Informa Mobile Internet Portal Strategies Seminar

I attended the Informa Mobile Internet Portal Strategies event in London last week. I was asked to be a panellist on a round table session, the topic being “what are the right monetisation models for a thriving mobile internet economy?”

The panel enlisted a good mix of people with varied experiences of, and roles in, the mobile domain. Glyn Povah from O2, Joe Braman of Turner Broadcasting and Miles Ross from IPC Media.

The discussion gave a useful insight into experiences and view points around the current mobile internet charging structures.

The session opened with a discussion on what charging models were working well in mobile. Premium SMS has been extremely effective for ringtones and wallpapers. Content charging for converged services such as music in the operator portals has driven growth by a single bill charging model. Billing services i.e. PayForIt have made it simpler for content owners to charge cross operator. Ad funded models have started to gather meaningful and useful numbers for analysis. These will be rolled out later this year to the wider audience.

It was proposed by the Chair, that the future growth of mobile internet usage would require flat rate data charging, mass market. For me this is a yes and no answer. Whilst I agree that flat rate charging is helping to overcome certain user barriers to mobile internet usage, there is still some work needed to convert the masses. In essence, users are being charged twice for content, Firstly, to cover the cost to connect to the mobile internet. Secondly, the cost of the content. In the mobile advertising space, brands and advertisers have looked at charging models where the data traffic has been funded by the brand as part of the campaign (AKA wholesale data). Aces Royal did exactly this and received high response rates to their campaign.

It was notable that all parties acknowledged the importance of advertising funded models. It is well known that operators are trialling multimedia services like music, video and games with a closed user group to determine their appetite to receive mobile adverts. Unofficial results suggest mobile banner click through rates of >10%, with >55% repeat usage. It was agreed that the most probable model would be for part funded content as opposed to free.

The Chair specifically mentioned the high use of Bluetooth amongst 14-24 year olds as the mechanism to send and receive content. This threatened the operator and content owners business models it was argued. I offered the opinion that brands and agencies use Bluetooth as part of an integrated campaign to spread brand awareness. Events prove worthy places to push exclusive or teasers mobile content clips. This helps drive loyalty to specific portals where uptake and repeat usage are often observed.

The final discussion talked about the operator role and the value they can unlock to the mobile ecosystem going forward. The panellist list can be summarised as;

- Operator CRM API to allow trusted 3^rd parties to query user details. This would aid contextual and relevance in serving content and advertising to users.

- Trusted billing mechanism integrated with all operators. Transparent commercial model with revenue share possibilities.

- Wholesale data tariffs with unlimited usage for a fixed price.

- Extensive developer API’s to query e.g. device recognition services, access to the mobile phone number etc.

- Greater recommendation and personalisation services.