Mobile TV for the Masses

OCTOBER 23, 2007


An interview with Jack Hallahan, vice president of advertising and brand partnerships at MobiTV

MobiTV is a mobile TV distributor for channels such as MSNBC, ABC News Now, FOX News Channel, Fox Sports, ESPN 3GTV and NBC Mobile. Jack Hallahan joined the company in 2005 as vice president of advertising and brand partnerships.

Before joining MobiTV, Mr. Hallahan was managing director at Wirestone, where he drove ad strategies for Apple, TiVo and William-Sonoma. He has also served as vice president at AKQA Advertising where he managed brands such as CNN/SI, Mattel, Macy's, Nike and Visa USA. eMarketer spoke with him about mobile TV viewer demographics and marketing campaigns.

eMarketer: Who is watching mobile TV?

Jack Hallahan: It used to be strictly early adopters who would put up with poor video quality just to say they had mobile TV on their phones. In 2005, the content was OK, but the end-user experience was not that great, thanks to carrier and other tech factors.

As service providers started improving data services, the experience and content improved. Handsets have also improved, so now viewer demographics are going much more mainstream.

eMarketer: So what are people watching?

Mr. Hallahan: It's gone from essentially basic cable to more prime time fare, like "30 Rock" and "Oxygen." Mainstream content like this is also bringing in more women.

So now it’s 18- to 49-year-olds who use it to keep up with programs they follow and events including live content. Live news is popular as well.

eMarketer: How many viewers are we talking about?

Mr. Hallahan: We're well past 2 million subscribers. We are now one of the top 10 [multiple service operators] in the country.

eMarketer: How much mobile TV content is paid versus ad-supported?

Mr. Hallahan: Right now our content all goes to paid subscribers. We tend to think that paid subscribers are a more attractive audience for marketers since viewers are more dedicated.

We are exploring free, ad-supported services, where content partners like Sony, BMG and Warner give artists exposure. With that, we develop WAP sites for artists.

CBS Network recently supported one of these for their show "Pirate Masters," including a site featuring Avril Lavigne. The site is fully developed; visitors can buy and download MP3s, wallpapers, ringtones and the like.

Marketing supported the site. Other media pointed to the WAP site, which then pointed to MobiTV. As a result, we got 500,000 visits to the site. On the paid side, our advertisers can reach an audience paying $10 a month who really want the content.

eMarketer: How do you work with advertisers or marketers?

Mr. Hallahan: For NBC to sell MobiTV is not a good investment of their time, but we can sell across channels. With "30 Rock," for instance, we run pre- and post-roll ads. It’s an on-demand thing, so we can run the ads guaranteed during the show. Viewers won’t miss out if they come in late. The first offer will be to a current advertiser on the program.

eMarketer: How do carriers vary in how MobiTV is accessed or presented?

Mr. Hallahan: We have a relationship with all the major carriers. We're dealing with T-Mobile right now.

The content doesn’t have to be reformatted for each carrier. It's not that hard since, TV is a 65-year-old technology. If the content isn't optimized for mobile, then it just appears letterboxed if it's normally widescreen content.

Fox Sports, NBC Mobile, ESPN Mobile and other channels have optimized content. Most don’t, but they don’t experience much of a loss by putting it on mobile.

Although the content looks the same on each carrier, we make sure programs look as good as possible on every handset. So, if one phone's screen is larger than another's, or has a screen with odd dimensions, we handle that. We have performed [quality assurance] on more than 220 phones so far.