Will the Revolution Be Micro-Sized? Mobile TV Takes a Big Step Forward
To capitalize on this “finite engagement”, MobiTV introduced advertising into its model a few months ago with its “local avail” initiative. The platform allows advertisers to repurpose TV spots to insert into the “local avail” advertising segments in the network’s video feed, whereby local affiliates are then free to replace the national ads with their own ads for that market. Using this model, the company quickly attracted the attention of Jeep, which aggregated its “Meet the Mudds” videos for the Jeep Commander into MobiTV’s service.
“[Jeep] is really trying to reach the person on the go,” Whetstone says. “We actually think this is better for the customer, too. Television has advertising, people are now accustomed to that. [But] if you’re watching the news at home, you’re typically seeing ads for pharmaceutical products or hearing aids, stuff that’s designed for people that are older. If you’ve got a person on a cell phone watching news, chances are that they’re younger, healthier and probably more interested in technology things. So I think delivering a more tailored ad works better for the brand and ultimately works better for the consumers who get stuff that’s relevant to them.”
Seb Bishop, co-founder of Espotting and CMO of MIVA, takes a more diplomatic view of advertising’s potential on mobile content - especially that of the streaming kind touted by MobiTV. “The beauty about [rich media] mobile content, I guess from an advertiser’s basis, is that you would pay on a per-ad-delivery, unlike regular TV where you believe there are a certain number of viewers,” he says. “But on TV, you’re not paying on a per-view or per-download basis. That’s going to influence the performance-based approach to put TV commercials onto the mobile device, which is obviously hugely compelling for an advertiser base. They know exactly how many ads they’ve delivered and how many people have watched it.”
Still, Bishop counterpoints by saying that the lack of audience awareness in regards to mobile TV is a challenge to providers and a deterrent to agencies and advertisers. “There isn’t a user base, so that’s hampering growth,” Bishop says. “The penetration of mobile users and people watching that type of content needs to grow, so to an agency, it’s not worth running a campaign unless there’s an audience there. It’s just not worth the hassle yet.”
Bishop instead believes that pay-per-call will dominate over local avail mobile advertising in 2006, because essentially, it better benefits both advertisers and consumers. “If today, you were [to access] Google [on your mobile] and type “flights”, you will be faced with a bunch of pay-per-click ads, where you’ll click on that ad and it’ll take you through to that page and the advertiser will pay on a per-click basis. So if you’re on a mobile device, and you need information at that particular moment in time, then you’re obviously at that point-of-purchase and you need a result right there and then. To an advertiser, that’s incredibly compelling because not only is the price model very interesting, but you can also upsell other products to that user. So I think you’ll see a higher uptake in that model before you see a rich media model.”
Becoming a viable advertising outlet isn’t the only test mobile television will face in 2006. In the past two years, there have been issues with headset functionality, as well as with the immense absorption of battery life that comes with this technology. In a statement in July 2004 to the BBC, Nokia spokesman Mark Squires admitted, “The most important thing to realize about the difference between mobile TV and digital TV is that with digital TV at home, you’ve got an unlimited power supply and a large aerial on the roof of the building, both of which are quite handy.”
But since that time, there have been vast improvements—thanks in large part to 3G technologies, which provide broadband streaming capabilities to mobile multimedia content. Screen presentation has improved, and power-conserving “time-slicing” methods have also been introduced.
As a result, companies like Nokia and Qualcomm have emerged with similar models of to that of MobiTV’s, specifically nationwide broadcast TV networks.
But Dave Whetstone says he isn’t worried about competition. In fact, he welcomes it.
“They could be potential competitors for us or they could be partners as well,” he says. “The biggest challenge that we’ve got right now is that a lot of customers don’t know that you can watch TV on your cell phone. So awareness is the biggest challenge. I actually welcome more people talking about mobile television, building energy around this and promoting the categories. I think it’s going to help all of us.”
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