Nielsen has completed its first month of measuring a trial group of Australian mobile publishers in Market Intelligence, its site-side audience measurement tool. This is the first cohesive attempt at measuring off-deck mobile websites (non carrier related – i.e. Vodafone Live! or Optus Zoo).
The results look interesting, and will require some scrutiny in terms of calculating cookie deletion and unique audience – but is interesting to analyse nonetheless. The numbers are consolidated between devices (i.e. sites optimized for different handsets like Nokia or iPhone), they are not de-duplicated and the advertisers are currently limited to News Ltd, Fairfax, NineMSN (and Premier Media Group owned FoxSports).
I have summarised the first batch of monthly data below: ranked by monthly audience size and highlighting the stickiest or most engaging sites.
News.com.au gained the largest audience for April, with just over a million unique browsers. However on average Fairfax news sites The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age had more user sessions per month for a longer average period of time. FoxSports is the stickiest mobile site, clearly catering to sports nuts who spent an average time of 42 minutes a month on the mobile site (though there are only 33,000 of them per month currently using the site).
There could be some debate as to why Fairfax’s news sites are stickier than News.com.au (audience or content or user-experience) and why people spend much more time on NineMSN than News.com.au (more video content?). At this stage we can only speculate and watch the monthly data roll in and average out a bit more.
View the image gallery below for today’s screenshots from the largest sites.
There are obviously some big publishing names missing from this dataset, some who have large audiences (Google, ABC, Bigpond, CarSales.com, RealEstate.com.au) and some that are lagging behind in their mobile product in general (Yahoo!7). But it is a good starting point, and might surprise some people in terms of the size of audience and time spent with media some of these sites are not commanding.
Let’s hope that that more sites get on board over the coming months so we can start to get a less fragmented view of mobile audience measurement and invest appropriately in the medium.
Iron Man 2 – the movie – was spotted recently advertising across Australian news and carrier networks. The campaign is simple: banner ad linking to microsite where you can watch the trailer. A cheap, efficient medium to get a movie trailer to an audience on their mobile phones while they are out and about.
Whilst the resolution on the movie trailer wasn’t great due to compression, it was very quick to load (via Vodafone 3G connection). I would reserve my criticism for the lack of other features on the site – most listed as ‘Coming Soon’ up until recently. See pictures below.
For serious fans of the comic franchise, the Iron Man iPhone app game by Gameloft is now available in the Apple AppStore for AUD$8.99. At last view it was ranked #1 on the What’s Hot featured tab. To me this seems a bit pricey, when you count it together with the cost of seeing the film. AUD$5.99 would seem more reasonable.
News Ltd’s The Australian newspaper is first major news masthead to launch advertising packages to agencies and marketers late last month in the country. I saw a preview of the application, monthly pricing and advertiser packages a few weeks ago and found some interesting points worth sharing:
The Australian iPad App overview: traditional looking press format (stories prioritised by editorial) with multimedia (video, rich imagery, audio).
App price: I can’t share specifics due to confidentiality agreements, but it is significantly less than USA-sister publication the Wall Street Journal’s US$17.99 per month.
iPad ads are full-page interstitial and exclusivity in category (i.e. finance, automotive, etc) – but will not, initially, be able to link directly the advertiser’s website. This suggests News Ltd does not want to be initially weighed down or scrutinised by media agencies obsessed with ‘click-through-rates’ on ads when they may not necessarily need or want them to. This could have the effect of depressing the rates at which advertising can be charged as advertisers and agencies measure the success of their advertising on the basis or instant and direct response to advertising, which is only partially representative of the influence of advertising.
News Ltd offered four advertiser packages of AU$250,000 – split between press, internet and iPad commitments, the latter of which totals $50,000. So 20% of the iPad ad package actually goes specifically towards advertising within the iPad – the association of innovation with the launch is being pitched as a large benefit, though this is debatable.
Forecast reach: none given. This will be second of the two main concerns for interested advertisers. My forecast of sales in Australia will be 50,000 – 100,000 within three months, with The Australian achieving 15,000 – 20,000 monthly subscriptions within this time.
Partner packages are for a term of three months, with first right of refusal for following three months.
Launch delays: issues affecting the launch of the app is launch of the iPad itself in Australia – which has been pushed back to the end of May due to strong demand from North America. News Ltd are acutely aware of this, and are thus trying to be as flexible to advertisers as possible.
So how does the offer rate? About 3/5. Positive in terms of speed to market, category exclusivity and flexibility of term length. Negatives are limited advertising opportunities (initially) and bundling in 80% non-iPad media spend into the deal, though this is a moot point for most large agencies who could link pre-planned budgets into the deal.
This is an edited extract of a note to advertiser clients at ZenithOptimedia AU and Publicis Mojo. News Ltd is both a client of, and supplier to, my employer and my work from time to time involves consulting to News Ltd.
Much has been written in the past two weeks in the local marketing media about Apple’s foray into mobile advertising. Most pieces were barely more than transcripts of Steve Jobs keynote presentation (see video at bottom of post) instead of comparing the upcoming release of iAds against the current market offering. Note For the discussion below, I am only comparing advertising in-applications and not mobile websites, SMS/MMS, mobile search or carrier-based offerings.
Some background information: There are many mobile ad networks that provide advertising inside smart-phone applications (in-app ads), the largest of these is AdMob which agreed to be acquired by Google late last year for USD $750 million in a strategic move by Google that gave it global leadership on mobile search and banner advertising on mobile web and applications. It also fitted in nicely with their ever growing and improving Android mobile operating system (currently on over 35 different mobile phones, with another 18 soon to be released).
Not to be outdone Apple Inc announced on January 4 this year that they had acquired another American mobile ad network – Quattro Wireless – for a rumoured USD $275 million, in an escalating game of one-up-man-ship.
In Australia, AdMob currently dominates the in-app advertising landscape with reach of over 66% of all iPhone users (whether they have apps that carry advertising or not). Whilst they claim reach of 50 million mobile users worldwide, Quattro’s reach in Australia is not currently disclosed, and is estimated to be very small.
So, how do they stack up against each other?
With the announcement of their new iAds, Apple is effectively activating a superior ad format on an existing network – with the aim to increase the networks reach (get developers preference over AdMob/Google) and increase their advertising revenue yield (charging advertisers more per ad for a superior format and user experience). It is a bold and welcome move.
On the other side, AdMob has a much larger network reach across different phones, flexible buy models (i.e. cost per click) and will likely have Google’s global sales team if they get FCC approval of the acquisition. But rumours persist that Apple might restrict developers choice of ad partners, and exclude AdMob, which a real possibility if their past efforts of setting up a closed network against Google’s open approach continue.
Would this have a big affect the industry in Australia it it happens? Yes.
93% of all in-app advertising occurs on an iPhone in Australia. And though Android, Ovi (Nokia), Blackberry and Samsung are making some inroads on the app market abroad, most applications consumed, used and developed in Australia occur on an iPhone. AdMob/Google would still own mobile search and a significant portion of mobile web advertising, but the richer and more brand friendly in-app advertising would be dominated by Apple.
Thus, it is important, despite the hype, that local marketers and media interesting in engaging mobile consumers watch this two horse race play out.
Also – if you haven’t yet watched the video demonstration of the iAds it is well worth seeing what possibilities will soon exist.
“We’ve found that only about 0.6 per cent of our internet banking users use M-Banking, and most of what they use M-Banking for can be accessed from TXT or Internet Banking,” the statement said.
The bank hinted at future investments it was making in enhancing mobile banking services.
“The major advances in smartphones over the last few years has also meant that our customers now want a service that is simpler and more useful than our current M-Banking service.
“Whilst we have decided to remove our M-Banking service, we are also investing in future enhancements to our mobile banking services that will deliver our customers an even better experience,” it said in the statement.
According to internal numbers I crunched recently with ZenithOptimedia Australia and the major local carriers, iPhones are used by between 8% – 10% of unique mobile phone consumers and business customers. It is interesting that even though phones that use operating systems like Symbian – still the dominant mobile OS in Australia – could only get 0.6% of their internet banking customers to use the Java-app based service.
Personally, I used the service on my Nokia N95 in 2008 before I started using an iPhone (and the mobile web-based banking service). The Java-based app was quick and convenient, but without a touch screen interface it was cumbersome to use. Clearly mobile banking is here to stay, but touch-phone user-experience and smartphone apps are the way of the future.
(Disclosure: my employer is a rostered agency of ANZ competitor NAB)
Fast food is all about convenience. No surprise that fast food brands gravitate towards a convenience medium like mobile phones.
Pizza Hut’s recently launched iPhone app requires setting up a simple account but is required only once. When this is complete the first interface is a choice on delivery time. Food categories are selected from a rotating carousel which includes ‘iFaves’ or previous saved orders which is a great feature not available on the Dominos application.
The main game is pizza topping and base selection. Pizza Hut opts for a landscape view which has more on-screen space for two rotating carousels of toppings and bases. This constant swiping through options recreates the feel of browsing through a real menu.
Domino’s have been advertising heavily over the past few months on mobile web and in apps for their iPhone app, which was released November 2009. After a similar signup process to Pizza Hut, the user is faced with a heirarcial menu of items, in a messy and cramped button format. There is a lot on the screen, though you are drawn to the red button for ‘Hot Pizzas’ mostly.
The navigation is generally clumsy however other areas such as individual product pages are similar to Pizza Hut. One element I liked was the in-house promotion ads (example below for Créme Brulee Puffle) to showcase new items. Another cool feature was being able to track the status of the order for the super keen.
Overall, the Pizza Hut app feels less cramped and is easier to navigate. The ability to save favourite orders is where this app becomes a time saver and more convenient than making a phone call (lets be honest, it’s not that hard).
The Pizza Hut app also had a game at the start .. Whilst I am not sure entirely why, it seems like it may have been designed to pass the time while you wait for your pizza to arrive or as another touchpoint to bring potential customers back to the app.
Either way, both are free and users will probably gravitate towards their favourite or local brand rather than the brand with the best app.
This is pretty much a tablet-version of existing Adobe Flash-based magazines like Pages which have been around for years – so my mind is not really blown by any of this. What really remains to be seen is how this experience can be enhanced beyond simple portability of publishing for advertisers, and incorporate the best of mobile targeting, data and network integration.
Here is your five minute update on all things mobile this week.
Mobile World Congress is midway through in Barcelona and already there has been some major industry news.
Microsoft is back as a serious mobile contender with the release of Windows Phone 7 Series – which has reportedly, drastically improved integration between the operating system and HD video, Bing, Zune and Xbox live. With gaming being such a make or break feature of hardware devices, the Xbox integration is the fix Microsoft needed to be taken seriously again.
Next – A serious posse of global telcos – including AT&T, China Mobile, NTT Docomo, SingTel and Vodafone, representing three billion mobile customers – have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to create an alternative open applicationd platform to rival Apple iPhone OS and Google Android. Currently titled Wholesale Applications Community we can expect more detail in the coming weeks. Handset manufacturers LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have also giving initial public support for the initiative – however there is no clear idea on how the alliance will work, who will lead it, and if too many cooks will spoil its broth.
Sportswear company PUMA have collaborated with french manufacturer Sagem to make a unique sports-featured solar powered mobile phone. Whilst light on hardware power and features, it makes it up with strong personality in its bespoke operating system. See the video below for a preview.
Back in Australia, Telstra has continued to invest capital and development in the highly profitable wireless internet market. This week they announced they would be doubling the speed of its Next G HSPA+ network to maximum theoretical speeds of 42 Mbps. The wireless broadband market is booming in Australia with some analysts are predicting the market size to double in size from its current 2.9 million customers by 2014.
The L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (LMFF) in March has been preceeded with a feature packed iPhone application – currently featued on top of the Australian iTunes store. The app is produced by Melbourne-based Mobile Muse and includes features such as event program, designers features and an intuitive directory to connect you with them, galleries and behind the scenes short-form video content. The app appears to be aimed mainly at the fashion trade, but it really is gorgeously designed in mainly black and white. Download it for free here – iTunes link.
Finally – in the blow-our-own trumpet category – Mojo (my employer) scored #8 overall in the Campaign Brief/Banner Blog Australian/NZ Hot Cold agency list. Digital agency Soap scored best overall, while NZ agency AIM Proximity was the highest ranked full-service (digital and non-digital) agency, the same category that Mojo fits into.
I am sure there is heaps more that will come out of the World Mobile Congress this week, so I will follow up on these next week. Also – I will do a feature on the LMFF app after the event in Melbourne next month so I can properly road test some of the features.
Google appears to have, intentionally or not, started its own meme (as if the ‘Googling’ generized synonym for search wasn’t enough).
In December Google USA soft-launched a series of 30-60 second videos on their youtube.com/searchstories channel – where a series of internet searches a woven together to create a short story. A couple are clever, some plain odd.
Yesterday the most popular of seven Google created clips – Parisian Love – aired during the Superbowl. This itself was a clever tactic for choosing the most likely TVC to air, as of the seven Google created videos Parisian Love was by far and away the most popular (about 20 times more popular than the next, prior to the national Superbowl spot).
Reference Videos:
From the views on Parisian Love so far the views have doubled in the last 24 hours since the Superbowl. Interestingly, Mashable reported also reported yesterday that 12% of Superbowl viewers use the web during the game.
So far the majority of responses are probably not what Google had in mind (Tiger Woods, Emos/Suicide, Underwear Bomber), but there is a good chance after the Superbowl exposure, and talk online about the ads, that there will be more and more. All it needs is one quite funny and popular clip (like the Tiger Woods one below being passed around on Twitter this morning) to become the ‘Downfall‘ (Hitler) meme of 2010.
It is a brave brand manager who puts the control of a brand in the hands of a small % of its audience. However, it is also a sign of confidence in your product, service and customer loyalty.
I have discussed previously to people inside the agency, in creating ideas aimed at Gen Y, the validity of campaigns creating numerous pieces of content, connected by a single idea, with the view to firstly share to an audience who will then likely remix and re-distribute to their peers. Mostof thesein the past have been user-initiated. If a big brand can pull this off, without it backfiring, it will be something to behold.
It is possible. Remember the success of BlendTec Will It Blend?
Fairfax, one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest newspaper and online media companies, and its digital division Fairfax Digital has relaunched the varying mobile versions of their popular websites, such as The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age.
These relaunches are a welcome improvement to their predecessors. Which has become to feel dated, in context of other easily accessible global media brands on mobile like the NYTimes.com or The Guardian.
The news menus and articles make better use of the limited space on mobile than their predecessors, in addition to being more pleasing to the eye and easier to navigate. For instance, on the previous versions, to read an article you needed to click on a text-link of the headline. Which regularly led to accidental clicks on adjacent stories. The new version has the whole icon+headline+excerpt clickable which is a much more friendly user experience.
And whilst the mobile banner sizes on the top of menus and article pages have not changed – I imagine the intention is to add more advertising space than the current header/footer combination by taking advantage of the menu/article layouts more modular look. By modular I mean the structure is more defined into rectangles of icons/headline/text than the previous text and link only.
Reducing the size of the masthead has increased the space above the fold for leading articles from around half, to two-thirds. See compared to the previous version below.
Other sites included in the refresh include Business Day..
..Life & Style, and Travel..
..Environment, and the National Times opinion site, operating under the newspaper masthead brands instead of the NationalTimes.com.au domain.
I was surprised to receive 
