The Skweezer Blog

According to two different analyst houses this week, NFC mobile phones and contactless-enabled points of sale (POS) are both expected to take off in the next few years, creating a perfect storm for mobile payments and couponing. Juniper Research is forecasting that one in six mobile subscribers will have a NFC phone by 2014, and IMS Research said today that the number of locations that accept contactless payments will increase to more than 12.5 million by the end of 2013.

Juniper Research predicts that says the redemption value of mobile coupons will be almost $6 billion worldwide by 2014. It also states that over 10% of mobile customers in some regions will be using mobile coupons within five years, with NFC coupons and smart posters generating more revenue per user than standard NFC transactions. Most value is expected from the Far East & China, Western Europe and North America.

These NFC handsets will be primarily used for payments and retail transactions, including coupons, according to Howard Wilcox, senior analyst and lead author of Juniper’s report. He also noted that the rollout of NFC-embedded handsets is the bigger limiting factor than POS equipment, but that it is beginning to change with Nokia’s 6126 Classic NFC phone coming to market before the end of the year and others expected to follow suit. NFC is “poised to enter an operational build-up phase culminating in mass service rollouts across many countries,” according to Wilcox.

This will be especially true for metro areas driven by transport ticketing, and retailing ARPU from NFC mobile coupons and smart posters will also be lucrative, exceeding ARPU from NFC payment transactions. Juniper believes that by 2014, more than one mobile subscriber in 10 in developed regions will use mobile coupons, and that usage will generate close to $6 billion globally in retail redemption value.

According to IMS Research, growth in contactless POS will accelerate six times faster than the overall electronic funds transfer at point-of-sale market. IMS research director John Devlin notes in the report that although the market took a downward dive in late 2008 and the first half of 2009 (primarily in the retail and hospitality sectors), the market now returning to growth. Those companies that managed the economic downturn well are now investing in new contactless technologies rather than replacing their existing, essential POS equipment, Devlin said.

Also helping the demand of contactless POS is that card vendors and banks are beginning to issue more contactless cards and consumer awareness is growing in many countries. Devlin noted that as the retail and hospitality sectors continue their recovery, differentiation will be increasingly important to compete. Accepting new forms of payment, including contactless cards, fobs and NFC and mobile payments will be key.

Posted by Mark Sieve

Today CNN announced an iPhone app that has already gained widespread praise in the few hours since its release [1] [2]. According to Reuters, some features of the new app include:

• Users can flick through news stories across categories. Additionally, when the device is rotated horizontally, stories can be flipped through quickly.
• Each story features bulleted highlights above the full article, designed to satisfy mobile “snackers,” allowing them to scan through the latest stories, as well as meet the needs of users who want the whole story.
• Local news, weather and traffic based on user’s actual location or the ability to select a specific location.
• Ability to “follow” a story or topic: As CNN publishes breaking news alerts or new stories related to a chosen topic, the app will push the updates to the device.
• “Saved” content, which enables users to access text stories even when they’re offline.

I find it interesting that CNN Interactive Group chose to launch this as a paid app, as free apps are between four and six times more likely to be downloaded than their paid counterparts. The new app is actually ad-supported as well, displaying ads while video loads (though not utilizing the “pre-roll” ads often found in online news clips).

Although many apps generate more revenue for their developers as paid apps than through an ad-supported model (see this informative article on Jonathan Wegener’s blog), apps that are used repeatedly earn more with advertising in the long run. Playing around with the app this morning, I have to say that I think this is something users will be interested in using frequently indeed.

Still, don’t be too surprised if CNN offers their iPhone app for free within the next few months. The people that had to have the product will have paid up, while the 6x users who were unwilling to pay can still generate revenue for CNN through their mobile ads.

Posted by Mark Sieve

Over the past few days there have been several columns published regarding the public’s perception of mobile advertising. What’s striking to me, as somebody who follows the news closely on this subject, are two things:

1. The frequency with which studies are coming out pertaining to the social impact of mobile advertising
2. The diametrically opposed findings of these studies

Take for example several headlines from the past few days:

9/14 - Users Of Smartphones More Sympathetic [to] Social and Mobile Advertising
9/12 - Mobile (And Particularly iPhone) Users Not Keen On Clicking Ads
9/11 - Mobile Ads See High Traction Among Youth
9/11 - Consumers Want Nothing to Do with Mobile Ads?

One of the difficulties with measuring public acceptance of mobile ads is the diverse nature of the mobile advertising platform. For instance, advertising on mobile devices can take the form of CPM banners, text-based CPC ads, and opt-in SMS/MMS alerts or coupons. And these ads can be delivered to the user via downloaded apps, mobile browser, or SMS/MMS. Not to mention behavioral differences by age group, economic status, and geography.

One thing seems probable however: we can eventually expect free, ad-supported content to be the norm in the mobile environment just as it currently is in the more mature desktop environment. Given the choice between free apps, ringtones, Web services, etc. with advertising and paid content without advertising, consumers will in all likelihood choose the former.

Posted by Mark Sieve

For the last year or so, I’ve been wondering how much of bubble the mobile content industry (apps, web, ads, etc) has been living in. I started my computing career in the early 90s, so I’ve lived through the original dot com bubble. I remember the days when doing simple HTML sites was considered “complex”. And companies like Shopping.com were paying US Web amounts like $100,000 just to do a 10 page HTML work-up of a site idea.

Of course, later in the bubble when web applications began to take hold, ecommerce became the “big thing”… and the emergence of a reinvented EDI model redirected the industry’s focus bit. It went from content and browser/server applications to platforms where servers could talk to other servers using web protocols. And leverage not only the dedicated function of uniform services, but take advantage of a common business model as well–reducing costs for everyone. Ultimately, when a new and disruptive concept comes at the end of a bubbly cycle, I believe it causes the bubble to burst. Of course 9-11 and a down-market cycle didn’t help either. But you get the idea.

So, today I was reading about Glu Mobile announcing lower-than-expected earnings for Q308. Unlike the Web 1.0 burst, there are a lot fewer public companies–thanks to Sarbox and other regulatory policies. (How ironic, given the talk lately about not enough regulation). However, a down-market combined with the credit crisis is creating a similar effect as it did in 2001. What does this mean for mobile content companies? Well, we’ve seen a similar content push in the genesis of this industry (making stuff), followed by a “buying of apps and ringtones” cycle (ecommerce), and now we’re seeing a platform-ish phase where mobile ad companies are inserting themselves into the mix to help these companies monetize on a standard set of ads and formats.

Sound familiar at all? If you agree with my premise and listen to what Glu had to say, then one can easily deduce the mobile content industry bubble is about to burst. The question now becomes, how many business will be fail because of this burst? Do you believe the analysts’ predictions when they say, “The Mobile Advertising Industry will be worth _____ billion dollars in 20__”? If there are no content companies around to serve ads… and less ad platforms to provide ads… and less consumer spending to buy things… and less businesses advertising to get consumers to buy things… then this burst seems inevitable.

Posted by Kevin Perkins

Web site publishers and bloggers can now create and manage Skweezer Ads feeds through the new Skweezer Reports & Analytics Web site.

IRVINE, Calif., June 4, 2008—Skweezer, Inc. today announced the launch of the Skweezer Reports & Analytics Web site, located at http://reports.skweezer.com, which provides online reporting for the company’s Skweezer Ads and Skweezer Private Label customers.

“Skweezer is in the unique position of having collected very detailed mobile advertising and mobile browsing data for several years,” said Skweezer, Inc. president Mark Sieve. “This initial release of the Skweezer Reports and Analytics site provides a wealth of information to our customers and, with a host of new reports and features planned for release this summer, promises to become a powerful and comprehensive mobile analytics solution.”

The new Skweezer Reports & Analytics site provides Skweezer Ads customers with detailed reports on their ad campaigns, including match rate, cost-per-click, and click-through data. The site also provides publishers with the ability to create multiple feeds, design custom ad layouts, and monitor their payment history.  Skweezer Ads currently captures a wide range of additional data for each ad that is requested and displayed, such as geographic location of user, device type, and keyword and category information of the requesting page; this information will also be made available to Skweezer Ads customers in upcoming months.

The Skweezer Reports & Analytics site also tracks data for Skweezer Private Label implementations. Wireless operators, search engines, and other enterprise level customers using Skweezer Private Label to mobilize desktop Web content can use the site to track traffic levels and manage subscribers. Detailed aggregate data regarding geographic location, browsing history, device type, and other useful information will be made available in forthcoming updates to the site.

Skweezer Ads is an online advertising service that supplies both desktop and mobile ads in a single ad feed, automatically displaying the correct type of ad to each visitor. Skweezer Ads customers have the added benefit of being able to use Skweezer’s mobilization technology to automatically create a mobile version of their Web site, which is dynamically created whenever a mobile visitor is detected.

Skweezer Ads is the world’s first internationally-consumed mobile advertising service, having served mobile ads in over 175 countries since its release in 2004, and was voted Best Mobile Marketing Product in the 2007 Mobile Star Awards.

Skweezer’s award-winning content mobilization technology can be seamlessly integrated into any wireless data offering, search engine, or other large-scale portal or Web property through a Skweezer Private Label implementation. Skweezer Private Label allows wireless carriers and other service providers allow access to the “whole Internet”, including the vast majority of online content that was not designed to accommodate mobile browsers. Skweezer Private Label works seamlessly with any mobile device regardless of platform and is available as either a hosted or installed solution.

About Skweezer, Inc.:
Skweezer, Inc. has been a key innovator of mobile content optimization technologies since 2001, creating award-winning solutions that have accelerated mobile Web adoption and consistently raised the bar in terms of users’ expectations and feature development. Skweezer Ads, launched in 2004, provides publishers and ad networks with desktop and mobile ads through a single ad feed and includes Skweezer’s optimization technology that automatically mobilizes site content for mobile visitors. Skweezer’s scalable, time-tested “carrier grade” content optimization and converged advertising products are relied upon by some of the largest wireless operators, search engines, ad networks, and enterprises in the world.

Skweezer company site: company.skweezer.com
Skweezer Reports & Analytics site: reports.skweezer.com
Skweezer Ads page: ads.skweezer.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Skweezer Ads gets a major upgrade including technological innovations that are online advertising firsts.

IRVINE, Calif., May 29, 2008—Skweezer, Inc. today announced a major upgrade to its Skweezer Ads service, which allows customers to serve ads to a wide variety of mobile, desktop, and other Web-enabled consoles through a single ad feed.

This latest release of Skweezer Ads includes innovations that are firsts for the online advertising community. One such innovation is a patent-pending algorithm that dynamically converts conventional text-based cost-per-click (CPC) ads into mobile-friendly ads complaint with standards set by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). Another key innovation is Skweezer Ads’ cut-and-paste code that detects a visitor’s device type, retrieves appropriate mobile or desktop ads accordingly, and optionally reformats and compresses the Web content for mobile viewing.

Skweezer Ads is now available to publishers through ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, or JavaScript code. This latest version of Skweezer Ads uses “short URL” for easier inclusion into Web sites, RSS feeds, mobile applications, and SMS messages.

The Skweezer Ads back office, located at http://reports.skweezer.com, has also been updated and includes a new ad formatting wizard allows publishers to use a “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) interface to customize the way their ads look. Customers also now have the ability to create multiple ads feeds, or channels, for a single account. The signup process has also been greatly streamlined and is accessible at http://reports.skweezer.com/open/signup.aspx.

“We’ve finally created a viable AdSense alternative to help publishers monetize every square inch of their Web sites and RSS feeds,” said Skweezer CEO Kevin Perkins. “Our ad technology truly fulfills the Web 2.0 promise: we not only help publishers instantaneously create mobile content from their desktop pages, but our patent-pending algorithm also knows the right ad to show for the right modality.”

Skweezer Ads is an online advertising service that supplies both desktop and mobile ads in a single ad feed, automatically displaying the correct type of ad to each visitor. Skweezer Ads customers have the added benefit of being able to use Skweezer’s mobilization technology to automatically create a mobile version of their Web site, which is dynamically created whenever a mobile visitor is detected.

Skweezer Ads is the world’s first internationally-consumed mobile advertising service, having served mobile ads in over 175 countries since its release in 2004, and was voted Best Mobile Marketing Product in the 2007 Mobile Star Awards.

About Skweezer, Inc.:
Skweezer, Inc. has been a key innovator of mobile content optimization technologies since 2001, creating award-winning solutions that have accelerated mobile Web adoption and consistently raised the bar in terms of users’ expectations and feature development. Skweezer Ads, launched in 2004, provides publishers and ad networks with desktop and mobile ads through a single ad feed and includes Skweezer’s optimization technology that automatically mobilizes site content for mobile visitors. Skweezer’s scalable, time-tested “carrier grade” content optimization and converged advertising products are relied upon by some of the largest wireless operators, search engines, ad networks, and enterprises in the world.

On the Net: Skweezer company site: company.skweezer.com
Skweezer Reports & Analytics site: reports.skweezer.com
Skweezer Ads page: ads.skweezer.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Skweezer Ads is launching a new mobile banner feed through partnership with Smaato Inc.

IRVINE, Calif., May 19, 2008—Skweezer, Inc. today announced it will begin distributing a new mobile banner advertising feed through partnership with Smaato, Inc.

“Smaato’s open architecture platform allows us to dramatically expand our mobile advertising capabilities,” said Skweezer, Inc. CEO Kevin Perkins. “By combining the breadth of multiple banner ad networks via Smaato, our premium publishers will have more opportunity to monetize their offerings world-wide with their Skweezer Ads feed.”

Skweezer Ads is an online advertising service that provides text-based cost-per-click (CPC) ads to both mobile and desktop environments through a single ad feed. The new partnership with Smaato will allow Skweezer to start offering banner-based cost-per-impression (CPM) ads created specifically for display on mobile platforms. This mobile banner feed is available for international distribution, which supports Skweezer’s presence in over 175 countries.

Initial traffic for the new mobile banner feed will be confined to 200 million requests per month and will be served to Skweezer Ads’ India market. Once the new feed has been thoroughly appraised and validated, it will be distributed throughout Skweezer Ads’ global network of publishers, carriers and ad providers.

About Smaato Inc.:
Smaato Inc. is a leading mobile advertising technology company that provides the open mobile advertising platform called SOMA™ (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) for developers, publishers, ad sales networks and operators. The SOMA platform enables the delivery of targeted display advertising to mobile phones within applications and on mobile sites. SOMA’s unique feature is the SOMA client, which is a mobile ad server on the handset that optimizes the process of ad-enabling applications for mobile software developers. SOMA can be easily integrated with 3rd party ad sales networks, ad inventory owners (developers, publishers, operators) and ad technology providers.

On the Net: Smaato site: www.smaato.com

About Skweezer, Inc.:
Skweezer, Inc. has been a key innovator of mobile content optimization technologies since 2001, creating award-winning solutions that have accelerated mobile Web adoption and consistently raised the bar in terms of users’ expectations and feature development. Skweezer Ads, launched in 2004, provides publishers and ad networks with desktop and mobile ads through a single ad feed and includes Skweezer’s optimization technology that automatically mobilizes site content for mobile visitors. Skweezer’s scalable, time-tested “carrier grade” content optimization and converged advertising products are relied upon by some of the largest wireless operators, search engines, ad networks, and enterprises in the world.

On the Net: Skweezer site: www.skweezer.com
Skweezer company site: company.skweezer.com
Skweezer RSS Feed: rss.skweezer.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Agreements set to expand MIVA’s mobile Pay-Per-Click distribution across the U.S. and U.K.

IRVINE, Calif., March 12, 2008—Greenlight Wireless, a mobile content and advertising pioneer, today announced U.S. and U.K. Pay-Per-Click agreements with MIVA Media, a leading digital advertising network and a division of MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIVA).

The agreements will see MIVA’s Pay-Per-Click ads displayed to consumers accessing Greenlight Wireless’ portfolio of U.S. and U.K. partner sites from their mobile phones. This partner network includes national news, entertainment and network operator sites that generate over 30 million mobile searches per month.

Additionally, MIVA’s Pay-Per-Click ads will be displayed to mobile users who utilize Greenlight Wireless’ Skweezer service. Skweezer is a free service that compresses and reformats web pages to make them easier to view and navigate via mobile phones and PDAs.

With both implementations MIVA’s Pay-Per-Click ads will be targeted using Greenlight Wireless’ proprietary contextual technology and will be displayed alongside site content on users’ handsets.

MIVA has been testing mobile ad delivery with Greenlight Wireless in the U.S. for the past six months however with these new agreements the campaign will now be fully rolled-out across the U.S. and U.K.

“We believe these agreements are a significant vote of confidence in our ability to effectively monetize mobile content. Greenlight Wireless has award-winning technology as well as a prestigious and growing distribution network making this an exciting new distribution channel for MIVA advertisers,” commented S. Brian Mukherjee, SVP & Group Managing Director, MIVA Media.

Adds Kevin Perkins, Chief Executive Officer, Greenlight Wireless:

“Combining the skill sets of Greenlight Wireless and MIVA enable us to get around three of the fundamental issues facing mobile marketing today – diverse technology, advertiser depth, and content availability. The beauty of these agreements is that MIVA’s advertisers can now market to mobile websites without the need to plan or buy campaigns separately.”

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile environment.

On the Net: Greenlight Wireless site: www.greenlightwireless.net

About MIVA Media:
MIVA Media is a contextual Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad network focused on key vertical sectors. Its mission is to deliver valuable digital audiences to advertisers. MIVA Media delivers more than 100 million cost-effective leads to advertisers each month and helps maximize revenue for the thousands of third-party web publishers that display its PPC ads. MIVA Media offers three PPC Networks: the vertically focused MIVA Precision Network; the MIVA Core Network which offers broad, horizontal Ad distribution; and SearchFeed which specifically targets small-to-medium sized advertisers and web publishers. MIVA Media is owned by MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA).

About MIVA®, Inc.:
MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA) is a global digital media company with a mission to deliver valuable digital audiences to advertisers. MIVA has two focuses to its business: owning and operating a growing portfolio of consumer destination sites and category specific toolbars, through its MIVA Direct division; and running a 3rd party contextual Pay-Per-Click ad network focused on key vertical sectors, through its MIVA Media division. MIVA, Inc. operates across North America and Europe.

On the Net: MIVA site: www.miva.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Also seen on…

• Forbes
• HPC.net
• OC Register
• SmartBrief
• socalTECH
• Stockhouse
• Sys-Con Media
• Unstrung
• Yahoo!

I had a good chuckle today when the CEO of one of our transcoding brethren starting launching F’bombs toward NetFlix’s popup ads—apparently he sees them all over the net on his desktop. I believe Russell Beattie’s blog post is entitled “Dear NetFlix: F**k You“.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Beth Comstock of NBCi or Jerry Yang of Yahoo! lit up a company the same way?! Wow, kiss that potential advertiser good-bye… along with a shareholder lawsuit, dismissal from the company, etc. The fact that Russ’s website and others make their money from essentially doing what NetFlix does only demonstrates the untargetedness of advertising, in general.

Given what mobile media provides… it’s clearly one of the most intimate content platforms to date. Sheesh, the thing is in your palm! The network operator knows a ton about you (phone number, bill spend, geo, etc). And companies like us have amazing technology to target your experience in a “helping” manner, not an invading one. Nielsen really only knows the half of it.

I won’t launch into F’bombs myself, but I too am passionate about this. Given how much we know about people–especially in mobile–why can’t we make the ads more helpful to people? That sounds like an over-simplified statement, but in all these companies’ quests to “figure it out”… they seem to be leaving that one essential component out of the equation.

More Here:

• Mobile Content or Mobile Ads?

By Kevin Perkins

I read an interesting JupiterResearch article from Nate Elliott on “Why 2008 Won’t Be The Breakthrough Year for Mobile Advertising“. I completely agree with his notion that mobile industry hype just keeps getting carried over year after year, after year, after year. Just look at the recent GSMA claim that mobile ad platforms will be worth $250 billion (yes, with a “B”) in year 2010.

Essentially, half of the digital ad revenue—in the world!

And at the same time, he makes excellent points about the harden realities of why it won’t get there that fast:

1. Difficulty finding budget for mobile advertising
2. Difficulty finding inventory for mobile advertising
3. The high cost of mobile ad inventory
4. Difficulty deciding on mobile advertising tactics (e.g., inexperience with the platform)
5. Difficulty measuring mobile advertising

The thing that continues to amaze me about mobile advertising companies is the lack of understanding about these issues. Examples:

• Your company has distribution, but no way to target based on context
• Your company has advertisers, but no metrics like their other KPIs
• Your company operates under the assumption that everyone in the world has—or soon will have—robust (aka expensive) smartphones.
• Your company operates under the assumption that everyone in the world has innate and sophisticated knowledge of using their phone for data services
• Your company believes “made-for-mobile” is enough of a differentiator that it can justify the high value of campaigns as the economies of scale increase

Where all these companies fall short is something that gets glossed over: making it easy. Mobile advertising will never take off unless it’s easy for users, advertisers, and publishers… all at the same time. Each segment is complicated by itself, let alone getting all three to work in harmony.

Our company has spent the last 7 years perfecting mobile content optimization to make it easy for users and publishers to access what they need from their phones. And, over the last 4 years, our advertisers have increasingly begun to pour money into this medium with little disruption to their existing (read efficient) pay-per-click systems. Key lesson: having any one of these components without the other… fatal.

We’re about to embark on a new phase of our company that joins all of these segments in a disruptive way: Making Money From Mobile Easy™. While others are still playing with content solutions or arguing about standards, we’ll be making it easy for mobile users, advertisers, and publishers well before 2010.

Posted by Kevin Perkins