Audi, notably the first OEM to do so, has come up with a media campaign surrounding an iPhone application, representing their 2009 A4 model.

The application comes in the form of a game called the “Audi A4 Challenge” and by installing the application, iPhone users can drive the 2009 model, which doesn’t go on sale until September 2008. The application is a free download and if you don’t have an iPhone, you can play the Web version of the game here.

Jeri Ward, Audi’s general manager of marketing and strategy says, “I think our customers and potential customers are smart, tech savvy, and tend to use devices like iPhone”. Ward also says that the 2009 A4 campaign will be heavily digital media based.

What really makes this story interesting is the fact that we are seeing yet another traditional print advertiser engage in new media in a completely new way. Although Audi is the first to take advantage of the iPhone as a mind-share builder, it is guessed that other OEM’s won’t be too far behind, especially if Audi does not have an exclusivity deal.

written by Beverly Crandon

FreeRange Communications, a company that enables publishers to feed content to their readers in an aesthetically pleasing way on a mobile device, announced today that it has added the Wall Street Journal to its list of clients. The FreeRange platform serves branded mobile content across BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm devices, without having its users maintain a separate mobile content management system.

Ted Rupp, Director of Business Development at ContentNext, another one of FreeRange’s premium customers said, “The FreeRange platform gives our readers the latest breaking news with an attractive interface and quick load time. FreeRange app’s vastly improve the mobile web experience, and provide an excellent outlet for sponsors as well.”

written by Beverly Crandon

Cox Enterprises Inc., with the aid of Quattro Wireless, has just launched 19 mobile newspaper sites that enable readers to get breaking news, sports, entertainment and stats, directly on their mobile devices. A few of the Cox Web properties that have launched the mobile product are the Statesman.com in Austin, PalmBeachPost.com and DaytonDailyNews.com. Cox is not the first publisher to collaborate with Quattro Wireless. Already, Quattro supports the Advertising Age partners with a custom wireless solution.

Lars Albright, vice president of business development at Quattro Wireless, said relationships with publishers like Cox work well, as news is a natural fit for the company’s mobile audience.

“We are thrilled to add the Cox Newspapers sites to the growing list of publishers in our news channel,” Albright said. “Advertiser response to the Quattro news channel has been very positive with particular interest in the local targeting opportunities sites like the Cox family of newspapers offers.”

The launch of the mobile newspaper concept for Cox will not only give them a chance to widen their readership through new forms of communication, but it will also give the newspapers a new revenue stream. Now all Cox needs to worry about is who will sell it. Already print media companies struggle with legacy reps who don’t understand how to sell the Web. Will mobile ad sales be any different?

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: Cox Communications, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Newspapers, Quattro Wireless

Covering stories from blog.ad-ition.com and other relevant classified media news.

This episode’s covered news bits include a review of the Washington Post Q1′ profit losses, Scarborough Research Newspaper Audience report and social networking and its affect on mobile usage.

 

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written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: classdified industry podcast, Facebook, Google, Mobile Social Networking, Newspaper audience, Newspaper market share, newspaper podcast, Newspaper Revenues, Washington Post

I recently stumbled upon a Nielsen report covering mobile social networking use and what caught my attention, was how well this report grasped the story of where new media is headed!

According to Nielsen, 4 million US mobile customers use their devices to access social networks, each month – this represents 1.6% of all mobile users in that country. This number alone truly doesn’t paint the picture of wide spread mobile usage for social networking activity, until you compare it to what is happening in Europe.

Nielsen reported that in the UK, the leading EU country using mobile devices for social networking, 812,000 people used their device each month to access social networks. The UK adoption rate for mobile social networking came in at 1.7% of all of its mobile users.

Now for the startling parallel. In Europe, where owning and using a mobile device for everything is second to breathing, their leading country for mobile social networking has an adoption rate that surpasses the US by only 0.1%. So, although the US mobile market has been slow to respond in many areas, when compared to other parts of the world, mobile social networking seems to be the balancing draw.

As publishers contemplate taking their content mobile, considering how they could build social networking parallels within their products, as well as directory services, is not a bad idea at all.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: Directories, Mobile, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Directories, Mobile Social Networking, Social Networking

The US Wireless Association (CTIA) delivered mobile user trend results for 2007 and the data favors employing a mobile advertising program for publishers.

Although the CTIA report recorded only a 2 % increase in the number of wireless users this past fiscal year, 2007 still represents a whopping 84% cell phone penetration among Americans; an 157% increase in the number of text messages sent; and wireless data revenue increases of 53%.

It has been said many times that advertisers and agencies are still trying to find the right formula for mobile advertising. Nevertheless, whatever that formula may be, the heavy mobile usage and the adaptation to non-voice activity, via a mobile device, indicates that consumers, now more than ever, are ready to work with targeted ads sent to their mobile devices.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: CTIA, Mobile usage 2007, Wireless Association

AdStar has just released a summary of their fiscal 2007 revenue performance and those of you who currently use AdStar as a solution or are looking at them for your future endeavors, may find the release interesting.

AdStar reported a net revenue decline of 7% when comparing 2007, to the fiscal performance of 2006. AdStar directly attributes their revenue declines to what is happening in the newspaper print industry, but we’ve also heard this before.
When a technology vendor reports continuous declines customers will or should begin to ask questions. What is the supposed sustainability factor of this provider? What steps are they taking to ensure their presence? Should I be looking at contingency plans? Let’s hope that AdStar is practicing one of the key elements of client retention, which is addressing the bad stuff – be proactive in client communication. One thing that I can factually say about AdStar is that they have publicly admitted that their choice to primarily service the newspaper industry, may not have been the smartest and as a result, they have started to target other verticals. In addition, the company has just finished development of their mobile application.

“The contraction in newspaper print advertising throughout the industry is having a significant impact on our core business,” stated Leslie Bernhard, president and chief executive officer of AdStar, Inc. “We will continue to support the newspaper industry with Web-based ad sales and payment processing services, while we direct our focus towards providing advertising services in new publishing channels. Our mobile advertising order entry dashboard development activities during the past year have allowed us to target new digital publishing opportunities, and we anticipate traction in this area during the months to come. We will continue to develop strategic partnerships and pursue business opportunities with content publishers, and we have launched a major initiative to advance sales and partnership opportunities in the wireless industry.”

Will the increase in breadth of focus, negatively affect the service newspaper publishers are receiving today? AdStar does run the risk of depleting their incumbent customer list, in light of declining revenue performance and resulted lessened R&D dollars.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: AdStar

Take a look at how New York Magazine incorporates mobile (content and advertising) into their product set. It’s a great idea and one that can be adopted by publishers of newspapers or niche magazines, servicing larger cities.

http://nymag.com/mobile/

New York magazine has a readership of 1.6 million per issue and it is published by New York Media Holdings, LLC.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: Mobile Advertising, New York Magazine

LightPole Inc, a new mobile software and services company, has finally come out of beta with their flagship product cleverly called LightPole. What makes LightPole of special interest to us is their partnerships with Yahoo! Local and Yelp.

The way LightPole works, is that mobile users can download the LightPole software to their phones and by doing so, no matter where they are in their city, they can quickly access information about restaurants, shops, Wi-Fi hotspots and pretty much any type of business in the LightPole database, aggregated from their partners.

The LightPole model is an ad supported one – so while users are sourcing information they are seeing relevant ads segmented and in alignment with what they were searching for. For the most part, the only credible partners on LightPole are Yahoo! and Yelp, but with Yahoo! working on strengthening their newspaper consortium with product offerings and services, you may soon find that some of your retail advertisers are being accessed via LightPole. A play I am sure Yahoo! has already discussed because of the revenue share model in place with LightPole.

If anything, this release tells us is that mobile advertising is coming closer and closer to a natural point of integration for publishers.

With its first public release after a year in quiet beta, LightPole’s free application looks promising. While not swimming in features, LightPole is fairly easy to use on any Java-enabled phone.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: LightPole, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Directories, Mobile Technology, Yahoo! Local, Yelp

More talks of the ‘coming soon’ Google Phone hit the press this weekend and as with most ventures explored by Google, as you read the releases you could not help but notice the definite strategic impacts to the media world.

Google plans to release the highly anticipated Google Phone by the middle of 2008, giving themselves enough time to build the differentiators, learn from the issues Apple has gone through with their iPhone and gain additional insight on Microsoft’s push to release their mobile phone and build allegiances (Motorola, Samsung, Palm).

One already known differentiator is that Google plans to continue in its vein of ‘Internet openness’ and bring that concept to the mobile world. They will give away their software to handset makers and then use the Google Phone’s openness as an invitation for software developers and content distributors to design applications for it. “Why”, many ask, “give away the software?” This resemblance of ‘open-sourceness’, I believe, will create a platform for Google to dominate the mobile search and advertising world, as they have with the online search and marketing world. Their realized revenues will not be from unit sales alone and in fact, I move that the hardware gains will be minimal in comparison to the relationships they will make with agencies and large advertisers, based on their soon to be superior mobile search algorithms and advertising tools.
I predict Google will maximize the following with the launch of the Google Phone:

Directory Relationships: we have all seen how 411 inquiries, via mobile phone, could serve to show advertiser messages, related to the business number inquiry. I suspect Google will open up it’s Google search tools to one-touch access and feed related advertising to mobile customers – similar to the 411 example. This form of mobile advertising will likely increase business listings in things like Google Base, Google Directory and do not forget Google Directory Assistance – giving traditional directories a run for their money.

Large Advertisers and Agency Relationships: take a look at Automotive OEM’s for example. We have seen their large adoption of new media practices to gain traction. It is suspected that Google will create mobile advertising campaigns to suit their budgets and taste for market share acquisition. Local publishers should also take notice as the Google Phone could be used for both the large advertiser, as well as the local dealership, through utilizing the local directory platforms Google already makes available to the public.

Google Desktop and Mail Apps.: Could applications made for the Google Phone help you to bypass Data Plan charges, if you have a G-mail account? Why not? I see Google gaining user share for their Google Phone by making available, elements of their Google Desktop and Mail applications.

The list could go on, but above are examples of not only revenue generating models, but also user acquisition activities.

What does all of this mean for Traditional Publishers?

Knowing of the upcoming Google Phone release, as a publisher, I would be looking at my products, offering, and client lists to see what obvious synergies arise. Do you create a campaign with Google where you share your client lists and become the directory conduit for your local content? Build fee-based advertiser premium packages, with the promise of syndicating advertiser messages to a Mobile Google audience.

Record Labels too should be taking notice. Is there room for a potential Google Phone Music Library, where users download artist releases or become premium/exclusive members and gain access to pre-releases - this could be fee-based or not.

In a New York Times article about the Google Phone, they go so far as to say: “Whoever takes the lead in this market may become a technological gatekeeper wielding the same power, and reaping the same profits, that Microsoft does through its Windows operating system.”

On another note, a Canadian telecommunications giant, Rogers Communications, and Yahoo announced an expansion to their relationship. The new pact will continue to provide Rogers‘ high-speed Internet access customers with a customized Yahoo portal and browser. Nevertheless, it will also extend Yahoo’s mobile offerings, including its Go 2.0 set of applications and search service, to Rogers‘ wireless subscribers. The kicker of the arrangement is the change to Yahoo’s billing agreement with Rogers. Previously, Yahoo charged Rogers on a per user basis. The billing scheme, in the new arrangement, will change to an ad revenue sharing model. This is great for Rogers and their 2008 margins will benefit, but simple math shows that Yahoo will take an immediate hit. (The per user billing relationship was estimated to be worth $575 million). But again, after reading the details on the Google Phone, you can see that Yahoo made the arrangement for strategic positioning purposes. To gain quick inclusion to the ‘mobile wars’, building alliances is seen as Yahoos only solution at this point.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: Google Phone, Google Phone predictions, Yahoo and Rogers Communications, Yahoo Mobile