Cellphones look to gain a greater voice in an Internet world
By Carolyn Y. Johnson
The Boston Globe
Thursday, August 30, 2007

BOSTON: The cellphone world, dominated by giant telecommunications corporations, is colliding head-on with the Internet, where hackers abound and a good idea can grow into a Google - spawning a full-fledged mobile media industry.

The intersection of the wireless world with the Internet's openness has long been anticipated, but it is edging closer to reality as new technologies, devices and consumer behavior finally chip away at the telephone's long legacy as a device used for talking.

The high-profile iPhone launch cast a media spotlight on a device that is more hand-held computer than phone. Google sparred last month with wireless carriers over the rules governing the upcoming auction of the radio spectrum, used to carry calls and data. Sprint plans to build its highly anticipated wireless broadband service, called WiMax, in 2008.

The activity has created opportunities for a bunch of wireless start-ups.

"People say that it's just a novelty now. But when the PC connected to the Internet, it transformed a word processor to a communication platform, to a media platform," said John Puterbaugh, founder and chief strategist at Nellymoser in Arlington, Massachusetts, which takes content from places like Comedy Central and VH1 and turns it into video, audio and visuals for cellphones.

Phones are now at a place much like the PC was in the mid-1990s, Puterbaugh said, and Boston is rich with a new generation of consumer mobile companies trying to make a business in a largely undefined space.

Established local industry leaders are key to the burst of new activity.

Two companies that went public this year build the backbone infrastructure that enables carriers to send network data - Starent Networks and Airvana.

M-Qube, a company that built technology to deliver content to phones, was bought by VeriSign for $250 million late last year. Third Screen Media, a company that created a mobile advertising network, was acquired by AOL for an undisclosed amount in June.

But on top of those more established players are start-ups that are so plentiful that the mobile scene is beginning to seem crowded - even as only about 10 percent of cellphone users subscribed to a data plan in the first quarter of 2007, according to Julien Blin of the industry analyst firm IDC.

Many companies offer new ways to get content on a phone - whether it is mainstream music videos or niche content, like a foodie's favorite video podcast, and their approaches include everything from working with carriers to trying to reach consumers directly.

Buzzwire, a company that received $4 million in venture funding, lets people stream podcasts, live radio, video clips, or other content on their phones. Groove Mobile is a mobile music company that powers the music store run by Sprint and also provides downloads and sharing services to users.

Oxy Systems earlier this year unveiled Phling, a service to allow a user to stream a music collection from a home computer onto a phone. Mobicious raised $4 million in venture backing this year and aims to become the ultimate go-to spot for mobile content - allowing people to search for mobile content and ship it directly to their phones instead of going through carriers' stores.

"It's sort of a cross between Google and Yahoo in the early days when they were indexing the Internet; we're indexing the mobile content," said George Grey, chief executive of Mobicious.

Already, the cellphone industry has spawned new business - the ringtone industry in the United States was valued at $600 million in 2006, according to Broadcast Music, a performance rights organization. The content industry is also projected to grow more than 60 percent, from $2.3 billion in the United States last year to $3.8 billion this year, according to IDC. But many believe mobile content will have room to expand further as consumers begin to use phones more like they do the Internet.

RazzberrySync creates premium text message content - ranging from beauty and fashion tips for teens to "blitz fiction," fiction fed to the phone in SMS chapters. And 80108 Media sends insider thumbcasts, including music reviews, event alerts and news to phones.

Many new companies are also bringing new categories of Web content to phones. Mobile social networking sites, which allow people to tap into their online network of friends when they are walking among people in the flesh, may seem a bizarre concept, but a U.S. study by M:Metrics found that already 7.5 million people, or 3.5 percent of mobile subscribers, use such mobile networking Web sites.

MocoSpace has created a social network primarily geared for phones. It says nearly a million people have signed up. RPM Communications is working toward a mobile social network that incorporates voice and sound. This year, the company launched Foonz , a service to quickly set up group conference calls. RPM says Foonz is a stepping stone toward its larger vision of a voice-enabled mobile social network.

Meanwhile, other wireless companies are trying to break the most formidable barrier to cellphone usage - the keypad. Digit Wireless integrates letter keys and punctuation into the keypad found on a standard cellphone. Vlingo introduced a beta version of its voice-based cellphone interface this month.

Nextcode in Concord, Massachusetts, is working on turning a mobile phone camera into a barcode scanner, so users can click a picture of a bar code from a poster or in the pages of a magazine and be directed to a related Web page or get content.

"People know there's stuff out there they could be doing with their mobile phones - they just don't know how to find it," said Jim Levinger, chief executive of Nextcode. "They're building out a Wal-Mart-sized amount of content for these stores, but a cellphone has a newsstand-sized interface, and you just aren't going to buy it."

Texting to Teens from E-Mail

AUGUST 31, 2007

Could full-sentence texting be next?

Web-based e-mail users will soon be sending text messages to mobile phones.

Yahoo! has already announced the feature for Yahoo! Mail users.

"If history is any guide, the other major e-mail providers will soon follow Yahoo's move," wrote MediaPost's Wendy Davis. "In the past, whenever a major company upgraded its free e-mail capabilities, a rival soon did likewise."

Ms. Davis noted that when Yahoo! upped the storage capacity of its free Web-based e-mail, Google followed suit within the week.

"The move also serves as a clever way to give users incentives to continue using e-mail, when many teens and young adults are increasingly turning to text messaging or IM in lieu of e-mail," Ms. Davis wrote.

An Associated Press-AOL study conducted with Knowledge Networks in late 2006 confirmed that instant messaging trumped e-mail for most teens.

The e-mail to text link is important for marketers who target teens.

Teens preferred e-mail 3-to-1 over texting for exchanging information, according to a Harris Interactive survey conducted in December 2006.

Now, e-mail will be connected to text, making texts a PC-to-mobile activity as well as mobile-to-mobile.

Despite a preference for e-mail over texting, teens use a variety of tools to communicate. Making it easy to send texts through e-mail from any Internet connection increases the chances of getting through to them. Typing on a keyboard is easier than on a mobile keypad, so the change may also convert some former texting holdouts.

Moreover, viral text campaigns may now be spread through the Web. Since mobile phones are personal, it is very easy to annoy users with unwanted or irrelevant offers. A text forwarded from a friend, perhaps straight from an e-mail account, stands a better chance of getting opened.

The eMarketer Kids and Teens report will be published in September 2007. Please click here to be notified when it is release

New Eyetracking Heatmap: 6 Ways to Get More Webinar Sign-Ups

By Anne Holland

Webinars are the second-most popular lead generation offer in business-to-business technology marketing this year, topped only by white papers. This is rather stunning, given that nobody had even heard of a Webinar a decade ago. (But then, we'd never heard of iPods either.)

I see a lot of great, informational Webinar promotions out there. Marketers are very good at the e-mailed invites and ads in e-mailed trade newsletters. However, I must admit that nine times out of 10 when I click through to see your landing page ... it stinks.

OK, I understand it's not your fault. The Web or IT department about what you can do on your company site limits you. And when you have ideas for improvements for an upcoming Webinar registration form, they probably say something like, "Get in line."

However, if they have an opening and you can slip in a Webinar registration page improvement project, print out this heatmap and show it to them (click to enlarge):

This heatmap is from an exclusive study we conducted this spring with real-life business executives. The goal is to determine how you can design Webinar registration pages to get better results.

Here are six lessons you may want to share with your Web designer and online copywriter:

1. The first word in every headline and paragraph has vastly more impact and influence over response rates than any other words in the headline, sentence or paragraph. Look at each first word. Is it the most powerful you can possibly use for the critical position?

2. Replicating important words -- such as the topic of the Webinar and keywords for your marketplace (in this case VoIP and Internet Phone) -- in multiple positions over the page can improve response. Don't assume the prospect carefully read everything on the page from start to finish. Assume their eye flickered about and they only spotted perhaps 25% of the information. Make sure highly relevant keywords are present no matter where that eye flickers.

3. Two-column formatting, where both the informational copy and the registration form are above the fold, may help response rates. Definitely test it. However, we would strongly advise against two columns of textual copy. This print-design layout never does well in online eyetracking tests.

4. We would also advise against a third-column such as a vertical navigation bar or additional, unrelated offers above the fold. Landing pages with fewer click options, fewer path decisions, nearly always get far higher response rates.

5. Bullet points work. Bullet points often blow paragraph-style copy (with nearly the exact same words) out of the water. But, you already knew that.

6. Add immediate calls to action, such as a large "Sign Up Today." and a bold "Register Now" even when you might think the action is self-evident. Being politely pushy can pay off.

Anne Holland is content director of MarketingSherpa.

60% of Mobile Phones Have Cameras

AUGUST 27, 2007

Three in five US mobile users now have cameras built into their handsets, up from about 40% in 2006, according to In-Stat's "Camera Phones and Social Networking—A New Global Focus" report.

In-Stat also estimated that more than one billion camera phones would be in use globally by 2008. The firm predicted that mobile blogging and picture sharing would generate mobile data revenue for carriers.

"This growing focus provides financial opportunities for mobile device networks, social networking site operators and software developers," said Jill Meyers, an In-Stat analyst, in a statement.

"Mobile device networks can benefit through traditional methods of data plans, as well as per-message and per-photo charges," she said.

A smartphone's BFF: Teens and tweens

Teen mobile phone usage is way up, and the younger consumers are hungry for new wireless capabilities. Some device makers are finally starting to catch on, writes Business 2.0's Michal Lev-Ram.

By Michal Lev-Ram, Business 2.0 Magazine writer

August 24 2007: 11:25 AM EDT

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Forget checking email on your cell phone - that's soo 2004. Today's teens are doing much more with their mobile devices. Speed texting with their eyes closed is only the beginning, and the technology can barely keep up with their rising demand for new features.

That's exactly why adolescent consumers are a desirable demographic for phone makers and carriers hungry for data revenues - $5 a month charges for unlimited messaging and $1 song downloads, to name just a few examples - as the cost of a call per minute continues to decline.

In just two years, the number of teenage cellular subscribers has grown by nearly 26 percent (that's a full 10 percentage points above the growth rate of 45- to 54-year-old customers for the same time period). And there's ample evidence that teens want advanced capabilities on their phone. The same can be said for tweens - the 8- to 12-year-old crowd.

So why not make a smartphone geared toward teens and tweens? After all, they're the ones who are driving some of the most advanced mobile trends.

"This is a group that has never known the world without mobile phones, and they've come to expect a lot from their devices," says Mark Donovan, a senior analyst with Seattle-based research firm M:Metrics. "For just about every category of mobile media activity, if you look at the 13- to 17-year-old bracket they're doing more things with their phones than the average phone user."

According to a recent survey by M:Metrics, 47 percent of teenagers take photos with their mobile device - that's twice the industry average. Young adults also access social networks, share pics and videos and browse the mobile Web a lot more than their older, less tech-savvy counterparts.

But despite teens' hyperactive mobile activities, smartphones like Research in Motion's BlackBerry (dubbed "CrackBerry" by some addicted users) and Palm's Treo have been largely geared for the business user - older corporate customers perpetually tethered to their email.

It's true that smartphones are expensive to develop and build, and that the underage crowd isn't exactly the one with the most spending power. But recent mobile devices like the slimmed-down Motorola Q and the Blackjack by Samsung have already pulled smartphone prices down - they're selling for as little as $100 (with a 2-year contract, of course).

The new generation of phones are also sleeker and more multimedia-focused than their predecessors. "They don't want to walk around with a phone that makes them look like a dork," says Donovan. "Style and capabilities should go hand in hand."

It turns out kids don't want phones that look like they're made for kids. Case in point: Earlier this year, AT&T discontinued a child-centric, simplistic five-button phone it started selling in 2005 due to what analysts say were lackluster sales.

The maker of the AT&T phone, a Lincolnshire, Illinois-based company called Firefly Mobile, has since gone back to the drawing table to create a more souped-up phone for tweens. Dubbed the FlyPhone, the upgraded device will have a lot more than "call mom" and "call dad" buttons - it will include a camera, MP3 player, games and picture-sharing capabilities.

"Kids aren't afraid of technology," says Don Deubler, founder of Firefly. "The new phone allows them to do more things they want to do."

The FlyPhone will be available through Firefly's Web site and retail channels like TargetCharts, Fortune 500) stores by late September. According to Deubler, the device will retail for $125 without a contract. (

Other phone makers and carriers are also edging toward more advanced devices for younger consumers. Helio, a small Los Angeles-based mobile operator that actually leases its spectrum from Sprint, launched the Ocean - a youth-centric feature-filled mobile device with two sliding keypads - last March.

With its full-QWERTY keyboard, GPS service and a MySpace application, the Ocean comes close to a smartphone for teens, though at $295 (the price at which the device is offered to new Helio subscribers), it's still beyond the reach of many of them.

What's more, as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), Helio's reach is limited as well. As of last released count, the company had 100,000 subscribers - peanuts compared to any one of the big four mobile operators' numbers.

So will the big players - Sprint (Charts, Fortune 500), AT&T (Charts), Verizon (Charts, Fortune 500) or T-Mobile - start to catch on and market innovative, lower priced smartphones specifically made for young people?

"Teens have a big interest and activity online," says Donovan, the M:Metrics analyst. "It's natural to think you'll see more smartphone penetration among them."

Google's Share of Search Traffic Continues to Grow

Google accounted for 64.35 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending July 28, nearly four points more than the comparable period a year earlier, according to Hitwise, MarketingCharts reports.

Also according to Hitwise:

• Yahoo Search received 22.31% of searches in July (nearly unchanged from last year).
• MSN Search accounted for 8.79% (a significant 3 percentage points more than last year).
• Ask.com's share of searches was 3.21% (nearly unchanged from last year).

The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.52% of US searches, the online research firm said.

While search engines remain the primary way for internet users to navigate to key industry categories, Google's share of that traffic has been increasing significantly, according to Hitwise:

The Travel, News and Media, Entertainment, and Business and Finance categories received double-digit increases (comparing July 2007 to July 2006) in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Americans Use Cellphones for, Well, Calling

U.S. Still Lags Other Countries in Multimedia Use

By Megan McIlroy

Published: August 23, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- American mobile users are still using cellphones primarily for calls, falling behind other countries in adopting them as multimedia devices, a new study by Universal McCann discovered.

Americans are increasingly using multimedia services on their phones, but at lower-than-average rates.

The study, conducted in June, covered 10,000 internet-connected mobile-phone users in 21 countries. It found 65% of mobile-phone usage in the U.S. is made up of phone calls, one of the highest percentages in the world. Internet usage on mobile phones in the U.S. is above the global average -- the average U.S. user makes 12 visits a month -- but still lags behind the leading market, Japan, where users go online an average of 40 times a month, the study found.

Need multiple strategies
For marketers, the study results mean "that if you are going to do internet and online marketing, one strategy for the U.S. may not be used as a blueprint; you have to adapt it to other markets," said Graeme Hutton, senior VP-director of consumer insights at Universal McCann.

Americans are increasingly using multimedia services on their phones, but at lower-than-average rates. The study found 52% of Americans have taken a photo on their phone vs. 80% globally, 22% have recorded a video vs. 62% globally, and 24% have downloaded a game vs. 31% globally.

Americans' use of other portable technology is partly responsible for the lower-than-average adoption of mobile phones as multimedia platforms, Mr. Hutton said, adding that "here we are used to having more than one mobile device; abroad it is being focused on the phone."

Don't want do-it-all products
Just over 60% of U.S. mobile users already own three or more devices including their phone -- with more than 42% owning a portable media player, 36% owning a laptop and 67% owning a digital camera, the study found. It also found that demand for converging devices that do everything is low in the U.S. compared with other countries.

Some other findings of the study: The U.S. is the only country apart from South Korea where more people have paid for music downloads than have downloaded them illegally. More than 17% have paid for music downloads, while 15% have downloaded illegally from a peer-to-peer sharing site. Music downloads are more popular among U.S. mobile users than TV or film downloads.

Welcome to the new world of room service

Tuffled Wagyu beef, 1,000 wines to choose from — our guide to the best

By Shivani Vora

Forbes

Goodbye limp French fries, hello fine dining: Room service has woken up from a long, dull nap.

Whatever you want, you can get it 24 hours a day at some hotels—whether it's on the menu or not. And it when it arrives, it may come in courses served sequentially, as in a fine restaurant. Can't decide between the 1,000 different wines offered? No problem. The room-service sommelier will be happy drop by.

Kosher? Vegan? Gluten-free? It's all available.

Foodies take note: In hotels worldwide, what used to be an afterthought has become a top room-service priority—in part, because customers are demanding it.

"We're finding that baby boomers are spending more time in their rooms when they travel, just relaxing, and younger generations are spending more time in their rooms working," says Bjorn Hanson, a principal in the Hospitality and Leisure Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "As a result, there is a higher level of demand for room service, and hotels are forced to improve it."

Options for all
For example, Peninsula Hotels, which has seven worldwide locations, including Hong Kong and Beverly Hills, launched a wellness program last year that provides healthy and organic food on their room-service menus. At the Chicago branch, there's even an organic menu for children.

W Hotels offer room service through its Whatever/Whenever department, which means that guests can order whatever items they like, 24 hours a day, and the hotel will prepare the meal for them—even if its not on the menu. At the Mandarin Oriental in Bermuda, room-service fare expands beyond the typical seafood and meat options. Stay here, and you can order a rum and chocolate pairing or an afternoon champagne tea to enjoy in your room.

Now this is service
One of the biggest changes hotels are implementing, says Hanson, is to bring a restaurant-like experience to your room.

The Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., for example, revamped its room service last year and now offers fine dining in guest rooms instead of delivering food all together on one tray.

A server arranges a table in the room with Frette linens, white Bernardaud china and sterling silver, and delivers each course one by one. Guests call when they are ready for their next course; it may also arrive in 20-minute intervals. Start with a tomato basil soup with garlic croutons, then move on to the organic baby greens with aged vinaigrette and the milk-fed veal chop. End with the orange blossom crème brulee. If you're not in the mood for such pomp and circumstance, it is possible to have your food delivered all together.

"We were finding that more guests wanted to eat in their rooms," says Tiffani Cailor, director of public relations for the property. "Many are business travelers who eat in courses between phone calls, so it made sense to make these changes."

Besides the Peninsula, The Metropolitan in Bangkok is another example of a hotel that offers healthy meal choices. Guests can order from Glow, the hotel's restaurant that emphasizes healthy, natural and organic food using only fresh ingredients. When you order from here, there's no need for deprivation. Choices include steamed fish in a fragrant mushroom, chili and ginger broth with greens and brown rice or udon noodles, baby corn, shiitake mushrooms and snow peas with a spicy lemon-garlic dressing.

Drink up
Given the limited wine choices room-service menus typically have, oenophiles usually can't indulge, but that's not the case when they stay at the One & Only Palmilla in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Nearly a thousand bottles of wine are on the room-service list here, including Italian makes like Gaja, French vintages like Joseph Drouhin and Chilean names like Almaviva. If you need help selecting the best wine for your meal, a sommelier can come to your room to help you choose; he can even help you identify its flavors when it arrives.

The only drawback? When one's room is so appealing, it makes sightseeing difficult.

© 2007 Forbes.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20393013/

Southwest Keeps Fans From Straying
August 20, 2007
By Joan Voight

SAN FRANCISCO In its signature folksy manner, Southwest Airlines over the last two years has used techie social marketing tools, including a widget and a blog, to inject itself into customers' everyday lives.

As other mainstream marketers are now discovering these marketing tools, Southwest shares the insider knowledge it has gained from its long-term efforts. Its experience offers first-hand evidence of what works and what doesn't for a discount-oriented target market.

The company introduced its online "Ding" service in February 2005, before most marketers or airline customers ever heard of marketing widgets.

The Ding is a computer application—or widget—which consumers can download on their personal computers. Whenever exclusive discount fares are offered, the program emits the familiar ringing sound of the in-flight seatbelt bell. The discounts last only 6-12 hours and can only be accessed online by clicking on the Ding application. The audio cue is the same sound used with the slogan, "You are free to move about the country," in the company's TV campaign, which ties the service to the airline's brand advertising.

In its first two years, the Ding application was downloaded by about 2 million consumers and generated more than $150 million in ticket sales, said Kevin Krone, vice president of marketing. While Southwest has been steadily increasing its Ding promotions with e-mail, direct mail and TV advertising, the most effective marketing method has been word-of-mouth referrals, said Krone. "The ratio of referred [Ding] installers to total installers is very high, which tells us that people who download the program often convince their friends to do it as well," he said.

He added that the pace of both monthly Ding downloads and ticket sales has steadily increased each quarter. However, the Ding application's effectiveness as a launch pad for the company's Rapid Rewards loyalty program and other services has remained fixed, he said. The company declines to give conversion rates, but industry sources say 45 percent of Ding users come back to book again, compared to the industry rate of 27 percent repeat ticket sales.

Based in part on the success of Ding, the airline in April 2006 launched a "Nuts About Southwest" blog, written by employees and soliciting comments from the public. An internal search engine helps visitors zero in on the topics that interest them. Designed to give customers an inside look at the company and access to 30 cross-department employee bloggers, the blog generates a decisive response from Southwest loyalists. In July 2007, the blog attracted more than 100,000 total visits and more than 40,000 unique visitors. A blog post by CEO Gary Kelly about the airline's consideration of assigned seating drew more than 600 comments, mainly in support of the current non-assigned seating practice.

Over the last 12 months, the blog has featured 260 posts, and has received about 6,200 comments, or about 20 per day, said a company representative.

As a result, Southwest is committed to digital social marketing as a way to drive business, said Krone. For instance, the airline is considering other online widgets that could provide travel services to customers, he said. All future initiatives will be informed by the evolution of these early efforts.

For instance, the Ding program showed that digital interaction operations must be easy. Over time, the company repeatedly simplified the Ding installation process to prevent any customer frustration. It also made the deals more selective. "Customers felt overwhelmed when we showed them all the Ding discounts to all the cities we serve. So we allowed them to filter which cities they wanted with each session," Krone explained. "That evolved to the present system, in which customers identify the 10 cities that interest them when they sign up for Ding."

From its blog, the company learned that talking directly with customers requires a more honest, direct approach than typical marketing. "If there is something that customers demand and you can't change it, it is best to be transparent," said Krone.

For example, Southwest expanded its time frame for booking advanced tickets due to customer comments, but did not go as far as some people wanted. Rather than ignore that unsatisfied minority, the blog explained company policymakers understood some customers wanted to book further ahead, would study the issue and might later expand the time window. The blog showed the marketer that "explanations and transparency are as important as solutions," said Krone.

A McKinsey report supports Southwest's firsthand experience with social marketing. "How Businesses Are Using Web. 2.0" states that marketers find online discussions using collaborative and communications technologies "offer immediate value for their organizations." Blogs, in particular, "help engage prospects and detractors in a positive and productive discussion," thus helping brands manage their reputations, according to the March 2007 study.

Southwest says that online social marketing is a natural extension of its offline efforts to connect with customers. "It fits like a glove on a hand. We were doing social networking long before it was cool and digital," said Krone. "If customers are digital, we will be digital. If they are online, that is where we have to be," he said.

Travelers' migration online shows no sign of abating. Eighty-one percent of leisure travelers and 90 percent of business travelers are shopping online, and those e-consumers are demanding both control and customization, cites a June study by Forrester Research.

A year ago, online marketers were advised to listen to online conversations to gauge what was being said about their products, said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic, "but as social media matures as a marketing channel, now it's more important for brands to actually engage in the conversations."

Google says mobile usage has surged this summer

Wed Aug 22, 2007 4:48PM EDT

By Eric Auchard

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Google Inc has seen a spike in usage of its mobile services since May, partly offsetting the traditional summer slump in computer-based Web surfing for the first time, an executive said on Wednesday.

"We are seeing more and more mobile activity," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products, told a Web marketing conference in Silicon Valley.

Traffic to Google's maps, e-mail and mobile searches on mobile phones and wireless handheld devices rose 35 percent between May and June. That reversed the previous annual pattern in which both mobile phone and computer use declined, the Google official said.

The much anticipated U.S. launch of Apple Inc's iPhone Internet phone in late June led to a jump of 40 percent to 50 percent in use of Google Maps on mobile phones, according to Mayer, Google's vice president of search.

Google Maps is one of the handful of featured applications on the iPhone.

Mobile use remained high into August, even as overall traffic searches surged then fell in the summer months. The traffic traditionally drops by 20 percent to 40 percent between May and June, as computer users in the Northern Hemisphere go on vacation.

"I think this is sort of a sign that people are becoming savvier with their mobile devices, and that there are better devices" available for the Web, while away from computers, Mayer told reporters after a presentation to marketers at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose.

"The technology curve is catching up," she told reporters after the presentation. "The phones are just better."

While the numbers of mobile users of Google search services remain tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of computer users of Google, the higher traffic reflects the growing acceptance of the mobile Internet, Mayer said.

While there are tens of millions of mobile searches on Google each day, they are a far cry from the billions of daily Google service requests done via computer.

So far, Google services are mainly designed for use on higher-priced "smart phones" that have faster browsers and bigger screens than typical mass-market mobile phones that are commonly used for voice-calling and text-messaging.

Mayer said internal traffic data appears to show a growing number of users switching off their computer and signing on to Google services via their mobile phones.

Google's mobile traffic still comes largely from U.S. users, reflecting the wider number of services available in the company's home market, including Google Maps, which offers detailed real-time traffic maps in more than 30 U.S. cities.

Japan and Europe are also seeing growing demand for Google services such as Gmail and mobile search, Mayer said.

Overall growth in the usage of Google services has begun to pick up again in the current week, as U.S. students go back to school and vacationers begin to return to work.

Call Tracking for Campaign Longevity

By Stuart McKelvey


If advertisers and agencies are only tracking the success of online campaigns through clickthrough rates or online conversions, they are missing out on the true value of advertising.

Numerous studies have shown that consumers increasingly use the internet to research upcoming purchases. But did you know that recent data reveals that the majority of consumers are going offline to complete these transactions?

In March of last year, comScore Networks issued a study showing that 63 percent of purchases completed as a direct result of a search query were offline purchases, with 37 percent online.

In fact, this trend is even more significant when consumers search for local information, as shown in a TMP Directional Marketing/comScore proprietary 2007 study measuring consumer usage of all online media sources when looking for localized information.

According to this study, 90 percent of consumers who went on to make a purchase after searching locally completed the transaction offline vs. 10 percent online.

The point is that if advertisers and agencies are only tracking the success of online campaigns through metrics such as an increase in website traffic, clickthrough rate or online conversions, they are missing out on the true value of advertising. Period.

So how does one start recognizing and tracking the offline benefit of online campaigns? One very simple and effective way is to set up a call-tracking line, whereby a unique phone number (local or toll-free) is placed on a website or search engine-sponsored ad. The number routes into the normal phone line allowing the total number of calls received from a specific advertisement to be tracked and reported daily, monthly or any other desired frequency.



In addition to the number of calls, basic call tracking lines can also provide other valuable performance information such as the following:

1. Length of the call
2. Date and time of the calls
3. Basic caller ID data that can then be used to match consumers from initial contact through to purchase
4. Area the call came from via area code or ZIP code

A sample of a basic call-tracking report is shown below:



Below is an example of one of TMPDM's advertisers who was able to see the true value and performance of its local online advertising through the use of call-tracking lines. Without the additional performance tracked via these lines, the campaign would have been discontinued as a result of the client's perception that the advertising had not met the desired cost per lead (CPL) and cost per sale (CPS) metrics. At the time, the campaign was measured solely by total online contacts and sales.

Case study
Situation analysis: A national pest control company was looking to generate additional lead volume at an efficient CPL and CPS rate. A desirable CPL target was set at $20 as well as a target CPS of $50.

TMPDM implemented competitive advertising placements across the top three local search/internet Yellow Pages sites. Although the client didn't typically set up call tracking as part of any of its other online buys, TMPDM was able to negotiate this tracking at no cost to the advertiser for the first year of the campaign.

The Results (January-December 2006):

* Total Ad Investment: $160,230
o Target CPL = $20
o Target CPS = $50

* Results if measured solely on online performance:




As a result of the added performance, the advertiser not only renewed the buy in 2007, but increased the overall campaign more than 200 percent. To date, the advertiser is still generating a large volume of leads and sales from the buy at 20-30 percent below its targeted lead/sales amount.

There are many call-tracking providers, and price points have decreased considerably thanks to some of the newer VoIP-based providers. Some leaders in the field include:

* eStara
* Who's Calling
* Call Source
* VoiceStar

As the lines between online and offline conversion continue to blur, it is more important than ever for marketers to understand the real performance of their campaigns and how each complement and compete with each other. Without this understanding, the advertiser or agency will never really be able to recognize or convey the true performance or ROI of campaign strategies. This may result in missed opportunities or, worse yet, the abandonment of proven, highly performing ad placements.

Ryan Naraine, PC World Wed Aug 22, 4:00 AM ET

Pickleview, an app written during the three-day iPhoneDevCamp, lets you Webcast baseball games while chatting with other users.What if Dell released a new computer with nothing but a Web browser on it? Well, as slick as the iPhone is, if it's missing an application you need--instant messaging, for example--a tiny PC with a browser is really all you have. But as today's explosion of Web-based applications demonstrates, you can do a lot with just a Web browser. Eager developers are already creating new Web-based applications for the iPhone (see some of our favorites on the last page), and high-profile sites like Facebook and Netvibes have gone a long way toward making themselves more iPhone friendly. But questions remain about how much the iPhone's current incarnation can really do and what that means for the future of mobile computing. Citing security and reliability concerns, Apple opted against releasing a software development kit, or SDK, to allow the creation of native iPhone programs. Instead, Apple provided hooks to let developers access many of the iPhone's basic functions, such as sending e-mail, dialing a phone number, or tying into the embedded Google Maps through Apple's Safari browser. Ideally, developers would use those capabilities to build Web sites and apps that behave just as native iPhone programs do. So how is the effort going so far? Just one week after Apple shipped the iPhone to droves of drooling early adopters, Richard Herrera traveled to Adobe's San Francisco office for iPhoneDevCamp, a three-day event where Web developers and designers brainstormed ideas for delivering applications to the shiny new device. Just four hours into the first day, Herrera and three other developers he barely knew delivered Pickleview, an iPhone Web interface that shuttles real-time, interactive baseball scores from MLB.com to a live Twitter chat stream. "When Apple said that any application fully compatible with Safari 3 would integrate perfectly with iPhone, I knew it would be real easy to build some fun apps," Herrera says. "It's only been a month [since the release of the iPhone], and I've seen some really interesting things being done." While coders are still getting a handle on what they can and can't accomplish through Safari, impressive applications are already starting to emerge, and events like iPhoneDevCamp have produced some fun new features. But several developers believe that many serious business programs will require an SDK. Early ApplicationsRaven Zachary, open-source research director for the technology-analysis company The 451 Group and one of the organizers of the iPhoneA-DevCamp, says he was blown away by some of the creations that came out of the development event. "I saw a voting application that was motion controlled, where you could vote 'yes' if the iPhone was horizontal or 'no' if it was moved into a vertical position. That was neat," Zachary says. "Pickleview's interface was really impressive," he adds. Other software coming out of the camp provides an early glimpse at what can be ported to mobile devices. Telekinesis, for example, turns the iPhone into a remote control device to access Mac OS X computers through a collection of mini Web applications on the phone. There's even an iPhone-specific social network called iRovr that offers MySpace-like functionality for groups of iPhone-using friends. Some other ideas include Gas.App, which delivers gas prices based on an iPhone user's zip code; txtDrop, which provides free Web-based SMS on the device; iPhone My eBay, for bidding and tracking auctions in a customized iPhone interface; iChess, a touch-screen chess game by Australian developers who have never laid hands on an iPhone; and FlickIM, an AOL instant messaging chat tool designed for the iPhone. Then there are "launchers," or app aggregators, Web sites that mimic the iPhone screen layout on the Web, giving iPhone users a way to easily access third-party apps without having to bookmark individual Web pages. Three launchers that have gained momentum are AppMarks, MockDock, and Mojits, each offering preloaded programs and the ability to add and delete apps from a single iPhone Web page.

Tracking Development

Connect with your techno-hip friends on iRovr, the first iPhone-specific social network.Steven Schopp, a New York-based developer who is working on iPhone gaming software, came up with the iPhone Application List to track the many new apps created every day. He says the Safari app-delivery model makes it "supereasy" for anyone to hop aboard the iPhone gravy train. "It really opens up the iPhone to everyone with basic Web developer knowledge. Once you stick to Web standards on Safari, your app will work perfectly on the phone. This makes it so easy for anyone to get involved," Schopp says. Still, the big question on everyone's mind is whether Apple will bite the bullet and release a full SDK so that more people can write native iPhone programs, much as it did with Cocoa, the object-oriented application environment designed specifically for building Mac OS X-only native apps. Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at New York-based Jupiter Research, notes that most current iPhone programs are consumer focused and fill a very small niche; he also argues that the iPhone won't truly be a killer device until third-party applications can attack issues such as compatibility with Office documents, allowing the creation of Word or Excel files. "These things can be easily addressed with an SDK, but we'll have to wait to see what Apple decides to do," he adds. Veteran developer Dave Winer, who bought an iPhone the day it hit retail shelves, isn't impressed with the Web-based application approach either. "How different the situation would be if the iPhone had a full SDK, if you could run Mac OS apps on the device, or if it had a built-in HTTP server that would allow you to browse or configure it over Wi-Fi from a Mac or Windows machine," Winer wrote on his widely read Scripting.com blog. "In other words, if it had the kind of revolutionary features and was an open platform in the tradition of Apple and the PC industry." But could that level of openness be coming? Joe Hewitt, a software engineer who created the user interface rendering engine behind America Online's new AIM platform, believes Apple will give developers tools to tie Web utilities to different parts of the device, like the camera or the calendar app. "They say they're going to focus on Web apps, and I believe this is going to be the main approach," says Hewitt, whose free tool iUI aids the creation of Web sites that look as if they belong on the iPhone. Hewitt expects Apple to add Flash support to Mobile Safari, opening up the iPhone to gaming and video delivery. He also anticipates an offline caching utility similar to Google Gears so programs won't need constant connectivity. iPhone 2.0?The 451 Group's Zachary agrees that future iPhone updates--both to the firmware of the device and to revisions of the hardware--will find ways around the Web-delivery stumbling blocks, but he thinks it's inevitable that Apple will release an SDK to help build native iPhone software. "Ideally, I think we'll see feature revisions with GPS to add location-based services. That will make online mapping apps much more effective. Right now, [Apple CEO Steve Jobs] is comfortable with Mobile Safari, but I think we'll see an SDK that allows native apps in some kind of sandbox to get around the security and stability fears," Zachary says. "The guys who have dedicated their lives to building Mac apps are not going to do the Web paradigm. They will want to wait for an SDK before committing to any kind of iPhone development," he argues. Web-based delivery could also limit iPhone application availability by making it harder for some developers to earn money with their creations. Gartenberg believes that more native software and games will arrive, but that Apple will continue to work with a few select companies, as it has with Google and YouTube. "That's pretty much the model they've done with the iPod, where you can get third-party games, but only if you buy them directly from Apple. They're only working with select developers on those iPod games, and that's pretty much what they'll do with the iPhone," he says. While selective development of native applications will continue--Steve Jobs has already promised an iPhone voice recorder--most of the action will be confined to Web-based applications. And that should be a good thing for mobile apps in general: Once a Facebook or a Netvibes runs on the iPhone, adapting it to operate on the next great mobile device becomes that much easier.

Our Favorite Safari-Based iPhone Applications

Looking for a few new programs for your iPhone? These nine Safari-based gems (and one traditional Web site) are among our favorites: iPhone Application List: Though it's short on iPhone-specific presentation, this iPhone Application List is the place to start. App Launchers:AppMarks, MockDock, and Mojits all come with a selection of applications preloaded and let you add new favorites to a customized page. Remote Access:Telekinesis gives you access to files, media, and more on systems running OS X. Communications: Check out the txtDropFlickIM for access to AOL instant messaging. On the Go:Gas.App helps you find the best gas prices in your zip code. Games & Sports: Some favorites include an iPhone-ready Duck Hunt Clone and pickleview.com which lets you chat while watching live baseball scores. service to send free Web-based SMS and

Personalized search biggest advance in search quality, says Google VP Mayer

Story posted: August 22, 2007 - 2:23 pm EDT

San Jose, Calif.—Personalized search is a red-hot topic in the search marketing space, and the subject of much discussion among attendees and speakers at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo. Personalized search has been “one of the biggest advances we’ve had in search quality over the last few years,” said Marissa Mayer, VP-search products and user experience at Google, in a keynote Q&A with conference co-chairman Danny Sullivan here at conference on Wednesday.

“The past few months have been a big leap forward,” Mayer said, adding, “We’re seeing a bigger part of our user base use personalized search.”

Google ramped up its personalized search product in February, Mayer said. Personalized results will become the default in the future, she added, because of the relevance they provide to the end user.

Mayer also touched on universal search, the concept of pulling multiple kinds of search results into one search experience. Google currently integrates maps, news, images, video and books into search results, but Mayer said in the future, such things as blogs and scholarly works will be integrated as well. She said universal search is “a way to move away from 10 links and give people a richer experience.”

She said that Google is also looking at “changing the presentation” of universal search in order to ensure that it has “the right amount of attention on the right parts of the page,” which addresses the complaint by some advertisers that Google AdWords they have purchased get lost in shuffle on the results page because things like image results can distract the user.

She added that as the search results page evolves, it provides an opportunity for ads to contain images or gadgets that attract users.

Catching the European Mobile Market

AUGUST 22, 2007

European mobile customers may speak many different languages, but marketers everywhere are getting the message.

"The European mobile market starts with two big advantages: a widespread, high-speed infrastructure and handset manufacturers that are among the best in the world," says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Mobile Europe. "So it's no wonder that European mobile consumers are accustomed to switching easily between voice and data services."

A recent receptivity among carriers, regulators and brands is opening up new opportunities for mobile marketing on the Continent.

eMarketer estimates that mobile advertising spending in Western Europe alone will grow from $382 million in 2006 to $3.46 billion in 2011, roughly a ten-fold jump.

According to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), the mobile market in Europe will total 850 million subscribers in 2007 and grow to 920 million by 2010.

"These are huge numbers," says Mr. Gauntt. "Of course, when compared to Asian juggernauts such as China, where one operator, China Mobile, alone will serve more than 400 million subscribers in 2007, they seem slightly less overwhelming."

According to an Exane BNP Paribas and Arthur D. Little study, on a per-capita basis, Europeans in 2007 will spend an average of €30 ($41.48) per month on mobile voice and data services, and growth is expected to be slow.

"One of the primary reasons the red carpet is rolling out for marketers is that the mobile industry has exhausted almost all other avenues for monetizing its mobile Internet and 3G investments," says Mr. Gauntt. "Marketing revenues stand out as one of the few new sources of income in this relatively mature market."

US Hispanic Mobile Use, Revenues Up

AUGUST 22, 2007

But one mobile strategy will not reach all users.

Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing and youngest US mobile segment, with the highest average revenue per user of any demographic group, according to Telephia's "Q2 2007 Mobile Hispanic Report," cited in RCR News.

Telephia also found that US Hispanics were nearly twice as likely as non-Hispanics to access wireless Internet through their phones.

"US Hispanics tend to come from larger families and are less likely to have Internet access at home than the overall population," said Levi Shapiro, Telephia's director of mobile media, in the article. "These factors may explain why so many in this demographic view the handset as their primary multimedia access device."

Mobile data are helping to drive the group's high average revenue per user, but voice usage is high as well.

An M:Metrics study in March 2007 also found heavier mobile content and application usage among Hispanics compared with the total mobile population.

Hispanic Americans are heavy users of various consumer electronics and media, as reported previously.

The rising Hispanic population in the US means that Miami, Los Angeles, New York and Houston are no longer the only geographic targets. Hispanics make up more than 10% of the population in 14 states, making targeting a regional matter, if not a national one.

But Hispanic Americans are not a homogeneous group.

"A one-dimensional content strategy is not going to work," said Nick Montes, president of Viva Vision, a Hispanic-focused, English-language mobile video programmer, in the RCR article. "It is critical to focus on a sub-segment of the Hispanic marketplace."

uLocate's GPS widget platform to launch on Alltel network

US wireless carrier Alltel and uLocate Communications today announced the launch of the WHERE GPS-enabled mobile widget platform on the Alltel network. The application is available for download in Alltel's Axcess Shop for US $2.99 per month. The application will initially launch on five phones: The Wafer™, The Alltel Hue and u520 by Samsung as well as The Wave and AX8600 by LG.

“WHERE is a perfect fit for our on-the-go customers who seek simple directions to everyday locations whether at home or while traveling”, said Wade McGill, senior vice president of wireless product marketing for Alltel.

WHERE allows content providers to easily develop a GPS-enabled application (widget) from a website with geo-localized content; then the user can access to this content through a GPS-enabled mobile phone and the WHERE mobile client. Today WHERE gathers more than 25 widgets on various topics as broad as to help you find the nearest Burger King or Rent A Car or to get local air quality or the biography of the local US representative. uLocate announced a ShopLocal widget two weeks ago.

After Sprint, Alltel is the second wireless operator signed by ULocate. Alltel is the fifth biggest US wireless operator with 12 million customers and 5% market share (Source: Chetan Sharma Consulting).

Adobe wants to push Flash onto wireless devices

Sarah Jane Tribble
August 21, 2007 - 12:11PM

Adobe, the company credited with transforming the web from a dull to a dynamic environment, is pushing to do the same thing for mobile phones.

The San Jose company wants to become a major player in the wireless market by making it easier to use graphics and interactive gadgets, as well as watch internet videos, on the small screen.

"Adobe and our technologies powered the evolution that happened on the web," said Adobe mobile executive Gary Kovacs. "The same thing is going to happen on mobile."

But the task may not be easy, the fast-growing mobile phone market changes quickly with new phones rolling out every 12 to 18 months. And because the phones vary greatly in style, screen size and operating systems, developers have found it difficult to create applications that can go on more than a few phones.

While Adobe's Flash is already offered on some mobile phones, the company wants to overcome these market barriers and make the technology ubiquitous.

This year, Adobe expects 270 million Flash-enabled devices to hit the market, and many of those will be mobile phones. That number is expected to reach 1 billion by 2010, Kovacs said.

Adobe's two biggest products for mobile are Flash Lite and Flash Cast. Flash Lite, which is being updated later this year, makes it easier for phone users to access video, games and wallpaper. Flash Cast enables phones to have separate video channels, like on a television.

Already, the products are gaining popularity in one of the world's most fiercely competitive mobile phone markets: Japan. Telecom giant DoCoMo has generated $US1.8 billion ($A2.23 billion) in revenue from the Flash Lite download service and has 10 million subscribers to the Flash Cast service since launching 18 months ago.

And now, Adobe is stepping up efforts in the US. Verizon sells 13 Flash-enabled handsets and announced it is launching Flash Cast-based service before the end of this year.

Flash, which Adobe inherited as part of its 2005 Macromedia acquisition, first hit the internet in the mid 1990s, making it possible to have dancing graphics and interactive widgets on the screen, said technology analyst Michael Gartenberg.

"It really did transform the web from static to dynamic to a much richer environment," Gartenberg said. "The notion of bringing that same level of richness to mobile devices is important."

One of the biggest complaints about Apple's popular iPhone has been the lack of video technology. While the phone easily accesses web sites and videos specifically designed for its Safari browser, such as YouTube, it doesn't tap into videos using Adobe's Flash or Microsoft Media Player.

For example, if an iPhone owner goes to CNN.com and tries to pull up a video, the picture is grey. It reads: "Plugin Error: Oops! You need the latest version of the Flash Player to view this video."

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg reported in July that "Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months."

And during the interview, Kovacs first said he couldn't say "when" the iPhone would offer Flash but quickly corrected himself to say "if and when." Apple did not respond.

Richard Monson-Haefel, a senior analyst with research firm the Burton Group, said regardless of what is offered on the iPhone, other manufacturers are working quickly to match the iPhone's ease-of-use. That's where companies like Adobe can play a part.

"People don't see Adobe, Adobe just makes things possible," Monson-Haefel said. "But that's OK and that's a good place to be. They don't have to be a consumer brand, they just have to help other companies be a consumer brand."

But Monson-Haefel said the most exciting thing Adobe could do for the general mobile phone market is the Flash Home application, which is still in development. The application would make a phone's home screen run on Flash. So, instead of a simple clock and name, the home screen could have interactive widgets that consumers can custom design. The product is expected to hit mobile phones next year.

San Jose Mercury News

Five predictions about the future of the Long Tail in travel

August 14, 2007 | Online Travel


The Long Tail is a positive force, holding great promise for travel, tourism and hospitality. Yet, it also has the potential to become a major market disruptor in travel distribution.

by Bob Offutt, PhoCusWright

The Long Tail is a positive force, holding great promise for travel, tourism and hospitality. Yet, it also has the potential to become a major market disruptor in travel distribution. There are already warning signs that the democratization of travel content is enabling new competitors and value equations at the expense of the Head, the traditional air/car/hotel/cruise channel. With air travel becoming a commodity, metasearch enabling airlines to compete effectively with travel agencies (both brick-and-mortar and online), and the airlines squeezing the distribution channel financially (e.g., with full content deals, surcharge threats, elimination of commissions), the old value equation is at risk. It is time for something new.

Philip Wolf, president and CEO of PhoCusWright, in his article “The Long Tail and Travel”, outlined the following five tenets for realizing the power of the Internet in travel distribution:

- The little guy’s (product, channel, site, business) influence is significant
- The sum of the niches is embraced
- The 80/20 rule is debunked (“law of the vital few”)
- The size of your reputation matters more than the size of your marketing budget
- Distressed, “out of print” or discontinued product now has value

Now, PhoCusWright offers five predictions about the future of the Long Tail in the travel distribution industry:

1) The Long Tail era will drive a new economy.

GLOBAL CONTENT WILL BE EASY TO PUT INTO THE SUPPLY CHAIN.

Historically, the travel distribution channel was the domain of large suppliers. Reservations systems were complex and unwieldy, requiring significant investments in hardware, software and connectivity. It took days or weeks of training to learn to use the green screen suppliers employed 15 years ago to place their information in a GDS. Today, making content available globally is accomplished with a Web site and a simple editor. Large airlines still use intermediaries (the OAG and Airline Tariff Publishing Company) to distribute their fares and rules, but the smaller ones, who rely heavily on the Web for distribution, use their own Web sites and metasearch to attract customers. It is the large airlines’ desire to retain complexity in their pricing, sustaining the complicated and expensive process that they continue to use.

PRACTICAL, LOW COST RESERVATION/CONFIRMATION SYSTEMS WILL EXPAND BOOKABLE CONTENT.

There are low cost and shareware packages that provide the capability for a small travel supplier to accept and confirm reservations online. With the low cost of hardware, it only takes a small investment to put a simple reservation system online. We are seeing a proliferation of these systems from parking reservations to dining, bed and breakfast (B&B) reservations, preshipped luggage, weather, traffic, flight information and event tickets.

MECHANISMS WILL BE IN PLACE FOR THE COLLECTION AND DISBURSEMENT OF FUNDS. In the past, funds collection and credit card clearance were huge barriers for commerce sites, but with players like Paypal and Google Checkout, this is much less an issue.

MEDIA AND “NEW” COMMERCE SITES THAT WILL BOTH HAVE A PLACE IN THE LONG TAIL WORLD.

The travel distribution industry has struggled for years trying to figure out how to monetize non-commerce activity. For commerce, it had always been the booking fee, the incentive, the commission, the override and more recently, the service fee. Other information like flight arrival and departure details or weather at a destination was thrown in for free as a cost of doing business. Now with the advent of media sites that are supported via some form of advertising model, sites with content such as weather, traffic, flight statistics and even seat configurations can be economically sustained. While quality individual sites are in place, the value is in the aggregation.

THE LONG TAIL WILL FOLLOW INTERNET PENETRATION.

The Internet is a global phenomena. Yes, but… the Long Tail can only be sustained where the infrastructure exists to support it. This is different for different types of content. For example, for an individual to take advantage of the Long Tail in the music distribution industry, all that is required is an Internet capable MP3 player and access to a single music aggregation site. A person in India can easily download music from iTunes to his MP3 player. However, if the same person wants to plan a trip in India and to make reservations, each supplier (or intermediary), for example, requires reservations software, Internet presence, the ability to collect payments charged against a credit card. In addition, the traveler needs facilities to print an itinerary. In many developing countries, telecommunications and facilities infrastructure is not capable of supporting this. Thus, the provisioning of the Long Tail in travel will follow the development of the necessary supporting infrastructure.

2) The Long Tail facilitators – content provisioners, software suppliers and ASPs – are in pivotal positions.

The commercialization of the Long Tail presents major opportunities for facilitators. While there are existing software packages, as needs mature, there will be opportunities for more complex capability and custom development.

Many businesses will not want to compete directly on the Internet and instead would prefer to have an intermediary to handle the details. Viator, which has content from over 500 destinations worldwide, has been extremely successful at this, while Gullivers Travel Associates works with over 35,000 ground product suppliers globally. On the reverse side, points of sale may not want to deal with thousands of suppliers and would prefer to deal with an aggregator. Smaller points of sale may not want the overhead of their own technology and would prefer to outsource this to a third party. This strategy appears to be working quite well in the dynamic packaging area. There is also a significant opportunity to target specialty markets such as road trips, the vacation - drive market, still the largest single leisure segment in the U.S.

Enabling, supporting and developing the travel Long Tail represents a great opportunity for a new generation of aggregators, software developers and application service providers.

3) Technology and standards will evolve.

The glue that held the traditional travel distribution industry together was standard data formats for intercommunication. To enable the new era of Internet-based distribution, these were updated in XML (extensible markup language) by the Open Travel Alliance. Unfortunately, the bulk of the activity was focused on the Air/Car/Hotel/Cruise industry and the majority of the developed standards (with a few exceptions) focused on sustaining the Head, not enabling the Long Tail. Even the Head suffered because these standards were complex, often required significant technology investment to implement and were often employed inconsistently. This would suggest there is little hope for developing true standards in “the Tail.” Yet key Long Tail players such as Rearden Commerce, are already forging ahead, establishing defacto standards for suppliers. Aggregators such as Viator, Gullivers Travel Associates (now owned by TravelPort) and Rearden mask the complexity and provide an easy-to-use interface to points of sale. As the Long Tail expands, standards will develop, giving it even more momentum. This is critical if the Long Tail benefits are to be fully realized.

4) The democratization of supply will open up new marketing and packaging opportunities.

The lack of data and interconnect standards provides an opportunity for a new breed of market dominators. GDSs have dominated the travel distribution marketplace for the past 25 years. Their major airline-sponsored software and hardware systems have virtually controlled the distribution channel. Now with economic pressures from airlines, legacy technology and loss of air bookings to supplier-direct channels, the GDSs are struggling to sustain their economic position with the Head content. In the meantime, online travel agencies and travel management companies (TMCs) are developing or implementing new platforms that aggregate content from multiple sources, only one of which is the GDS. These companies have the potential to be the new intermediaries, drawing on a rich supply of Long Tail content, either directly or through aggregators such as Viator, Gullivers and Rearden.

This is the next wave of travel distribution but not the last. As Long Tail sales grow, then it will move to the Head and a new Long Tail will emerge.

5) The success of the Long Tail in travel is directly proportional to the quality of search – making metasearch, geographically-oriented search and vertical search key enablers.

To utilize content in the Long Tail, you need to be able to get to it. Search engines are the “railroads” of Long Tail content. You have to be able to find it. Today’s search engines generally provide too much detail to be useful. Searching for “B&B in Napa Valley” yields 270,000 results in Google, while Yahoo! does a little better with only 94,000. There are a few embryonic efforts to provide vertical search, but these are relatively shallow and only seem to hit major destinations. Going forward, effective search will be the greatest opportunity for/impediment to the success of the Long Tail in travel.

Come join us at The PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando (November 12-15) where we will explore search and many other topics that are relevant to the movers and shakers of the Long Tail era.

Bob Offutt is Senior Technology Analyst at PhoCusWright

Is Yahoo! Better than Google?

AUGUST 15, 2007
Search is not the final word for all portal users.

What makes one portal better than another, either for users or for marketers? Or are all portals fundamentally alike, easily exchanged by visitors and advertisers? Further, how does Yahoo! differentiate itself from Google or MSN, for instance?

From the audience point of view, as measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, US consumers now express more satisfaction with Yahoo! than Google, Ask.com, MSN or AOL. The ACSI report on e-business Web sites is sponsored by ForeSee Results.

"Even more important than Yahoo!'s first lead over Google is the trend of their scores moving in opposite directions," Larry Freed, president/CEO of ForeSee, said in a statement. "We may see a real turnaround for Yahoo! in the next year."

Past performance is not an indicator of future results. But the fact remains that Google is not the be-all and end-all for all users. So which portals are best for reaching which type of user?

Within each portal, the most visited subdomains describe the most popular offerings. A December 2006 Quantast study showed that for AOL, the most popular application was instant messaging. For MSN and Yahoo!, it was e-mail. If portals are defined as a gateway to another destination, Google might be more pure portal than the other three large sites. Its most popular subdomain is its specialized images search.

So search, communication and content differentiate the top portals. For marketers, choosing the "best" portal depends on who they want to reach and may mean using more than one in the end.

"For most brand-oriented campaigns, a mix of portal placements and focused ad network buys can offer the greatest reach—with the caveat that a good share of the audience might be duplicated across the portal-network combination," said eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman.

Is Everything You Know About Social Advertising Wrong?

By Sean Carton , August 6, 2007

Much as we like to talk about creating new models, most thinking these days about monetizing social media (on the social media site side) or tapping into the vast amounts of traffic to get messages across (on the marketing side) is pretty old-school. There are obviously lots of eyeballs and we've got messages we want those eyeballs to see, so it stands to reason that if we can get our messages in front of those eyeballs they'll see them.

Right?

Doesn't look like it, folks. Social networking CTRs (define)are abysmal, and nobody seems to be actually making any money

Perhaps we haven't found the right model yet. There's lots of homespun advice on plenty of marketing sites out there debating that issue. Perhaps there's too much clutter. Maybe we're just too far ahead of the curve, trying wacky stuff, like creating corporate islands in Second Life. Maybe new ideas like the much-vaunted widget are the answer.

I kind of doubt it. Others do, too. Just because there's a lot of traffic out there doesn't necessarily mean it can automatically be translated into revenue and it's a good place to put your ads.

Why? Because this kind of thinking isn't that far from the kind of thinking that's been driving advertising for a long time. It's intrusive, interruption-driven thinking that says, "Well, if lots of people are looking at something, then placing our ad in front of that something is going to bring us results."

Baloney.

A very fine brand of baloney, maybe, but one that's beginning to rot nonetheless. The interrupt model worked fine when we had a captive audience sitting in front of TVs with no choice but to watch what we put in front of them. DVRs changed that by putting the kind of control people have on the Internet into the hands of TV viewers. Banner ads (and I use that term loosely to describe any kind of display advertising we place on pages: rich media, video, text, static, or whatever) use the exact same model, replacing the "take over your screen" model of TV advertising with the "we're gonna put something here and make it wiggle so you notice it" model of most online advertising.

It's like TV, but worse. When you watch a TV spot, you know you'll get your show back when it's over. When you click a banner, you're off to the great unknown, especially since using a browser's back button has become so iffy.

Now, I'm not saying banners don't work (I'm not opening that can of worms). But I am saying the idea that just because there are a lot of people to potentially put an intrusive message in front of doesn't automatically translate into results. "But wait!" you may be saying, "What about contextual advertising? What about search?"

Ah! This is where things get interesting. Some models are working with consumers and their interests instead of against them. Contextual advertising works by linking the ad to the content at the "ah-ha!" moment a consumer may have when reading something related to the advertising. The ads don't work as well as search because reading and searching for a product aren't necessarily linked, but they do work better than just jamming an ad in front of someone's face.

Search advertising's success stems from the fact it inserts itself into consumers' attention stream when they're actually searching for what you sell. Sure, they may not be ready to buy and may be searching for general information, but they're still indicating an interest in the topic. The CPC (define) model makes this form of advertising even more effective because marketers only pay when someone positively indicates an interest.

You get results. It's a no-brainer.

What's this got to do with social-networking advertising? Everything. Search marketing works because it understands search's essential nature: people looking for stuff. Where social networking advertising (at least the passive model that uses banners or, in many cases, contextual advertising) falls down is it fails to recognize the essential nature of social networking. People come to hang out with other people. Anything that gets in the way ruins the experience and will be avoided.

This is why widgets have been getting so much play lately: they don't intrude on the user experience. Yeah, they're branded. Yeah, they're obviously a product of crass commercialism, but when done well they enhance rather than detract from the experience. They're something to share within a social network, not something to detract you from it. They can become part of the conversation you're having with friends and acquaintances, not an interruption of that conversation.

Are widgets the answer to how advertising can work in social networking? Not at all, but they're a beginning. The answer will become apparent when we think outside of the ol' display advertising box and start to imagine ways we can work with the essential nature of social networking, rather than against it. How can we join communities of interest in an authentically helpful way? How can we give consumers the tools to facilitate their conversations about our products or services (conversations they're going to have anyway, with our without our help)? How can we help connect them to get help, advice, or suggestions from others (Dave Evans has a few good ideas)? How can we make it easier for true believers and brand fans to do the selling for us (or help recruit new fans)? How can we work with what's going on rather than against it?

Getting there won't be easy, especially when we're all faced with clients and budgets that are mired in the old way of thinking. Where's the money come from? PR? The ad budget? The Web budget? Who's in charge? How can we "control" the brand when it's opened up to...shudder...the masses? (That's sarcasm, folks.) How do we measure this stuff? How do we define success?

There's obviously a lot to work out. But we don't have any choice. Either we face the new world with new thinking, or we don't and suffer the consequences. Time to choose.