Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Wednesday linkage

Nokia is opening up via its Adlabs to teach the world how to advertise on mobile. This is a good thing and I agree with Mike Baker that the objections of reach and metrics are obsolete. I would agree that creative teams are holding things back, but most importantly of all, agencies still haven't worked out how to a)add value in mobile initiatives and b)charge a fair price. I had an interesting conversation with an industry pal yesterday who said he'd seen 'traditional' agencies mark up project quotes by up to 400%. And then the agencies in question wondered why they didn't win the pitch. Hmm.

Mobile operators are up in arms at the prospect of having to reduce their EU roaming and SMS rates within the bloc. And it's about time too that those charges were reduced. It makes no sense to me to pay 40p for a text message (but only 20p for a MMS message) and £7.50 per megabyte when roaming in Europe. Distance is not an issue these days. I look forward to the day when it's all reasonably and fairly priced. Well, a girl can dream can't she?!

The VC community is betting on mobile for future digital investments according to KPMG.

"With a focus on mobile entertainment, venture capitalist opinions vary when
asked about which mobile entertainment applications would dominate market
revenue in 2009, though social networks was the favorite with 31 percent of the
responses. Rounding out the top five applications were gaming (20 percent),
video (14 percent), music downloads (20 percent) and user-generated applications
(10 percent). Additionally, 90 percent of VC respondents believe mass adoption
of mobile video consumption will take off in the next five years, and 60 percent
expect it will happen within the next three years. "Activity in the market
clearly indicates that the mobile space has become a significant area of
opportunity for venture capitalists," said Brian Hughes, KPMG partner based
inPhiladelphia and co-leader of its venture capital practice. "The population of
consumers who prefer to receive content via their mobile devices is a rapidly
growing segment of the market, and VCs have shown keen interest. We've seen new funds created specifically for the mobile sector, and social media also
continues to gain traction." "