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Debenhams is a chain of 153 department stores in the UK. They’re hugely popular and serve a wide variety of demographics. They’re for everyone from your grandmother to your 14 year old niece, right?

Which is why Terence was surprised to find one of their newspaper advertisements featuring a QR code. That’s fine — if a little bit techie — but what really confused him was the requirement for you to download the Debenhams iPhone app. You then need to use that app to scan the QR code. That would then give you 10% discount on some beauty / fragrance products.

Over to Terence:

What? Let me count the ways this is wrong…

• What on earth does “shop the ad” mean? Is it a typo for “scan the ad”?
• Roughly 5% of Debenhams customers have an iPhone – why is this restricted just to them?
• I don’t know how many people have already downloaded the Debenhams app – but fewer than 500 people have rated it. With an average rating of 3* – it’s unlikely many more will grab it.

Requiring customers to download the iPhone app is highly restrictive. Yes it’s certainly cool, but the crazy fact is, most of Debenhams customers will not be using iPhones.

How should Debenhams have handled this?

Well, Terence reckons they should have enabled the QR code to point to a mobile website. I’d have gone further: Definitely use mobile web first, so that everyone with a browser-enabled handset can play (and that is a LOT of people — indeed almost anyone with a handset purchased in the last 4 years, basically).

I’d have put a shortcode on the advert and asked customers to text ‘perfume’ to 80111 (or something like that). Then I’d have sent them back a thank-you text featuring both a ‘code’ for the till (“show this text at check out for 10% discount”) along with a mobile web link featuring more information, perhaps a scannable barcode (for the handsets that are capable) and a few more bits of relevant information. After all, if you’re sitting on the train and the newspaper advertisement catches your eye, you’ll probably be quite happy to have a browse around a mobile microsite, whether you’re using an iPhone or a £70 Nokia.

Interestingly, Ruth from Debenhams saw Terence’s post and replied. Here’s what she had to say:

Hi Terence, I work at Debenhams and noticed this post regarding our use of QR codes. We thought you might be interested in some information about our customers’ mobile usage. iPhone users are the largest percentage of smartphone users for Debenhams customers and so we felt it was a good place to start targeting this activity. We do however have plans to develop the app for further handsets and ultimately want to develop a mobile site so that all smartphone users can shop for Debenhams products on their phones. We know we need to keep developing this offering, and we’re expecting to learn along the way and all feedback is really useful, so thank you!

I’m hugely disappointed to see that — yet again — another huge company has jumped aboard the ‘well, obviously, we need to look at smartphones’ viewpoint and completely ignored the rest of the country’s highly capable devices.

Yes, your 8 year old monochrome Ericsson can’t handle mobile web. But it can STILL handle text messaging. And surely you want to encourage as many people as possible to be able to interact with your brand?

The argument that iPhone users ‘are the largest percentage of smartphone users for Debenhams’ is massively disappointing.

So what about Android, BlackBerry or Nokia smartphone users?

I think what Ruth means to say is that Debenhams couldn’t be bothered to support those devices. That their mobile agency — whoever they are — didn’t really want to get involved in making apps for those other platforms. Or Debenhams didn’t want to pay.

But why are they fixed on a mobile app strategy? Where’s the mobile web — that works for almost EVERYONE? And what about ‘gracefully failing’ to ensure 100% compatibility by using SMS?

Not fun enough? Not cool enough?

Highly limited thinking.

Here’s Alex Meisl, Chairman & Co-Founder of Sponge Group explaining why this kind of strategy from this kind of brand is rather frustrating to see:

Another $8m has arrived in the InMobi bank account this morning courtesy of existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. It’s for the company’s series B round and brings the total financing raised to $15m.

I’ve been following the company for quite some time and I’m delighted to see that their investors have stumped up for the second round. The company is really doing very well indeed serving almost 17 billion mobile ad impressions a month across 179m consumers in 108 countries. Nice.

I’m hoping to get their European guy on camera shortly. More news soon. Meantime, congratulations once more InMobi — and do take a look at their offerings if you haven’t already.

The key question I’m aiming to explore tomorrow is this:

Is the mobile marketing industry too obsessed with smartphones?

You can read more about the series here. I’m working on it in conjunction with OpenMarket, the leading global mobile transaction hub.

I hope to see you tomorrow.

It was, I think, over two years ago when I met Anne Frisbie who had just started working for InMobi (she runs their US operations). I think we were in Las Vegas at CTIA or somewhere similar. I remember her explaining that InMobi was a rising star in the mobile advertising marketplace at a time when AdMob was everywhere and more or less the only major Western player in mobile ads. I began following the company’s movements after that.

I’ve posted here before about InMobi, highlighting their imminent arrival to the shores of the United States (they soft-launched in the US back in January). They are the world’s largest independent mobile ad network operating in London, SFO, Bangalore, Tokyo, Mumbai and Singapore. Each month they knock back 16 billion mobile advertising impressions with 2 billion of those coming from the United States alone.

The company enables advertisers, application developers and publishers to reach mobile consumers in 108 countries. It’s not all AdMob, remember. Here’s an overview of the company’s performance recently:

If you haven’t talked to them, I definitely suggest you get in touch with them. Let me know if you need an intro.

Also, do check their recently launched Android, iPhone and iPad SDKs.

Hi Ewan,

How’s things? I hope you’re doing well. Hopefully you saw our welcome note to Apple on joining the mobile advertising market? Steve never responded or reciprocated which I found disappointing

The real reason I am writing is to tell you about a new piece of technology we’ve implemented for our advertisers called AdROIt. You may have seen the release last week? AdROIt is an advertiser analytics technology that provides cost-per-acquisition based performance tracking for actions like registration, travel itineraries, car test drive requests, mortgage quotes, etc. While this reporting piece is interesting, the main differentiation for AdROIt is how we leverage the data to automatically improve our ad serving to generate better quality leads. Early beta tests drove a 40% reduction in the cost per acquisition without sacrificing volume.

My pithy way to describe AdROIt? No dumb beacons! Many folks already have tracking solutions in place. Rather than creating thousands of reports that require manual work, AdROIt creates a performance feedback loop at a deeper level than CPC and automatically improves ad serving in real time. Basically its another data input for our self-learning network that improves performance for advertisers with every impression and every click. You will hear more about that over the next few months. Additional details are at www.InMobi.com/AdROIt.

Let me know when you’re back over on the West Coast and we’ll catch up properly.

Speak to you soon.

James

James, good to hear from you — thanks for writing. I should be back in the Valley in the not too distant future so let’s do a drink!

If you’ve been following Mobile Developer TV, you’ll remember James from the recent interview we did with him at Mobile World Congress.

Mobile Entertainment’s Stuart Dredge noticed this job posting that gives a hint that Apple may well integrate advertising into the iPhone SDK.

That has quite a few implications for the mobile marketing industry — much of it (rightly or wrongly) based around the Jesus Phone. It’ s a logical move to manage the advertising inventory on behalf of the developers. Most of the developers I speak to are far more concerned about creating smart applications that garner attention (and/or purchases) rather than worrying about the actual advertising network they use to support their free products. I almost feel that for many, advertising is the last thing developers reach for. Once they’ve made their app, they’ll integrate the relevant AdMob functions and boom… they’re done.

If Apple were to make it point-and-click simple to integrate advertising — literally a ‘insert banner ad here’ function in the SDK, that could well put a lot of other networks out in the cold. Would Apple *ban* them? Or simply make sure that it was a no brainer for developers to select Apple first and then give an option for a developer to choose another ad network?

As Stuart’s post points out, RIM has been working on something similar for some time — if memory serves, it’s announcement more or less got a round of applause from the gathered partners at the BlackBerry Alliance Partner event I attended last year.

AdMob famously own the iPhone ad space after their concerted push that began early last year — they and the rest of the marketplace will no doubt be watching Apple very, very carefully.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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 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?

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.

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.

A number of companies have already signed up to the Ad Alliance including i-movo, Mobile Acuity, Mobiqa, and uLocate, according to Nokia, with “many additional members in testing”.

It looks like Nokia’s already doing far more interesting things with mobile advertising than Google, which is stuck in the banner and text ads space. Given that operators have proved more willing to embrace Nokia’s services push (as demonstrated by the recent spate of loving Ovi got), it looks like the mobile ad space won’t be as easy for Google to dominate as the fixed internet was.

Under the trial, the WSJ says, 4INFO will give Yahoo the tech it needs to publish content like news and horoscopes over SMS with a small ad included, with either Yahoo or 4INFO selling the ad space.

With operators now looking at embedding ads into games and trading them in return for mobile TV clips, it’s interesting to see search companies turning to the old school likes of SMS. While it’s not as flash as newer advertising types, it does have one major advantage – being opt-in – not to mention better click rates.

Another Forbes article reports the German head Fritz Joussen as saying he doesn’t see a viable business in offering pay television via mobile phones after the emergence of phones that receive regular terrestrial TV signals. “These devices came as a surprise and call a payment based subscription model into question,” he adds.

While I can’t help wondering why, if Vodafone was so unimpressed with mobile TV, it bid for a licence in the first place, but it’s right to pick up on the question of whether paid TV is the way forward. Vodafone has repeatedly championed the cause of mobile advertising – I’m surprised it hasn’t already starting giving away mobile TV clips in return for ad viewing. After all, it’s what we’re used to on terrestrial TV – we know the model works, why not export it to mobiles?

Fund My Phone works slightly differently: it gives you free minutes if you encourage all your Facebook mates to endure some advertising spots. Free-minutes-seekers install the application, tell all their friends about it, and for every four mates that watches a one minute trailer of some sort and gives their feedback, free minutes get sent back to the original user.

In principle, it’s a canny idea but how many of people’s Facebook friends are more than vague acquaintances they added to boost their friends list and make themselves look popular? Asking them to watch some adverts for you should separate the wheat from the chaff and you might even get some free airtime out of it to boot.

To try and make more cash out of mobile ads, Google is introducing banner ads to mobile web pages – sort of like chopped down version of what’s typically seen at the top of pages viewed on a desktop browser. Google said it’ll keep the number of banner ads down to a single one on each page, so as not to overload browsers.

On one hand, I can’t believe that Google has done this already – banner ads aren’t exactly a niche phenomenon the web. It seems like the ‘search giant’ is a bit slow off off the blocks with tried and tested formulae – and ever slower with new formats.

By 2010, mobile TV will also be the most lucrative channel for mobile advertising, although idle screen advertising will also do well, with ad spend $7 million this year and up to $500 million in 2013.

If mobile is the biggest generator of ad revenue, it looks like we can expect more free channels and programming on the way. If there’s one thing that could open up mobile TV more than anything else – be it good handsets, clever standards, and so on – then it’s possibility advertisers will make sure we can watch TV gratis. As long as we can get over all those annoying ads…

Xinhua said China Mobile will block SMS coming from the seven advertising companies and will work with all the operators to sort out rules on SMS advertising.

200 million messages – how did they manage it? The paper says that there isn’t much punishment for companies sending out junk SMS. That said, you would have thought the cost of sending out 200 million texts would be prohibitive enough.