism and the merchant are separated. The payment intermediary will be responsible for being able to audit all transactions, therefore creating a secure, reliable payment mechanism, where content consumers feel reassured.

Americans Spend More Than 4.5 Hours per Month Browsing on Smartphones, Nearly Double the Rate of the British

Social networking and commerce draw consumers into the mobile Web

Social networking and Internet commerce are compelling smartphone users to spend an average of four hours and thirty-eight minutes per month browsing the mobile Web in the United States and two and a half hours per month in Britain, reports M:Metrics, the mobile media authority.

According to March data from the measurement firm’s metered smartphone panel, active mobile Web users in the United States spent an average of one hour and thirty-nine minutes in the month browsing Craigslist on their smartphone, the longest duration of any site among the top twenty domains visited. In the United Kingdom, Facebook commanded the most time spent browsing in the month, with visitors dedicating an average of one hour and forty-five minutes using the site, which is also drawing in users in America. There, Facebook ranks fourth in terms of time spent browsing, after eBay and MySpace, with Disney’s Go.com rounding out the top five. In the UK, the remaining top sites by browsing time are the mobile operator 3’s portal, Sky TV, Microsoft’s Live and BBC.

“People are becoming increasingly engaged in the mobile medium,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Among smartphone users in the United States, mobile browsing has increased 89 percent year over year, and pageviews have increased 127 percent. Consumption is quickly evolving from brief transactions, such as checking the weather or flight status, to time-intensive interaction with mobile Web sites—even without an iPhone.”

“A primary factor in the discrepancy in the duration of time spent browsing between British and American smartphone users is the relative popularity of flat-rate data plans in the United States, where 10.9 percent of users have an unlimited data plan versus only 2.3 percent in Britain,” commented Paul Goode, senior analyst, M:Metrics from the firm’s London bureau. “Other factors to consider are the popularity of devices with QWERTY keyboards in the United States—where nine of the ten top smartphones are QWERTY, while the inverse in true in the UK—and the greater penetration of smartphones in the British market.”

Even so, mobile social networking sites are running up the meters in the United Kingdom. Each day they visited the site, Facebook users spent an average of about 19 minutes, compared to an average of 15 minutes for Microsoft Live visitors, 10 minutes for mobile operator 3’s portal visitors, 14 minutes for Sky TV and nine minutes for BBC visitors.

In the United States, on the days they visited each site, consumers spent an average of 22 minutes on Craigslist, 29 minutes on eBay, 16 minutes on MySpace, 14 minutes on Facebook and 18 minutes on Go.com.

This data is derived from actual user behaviors among those with Windows, Symbian and Palm handsets. M:Metrics uses sophisticated on-device metering technologies to capture the mobile browsing and messaging activities among its panel of 3,500 smartphone users in the United States and the United Kingdom. M:Metrics’ MeterDirect is the world’s first syndicated research service reporting mobile media consumption using mechanical measures and was launched in March 2007.

M:Metrics applies trusted media measurement methodologies to assess the audience for mobile content and applications. As the world’s most authoritative mobile media measurement firm, M:Metrics delivers the most accurate mobile market metrics through the world’s largest monthly survey of mobile subscribers as well as automated data collection methodologies.