M-Ads: Advertising Inside an App

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.

HOTELS.COM

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Here at BuzCity, we've noticed that travel and hospitality providers are increasingly turning to mobile to market services and interact with customers. In previous entries, we've already looked at how carriers – like SriLankan Airlines and Malaysia Airlines – have been using mobile to sell tickets, track bags and more.

But what about after the flight?

This week, we look at a mobile campaign run by Hotels.com, which – as the name probably tells you – is a platform for travelers to find a place to stay.

Medical Tourism - Promoting Thai Hospitals to the Middle East

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Time for your annual checkup? Need a root canal? Heart surgery? Or even a sex change operation? More and more people are traveling overseas to seek medical treatment. For some, the quality of medical care is simply better outside their own country; for others, the cost savings are significant.

The growing size of the medical tourism industry – estimated by some analysts to be worth US$40 billion annually – is leading hospitals to more aggressively promote their services to overseas patients.

Today, I'd like to take a look at one such effort – a mobile portal and ad campaign by one of Thailand's leading private hospital groups, Samitivej Hospital.

KENYA : MOBILE PHONE USE

Our recent release of the Mobile Ad Index for Q3 2010 received a lot of interest. In particular, attention focused on Kenya which has seen 6 months of triple digit growth ; probably a direct result of the price war between Zain and Safaricom.

So we thought we’d share a bit more about the Kenyan mobile user and what they usually get up to …..

Who is the Kenyan mobile surfer?

ADIDAS, INDIA & THE WORLD CUP

By Romulo “Je” Alipio and Manish Mishra

This week we'd like to share with you an interesting story about adidas, which launched a hugely successful

mobile application in India during the World Cup and used the BuzzCity Advertising Network to promote it.

Now, you don't normally associate football with India, but during the World Cup a lot of us were just as crazy about the game as fans elsewhere.

Adidas made it easy for Indian users to follow the action.

And the combined reach of the Djuzz platform and the BuzzCity ad network ensured that adidas' targeted audience knew all about the application.

The BuzzCity Campaign Planner

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

This week, I'd like to walk you through the BuzzCity Campaign Planner, an easy-to-use online tool that can help you target your mobile advertising campaign, estimate the amount of traffic it will receive and maximise the return on investment.

The Campaign Planner – which can be found at planner.buzzcity.com – provides statistics on over 230 markets as well as a list of our top markets.

Calculating Ad Traffic Using The BuzzCity Campaign Planner

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

The BuzzCity Campaign Planner provides a host of demographic and publisher site data for markets across the BuzzCity Ad Network. You can use this to estimate the size of your viewing audience and the required budget.

Let's say for example that my company is running a promotion for a female spa in Jakarta. Our research shows that women aged 30-34 are the most likely to take up the service. And these women enjoy Entertainment and Lifestyle content. If we run a campaign on the BuzzCity Ad Network targeting this market segment, how many pageviews should we expect?

MALAYSIA AIRLINES GOES MOBILE

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

MALAYSIA is quickly becoming one of the most important mobile markets in southeast Asia . . . and some of its companies are on the cutting edge of the industry.

With a population of about 30 million people and mobile penetration of more than 100%, perhaps it's not surprising that there is strong growth in mobile traffic.

The BuzzCity Mobile Advertising Network registered more than 53 million page views in Malaysia during the month of May, making it one of our top fifteen markets. Quarterly traffic increased 14% from January to March as compared with the last quarter of 2009.

Mobile ad growth is occurring in tandem with the creation of interesting mobile applications, content and properties.

In this blog entry, I'd like to highlight an example from the country's national flag carrier, Malaysia Airlines. It's launched a customised mobile site where passengers can book tickets, make payments, check-in and even track the status of delayed baggage.

Commentary : The Pull Between Mobile Apps And Mobile Websites v2

More and more companies are investing in mobile, but less and less are planning the right mobile strategy.

The push to build Mobile Apps is strong.  But the ROI of mobile websites is definitely better.

So forget the massive media hype and think strategically about your company's advertising and branding strategies.

Commentary : Mobile Banking Hope for Haiti

It was not long ago that people around the world were using their mobile phones to distribute aid money via SMS to charities working with those affected by the Haiti earthquake. Now, we’re looking at a new kind of mobile aid for Haiti. Last week the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it is launching a $10 million fund for mobile banking services in the country.

The earthquake destroyed over one-third of the country’s banks, ATMs and money transfer stations leading to a severe cash shortage for the survivors. This meant that there were severe problems for those remaining in the country to access cash which might have been in their accounts or which was being transferred by relatives overseas. In fact, despite the recovery of many of the traditional banking institutions in Haiti, only 15% of Haitians had a bank account prior to the disaster so their requirements extend beyond the rebuilding of a physical bank branch.

As most Haitians have access to a mobile phone, the most obvious solution seems to be the establishment of a mobile banking system.

Good Pipe v. Bad Pipe

By Lai Kok Fung, BuzzCity CEO

Telecom carriers and some advertising companies are at it again. Instead of focusing on whether a carrier provides fast reliable high-quality connectivity, they've resurrected a false debate, posing the question “is a mobile carrier a 'dumb' or 'smart' pipe?” In the hope of securing an additional revenue stream, they make Orwellian promises of better user experiences, when in fact all they want to do is hijack a user's mobile browser and insert ads where they shouldn't appear.

The real focus shouldn't be on “dumb v. smart” but rather whether a carrier is a good pipe or bad pipe.

Let me share with you an analogy.

Suppose the government wishes to privatise the postal delivery service and invites companies to place a bid for a three-year contract. How would it determine if the vendor would be a good provider?

Commentary : Is Facebook Zero A Hero ?

Here at BuzzCity, we welcome the launch of Facebook Zero, a new lightweight mobile version tailored for international markets. Facebook has also signed deals with over 50 carriers to offer free access to the site, without any data fees.

Facebook Zero will best serve emerging markets best, where the mobile phone is the primary interface with the internet and handset penetration is extensive. 

Commentary: Mobile Gaming Consumption Trends

There was an interesting article from Mobile Insider posted on the 15 April 2010 analysing comScore data. The data looks at mobile gaming trends between February 2009 and February 2010. BuzzCity’s mobile gaming platform Djuzz also allows us to constantly monitor trends in gaming and handset preference so it was interesting to compare results.

We agree with the comScore data when it comes to feature phones enjoying the lion’s share of mobile gaming and application usage. Our data shows that Nokia and Samsung phones – specifically those that are three to four years old - are particularly popular with mobile gamers.

MOBILE ADVERTISING INDEX Q1 2010

In Q1 of 2010 the network delivered 8 billion advertising banners in the first quarter; a growth of 38% from the last quarter of 2009. Most countries among the top 20 (with the only exception of Saudi Arabia) showed double digit growth in traffic. Among these the United Kingdom and Vietnam saw triple digit growth.

Commentary: Java Games from Orange and HMV

At BuzzCity, we were quite interested to see the recent announcement by Orange and HMV that they are working together to launch a new mobile gaming service.

There are some clear benefits to this partnership. The service will be available across any network. And it will work on more than 1,000 Java enabled handsets. A different company would have restricted the gaming platform to Smartphones, so this is a refreshing move by Orange. It will be interesting to see how other operators respond.

At BuzzCity, we also take an open platform approach by providing advertisers, consumers, developers and publishers access to innovative mobile platforms regardless of their access to technology.

The involvement of two major brands also validates our hypothesis that mobile gaming is growing exponentially. Djuzz -- our new gaming platform -- was only launched last month, but it already receives nearly 30,000 downloads a day. Djuzz match-makes a gaming audience hungry for more content with creative game developers across the globe.

Commentary: Infusing Mobile

Yahoo! recently announced that it's disbanding its mobile division and will redeploy employees from this group throughout the company. Rather than giving up on mobile, Yahoo! is recognising that it needs to be part of every activity.

At BuzzCity, we welcome this move. There's a lesson here for businesses everywhere. 

The BuzzCity Mobile Money Survey

We’ve released the results of our fifth global survey investigating consumer mobile behaviour, on the global mobile payments market.

The survey identifies three areas where progress is needed:

1. User education about mobile banking services to increase uptake.
2. Increased partnerships between banks, carriers and merchants to increase the number of products available for purchase.
3. New services need to be developed to enable mobile transactions for those without access to traditional banking facilities.

Commentary: Working Together, Telecoms Can Ease Bandwidth Crunch

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Mobile networks are facing a crunch. There's just not enough bandwidth for everything right now. So, we're very pleased to see the launch of a new initiative that aims to make applications more efficient:

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) -- consisting of 24 major telecommunications operators including China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, TeliaSonera and Vodafone -- intends to build the world's first open platform delivering applications to all mobile phone users.

DISCOVERY

By Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

DISCOVERY is the big buzzword in mobile now. Everyone is talking about application discovery, content discovery, game discovery, social network discovery . . .

Not long ago, application development was a dying industry. Content was tied to telco portals, which restricted the content available to consumers. Then, along came the Apple App Store whose success is fostering imitation by Nokia, Google and others.

But if you're a mobile consumer, how do you find what you want? And how do you do it quickly?

Mobile users have demonstrated they do not want to spend much time looking for content. Time searching is time not-playing. And the extra time online also often adds to consumer phone bills.

So, at Djuzz, we spent time thinking about how to make it easy for consumers to find what they're looking for, whether it's a specific title or a genre. We also designed the portal to dynamically highlight the most popular content.

Let's take a closer look. In this blog, I'd like to walk you through the user interface.

The Smartphone Buzz

By Chester Ng, Account Manager (Southeast Asia)

Across Southeast Asia, we've been noticing a shift in the way consumers are surfing the mobile internet. A rapidly growing number of mobile surfers are using smartphones – Blackberries, iPhones and devices like high-end Nokias that use the Symbian S60 operating system – to access the mobile internet.

Some makers of these high-end devices are also noticing the shift and have started targeting their user base with mobile advertisements.

In Singapore and Thailand, smartphone users account for more than half of all ad page views of banners served across the BuzzCity Advertising Network. In Indonesia and Malaysia, 1 out of every 3 to 4 surfers is accesing the mobile internet from a smartphone. We're also seeing triple-digit growth in smartphone use in these markets.

MOBILE ADVERTISING INDEX (Q4 '09)

Mobile advertising across the BuzzCity Advertising Network grew 41 percent in 2009, as compared with 2008. Sixteen countries measured triple digit year-on-year growth, based on traffic data gathered across our network.

Commentary : Mobile Web Beats Mobile App

Continental Airlines recently placed ads on a mobile website (whitepages.com) and inside the directory's iPhone application. 

Which did better?