Are any MIR readers actively advertising products and services on the iPhone platform?
I’m asking because I saw this Tweet from Mark Curtis, top chap at mobile dating/flirting site, Flirtomatic:
We bought iPhone advertising for the first time yesterday: very impressive results for first campaign…..clearly volume in the UK alone..
I’m keen to hear more anecdotal evidence such as this. Very interesting indeed.
PS: Follow Mark Curtis on Twitter here.
So I’m back to school this week; and during my free lessons, I often find myself aimlessly wandering around. I probably shouldn’t be, as I have mountains of work to do, but it’s certainly more fun.
But it turns out my aimless journeys around my over-crowded school can come in handy… And I came across a poster of major intrigue!
I love mobile services which are useful. Finding services, and then realising whether or not they are useful or not is what I like doing; mainly because it is rare that I will find something that has use far beyond making a company or un-named person a lot of money.
So when I found this poster, I was intrigued.
I doubt I’ll need to remind or inform anyone of the current issues with “Knife Crime” especially in London and Schools. And as a teenager myself I monitor the news locally and nationally to see what is happening. I often find that the government and their pleas to stop knife crime are only just pleas. Having Gordon Brown or any MP for that matter, talking about a subject to do with young people, doesn’t reach many people.
I hear you ask, what about this intriguing poster?
It’s advertising an “anonymous” texting service which can be used to inform the Police about people or persons with Knives.
I think this goes above and beyond what Gordon Brown, the Police Chiefs and the number of other people or institutions have said or done recently. It’s all too easy to say, “We need to get knives off of the street” and that we as citizens – of whatever age – should be doing our best to prevent deaths on the street.
I’ll admit, when I was in lower school I knew of someone who carried a knife, or at least a blade of some nature. There was nothing I could do about it, because I knew the consequence of phoning up the police – getting the boy, and specifically his group of cronies onto me – so I didn’t do it. And I know also many other people were highly aware of the issue too, and as far as I know, no one ever phoned up the police.
And why was that?
The Police come into school, sit you down, talk to you, make an issue of it, and highlight that you’ve highlighted an issue, and therefore it all backfires on you!
The beauty of this service is the anonymity that comes along with it. On the poster we’re told that the number is scrambled, and therefore can’t be traced so no one can reply, and whatever happens as a consequence, the texter cannot be held accountable for it.
That’s what I call brilliant.
What I like more about this service is that it’s gone a bit beyond a poster campaign, and little business-type cards are being handed out to all the lower years. Admittedly, I stole borrowed one of these cards (for research purposes, naturally).
This is what our Government should be doing, what they should be talking about and implementing. And if such a service had been in place say three or four years ago when I was a little Year Eight or Year Nine, when I was thinking “Oh bugger, that boy has a knife”, I certainly would have sent a text.
So I have to applaud the common-sense which has finally kicked in, and I hope that someone uses it.
Any questions, comments, suggestions or anything as usual send them to Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com.
In an effort to promote its highly touted ‘Comes with Music‘ service, Nokia, the leading handset manufacturer has now started placing special benches at various public places in the UK.
Now, before you start wondering what’s with Nokia and the Benches, let me elaborate. The benches are actually a clever advertising medium to promote their ‘Comes with Music’ service here in the UK. These benches are fitted with Nokia’s handsets and headphones into the armrests. These handsets will be pre-loaded with music, depending on the the region where they are located. For example, Liverpool may get The Beatles while Birmingham might just get Black Sabbath.
DId someone say vandals? Nokia is staying one step ahead here, by placing a security guard at every location. There will also be a live performer and different appearances will be made each day until Christmas.
Wow! Doesn’t time just fly by? I’ve been away for a month – organising myself with school and the various activities I’m involved in, and it feels like forever! Never fear though, because now I’m back. Well, for once a week that is!
Now school’s are a hostile environment (well, at least mine is), and navigating the Sixth Form common room is something like an assault course. But it’s so much more than that too! It’s buzzing with technology, and young people who know things, right?
I’ve been keeping my eye out for mobile news, and reading MIR, and of course the news in general. The Google Android is by no means a small piece of ignorable news at the moment, so how is it then, no one is talking about it?
After the twelve-week summer holiday some people were showing off their new gadgets, namely Sony mobiles, and the odd iTouch; in the three hundred student strong Sixth Form I’ve only seen a single iPhone. That’s just one.
Now before I criticise my peers for being totally unaware about the world of technology, computing and mobile phones; there are some techno-people like myself too; maybe even more technologically experienced. So why then is it that no one is talking?
From what I’ve gathered, no one particularly cares. Of course, I care, the rest of the MIR team cares, and I’ll hazard a guess that you the reader may also care too. The mobile phone industry is of course interesting, fast paced, and constantly evolving. But could this be the problem?
From what I’ve seen is that for those who I know (and you may beg to differ on this), the world of technology is just too fast paced to keep up with; and as a result, they don’t bother to keep up at all. If you ask someone about the new Nokia 5310, you’ll get a blank stare and no hint of excitement at the prospect of free music. Why? Well they don’t know about it!
For me this is quite an interesting piece of news, I won’t buy the phone as it doesn’t actually interest me, or grab me enough to go and spend money on it; but its certainly something of interest, and a product which is really targeting what I do the most – download music.
So back to the Android:
Well, there’s nothing to say. I think the device itself looks good (although for the videos I’ve seen, slightly slower than the iPhone), and if it’s priced correctly it should fly off the shelves. But where is the buzz from the Sixth Formers? The sixteen to eighteen year olds with plenty of disposable income, and a constant desire to keep up with the times just have no desire, or even no knowledge of this remarkable piece of news.
Then I think about this, why don’t my friends know about this? Or even the people who I see everyday, why don’t I hear them talking about the latest mobile phones? I hear them chatting about the new Manhunter game, and Gears of War, and maybe debating what’s best, the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360? Why, and I’ve said this before, isn’t there more advertising, or promotions for the young people of today?
Obviously there is an issue here. Either my outer-London school and its students are blissfully unaware, or advertising just isn’t doing its job.
For all I know, I could be totally wrong; but in the numerous times I’ve tried to talk about mobiles or something I feel like I’m talking a different language. And, I don’t know about you or anyone else really, but in this day and age, who would expect that? What’s more, how is it, that Nokia with their 5310 which is so obviously designed and aimed at young people, aren’t they targeting us?
So to Nokia, and Google, what’s going to happen? You both have quite possibly big selling devices, but what are you doing about it? The 5310 launches tomorrow and I’m certainly not feeling, nor seeing any of the buzz.
If you have a differing opinion on this, or want my opinion on any particular aspect of the mobile industry please feel free to leave comments or e-mail me at samantha@mobileindustryreview.com
As Google hunts for new ways to make money from wildly popular YouTube – make that any way to make money from YouTube – it’s started testing ads on the mobile version of the video sharing site.
From Google’s mobile blog:
You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan. This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube — it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.
According to the blog, users watch hundreds of millions of YouTube videos on their mobile devices every month. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that advertising has made its way onto mobiles although it’ll be interesting to see how Google manages the balancing act between screen size and advertising space.
The latest report into mobile advertising from mobile community Limbo and GfK Technology reckons that some half of UK mobile users are getting mobile advertising, with text messaging still unsurprisingly the favourite delivery mechanism for those ads.
The report also says Blighty is the most familiar with mobile web advertising, with 16 percent of British users saying they’ve seen a promo on the mobile internet.
According to the study, those advertising through mobile channels “were mainly mobile carriers, handset manufacturers, media brands and digital entertainment companies”. So, mostly mobile-related companies then. Is it that other industries are shy of mobile ads, or just that mobile companies get better rates when they buy ad space from each other?
Mobile ad company has announced its landed new investment from the likes of Motorola and Cisco, along with more cash from previous investments Telefonica, Vodafone, Accel Partners, Globespan, and Sequoia Capital. No official word on how much the round is, but it’s thought to be in the region of $22 million.
The company, which sells telco-grade ad serving, already has operators including Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange on its books as well as heavyweight customers like Coca Cola signed up. Getting Cisco and Moto on involved will doubtless give Amobee a boost with their collective handset and software experience, not to mention the cash.
Nokia is testing out a new way to get execs interested in mobile advertising: sit them down and show them how to do it. The handset maker will be opening “Ad Labs” in London and Boston, used to certify and “train traditional advertising agency staff in the “black art” of mobile advertising,” reports The Guardian.
According to Nokia, execs are not having trouble with mobile advertising technologies themselves, but instead with the planning and creative concepting, which is where they’re hoping the Ad Labs will be able to step in.
Nokia is giving advertising a real push at the moment: there was the enpocket acquisition last year and the Mobile Ad Alliance earlier this week. Mobile advertising has always been a nebulous practice at best, despite a lot of talk about industry standardisation and working together, that doesn’t appear to be changing very fast. Nokia looks like its going after the mobile advertising number one spot, with or without its partners.
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