gammalife

Mexico : M-Commerce Profile

2012-01-27T14:31:00.005+08:00

Mobile advertising has grown more than 400% in Mexico over the last year; by the end of 2011 more than 1.3 billion banner ads were served to Mexican audiences.

Mexico is a market with a high rate (35%) of female adoption of the mobile internet and the presence of users over 35 years old (19% compared to a global average of 15%). The influence of these mature users are disproportionately high when mobile purchases are made. Over-35's account for 25% of grocery purchases and 25% of travel related purchases.

But, mobile transactions are not yet a regular part of the Mexican users’ mobile experience. More than 80% have never or only occasionally transacted online.

While the convenience of mobile banking and payments is clear to Mexican users, and there is demand for mobile transactions, elements crucial to widespread adoption of mobile commerce are still missing.

Click here to download Mexico: M-Commerce Profile abstracted from our 2011 Survey.

Hotspots : Latin America & the Caribbean - Q4 2011

2012-01-27T13:59:00.006+08:00

Throughout 2011, across Latin America and the Caribbean, some 9 billion ads were served across 40+ markets. This is a regional growth of more than 330% Y-on-Y, making the region the fastest growing in the world.

Mexico, Brazil & Argentina top the list for banner ads served in 2011 for the region. By Q4 2011, Peru, Guatemala, Paraguay & Ecuador have emerged as the next growth hotspots.

Mobile Value Added Services (VAS) continue to grow in importance throughout the region; although in Brazil demand softened as players realigned their campaigns amid stiff competition. The consumer’s continuing demand for VAS is perhaps best exemplified by the launch of opt-in mobile advertising services by Claro in late Q3. (In return for viewing ads, Claro will provide subscribers with points that they can redeem for free voice minutes and SMS).

Please download the latest review abstracted from our Campaign Planner.

The BuzzCity Report ( Volume 2 Issue 1 )

2012-01-17T08:01:00.011+08:00

In 2011, consumers continued their mass adoption of mobile technologies, and many brands took their first steps to benefit from the marketing opportunities that inevitably follow in the wake of that adoption.

Our ad network grew in Q4 by a further 16%, reaching a total of 38.9 billion ads served globally. So, by year end, we reached a total that’s 139% higher than 2010.

The industry has not only grown – it’s matured too. A year ago, just three countries were serving in excess of one billion ads per quarter on our network. Now, ten countries have broken through into the “billion club”, and several more are sure to follow next quarter. These are:-

India 9.56 bil impressions / quarter.
Indonesia 5.60 bil
United States 2.81 bil
Canada 1.38 bil
Mexico 1.31 bil
Vietnam 1.19 bil
Saudi Arabia 1.14 bil
South Africa 1.12 bil
United Kingdom 1.03 bil
Thailand 1.00 bil

With such a rapid pace of growth and maturation, things change fast, and no marketer can afford to make assumptions. So, this quarter, we release the results of our latest Mobile Payments and Commerce Survey, which reveals the demographics, attitudes and mobile commerce habits of mobile consumers in 17 countries.

Please download the full report here.

BuzzCity Tours Jan & Feb 2012

2012-01-12T10:57:00.009+08:00

The New Year starts with a busy schedule of tours for January and February.

Comsnets 2012, Bangalore (3-7 Jan) Manish
BOOST Conference, Jakarta (17 - 18 Jan) Silvia
Mobile Retail Summit, London (26 Jan) Daniel
Mobile Latam, Miami (1-2 Feb). In 2011, across Central and South America, more than 9 billion mobile ad banners were served on the BuzzCity Ad Network - Mexico and Brazil fulfilling almost 70% of the traffic in the region. While many markets in LATAM show triple digit growth, these still serve less than 10% of total global traffic it is clear that the potential for growth is enormous. KF is a speaker at this event and will share insights into paths to growth, user patterns and customer case studies.
MMA, Brand & Agency Briefing, London (1 Feb) Anna
Adtech, New Delhi (22-24 Feb) Manish & Nikil.
Mobile Marketing in Indonesia (23 - 24 Feb) Dewi
MWC 2012, Barcelona (27 Feb - 3 Mar) Stand 7E47. KF Lai, Joey, Anna, Daniel & Ryan. In a session on "Mobile Advertising: Emerging Markets" Kok Fung will share insights from our network and results of our studies across the markets that we work in.

Djuzz Top 10 - December 2011

2012-01-04T11:36:00.002+08:00

At the end of December 2011, Djuzz hosted more than 18,600 games and applications. More than 8 million were downloaded in December, and the Top 10 remained relatively unchanged.....

Need For Speed Shift Unchanged
Need For Speed Undercover Unchanged
Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince Unchanged
GI Joe Unchanged
Outlaw racing 2011 Unchanged
Fight Night Round 4 Unchanged
Airforce 2 Unchanged
Wolverine Up 2 places
EA Sports FIFA 10 Down 1 place
Crime City Down 1 place

Biggest Climbers Among the Top 50 in December are :

21    GameZone (by Tsuk) up 1585 places
43    Guns and Glory (by Handygames ) up 414 places
39    Bodyguard (by Zapakgames ) up 152 places
33    ICC World Twenty 20 England 09 (by Zapakgames ) up 40 places
49    Fire And Flames Racing (by Indiagames ) up 13 places
42    Hard Rock Casino Collection (by EAmobile) up 9 places
40    2008 World Soccer (by Youpark ) up 6 places
17    Command and Conquer RED ALERT (by EAmobile) up 4 places
15    Ben 10: Battle for the Omnitrix (by Zapakgames ) up 4 places
30    Tom and Jerry - Mouse Maze (by Playfon ) up 8 places

Mobile Marketing on a Shoestring

2011-12-23T14:41:00.001+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

As 2012 approaches, there are still companies that have not allocated budgets for mobile marketing yet.

What are they thinking?

Yes, we are biased, but here are the facts:

The number of mobile devices is about to equal the number of people on this planet.

Mobile is the primary – sometimes the only – way to access the internet in many markets

Mobile advertising is inexpensive as compared to other media

It is easy to measure the return on investment and unlike print, radio and TV, marketing can be directly linked to sales.

So if you are a brand manager, agency type, media buyer, strategist or really anyone who has a creative say about what goes into a campaign, don't be scared of change.

Listen, we realise you could get fired for spending half a year’s budget running a mobile campaign (but never for a TV commercial!), so here are some ways you can become the go-to guy on your team for mobile.

1. Push to make mobile a part of every campaign

Companies like BMW and Ford now mandate that every single marketing campaign – be it online or off – have a mobile element. This just makes sense. Include a mobile message or call to action. The incremental price is small.

2. Build a social media presence (with a strong focus on mobile)

Social networks present a range of opportunities to engage with customers via mobile (more than half of social network interaction is mobile). The platform adapts itself automatically to support the full gamut of mobile devices. This needn’t cost you anything more than the time and effort of your team.

3. Integrate QR codes into your offline media and products

If you work in consumer products, definitely think about the opportunities for mobile marketing on your packaging. Place a Quick Response (QR) code on every box, can or label. Then give consumers a reason to point their camera phones at the QR Code. In a matter of moments, you'll be interacting with them on your mobile site. (Similarly you could place a mobile url or opt-in SMS number on your product.)

Now, imagine the media cost if every package was a media buy in a magazine. Are you sitting on a free publishing medium? Becoming the stubborn mobile evangelist on your team could easily win you thousands of dollars worth of media exposure, at no extra cost.

4. Optimise and fine-tune your campaigns

You don't have to spend much, less in fact than the cost of a night at the movies. Some companies spend as little as US$20 to get started. Admittedly, it depends on your budget. Some mobile advertisers spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on their initial ad buys. But the point is, it depends on you. After you start advertising, check in frequently to monitor the progress, then adjust accordingly. Don't be scared to test different ideas, text ads, banners, bid rates, etc. Also make use of conversion tags to distinguish between the ads that result in quality clicks and those delivering traffic that delves no further than your landing page.

5. Network and stay informed

The better informed you are, the better your chances for success. Set aside some time to learn more about the basic mechanics and best practices of mobile. This blog and the BuzzCity website are great resources: check out our case studies, “how to” articles and reports. For information on specific markets – including the most popular phones, operating systems and usage patterns, use the BuzzCity Campaign Planner.

Talking with other people in the industry is always useful as well. Almost every major city now has a chapter of Mobile Monday or an active chapter of the Mobile Marketing Association. Of course, my colleagues and I travel quite a bit as well for conferences and BuzzCity roadshows and we publicise where we'll be in advance on this blog.

The Last Word
Good luck! And check in with us again next year. My guess is that after twelve months of growth on a tiny budget, you’ll have more than proven the value of mobile to your team and clients, because during that time you'll have strengthened the company brand by fostering interaction, discussions, experiences, relationships and even sales.

Then, it will be a lot easier to ask for money to fund the next phase of growth. The trick is to start before you're ready. Yes, even if you only have a small budget!

Achieving Blazing Game Downloads

2011-12-14T15:51:00.004+08:00

By Allen Umali, Executive Producer, Djuzz

Three of the most successful games on the Djuzz platform recently are Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince, Wolverine and EA Sports FIFA 10.

What do the student wizard, X-men and stats-based controls for FIFA strikers have in common?

LONGEVITY.

And we're not just talking about the age of the characters.

Games based on movies, TV shows and sporting events tend to have a great shelf-life. Their success, though, is more than just a function of a good brand name.

We've been studying the download patterns on Djuzz and have noticed a few simple rules for success. If other game developers can start thinking like the makers of movie & sports linked games – and promote like them – we believe they'll see greater profits as well.

Best Performers

Before we get to the rules for success, let's take a look at the best performers. The Top 100 Games of 2011 include perennial favorites like The Sims, several variants of the Need for Speed, apps & games linked to cricket, football and wrestling as well as hit movie titles like Avatar, Iron Man and Transformers.

As films and major sporting events are promoted with huge fanfare across multiple channels – radio, TV, print, billboards, merchandise, banner ads, social media and more – strong user demand is generated for anything linked to the franchise . . . and game downloads spike at the launch. Fresh spikes occur with each new round of promotional activity – the DVD release, the first appearance on television, etc. These games can continue to perform well for months, if not years.

Take Godzilla Monster Mayhem, for example: it debuted 18 months ago but is still one of the top 100 games of 2011. Godzilla has not continually been in the Top Ten, but like many major titles, it circles in and out of the charts. In November, it still had more than 23,000 downloads.

Lessons

The average release, in contrast, achieves decent downloads for several weeks, then drops off the charts altogether.

Do you need the rights to a major title to achieve staying power? Definitely not! Here's what we can learn from the big names . . . .

1. Create a Buzz: Invest in PR
Think like a promoter. You have a limited amount of time and budget to hype each title. The trick is to provide an interesting and exciting story. Tell the audience what makes your game unique. Consider describing the 'making of the game'. Journalists appreciate a good story . . . and quality images. Don't just say 'hey we're launching a new game' because that won't get you very far.

Target several relevant news and entertainment outlets at once, both online and off, to create multiple reference points for your game. Consumers will take notice when they read about the game in different media.

Create milestones beyond the launch, just the way film promoters set dates for a DVD release. Your milestones could include the release of a free (ad-supported) version or update with new challenges. Each milestone is an excuse to tell your story – and generate media and consumer interest – again.

2. Fuel the Buzz with Social Media

Creating a Facebook page or Twitter feed is easy. And, let's just go ahead and say it again, social networks are mobile-friendly, which means you don't need to spend a lot of time or money to have a presence on the mobile internet.

Think first though about how to attract users and keep them engaged. Offer tips. Provide video clips, cool images and links that encourage sharing and could go viral. Reward user participation. Encourage discussion and let users know you're listening . . . particularly to feedback that can improve your game. Loyal fans will be the first customers of your next release.

3. Engage with Multiple Distributors and Search

Use a consistent set of phrases and keywords in your game titles and descriptions. This will build recognition both for search spiders and among your user base.

Consider paid mobile search. This is usually a lot cheaper than fixed internet search and in abundant supply. Otherwise stick to small focused mobile ad campaigns.

Distribute to as many app stores as possible. Each one has its own unique audience of users. Promote each destination with search, on your mobile site and social networks.

4. Go region by region

If you don’t have the resources to focus on the whole world at once like a global film distributor, no problem. Just pick one important market at a time and build usage there before moving on.

5. Leverage on Pop Culture
We've seen the Vampire and Zombie cycles. During this period, anything with “vampire” in its title generated downloads. What's the next hot topic and how can you ride on it? Check out upcoming movie releases, listen to the radio, surf the net for ideas. Is your game similar to – or better – than a classic? If so, draw out the comparison in your game's description. This will generate greater recognition of your game, more search hits and could even leverage on consumer nostalgia for the original.

The Bottom Line

You don't need a huge splash from Day 1 in order to be a success. But you should have at least a small marketing budget to create a buzz. Be creative. If you build recognition of your game, market by market, by promoting it over multiple channels, the word will spread and who knows we could be writing about your product in this space in future.

Top 5 Phones - Q4 2011

2011-12-12T15:35:00.004+08:00

Nokia continued to dominate mobile phone usage across the BuzzCity Ad Network. By the end of Q4, the Top 5 devices were :

Nokia: 46% (49% in Q1)
Blackberry: 21% (3% in Q1)
Samsung: 9% (13% in Q1)
Apple: 7% (8% in Q1)
White Box Phones: 7% (6%)

Over the past year Blackberry advanced the most, increasing its market presence from 3% (at the end of Q1) to 21% at the end of Q4.

Despite this, the top phones for game downloads (on the Djuzz Network) were Nokia (51%) and Samsung (22%) while White Box phones saw a disproportionately high download activity (14%). Tablets are starting to make a noticeable presence although this is in relatively low numbers.

Djuzz Video Downloads

2011-12-09T16:15:00.003+08:00

Our producers & engineers have been busy and we are happy to report the (early) launch of the Djuzz video downloads service.

Visitors to the site can now download movie previews from partners like Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia Tristar, Disney / Buena Vista and various indie houses.

We've made available three thousand previews to date and expect to have about 10,000 movie previews by Jan 2012. Previews are sorted in eighteen categories and include action/adventure movies, comedies, documentaries and sfi-fi thrillers. These range from the most recent releases to the more time tested favourites.

We expect to release video catalogues in January 2012 and welcome your enquiries via allenu[at]buzzcity.com

Global Hotspots : The State of Play for the Mobile Web

2011-12-09T14:42:00.008+08:00

The year-end push for sales highlights advertiser hotspots as we turn into the New Year. Here's a snapshot of the key markets that are expected to drive mobile internet advertising in 2012.

Indonesia remains a much sought after market and this is likely to remain as operators are expected to release, by mid-December, an approved “whitelist” of VAS players following a crackdown on errant subscriptions.
Other South East Asian markets where advertiser demand is expected to continue includes Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.
Across Continental Africa, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria remain key targets for advertisers. South African and Kenyan CPC rates have stabilized and are expected to draw in more advertisers. Nigeria remains competitive although CPC rates have seen a slight increase.
In South America, Brazil and Mexico continues to grow in traffic; Mexico is expected to deliver quarterly traffic of 1B impression in the New Year. CPC rates in Argentina and Chile have stabilized to more sustainable levels.
In the United States, rates remain competitive as advertiser demand is expected to be met with traffic growth.
In continental Europe the UK, Italy, France, Poland and Turkey are expected to sustain advertiser interest as mobile activity continues to grow.
Other advertiser hotspots that are expected to continue attracting advertiser interest in 2012 include Australia where double digit annual growth persists despite sometimes fluctuating advertiser demand.

Five Predictions for the Mobile Industry in 2012

2011-12-09T10:41:00.003+08:00

It's that time of year when we bring out our crystal ball and gaze into the not-so-distant future.

What would you think of a world where mobile devices all operate off of the same system, tablets replace laptops AND phones, coupon giants go the way of the Netscape & Friendster and m-Commerce remains a distant dream?

NO, we wouldn't believe that either! The mobile industry is constantly changing, but based on our experience of the past year, we're confident that these 5 predictions will hold true:

1. Marketers finally accept fragmentation.
2. Tablets are recognised as a new type of media, unique from PCs and phones.
3. Coupon companies go mobile, add fulfillment, then soar.
4. Small businesses embrace mobile social media.
5. m-Commerce comes of age in emerging markets.

Let's take a closer look!

1. One OS? One Device? Forget it!

Fragmentation is here to stay and 2012 is the year when developers and brands finally give up on trying to target a particular operating system or device, because specialisation means missing out.

The dizzying array of mobile devices, platforms and operating systems may be good news for consumers, but it can easily trip up marketers. The industry needs sensible strategies. In 2012, we'll all finally realise that pumping most of a marketing budget into an application that only reaches a sliver of their potential user base just doesn't make sense.

The solution? Make the mobile internet the first port of call as well as your primary presence. The mobile web has universal standards; it's an efficient distribution system and the 'biggest platform ever made'. It's an easy shift in perspective and one that will be the norm in the year ahead.

Beyond 2012, watch out for HTML5, which provides users with a rich app-like experience without having to download an app. But there is still a way to go before the majority of mobile devices can support this technology.

2. Tablets are recognised as a medium in their own right

Tablets are hot, sure, and not just Apple's iPad, as Android-based units start to capture market share. But when Apple first released the iPad in April 2010, pundits worried that the new device would cannibalise the market for both PCs and phones. This hasn't happened. And it won't. Tablets are a unique media consumption device with their own set of challenges and opportunities. A new ecosystem is forming, where phones, PCs and tablets are linked by cloud services and content.

3. Coupons Go Mobile, Add Fulfilment and Soar

So what's the story with coupon companies? Some people love them, others say there are too many players in the industry and they're just a passing fad. Take a look at Groupon. Its share price is still in the gutter and well below the US$31 high it hit after going public in November and many analysts doubt the company will make it past 2012. But Groupon's Cyber Monday holiday sales were 500% stronger than a year earlier.

Image courtesy of groupon.sg

Critics argue that discount sites don't create consumer loyalty, because bargain shoppers are by definition flighty. But too much time, effort and technology has been invested in coupons for them to go the way of the Dutch tulip. There are just too many clever people spending time tweaking their business models for the entire coupon industry to simply fade into obscurity. The ability of these companies to assemble an audience and present shoppers with a compelling set of offers is a value-add for all – consumers, retailers and publishers.

But here's what most observers are missing: the mobile angle.

The next step – which we'll see in the year ahead – is that companies like Groupon will add mobile fulfillment to their models. We're at a watershed where the dominant payment method will soon be determined. But whether it's using a mobile wallet, mobile banking or a peer-to-peer money transfer service like PayPal, the mobile internet + coupons + mobile payments is a winning formula.

The coupon market will consolidate in 2012. The consolidation will be rapid and exciting to watch. But a handful of smart companies that understand mobile commerce will emerge on top.

4. Small Businesses Gravitate to Mobile Social Media

In the old days, a company needed to hire an ad-man, like Mad Men's Donald Draper, to promote their business. Even today, major brands and SMEs alike rely on media professionals to design and develop their online presence – everything from websites to apps.

It is increasingly easy though for small businesses to market their services and develop relationships with a consumer base on their own. Small business owners are simply turning to Facebook, Twitter and other social media. And since support for mobile devices is provided by the social networking platforms themselves, businesses can easily focus on maintaining a conversation that delights and rewards mobile consumers for their loyalty.

Take for example one of our Indonesian clients, which attracted Facebook followers by offering to give away free iPod Touches. The company attracted a huge following, which they can cultivate as Facebook facilitates recurring interaction. This was not a one-off exposure, but rather the groundstone for forming relationships with customers. It's like building a piece of media, owning a page of a magazine. And increasingly in 2012, small businesses will do just that . . . and in the process, teach traditional marketers a thing or two about consumer relationships.

5. M-Commerce Comes of Age in Emerging Markets

In the United States, e-commerce – including online, catalogue and mobile sales – now accounts for more than 40% of all retail sales in most sectors. Seventy-four percent of electronics, music & videos are purchased online. Upwards of 65% of clothing, furniture and office supplies.

Expect to see similar trends in emerging markets . . . as soon as regulators step in to halt the handful of VAS players who unscrupulously take advantage of loopholes in mobile billing. Proper regulation protects consumers and legitimate businesses and encourages more people to access e-commerce for the first time.

The markets that take control and regain consumer trust will set an example in 2012 to the laggards that m-commerce, properly conducted, can pay handsome dividends.

And there you have it, our five predictions for 2012. Let us know in twelve months how they pan out! The market has evolved at a tremendous pace over the past several years . . . and it's virtually unrecognisable from when we started BuzzCity in 1999. We're confident that the year ahead will be a good one for us all. On behalf of the BuzzCity team, we'd like to wish you an early Happy New Year!

Djuzz Top 10 – November 2011

2011-12-06T09:54:00.009+08:00

By the end of November, there were 18,000 games hosted on Djuzz from nearly 200 developers. Among the Top 10 Games in November are:-

Need For Speed Shift - Up 1 place
Need For Speed Undercover - Down 1 place
Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince - Unchanged
GI Joe - Up 2 places
Outlaw Racing 2011 - Down 1 place
Fight Night Round 4 - Down 1 place
Airforce 2 - Unchanged
EA Sports FIFA 10 - Up 1 place
Crime City - Up 2 places
Wolverine - Down 2 places
SuperTank - Up 1 place

Among the Top 50 Games were some of the biggest climbers of the month. In 14th place is Online Racer (by Softgames) which climbed 60 places. Also by Softgames are My Little Farm (Up 159 places) and Heroes of Atlantis (Up 208 places). Other top climbers included :-

48 - Sexy Babes Wild Water Slides (Glu) Up 302 places
31 - Heros of Atlantis (Softgames) Up 208 places
49 - Stranded 2 (Glu) Up 264 places
30 - My Little Farm (Softgames) Up 159 places
14 - Online Racer (Softgames) Up 60 places
34 - myTopmodel (Softgames) Up 60 places
17 - Monster Fight (TMGamer) Up 33 places
18 - 2D Moto Racing Evolved (Indiagames) Up 34 places
39 - My Little City (Softgames) Up 25 places
9 - Crime City (Softgames) Up 2 places

Are Mobile Consumers Better Informed than Salespeople?

2011-11-28T12:47:00.005+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

An editor of Harvard Magazine recently wrote about consumers who are taking on (willingly or not) the roles of petrol attendants, check out clerks and sales assistants. Go to a supermarket in the US, and you're likely to scan your own purchase. Drive into a petrol station, pump your own gasoline and squeegee the windshield yourself.

“The robots have won,” writes Craig Lambert. “Although the automatons were supposedly going to free people by taking on life’s menial, repetitive tasks, frequently, technological innovation actually offloads such jobs onto human beings."

It's not all bad news, though. When it comes to purchase decisions, consumers are winning. The average shopper has become adept at product research - checking product information and comparing prices on the spot. Even in situations where a salesperson is available, consumers have a bigger view that includes options in other stores and online.

The self-service phenomenon may be charmless, but in this case, mobile technology is empowering consumers with information . . . and offering new opportunities to retailers and publishers.

The Facts

A survey of BuzzCity users shows that more than 40% of mobile consumers use their phones to check out prices or product information. You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that about half of the consumers we polled in the US, UK and France are using their phones this way. But the percentage is even higher in Indonesia and Nigeria. And even in places like Egypt, Malaysia and Mexico, consumers who are not yet transacting on mobile are already using their phones to look up technical specs, read consumer forums & expert reviews and compare prices. Consumers are becoming better informed and educated than the salespeople . . . and they have their phones to thank.

Consumer Reviews

CNET, for example, is probably one of the best known internet sites for tech product reviews and price comparisons. The company's mobile version strips out a lot of the content and navigation, but it's still really useful. CNET's mobile app is better. It offers barcode scanning technology that makes it easy to access information and compare products. The buying guides offer key questions to ask in store when considering a tech purchase.

GameSpot meanwhile is a great platform for reviews and really anything to do with games. As you might expect, the audience is primarily male (97% men according to the company). Gamespot's mobile portal is customised by region and searchable by platform. There are also some tongue-in-cheek video promos.

Where's the mobile version?

Yet there are still a number of online consumer platforms that have yet to go mobile. Some examples include dpreview.com (digital cameras), Hardware Zone (PCs) and GSMArena (how ironic, yah!).

These companies are simply missing out by not building a mobile presence. There's a great opportunity here for them . . . or their competitors.

Think Local

Product availability and pricing can vary remarkably between countries. The camera that’s cheapest in New York might be the most expensive one in Seoul and completely unavailable in Helsinki. So although consumers may continue to check out international sites, there’s a community of shoppers in just about every region who are ready to compare their findings and eager to connect with others who are making purchase decisions.

Producing content in local languages is also sure to increase readership in many markets.

Opportunities for Retailers

Finally, you don't have to be an online portal to reach out to consumers using mobile. Take the example of B & H, a New York based photo, video and pro audio store. Each product and category on the company's site has in-depth reviews, expert guides and user comments. Customers are encouraged to post reviews, Amazon-style, and can rate each other’s posts.

B & H's site transforms the company into more than a retailer; it becomes an authority, with guides and tips on everything from studio lighting to photographing seascapes and weddings.

So, if you're a retailer or publisher, it's time to think about about how you can engage these mobile consumers . . . by creating forums where they can compare information, check out prices, read reviews . . . and perhaps even make a purchase from their phone.

Djuzz Music Catalogue

2011-11-24T17:21:00.007+08:00

By Allen Umali, Executive Producer, Djuzz

We launched free music downloads in early September and, since then, have seen more than 250,000 music downloads from Djuzz. If you are already a catalogue partner for Djuzz games, you can now, very easily, get a music catalogue for your site.

The link for the music catalogue is as follows.
music.djuzz.com/?ca=xxxxx

So if your current link for the games catalogue is partner.djuzz.com, your music catalogue can be found at

music.djuzz.net/?ca=partner.

All your current selections (logos, colours, ad settings etc) have been retained and your music catalogue is ready to be launched.

Those new to the Djuzz catalogue can get more information here. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

You can write me at

New Mobile Regulations in Indonesia Pave the Way for M-Commerce Growth

2011-11-18T18:38:00.005+08:00

By K.F. Lai, BuzzCity CEO

The government of Indonesia has effectively 'reset' the mobile subscriptions market. It shut down all mobile subscriptions in mid-October and required content providers who wish to resubscribe their users to do so in compliance with tougher rules.

Consumer agencies have been pushing for this action against a small minority of mobile advertisers whose fraudulent actions tarnished the whole industry, for some time.

The result is good news for the whole industry (well, everyone except those fraudsters) and it took place not a moment too late. Regulators around the world are starting to recognise the importance of their role in protecting the value chain. By re-establishing much-needed trust between businesses and consumers, this paves the way for the emergence of solid m-commerce markets.

So what’s changed?
Indonesian mobile service providers have agreed to stop broadcasting SMS messages, pop-ups and voice messages containing third party promotions. New subscriptions meanwhile require a double opt-in by consumers.

The safeguards will ensure that consumers understand what they’re agreeing to, with terms and conditions displayed, and clearer ways to unsubscribe. They will also protect unwitting consumers from being caught by misleading SMS campaigns offering prizes, which subscribe unsuspecting respondents to a subscription service and ring back tones that siphon cell phone credit.

The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) calls this “phone credit theft” and estimates that consumers suffered monthly losses of Rp147 billion (US$ 16,3m) from these practices. It also says that complaints against telecommunications providers comprised some 18% of all complaints recorded by the foundation in 2010, up from 9.6% in 2009.

Other examples
Indonesia is hardly the only country to implement tough rules aimed at mobile content and service providers.

In South Africa, consumers making a purchase by SMS or WAP need to double-confirm the transaction. In the case of a SMS, users receive a message from a carrier asking them to confirm that they would like to subscribe; the message restates the price of the service and the user has to reply “yes” for the transaction to go through. For WAP transactions, users go from a banner ad to a landing page with a click to subcribe/buy button. After they click to confirm, a carrier page appears with price details and information about how to unsubscribe. The consumer needs to click again to confirm the purchase.

In France, abusive SMS marketing practices led the government to pass a law requiring advertisers to give consumers the option to opt out of these lists. Facing a similar scenario, the Thai government set new rules for unsolicited SMS campaigns.

The immediate impact
In Indonesia, the average Cost per Click (CPC) dropped from about 14 US cents to 4 US cents overnight. After the intial drop, we've seen a gradual increase in CPC, though it's not quite back to its previous levels yet. Content advertisers have returned to the fray and are adhering to the rules, while no doubt allocating a lot of time and energy to regain their unsubscribed customers.

Short-term opportunities and long-term growth
This cycle presents brands – big and small -- with new opportunities:

•   They can get cheaper clicks and more exposure for the same advertising budgets over the next few weeks, while the content companies are getting back up to speed with all campaigns.

•   Companies selling one-off items now face less competition, which means they may enjoy higher margins in the short-term.

•   One-off mobile transactions – like the sale of MP3s, games, ringtones, etc. - are not affected by the new rules. But these content providers now face less competition as well, which is good news for companies that have adopted the Try & Buy, Mix & Match or other freemium models.

What we're witnessing are the growing pains of maturing markets. Regulators are flushing the rubbish out of the system. It's unfortunate that drastic actions by regulators have been needed in places like Indonesia; in other markets experiencing rapid growth, we hope regulators can step in earlier.

Hotspots - Africa Q3 11

2011-11-10T17:13:00.007+08:00

In Q3 of 2011 a total of 3.2 billion ads were served across continental Africa. This continues a year of growth across Continental Africa characterized by 135% more traffic compared to 2010. Seven countries drew traffic in excess of 100 million ads served per quarter and three countries (South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya) saw more than half a billion ads served in Q3 2011.

Further depth is seen across the continent this quarter as 26 countries (22 in the last quarter) served more than 10 million ads.

Please click here for the full report

Ad networks: the scale and insight to beat fragmentation

2011-11-04T11:00:00.005+08:00

The past few years have shown remarkable growth of the mobile internet, driven by rapid consumer adoption and major advances in the capabilities of mobile devices. In recent months, mobile ad networks received a great vote of confidence from investors, who bet substantial sums that the space will continue growing, become more valuable, and attract an increasing share of marketing budgets.

In spite of this, though, some naysayers still question the value of ad networks. They believe that marketers are still treating mobile as an afterthought, and they question the quality of network traffic.

Low quality traffic?

Ad networks, by definition, represent a broad spectrum of sites across the web. To question the quality of traffic on a network of the scale of BuzzCity (or any of the big three ad networks) is to question the mobile internet itself – and basically claim that ‘the internet is rubbish’.

In mobile, as in the fixed web, there are indeed many sites dedicated to meaningless drivel (jackass-style videos and skateboarding pets come to mind), but any site that attracts loyal users, and grows its traffic consistently, is a site that by definition, answers real consumer demand for content and services.

With a few exceptions (usually, sites that create negative brand associations), the only place that isn’t a potentially valuable source of traffic for your brand… is a site with no traffic.

Is mobile still an afterthought?

As for mobile being an afterthought for brands and agencies, well, there’s some truth there. Traditional media (print, broadcast and outdoor) is holding on to the lion’s share of ad revenue for now, but its proportion of budget is falling as it loses adspend to digital channels. That trend isn’t going to reverse anytime soon.

The burgeoning mobile ecosystem now includes significant mobile commerce channels, a wider array of content and services than ever, and of course, ever increasing advertising budgets. The slice of pie may not be massive yet, but already, it’s nothing to be sneezed at.

The challenge facing marketers: fragmentation

Consumers are spoilt for choice. 10 years ago, options were scarce, but users now have options ranging from the most basic to the most advanced mobile devices.

Agencies and brands aren’t that lucky. Anyone who’s worked in the industry, even in the most cursory way, knows the challenges of fragmentation. Marketers face a dizzying array of platforms, and almost too many individual models of handsets to count. Each has its own screen size, hardware configuration and mix of functionality. That can make setting a strategy very difficult indeed.

Our regular reports (including The BuzzCity Report and this blog) provide analysis and practical advice for marketers. Because we’ve never put our eggs in one basket (either in the platform wars, or the web vs apps debate), we have a clear and unbiased view of the state of the mobile web.

By working through this rich data and providing insight, the ad networks play a valuable role in providing marketers with the information that they need to make the right decisions, and set appropriate strategies.

Avoid the strategy black hole.

Mobile strategies are unclear for many advertisers and agencies. Without a transparent, unbiased view of the whole ecosystem, it can be difficult to make decisions. And when decisions are made without the right information, mistakes are almost inevitable.

The first step towards setting an appropriate strategy is to question statements such as those discussed above, get the information that empowers you to decide what’s best for your brand based on an accurate and true picture of current usage and trends, and then harness the potential of millions of those mobile users around the world.

BuzzCity Tours - Nov & Dec 2011

2011-10-14T13:36:00.014+08:00

We complete this year’s tours with :

The BuzzCity Media Roundtable @ Charlotte Street Hotel, 15 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 1RJ. [8 Nov]. The roundtable will provide media with insights into marketer uptake and attitudes to mobile advertising. Discussions will include consumer insights; how they behave with mobiles, what the drivers are for future development of mobile marketing.
KF Lai will also be joining a panel of experts @ Access: Mobile, London, [Nov 9th]
The Festival of Media Asia, Singapore [13-15 Nov]
Mobile Asia Congress, Hong Kong [16-17 Nov] where KF Lai will join a panel of experts to discuss "How Mobile Advertising Is Evolving and the Metrics Behind It".
MVAS India Summit, Mumbai [23 Nov] (Manish)
Mobile Web Africa [22-23] Johannesburg (M de Souza)
World Brand Congress [24-26 Nov] Mumbai (Manish)
MEF Americas, Miami [29-30 Nov] (Camille)
Dubai World Game Expo 2011 [30 Nov - 3 Dec] (Allen U)
The BuzzCity Developer Garage [ 4 pm on Dec 2] at our office in Singapore. This event looks at the subject of “Building Successful Tech companies – Having the End in Mind”. Hear from Darius Cheung, Director of Consumer Mobile Technology at McAfee, and Eddie Chau, Founder & CEO of Brandtology and Chairman of Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation. Both will share their experience driving start-ups to successful exits. Please RSVP by email to baoyi[at]buzzcity.com as seats are limited

As always, we hope to meet with you at these occasions.

The BuzzCity Report ( Volume 1 Issue 4 )

2011-10-12T07:10:00.001+08:00

In the third quarter of 2011, our network grew by 11%, and served a total of 33.7 billion ads worldwide. We’ve already exceeded the number of ads served in the whole of 2010, and are well on track to double last year’s performance.

In addition to the regular roundup of stats and analytics, we focus on the practical lessons particularly aimed at smaller businesses. Our feature section is a primer on ‘Mobilizing your Business’ and our Media Insight section shows how you can effectively make use of social networking to promote a local business. Please click here to download the full report.

Best Practices and Tips for BuzzCity Publishers

2011-10-11T23:42:00.000+08:00

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

BuzzCity has passed an important milestone: our advertising network now averages over 10 billion impressions every month, thanks in part to a growing number of small individual publishers.

Take Indonesia, for example. As in all our markets, the average cost per click is a function of advertiser demand and publisher supply. At the moment, the average CPC in Indonesia is about 4 US cents. So if you figure a site gets 5000 clicks -- a decent amount for an entrepreneur or hobbyist -- that's US $200.

So, how do YOU cash in? Well, in my last article, I wrote about the mechanics of how to become a publisher. This week, I'd like to share some tips that will help you make money and best practices that will keep your readers and visitors happy.

The Golden Rules

As a publisher, you determine where ads appear on your mobile site. As you do this, consider two golden rules:

1. Don't piss off your users.

2. Be strategic.

Mobile users are generally impatient. They want to find what they are searching for quickly and easily. On average, they view 1.5 pages before moving on. Only 33% of consumers make it past the first page. If you place ads correctly, visitors to your site will appreciate it and keep coming back. At the same time, you'll maximise the number of clicks and your revenue.

Best Practices

1. Place ads on pages where user activity is high.

2. But don't place ads in spots that will annoy users.

3. Avoid distracting visitors from your site's intended activity.

4. Graphic banners and text ads should be placed in spots clearly meant for advertisements and arranged so that users can choose whether to click on them.

Consider starting with a single banner ad on your home page, like this:

You could also try 1 graphic banner + 1 text ad:

In both cases, you'll note that the ads are at the bottom of the mobile page, a spot that doesn' t distract and where consumers are used to seeing ads.

5. Keep track of the ads' Click Through Rates. A healthy CTR is between 1 and 1.5%. In some situations, it's best not to show any ads on a page. BuzzCity's online reports show you the average CTR for campaigns on your site, indexed by market.

So in the example above, the publisher is receiving more exposure in the US, but a higher click-through rate in India.

Remember . . .

Placing more ads on your site does not necessarily mean you'll make more money. Most ad buys are based on CPC, the cost per click. Additional ads may or may not lead to more clicks. In a chat room, for example, users don't click ads so much– regardless of the number of ads on the page -- they're more focused on chatting. On a search page, though, the odds are higher as the user is already looking for something.

If you're running a community site, too many graphic banners could lead to short-term gains (as users click) but long-term losses (as users leave your page and don't return). In this case, best to focus on a single text ad per page.

Safeguarding Against Fraud

We have several policies to protect both adverstisers and publishers from fraud. Several key things to note here:

do not change the Ad Codes
don't try to beat the system by clicking on ads on your own site
don't place ads in a spot where touchscreen users will accidentally hit it, for example, too close to another link on your page.

Our engineers check sites for these issues regularly, and if we detect problems, it could delay payments of legitimate earnings owed you.

Once a flag is raised, a site is placed on probation. During this period, if a user clicks on an ad, she will be directed to an Ad Page, like the one below, rather than directly to the advertiser's url. Only if she then clicks again on the ad will the click be counted.

In addition, during a probation period, unpaid earnings are forfeited, but new clicks will be credited to the publishers account. For more details, please take a look at our Publisher Fraud FAQ.

Marketing & Promotion

To maximise revenue and get the most out of your mobile site, publishers need to attract users. And the best way to do this is simple: advertise ; )

Of course you'll need to advertise in the right places and perhaps make some adjustments to your site to keep users happy. Here are a few tips and strategies:

Use tools and analytics to measure your site's performance
Make adjustments based on the analytics
Identify your key markets and understand the user base there
Use marketing channels to develop a solid user base
Submit your site to search engines

If you transfer earnings from your publisher account to purchase mobile ads, BuzzCity will give you a 20% bonus, giving you more bang for your advertising buck.

Keep in mind that an effective marketing strategy is a continual process. To be successful, you can't promote one day, then stop the next. But you'll also need to update your ads from time to time.

Related Article

"Earning Money as a BuzzCity Publisher"

Djuzz Top 10 - September 2011

2011-10-06T15:34:00.005+08:00

There were 8.2 million game downloads from Djuzz by 3.6 million gamers. Among the Top 10 for September are:-

Need For Speed Undercover : New Entry (Try n Buy Version)

Outlaw Racing 2011 : Unchanged

Need For Speed Shift : New Entry (Try n Buy Version)

Need for Speed Shift : Down 3 places ( This ad supported version was replaced by the Try n Buy version)

Crime City : Up 32 places

Airforce 2 : Up 4 places

Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince : New Entry

Fight Night Round 4 : New Entry

GI Joe : New Entry

Tom and Jerry - Mouse Maze : Down 3 places

More than 13,000 games were made available in September and many new titles like Wolverine and Monopoly Here and Now The World Edition quickly made it among the top fifty games this month. These are among the 4,000 new games added to our offering in the last 6 months. (We plan to release another 5,000 titles in the next couple of months). These remain much sought after by surfers as evidenced by their rankings at the end of September 2011. See how these rank among the Top 50 games in September.

Earning Money as a BuzzCity Publisher

2011-09-21T15:08:00.005+08:00

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

The BuzzCity Ad Network enables mobile website publishers and application developers to monetise their content with advertisements. Partners earn a share of the revenue for each ad clicked while retaining complete control over how and where the ads appear.

So if you've created a mobile site - whether it's to talk about sports, music or share your views on everyday life -- and you'd like to make some money, this blog entry is for you. Today, we're going to walk you through the basics of becoming a BuzzCity Publisher and answer some commonly asked questions about payments.

HOW TO BECOME A PUBLISHER

Anyone can become a publisher in just a few easy steps.

First, you just need to sign up! Simply go to www.buzzcity.com to register. We'll then assign you a unique partner ID (which you'll need to use in a moment to place ads on your site). Your partner ID is the numeric code next to your account name and it looks like this (click on the image to make it bigger):

Now we need to know about your mobi-site and what sorts of ads you'd like to run.

You'll need to give us your site URL and select the best description (channel) of your site. Most publishers usually want advertisers whose messages are appropriate for their visitors, so give some thought to your advertiser categories. There are five choices:

If you run a mobile site with local news, for example, you may want to choose advertisers from the Brand and Mobile Content categories. Please take note -- choosing all the available categories does not guarantee higher earnings.

PLACING ADS ON YOUR MOBILE SITE

Next, you need to place an AD CODE on your site. This is easy to do. Most publishers prefer to run graphical banners. Here's the code you need:

<a href="http://click.buzzcity.net/click.php?partnerid=XXXXX">
<img src="http://show.buzzcity.net/show.php?partnerid=XXXXX & get=mweb" alt="" </a>

Change the XXXX to the number in your partner ID (just the numbers), then paste the ad code into the html of the page where you want ads to appear. This is just like copying an “embed video” code from a site like YouTube.

Now an ad like this will appear on your site:

And that's it! Please note that clicking on this banner from a PC won't cost the advertiser nor will it earn money for a publisher. Our system only counts clicks made from a mobile device.

Let's move now to one of the most popular questions . . .

WHEN DO I GET PAID?

Once your earnings reach US$200, we pay you!

To see if things are going well, your publisher site statistics can be a useful tool:

Ideally your stats should show that a lot of banners are being displayed and clicked on by visitors.

Becoming a publisher is easy but mistakes do happen! Sometimes publishers mistakenly describe their site and select the wrong adverstisers. We get complaints from both parties when this happens. To address this issue, new publishers are put under a brief observation period. This helps us categorize sites appropriately and fix little errors like these. While we wait for the end of the observation period before making any payments, you'll of course still be paid for ads that are clicked on during this time. We'll issue your first cheque on the last day of the following month after your account reaches US$200.

In the meantime, please be sure to fill out the payment details on the registration page. You'd be surprised by how many times we've had to delay payment, simply because publishers haven't told us where to send the money.

UP NEXT

Tips and Best Practices, including how to drive traffic to your site and insights on how we handle fraudulent clicks. Until then, keep in mind that publishers with interesting content and who choose ads best suited to their audience will make the most money.

POSTSCRIPT: TEXT ADS

Some publishers like to place text ads on their site. While this is a relatively simple task, it requires some skill with coding, specifically something called the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. More information can be found on our publisher wiki.

Djuzz is now Jammin'!

2011-09-20T15:09:00.004+08:00

By Allen Umali, Executive Producer, Djuzz

Hi! My name is Allen, I'm the new executive producer of Djuzz, BuzzCity's ad-supported mobile content portal and I have some exciting news: Djuzz now offers gamers more than just games. We have free music too!

That's right . . . just like the 13,000+ games and apps already on offer . . . MP3 files can now be downloaded by mobile users at absolutely no cost.

But wait, you say, hasn't free music been the death-pin of sites from Napster to TubeFire (a Japanese site that is currently being sued for enabling users to download YouTube videos)? What makes Djuzz so special?

Well, a lot of things make us stand out ; ) but in this case, we are focusing on indie music, which makes Djuzz a win-win proposition for artists and consumers.

What's in it for musicians?

BuzzCity hosts, markets and promotes the music at no charge (just like what we do for applications and games). We act as an independent, non-exclusive distributor. There is absolutely no cost to musicians.

But why would a band or solo artist want to give away its music for free?

Imagine for a moment that you're a singer in Kansas or Kuching for that matter and you find out that you can easily promote your music to millions of people across the globe, but you have to give away something for free. What do you do? Lady Gaga or the Black Eyed Peas might not go along with this, but the artists we've been speaking to, jump at the opportunity. For them, exposure is key. Only when a band is well-known on a national or international stage does their priority shift to restricting distribution.

Posting music on Djuzz also creates new revenue opportunities. Just as game-makers offer both free and premium versions of their products, musicians can promote themselves with free tracks and sell albums. Or offer a track for free for a limited time, then sell it later.

Plus tie-ins cross promotions with JamSked -- our mobile internet directory of live music events and independent artists – can drive new fans to their concerts. This is good news for promoters, venue operators and others in the music industry . . . not to mention the legions of music lovers who already frequent JamSked.

Tell me more about the music!

Personally, I like the tunes of rocker Anton Cosmo, whose dad was in the band Boston. But if you're in to a different, not to worry, 2800 tracks are currently on offer. We expect this number to rise rapidly. At the moment, the tunes are divided into 10 categories:

But sometimes, we're not quite sure how to classify a song, so I expect the number of categories will also increase.

Just like apps and games, Djuzz highlights what's hot and the latest tracks.

Click on an artist's name and you're taken to a profile page, which includes a photo, a link to their tracks on Djuzz and suggestions about related artists.

Why are we doing this?

Mobile consumers want content! And they consistently want to do more with their phones. Content developers meanwhile face high distribution costs. And we have great relationships to offer both groups. Expanding Djuzz to offer music as well as apps and games just seems like a no-brainer. Of course, we have our business reasons as well: good content means more users and more advertising opportunities, which in turn is good for our catalogue partners.

What type of content are we looking for?

Well, obviously, MUSIC. But there's also plenty of space on Djuzz for apps and games. JamSked features gigs. And Now-Cook is the place to go for recipes.

Coming Soon!

VIDEOS and WHITE LABEL MUSIC CATALOGUES.

We're rolling out both features in January 2012. The first Djuzz videos will be movie trailers from Hollywood to Bollywood and everything in between. And with white label music catalogues, partners can create their own branded mobile music sites and place ads on them to generate revenue. Prospective catalogue partners can start making enquiries now about getting content for their sites.

More Info

Find the latest list of popular downloads on our Djuzz blog and if you any questions or comments, please let me know. You can write me at allenu[at]buzzcity.com

Mobile Entertainment Comes of Age, Revealing a Treasure Trove of Opportunities for Brand Engagement

2011-09-08T18:59:00.013+08:00

By KF Lai, CEO

Anyone who still believes that mobile gaming is the domain of the spotty teenage boy urgently needs to update their thinking. All age groups are now engaging in regular and immersive mobile entertainment activity on their mobile phones, and the proportion of women playing mobile games is rising fast. Those agencies and brands that understand the new dynamics of mobile entertainment can take advantage of this powerful channel to reach mainstream consumers with “byte size” commercial or branded messages.

Mobile entertainment has certainly come of age. Whereas consumers previously indulged in ‘casual snacking’, the mobile lifestyle has become more structured and sophisticated, resulting in significant growth of immersive and regular mobile gaming activity across all demographics. 42 percent of consumers in the UK now use a smartphone[1]. Only 9% of mobile users globally claim that they have never played games on their mobiles.

Advertiser activity has increased too, with investment in the marketing of games, music and lifestyle content growing consistently over the past few years. That adspend is obviously generating results, with 46% of mobile users having purchased virtual products such as games, ringtones and MP3s.

Changing demographics

Many marketers still fall into the trap of thinking that mobile entertainment is all about the teenage market. The typical mobile user is aged between 20 and 25, and more mature gamers are beginning to emerge. The over-40s market is growing particularly fast, and already makes up 12% of gamers in the US, 19% in South Africa and 8% in Malaysia

Although the mobile gaming market has traditionally been male-dominated, we’re starting to see the rise of female gamers (they already make up 29% globally). Countries leading the way here are the US and Thailand (both 49% female), and South Africa (47% female).

Interestingly, both men and women share a preference for action and adventure games (41%) followed by sports and racing games (21%). 8% of users prefer social apps, and 9% prefer puzzles.

Regular engagement

Mobile users are no longer so casual about gaming. There’s structured regularity in both the discovery and consumption of games. 32% of consumers download new games sporadically, and a majority (46%) demonstrate a weekly or fortnightly regularity in their download activity. 40% of gamers play every day.

Games are being relied on more than ever as recreational time-fillers, and we can see patterned breaks such as after work, while waiting, or before sleep. 32% of users claim that they will play a mobile game ‘at every chance they get’.

Most mobile users know precisely what they want. Their preferences suggest sophisticated plotlines beyond the traditional idea of casual games. Role-playing games, multi-level quests, social games and strategy games all require interaction, engagement and skill development over time. 46% of users play to learn something new, or to get the most out of their phones.

We’re also seeing discernment, prior knowledge and background thinking when it comes to purchasing decisions. Based on user search behaviour, a significant portion of downloads come from users who are already aware of the game title that they’re looking for, and less dependence on discovery.

With all the games on the market, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s impossible to create a new game that will be of interest to the mobile user. In fact, 12% claim they can’t find what they want. Our research showed that users felt that many games did not cater to their age or vocation, or teach them something new – a clear market opportunity for games developers.

What opportunities are there for marketers?

Whereas mobile gaming might once have been viewed as a simplistic activity that users stumbled upon, marketers are now learning that mobile entertainment is a mainstream activity, and a set of targetable consumer products.

So if you’re looking for the next opportunity in mobile entertainment, where do you start? With the significant regularity of user interaction (both playing and downloading new games), ad-supported games or advergames look to be a good opportunity – particularly where branding is a key campaign objective.

Distribution is crucial, and you’ll need to collaborate with platforms that encourage discovery, and make use of every media opportunity to build consumer awareness prior to download.

With all the hype around top-end smartphones, particularly handsets such as the iPhone, it may be tempting to focus on developing for this segment exclusively. Don’t forget, however, to direct some resources toward feature phones too – they still make up a significant segment of the market, and could well be low-hanging fruit.

Consider the longevity of your game too. It goes beyond the length of a single campaign, so plan for a lifespan of at least 1+ years.

Opportunities exist to create games or applications that target a female audience (our data shows this is clearly a growing market). There are also opportunities for recreational applications, or games that can be used as much for stress relief as mental exercises.

With a wide and growing variety of channels available to reach the mobile user, it is crucial that marketers develop their understanding of the mobile user and his/her behaviour, effectively optimising their content to suit these. By understanding the consumer as well as possible, marketers can reap the rewards of successful mobile campaigns.

This article was originally published in Fourth Source on 1 September 2011.

Djuzz Top 10 - August 2011

2011-09-05T09:56:00.022+08:00

August saw a 33% increase in unique visitors to Djuzz which resulted in a total of 8,735,096 game downloads. This is an increase of 16% compared to last month. The Top 10 are:-

Djuzz Top 10 - August '11
Rank	Developer	Title	Downloads	Growth	Remarks
1	EA Mobile	Need for Speed Shift	448,218	13%	Unchanged
2	Tequilam	Outlaw Pacing 2011	312,731	19%	Unchanged
3	EA Mobile	The Sims 3 World Adventures	269,872	12%	Unchanged
4	EA Mobile	Command and Conquer: Red Alert Mobile	249,290	13%	Unchanged
5	HOVR	Underground Racer	143,206	17%	Unchanged
6	Zapak Games	Indo Pak Cricket	129,645	90%	Up 11 places
7	Playfon	Tom and Jerry - Mouse Maze	115,860	24%	Unchanged
8	Playfon	Ben10 Power of The Omnitrix	106,634	19%	Up 1 place
9	Moffy games	3d Street Racing	105,092	19%	Up 1 place
10	Wintel	Airforce 2	102,142	12%	Down 2 places

The top five games remained unchanged as each saw increased number of downloads. Cricket themed games drew a lot of interest among surfers and saw the biggest growth among the top fifty games. Indo Pak Cricket by Zapak Games saw a 90% rise in downloads. T20 Cricket Premier League and EA Cricket 11 also benefited from international cricket that started in July. The top climbers in August also include Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (31%) and DreamPlanet (29%).

For a full list of the Top 50 games in August, please click here.

Social Networking and Business 101

2011-08-29T18:05:00.001+08:00

By Chester Ng, Sales Director (Southeast Asia)

If you are a small business owner, you don't need to spend a lot of time or money to have a presence on the mobile internet. Free social networking tools are making it easy to create 'mobilised' content to attract and interact with consumers. You can also publish updates on your own, without having to depend on an agency or web developer.

Best of all, you'll reach a large market segment that depends on mobile handsets to access the internet.

In today's blog post, I'd like to share some examples with you of how major brands are using social networks. But whether you own a hair salon or a restaurant, work at a local retailer or manufacturer, you can apply these ideas to your own business in ways that will benefit your company's bottom line.

FACEBOOK

Some 300 – 400 million people access Facebook on a daily basis. Several hundred million additional users go to Facebook, but not as often. Facebook is the leading social network in most markets. You don't have to be a genius to create a new account or page. And it's mobile friendly. If you access www.facebook.com from a mobile device, the site will detect your handset and redirect you to the appropriate version of its mobile site, m.facebook.com, based on whether you have a touch screen or not.

Brands as diverse as Absolut Vodka, Acura, DBS Bank , Ernst & Young and Tata Docomo have a presence on Facebook.

Today, though, I'd like to focus on the example of AXE, a popular men’s perfume from Unilever, which wanted to launch a new product line in Indonesia.

Prior to this campaign, AXE did not have a mobile presence. But the company realised that mobile had to be a key part of their advertising strategy. More than 40 percent of mobile users in Indonesia say they rarely, if ever, use a computer to access the internet. And the BuzzCity Advertising Network reaches over 23 million people in Indonesia. Seventy percent are men, which is AXE's target market.

So AXE created a Facebook page and banner ads to promote it. The page offers info on AXE's latest events and promotions. The KPI for the campaign was to drive as many people as possible to “LIKE” the Facebook mobile fan page. To attract users, AXE offered a lucky draw for a free iPod Touch.

In just five days, AXE's banner ads attracted 1.7 million impressions. The Facebook page has over 700,000 fans.

YOUTUBE

YouTube's technology compresses videos into formats suitable for phones. It's as easy as uploading your video. Placing a TV ad online will give it a longer shelf life and reach a wider audience. You can also consider creating content especially for the web. Take a look, for example at Harley Davidson's YouTube channel. It's produced a series of short videos about its bikes and the people who ride them.

You don't need to produce professional videos, either. With flipcams and consumer video cameras, you can easily create and share videos of your merchandise, testimonials and more.

Even if you don't take action, someone else might . . . particularly if your ad is amusing. A Thai consumer, for example, uploaded this video about Bridgestone tires. (The previous link was for mobile; here's a PC version.)

TWITTER + FACEBOOK + BLOGGING + YOUTUBE

As you can see from this photo, the Hock Gift Shop (HGS) is not a very large store. But this 'one stop army shop' is quite popular in Singapore with men performing their National Service and annual military duties (“Nsmen” and “reservists”). HGS has also adopted an integrated social media strategy to publicise its merchandise. It posts Twitter updates a couple times a week with links back to its website. The most recent entry on its blog showcases new tools that the shop has to customise t-shirts. HGS' YouTube channel shows how products are made – from engraving dog tags to using a heat press to customise t-shirts; there are a few non-product vids posted just for fun as well. And the store's Facebook page provides a forum for customers to interact with the shop & pose questions and for the store to provide updates on merchandise and pricing. HGS has a website as well; and of course there's a widget on the home page linked to HGS's Facebook feed.

OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS

Your choice of which social network to use will likely vary by market. In Thailand, HI5 is popular. MySpace is pretty US & Canadian centric. So far there's no business element to Google+ yet, but keep an eye on it.

THE POWER OF MOBILE

Regular readers of this blog are already attuned to the advantages of mobile marketing. But did you know that the primary mode of accessing the internet for more and more people is increasingly a mobile device?

In Russia, 19% of internet surfers rarely, if ever, use a PC to go online. In Egypt, the number is 70%.

So the bottom line here is this: social networking provides a cheap back-door onto the mobile internet so that you can market your business and interact with consumers. As always, though, you can't assume that 'if you build it, they will come'. You need also need to promote what you do. Fortunately, mobile advertising is cheap and has a high ROI.

Mobile Hotspots : Latin America and the Caribbean

2011-08-26T08:00:00.001+08:00

We recently highlighted hotspots in Latin America which generated a lot of interest among advertisers. This update outlines some of the devices used in some of the key markets in the region.

Device	Mexico	Brazil	Venezuela	Costa Rica
Apple	11.8%	0.8%	0.5%	1.5%
Blackberry	23.9%	0.9%	29.5%	0.1%
LG	12.3%	16.8%	6.9%	2.2%
Motorola	1.3%	4.0%	5.2%	1.1%
Nokia	33.4%	40.9%	33.9%	69.5%
Samsung	5.3%	27.0%	15.4%	4.9%
SonyEricsson	6.2%	6.4%	6.7%	16.3%

We have also expanded this hotspot “watchlist” to include the Caribbean nations. Please download the latest review abstracted from our Campaign Planner.

Mobile Hotspots : Central and Eastern Europe

2011-08-19T12:35:00.002+08:00

We often share market opportunities and wanted to highlight hotspots in Central and Eastern Europe.

Last year, a report called “Do you CEE?” was published which studied Central and Eastern European internet ecosystem. What is clear from the report is that the CEE is:-

A market full of incredible potential for online advertising growth,
Growing from strength to strength and appears to be a forward-moving and....,
...has “much more room for new media”

Our own data also shows that countries in Central and Eastern Europe have had a year of tremendous growth in mobile. Advertisers are taking advantage of this particularly in Turkey, Poland, Romania and Russia.

Click here to download a brief summary of opportunities across continental Europe.

What’s The Shelf Life Of Mobile Games?

2011-08-16T10:00:00.010+08:00

In the last 7 months our ad network has doubled in size; possibly because there are more (new) surfers on the mobile internet and also because they (early adopters and newbies) are spending more time surfing. Their voracious appetite for content has improved the longevity of many game titles on Djuzz. We looked at the Top 100 games of the last six months to see how older content fared against the latest additions….

By August 2011, the Top 100 games this year have had more than 34 million downloads.
More than a quarter of these titles are from HOVR who has 26 games among the Top 100. These include Underground Racer, 4x4 Extreme Rally , Big Game Safari, Euro Football, and Battle Line Okinawa. Collectively these titles have been downloaded 7.5 million times in the last 7 months.
Herocraft has 10 titles (including Mr Revolver, Dragon & Dracula and Robo 2) which secured 2.5 million downloads.
Youpark has secured 2.2. million downloads from 9 titles and
inLogic has 7 titles (including long-time favourite on Djuzz Fatal Fist, among others) that have been downloaded 1.2 million times.

While popular wisdom among developers suggests that “celebrity” titles have a longer shelf life among games (2-3 months) we could not help noticing some evergreen favourites on Djuzz. Mr Revolver (by HeroCraft) traces its lifeline on Djuzz to Dec ‘09 and BomberXmen by Falcon Mobile also from Dec ’09 that tops off longevity with almost 2,000 downloads per day !

While it may be too early to tell, we are keeping an eye on these trends to see how developers and brands can leverage rich content offering to develop sustainable distribution to mobile surfers.

Expect more on this in our Q4 Report !

ps The shelf life of unbranded games is rumoured to be 2-3 weeks !

Some Advice for the Makers of White Box Phones (and the rest of us too)

2011-08-12T15:50:00.022+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

Walk into a handset store in the popular shopping mall ITC Roxy Mas in Jakarta or District 1 in Saigon and there's a very good chance you'll find rarely heard of makes being sold alongside the international mass-market brands. Some phones, though, like the Blueberry and ti-phone, have a familiar ring to them.

These generic 'white-box' phones are selling just about as well – sometimes better – than their big-name competitors and they now offer the same features, and then some, at a cheaper price.

Telecom carriers and brand-name manufacturers are taking a big hit, but if the no-name upstarts are to survive and flourish, they should take a few tips from the likes of the iPhone and Samsung. Otherwise, they'll be knocked off the block by the next company that can slice a penny off the cost of a chip or screen.

Background: White Boxes Are In

It's no secret that white box phones are cheap (US$50 to $100) and have been winning market share for some time. Generic handsets – taken as a group – are the market leader in Vietnam and hold the second and third largest stakes in several other markets. Just take a look at these stats:

Vietnam: 40% (Nokia is in second place with 39%.)

Indonesia (21%, second largest)

India (12%, third largest)

Kenya (11.5% third largest)

Philippines (11.5%, second largest)

White box handsets today have bigger screens, full QWERTY keypads and processors that can handle most multimedia content. In fact, a consumer can buy a generic phone that can do everything an iPhone or Blackberry can do at a fraction of the price . . . and without having sign a 24-month contract with a telecom carrier.

Nexian Smartfren E651 Touchscreen

The user experience can be glitchy at times and is honestly not as good as that of an iPhone, but these generic handsets have additional advantages. Some phones, for example, offer slots for duel SIM cards so a consumer can have more than one active number at a time, a feature that mainstream handsets have shied away from in order to avoid upsetting the telecom companies.

Who Makes the White Boxes?

There are three main categories of players here:

Chip manufacturers – like MTK in Taiwan and Spreadtrum in China -- who build the processors that power smartphones. They make A LOT of these and produce each processor for as little as USD 2-3 each.

Vertically integrated manufacturers, who build and spec entire handsets (buying key components from likes of MTK and Spreadtrum)

Retail brands that spec white box handsets and brand them (like Maxis in Malaysia or Nexian, an Indonesian company that was recently bought by India's Spice Mobile). Their key offers are own-OS phones retailing for USD30-50 each and Android-OS phones that cost about USD100.

Often, the white box manufacturer wills send a glorified salesperson to a carrier, who will specify a price point and the required features (say $55 for xxx thousand handsets with 3G, a certain screen and processor, etc.). The phones are then made based on that order rather than the other way around. The manufacturer very quickly sources the parts and fullfils the purchase order.

Impact on the Industry

Major players like Nokia and RIM are losing market share . . . a fact reflected in their share prices. Nokia shares are down nearly 60% since mid-February; RIM is off 68%. But if you look at our stats, it's definitely not game-over. Nokia is still the biggest player in most markets.

The white box business model also poses a real threat to telecom carriers. Until now, the two have built a strong symbiotic relationship. Carriers subsidise the cost of premium handsets – driving up demand for the phones – while securing the loyalty of customers who sign 12 and 24-month contracts. But cheap quality handsets turn this model upside down.

It's worth nothing meanwhile that Samsung is reading the market well. True, the share price of Samsung Electronics is off (28% since mid-January) but the company's smartphone sales grew by 51% in the second quarter of the year and it's one of the top two handset makers in 7 of 10 of BuzzCity's top markets.

Samsung is setting the right price points and choosing attractive feature sets in developing markets. The Android-powered Galaxy S2 also competes head-to-head with the iPhone in developed countries. And in both cases, Samsung is using attractive content and services to develop a relationship with consumers.

There’s a wave of demand for data meanwhile as users take advantage of the full capabilities of their handsets. New market segments are now accessing multimedia content, browsing the internet and checking email from their phones. This increased consumer usage of course opens up new opportunities for marketing and advertisers.

Lessons for White Box Manufacturers

While competing mainly on price has been a successful strategy to date for white box manufacturers, it's a risky strategy and one that will fail in the long term (which in today's mobile industry arrives sooner than you think). Margins are raser thin, so as soon as another company comes along that can shave a penny or two off the component prices, you're history.

So if White Box #1 is going to thrive – and not fall to White Box #2 – it is going to need to build user loyalty by offering BRANDED SERVICES and CONTENT. Manufacturers should study their markets to learn consumer interests, which they can monetise through content sales and relevant offerings.

This is nothing new. Branded services fueled the success of today's best-known brands. Blackberry took instant messaging, which had been around for 15 years, created a walled garden and gave people code numbers. It became cool to BB Message. Apple has taken video messaging, called it Face Time and it's considered revolutionary.

And all of the major players offer content stores. Apple has iTunes, Nokia - the Ovi Store and Android – the Android Market.

Most people now treat handsets like a PC: apps are more important than the device and consumers want to be able to customise their phones.

The Last Word

The mobile industry is changing before our eyes. Twelve months ago, you couldn't have predicted that Nokia would be in the trouble it's in now. Change is accelerating and it would be foolish to predict a year in advance. But if today's white box makers want to thrive, they need to grow up and become brands. And by moving towards the mid-tier market and offering a range of features, it appears some players are already headed in this direction.

Djuzz Top 10 - July 2011

2011-08-10T16:00:00.000+08:00

In July, more than 7.5 million games were downloaded from our games portal Djuzz. The Top 10 were …

#	Title	Downloads	Remarks
1	Need for Speed Shift	397,418	Unchanged
2	Outlaw Racing 2011	262,904	Up 15 places
3	The Sims World Adventures	241,495	Down 1 place
4	Command and Conquer: Red Alert Mobile	219,763	Down 1 place
5	Underground Racer	122,069	Unchanged
6	Cricket T20 Fever 3D Android	97,796	Unchanged
7	Tom and Jerry - Mouse Maze	93,144	Unchanged
8	Airforce 2	91,521	Up 8 places
9	Ben 10 Power of The Omnitrix	89,297	Unchanged
10	D Street Racing	87,970	Up 1 place

New to the charts is Outlaw Racing 2011 which climbed 15 places to get to the 2nd position in July. The top climbers also included Airforce 2 which landed in 8th place having climbed 8 places. Other big climbers in July were Ibibo Browser (up 2,870 places), Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (up 23 places) and EA Cricket 11 (up 45 places).

By the end of July more than 12,000 games were hosted on Djuzz and distributed via 1600 catalogue partners.

Click here to download the Top 50 Games on Djuzz.

French Mobile Users and m-Commerce

2011-07-28T17:31:00.000+08:00

A shift is taking place in the French mobile internet.

French mobile surfers are mainly using the internet for three reasons: (1) to have fun and play online, (2) to look for services and information like phone numbers, addresses and the next party to go to and (3) to read and access mobile content.

Most of the French brands don't get this, though. They've been too focused on SMS marketing to their existing databases to see the advantages of mobile advertising. And ad agencies have been reluctant to use long-tail networks like BuzzCity due to lingering doubts.

But this is changing as French brands begin to use the medium to attract new consumers, rather than targeting campaigns to existing clients and some companies – like La Redoute – are discovering innovative ways of integrating m-commerce into their business models.

The French Mobile Environment

Data charges are scary – and prohibitively expensive – for many French consumers. Unlimited subscriptions are not the norm. I know a lot of people, young and old, who feel lost with smartphones and don't know how turn off the browser when not in use. That said, smartphones are the norm. More that 97% of French phones have an XHTML browser and most have a music player and 3G as well.

The number and percentage of mobile phone users who access the mobile internet has also risen steadily over the past several years from 30% of SIM card owners at the beginning of 2008 to 43% today. And about 70% are on post-paid plans.

Source: ARCEP: “L'Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes

We also see that mobile phones are a very personal device for the French. We like to use our phones to take photos and watch videos, even more than our German and English neighbors.

And because our phones are personal, we take offense if ads appear to be intrusive.

Meanwhile, we're likely to use our mobiles to access the mobile internet while in the office. French companies often set up firewalls to keep us from using the office PCs to access our favorite sites or check our personal emails. Of course, we tend to thumb our noses at these policies by using our phones instead.

Source: SFR Regie

In this graph, you can see that mobile usage climbs steadily throughout the morning, peaking in the early afternoon. Usage drops off in the evening when we're out to dinner with friends and has evening peak around 10pm as we check emails and play online before going to sleep.

Finally, it's worth noting that nearly one-third of French mobile surfers are aged 35 – 49 (another 30% are under 24) and the largest demographic group are Parisians.

Embedding Mobile in Your Business

One French company that we think is leading the way in mobile is clothing retailer La Redoute. Traditionally, La Redoute has relied on magazine ads to fuel sales. More recently, though, La Redoute is not only advertising on mobile, it's making it easy for consumers to make a purchase. All you have to do is take a photo of the item you want to buy (from a catalogue), upload it to a mobile site, choose your size and then, voilà, you can buy it from your phone. Mobile banner ads also provide a code for free delivery.

La Redoute has the right idea. Market products with mobile ads, create a good mobile website, integrate the mobile campaign with the rest of the business and, above all, make it as easy as possible for consumers to buy what they want!

Related Article

Privacy is a big issue for French consumers as well as ad agencies and brands. We explain why and discuss BuzzCity's take on the issue in this column.

Mobile Surfing and Privacy in France

2011-07-28T17:29:00.001+08:00

The #1 concern of ad agencies, brands and consumers in France, when it comes to the mobile internet, is privacy. And for good reason. We've seen high-profile scams and questionsable business practices that have tried consumer patience and hit users in the wallet.

We take these concerns seriously at BuzzCity.

In this column, we'd like to share with you some examples of the bad practices that have put French consumers on edge as well as what BuzzCity is doing to block unethical and rogue practices.

Please be sure to check out our other column that takes a closer look at the French mobile user and highlights how one innovative French company is making the most of m-Commerce.

WHY MOBILE PRIVACY IS A MAJOR ISSUE IN FRANCE

SMS marketing has been used by a lot of French advertisers . . . and has annoyed a lot of French consumers. The French government reacted by passing a law requiring advertisers to give consumers the option of opting out of these lists. But when mobile users replied “stop” to these ads, some companies would send another SMS asking them to confirm their choice. Replying to this latter message added 4 euros to an unsuspecting consumer's telephone bill.

Meanwhile, this past December, a number of companies ran campaigns – particularly targeting iPhone users – inviting consumers to telephone Santa Claus. The cost: 8 euros for the first minute! Then an additional euro for every consecutive minute. In addition to being exhorbitant, the problem is that parents often leave their iPhones with their kids. And when their children saw an ad inviting them to talk to Santa . . . well, you can imagine how the parents felt when they saw their telephone bill.

BUZZCITY'S STAND

Not long ago, on the French BuzzCity advertising network, we noticed a dating service campaign targeting Android phones. As soon as someone clicked on the banner, the dating app was automatically downloaded and the consumer was billed for it.

We blocked the campaign. We didn't have to do this. There's no legal requirement. But we're not going to sit by and watch an unethical company destroy our market. We owe it to our publishers and users.

Unfortunately, it's not feasible for us to check every campaign that runs on our network. There are just too many. But the moment we notice something wrong – or receive a complaint – we'll take action.

If you are aware of a campaign that should be blocked – or just have some feedback or questions – please contact us at

RELATED ARTICLE
The French Mobile User and m-Commerce

BuzzCity Tours : August & September 2011

2011-07-27T23:45:00.024+08:00

Our team is travelling again this August & September; we hope to be seeing you at :-

Digital Marketing Conference in Jakarta - (Dewi) [10th August]
AusCham Ho Chi Minh City Business Briefing - (KF) [23rd August]
Vietnamese Youth Entrepreneurs Bootcamp in Ho Chi Minh City - (KF) [23rd -25th August)
Salon E-Commerce in Paris - (Anna / Camille) [13th – 15th Sept.]
DMEXCO in Cologne - (Delynn) [21st – 22nd Sept ]
Ad:Tech I London - (Anna, Camille, Ryan and Daniel) [21st – 22nd Sept.] We look forward to seeing you at Booth 340 National Hall, Olympia.
Social Media Marketing in Indonesia , Jakarta – (Dewi) [22nd – 23rd Sept. ]
Mobile Monday Summit , Bucharest - Anna [26-28th Sept]
Mobile Marketing & Customer Engagement Summit 2011 Bangkok - KF Lai [27- 28th Sept]

Our Developer Garage returns at the end of this month with two key presentations by John Phillip, founder & CEO of DocuBuzz and Grace Chng, Editor of Digital Life at SPH. John will talk about their challenges in developing a tablet-oriented meeting management / digital collaboration solutions. Grace will be sharing insights on “iPad Dominance : is there life in tablets that are non-iOS?”

Details of the Meet up are as follows:

Date: 30 September (Friday)
Time: 4 – 6pm
Location: BuzzCity (Yellow Pages Building)
Address: 1 Lor 2 Toa Payoh Yellow Pages Building #02-03 Singapore 319637

Exploring North African Markets

2011-07-26T11:19:00.001+08:00

The demand for Value-Added Services (VAS) in North African markets is rising as telecoms and media converge further. If you are a VAS provider looking to expand in this region, here are the questions you should be asking:

1. What are the key North African hotspots?

	Country	Q1	Q2	Q on Q Growth
1	Egypt	288,800,000	497,200,000	72%
2	Sudan	125,500,000	278,500,000	122%
3	Morocco	30,600,000	105,800,000	246%
4	Tunisia	23,800,000	36,600,000	54%
5	Algeria	4,700,000	9,200,000	96%
6	Libya	164,700,000	100,000	-100%
	North African Growth	638,100,000	927,400,000	45%

Traffic in North African countries has seen tremendous growth in the last 18 months. Surfing activity in the first half of 2011 generated as much traffic as during the preceding year. And in the second quarter of this year, we served nearly 1 billion ads in the region.

With the exception of Libya, the upward growth trend is expected to continue. Egypt (72%) and Sudan (122%) each serves more than 100m ads per month and more growth is expected.

Morocco saw very strong growth in Q2 (246%) as a result of moves in 2010 to liberalise the market. Competition has driven prices down and increased the number of subscribers. Competition has also driven up the level of innovation. Maroc Telecom, for example, announced plans in December to launch a service that will allow people in France (later in Spain and Italy) to add money to the accounts of friends and family in Morocco. This will effectively enable Maroc Telecom to tap into the significant volume of remittances sent by the Moroccan community in Western Europe.

2. What are users surfing with?

Nokia is dominant in all markets, although Samsung is a strong second in Morocco and can influence campaign targets and outcomes.

Phones	EGYPT		SUDAN		MOROCCO
1	Nokia	75.3%	Nokia	88.1%	Nokia	44.5%
2	Samsung	9.7%	Samsung	4.9%	Samsung	26.3%
3	White Box Phones	7.1%	White Box Phones	3.3%	Apple	10.6%
4	SonyEricsson	3.4%	SonyEricsson	2.4%	LG	8.4%
5	Apple	1.7%	Vodafone	0.8%	SonyEricsson	5.2%

3. What are users looking for?

Mobile surfers in these countries, as in all markets, are hungry for content. And there are significant opportunities for brands that provide content related to Entertainment & Lifestyle and Mobile Content (mobile games and videos continue to be a favourite). Community services (social networking) continues to draw members and these sites are visited frequently.

All in all, we expect carriers to be among the first to promote mobile entertainment on the mobile internet. But there's also definitely room for smaller players to make a sizeable dent in this competitive yet rapidly changing mobile-entertainment space.

Mobile Development Tips: The Hybrid Approach

2011-07-15T12:40:00.001+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

OK, you're about to embark on a new advertising campaign. One agency tells you that Mobile Apps are the way to go – they're sexy, there's no lag in the experience, the app stays on a consumer's phone forever (unless she deletes it), it's a fantastic branding tool and besides everyone's doing it. But another agency has a long list of reasons why you should concentrate on a mobile website: they're easier to access, cheaper to build, better suited to sales and have a superior return-on-investment.

So what do you do?

Increasingly, the right approach is to build both. Here are five steps to help you along the way . . .

Step 1

Determine which mobile platforms are most prevalent in your target market(s) and, if possible, which platforms are most used by your consumers. To do this, a good place to start is with BuzzCity's Campaign Planner. If you have an existing campaign in place, you can also use the detailed data from BuzzCity campaign spending reports and tools like Google Analytics to determine which devices are being used to view your campaign and visit your mobile website.

Step 2

Determine whether the number of users on a particular platform justifies your investment.

For example, in Spain, we see that you can hit 60% of mobile users, if you build for Symbian and iOS.

In the UK, you can reach 60% of the market by developing for Blackberry and iPhone consumers.

But in France, there's no single dominant operating system.

Similarly, if you are launching a pan-European campaign, it's difficult to choose which operating systems to target, without doing a more detailed analysis of the consumers who access your mobile website. So, in this scenario, you’d be advised to go for the platform-agnostic approach, such as providing an HTML5 version. HTML5 provides a rich, app-like experience within the mobile web and allows you to reach the majority of advanced smartphones, including Android, iPhone and newer Blackberry models.

Keep in mind that the average cost of building a mobile application is US$35,000 and the more platforms you build for, the more expensive the investment.

Step 3

Outline the scope of the campaign that will promote your app and what you want it to acheive. Don't forget to share this brief with your developer! Here are some examples of campaigns that integrate apps with a mobile web presence:

One of the most successful recent campaigns that integrated apps with a mobile web presence was run by Adidas in India. It used the BuzzCity Mobile advertising network – and a mobile website -- to promote the app, which provided users with useful sports information (tournament fixtures, scores and standings) as well as fun stuff (like wallpapers featuring football stars and promos of adidas football gear). Even without the app, the mobisite had enough content to promote the brand.

Step 4

Make sure your mobile website is not the application's poorer relative. The app might be slicker or have more features, but your mobisite needs to also stand on its own. A lot of users will see your mobile website first, after clicking on a banner ad. And not all of them will go on to download an application. Some won't have the right type of phone; others just won't want another app. So the site itself must also offer a good brand experience.

Step 5

Work closely with your digital agency to determine your specific marketing objectives and the brand associations that you would like to create with the app.

Anurag Singh, a mobile marketer in India whose clients include adidas, Orbit, Reebok, Samsung and Wrigley's, tells us that there are three main principles driving mobile advertising: information, interaction and engagement. If your goal is to inform, create an app that has information that is proprietary and unique. For greater interaction and engagement, consider building a branded game.

To this list, I would also add e-commerce. Companies in the travel industry, in particular, have embedded mobisites into their business models. If I'm traveling from Singapore to Paris, it's easy for me to use my phone to buy a plane ticket with AirAsia and book a room with Hotels.com

Post-Script

A word to the wise . . . just because everyone in your brand agency lays an iPhone on the table during meetings doesn't mean that's where your market is. Do your research! ; )

Additional Resource:

For more about applications versus mobile website, check out the latest edition of The BuzzCity Report and in particular an article on page 26 called "Innovative Strategies for App Development".

The BuzzCity Report: Vol 1 Issue 3

2011-07-14T14:26:00.004+08:00

The latest BuzzCity Report has been released, covering our activity for the second quarter of 2011. The report includes detailed statistics on the performance of the network and studies the trends and forces that are shaping mobile internet advertising.

As the latest issue explains, we’ve posted another quarter of exceptionally strong growth:

The number of ads served has increased by 30% this quarter, to 30.2 billion, an important milestone for the ad network (for the first quarter in our history, we’ve averaged over 10 billion ads a month).

Our top 20 countries delivered 76% of all banners served (23 billion).

We now have four markets which serve over 1 billion ads per quarter, namely India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the United States. We anticipate that in the course of the current quarter, at least one other country will join this list.

Other countries that stand out for their rapid growth include Saudi Arabia (50% growth over the previous quarter), Nigeria (+44%), Thailand (+82%), Mexico (+36%) and Brazil (+68%).

In our ‘Quarterly Feature’ and ‘Media Insight’ sections, we’ve focused on fragmentation, and the challenges that marketers face when developing apps. We investigate best practices on reducing risk, to ensure that they’re reaching their intended target markets. Our coverage includes:

The basics: What an operating system is, the inherent limitations that operating systems impose, and the functionality that they allow.
Approaches: Establishing a strategy for app development that promotes your brand, and promotional strategies on the mobile internet.
Advice from the experts: We talk to experts in the field of app development, in developing and developed markets, for their advice on brand-building using apps.

To download the latest report, please visit reports.buzzcity.com.

Oh What a Lovely (Price) War!

2011-07-11T12:21:00.001+08:00

By Daniel Courtenay, Publisher Alliance Account Manager (Africa)

South Africans who have travelled abroad over the past decade have often returned with envy-provoking tales of cheap, high-speed uncapped internet access, for as little as R200 a month (around US$30). Customers in Europe and the US have had access to deals like this for the past eight or ten years. Back home, this kind of connectivity has been limited to a privileged few. Until recently.

The opening salvo

A fortnight ago 8ta, Telkom’s new mobile operator, slashed mobile broadband prices, firing the opening salvo in a local price war which is likely to rock the entire industry.

The offer is as follows: 10Gb of data per month, for a period of 24 months, at R199 a month (US$30), and an additional 10Gb of data for late night usage over the same period for R100 (US$15). That’s a cut of nearly 90% per MB over average industry rates.

MTN was the first of the carriers to respond, by slashing the price of its ‘uncapped’ offers last week. Its ‘Uncapped Lite’ product has been reduced from R749 a month (US$110) to R299 (US$45) a month and its ‘Broadband Uncapped Pro’ package has been reduced from R1 999 (US$300) to R899 (US$135). The products aren’t truly uncapped as they are subject to a fair-use policy of 3GB and 10GB respectively, and they’re available only on a 24-month contract.

Implications

For starters, the lower cost of data will lead to an increase in internet traffic across the board, and bring entirely new users to the fold. New demographics, previously unable to afford internet access, will start to consume content and take up web services, while light internet users are likely to take up unlimited packages. Downloads, particularly of multimedia content, are likely to see dramatic increases.

Out-of-bundle internet access rates will be adjusted more slowly (these are real cash cows for the operators), but they’ll inevitably succumb to this downward pricing pressure too.

This presents an opportunity for network advertisers, as increased supply of inventory is likely to cause an easing, at least temporarily, in the average bid rates required to achieve their targets. Publishers, meanwhile, will benefit from a larger audience, and wider reach.

The ability to reach this ‘new’ consumer demographic also offers brands, ad agencies and anyone seeking to reach the mobile end user an opportunity to reach a completely new market and lower-income consumer. Advertisers that were once hesitant to use mobile could now very well be on the other side of the fence – insisting that this is the way forward.

The pressure is on for the remaining mobile carriers to respond to this challenge. They will have significant challenges to increase their data capacity, while matching the pricing levels set by 8ta, which will mean a significant drop in revenues. Failure to adjust their tariffs within coming weeks will lead to churn between networks, as consumers start to question their loyalty to existing providers.

Another dash of chaos, in a white box?

Although ‘white box’ manufacturers have until now achieved very limited distribution in the South African market, it can’t be long before the presence of cheap ($50 to $100) smartphones further stimulates demand for connectivity.

The combination of the falling cost of access, the advanced network infrastructure already in place locally, and this quantum shift in the cost of hardware, may well culminate in a perfect storm for exponential growth of the mobile marketing industry.

Mobile Hotspots - Thailand

2011-07-01T00:02:00.006+08:00

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Here at BuzzCity, we've been keeping a close eye on Thailand, which consistently ranks as one of our Top Ten markets. Mobile industry growth in the kingdom has been phenomenal:

The number of mobile ads served in the first quarter of the year in Thailand -- 327 million – is nearly double the number served in Q4 2010.

The Q2 number will be close to twice the Q1 number. While we're waiting for the final figures, we expect to have served more than 900 million banners to Thai mobile surfers in the first half of the year.

Thai mobile subscriptions have passed the 100% penetration mark.

Analysts are expecting more than 72 million Thai mobile subscribers by 2014. This growth is due in part to the availability of cheap handsets and a thriving second-hand handset market. And increasingly, middle-class consumers own two phones and two SIM cards.

In today's blog, I'd like to share some insights with you about Thai mobile surfers, examples of the types of ad campaigns being run and some advice and predictions about the road ahead.

The Thai Mobile Surfer - Demographics

Contrary to popular perception, the mobile internet in Thailand (as in many other countries) is not a teen phenomena. Less than two percent of the Thai surfers on our network are under 20. Thai workers are the most avid users. Fifty-two percent of mobile surfers are in their 20s; forty-five percent are over 30.

Almost as many women (49%) access the internet with their phones as men.

And sixty percent of mobile users are in the Greater Bangkok area. Fifteen percent are in the central part of the Thailand (around Ayutthaya, Nakhon Nayok and Singburi), while the remaining 25% are scattered throughout the country.

You can find the latest statistics – both about the demographics of Thai mobile users as well as the most popular types of content, handsets, carriers, etc. -- in the online BuzzCity Campaign Planner.

The Thai Mobile Surfer – Habits

Thai users access the mobile internet often (5 times a day) and for long periods (up to 1 hour each time they access). Their primary access to the internet is via mobiles. Even though they are using a mobile device, they are not on the move: they like to access the mobile internet at home or at work. Usage is spread throughout the day, but the most popular time to access starts in the early evenings and continues until past midnight. Lunchtime is the least active period.

More than half of all Thai mobile surfers are using a Nokia handset. Apple has the second biggest market share.

Thais are avid social networkers. Some 45% are on mobiles to network and interact with friends. BuzzCity's myGamma platform -- which features customised Thai language content -- is quite popular. Another 25% of mobile users meanwhile go online to look for content like applications, games and ringtones. Eighteen percent frequent Entertainment & Lifestyle channels, while more than 8% use their phone to access dating and glamour sites.

Mobile Ad Campaigns

Thais – particularly the internet and tech savvy urbanites -- have become particularly receptive to mobile web advertisements and integrated campaigns.

Blackberry, for example, ran ads recently to promote the Social, Search and Tab features of the Blackberry OS6. The campaign attracted over 4 million banner views in one month, with a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 0.5%.

Thailand’s largest department chain store, Central, launched an iPhone application for users to check for promotions, new arrivals, events and exclusive items. This campaign attracted 1.4 million views with a CTR of 0.8%.

Other advertisers are using 2D barcodes to drive consumers to their mobile sites. These Quick Response – or QR – Codes appear in traditional ads. Consumers simply need to point a camera phone at the barcode and take a photo. Their phone's mobile browser is then automatically directed to the mobile site.

Admittedly, advertisers in Thailand were initially skeptical about mobile. But we are now seeing brands from a range of industries embracing the medium and making mobile an integral part of their marketing strategies. Some examples include:

Education : E.Q. Training
FMCG : Estemed BB Cream
Healthcare : Samitivej Hospital (Check out my blog article about how Samitivej is using mobile to promote medical tourism.)
Real Estate : Pruksa
Travel : Nok Air

Some Things You Should Know

1. Companies who are new to mobile advertising should start by setting aside a portion of their digitial budgets and using these funds for mobile marketing.

2. Experiment. Start small, if needed, then fine-tune your campaigns.

3. Track consumers trends and behavior. BuzzCity's Campaign Planner is a useful tool to track the most popular types of mobile content.

4. Use the BuzzCity Campaign Planner to plan ahead and calculate your expected ad traffic.

5. Make mobile an integrated part of your advertising mix. Here are some tips on how to do it.

6. The Thai mobile market has been doubling on a quarterly basis and we expect this trend to continue . . . and possibly accelerate as rural penetration increases and 3G licenses are auctioned off next year. If you're not already making mobile an integral part of your adveritising mix, you're missing out. Thai consumers are mobile savvy and your competitors are probably already in this space.

Mobile Hotspots – The Middle East

2011-06-13T10:00:00.007+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media and
Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

Although there has been a lot of mainstream media focus on the impact of social media on the Arab Spring, a survey of several countries in the region indicates that there is no sure link between democratic movements and growth in the mobile industry.

Civil war in Libya has stifled the internet, while the success of Egypt's Tahrir Square demonstrations is helping spawn the creation of more mobile content.

And the most exciting Arab mobile market, in terms of growth and absolute number of ads served, is also among the most politically and socially conservative countries in the entire region, a place where the Arab Spring has not blossomed: Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia currently ranks #5 on the list of BuzzCity's top global markets. We served nearly 300 million ads there in May alone and our network reaches about six million Saudis (and overseas workers). Over the past two years, mobile ad traffic in Saudi Arabia has grown more than 1000 percent.

One factor that helped trigger growth in the kingdom is that mobile services providers have been actively shifting their marketing budgets into new markets across the globe to exploit hotspot opportunities. We started to see a significant increase in advertiser demand on our network from May 2010, and since then, this has led to higher average spending per campaign, which in turn has attracted more publishers.

We’re not alone in being attracted to Saudi Arabia. Having been dominated by one carrier, Saudi Telecom, which is the largest telecoms company in the Middle East, Saudis now have three networks to choose from. They are the Middle East’s second and third largest regional players: Etisalat of the UAE and Zain of Kuwait.

3G broadband is booming, not just in Saudi Arabia, but in other parts of the region too. As of the beginning of this year, there were about 3 million broadband subscribers in Saudi and 1.3 million in Morocco.

Arabic Apps
The market for apps in the Middle East is still in its infancy. Downloads are small, compared with other regions, due in part to strict regulation of content (censorship of gore, porn and more). Technical expertise and marketing knowledge for apps is also scarce.

But a government-funded initiative in Abu Dhabi called AppsArabia is working to change this. It aims to support the growth of a sustainable app development industry throughout the Middle East and North Africa by investing in promising apps and providing mentoring, promotion and publicity as well as an online community to bring Arab developers together.

The Arab Advisors Group meanwhile reports that as of March 2011, there are 800-plus applications created by Arab developers or available in Arabic in the Apple App Store, Blackberry App World and Android Market.

Handsets in the Middle East
It's important to note though that the Middle East is dominated by Symbian-based Nokia handsets:

Apple has just a 2% share of the BuzzCity Ad Network traffic in Egypt. (Blackberry is non-existent.)

iPhone and Blackberry comprise a combined 10% of ad traffic in Saudi Arabia and 16% in the UAE.

So we still really haven't seen the impact of smartphones in these markets. As smartphones gain more market share, expect further exponential growth.

Egypt v. Libya
The only other Middle Eastern market to rank among our Top Twenty markets is Egypt, which has steadily climbed from 22nd position in Q4 2010 to 14th place in the first quarter of 2011 to #11 in May 2011, with nearly 200 million ads served that month.

Egypt’s popular uprising in late January led to three weeks of mounting pressure and the eventual resignation of President Mubarak from office. In that time, the consumption of internet data soared with a five-fold increase in mobile internet traffic. In the first quarter, Egypt’s mobile adspend also grew very quickly, up 144% despite the political upheaval that swept through the country and the fact that mobile networks were offline during much of that period.

By contrast, as Libya's uprising descended into civil war, the Libyan government has attempted to restrict all internet access. The comprehensive and sustained blackout has not been completely successful. We still serve about 10 million ad impressions, but this is a fraction of the 110 million ad impressions served in January.

Content is blooming too
The Arab Spring is triggering the production of more local mobile content, though, both by individuals and companies. Yahoo!, for example, announced earlier this month that it's hiring writers, bloggers and editors to produce original Arabic-language content in Arabic broader and it's rolling out regional homepages in both English and Arabic.

The bottom line is that while political risks abound, we have only just begun to see widespread usage of the mobile internet in the Middle East. More growth – and lots of opportunities – ahead!

Related Stories
Part 1 - Mobile Hotspots
Part 2 - Latin America

BuzzCity Tours: July 2011

2011-06-09T15:04:00.006+08:00

Join our team in the month of July as they attend events in UK, Jakarta and South Africa. Here's an update of the various events our team members will be attending:

BuzzCity CEO, Dr KF Lai will be networking with mobile industry leaders at the MEF CEO Summit 2011 in London on 6^th July. The next day on 7^th July, Dr Lai will be joining Anna at the highly anticipated Meffy Awards where they will be sharing the latest developments at BuzzCity with professionals in the mobile industry.
Dr Lai will then be speaking in a panel discussion at the FutureChina Global Forum in Singapore on 12^th July. The topic of the panel will be “The spectacular rise of China’s digital economy: what comes next?”.
Over in Capetown, South Africa on 15^th July, Hawa will be speaking at the 4^th Mobile Marketing Summit 2011 on the topic ‘Wap vs App’.
Dr Lai will be part of the judging panel under the mobile applications and advertising category for the Indonesia ICT Awards (INAICTA) held in Jakarta on 28^th July.
The BuzzCity Developer Garage which is a channel for developers to share experience, trends and insights on developing sites and applications on mobile internet, will be held on 29th July at BuzzCity's HQ office (Singapore). The topic of this event will focus on features and opportunities from the latest Windows Phone 7 Update - Mango. One of the speakers at this event will be Chris Ismael - Developer Evangelist at Mircrosoft. Further details on other speakers will be updated soon.

Feel free to email feedback [at]buzzcity.com to arrange a meeting with any of our colleagues at these events.

Mobile Hotspots – Latin America

2011-06-09T13:05:00.001+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

Latin America's mobile markets have grown by leaps, bounds and then some over the past year, but here at BuzzCity, we believe the Latin American mobile story is only just beginning.

Take a look, for example, at Brazil. It's one of the largest markets in Central and South America. But at the moment only about 10-15% of Brazilians access the web from their mobile phones. That’s a small proportion and it’s growing fast.

As I pointed out in the first part of this 'Mobile Hotspots' series, as several key factors come into play – namely lower rates, the rollout of 3G and WiMax licenses, better cheaper handsets and increased promotion of mobile web services – you can expect to see these markets take off even faster and further.

Mexico is by far the largest market in the region, in terms of ads served. Traffic took off after 3G licenses were allocated in the third quarter of last year. Driven by a booming GSM market, mobile penetration has topped 40%.

Brands from a broad range of industries are taking advantage of this growth to reach out to mobile consumers. Some examples include confectionary Bubu Lubu, financial services company Grupo Profuturo and telecom giant Telcel:

Bubu Lubu*, a chocolate bar with a strawberry and marshmellow filling, is linking mobile ads to its social media campaigns in Facebook and Twitter.

Grupo Profuturo is using mobile ads to reach out to a younger Mexican audience to promote banking, investment and loan services. Banner ads connect to a mobile site where respondents can provide their contact details. Customer service representatives then follow up on the leads.

And Telcel, which is by far the dominant Mexican carrier, is promoting the wireless internet service, particularly the idea of being able to work from anywhere. It's mobile internet offer includes three free monts of service upon signing a contract.

(*Side note: according to the Urban Dictionary, Bubu Lubu is also a term of despair, as in “Wah, Bubu Lubu, I can't believe my football team is losing!”)

Meanwhile, over in Argentina, one of the country's leading newspapers, La Nacion, is using mobile ads to promote its new iTunes app, and in the process the app has become one of Argentina’s top iTunes downloads. La Nacion targetted its ads to only appear on iPhones.

Overall, the number of ads served in Latin America experienced triple digit growth in 2010. And these markets are on track to repeat this performance in 2011. Traffic in Brazil and Mexico in the first quarter of this year alone nearly matched nearly matched the number of ads served in all of 2010.

As you can see in the table below, Mexico is followed by Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica on the list of the region's most active markets.

What's good to note here is that the reach of the BuzzCity Ad Network is growing as well. There are 3.6 million unique users in Brazil, 3.3 million in Mexico and more than half a million in Argentina (as of May 2011). The number of users in Mexico and Argentina grew by about 30 percent in just one month.

Back to the example of Brazil, while a relatively small percentage of users are accessing the mobile internet from their phones, there are 3 – 4 times as many cellphones in the country as PCs. We believe it's only a matter of time before Brazil becomes like India, where mobile devices are by far and away the most common tool used for surfing the web. (India is also currently our largest market with more than 2 billion ads served a month.)

Flat-rate data tarrifs are already stimulating usage. Of course rates could always fall further. And like other markets in the region, the key to further growth in Brazil is likely to be linked to the promotion of feature-rich devices and mobile internet content.

Related Stories
Part 1 - Mobile Hotspots
Part 3 - The Middle East

Mobile Hotspots

2011-05-18T18:03:00.005+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

What's driving the growth of the mobile internet? In case you blinked, the growth has been outstanding... by any measure.

There are five times as many mobile phones as landlines. Of the billions of handsets in use, over 96% have at least a basic web browser and over 94% have a colour screen. The number of phones with a browser capable of rendering an HTML web page eclipses the total number of personal computers worldwide by three times.

BuzzCity first started measuring ad impressions in 2007. In the first quarter of that year, we delivered 340 million ads. That seemed like a lot at the time. Fast forward four years to the first quarter of 2011 and our network served 23.2 billion ads. In fact, several of our top markets experience more ad clicks in a single month today than our entire market did back in 2007.

There are just as many people SMSing as brushing their teeth. There are actually more active mobile phone subscriptions worldwide than toothbrush owners (5.4 billion vs. 4.2 billion).

And the growth is not just over a period of years, or even year-on-year. Every quarter we see mobile ad markets doubling in size. Every quarter. Take a look for instance at some of our top markets:

Spain : 225% growth (212 million ad impressions in Q1 2011, up from 66 million in Q4 2010)

Egypt : 144% growth (288m v. 118m)

China : 130% growth (448m v. 194m)

All three of these countries, by the way, rank in our Top 20 markets, in terms of the number of ads served.

So what factors, we wondered, need to be in place to create this kind of soaring exponential growth?

To answer this question, we decided to study data from our ad network, focusing on hotspots where mobile web usage is doubling at least every three to six months. We examined traffic, not advertising spend, so we're simply looking at consumer demand.

Our analysis

We studied several markets where growth has been particularly strong.

India was a natural choice – it’s our largest market by number of ads served and one of our fastest growing. Other countries on an equivalent growth path include Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Vietnam.

We mapped periods of intense growth in these six countries to changes in local ecosystems, analysing each market for underlying factors that might explain the increases. We identified four key factors that drive growth. When more than one of these factors comes into play, the effect is exponential.

Finally, we applied this thinking to four regions – Africa, Central America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia – to see if the same four factors have the same explosive effect in the rest of the world. The answer by the way is a resounding “yes”. So, if you are an advertiser and you notice the following factors coming into play in a market, expect massive growth.

Four Key Factors
So, here’s what we found, the top four forces driving growth of the mobile internet:

1. Falling cost of internet access

This is by far the most immediate and powerful factor in growing traffic volumes. It can be done incrementally (resulting in gradual growth) or through a price-war between carriers (which creates staggering quick jumps).

India provides one of the best examples of the effect of a price war. There are now 750 million active mobile phones connected by 15 mobile carriers. The market activates between 10 and 15 million new SIM cards each month. Competition between the carriers is fierce and primarily price-driven; margins are razor-thin. The cost of data has plummeted to less than 20 US cents per MB. This is not the cheapest in the world, but with 15 carriers fighting over each activation, it’s a good place to be a customer.

2. Rollout of new technologies such as 3G or WiMax

Next generation technologies allow networks to transfer large amounts of data at high speed. Carriers usually engage in heavy promotion of these new technologies, leading to fast adoption by new users and increased data consumption for existing clients. Governments and regulators moreover tend to award licences for each technology to several providers at once, which leads to a healthy competitive environment.

After the government allocated 3G licenses in India, mobile internet traffic skyrocketed from about 500 million monthly impressions in April 2010 to 2.4 billion a year later.

The same pattern has played out in Mexico, where the number of ads served more than tripled in just five months.

3. Cheaper handsets with larger screens and better usability

The producers of entry-level smartphones are achieving economies of scale and have slowly flooded markets in Africa and Asia over the past 18 months. Handset prices have dropped to less than US$100 for an Android phone and US$50 for MAUI-based handsets.

The availability of these cheap smartphones has driven massive increases in the consumption of email, web and multimedia content, and a wave of demand for data, as users take advantage of the full capabilities of their handsets. A market share of just five percent for one of these devices can create a noticeable and disproportionate increase in data traffic.

A look at the market share of MAUI-based generic handsets for April 2011 illustrates this:

Vietnam : 42.5 %

Kenya : 13.9 %

Bangladesh : 11.8 %

Egypt : 8.2 %

Thailand : 8.0 %

In several of these regions, the ‘white box’ handsets look set to knock the mighty Nokia off its long-held position as number-one manufacturer.

4. Heavy promotion of web services

Carriers from Mumbai to Manhattan are positioning bundles of ‘handset plus data package’ and promoting them as ‘designed for Facebook’ or ‘Twitter enabled’ to take advantage of the growth of social media platforms and other mobile web services. Other key enablers include financial service offerings and location-based services. Here are some examples from competing carriers currently running in Indonesia:

These top-level findings may sound obvious but they are powerful levers for accelerating the growth of a mobile ecosystem. When more than one of these factors is introduced at once, you’re likely to see exponential growth.

Check out the next installments of this series, when we start to take a look at how these factors play out region by region.

BuzzCity Tours - June 2011

2011-04-29T16:00:00.018+08:00

The month of June is set to be a busy month for our team as they attend events in UK, Singapore, Africa, France and Taiwan. Here's an update of the various events our team members will be attending:

Daniel and Hawa from our South Africa office will be networking with industry experts at two events in Capetown, South Africa from 1^st to 2^nd June - Socialmedia World Forum Africa and AppsWorld Africa 2011.
The BuzzCity Developer Garage which is a channel for developers to share experience, trends and insights on developing sites and applications on mobile internet, will be held on 3rd June at BuzzCity's HQ office (Singapore). Mr Tan Yinglan, Head (Projects) at National Research Foundation and Tam Hock Chuan, Managing Director, Investments, at SingTel Innov8 will be speaking at this event.
Joey from our Singapore office will meeting with professionals from the developer community at Planet of the Apps in Singapore from 8^th to 10^th June.
Over in London, Ryan from our Paris office will sharing BuzzCity’s latest developments with mobile, internet and media experts at the Open Mobile Summit held over 8^th and 9^th June.
Not too far away in Paris, Anna and Camille will be meeting up with mobile industry professionals at Buzzness Mobile 2011 held on 8^th and 9^th June as well.
Anna will be on her toes again from 14^th - 16^th June at The i-Media Agency Summit in Brighton, UK where she will be meeting leading experts from the digital media, PR and communications industry.
The BuzzCity Roadshow in South Africa will be held on 14^th and 15^th June in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively. The event venue for the Johannesburg Roadshow will be at The Venue Melrose Arch and for Capetown it will be held at African Pride Crystal Towers, Century City. More details such as who the speakers will be and the confirmed programme will be updated soon.
In Singapore on 16^th and 17^th June Jeffrey and Meredith from our Singapore office will be attending the event for digital marketers, AdTech Singapore, where they will be sharing the latest updates from BuzzCity.
In Singapore on 16th June again, BuzzCity CEO, Dr KF Lai, will be speaking in a panel discussion at Echelon 2011 on the topic 'Telco: Asia's Goalkeepers?"
Dr KF Lai, will be attending and speaking at the Chinese Carrier Conference on 20^th and 22^nd June on the topic ‘Mobile Challenges in Asia’
The annual CommunicAsia2011 held from 21^st to 24^th June in Singapore will be attended by Jeffrey and Meredith who will be networking with professionals in the communications industry and attending various industry related talks.
Dr Lai will be speaking at CommunicAsia’s CEO Power Panel on 23^rd June in which the topic will be ‘Don't leave home without it! How will the Mobile Wallet empower emerging economies?’
The BuzzCity Roadshow in Thailand will be held in Bangkok on 24^th June at the Arnoma Hotel at 99 Ratchadamri Road. More details can be found here.

Feel free to email feedback [at]buzzcity.com to arrange a meeting with any of our colleagues at these events.

App Monetisation Secrets (Part IV)

2011-04-20T08:00:00.005+08:00

By Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

Try & Buy, Virtual Goods, Mobile Ads, Mobile Rewards, Service Subscriptions, Upgrades & Updates, Cross-selling, Mix & Match . . . the number of revenue strategies has blossomed along with the market for mobile apps.

Which strategy works best? Which is the most lucrative?

I can't answer that . . . because there is no single monetisation strategy that will work across markets. You really have to do your research. And it's extremely important to have a business model in mind from Day 1. Waiting until a new app is finished before sorting this out is a sure way to lose money.

Don't despair, though. While it's particularly difficult to build a game that will be successful in both developing and developed markets, I think there are three inter-related key variables for developers to keep in mind as they create games and take them to market.

1. Time
2. Mode of Consumer Payments
3. Connectivity, Handsets and Platforms

Time

How do consumers in your target market value their time?

Well, in high-income markets like the US and UK , where consumers have more disposable income, gamers are impatient. They will not support a game that requires them to watch an ad first. Nor are they likely to take a survey in exchange for free game time. So scratch Mobile Ads and Mobile Rewards off your list for these markets.

Upgrades & Updates, on the other hand, are a successful strategy because American and British consumers are willing to pay a fee to extend the lifespan of a game they've already downloaded, assuming they like the game. Upgrade fees provide these consumers with an additional return on the time already invested in a current version of the game.

In emerging markets like Indonesia and Vietnam, on the other hand, gamers are happy to trade time for free downloads, additional playing time or virtual goods.

The challenge with Mobile Ads and Mobile Rewards is that many consumers simply do not know that they exist. Developers need to educate the market and build an audience. Consumers often fear that money will be deducted from their SIM card if they download a popular branded game. If they knew they could get EA games like “Need for Speed”, “Sims” and “Worms” for free (via any freemium model), content consumption would jump.

Time Too

When it comes to time, though, the split is not simply along economic lines. There are cultural differences as well. In Thailand, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, gamers are hooked on Role Playing Games (RPGS) – like MOBile Wars by Cellufun, Warspear Online by Aigrind and With by GameMaker – and are happy to spend money on virtual goods like clothes and swords for their characters.

In India and The Philippines, on the other hand, consumers are into games that are easy to pick up and can be played for about five minutes. With short action and racing games, virtual currencies do not take off.

Mode of Consumer Payments

The key question here is whether consumers in your target market buy pre-paid SIM cards or subscribe to a monthly service. If they have prepaid accounts, you can scratch any approach that requires a credit card from your list. So basically forget about Try & Buy, Subscriptions, Upgrades and Virtual Items. Technically, it's possible to subtract fees from a prepaid account. But users generally keep less than US$5 on their cards and they use these funds for what they deem to be essential – SMSes and calls – not entertainment.

Fortunately, the pre- versus post- paid split falls largely on emerging market lines. So once again, in places like The Philippines and India, think ad-supported and mobile rewards.

Connectivity, Handsets and Platforms

Are you building a game for a target market where consumers have the latest phones? And do they have good internet connections?

If so, you can consider showing video ads and building games in HD.

But at least ten percent of the global handset market now is held by generic devices like those made by chip-manufacturer MTK (MediaTek) and Chinese factories installing the MAUI browser. These generic phones have touch screens and can connect to the internet and run apps, but the platforms are extremely limited compared with Android, Nokia or the iPhone. Ten percent is a significant share of the market – three times that of iPhones, in fact -- so if you want to target these devices, you need to program your game around them. Make the games simple and be sure they do not use too much memory.

Good connections to payment servers meanwhile are essential for virtual transactions, which need to be as seamless and secure as possible in order to maintain consumer confidence and support. So, Virtual Items and Updates/Upgrades are good bets in countries like Germany, Japan, Korea and the US, where virtual transactions have been proven secure and users are adept in virtual worlds.

In slow markets, avoid monetisation methods that are data heavy. Creating branded apps – like Yahoo!'s and Adidas' cricket schedulers and Reebok's action, racing and sports games – can be more effective, because you only need to count the number of downloads to measure the marketing impact and there is no need to connect to an external server.

Future Monetisation Strategies

Here at the beginning of a new decade and some fourteen years after the introduction of the first mobile game, the market for mobile apps is fragmented, providing developers with a variety of options.

Going forward, expect to see some consolidation as a handful of trusted partners emerge, providing the best possible experience for developers and users alike.

Expect to see more hybrid freemium models – combining Virtual Goods with Try & Buy by selling additional virtual items at higher levels, Mobile Ads + Try & Buy, etc – as well as social networking approaches, like that taken by Germany's Gofresh, which encourages app sharing and offers free downloads on itsmy.com to members who recommend a game to their online friends or contact lists.

Think back for a moment to 2000. If you wanted to launch an international SMS campaign, you had to go direct to each market. But today, there are companies that specialise in providing global SMS services. At the moment, there are companies that can assist developers with monetisation strategies and implementation. But so far, there's no expertise in providing seamless global services. This will change.

Related Stories
Part I - Early Business Models
Part II - Revenue Issues
Part III - Freemium Models

The BuzzCity Report (Vol 1 Issue 2)

2011-04-19T16:00:00.022+08:00

The BuzzCity Report for the first quarter of 2011, as before, includes detailed statistics and analytics, which maps the trends and forces that are shaping the mobile internet advertising.

In this latest edition we report on:-

The number of ads served on our network increased 38% globally over the past three months, to 23.2 billion ad impressions. This means more reach for advertisers and opportunities in new markets for content developers. By the end of March 2011, our network served more than 9 billion ads per month.
Countries that stand out this quarter include Spain (225% increase) and the USA (+72%). Others that have continued strong existing growth trends include Egypt (+144%), China (+130%), Mexico (+93%), South Korea (+92%), Thailand (+92%) and Turkey (+82%).
The continued consumer demand for mobile content,
The most successful tactics currently used to promote apps (essential reading for all developers),
How the live music industry is responding to the challenges and opportunities presented by the mobile internet .

To download the latest report, please visit reports.buzzcity.com

BuzzCity Tours: May 2011

2011-04-07T09:57:00.003+08:00

Join our team in the month of May as they attend events in UK, Singapore, Malaysia and Africa.Here's an update of the various events our team members will be attending:

KF and Meredith will be networking with industry professionals at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum (MMAF) 2011 in Singapore (3-5 May). KF will also be speaking at the social media panel (4th May) on the topic ‘Mobile is Critical to Social Media, but is it Vice-versa?’
The BuzzCity Roadshow will be held in Malaysia on 4th May at Boulevard Hotel in Kuala Lumpur”. This event will bring industry executives in Malaysia together to share their best practices, challenges and media understanding.
Hawa will be attending Mobile Web East Africa 2011 in Nairobi (25 - 26 May) to meet up and network with global digital marketing experts.

Feel free to email feedback[at]buzzcity.com to arrange a meeting with any of our colleagues at these events.

App Monetisation Secrets (Part III) : 2007 - 2011

2011-04-06T00:39:00.007+08:00

By Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

Apple's introduction of the App Store in 2007 revolutionised the mobile industry. Games and application developers were freed from the shackles of phone manufacturers and carrier portals. They could sell directly to consumers and in multiple markets. Development cycles shortened, go-to-market strategies were refined. But the iPhone platform only represents three percent of the global market and all the hype led even more developers to try their luck, making it harder and harder for a single app to stand out (and be profitable).

Faced with yet another crossroads, developers innovated and found a new business model: freemium, a mix of free content and premium paid services.

There are at least half-a-dozen freemium models. Each offers a potential solution to the issue of distribution and profitability. The techniques can be used anywhere – websites, wapsites, OEMs, on-deck portals, indie store fronts like Djuzz and even via email. But of course there are also pitfalls. Today, join me, as I try to make sense out of Try & Buy, Mobile Ads, Virtual Goods and more.

Try and Buy

A Hong Kong startup with strong ties to Nokia – mBounce – first introduced this approach in 2006. mBounce managed Nokia's “Try for Free” business and embedded a free version of the popular mBounce 3D Bowling game on Nokia phones in 2007 and 2008. With a simple click, users could buy the premium version.

One of the first freemium models, this is still among the most popular. The concept is straight-forward. Consumers test an app for free – either for a limited time or with limited functionalities – then if they like it, they can purchase it outright.

Users of Mobile Hotdog are presented with a menu to purchase a game or play a demo version. Payments are by SMS.

From a consumer perspective, the payment process for Try & Buy is much smoother than the previous pay-per-download models, which relied on annoying SMSes to confirm and reconfirm a purchase.

Developers meanwhile have complete control of the price point and territories to support. They also earn on every purchase. To implement the model, developers generally work with Try and Buy SDK providers like mBounce to embed the approach in their codes.

Virtual Goods
The instant gratification and bragging rights brought by a bigger shield, a colourful vest or a mean-looking pet have spun a whole new industry. Gamers can buy virtual accessories, maps, weapons and even new characters with a single click. The user flow is seamless; payments schemes are normally via SMS, wap or credit card. These micro-transactions enable whole virtual worlds and real-world companies to exist. Developers work closely with companies like Fortumo which provides API’s that can be easily integrated into an app.

In this example from GunBros, gamers spend “War Bucks” to purchase items, armor, weapons and artillery. But first consumers must purchase the War Bucks, at an exchange rate of 5 War Bucks to one real-world US dollar. Payments are made via credit card.

Mobile Ads
We've written a lot about mobile advertising here on the BuzzCity blog. Graphical banners can be displayed before, after or even during a game. Developers work with distribution networks like BuzzCity that provide automated solutions or SDK codes which can be embedded in an application. There are no upfront costs, developers control the types of ads shown (blocking ads they don't want) and they earn a percentage of the ad revenues with every click.

Service Subscription
Just like old-school newspapers and magazines, mobile applications with regularly updated content can charge consumers for subscriptions. Not surprisingly, media outlets have been the first to adopt this model. In 2010, The Washington Post launched an iPhone app for just US$1.99 for 12 months of mobile access to the paper's content.

“The Daily,” a daily digital news publication with original content created exclusively for the iPad, offers weekly and annual subscriptions. Payments are made by credit card.

Developers need to build subscription systems internally as they require a server to push the content and settle payments, which can be made by SMS, WAP or credit card. Upon startup, the application connects to the server to check the consumer's status (paid, unpaid, etc.) as well as the type of content available for that geographic locale. Users meanwhile are normally prompted during payment cycles, unless they have signed up for auto-renew.

Subscriptions won't work for most games as the content has a limited lifespan -- the normal lifespan of a racing game or puzzle is 3 – 4 months -- but it could work for multi-player games, though I haven't seen this done yet.

Mobile Rewards
Imagine you're playing a game and would like to buy a virtual shield to protect yourself from demons. The shield costs 10,000 virtual dinars. But you don't have that much virtual currency and don't want to pay the real world equivalent. What to do?

Well, if your time is flexible, a number of companies now offer a solution. Instead of spending cash, take a survey or click on an ad instead. Afterwards, users are rewarded with virtual credits, prizes like unlocked characters, special maps and limited-edition weapons or even free game downloads.

Mobile rewards are usually pubicised at the beginning of a game to entice users to participate. It's most popular in developing markets where consumers use prepaid SIM cards.

Developers meanwhile work with companies like Tap Me to implement this model, which is financed by advertisers and marketing companies.

Upgrades/Updates

Another way to monetise applications is to offer upgrades and updates for a fee. Rolling out new characters, features and levels after the initial launch of a game keeps users interested, prolongs an application's shelf life and generates an additional revenue stream, without much additional cost. New skins – often tied to a holiday like Christmas or Halloween – are also popular.

Upon startup, apps normally check for updates and if any are available, users are prompted to upgrade.

Bolt Creative offers Pocket God users several choices to outfit characters or play new levels.

Developers normally build this system internally as it requires a server to push the update. Payments are provided via normal channels (SMS, WAP or credit card).

Cross Selling
This is a good way to move back inventory or promote new apps, by using one game to sell another. Cross-sell pages normally appear at the end of a game before a user exits. For example, if a consumer has downloaded an old game for free, she may see a cross-sell page linking to a premium site selling the latest apps. Or if he is playing a new game, the cross-sell page might promote a developers' back catalogue.

Mix & Match
Developers have also begun to offer consumers choices on how to pay. In this golf game, for example, Flexion offers pay-per-download as well as two different subscription options. Payment is made by SMS or wap charging.

Other developers combine elements of various freemium models, such as enabling consumers to turn off ads by paying an upgrade fee.

Overview
So many choices, so many possibilities, it can be confusing. Each of these models has its pros and cons; some work better in one type of market than another. In the next installment of this series, I'll provide an overview of how these freemium models are performing as well as share some thoughts about where we go from here.

Related Stories
Part I - Early Business Models
Part II - Revenue Issues
Part IV - Monetisation Strategies: What Works, What Doesn't

App Monetisation Secrets (Part 2)

2011-04-04T15:54:00.004+08:00

By Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

At the turn of the millennium (which sounds very cool to say, but was really just a little over a decade ago), app developer houses were popping up all over the place.

Large developers made money by selling content directly to phone manufacturers like Nokia. Sometimes they received one-off payments, but more often revenue sharing was the preferred model. Garage developers, meanwhile, struck deals with bigger companies, which could bundle their content for sale to the Nokias and Ericcsons.

But as the number of development houses mushroomed, margins became smaller and smaller and it just became too difficult to turn a profit. Pay-per-download seemed the way to go, but like the other models, this revenue stream was highly dependent on the carriers, which created a number of problems for developers.

Revenue Issues

1. Disproportionate Revenue Shares

Game developers – and smaller companies in particular – were really at a disadvantage under this model. Carriers generally kept 70% of revenues, but sometimes their take could rise to 80%.

2. Even More Disproportionate Revenue Shares

SMS and WAP charging are controlled by the carriers, but since the mid-2000s, carriers only work with Master Content Providers (one or two per carrier). Everyone else goes under them. So smaller developers wouldn't even make 20% from a revenue share deal, as they relied on better-connected firms to distribute their content and had to share their portion with them. Figure that it cost US$20-30k to design and develop a game. There just weren't enough downloads to cover costs, much less make money.

3. Late Payouts

An age-old problem faced by vendors in many industries. Carriers often paid developers three to four months later than the designated payout date. For February payments, for example, developers would be lucky to receive their money by June.

4. Disagreements over Generated Revenue

Just how many consumers downloaded an application? You would think this would be a straight-forward question, but the numbers were always a source of contention, particularly in developing markets. Developers inserted tracking systems into their games. But carriers said that many downloads were not paid. In some countries, the discrepancies could be as high as 40 percent. Were the carriers honest? Were there flaws in their systems? We don't know. But most developers couldn't do anything about it. Only the biggest houses with the most popular games had any bargaining power with the telecoms.

Dark Ages & Rennaissance?

At this point, it's also worth remembering that the mobile industry was fragmented. Thousands of devices had flooded the market and choosing which platform or platforms to target was daunting.

All this led to a 'Dark Age' for developers. Few companies had postive cash flow or annual profits. From 2005 – 2007, investment in gaming and mobile applications fell to an all-time low.

Fortunately this period was short-lived.

In 2007, Apple launched the Apple App Store, paving the way for new business models (did someone say FREEMIUM?) and enabling developers to market directly to consumers, bypassing carrier portals and payment systems. But, of course, not everything is rosy . . . and in the next part of this series, we'll look at the issues faced by app developers in the market today.

For more about the early days of app monetisation, please check out my first entry in this series. In Part III, I explore the diversity of "freemium" models and in Part IV, we look at the success of various monetisation models in different markets.

Demand for Content Drives Syndication

2011-04-01T00:00:00.095+08:00

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

While most analysts and observers think of BuzzCity as a mobile ad network, we've been quietly and quickly building up another side to our business: content syndication.

As of this month, we now syndicate content to more than 1000 partners across the globe!

This process started in 2010 as we undertook a concerted effort to help develop mobile audiences. We did this by taking content from BuzzCity's diverse mobile platforms -- myGamma, Djuzz, JAMsked and Now-Cook – and sharing it with partners.

Our sites are designed to satisfy mobile internet users’ insatiable demand for relevant, useful and entertaining content on the mobile internet. They also provide a great context for advertisers to promote their brands.

With syndication partners growing at a phenomenal speed, BuzzCity’s content partners are assured that their games, recipes or gigs reach the desired target audience – whether it’s a student who loves to play cricket games in the UK or a Thai Tuk-Tuk driver yearning to satisfy his appetite for speed.

Today, we'd like to share with you some examples of our latest partners:

MTV (Brasil)

In mid-March, MTV Brasil launched a games catalogue and is expected to start a catalogue of Brazilian gigs with JAMsked soon. In March 2011, Brazilian traffic was ranked 13th on the BuzzCity Ad Network after tremendous growth in the second half of 2010.

Arpu+ (Egypt)

Arpu+ are based in Egypt and offer our catalogues as part of their mobile entertainment news services. Three catalogues go on offer to Egyptian users from March 2011 offering games, live music and recipes .

HTC (Thailand)

As handset manufacturer HTC launches more Android devices this year – including the Aria, Desire HD, Hero, HTC G1, Magic and Wildfire -- each handset will come with preloaded launcher applications for Djuzz and myGamma. HTC expects to retail 30,000 of these handsets each month for the rest of the year.

Videocon (India)

Videocon is using BuzzCity's catalogues to provide its subscribers with content from Djuzz, Now-Cook and JAMsked, enabling them to download the latest mobile apps and games, browse a catolgue of thousands of scrumptuous easy-to-make recipes and check out information on the hottest music gigs in India.

The Business Angle

Here at BuzzCity, we're really very excited by this tremendous growth and the opportunity to work with such a diverse range of partners across the globe. Syndication and creating new platforms for content fits hand-in-hand with the advertising side of our company's business model. This encourages growth of the network and we monetise the traffic through advertising.

Thanks to some pretty direct feedback from our user base, we've long known that the demand for mobile content has outpaced supply, which is why we've made a commitment to further grow the mobile internet by working with partners to deliver quality content to the people that demand it.

App Monetisation Secrets (Part 1)

2011-03-29T16:06:00.006+08:00

By Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

"Freemium". Is it the golden grail for application developers? It's certainly the key buzzword in the industry right now. But not that long ago pay-per-download and embedding were on top.

Developing cool and useful mobile applications isn't easy. Making money off them can be even harder. Even if you believe in freemium, there are so many different models – Try & Buy, Upgrades, Mobile Rewards . . . what to do?

Well, let's start with a sense of history. Today's piece is the first of a multi-part series in which I'm going to take a closer look at the evolution of mobile monetisation, explore why some business models work and others don't, then share reflections about what's to come in the near future.

The First Mobile Game

In the mid 1990s, mobile phones were analogue and couldn't do much other than transmit voice. Nokia soon started making hipper devices, adding SMS, data and finally content.

Then in 1997, an engineer named Taneli Armanto took a popular 1970s video game – SNAKE - and embedded it onto the Nokia 6110. The move was a hit. SNAKE has since been distributed on some 350 million devices and was a turning point for Nokia as well as a source of inspiration for developers across the industry.

Early Business Models

Game development houses cropped up, but the question was always how to monetise new content. At first, there were basically three business models:

1. Embedding

Nokia was bullish about getting content and would pay developers either a one-off bulk fee or a per-phone installation for the rights to embed games and apps on its mobile devices. Sony and Ericcson followed suit. Everyone wanted to be part of it. The going rate for per-phone installation was about US$1 per device or US$2-3 for better-known branded games and well-known IPs. Top partners could make US$250 – 500k per deal per game. And they were often commissioned in advance. Smaller and newer developers might make as much as US$100,000 or as little as US$10k.

2. Outsourced Development

The bigger and more established game makers -- like EA, Digital Chocolate, Hero Craft and PHQ – began to strike deals with the smaller players to purchase content and distribute it to phone manufacturers. EA and the others already had good relations with Nokia and the like; they would often bundle content into packages before offering it to the Top Five. Sometimes garage developers received a straight fee. Other contracts were based on revenue sharing, with the smaller company generally receiving a 30-35% cut.

3. Pay Per Download (PPD)

Before the days of App Stores, WAP sites were the best place for consumers to check out mobile content. If you saw a game you liked, you would SMS in a code, then receive a download link. A mobile carrier or billing service would charge the consumer's credit card.

Revenue Issues
Embedding and outsourced development fell out of favor first. As the number of development houses mushroomed, margins became smaller and smaller and it just became too difficult to turn a profit. PPD seemed the way to go . . . but the grail was still far away.

In Part II of this series on App Monetisation Secrets, we take a look at some of these revenue hurdles. In Part III, we examine the rise of "freemium" and the diversity of its models. And in Part IV, we look at the factors to consider when choosing a monetisation strategy.

Ringback Tones

2011-03-22T15:10:00.001+08:00

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Ever find yourself snapping your fingers, bouncing your head or even singing along as you listen to a friend's mobile ring a familiar tune? Or perhaps you find your colleague's ringback tone to be especially annoying? (No offense, Hisham!)

What's a ringback tone, you ask?

Well, if you need to ask . . . . alright, actually, it's OK. Ringback tones – the tunes you hear when you dial someone else's number – haven't quite taken off the way telcos had hoped when they were first launched globally about seven years ago.

But the melodies still comprise a market segment where telecom companies have a unique advantage.

Unlike ringtones, which can be downloaded and played from your phone, ringback tones rest on the carrier servers, so only a telco or licensed partner can sell the product.

In the US, Verizon Wireless is promoting a ringback tone “jukebox,” that holds up to 100 melodies and can be easily customised by consumers. Each ringback costs about US$2 for a one-year license. Users can specify different ringback tones for each day of the week, hour of the day and for specific callers or groups of callers. For example, if your boss calls at night, you can programme the jukebox to play “Workin' 9 to 5” but if your boyfriend rings, he'll hear “Are You Going to Kiss Me or Not” (by Thompson Square).

Pop tunes and movie anthems are among the most popular ringback tones. According to RealNetworks, “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem and Rihana topped the US ringback charts in 2010; in China, the most popular ringbacks were the theme song to the drama “My Queen” -- “No If” by Fish Leong – and “Sorry Sorry” by Korea's boy band Super Junior.

"Sorry Sorry" by Super Junior

A different genre of ringbacks – advertisements – is also striking a chord with consumers chasing free airtime. A Pepsi campaign in Turkey generated more than 25 million calls from five million users, according to Juniper Research, which expects brands to spend upwards of US$780 million a year on ringback campaigns by 2015.

Telecom companies see proprietary content like ringbacks as one way to draw people back to the carrier portals. But to do this, they now realise the need to advertise off-portal, placing banner ads that target their competitors' user base as well as their own.

Several companies -- including Vodacom in South Africa, Idea (India) and Telkomsel (Indonesia)-- have started to just that, by leveraging on the BuzzCity Ad Network.

(Check out this link on the IDEA website, by the way, to listen to top ringback tones in 16 Indian languages.)

In "Telecoms Go Off-Portal," I take a closer look at how carriers are now shifting strategies and engaging in mainstream mobile marketing campaigns to promote services and attract new customers.

BuzzCity Tours: April 2011

2011-03-17T12:22:00.013+08:00

April is set to be a busy month for our team who will be attending and speaking at events in The Philippines, US, Vietnam, India, France and Singapore.

Here's an update of the various events our team members will be attending:

Michael de Souza will be speaking at Connected Creativity at MIPTV in Cannes (5-7 April), France on ‘Beyond Ad Campaigns: How to Create a Powerful Brand Presence on the Mobile Web’ and networking with leading innovators in entertainment, mobile media and technology.
We are a sponsor at “The Mobile Marketing Conference 2011 – The Market is Mobile: Can Your Brand Keep Up?” in Manila (7-8 April). Delynn Ho will be speaking on “Mobile Web Advertising: How can Brands be discovered in the small screen?”
Cindy will be attending Ad:Tech San Francisco (11-13 April) where she will be on hand to assist with your enquiries and share the latest updates.
In Singapore (13 – 15 April), Alban Villani will be at The Internet Show where he will be networking with digital marketing experts and sharing the latest developments at BuzzCity.
Michael deSouza will be speaking again at the 5th Annual Mobile VAS Summit 2011 in Singapore (27 Apr) on the topic ‘Promotion Strategies to Maximise the Revenue of Your Location Based Services’.
Manish will be attending Ad:Tech New Delhi in India (27-28 April) to meet up and network with global digital marketing experts.

Feel free to email feedback[at]buzzcity.com to arrange a meeting with any of our colleagues at these events.

Telecoms Go Off-Portal

2011-03-15T11:30:00.002+08:00

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

A shift has taken place in the world of telecom companies.

Not long ago, carriers saw themselves as gateways, creating walled gardens making it difficult and more expensive for mobile users to surf beyond the telco portals. Mobile users wouldn't have it, though. And as data charges in most markets have become increasingly affordable, telcos have had to adjust.

Nowhere has this shift been more pronounced than in the carriers' sales and marketing departments. Under the old plans, telcos were content to market to their consumer base, particularly via SMS blasts. Today, though, carriers are moving beyond their own properties. They're taking out mobile ads and running mobile campaigns, just like brands in other industries, to engage surfers and promote unique services like ringback tones.

The new campaigns are paying off.

Agencies tell us that mobile internet usage during the period of the campaigns has increased by more than 40%.

Let's take a look at examples from three countries . . .

Promoting a Service
Telkomsel holds a 22% market share in Indonesia, but the carrier is reaching outside its own customer base to promote a free roaming service for Blackberry users. The Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) includes emails, chat (BBM) and surfing on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Telkomsel's ad campaign is straight-forward. A banner ad

links to a landing site created by the company:

The campaign is running in Indonesia as well as overseas to target Indonesians who are traveling. Indonesian Blackberry users who subscribe to Telkomsel's service receive free roaming in five markets – Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

What's particularly interesting is that Telkomsel targets all smartphones, regardless of make or carrier, in several markets. Telkomsel wants its own Blackberry users to know about BIS, but it also aims to expand its market by targeting non-Blackberry users (so they'll consider switching phones) and its competitors clients.

Consumer Education

Like Telkomsel, Vodacom is working to grow its market, but rather than promoting a specific service, South Africa's largest carrier is raising consumer awareness of how mobile phones can be used.

This simple direct banner links to Vodacom's DIY mobile site, which contains information about data charges and the types of services available, such as chat, content downloads, surfing and search.

Promoting Apps and Proprietary Content

Idea Cellular is partnering with Djuzz -- BuzzCity's free ad-supported mobile games and apps portal -- to distribute a proprietary application, a translation app that promises to 'break the language barrier'.

The language app features vocabulary in nine Indian languages from a variety of concepts and situations. It also offers audio so users can hear the correct pronunciation. This campaign complements Idea Cellular's language helpline, which also offers on-the-spot translation services.

Previously, a carrier app like this would have only been available on the telco's portal, not on an open distribution platform. But India Cellular realises that if it wants to grow the market, it needs a broader approach.

Of course, carriers have not altogether given up on drawing consumers back to their portals. But to do this they need to offer cool content . . . and they need to market their services outside their own gardens.

For a look at one area where telcos have a unique advantage, check out my piece on ringbacks!

BuzzCity Roadshows 2011

2011-03-08T14:22:00.006+08:00

We regularly share information that helps our partners plan their marketing campaigns and we have recently streamlined our reports into a publication called The BuzzCity Report.

This is a quarterly report derived from analyses of data from BuzzCity’s Ad Network and user behavior on BuzzCity’s media properties. The report is aimed at marketers and agencies that are planning campaigns on the mobile internet.

We will also share more insights from our network during our road shows which start in March in Indonesia and Vietnam at the following locations.

Jakarta

Date : 24th March 2011 (Thursday)

Time : 1100hrs – 1700hrs

Venue : Akmani Hotel, Jalan Kyai Haji Wahid Hasyim No. 91, Jakarta

Please click here to view the afternoon's schedule and confirm your attendance.

Ho Chi Minh City

Date : 30th March 2011 (Thursday)

Time : 1100hrs – 1700hrs

Venue : Rex Hotel, 141 Nguyen Hue Blvd, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Please register here to visit us in Ho Chi Minh City.

In India we begin our ‘Coffee Chat’ workshops with The Digital Club in Mumbai (Wednesday, 30th March) and New Delhi (in the final week of the month). We expect to organize several throughout the year in Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore.

We are planning more roadshows in the coming months and hope to cover more cities as there is always a lot to share.

Djuzz Gaming Charts : February 2011

2011-03-02T09:25:00.027+08:00

More than 8.9 million games were downloaded from Djuzz in February; an increase of 5% from January.

Social networking application, Rocketalk, continued to lead the charts and saw an increase of more than 100% in downloads as their promotional campaigns renewed in February. As the F1 racing season starts, racing games also received renewed interest; up 8 places is GTS World Racing with 154% increase in downloads. Underground Racer climbed a notch to gain their place in the charts to overtake 3D Street Racing.

The start of the Cricket World Cup also renewed interest in cricket themed games and Cricket T20 World Championship climbed two places to seventh place.

In 9th place is new entry to the charts TNA Wrestling by Nazara.
Here's a look at the Top 10 Games downloaded in February :

#	Title	Developer	Downloads
1	Rocketalk	Rocketalk	1,426,009	Unchanged
2	GTS World Racing	Panda App	199,643	Up 8 places
3	Underground Racer	HOVR	140,670	Up 1 place
4	3D Street Racing	Moffy Games	137,362	Down 1 place
5	Tom Jerry - Mouse Maze	Playfon	105,446	Unchanged
6	Combat Club	Herocraft	102,009	Unchanged
7	Cricket T20 World Championship	IGFun	92,457	Up 2 places
8	Speed Moto	HOVR	91,267	Unchanged
9	TNA Wrestling	Nazara	85,764	New Entry
10	Ben 10 Power of The Omnitrix	Playfon	80,472	Down 3 places

Top Categories.

Action & Adventure games made up 25% of games downloaded. Rocketalk's popularity boosted Social & Messaging apps into second place (16%) while Racing (14%) and Arcade (14%) themed games shared third place. The Top 10 Categories as measured by downloads are :

Category	Downloads
Action & Adventure	2,183,741
Social & Messaging	1,462,344
Racing	1,282,511
Arcade	1,240,556
Instant Fun	1,039,014
3D Games	922,513
Sports	791,395
Movies & TV	656,104
Puzzle & Strategy	385,759
Casual	360,387

Blind Networks: Now You See!

2011-02-24T19:09:00.007+08:00

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

Blind ad networks are often misunderstood despite the huge traffic they serve.

With blind networks you can’t specify the individual mobile internet sites on which your ads will appear. Instead, you select a channel, such as ‘Entertainment & Lifestyle’ or ‘Premium Portals’ (there are nine to choose from altogether), and your ads are displayed across the hundreds or thousands of mobile internet sites within that category.

This kind of selection is a necessity, as it is in any long-tail network. Asking brand managers or media planners to work through a list of thousands of individual sites to evaluate their content and context for a good match to the brand that they’re promoting, and then make a selection, would be time-consuming and counterproductive.

The sheer volume and variety of sites in the mobile internet makes detailed planning (of the kind seen in traditional ad schedules for print or television) impossible. And this apparent loss of control makes some brands and agencies very nervous indeed.

It’s an understandable quandary. Media planners and marketing managers have a responsibility to protect brand reputations. If you don’t trust your ad network to deliver the right quality of traffic, it can feel a bit like passing your baby to a stranger.

Mostly, though, these fears are unfounded. The legacy of mistrust among some agencies and brands is a hangover from a time before many blind networks developed their sophisticated targeting and analytic capabilities, which give you the ability to engage the right users. These capabilities, used in conjunction with real-time reports and active campaign management, can ensure that your campaigns are performing in line with expectations, and reaching the right audience.

The points below provide some practical tips on mitigating risk to your brand, and ensuring that you are always displaying your ads in an appropriate context.

Trust in your ad network’s classification of sites

Blind ad networks put a great deal of time and effort into ensuring that the sites listed in a particular channel are classified accurately.

Our publisher team frequently audits the content appearing on our partner sites for appropriateness to the channel in which it’s categorised, reclassifying partner sites whenever necessary.

In the case of large partners with a variety of content on their site or portal, we split their inventory across multiple channels, as needed. So, in a typical news portal, movie, music and fashion content goes into the ‘Entertainment & Lifestyle’ category; weather, news and traffic information would be listed in the ‘Information’ category, and so on.

In this way, we ensure that the traffic that you select is always appropriate, and the sites that the ads appear on are representative of their channel description.

Planning tools and surveys

The first step in planning any campaign is to view detailed information on who’s engaging with your ad network, by using campaign planning tools. These provide detailed user data including age, gender, and location of our users, as well as the devices being used to connect to the mobile internet.

In addition, user surveys provide further insight into interests, usage and behaviour of mobile internet users. Look out for BuzzCity’s latest survey, to be released on Monday 14 February 2011 at the GSMA in Barcelona.

Armed with this information, and an idea of which channel is most appropriate to your campaign, you can go ahead and set appropriate targeting for your campaign.

Price, targeting and the importance of campaign monitoring

Placing advertising directly on specific niche sites to target a specific demographic can cost a lot, per user. The holy
grail of planning is to find a media channel that reaches as much of your target demographic as possible, at a reasonable cost per user, to ensure that there is no ‘wastage’.

That makes targeting a tradeoff (of cost and reach) that media planners are constantly engaged in. You don’t want to spend too much per user, but you also don’t want to reach too many users outside your target market.

Blind networks offer a number of targeting options to start zoning in on your target market, usually at no cost, including:

Channel targeting (eg, ‘Entertainment & Lifestyle’ or ‘Premium Portals’)
Time targeting (time of day, date ranges)
Context tags (eg, games, information, movies, photos, videos)
County targeting
Carrier / telco targeting
Device targeting (including the ability to specify the brand, operating system, model and feature capabilities of the mobile device)

This cuts out irrelevant traffic, leaving you with an appropriate context which you are comfortable for your brand to appear in.

CPC means you don’t pay for ‘wastage’

Now, there’s a further point to bear in mind. It concerns the CPC (or cost per click) model.

Unlike traditional advertising (which buys only reach or exposure), CPC advertising only charges you for actual interaction with your campaign. Your balance will not budge if no-one clicks on your ads, even if you receive thousands of impressions. You’re paying only for clicks, and that occurs only at the moment that a user displays interest in your product or service.

As long as your ad creative accurately depicts your brand offer, there’s very little adspend wastage, and any wastage would be attributed to people who are not actually interested in your offer, who nevertheless click on your ad. This highlights the importance of an accurate yet enticing call to action.

The important point to remember is that in a CPC world, it’s less important to ensure that you expose your brand only to your exact target market. Wider exposure of your campaign isn’t a problem, because you aren’t spending your budget on any users who don’t click.

The value of continual monitoring and optimisation

As digital marketers (and you’ll know this if you work at a digital agency or specialist mobile company), we’re all constantly emphasising the benefits of digital media – it’s measurable, adaptable, accountable and real time. We criticise traditional media for not being as nimble and ‘real-time’.

Be sure that you don’t fall into the trap of not practising what you preach. Making ongoing changes based on real-time results can be time-consuming. It also requires analytical enquiry and a spirit of competitiveness.
You may decide to hire someone new – an optimisation manager – to monitor your campaigns and get the most out of them. But the rewards are there. It's definitely worth it.

This is the crucial second part of the equation, which is where you can really start to take advantage of the lower cost of blind networks. By constantly analyzing the results of the clicks that you are getting, and monitoring and tweaking to ensure that you are reaching the right audience, your campaign will remain on track.

It’s too cheap to be valuable!

Some advertisers become suspicious of how inexpensive blind network advertising can be. They think that there has to be a connection between quality interaction, and buying expensive ‘premium’ media. In truth, there are some very good niche, targeted media properties where it’s worthwhile paying a lot per user. Unfortunately, there also a lot of rip-offs out there, capitalising on the assumption that price equals quality.

On a bid-driven network like BuzzCity, our advertisers determine the price that they’re willing to pay per click. Our ad servers allocate traffic based on your CPC bid rate, so the rule of thumb is that the higher your bid, the more traffic your campaign will receive (until your day budget limits your campaign spending).

We’re basically ruled by supply and demand. In countries where there’s high advertising demand and limited inventory available (countries like Malaysia, South Africa and the UK), you’ll need to bid higher than elsewhere to get substantial traffic.

Similarly, there are bargains to be had in oversupplied markets. Countries like India and Indonesia have loads of traffic, and relatively little ad competition for the inventory available. Here, you can get loads of value for as little as 1c or 2c per click (USD).

In these countries, advertisers make the mistake of thinking that this is poor quality traffic, when, in fact, it’s simply traffic that’s in abundant supply. Don’t get trapped in this assumption. You’re getting a bargain!

Publishers and transparency

The anonymity of a blind network suits many publishers well, and number of publishers ask us to sign confidentiality agreements, to ensure that we don’t divulge their participation in our network.
The reasoning behind this is simple. These publishers run premium sites (with high ad rates relative to network advertising). They also usually have an in-house ad-sales team.

They sell as much inventory as possible, usually on a CPM basis, but seldom sell their entire inventory. Once they run out of sold ads, they then back-fill with network advertising from us, to ensure a steady flow of income when they run out their own bookings.

To admit to the wider market that they’re actually back-filling with network advertising (available to advertisers at a much lower cost) would harm their perception as a premium publisher, so they ask us not to reveal their names.
This is the positive side of blind networks – you often get great quality, premium traffic, at a fraction of the price that they charge directly.

Of course, it’s impossible to target only one publisher or site for a campaign on a blind network, but you’ll almost certainly get traffic that you would ordinarily pay a lot more for, mixed in with the rest of the network of sites.

Publishers are also demanding transparency

Publishers of mobile internet sites are increasingly sharing the same concerns that brand advertisers do. After all, they, too, are managing a brand, and they need to ensure that that advertising that appears on their site adheres to their own guidelines, and suits their target audience.

They have insight into who uses their site and what these users want, and they realise that advertising from a well respected brand reflects well on them, creating a richer, better user experience.

Blind ad networks provide publishers with a set of tools to accept and block certain campaigns. Publishers are able to moderate the advertising that’s currently live and scheduled for that day. In this way, publishers are able to select campaigns which are a good fit with the users of their sites. This behaviour further reinforces the relevance of your campaigns.

The bottom line

In short, the mobile internet ad environment is coming of age. For the brands who advertise, and the users who interact, this can only be good news.

Targeting capabilities on blind networks are constantly improving. So too are the abilities of agencies and brands to tweak and optimise their campaigns. Publishers are getting pickier about the advertising that they, in turn, accept.

Do not fear the blind network! It contains a vast amount of rich interaction, and with the right approach and attention to detail, it’s far from the ‘wild west’ of advertising that it’s sometimes made out to be.

Mobile Banking

2011-01-25T21:43:00.005+08:00

By Chester Ng, Sales Director (Southeast Asia)

After selling livestock or milk in local markets, Maasai herdsman living in the Serengeti Plains of Kenya, used to return home with cash in their pockets, which might sound nice but also meant they were walking targets for theft. No more. Thanks to a mobile banking service, a herdsman's customers now transfer payment direct to the seller's account.

Kenyans in the city, meanwhile, are using the same service to pay for transport. But as a BBC reporter points out, try to do this in London, New York or Hong Kong or Singapore, for that matter, and you'll likely “find yourself with a very upset cab driver”.

At BuzzCity, we've noticed an increasing number of banks and financial institutions using mobile advertising to share information and promote services. But very few have actually introduced full-service m-banking. This is going to change. And as it does, there are a number of things that banks need to keep in mind . . . .

It's not actually that surprising that a nation like Kenya is at the forefront of m-banking. From mobile advertising to social networks, we've seen developing markets – where most consumers do not have access to computers – leading the way in so many areas of the mobile internet.

In Kenya, the company offering “branchless mobile banking” is called M-PESA. Over half the country's adult population uses the service to pay for shopping or utility bills, wire money to relatives or simply take a taxi home. Safaricom, the company behind M-PESA, also offers interest-paying mobile bank accounts, micro-credit and micro-insurance policies.

Standard Bank in South Africa is another good reference point as are Standard Chartered Bank's southeast Asia operations in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Consumers can use their phones to check their bank account balance, manage credit cards or loans, pay bills, transfer money between accounts and more. However consumers are often required to register first from a PC before they being able to bank with a phone.

Other banks are experimenting with mobile and using it for customer service, branding, sales and marketing. Others like Citibank India run lead generation campaigns: “Live your dreams” with a personal loan, says the Citibank banner ad. Consumers are taken from there to an online form. Bank employees follow up manually with a phone call.

Some banks are using mobile to help consumers locate the nearest ATM. Or take the case of BCA Indonesia, which has a cross-promotional campaign with a telecom provider. BCA wants consumers to use the bank when they top up or buy pre-paid mobile cards.

As financial institutions embrace mobile as a distinct channel -- not just a supplement to PC banking –their number one challenge is the same as they faced when first rolling out online banking: Consumer Confidence.

If consumers don't trust a service, if they don't feel one hundred percent confident that their money is safe, they won't use it.

So here are four tips:

1. Understand Your Local Mobile Market

How will your clients interact with the service? Do their mobile devices have GPRS, 3G, USSD? Do they use applications? A good resource to answer questions like these is the BuzzCity Campaign Planner, which has up-to-date data on over 200 markets.

2. Get the Product Design Right

The service needs to be intuitive and easy to use. From registration to payments to query resolutions, the platform should be friendly and efficent.

3. You Only Get One Chance

Customers who are unsuccessful in a mobile banking attempt will generally not try again. When a new service launches, banks need to get it right the first time.

4. Consumer Education is Key

Banks need to use a variety of channels to continually educate consumers and boost confidence. Messaging should focus on product awareness, ease of use and banking security.

When done right, mobile banking can create and grow new markets, enabling consumers in a variety of settings to save money and pay bills and in the process create value in communities as far-flung as the Kenyan Maasai and Indonesian commuters.

Notes: Hawa Omar, BuzzCity's Sales Director in South Africa, contributed to this article. The photo of the Maasai man is from the BBC clip, "The Maasai Go Mobile", which you can watch here.

Visit Us in Barcelona

2011-01-21T13:00:00.018+08:00

We started touring early this year and will be in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress.

Our colleagues from offices in Singapore and Paris will be on hand (Stand 7E47) to meet with partners.

We look forward to meeting up with you!

As we have a soft spot for Indie musicians, we'd like to throw in a plug for Metric who will be performing at the Congress Party and Awards celebration. If you are travelling in Spain before or after MWC, you might want to check out JAMsked for live music in Spain.

Mobile Advertising Index (Q4 2010)

2011-01-20T17:00:00.009+08:00

2010 saw a huge growth of the mobile internet as more users took advantage of cheaper data rates and much improved handsets. Our ad network grew by over 90% compared to 2009 and advertiser campaigns have also increased.

More than 2500 advertisers ran campaigns and increased their expenditure in several key markets.

India continued on its growth curve – in Q4 more than four billion ads were delivered to Indian audiences - and for the first time outpaced Indonesia to secure the number one spot.

The top 5 most active countries in Q4 were:

India : 4 billion impressions served
Indonesia : 3.0 billion impressions served
United States : 1.1 billion impressions served
South Africa : 0.9 billion impressions served
Kenya : 0.5 billion impressions served.

To view the report in full, please visit the Reports section of the BuzzCity website.

Shoprite, Shop Right!

2011-01-19T13:02:00.001+08:00

By Hawa Omar, Sales Director, South Africa

Whether you want to buy an iron, a birthday present for your nephew, a bus ticket, haircare products or meat for the braai, Shoprite has it all and usually at a good price. With over 1000 outlets in South Africa, Shoprite is South Africa's largest supermarket chain. The company, which also has 36 stores in twelve more African countries, focuses on turnover and targets middle-income consumers.

And like a growing number of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) businesses, the South African superstore has begun promoting its goods on the mobile internet with banner ads and interactive pages.

FMCGs, in general though, are not making the most of mobile. CEOs need to take a step back and look at how internet giants like Amazon grew their online communities and markets, then adapt these lessons for the unwired.

Mobile advertising these days is a no-brainer. There are more than 500 million mobile subscribers in Africa alone. And on my continent, mobile long ago passed PCs as the most popular way of accessing the internet. So it's no wonder that Shoprite turned to mobile marketer Yonder Media to design a Christmas-time promotion.

Yonder worked with Shoprite to design a mobile campaign that placed banners across most content channels five days a week. The banners link to an online mobile catalogue.

The first thing a consumer needs to do, after reaching Shoprite's mobile landing page, is select which province she's from. This gets her through the front door and enables the system to share the most relevant promotions with her. It also provides Shoprite with information about where the clicks are coming from.

In addition to the online catalogue of promotions, the site also encourages consumers to register for SMS updates and refer friends.

Shoprite is pleased with the campaign's ROI. Mobile ads are cost-effective and Shoprite's banner received 10,000 clicks in less than a month.

But if FMCGs like Shoprite are going to take their campaigns to the next stage, if they are going to truly unleash the power of mobile, they need to do more. They need to create communities and enable mobile sales. The architecture exists. It's time for companies to make use of it, while keeping in mind these key consumer touch points:

1. COMMUNITY

Successful e-commerce sites like Amazon have thrived not just by establishing an efficient order fulfillment mechanism, but by creating customer-generated content, such as reviews, around the products they sell. Going forward, the retailers who perform best will be companies that enable consumers to rate products, make recommendations, share recipes etc. in the mobile space.

2. LOYALTY

FMCGs have long cultivated consumer loyalty through a variety of programmes. These can now be consolidated into the mobile space. For example, there's no longer a need for physical loyalty cards, when mobile phones – and personalised mobile services – can take their place.

3. COUPONS

Forget the Sunday newspaper supplements. Yes, discounts attract consumers and generate sales. But virtual coupons and discount codes can now be sent to registered members by SMS and placed on mobile websites. Mobile devices can capture, manage and redeem coupons and discounts.

4. SHOPPING LISTS

Enable consumers who visit your mobile website to create shopping lists that they can later access when in the store. If the shopping list can provide details on which aisle and row to find a product, even better.

5. PAYMENTS

Mobile phones can make payments now anywhere, anytime. And in many African countries, there are now more consumers who use phones as a banking device than there are consumers with bank accounts. Retailers should start letting consumers pay with their phones, in advance or at checkout counters.

Consumers are in a fundamentally different position today thanks to the mobile internet. With phones, they can browse, bank, shop, socialize, buy and trade.

FMCGs have begun to tap on phones to advertise, collect data and share information about products. It's time for them to take the next step.

Spreading The Word with QR Codes.

2011-01-18T09:09:00.010+08:00

Nothing beats a great live show ! It's not just good fun for all, but on the business side, gigs are also a base from which musicians sell their CDs, T-shirts and other merchandise. The key, of course, is presence and QR codes are a good way to spread the news of your upcoming gigs.

A QR code is a matrix barcode that is readable by most camera phones. These codes can be used to store all sorts of information including a link to your concert appearances. A QR code (printed on posters, CD covers etc) acts as a hard link from these physical objects directly to your online presence.

Urbandub Live!

So here’s what we’ve done to help bands spread the word about their gigs. JamSked now provides each band with their own QR code that links back to their gig listings on JamSked.

To get your band’s QR code

Go to jamsked.buzzcity.com and login. (New partners will first need to complete a registration.)
To get your band’s QR code, Click on Artist List (or Gigs List, Venue List where relevant )
Copy the QR code image and save it for later use.
This image can be printed on you posters, name cards, CD covers, web site. etc.

When a fan scans the code, from say, an album cover he will be directed to a page on JamSked that lists your latest stage appearances (if there aren’t gigs any listed, it probably means you haven’t updated your entries). The QR code can appear anywhere an image is permitted (eg TV, Video,) and if included in your next print run, it is not likely to cost you any more money. Even a relatively small image (below) works just as well.

The code is unique to you and always directs users to a page that lists your most up-to-date gigs. It’s easy to check too – just scan it with your camera phone.

Gigs @

Hard Rock

The QR code is also perfect for our venue partners! You will find your code when you click on Venue List after you’ve logged in. When scanned, the code opens a browser and takes users to a page that lists upcoming gigs, your address and any other info about your venue that you entered.

Your code is an excellent supplement to the marketing collateral you distribute off-site as it directs users to the most up-to-date information about the events you host.

BuzzCity Tours: Jan 2011

2011-01-06T11:41:00.005+08:00

The new year is off to a great start with our team attending events in Europe, Middle East and Asia such as the highly anticipated BlackBerry® Developer Conference Asia in Bali, Indonesia (13th - 14th Jan) which was mentioned in the previous blog post.

Below in an update of the other events our team members will be attending:

Michael will be attending the Social Media Marketing Conference (17-18 Jan) in Singapore where he will be on hand to assist with your enquiries and share the latest from our network.
KF and Manish will be attending the Click Asia Summit 2011 (20-22 Jan) in Mumbai, India. KF will be speaking at the event on the topic 'Mobile Marketing Challenges in Asia and How to Fix it'.

In Bangkok, Thailand, Michael and Suttiporn will be attending the 6th Annual Prepaid Mobile Summit 2011 (25-26 Jan). Michael will be speaking on the panel on 26th Jan on the topic of M-Commerce.
Our 'Djuzz' man Je will be attending in the Mobile Games Forum 2011 (26-27 Jan) in London, UK where he will be networking with industry experts from the gaming industry and sharing the latest developments at 'Djuzz'.

Feel free to email feedback[at]buzzcity.com to arrange a meeting with any of our colleagues at these events.

The BlackBerry® Developer Conference Asia

2010-12-29T15:10:00.002+08:00

We have a series of tours and road shows planned for 2011. We start the New Year with a stand at The BlackBerry® Developer Conference Asia in Bali, Indonesia (13th - 14th Jan). Our colleagues from Singapore and Jakarta will be on hand to meet with partners and share revenue opportunities through in-app advertising on our ad network.

Happy New Year and we look forward to catching up with you!

M-Ads: Advertising Inside an App

2010-12-22T17:53:00.001+08:00

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Our partners spoke and we listened. In this case, mobile application publishers said they don't like losing eyeballs. Unless, Je tells me, it's part of a really rad game like Inferi Dii. But when it comes to users exiting an app because they've clicked on a banner ad, that's not so cool.

So, please allow me to introduce m-Ads . . . banner ads that open inside an application.

How does it work?

Participating publishers simply need to download our SDK (software developer kit) and install the code in their application. They only need to do this once.

Advertisers meanwhile can create a landing page when setting up their campaign.

That's it.

Then the ads start appearing inside applications, publishers receive a share of the revenue for each ad clicked and users have a more streamlined experience.

And, oh, the landing pages inside an app load quicker than ads on external pages.

With the SDK, publishers can also choose when the ads should appear -- before an app is launched, within the application itself or before a user exits the app.

Let's take a look at an example. Suppose JamSked -BuzzCity's - mobile internet directory of live music events and independent musicians - wanted to run an ad campaign. The JamSked campaign manager would log into her account at www.buzzcity.com, choose the Advertiser dropdown menu and click on "Landing Page".

From here, the advertiser can write copy, insert a hyperlink, numbers for Click-to-Call or Click-to-SMS as well as a photo, video or audio clip.

m-Ads work in Android, Blackberry and J2ME applications.

Here's a look at graphic and text banners within an application . . .

And here's what a landing page looks like inside Android . . .

and inside J2ME . . .

From a user's perspective, here's the ad flow . . .

On the far left, you see an application about TV shows in a Blackberry phone. At the top of the app, is a banner add for JamSked. When a user clicks on the banner, they're taken to the JamSked landing page. From there, the user can either easily return to the main part of the application or they could click again to go to JamSked's mobile site.

Living the Mobile Lifestyle

2010-12-22T11:31:00.042+08:00

Life without a mobile phone has become impossible to imagine, not because everyone has one but probably because the mobile has many uses. It wakes you up in the mornings; you can take photos with it. You can take notes too. And with the internet, it has become a reference library. The mobile phone is about to rival the PC as a means of accessing the internet.

So what is the mobile lifestyle?

This brief chat with Michael De Souza on Malaysian radio station BFM ‘Tech Talk’ tries to explain what exactly is the mobile life and other topics such as:

• The evolution of SMS
• How the gaming industry is going mobile
• Mobile apps and the advertising model
• And the future of mobile phones..

Listen to the full interview below

Now-Cook Users Get Busy in the Kitchen

2010-12-09T18:25:00.000+08:00

by Michael de Souza, VP Media

If stats are anything to go by, then Now-Cook, BuzzCity’s new mobile recipe portal, has been delivering on its promise of quick, tasty and fuss-free recipes for everyday eating, to hundreds of thousands of users around the world. In the month of November, the Now-Cook site delivered a month-on-month increase of 76% in traffic, with over a million page impressions served. That’s on top of the previous month’s traffic growth of 75%.

Aimed at food lovers everywhere, the site (at http://m.now-cook.com) promotes simple food that’s easy to prepare and quick to cook. It’s intended for anyone who enjoys good food eaten informally, and particularly appeals to those who lack the time to cook it.

Growth of the site has been driven by an ever-increasing collection of recipes from quality content partners such as Nestlé in India, The Guardian newspaper group in the UK and the health-conscious Weigh Less in South Africa.

Repeat behavior

The power of the site lies in the mobile phone’s portability, enabling users to browse through our catalogue of great dishes on the go, consult ingredient lists in a supermarket, and then view the recipe once more, back in the kitchen.

While certain recipes get a lot of page views but very few repeat visits from the same users, there are some clear winners that are returned to, time and again. This is particularly heartening, and evidence that the site is a useful, practical tool for real-world cooking.

Examples of these dishes include Chocolate Apple Bread, Sticky Chicken Wings, African Celebration Soup, Asian Beef and Noodles, Chicken and Broccoli Casserole, and not surprisingly, Bloody Mary Party Soup (with vodka optional, but highly recommended!)

Where are the Cooks?

The top ten countries using Now-Cook include a healthy mix of countries, with India and the US in the top two places (together making up over 70% of traffic). African nations, where mobile devices often provide a primary means of internet access, have been very receptive to the mobile recipe offering, with South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria in 3rd, 4th and 6th spots respectively, together contributing over 6% of traffic. The UK takes up 5th spot, and Canada holds 7th, each contributing about 2% of traffic.

We’re opening up our library of recipes to partners

One of the most exciting developments in the evolution of the site is the launch of our Now-Cook catalogue, which allows our partners to set up their own FREE mobile recipes sites – instantly! The resulting site promotes a brand or service alongside enticing recipes from the Now-Cook mobile internet site.

Partners are able to customize and brand their mobisite, specifying URLs, logos, titles and colours. They can select the content and categories of recipes that they would like to offer from the full range currently available, specify the countries and regions in which the new site should be displayed, and access real time reports, to understand their customers better.

A number of partners have lined up for this service, and these sites will start to roll out in coming weeks.