Communities Dominate Brands

From Adsense to Flirt-Words; Virtual ice cubes that melt on arrival: Flirtomatic!

We love Flirtomatic here at this blog and have chronicled its rise and rise and rise since its launch in 2006. Flirtomatic's CEO Mark Curtis is a close friend of ours and has been remarkably generous in sharing detailed information about the service. I discussed the melting ice cubes two weeks ago at my mobile-specific blog www.7thmassmedia.com but they have again innovated and also picked up some recognition. So its time to do a bigger review of perhaps the most innovative social networking service of them all, Flirtomatic.

FLIRTOMATIC IS NOT

Lets start by what it is not. You might think its a dating service. It is not. There is an 18 year age limit and some of the often-mentioned (and seen) graphics from Flirtomatic included the girl swirling the bra, and the "virtual boob job", so its easy to think Flirtomatic is sleazy sexy nudity. It is not. The content guidelines for Flirtomatic say that the user-generated content must be of the kind, that the BBC would be willing to broadcast the content over the air. All messages and pictures are monitored by real live people and when members approach or cross the line, they are gently advised of the guidelines. The members greatly appreciate it. Flirtomatic is not a place for sick, perverted "dirty-old-men" (like me, ha-ha).

So its not dating and its not porn, what is it then? Its a fun flirting service for adults. Mostly young adults. A social networking service for that age who hang around in the clubs, pubs and discos. Who are perhaps a bit tipsy and drunk, wanting to flirt a bit, not really looking for anything serious. Twitter but with the fun added. In fact, Mark Curtis said that Flirtomatic members "buy extra fun from us" that is what they do.

BIG GROWTH

Ok, weird experiment in social networking? Lets look at the numbers. Today Flirtomatic has over a million users and has spread from the UK to Germany and USA. It is available on the PC and on mobile, but far more than half of users are currently on mobile. What does it cost? Nothing. Even on mobile, Flirtomatic abandoned its subscription fee as "unnecessary" in 2007 as we reported here at Communities Dominate.

To sign up its that simple that you only need a minimum of two details and you can be up and flirting. Yes, there are profiles you can fill out (later) if you want, but Flirtomatic understands that users especially on mobile are in a hurry and don't want to go through many clicks and pages of forms to sign up to something. Its as near-instant as possible.

So how do they make their money, it has to be advertising then, eh? Banner ads? Well, yes, Flirtomatic does have advertising also, but their ad revenues are a small minority of total revenues. So small that they really would not suffer if ads disappeared. (What? no subscriptions and negligable advertiser revenues? What kind of voodoo magic financing is this based upon?). Flirtomatic is the most creative developer of real money-making opportunities from their user base, that are possible in a virtual world.

MOBILE, THE MAGICAL MONEY-MAKING MACHINE

Personalizing for premium cost. You can have your basic character and customize it, post your picture etc. But if you want to customize your character and be a bit special - and who doesn't want to be a bit special - then yes, customization. Flirtomatic created their virtual money system, flirt points. And they started off by accepting premium SMS based payments to buy flirt points. Today they accept a wide range of payments including credit cards, paypal, direct debit, and yes, mobile premium SMS payment. Obviously this was not invented by Flirtomatic, it is a direct adaptation of the idea first launched by Habbo Hotel. But its one way to make money. Latest ideas of this concept include yes, boob jobs and tummy tucks at one UK pound each. They sold 10,000 virtual boob jobs for last summer (and bear in mind, its only visible in bikini, there is no nudity..)

Then they decided to add gifting. Virtual gifts. Again, this is not an invention of Flirtomatic, it is an adaptation of the stunningly popular virtual gifts first invented by South Korea's Cyworld. The first famous Flirtomatic virtual gift was the virtual red rose, which back in 2007 (when they only had 400,000 users) sold 3.5 million units at about 23 UK pence a piece and generated 800,000 UK pounds (1.4 million dollars) in revenues. That is what I mean. Flirtomatic was proving that mobile was indeed a magical money-making machine. Not everyone of their members needed to buy these premium gifts, but as some did, the others saw them, and more bought them, and rapidly Flirtomatic made tons of money. Since then they've done wonderful stuff in the virtual gifts space, such as the sprinkled red rose and then the innovation of real world gifts sent to virtual friends (a true invention) when they launched  a set of real world gifts for Valentines's day this year. Now they carry a big inventory of real gifts you can send to your flirting partner(s). Latest in this space is the gift of the virtual ice cube, that melts upon arrival.

MELTING ON ARRIVAL?

What? What good is a virtual ice cube? You see it in the phone screen, you can't drop it into your drink. And then it melts on arrival? Who in their right mind pays to send such a gift? Not in their right mind, remember, the Flirtomatic users buy more fun from Flirtomatic. They may be a bit drunk when flirting. Ice cubes can mean many things from cooling a drink to sensual sexual fun. An ice cube is fun. You are flirting, you may be in a pub or bar. Your friend may be stuck in a meeting that is running late and is getting upset at the boss who wont' let them leave (send an ice cube! Show you care). Then your friend is in the train that is crowded and hot (send another ice cube). Your friend finally arives, orders a drink - you see her, you wink, she orders her drink, drowns it fast, and with the phone hidden behind your back, you send another ice cube.. its fun. Did it sell? They sold 5,000 melting ice cubes in the first week.

Its not just selling such gifts to the Flirtomatic members, they also can turn these into sponsored content, so its a form of advertising. Not a boring banner ad, but a sponsored "big wet kiss" for example by L'Oreal or a sponsored virtual drink like a glass of champagne or a beer. Again, Flirtomatic is blending the line between reality and virtuality, they had for example a gift of a sponsored real glass of Guinness beer, redeemable at authorized Guinness pubs. Not virtual beer but real beer from your virtual friend. Who would NOT want to give this gift to a friend? See how Flirtomatic delivers more fun to its users?

EGO SERVICES

But the really funky part of where Flirtomatic has truly shown the way for the 10 billion dollar social networking industry worldwide (over 2/3 of the revenues is generated on the mobile side, obviously, most of the Facebooks and YouTubes and Twitters are very poor at generating revenues while mobile social networking is usually very lucrative), is with what Mark Curtis labeled as "ego services". Paid premium services that deal with the users' ego. For example your ratings. All Flirtomatic members can rate each other so you get 5 stars or 3 stars or perhaps you get 1 star. Nobody wants bad scores, and it is typical of human relationships that sometimes there is unfair play, perhaps "revenge" etc. So you have mostly great scores and the one 1 star review spoiling your record. Wouldn't you want to be able to just eliminate that bad score? With Flirtomatic you can. They call it "delete your freak". But obviously you need to pay (I wish I could delete one freaky review of one of my books on Amazon ha-ha).

This also is a class of services, there are many. Another is to pay to reveal who gave you that score, whether particularly good score (really loves me) or particlarly bad score. But pay to reveal. Yes. Ego-services, a true innovation by Flirtomatic.

AUCTIONED USER ADS

And they keep on and on. So while yes, there are banner ads on Flirtomatic and yes, traditional brands as advertisers; and Flirtomatic has also pioneered virtual branded gifting; the most amazing part is how they've brought auctioned ads to the service. They started with the First Face. If you want to be the first picture all Flirtomatic users see when they log into the service, that is easy to do. Bid on it. outbid the others, and you are the First Face for the next 6 hours. You'll definitely gain new friends in the next 6 hours, fastest fingers first...

Now they've just today announced Flirt-Words, a variant on adsense type of auctioned words, rented for the next 24 hours to the member who bids the most. Want to own "cool" or "sexy" or "fun" for the next day, when Flirtomatic members search the service? If you win the bid, you get it and be prepared for incoming messages from new friends.

GRAND PRIX OF NEW MEDIA AWARDS

We love Flirtomatic. It is the most fun side of our thesis that communities dominate, and we really do appreciate it, that Flirtomatic keeps validating that you can make money on social networking (primarily on the mobile side, obviously). Last week the New Media Age, a UK publication focusing on digital media but with a strong history and focus on the internet side, had its annual awards. Flirtomatic was not only the mobile winner, but given the Grand Prix top prize of the gala event. I wish I could have been there but we joined very warmly celebrating with Flirtomatic via Twitter and Forum Oxford and now here at the CDB blog. Congratulations to all at Flirtomatic.

Now, several really important additional comments. First, Mark Curtis is of course also an author, his book Distraction: being Human in a Digital Age is very VERY warmly recommended. Its in paperback, if you want something great to read this summer, pick it up. If you like our blog, you will love the book.

Then Fjord. Mark Curtis is a founder and board member of Fjord, the digital design agency specializing in digital convergence, between mobile, web and media. Truly a world-class talent, Fjord is used by the BBC, Nokia, Yahoo, T-Mobile, etc. And yes, Fjord designed Flirtomatic originally. Certainly its own staff have evolved Flirtomatic very far, but please, in your mind, go back to 2005-2006. Four years ago, who was promising new ways to make money on social networking? on a converged service? Who was even offering mobile social networking back then, apart from some unfamiliar names from Japan and South Korea.

Yet back then, long before Twitter, when Facebook and YouTube were not known, some UK digital agency named Fjord, conceived of Flirtomatic. If you today need help with gaining success in this difficult digital convergence space that includes mobile, then please consider Fjord. They have expanded past the UK with offices in Germany, Finland and USA. They are truly world-class.

And lastly, if you want to read more about Flirtomatic and also those other services I mentioned like Habbo Hotel and Cyworld, then I am most proud that Mark Curtis wrote the foreword to my latest, my 9th book, Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking. You can read many sample pages of the 171 page eBook, that has 50 case studies of success in mobile social networking, at this page: Tomi's Pearls Vol 2.

(Rant) Deeply Disappointed in CNN: is now Celebrity News Network: Shame!

(Yeah, this is a rant.) I'm a news junkie. Ever since I moved from my native Finland to the USA to study at the university for my undergraduate degree, I discovered US based cable TV in 1983, and the two channels I fell in love with were CNN and MTV (in that order). Ever since, I've insisted every home I ever had, to have cable TV and both a 24h news channel and a 24h music video channel. Here in Hong Kong out of 24 hour news channels, I get CNN Headline News (US feed), CNN international, BBC World News, Sky News, CNBC, Bloomberg, Euronews, and Al Jazeera English. I even get the Fake News Network (aka Fox News). My preference has always been to follow CNN International.

So Michael Jackson died on 25th of June. I mean no disrespect to Michael Jackson and his fans. He was indeed a pop icon, sold 750 million records, and his album Thriller is the best-selling music album of all time. He was on the charts over a period spanning 4 decades; he was truly one of the greats of the music industry of all time, up there with Elvis, the Beatles, Sinatra, Edith Piaff etc.

And I personally truly did like his music all over the years, with songs such as Dont' Stop (Till You've Had Enough), Billie Jean, Bad, Smooth Criminal and Scream having been among my fave songs of their time(s) and I've danced to just about every Michael Jackson song he ever released. Regular readers know I'm not really a pop music fan, my tastes go to the much more hard-edged dance music in hip-hop and rap, but I always thought that Michael's use of Vincent Price to do the rap on Thriller (and it works far better on the album version than the music video, to my taste) was pure genius.

And its not just Michael. I've enjoyed the dance tunes from all the Jacksons, and his sister, Janet more than Michael even, due to her music having more of an edge due to the production by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis; and even Michael Jackson's collaborations from the duets like Say Say Say with Paul McCartney to the background vocals Michael sang to Rockwell's under-appreciated song Somebody's Watching Me.

So please Michael Jackson fans, do not crucify me as being somehow "anti-Michael Jackson" with this rant. I honestly do like most of his music, some of his big hits have been among my all-time fave songs.

CELEBRTIY NEWS NETWORK

So it is the evening of the 1st of July here in Hong Kong today. I am watching CNN International and CNN Headline News. A moment ago, the top story on CNN Headline News was Michael Jackson. On CNN International Michael Jackson was the third story. Its been six days since Michael Jackson died !  Yes, we do understand that there is family who mourn him, yes. And yes, we do understand that there are tens of thousands of fans who mourn him. But now to explore gossip about how he may have died and what might be on the will etc, that is gossip about a dead celebrity. It is beneath a "24 hour news" channel to devote 6 days of continuous headline coverage, and being the main story on the network - even usually very competent Anderson Cooper 360 degree has been diminshed to Anderson Cooper AC1, its been only Michael Jackson - still this morning MJ was the main story for AC-1. Shame!

WORLD NEWS

So lets start with the world. Maybe its been a slow news cycle and international news could be forgiven to devote extra time on the big pop star and global celebrity who passed away (last week). Maybe not much is going on in the world. Lets examine the evidence, shall we.

There was another death as well. I'm not talking of other celebrities like Farrah Fawcett Majors the former Charlie's Angel. I mean ordinary people. An airplane crashed into the Indian Ocean. Jemen Airlines went down and 153 died (and miraculously a 14 year old girl survived). I would think these 153 international deaths would warrant some more attention than the follow-up gossip of one dead celebrity from last week.

Oh, you want death? Iraq reports deaths every day. 35 died in a car bombing in Kirkuk today. Are these Iraqis not worthy of remembering? A freight train killed 17 in Italy. 

Then there are non-death but "important" news from the world. Like July 1 being the day that US troops withdraw to bases, out of the cities of Iraq. This was one of the deciding issues of the past US presidential election. Is a dead celebrtiy from last week really more important than the sovreignty and the troop withdrawals of one of the USA's longest wars?

Talking about sovreignty, there was that election in Iran, a contested election with tens of thousands on the streets. But when a celebrity dies in America, suddenly the rule in Iran is no longer newsworthy.

Talking of who rules whom, Honduras had a coup. A legitimately elected President was disposed and thrown out of his country. The UN voted that he must be re-instated. But CNN tells us that Michael Jackson had some nurse who said this and that about the medications.

The European Union has a new Presidency effective today, Sweden. But a dead celebrity is more important.

In Pakistan a fragile truce between the government and rebels in Wasiristan has broken down, in part because of US spy drones. This all impacts the second-longest war the US has ever been involved in, Afghanistan. You'd think the Pakstani-US relationship and fighting rebels in the mountain regions on the border of Afghanistan would be of importance - the rebels ambushed a military convoy. But no, there apparently was a celebrity who died last week.

There is much more in a dangerous world, from North Korean nuclear ambitions to signs of possible advances in the Israel-Palestinian issue. But we hear more and more repeats of the aftermath of the death of one celebrity.

US NEWS

So we have an American major celebrity who died, it is more understandable that CNN Headline News, with its US focus, will cover this story more tha you'd expect CNN International to do. But really, Michael Jackson has been the top story virtually uninterrupted for six days. Really? Has the US been such a sleepy time in the news cycle, a really slow week for news, that a 24 hour news gathering station could not find other stuff to cover?

Iraq war pull-out. This was major theme by Republican Senator and presidential candidateJohn McCain - and for a long time was the stated position of the Bush Administration - that a timeline would invite death and chaos and failure in Iraq. Repeating President Bush and Senator McCain repeat those phrases "was news" week after week, month after month last year; but now when it actually HAPPENS, it is not top news because a celebrtiy died last week.

Same or Afghanistan and Pakistan and North Korea and Iran (see above). All items that seemed central to US foreign policy and were regularly repeated in sound-bites on CNN all last year, but now when there is action on these fronts, they are not big news, because of the death of a celebrtiy last week.

Franken. So the US senate, of 100 senators, has had only 99 senators since the US election in November 2008. Today the 100th senator election was finally decided and Al Franken becomes the last winner of the last election. Is the election result of a US senator today really less important news than the death of a celebrity six days ago.

Filibuster-proof Democratic Majority. While Franken alone is news, it is very rare for the US senate to be so lopsided, that one party controls what is called a "filibuster-proof" majority, ie 60%. The last election saw a "distant" chance, that the Democrats just might, if Barack Obama did win, gain such a "super majority" in the Senate. Now Franken's victory gives them the 60 vote majority. This is not only news, it is rare and historical shift in power in America. Yet CNN reports as its top story about a celebrity who died last week.

There was a Governor (Sanford of South Carolina) who was found to be unfaithful, but also to secretly (and apparently against government procedures of South Caolina) left the country to visit a lover in Argentina for many days. 

The state of California ran out of money and started to send IOU's to its employees. President Obama talked of health insurance. The Secretary of Defense spoke about changing the "don't ask don't tell" plicy about the gays in the military. Embezzler Madoff got a 150 year sentence in prison. But no, these are not top news to CNN, CNN feels top news is, was and continues to be the death of a celebrity six days ago.

CNN HAS CELEBRITY REPORTER 
 
There is already an established celebrity gossip reporter on CNN, Larry King Live (someone that I avoid religiously) so let Larry King do his thing with the dead celebrities. He has all the soundbites and can replay all the interviews and call up all the friends of any dead celebrity. That is what he is good at.

CNN has a global talent pool of competent journalists, who do a great job digging up the real stories even when others ignore them. CNN has a reputation to deliver balanced news. Now somehow CNN has gone from being a legitimate 24 hour news channel, to be a gossip channel of memories of one pop star.

I think it really is revealing to see how little mention Farrah Fawcett Majors got in the same time span, who died at the same time. A little before Michael Jackson's career took off, Farrah was arguably the most popular female entertainer on TV, around the world. Not nearly as prolific over a long career as Michael Jackson had been, but Farrah also did not embroil herself with sensationalist stories in her career (Neverland Ranch, elefant man remains, a pet monkey, several allegations of child abuse, two fake marriages, artificially inseminated children, etc). And lets be real, Michael Jackson has not hit a number 1 in America since 1995 with You Are Not Alone. For anyone saying Farrah is a "past star" so was very legitimately Michael Jackson as well. its not like he'd died with songs on the charts this year or indeed, essentially not even this decade, his last Top 10 hit (barely) was You Rock My World in 2001.

If CNN honestly feels that digging into the aftermath of celebrity death is worth their while, then please CNN, do limit it to your Larry King Live show, it is such bogus news that it is perfect for this. Yes, Michael Jackson's death was news, on 25 June. Not today six days later. Its a 24 hour news cycle for a reason. The world - and indeed the USA - have moved on during this period. If you want to honor the man and recognize his funeral, etc, that I can understand. But please do not waste the time of millions of viewers worldwide, who tune in not to watch a Music TV channel, or to watch a Celerity Channel, but who really want to learn what is happening in "real" news. Please give us real news on CNN. Stop with the Celebrity News Channel.

Moto-Morons! What now? Enterprise smartphones for Asia? Madness

Motorola is truly clueless. I blogged about what they should be doing to reverse the death-spiral that they are in (Moto lost half of its market share in just one year and made massive losses while industry grew). And I blogged about what to do about it, where the real growth opportunity is (SMS for consumers). Now we can see how smart the Moto strategists have been. Transport & Logistics News out of Australia reports that Motorola has been developing entepprise-oriented mobile computers (smartphones) for Asia-Pacific.

MORONS !

The enterprise smartphone market (Palm, RIM Blackberry, Nokia E-Series, many of Microsoft Windows for Mobile smartphoes etc) is heavily contested. it is growing far less rapidly than the far larger consumer market. It has recognized brands and Moto is not in that game. WHY go fight in an area of diminishing relevance, which is already the far smaller segment, where it is very costly to enter and to support, and where margins are small.

Look at the companies that already are there. RIM. It shifted from enterprise oriented Blackberries to the consumer market and DOUBLED sales in just one year (RIM will become bigger than Motorola, possibly as soon as this year). RIM also increased its average sales prices, while the economy was in trouble ! Meanwhile, Nokia had its E-Series enterprise smartphones. They released their N-Series four years ago to serve the consumer market. Guess which outsells which. N-Series outsells E-Series by an enormous margin today. Apple iPhone is not an enterprise smarthone, it is a consumer smartphone.

So I told Moto in April that SMS was the only killer app for current mass-market consumers and is fuelling RIM's growth, Nokia's loyalty (and for example Samsung's solid growth and profitablity). What do Moto do? They go to the worst-performing sector of smartphones, with strong established players, and try to enter it with high-cost devices, and worse, they don't do this globally, only in APAC, so they even dont' get scale out of this idiotic move. Total incompetents ! These are your investor dollars in use. Are you satisfied? Go read the strategy roadmap to save Moto and compare. Idiots!

Interactive bus stop billboard ad, poster changes when u turn away!

This is very cool, and for our blog, its nice to see digital uses of media that impact such old media as print (first mass media channel out of 7) and one of its more "forgotten" parts, the outdoor billboard advertising.

John Herman at Gizmodo reports of a bus stop ad in Hamburg Germany, about stopping family abuse. It uses very clever technology, so that the advertisement image changes, when you look away, and look back at the ad. When you look at it, the ad shows a couple smiling. When you look away, the man is beating up the wife. Spooky, eerie, weird, but am sure, compelling ad about a very serious subject. And very cool high-tech geeky way to generate attention - and they have built-in a slight delay, so you just have time to notice the ad changed as you turn to watch it, or turn away. I'd love to see it for real to get the full impact, but this is cool. Go see it (with before and after pictures) at Gizmodo.

Lets Examine Facts of Mobile Advertising? Why Wildly Varying Stats?

Our dear friend Jouko Ahvenainen of Xtract was on U Talk Marketing discussing a couple of studies in mobile advertising, and attempting to explain the discrepancies. (Jouko is co-author with our Alan Moore with their book Social Media Marketing, a must-read book for 2009)

HOW MANY BILLIONS?

Deloitte in its Media Predictions / TMT Trends report 2009 said that mobile advertising was worth 1.0 billion dollars in 2008 (and predicted growth to 2.0 B in 2009)

Strategy Analytics reported also that 2008 mobile ad spending (by brands) was 1.0 billion in 2008 and Strategy Analytics felt that it would grow to 2.4 billion dollars this year.

eMarketer reported in February 2009 in the Netsize Guide that mobile advertising spending globally was 4.2 billion dollars in 2008.

Juniper measured mobile advertising at about 2 billion dollars in 2009 in June 2009

Gartner in 2008 measured mobile advertising to be worth 2.7 B dollars

Meanwhile Japanese mobile advertising alone is worth about 1 billion dollars in 2008 (Seed Planning 2008). Dentsu alone reported 620 M dollars of mobile advertising just in Japan in 2007. South Korea trends most mobile internet data at about 45% of the levels of Japan and has a very similar mobile ad market and eco-system and history as Japan, so Japan and South Korea alone are about 50% bigger than the total global numbers found by Deloitte and Strategy Analytics. And then we get countries like India where 80% of mobile phone users receive advertising and Spain where 75% do. Even in the UK 51% receive ads on their phones.

Yes the real number is certainly far more than 1 billion dollars for 2008. My company TomiAhonen Consulting measured the global advertising market for mobile at 3.2 billion dollars for last year, as reported in the Tomi Ahonen Almanac.

But this is pretty meaningless squabbling on the size. The worldwide total advertising market is worth over a quarter of a Trillion dollars and whether mobile advertising is 1 billion (Deloitte) or 4.2 billion (eMarketer), it is still of the magnitude of far less than 2 percent, and possibly under one percent of the total worldwide ad spending. It really doesn't matter at this level, is it "actually" one or two or three or four billions (and yes, makes me a bit humble to write that billions don't matter..)

The relative scale is significant. Fixed internet based advertising is ten times larger than mobile advertising. Radio advertising is of that size as well. Print and TV ads are far larger still. So please do not bother to focus on how many billions it is or is not. What we need to look at are certain trends, and certain comparative findings.

TRENDS, ALL OTHERS ARE DOWN

The first important observation is what is the prevailing trend in the economy, how it impacts. We know the global ecnomy is in trouble. We've heard the dire reports of broadcast and print advertising facing severe declines. Did you notice, that also internet advertising fell in the first quarter of 2009? Yes, all other advertising is declining, even that previously "hottest" ad category, internet advertising.

Now, if mobile also fell, it would be typical of all other ad media platforms. But what is happening? Every major analyst who has reported in 2009 about the status of mobile advertising, has said that mobile advertising is growing this year (like Deloitte and Stategy Analytics here mentioned in the above). Bucking the trend. This is very significant. The overall trend is down, yet mobile advertising is growing. Wow, that has to be very powerful indeed to counter the global trend.

HOW MANY

So one way to measure the advertising platform is by how much money is spent on it. Another way to measure it, is by its reach. How many people does your advertising on the mass media reach? 480 million is the daily ciculation of newspapers inlcuding paid and free dailies. 1.1 billion is the installed base of all PCs, laptops and netbooks. 1.4 billion is the total number of internet users. 1.5 billion is the total number of TV sets in use around the world, but not all of those have advertising.

How about mobile? 4 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, have 3.4 billion actual mobile phones in use, by 3.1 billion unique owners of at least one mobile phone and subscription. Clearly not all of those will receive ads, but 1.55 billion people had received ads on their phones last year. Yes, more people received advertising on a phone last year, than the total number of TV sets or PCs; and more than read a newspaper or wnt onto the internet.

We do need to remember that on mobile phones we do not receive dozens of ads per advertising break like on TV or hundreds of banner ads on an hour or two of web surfing, not to mention the thousands more in newpapers, magazines, billboards etc that we see daily. Mobile is the 7th mass media channel, the newest and youngest mass media, as different from the internet as TV is different from radio. Mobile is considered very personal and we are not willing to put up with heavy bombardment of ads. But ads can be very effective in this environment. In particular if mobile ad campaigns are built using engagemnt marketing methods. Lets look more at the numbers.

RESPONSE RATES

So lets consider why. On the internet the past 16 years we ahve seen the growth and evolution of interactive advertising. The measure they use is CTR (Click Through Rates). Wikipedia tells us that an average CTR is under one percent and if you achieve 2 percent on an internet ad campaign, it is "very successful". So you have to send 50 ads, to get one to click on it, and you have success. And most ad campaigns need over 100 ads served, to achieve one to click through.

On mobile we have a better measure, "response rates". This is a better statistic, as it measures an active interest by the advertising audience to engage with the advertisement or brand. Not just to click to the site and consider possibly to be interested. And we have some very interesting response rates from several countries across thousands of completed ad campaigns. In Japan goo Research reported that response rates were at 44%. In the UK, Blyk reported after 2,000 ad campaigns that it sustained average response rates of 25%, while Croatian Tomato Plus reported response rates of 30%. Separate other recent mobile ad campaigns range from response rates of 39% in the USA by car-customizing company West Coast Customs, to 44% in South Korea with a Gillette Campaign.

An even more powerful endorsement comes from Germany, where BMW achieved not a response rate, but a "conversion rate" ie direct actual money paid by that customer who received the ad, on an MMS picture messaging campaign, that achieved yes, a 30% conversion rate. For every ten picture messaging ads sent by MBW, 3 recepients walked into an authorized BMW dealership and made a purchase. This is POWER.

So as the first mobile ad was launched in Finland 9 years ago, and today mobile advertising is no longer a "novelty" gimmick, if we achieve response rates between 25% - 44% across six countries on three continents, we are starting to have quite meaningful "rule of thumb" that about 3 out of 10 who receive mobile ads, will also respond to them. Almost one in three. That is average for mobile. Remember that a "very successful" internet campaign has to shotgun out 50 ads to grab one "click-through" which is not even yet automatically an engaged prospect.

Understand what this means first, in terms of the volume of ads. We can SHRINK the total of ads sent out, by a factor of at least 10, compared to the internet or TV or any other legacy ad media channel. And then, bear in mind the statistics, that bucking the trend, mobile advertising is growing revenues this year, possibly doubling in total value. This while mobile ad campaigns will be far less in total volume of ads.

Secondly that diminished volume means less clutter. Less noise. We can, and indeed we must, provide targeted ads that are permission-based and very strongly personalized. That means that even "generic" campaigns can seem far more relevant than mass-market ad campaigns on TV or the web.

And most importantly, on mobile when using engagement marketing methods and with a little bit of better design, the resulting campaigns are dramatically more powerful than any seen before, on any media. Like the BMW campaign (it created a virtual image of "your" car using your colour and model and the tyres and wheel rims you had bought. Even though a standardized mass-niche campaign, it seemed totally personal - that is MY car) - you can achieve enormous success. BMW was reported to sell 45 million dollars of new winter tyres and new wheel rims on a campaign with a total cost of 120,000 dollars. After such a return, who goes back to TV ad campaigns?

SECOND CLICK

Now, the above is ample reason enough for any astute CMO to shift advertising budgets to mobile. If literally thousands of achieved mobile ad campaigns only do the "worst" of those stats, at 25% response rates, then it is still more than ten times better than a "very successful" campaign online, and achieves in the process far greater level of true engagement than click-throughs. So lets get the kicker.

We have the first study of second click rates on mobile ads. This is amazing stuff. Amethon studied mobile ad campaigns and was reported somewhat "negatively" that "only" one in three mobile ad campaign achieved a second click rate. What does that mean. It means that overall for all mobile ad campaigns, the average response rate is 3 out of 10. And now, the second, truly and fully "engaged" level of involvement by the audience is one third, ie 1 out of 10. Wow. On mobile, we achieve on average, two engaged clicks, which is still five times better than any "very successful" internet campaign!

This is night-and-day, isn't it? You have to bombard 50 people to get one click for an excellent campaign on the web and more likely you have to devastate the audience with over 100 ads sent to find one willing to click on your banner.

On mobile, an average campaign you only need to send less than 4 ads to get one response, and with every 10 ads sent, you get a customer willing to make two clicks by the average campaign !

BUT IT GETS BETTER

This is measuring only the early "basic" types of mobile ad methods, like SMS ads, MMS picture messaging ads and WAP banner ads. This is barely the beginning. We have far more exciting and promising formats now being introduced to the market, on mobile. Such as advergaming, 2D barcodes,  augmented reality and idle screen advertising. As I reported on my parallel blog 7thMassmedia - I heard from my friend C Enrique Ortiz who said Telefonica is finding 82% response rates on advertising on their idle screen.

Update July 4: Since I originally posted this blog story, we discussed it with my friend Johannes Heinze on Twitter and Johannes pointed out that regular banner ads on mobile (and SMS spam) don't get these levels of response rates. So let me be clear, "generic" banner ads and spam SMS is as poor as any other interruptive ad concepts form the last century, whether on TV, radio, internet or mobile. Yes, they may achieve some response levels and click-through rates, but that is really just copying bad formats for the newest mass medium. Advertisers do need to learn, that mobile allows a far more powerful advertising method, "engagement marketing" and only by using that method, do you achieve resonse rates of 30%. Generic interruptive ads, even on mobile, will not perform at that level. I hope that was clear. (Thanks Johanes!)

The important point is that this is now the golden age of mobile advertising, when great innovations are being made and magnificent new ad concepts are being invented. We are facing a change to mobile advertising like the internet world saw with Google adwords. This is the big opportunity for advertising now in 2009. If you're in advertising, get into the mobile side of the business, here is where all the real creativity is happening.

And yes, if anyone wants to take a quick read of 50 case studies of excellence in moble advertising, then please read my eBook Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 1: Mobile Advertising. See the book website, there are free pags for you including many free case studies to see.

40% of iPhone Users access web more from phone than PC

Yeah, this is no surprise. comScore has surveyed 7,300 users of iPhones (and iPod Touches) and found that 40% of them now use their iPhones to access the internet more than they use personal computers. This is similar to findings earlier reported for Blackberry users with email and consistent with the ealry anecdotal evidence about the iPhone. iPhone users are also quite wealthy and relatively old (76% are over the age of 25) and seven out of ten iPhone owners are men (boys' toys, eh?).

Note this finding does not suggest an end of the PC, it only suggests an accelerating shift from PCs to smartphones. Note that even with such a powerful internet-optimized handset as the iPhone (best internet smartphone clearly out of the current lot) they do not even pass the half-point of all users shifting to mobile. But regardless, it does confirm that increasingly, as the mobile handsets get better, more and more casual mainstream PC users will find no particular utility out of the PC. Like the Japanese say, if you ask them, would they like to read emails on a PC, they will be surprised and say, they were not aware that email also was available on a PC (as almost all Japanese email users access email on a phone) - and then usually add, but why would you want to..  (Yeah, the Japanese have had the full mobile phone based access to the internet for ten years now, and very advanced phones for most of this decade).

Now factor in the replacement cycles of phones - we replace our phones more than twice as often as we replace our PCs - and we tend to get phones in many markets at severe price subsidies so they seem much cheaper than a full-price PC; the trend is strictly one-way for any existing PC owners: from PC/laptop use to smartphone use. The iPhone itself keeps improving dramatically each year, and the rest of the field is clearly taking lessons from the iPhone. So if you're currently into the second year of your laptop and start to look for a new laptop late in next year, by then there will be significantly better new smartphones in the market, than the iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, the Nokia N97, etc. This trend will acclerate, not slow down.

NY Times considers charging for mobile content

NY Times saying it is easier to charge on mobile content and considering doing that. Yeah, we think so too.. Also there are compelling ad concepts and mixtures of both - say idle screen news (Telefonica reporting 82% click-through rates on well-targeted ads on the idle screen)

Evolution of mobile phone continues: from 8 C's now 10 C's

I blogged about the evolution of the mobile phone and how its capabilities had expanded in what was originally the 7 C's of Cellphones two years ago, and the it had expanded to 8 C's by 2008. Now we add two more, and explain how the gadget in our pocket has the power of 10 C's of Cellphones. I will keep this reasonably short, summarizing major parts that tend to be not disputed.

1st C - COMMUNICATION - JAPAN 1979

The telephone, both the fixed landline and the mobile phone, is first and foremost a communication device. It is why we take our mobile phones to bed and to the bathroom but we don't carry our iPods or PSPs or laptops within arm's reach 24 hours, 7 days a week, as 91% of us do keep the mobile phone (Morgan Stanley 2007). So yes, nine out of ten will also have the phone in the bedroom, often in bed, as 71% of the British report that they think the stand-alone bedroom alarm clock is now obsolete, as they use the mobile phone alarm (Birmingham Post 2008). The mobile is literally the last thing we see when we go to sleep and the first thing we see (or hear) when we wake up.

From that it is easy to jump to the conclusion that therefore the primary use of a mobile phone is naturally: voice calls. After all the telephone is a "distance voice" machine (from the Greek words tele and fon). That sounds very reassuring for most telecoms experts, yes of course, the cellphone is and will always be a telephone, a voice calling device. No, this part has changed and that change is very recent. Some advanced markets saw it earlier (first witnessed in the Philippines) but the UK regulator reported back in 2006, that for UK mobile phone users, the primary use of a phone had shifted from voice calls to SMS text messaging. It is still communication, but after over 100 years of voice calls, the system that first was called the "voice telegraph" had reverted to something more like the telegraph in communication - text based person-to-person communication ie SMS.

Before any readers can say "but but but" - this is indeed a universal trend, with reports from as far as Ireland and New Zealand (literally on opposite sides of the planet). We hear form Equador and Malaysia and South Korea and Indonesia, that SMS is preferred over voice calls. Even Americans, for the first time in 2008, the CTIA the US industry association reported that Americans did use the cellphones for the first time to send more SMS text messages than to place voice calls. A universal trend, definitely. In India the trend is already so far, that while 90% of mobile phone users send SMS text messages, only 66% of users place voice calls. The cannibalization of voice calls is considerable in some of the more advanced markets. But the point is, that Communciation is the first C and mobile phones have had it since the first commercial cellphone service in Japan in 1979, and SMS text messages since first launched commercially in Finland in 1993. It is still the first and most powerful ability, the phone is not morphing into an internet device (like a laptop) or media consumption device (like an iPod or PSP). It is primarily a communciation device, that is adding now new capabilities.

2nd C - CONSUMPTION - 1998 FINLAND

Now we get to the "mobile internet" part. The first downloaded content over the cellular network was the ringing tone launched by Saunalahti (now Elisa) in Finland in 1998. Soon thereafter we got i-Mode, the first "mobile internet:" service in Japan in 1999 and today's vast expanse of mobile content from games to news to jokes to screen savers and logos to adult entertainment, gambling, etc. Paid content is worth over 70 Billion dollars on mobile, ie about twice the value of paid content on the older fixed and PC based (legacy) internet. It is why now we call the mobile the newest, the 7th mass media channel and the fourth screen. Content of some type is availbable on essentially all mobile networks, but for varying prices.

3rd C - CHARGING - 1999 PHILIPPINES

The next innovation came from the Philippines where Globe's G-Cash and Smart's Smart Money were launched, and we got our firstmobile  payment services for hte mass market, in 1999. The payments industries (finance, banking, credit cards etc) have a patchy record with mobile. In some countries you can do just about anything with mobile payments such as Japan, Finland, South Africa, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia. In Estonia the only way to pay for parking is by mobile and in India you get a discount if you pay your utillity bills by mobile. In South Korea the default assumtion for new Visa cards is that you only want it onto your phone, the "old fashioned" plastic Visa credit card is a free option, mailed to your home. In other markets mobile payments are only starting. But m-banking, m-payments, m-wallet etc are real, and to show just how potent this is, today, just two years after M-Pesa launched in Kenya, 47% of all banking accounts in that country are mobile phone based m-banking accounts. To underestand the scale of the two industries now evaluating each others as possible rivals or partners, there are about 1.7 billion unique credit card holders, about 2.2 billion unique owners of bank accounts but 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions.

4th C - COMMERCIALS - 2000 FINLAND

In 2000 we get another radical innovation, advertising, or commercials on our phones. This comes from Finland via the commercial TV broadcaster MainosTV 3. Advertising on mobile has had a slow start and still today accounts for only 10% of all interactive digital advertising (ie internet advertising is 10 times bigger) and only 1% of the total global advertising spending. But mobile advertising is now in a strong growth stage, as the industry has learned about "engagement marketing" and we have sustained response rates reported of 25%-30% for mobile ad campaigns using this techinque, run across thousands of ad campaigns reaching hundreds of thousands of consumers, such as reported by Blyk. Better yet, the second click rate of mobile ad campaigns is still four times greater than the first click-through rates on the internet. Four times more people had been so satisfied with their first exposure to an ad brand on the mobile than advertising on the legacy internet, that they clicked to the second stage! And yes, last year 1.5 billion people saw ads on a phone worldwide, that is 50% more than the total installed base of personal computers, or about the size of all TV sets on the planet (and all of those TVs do not carry advertising)

5th C - CREATION - 2001 JAPAN

Japan brings us the next expansion of the abilities of the mobile phone in 2001 when J-Phone (now Softbank) introduces the mass market cameraphone. This spawns all that citizen journalism and amateur paparazzi we have covered here at this blog, from Ohmy News to CNN i-Report. Film festivals already exist for mobile phone based films. And to think, that whole concept of the cameraphone is only 8 years old and initially all camera industry experts said this fad of the puny little"toy cameras" on the phones would never catch on. Ha-ha, think again. MMS picture messaging has now grown past internet based email to be the second most widely used data application on the planet, with 1.4 billion active users, behind only SMS text messaging which has 3.0 billion active users.

6th C - COMMUNITY - 2003 SOUTH KOREA

Then in 2003 we see the start of the migration of social networking to the mobile phone, when South Korea's Cyworld releases its mobile version. Mobile Social Networking today is far bigger by revenues than its older internet-based siblings and all major internet social networking brands, from Facebook to YouTube to Flicrk to Friendster to Wikipedia have strategies to expand into the mobile space. After Habbo Hotel of Finland showed that fixed internet online social networks can make money (and profits!) out of mobile, today many fixed-mobile services exist including of course Cyworld but for example Flirtomatic out of the UK and Mixi out of Japan. Others focus only on mobile such as Itmy from Germany, Frenclub from Malaysia and Mobage Town out of Japan. Mobile Social Networking became the fastest-growing billion dollar industry ever and is the fastest growing industry sector today where major players are not only reporting healthy revenues, but many are also reporting profits - try to find that on internet based social networks.

7th C - COOL - 2005 JAPAN

This was added based on discussions at Forum Oxford in 2007 and Cool refers to Fashion. We can see the cool factor in the Apple iPhone but real fashion brands have also invaded the mobile phone space ranging from Prada with LG, Armani with Samsung and Dolce & Gabbana with Motorola. Premium luxury phone brands like the Vertu brand by Nokia, more of an ultra-rich jewelry brand than mass market phone brand, have launched. But the first to doa fashion-branded mass-market mobile phone handset was Benetton in Japan on NTT DoCoMo, and it was back in 2005, which is where I peg the addition of Cool to our list of the 10 C's.

8th C - CONTROL - 2007 SOUTH KOREA

When Jim O'Reilly and I were researching our book Digital Korea, I was stunned to find that South Korea had already started to sell household robots by 2007 and when we were in Seoul for the book launching tour, I visited one of the big shopping malls that had a robots store. Made me really feel like I had stepped into a science fiction movie. A shop selling only household robots. And yes, the robots could be controlled by moblie phone - in fact, some of the robots had features that the robot could call you on your phone and show what the robot saw via video link etc, even let you speak to others near the vicinity of the robot via a speaker on the robot - so if your relatives came on a surprise visit, your robot could open the door and greet your relatives, call you, and show you who is there, and then let you talk to them via the robot..  Anyway, 2007 is when South Korea added remote control to the abilities of phones. We do have all sorts of apps in this space, mostly weird niches like the SMS controlled tea-kettle in England and the remote control of your saunabath in Finland but for mass markets, we now also have homes built in Japan and South Korea where the locks are operated by phone.

9th C - CONTEXT - 2008 USA

This is a category I initially was not sure about. Back in 2007 a reader named Cooli - Olivier Guyot - suggested on our blog that Context should be one of the C's and argued it included the GPS ability and mapping and compass and cell-id, plus our status updates and shared calendars etc. I felt back then that context was not a human need we had (like to communicate or to consume), rather it was an enabling technology underneath, like IP the Internet Protocol. We humans have no need for "IP" (sorry, honey, I gotta go get me some IP now) but IP can be used to build all forms of services for the internet (or mobile) from YouTube to Google to Skype. But I reserved judgement for Context, that it might become something in the future, but that I did not see (back then) any mass market uses of context based services. Yes, GPS chips were coming onto phones such as on the Nokia N95 but even then, I did not believe in LBS or location-based services (for mass markets), which have, after all, existed commercially since 2001 and have been colossal market failures in every market.

This all changed in the past 12 months now with Twitter. I am now totally convinced that there is a human need to let people know our status (what are you doing), and we can build lots of services around this, from yes Facebook and Twitter updates to "mood music" as launched by Dada in Italy. So now when my friend Chris Bannink from the Netherlands suggested that Context should be a C, I do agree. And I have to admit, Cooli back two years ago saw this first.. Yes, its the 9th C and I time it for 2008, around the time Twitter broke into the mainstream and Apple added GPS to the iPhone, so this is also an ablity that was commercially launhced in the USA even though we've had various LBS services for most of this decade from Japan to Germany to just about the whole world. Twitter really changed my mind on this. Yes, Context is the 9th, but its commercial mass-market opportunity emerged in 2008, led by the USA.

10th C - CYBER - 2009 JAPAN

I had the 8 C's in my latest hardcover book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media and I've been showing the story to my audiences in seminars and speakerships around the world. Often my audiences ask, what is the next C. And I have honestly been looking for it. A few days ago it occurred to me, that Cyber has to be it. My epiphany moment was with the news that a Japanese company, AgriHouse, has introduced a gadget that monitors the houseplants that you have and sends a text message when your plants need to be watered.

Again this area of cybernetics and the communciation between humans and other living things is not really new in mobile. We have been connecting pets (LBS hunting dogs in Finland) and farmyard animals (Cows in Canada and Iceland) and even such immobile objects as trees (Forestry management in Sweden and Finland via GPS/GSM chips). South Korea even had that commercial launch of Bowlingual, letting your dog barks be translated to human speak via SMS. But I still counted those as niche markets. Now we have a true mass market, household plants - which start "to communicate" with us humans in our language, so to speak.

So Cyber is a valid category for mass markets now in 2009. But it won't stop with pets and plants. We are also witnessing a host of new truly "magical" services that allow us to enhance reality and alter it, using augmented reality, and of course the magic of the mobile phone. I have been talking of the Kamera Jiten cameraphone dictionary from Japan or the Ford Ka augmented reality ad campaign from the UK and Germany, or now the first case of an inherently superior browser for the phone, something that is not viable on a PC, the Layar augmented reality browser that overlays browser info to the real time view seen on the cameraphone and its view screen. Augmented reality? Enhanced abilities for humans (translations for example) and communciating with non-human onbjects like houseplants, trees and pets. Yes, Cyber is the 10th C, and it became a mass market C in Japan in 2009.

MOSTLY 3 COUNTRIES

The story of how the mobile phone has evolved does run very strongly around three countries - Finland, Japan and South Korea. These are also home to Nokia (biggest handset maker, from Finland), Samsung (second biggest maker, from South Korea) and LG (third biggest handset maker also from from South Korea) and half of SonyEricsson (fifth biggest handset maker, Sony from Japan and Ericsson from Sweden). I know I am a Finn and yes, very proud of my little country of only 5.2 million people. But South Korea and Japan have now taken the lead and they do drive this industry. The USA is in there, recently more active thanks to the awakening that happened in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. But look at this story and where are perennial technology and science innovators, France, Germany, the UK, Italy? Spain, Switzerland, Russia? or here in Asia, how about China, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand? or other often innovative countries like Israel? The mobile phone industry leadership is very strongly centered in these 3 (or arguably with Sweden, 4) countries: South Korea, Japan, Finland (and Sweden). It also means that the related mobile industry innovations tend to come from these regions, so if you are interested in the future of mobile, keep following the developments in these 3 or 4 countries, odds are, they are experiencing a future today, which is very similar to the future for the rest of the world (around mobile phones) in the near future.

IS A BABY, LEARNING TO WALK

Many also are frustrated by this industry. The "potential" is so huge, the real world results seem so tiny. Why is it that everybody is not surfing the web on the phone, why aren't we all making payments on the phone, why isn't advertising on the phone bigger, etc. Give it time. Please note those dates of each of the 10 C's. The expansion of the abilities of the phone started only in 1998, eleven years ago. It is not a mature industy yet. We will see a lot of innovation and growth for this industry. We will also see clashes between different cultures and technologies and industries and business models. Every one of the C's in the above is both a threat for someone and an opportunity for someone else. The next decade will offer greater total changes to our lives, based on the phone, than we've seen in this decade, so the opportunities are indeed huge. But don't panic. Give this industry some time to learn to walk before it can run.

So this is the story of how the mobile phone has evolved and expanded. Like Christian Lindholm the ex Nokia ex Yahoo mobile design guru and author, now Director at Fjord, likes to say about the mobile phone: "Anything that can be mobile, will be mobile." Why? it comes down to McGuire's Law of course - the utility of any activity increases with its mobility. (Russ McGuire is Sprint exec and author). Or the way I like to say, mobile has 7 unique abilities we cannot replicate on any other digital platform.

If you'd like to have a short 2 page summary of this story as a PDF file, that you can share with friends and use for your own reference, I have just written my latest "Thought Piece" about the 10 C's. I figure any executive has time to read two pages ha-ha.. If you'd like the free Thought Piece on 10 C's just please send me an email to tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com and I'll send it to you via return email.

Interactive is not engagment, mobile ad is not always engagement

There is an interesting study by Amethon on the mobile internet and its advertising, covered by Cellular news and I found it via a Twitter comment by our friend Andrew Grill. The Amethon report states that after the first click to a mobile advertising site, only one in three users would click onto further content. This research covered 100 mobile advertising services.

Now, to start with both the initial response rates to mobile ads (reported sustained rates in the 25% to 30% levels) is far greater than on the internet. more than 10 times better. So we start with a far larger pool of interested candidates. Secondly the internet metric is click-through rate, whereas most mobile advertisers measure response rates. A response rate is a better metric, more relevant and "real" than click-through as click-through rates include lots of fraud in its implementation and many users did not intend to go to sites when they suddenly discover themselves on a new unfamiliar site on the web. Most mobile advertising users (not all, obviously) did intend to pursue that link for that coupon, offer, movie trailer clip, etc.

The Amethon study reports 33% only continue the "engagement" past the first click. This seems like bad news (a disappointingly small number..). but lets be real. Engagement marketing was inventedby our Alan Moore and first written about in our book Communities Dominate Brands. Not all advertisers yet know what is the difference between interactive and engagement. Isn't all interactive advertising also engagement marketing (no, it is not).

So five years ago, any interactive ad campaigns, whether on the internet or on mobile, would have had zero percent engagement levels. There was no such thing as engagement marketing. Alan literally coined the term. So today, not all mobile advertising is engagement marketing. Engagement marketing is process of communciation, a long-term journey in dialogue, where the members of the "advertising target market" are invited to join in the co-creation of the experience. The audience is invited to participate. You can't build engagement on a single click-through link.

But secondly, consider how "bad news" is 33%. Amethon measured 100 mobile ad providers, not only their supposed or intended "engagement marketing" attempts, but all of their interactive campaigns. Many of those will have no folow-up after the first link! Click here to get coupon. You receive the coupon, no further action is even possible..

Some of the particular reasons were in the story - an age limit for example. If you offer a coupon to give a free alcoholic drink, then yes, it makes sene that there is an age limit, and yes, teenagers would try that site a lot and then not continue. This is not a sign of a "problem" but rather a sensible check on the campaign (similar to adult entertainment and gambling etc) 

But most of all, these 100 mobile advertising providers certainly all do not run engagement marketing campaigns.  I find it very encouraging that today in 2009, the second click level in mobile ad campaigns is more than three times bigger than the TOTAL click-through rates on the internet.

Mobile is the newest way to connect with marketing and advertising audiences. Follow Every Single One of Us to see how this new way is now being developed and evolved.

Celebrating Kate Moore, Iowa teen who is fastest at SMS texting

LG has been running a contest to find the person fastest at SMS text messsaging in America. The conetst has been run with MTV and is in its third year. This year 250,000 had joined the contest. They have just had the finals and the person with the fastest fingers is Kate Moore, a 15 year old girl from Des Moines Iowa (no relation to our Alan Moore). The story has been on CNN and even the Wall Street Journal covered the news.

The teenager won a 50,000 dollar grand prize. The runner up was another teenage girl, 14 year old Morgan Dynda who also made the finals last year. A nice detail from the finals was that for all the "SMS grammr" and abbreviations used in SMS (and IM and Twitter etc) - the winning texting test was to type correctly some lyrics from the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" so these girls also know how to type correctly..

Related info. 42% of American teenagers now can type text messages on their phones, blind, according to Harris Interactive. And how addicted is Kate Moore to text messaging? Get this - she averages 14,000 SMS text messages sent per month! 14 thousand? That means 466 SMS sent per day. For every hour she is awake, it is 29 per hour. Assuming she also receives the same level of response SMS messages from her friends, that means she is looking at a message on her phone every minute of every day that she is awake (and no doubt reads SMS text messages in her dreams too..). Meanwhile LG has said they intend to expand the texting contest to become a global competition. Great!

If you want to understand SMS text messaging, the most widely used data application on the planet, read my analysis of the SMS phenomenon including numbers and stats of users, revenues, etc in: 3 Billion use SMS, what does that mean?

Congratulations Kate Moore, you are the fastest American at SMS text messaging.

UPDATE - No way! CNN just reported that Ms Moore had only had a mobile phone for 8 months before winning the championship. Talk about a fast learner as well as fast texter. Any smart company out there wanting a one-person walking test lab for the 7th mass media, hire this lady now..