CS8803: A I A Final Project Report Lucky Mobile Advertisements Muhammad Usman Haider 902289633 Table of Contents Executive Summary .................................................................................................................3 Objectives .................................................................................................................................................3 Mission.......................................................................................................................................................4 Keys to Success.......................................................................................................................................4 Risks............................................................................................................................................................4 Introduction To The Problem ..............................................................................................4 Lucky Mobile Advertisements .........................................................................................................5 Basic Framework...................................................................................................................................5 Three most interesting contributions ..........................................................................................7 Design contributions would be summarized as: .....................................................................8 Advantages...............................................................................................................................................9 Future .........................................................................................................................................................9 The Final Say ........................................................................................................................................ 10 Implementation Details....................................................................................................... 10 Lucky Call Flow ................................................................................................................................... 10 Lucky AD Application Server ........................................................................................................ 10 Subscriber’s Wanna‐be‐lucky profile ........................................................................................ 11 Luck‐Sponsor profile ........................................................................................................................ 12 Luck History ......................................................................................................................................... 12 Response History ............................................................................................................................... 14 Billing Call Data Records ................................................................................................................. 14 Luck Bags ............................................................................................................................................... 14 Demonstration..................................................................................................................................... 14 Summarized Learning from AIA course ................................................................................... 15 Use Cases................................................................................................................................... 15 Target Audience.................................................................................................................................. 16 Lucky Ones (The Subscribers)...................................................................................................... 16 Luck Sponsor (The Advertiser):................................................................................................... 17 The carrier (luck coordinator) ..................................................................................................... 20 Market Analysis Summary.................................................................................................. 20 Target Market ...................................................................................................................................... 20 Lead Times ............................................................................................................................................ 21 Industry Competition ....................................................................................................................... 21 Revenue Estimates ............................................................................................................................ 21 Market Survey...................................................................................................................................... 22 Market Research and Analysis ..................................................................................................... 23 Sugar Mama .......................................................................................................................................... 24 BLYK......................................................................................................................................................... 25 Bibliography............................................................................................................................ 27 2
Executive Summary Mobile advertising is an industry that is about to explode. However, there is still some caution due to the fear of invoking adverse reactions from the subscriber resulting from receiving irrelevant advertisements on mobile devices. Our 'Lucky Mobile Advertising' application aims to address this concern by creating a win‐win situation between the subscriber, carrier and advertiser. In contrast to the current rigid 'view ads and earn air‐time' approaches offered by Virgin Mobile and Blyk, I propose that carriers let the users experience the incentives in a more controlled and 'lucky' fashion, creating a 'wait‐for' attitude amongst them. The subscriber would look forward to having being chosen as the lucky one and hence await the advertisement. The ‘wait for’ situation amongst the prospective customers will be the enticing factor for the advertisers to spend more and more while competing with other relevant businesses. The emphasis here is on the ‘Luck’ and the lucky incentive can be anything ranging from sponsored free call to a rebate on a particular product. Ads from the sponsor will also be conscious of subscriber's preferences and sponsors will be allowed to customize their target customer base. The carriers also benefit from obtaining an additional source of revenue and increased network usage. Objectives Lucky's objectives for the first year of operation include: ・ The introduction of an innovative solution that will leverage mobile advertising ・ The creation of a unique environment that will allow the subscriber to clearly define the genre of ads he wishes to receive ・ The introduction of a scheme, which will allow advertisers to define their target population. ・ Encouraging a shift of customers from the traditional 3G networks over to IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). For the following two years our growth objectives would include: ・ A growth in the subscribers subscribing for the lucky service ・ The inculcation of many more IMS services into the lucky application. ・ An increase in network usage ・ An increase in the amount sponsored by advertisers 3
Mission Mobile advertising is an industry that is about to explode. However, there is still some caution due to the fear of invoking adverse reactions from the subscriber resulting from receiving advertisements. Lucky aims to provide a win‐win situation between the subscriber, carrier and advertiser by addressing this concern. I look to introduce a less rigid approach to mobile advertising by letting the users experience incentives in a 'lucky' fashion, creating a 'wait‐for' attitude amongst them. Ads from the sponsor will also be conscious of the subscribers’ preferences and sponsors will be allowed to customize their target customer base. The carriers benefit from obtaining an additional source of revenue and increased network usage. Keys to Success ・ Tapping into the undiscovered potential of mobile advertising ・ Taking additional responsibility from the carrier ・ Minimum overhead needed for transition to the new system ・ The ability to ride any application/session on top of this one ・ Having the subscriber wait for the advertisements eagerly rather then be pestered by it. ・ Easy to use application requiring minimum effort from the customer Risks The risks involved with “Lucky” are: ・ Absence of a trade secret: This requires the idea to be exploited immediately ・ Privacy/ Fraud: Measures have to be taken to prevent both cases. Introduction To The Problem Traditional methods of advertising have included the use of newspapers, billboards, television and radios. The advent of the Internet brought about a new phase in the world of marketing. Technology now made it possible to deliver contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads and other advertising networks. The emergence of 'Pay per Click' campaigns marked the beginning of interactive advertising. However, due to lesser number of people using the Internet regularly, its true potential could never be reached. Mobile advertising, on the other hand, tells a completely different story. The advertising is targeted at mobile phones, reaching a global total of 4 billion as compared to the 800 million or so computers in 2008, thus having a much greater 4
reach. It is, therefore, an industry that is set to explode. However, its biggest disadvantage lies in the fact that many consider the mobile phone to be an extremely personal device and hence, there is still some caution owing to the fear of invoking adverse reactions from the subscriber when having to constantly receive annoying and irrelevant advertisements. Due to very strict privacy laws, carriers are also not in a position to share personal information about their subscribers preferences with advertising agencies. Currently existing mobile advertising models like Virgin Mobile and Blyk aimed to tackle this problem by providing advertisements to their subscribers based on information obtained from them by having them fill out a questionnaire. These models, however, provided an extremely rigid and uninteresting 'View Ads and earn air‐time' interface which did not particularly encourage viewers to respond to the advertisements. They were also faced with the risk of subscribers eventually losing interest due to receiving not very relevant ads and the absence of other incentives. Lucky Mobile Advertisements aims to address this concern by creating a win‐win situation between the subscriber, the advertiser and the carrier. I propose a solution that will: z Leverage all other IMS applications and prompt a faster and more enthusiastic switch to the IMS technology in the commercial world z Boost the industries of telecommunication and mobile advertising by providing increased network usage and greater revenue channels z Enable subscribers to decide exactly what kind of advertisements they wish to receive and when they wish to do so z Have the subscriber look forward to receiving such advertisements in hope of getting lucky and being rewarded with a wide range of incentives z Most importantly encourage the subscriber to respond to the advertisement in order to be more lucky in the future. Lucky Mobile Advertisements Basic Framework Our solution caters to the interests of all the involved parties: the subscriber, the advertiser as well as the carrier. On subscribing for the Lucky mobile advertising service, the participating advertisers are classified into various categories like retail stores, food outlets etc. They then become associated with that 'luck bag' and choose to provide certain amount of incentives to be used towards subscribers who are interested in receiving 5
advertisements from that category. They are, however, provided with the option of customizing their own preferences regarding their target audience. For e.g., a certain advertiser may wish to only advertise to subscribers between the ages of 18‐
30 or only to subscribers in their vicinity. They might also choose to sponsor sessions during specific timings in a day or on specific days of a week. All these preferences constitute the advertisers profile. Our application is equally flexible for the subscriber too. He can choose to join or quit this 'luck game' at any instant. On joining the service for the first time, the subscriber is allowed to create an online lucky profile wherein he can choose the categories of advertisers he wishes to receive ads from. He also has the option of further customizing his profile in terms of the time of day he wishes to receive ads etc. A further functionality is provided to the subscriber in that he can temporarily enable/disable the service from his mobile device by setting his 'presence status' accordingly. The application automatically adapts the ads behavior according to the status. The user experience is as follows: i)
The termination of any IMS session triggers the Lucky Ad application deployed on an application server. ii)
The application consists of a 'Luck Logic' which determines whether the user is the 'lucky one' or not taking into account all factors like subscriber preferences, advertiser preferences, amount of incentives available in each luck bag etc. iii)
If the subscriber is chosen by the logic to be the lucky one, he is sent a message announcing that he is eligible for the incentive provided by XYZ advertiser. This message is accompanied by a picture and a question about it. The advertiser has infinite possibilities to make use of this interactive question. It can be used for sharing information, conducting surveys, for publicity, market research, announcing discounts etc. The incentives can very from the advertiser sponsoring air‐time or providing discounts. iv)
On responding to the question within the allotted time, the Lucky Ad application decides to either send the final luck confirmation right away or based on the accuracy of the response, depending on the preferences set by the advertiser. v)
The frequency and relevance of ads varies with each subscriber. In order to maintain a balanced luck distribution, the probability of being chosen as the lucky one is set to a minimum threshold for each subscriber to begin with. This threshold increases only with the behavior, profile and feedback of the subscriber towards a certain maximum threshold. Thus, 6
the luck level of a particular subscriber ‘softly’ reduces to minimum threshold unless kept ‘alive’ by responding to the ads. vi)
Subscribers can also choose to 'increase their luck' by choosing a diverse range of categories for receiving advertisements from. vii)
Details regarding the number of subscribers deemed lucky, number of sessions sponsored; types of incentives provided and responses from subscribers are logged and provided for each advertiser. These statistics give advertisers a means of obtaining feedback about the success of the scheme and will prompt them to invest more towards the service. The basic call flow is as shown: Three most interesting contributions Below is a figure describing highlights of Lucky Mobile Ads. 7
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Lucky Ads Highlights 1 Design contributions would be summarized as: i)
Advertising Sponsored Services 8
ii)
Assurance of Ads Being heard iii)
Expected craze and interest resulting the ‘wait’ situation for “Lucky” Ads Implementation contribution are: i) Identifying and implementing “Interesting” Lucky Ad scenarios with the two‐
way dialogues with the customer. ii) Triggering Lucky Ad after the VOIP call is disconnected and implementing it successfully. Advantages Lucky Mobile Advertisements provides a much better framework when compared to existing models because of three main reasons: z The solution is extremely easy to use and requires minimum effort from the subscriber z It is one of the first models of mobile advertising that makes it possible for the advertiser to obtain feedback about the success of the scheme z It is requires no effort from the carrier side either and provides for increased network usage and an additional source of revenue Besides the above reasons, this application is extremely simple to deploy and easy to port across multiple platforms. It also utilizes existing standards and hence is not dependent on a set of proprietary protocols. Future Lucky Mobile Advertisements is posed to emerge as the most effective mobile advertising solution. It's strength lies in the fact that this solution can not only be used to boost mobile advertising but also be used towards leveraging any IMS­
based network resource. I propose that the solution be extended to include the location and presence of an individual as a factor while deciding luck. This would not only provide greater flexibility to the subscriber in terms of status manipulation but also attract more businesses to invest in the solution, as with the introduction of location, it is possible for advertisers to now target possible customers in their vicinity. This throws the doors of possibilities open not only to huge global firms but also to smaller, local businesses. I also propose inculcating the concept of social networking into the framework of Lucky mobile advertising, wherein subscribers can be rewarded for bringing in more people into the service, which will serve to form the subscribers group. Having people you know competing for receiving more luck would prompt any subscriber to actively respond to advertisements in the hope of becoming more lucky. 9
The Final Say In conclusion, Lucky Mobile Advertising looks all set to take the mobile advertising market by storm. Its beauty lies in its simplicity and flexibility and is ready to be implemented immediately. Implementation Details The Lucky Mobile Ad application is to reside on normal SIP application server. The LUCKY AD application is not same as traditional client/server based applications. The application passively receives end of session or BYE message along with the call information from the network core and generates luck alerts to the lucky subscribers only if the lucky application decided to award luck that time. Lucky Call Flow The call flow for a subscriber dialing/ receiving calls is exactly the same as a normal call except that after few lucky calls she will receive a text message/data announcing the luck with advertisement. Since the Lucky Ad Model is not tied to voice calls or any particular session. The triggering message to the application may be BYE from any charged session involving the lucky subscriber. Moreover for various sessions other than those of voice, the triggering message may not necessarily be the ending BYE message and can be intermediate message from within the ongoing charged sessions. Below mentioned are the block level input and output interfaces to the lucky application. Lucky Application Input & Output Interfaces For Basic Flow Lucky AD Application Server This is the heart of the application. Based on various inputs and preferences of both the subscriber and advertiser, the luck decision decides about the luck of disconnected active sessions. The main components of the application server include 10
i)
ii)
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Luck Logic module. Advertisement Relevance module. Luck History Maintenance module. Billing Information module. Subscriber’s Interaction module For Lucky application to decide the luck of a terminated call various inputs to the decision are used. Below is the schematic diagram of components involved in the luck decision. Components involved in Luck Decision Process Subscriber’s Wanna­be­lucky profile This constitutes all the subscribers to the luck application. This profile includes all the preferences that subscriber can imagine in terms of customizing the luck game. The subscribers can edit their profile anytime through web interface. Main choices include. 11
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
Join / Quit / Enable / Disable luck game. Select relevant categories for luck sponsors (Advertisers) Select timing and minimum/ maximum thresholds for the luck game. Select Location awareness preferences. This may include many more choices relevant to personalization of ads. Luck­Sponsor profile The profile gives all the choices to sponsors to fully customize the luck sponsorship to meet their business needs. The profile also will be available through web interface. i)
Join / Quit / Enable / Disable luck sponsorship. ii)
Select relevant categories for lucky ones (prospective customers) iii)
Select timings and minimum/ maximum thresholds for the luck game. iv)
Select Location awareness preferences. Moreover, it includes the question that subscribers want to be sent to the subscribers along with the associated picture element. Subscribers can associate timings with the question that can indicate for how many days or weeks the question should be sent along with the sponsored ads from that particular advertiser. Through web interface advertisers can modify the question and the picture element. The profile may include many more choices relevant to customization of sponsorships. Luck History This includes luck history for both the subscribers and the luck sponsors. On any call involving the subscriber the history is updated, whether the luck was awarded or not. The history helps in luck decision for the subscriber as well as for picking up the sponsor for the lucky call. This includes other records like overall network utilization and average call durations for the subscriber to help the decision. 12
Lucky Ad Decision Flow 1
Disconnect message from active
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Record for Billing System
Update Response History of
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Response History Subscriber’s Response history database will maintain records of subscriber’s responses to the lucky questions sent. The response history can have various meanings and interpretations for different advertisers based on the intent of the questions sent to the subscribers. It can help advertisers decide their investment in lucky ads and adapt their marketing strategies. Two‐way dialogue with prospective customers will be more beneficial than any traditional form of advertisements. Billing Call Data Records Lucky Server records the Lucky calls in CDRs (call data records) for the billing system to process and make adjustments to let the lucky calls reflected in subscriber billing. Luck Bags Luck Application will be distributing the lucky gifts (airtime etc.) to the lucky ones from the Luck Bags. Each possible broader category of advertisement is assigned a luck bag. Examples may include luck bag category for entertainment, cold‐drinks, pizzas, groceries, businesses etc. The advertisers will fill in the luck bags of their respective categories and the lucky application will distribute the luck bag’s contents to the subscribers of particularly those categories. To support a certain number of subscribers of a particular category I suggested an estimated model that suggests the number of advertiser’s needed. Demonstration For proof of the concept I will be establishing a voip call between two clients let say Alice and Bob. When the client disconnects the session, it will trigger the lucky application which will in return trigger the lucky message along with the question to the subscriber. When the subscriber responds to the advertiser’s question, application will return the final confirmation and the correct answer to the question. To establish the call session between the two clients I will be using click‐to‐dial call flow. I set up IMS network core emulator and the two clients on a single machine. The two clients are ‘X‐lite’ and the ‘Sip Communicator’. The application part of the click to dial is implemented using ‘Sailfin’ application server. However the lucky application and the lucky two‐way dialogue with the client is implemented in the ‘BEA Weblogic Sip Server’. The client portion only gets the lucky 14
announcements along with the questions from the advertisers and has an interface for the subscriber to send back the answer. The client for getting luck messages is implemented in the Visual . NET platform. Since the client has the minimal GUI for the lucky two‐way dialogue with the lucky application. It can be ported to variety of platforms and can be translated to the implementation in various different development platforms Summarized Learning from AIA course I learnt programming with the Application Servers and design guidelines for introducing new applications. Also I have experienced with the location based services (advertisements) and the challenges involved in location based ads. I benefited from and used Application Servers Concepts and Systems that were taught during the course. Practical issues with Location Aware Services helped me deeper insight into the concepts involved in deploying any location based applications. For future extension and practical implementation of the Lucky Ads, the presence API from IMS will be used to pitch social networking attraction tied with the Lucky Ads. Social Network and Web2.0 concepts covered will help appreciate the effort and design guidelines needed. Use Cases Lucky Ads application is proposed to create a win‐win situation among all the entities involved in the advertisement process. Subscriber
(Lucky)
win
win
Operator
(Luck
coordinator)
win
win
Advertiser
(Luck sponsor)
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Target Audience i)
ii)
Lucky Ones (Subscribers) Luck Sponsoring Advertisers (Businesses, Individuals, etc.) The attraction of Lucky Ads from the perspective of all the concerned parties in the value chain specifically the target audience of Lucky Ads is as follows: Lucky Ones (The Subscribers) Grabbing the subscriber’s interest is the key to success in mobile advertising future. The Luck Game is devised to achieve the same passion. Everybody loves ‘for­free’ and desires to be lucky. The LUCK factor is going to give this simple mobile advertising idea a successful dimension. The following features aim to contribute towards gaining the interest of the subscriber and helping keeping him involved with the service. • The service is simple. There are no intricacies involved for the subscriber to learn or use this. • There is no service charge included. All what is being given to the service subscribers comprises of “FREE incentives” and gifts. • 'Wanna‐be‐lucky' profile helps the subscribers to fully customize the categories of the sponsoring advertisements to meet their interests and let the carrier streamline the relevance between advertisers and targeted subscribers. The relevance of luck‐sponsor to the prospective customer is to be maintained by subscriber’s interests and feedback. • The ads from luck sponsors are aware of subscriber’s preferences of location awareness which essentially means advertisements from luck sponsors can also be based on subscriber’s current location. The subscriber can customize the timings to get the sponsored calls. • The quantity and frequency of luck depends on subscriber’s profile, network usage, call duration, age of service enrollment and most importantly the responses to luck‐sponsor. • Subscribers are expected to wait for lucky calls and hence look forward for their prospective advertising sponsor. • Subscribers will be allowed to opt for or adapt or quit ‘luck’ game through mobile or web interface anytime. 16
•
Subscriber can also set his/her status for the luck application. The luck application will adjust luck decisions according to the status of the subscriber. Below is the expected response of the subscriber to lucky ads and prospective user‐
centric story contextualizing the Lucky Ad usage. The subscriber (lucky) is getting highly customized and personalized ads only from those sponsors who are sponsoring their calls or sending lucky gifts. This means subscribers are in full control of categories of sponsors and time window of luck game, but they are not in control of exactly which call will be sponsored, what incentive they will get and how frequent this would be. •
I just subscribed to this service and started getting my lucky calls ‘for­free’ from the luck‐sponsors and that is all about it. •
See, how many free calls I get today. •
I don’t have to pay any thing for this service. •
The more I respond to ads, the more, lucky I am. •
I got 20 minutes of air time and four discount coupons on various items that I needed to buy this week. •
How can I get more and more lucky incentives? Luck Sponsor (The Advertiser): Reports on Customer response history( number/correctness of responses) to questions provides mechanism for the advertiser to judge the involvement of customers and therefore the SUCCESS of lucky ads and therefore adjust their future participation in LUCK game. •
We can reach out the potential customers that are just interested in businesses like us and our competitors. •
We are being awaited rather than being cursed by the potential customer. •
Our Ads being heard by correct people. •
We have got a two way dialogue with our potential customers. •
We can exploit the simple two way dialogue for huge number of possibilities ranging from facts sharing to survey, publicity to market research, marketing to quizzes, discounts to voting games etc. •
If the prospective customer of our domain is happy with our ads why would a competitor reach her more than us. •
We are reaching out to targeted and potential customers at right time sharing their joy of free incentives. 17
We must opt for this form of advertisements since half of the traditional forms of ads just don’t reach the right audience and promoting ads on mobile devices is a big portion of future ad strategies. •
The 2.5 billion mobile phones around the world can potentially reach a much bigger audience than the planet's billion or so personal computers. •
We can either be a huge organization, or an individual or just a gas‐
station/store trying to attract customers moving around us. Below are a few example screenshots giving a glimpse into what can be there as part of Lucky Ads. •
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The carrier (luck coordinator) The carrier (luck coordinator) gets the revenue from advertisers along with the sponsored calls or incentives. Luck hunt will also result in increase of network utilization in longer run. Since Lucky Ad model can be incorporated with any application for which end user is being charged, It can play a big role in introducing new IMS applications at cheap rates. Lucky gifts can be a major attraction for any existing application. Lucky is expected to help increase the utilization of any service with which it is introduced. The carrier gets free air‐time sponsored by luck‐
sponsors plus revenue from advertisement charges. The carrier can use the luck game two‐way dialogue for its own purposes of marketing new plans and customer behavior analysis. Lucky Ad model will help the existing customer base stick to the services being offered while lucky can help entirely new customer base in pre‐paid circle. Because the pre‐paid circles are more concerned of ‘air‐time’, lucky calls can have a lot much meaningful for the pre‐paid community since their already paid amount gets deducted in real‐time on network usage. Market Analysis Summary The mobile marketing industry is currently entering the second stage of the industry life cycle, where it is literally “taking off” with entry from almost every mobile firm either in process or on the way. With Lucky Mobile Advertisements, it is important to establish strong market presence immediately, as the idea has the potential to be quickly replicated by competitors. The market for this service includes to unique consumers: potential advertisers and potential subscribers. Target Market Potential advertisers include all kinds of businesses. To start off, these businesses will be individually approached with company‐specific pitches. After more companies begin to advertise with Lucky Mobile Advertisements, competition will increase, and less promotion will be necessary. The target segment of the subscriber market includes those customers within the age range of 18‐25 who have a mobile device. This segment has a better understanding and appreciation of newer technology and applications than any other age segment. They also have higher expectations, being very critical of modern advertising in general, and won’t be persuaded into purchases by flashy or tricky gimmicks. They prefer direct advertisements that are straight‐to‐the‐point and short. Another excellent quality of this segment is that they tend to stay up‐to‐date with current technologies, and are typically within the innovator and adopter buyer 20
groups. Being eager buyers, they are enthusiastic and thirsty by nature. The premise of Lucky Mobile Advertisements is to attract subscribers through the “luck factor,” this segment will respond to it better than most. After all, what young, ambitious person doesn’t want to feel lucky, and best of all—luck into something for free? Lead Times There is virtually no lead‐time for subscribers since they will be immediately notified if their call was sponsored. Advertisers have a longer lead‐time. Each advertiser will purchase a number of minutes to sponsor, and will receive a report after a period of time (much like a billing cycle) displaying the results of their ads, including click rates and subscriber responses. Industry Competition While mobile marketing is on the verge of becoming a standard method of advertisement, competition is sure to intensify. Currently, there are several companies testing the waters with mobile ads, such as Sprint, who began sending simple text ads to subscribers as early as 2006, but none of these attempts have been thoroughly developed. The only real competition lies in higher scale mobile advertisement plans, like Blyk and Sugar Mama. However, as successful as these plans have been, they’ve done Lucky Mobile Advertisements a service in creating customer awareness for this industry. Nonetheless, though Lucky is an original idea, it is somewhat easily replicated. It will be very important to continue updating the plan and adding new features in order to stay ahead of the competition. Revenue Estimates Maximum and minimum thresholds of the lucky ads will be defined clearly. Luck will always move somewhere between maximum and minimum. Just as there is maximum monthly threshold of 75 minutes for sugar mama and similarly for Blyk, subscribers get 43 minutes of air‐time and 217 text messages each month. On average, for example 1‐2 calls are sponsored for a subscriber per day of average length 2 minutes, this makes roughly 100 minutes lucky air‐time per user per month. Assuming that each advertiser is willing to sponsor 50,000 minutes of air‐time per month, below is an estimated relation between number of subscribers and advertisers. # of Subscribers Avg. per month Air‐time in # of Sponsors needed minutes 1000 100,000 2 10,000 2,000,000 20 21
….. ‐‐‐‐‐ ‐‐‐‐ The above table is just for reference purpose and relation will vary if assumptions change. Off course advertisers willing to sponsor more or less air‐time and a particular luck level of subscribers will vary the above relation. Moreover, as stated Lucky call need not necessarily announce free airtime. It can be any lucky incentive from the advertiser. In addition, the Luck level will ‘softly’ keep decreasing towards a minimum threshold if the subscriber does not keep sending responses. Subscribers sponsor the lucky airtime or incentives and in addition pay for the advertisement charges to carrier on monthly or weekly basis. Market Survey All participants were between ages 18 and 25 and are students, except for one who was 26 and was not a student. A: participants who are moderately to highly interested in having a cellular plan that involves Lucky Mobile Advertisements mobile advertising exchange. B: who think that mobile ads could influence their buying behavior. C: who would like free items like phone calls or text messages in exchange for viewing mobile ads. Participants A B C Female 24 83.3% 75% 79.2% Male 18 61.1% 66.7% 77.7% Total 42 73.8% 71.4% 78.6% Based on the interest shown by randomly chosen target audience, timeline where mobile advertisement market stands , fun and attraction promised by lucky ads we can easily imagine lucky ads to be much more revenue assuring than the existing successes of Sugar Mama and Blyk. Given that lucky is marketed within the proper target audience timely, we expect even more than 1000 subscribers on average joining the application. The more the lucky subscribers the more will be the attraction for the advertisers seeking to creep into mobile phones adding to new revenue sources for the carrier. The advertiser will be charged based on the number of the participants in the ‘luck‐game’ and there seems no barrier for subscriber accepting these ‘Free’ lucky gifts. Success of existing ‘work‐get‐paid’ approaches and their impressive figures help us forecast Lucky Ads 22
to be much more appreciated by the target customers and more lucrative for the carrier. Market Research and Analysis Source: www.ultramercial.com/sugarmama/
STRATEGY ANALYTICS INSIGHT, press release Advertising on mobile devices is the area that is being expected by marketing wizards and telecom/internet giants to play a key role in future marketing strategies and provide additional huge revenue sources for the carriers. Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm forecasts that annual expenditure on mobile ads will reach $11.4 billion by 2011. Other analysts predict the market will be as big as $20 billion by then. However, there are mixed opinions about the future of mobile advertisements, with cellular operators moving cautiously for the fear of annoying customers. Recent studies are now showing that subscribers are willing to tolerate advertising if they are able to get something in return. Today roughly 75 percent of all mobile subscribers in the U.S. and Western Europe can access the mobile Internet from their mobile devices. And of those people with access, about one‐third say they would watch advertising in exchange for free mobile content, according to a study called "Going Mobile" from the Online Publishers Association. This has now laid a healthy foundation for the mobile advertising market. Potential Present in Advertising­Sponsored mobile services Launch of Blyk in UK and Sugar Mama by Virgin Mobile in US demonstrates, attempts to reveal the hidden potential in giving some incentives to subscribers in return of their acceptance of advertisements. Get Incentive for Viewing Ads To understand potential of Lucky Mobile Ads, we need to look closely on most recent flourishing ad based models. The two most recent and most successful stories are of Virgin Mobile’s Sugar Mama in US and Blyk in UK. I then suggest how lucky ad is more attractive, promising and fun then the contemporary ones. Apparently this seems quite natural because without any evident motivation for the subscriber, any form of advertisement on her personal mobile device will be considered spam and therefore rejected. What only can make mobile advertising a success is the interest of mobile subscriber, if it gradually gets developed, with the mild frequency of personalized advertisements. Otherwise the factors like large graphic screen displays or reduction in services cost are less likely to play any important role in boom of mobile marketing. 23
Sugar Mama In May, 2006 America's Virgin Mobile introduced with its “Sugar Mama” program, which offers subscribers the choice between receiving an ad via text message or viewing a 45‐second advertisement when browsing the internet in exchange for one free minute of talk time. Those who spend five minutes filling out a questionnaire online get five more minutes. About 1,000 subscribers have signed up for the program each day since it launched about a year and a half ago. We should note that these are all customers who are willing to exchange 45 seconds of advertising on their handset or on their PCs for an extra minute of talk time. Most importantly, the Sugar Mama users aren't ignoring the advertising either: they clicked on offers in the ads they viewed more than 5%of the time, which is 5 times higher than the average online click rate. Advertisers in the service include Pepsi, Xbox, Jive Records, Levi Strauss, New Balance, Nintendo, Showtime Networks, Sony Pictures, Subway and the U.S. Navy. Agencies and advertisers know the 213 million 24
mobile phone users in the U.S. are a highly desirable target audience. Carriers would also like to unearth a new revenue stream to add to their subscription model. Virgin Mobile Prepaid Market Virgin Mobile has 28% of the Pre­Paid Teen Mobile Phone Market, and is the leader in this space “We felt we had assembled a user group in the Virgin Mobile audience that had value for potential advertisers and partners,” says Scott Kelliher, who joined as director of mobile advertising shortly after the Sugar Mama launch. “The notion was to create a program that would be a dialogue between the partners and our users. It was always supposed to be a value exchange: Users give their attention to the brand messages of our partners, and the partners reward them with air time.” "What really attracted us to the Sugar Mama program is that it is truly a pull vs. a push tactic," explained Stacy Doren, director, media and online, Levi Strauss Signature(R). "The audience is electing to receive the message and interact with the Levi Strauss Signature(R) brand in order to receive the bonus air time. It provides a new and innovative way to reach our consumers and provides us with the assurance that our message is being heard." BLYK Pitching itself as the world's first advertising‐supported phone company, Blyk launched a service last year in Britain. Blyk has breathed new life into advertising‐
sponsored free mobile services and is moving well towards its 100,000 subscriber target for the UK this year. 25
Blyk launched its MVNO service in the UK in late September 2007 using the Orange network. The service, only available to 16‐24 year olds gives its users 43 minutes of calls and 217 text messages each month for free in return for receiving advertising via SMS and MMS. Those minutes and texts were the average number sent by 16‐24 year olds and Blyk says this free allocation covers all the usage of60% of people in this age group. There are few obligations on the part of users regarding advertising messages they receive. Users must opt‐in to receive up to a maximum of 6 adverts per day. There is no requirement for the user to maintain any response rate on the advertisements: Blyk simply requires that the messages are received. If for some reason Blyk cannot deliver more than half of the advertisements to the handset for three months in a row they will close the user's account, but there is no obligation on the part of the user beyond that. In early February, Blyk reported it had signed up 30,000 subscribers in its first four months of operation, a figure growing 3,000 per week. This would put it well on course for its target of 100,000UK customers by the end of 2008. They recently announced plans to take the service to the Netherlands in the second half of 2008 through an MVNO deal with Vodafone, and we expect more announcements on new countries this year. The ad format – SMS and MMS messaging used for conversations between brands and members – is currently active in Blyk with 55 advertisers across 14 industries. In terms of the advertising model, Blyk charges advertisers GBP0.07 per SMS and GBP0.22 per MMS. In their first four months Blyk generated the following advertising profile: • 498 campaigns run on behalf of 55 brands across 14 industries; • an average audience buy of 60% (i.e. each advert is sent to 60% of the Blyk subscriber base); • an average response rate of 29%. These are impressive results. Blyk highlight typical response rates of 2% at best for traditional media advertising, 3‐6% for unsegmented mobile advertising and 13‐
20% for mobile advertising campaigns using detailed subscriber profiling. At its best, an advertising campaign by Penguin Books, which allowed users to download an audio chapter of a new Nick Hornby book, had a 49% response rate. Blyk will be generating GBP7‐9 (US$14‐18) per subscriber per month in advertising revenues. Blyk have not released any ARPU figures, though based on the above we can make the following estimates for the advertising element: • assuming each campaign was run just once, the average user would be receiving 2.5 messages per day (i.e. 498 campaigns over 120 days to 60% of the user base); 26
•
if all advertising were SMS then Blyk would be generating GBP 5.25 per user per month in ad revenue. If MMS accounted for 40% of all advertising then Blyk would be generating GBP 9.75 per user per month in ad revenue. Blyk won the Mobile Marketing Award for ‘Best New Offering from a Mobile Services Provider’ at a ceremony held in London on March 6th 2008. The 4th annual Mobile Marketing Awards recognize excellence in mobile marketing and advertising with a focus on innovation, insight and strategic integration. 27
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