I want, you want, we all want Swedish Beers… again!

Yes, it’s that time of year. It’s all about Barcelona and it’s as hectic as ever. But hey, I wouldn’t like it if it was any different.

Jenny Hiley has been keeping the Swedish Beers love going Down Under in Sydney for the last year (thank you Jenny!) and I’m pleased to announce that I will be spreading some more Swedish Beers love by running Swedish Beers in Barcelona again this year with a little help from my friends.

We had such a great time last year – about 800 of you turned up throughout the night and you didn’t want to leave when it was closing time. We had folks there from as far afield as New Zealand and Brazil. We have global reach people! We also had people there from network operators, mobile marketing agencies, brands, analysts, journalists, entrepreneurs, developers of all flavours of mobile, aggregators, content creators, messaging specialists, media owners and lots more besides. You want it, you got it at Swedish Beers.

And by all accounts it was an epic night for some last year. People are still telling their ‘Swedish Beers’ tales, and not just from last year, from previous years to that too! I guess we’re doing something right then…

Anyway, we have the lovely Admob confirmed as our lead sponsor – third year running in Barcelona and I think the 5th time they’ve sponsored Swedish Beers since we started back in October 2001 in London.

We are still on the lookout for more sponsors though to help the party really go with a swing. Like last year, we can provide the atmosphere, warm bodies, great banter, friendly welcome and a good time if you can contribute towards the beer fund. Another £4,000 and I’d be *really* happy and not only would I be happy, but a lot of other people would be very happy too! Do get in touch if you’d like to make that happen :)

Anyway, the important bit…

Our venue for the evening is Dostrece which is a two floor bar and restaurant – a ground floor and a chillout basement. Yes, that's right, a restaurant too! This means that they will be serving food from their normal menu until about 9pm so you'll get a chance to eat too if you want to. Prices are reasonable and it's a mix of Mexican, Spanish and Turkish flavours. @BCN_unlike reviews it here. We ate there last year and it was very tasty.

The venue holds about 300 or so folks at any one time so there’s plenty space for everyone. Dostrece is behind La Boqueria market and the nearest metro station is Liceu. Just walk up La Rambla, walk past La Boqueria and Teatro Grec, then take a left at Calle Carme (or Carrer del Carme) and Dostrece is at number 40 (Google map here). (They also have free wifi if you want to demo your latest iphone app.)

Doors will be opening at 6.30pm on Wednesday 17th February and we'll be open until late so there's plenty of time to drop by and enjoy the fun, meet interesting people and soak up the Swedish Beers vibe. There is no need to RSVP, but since there's a bar courtesy of our lovely sponsors, we will be distributing beer tokens on the night so you’ll have to look for the Swedish Beers crew and the lovely folks from Admob.

Like our previous events, this is a relaxed evening, no formalities, no presentations, no business cards thrust in your face as soon as you arrive. Just come with an open mind, be prepared to talk nonsense to strangers, enjoy a drink or five and have yourself a good time. Oh, and leave the ties at the door please.

It is likely to get a bit busy at times. But don't worry, people will be coming in and out all evening. That’s kind of the point as we know there’s always a lot going on. If it's very busy, there's no need to queue to get in. Just check out one of the other bars nearby and come back a little later when it's a bit less frantic.

We don't have a cloakroom so I don't recommend you bring your laptops with you - it's a liability in Barcelona I'm afraid. You won't need them anyway what with this new fangled thing called the mobile phone ;)

So just to recap:

What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking
When: Wednesday 17th February 2010, 6.30pm until we run out of steam
Where: Dostrece, Calle Carme 40, 08001 Barcelona

And of course, it couldn't happen at all without the generous support of our lovely sponsors, the first of which is Admob.

*Admob* Founded in 2006 (on my birthday as it happens!), AdMob is AdMob is one of the world's largest mobile advertising networks, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web, serving more than a gazillion mobile banner and text ads per month.

Their growing client list includes a diverse range of Fortune 500 brands like Ford, Coca-Cola, EA, P&G, Land Rover, MTV Europe, Adidas, and Paramount Pictures, as well as publishers that are pushing the boundaries of the mobile web like AccuWeather, BluePulse, CBS Mobile, EA, Flirtomatic, Hollywood.com, Peperonity, and TinyTube. Admob are the primary monetization and acquisition partner for thousands of companies.

Widely recognized as the world’s leading mobile advertising networks, Admob has won accolades from the Mobile Marketing Association, Ad Age, Business Week, Wired Magazine, and the World Economic Forum. Not bad eh!

Russell (genuine old skool mobilist and blogger), Andy, Jonathan and I suspect a few more from their crew will be around to hand out beer tokens and generally chew the mobile fat.

Hope to have more sponsors to announce soon as well! Get in touch if you’re interested

Skål

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CHECK US OUT ON FACEBOOK  & TWITTER TOO
Join the group or follow us on twitter - you'll be in good company and can keep up to date with Swedish Beers events in London, Sydney and Barcelona.
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Technorati Tags: swedish beers,events,mwc,barcelona,party,networking,mobile networking,admob

Preparing for Mobile World Congress

Yes, it's that time of year for folks working in mobile when it's all about Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I've had a bunch of expo passes to give away, courtesy of the lovely folks at BlackBerry who were our lead sponsor for Heroes of the Mobile Screen conference http://mobileheroes.net. I've now allocated all the passes via the Mobile Monday London Yahoo! group, but I'm very aware that not everyone managed to get one so these places will be worth a try to get one:

Android: http://sites.google.com/site/androidmwc/home
BlackBerry: http://uk.blackberry.com/campaign/appplanet/#tab_tab_developerday - click on the tab that says 'no code'
Vodafone JIL: http://jil.vodafone.com/app_planet/

I'll be running Swedish Beers - http://swedishbeers.org - on Wednesday evening 6.30pm until late at Dostrece. Admob - http://admob.com - is our lead sponsor and I'll have more sponsors to announce in the coming days.

More news and info as it comes...

Technorati Tags: mwc,mobile world congress,barcelona,android,blackberry,vodafone JIL,swedish beers

Tuesday linkage

It is Tuesday right? And it is March already (how did that happen)? So it must be time for some links.

This is an interesting post from the Admob blog about iphone advertisers best practice. I would say that quite a few of those tips and hints are relevant for anyone doing stuff in mobile advertising. It’s not exactly rocket science (but then mobile advertising isn’t) but it’s good to be reminded of the simple stuff every now and then. And this is a great checklist.

Bango is also running an interesting experiment in running a mobile website, Mobislim. They have a real mobile website set up and are sharing all the analytics, results, learnings and more with their audience in a blog format. If you are a mobile webmaster looking to commercialise your offering, this is well worth keeping an eye on.

If stats are your thing then have a look at MSearchGroove’s post covering stats around mobile web traffic, mobile search and advertising. Peggy Anne Salz has some interesting insight and links to share.

There was a little flurry of excitement about Process Away recently and their iphone App. Agreed, it looks really good and looks like a great solution to be able to take payments at your live event without a huge investment in hardware, software, wifi and the rest. That I don’t doubt. But who are they and why would I trust them with my money? And even looking at the FAQs, that doesn’t reassure me much. Seeing as folks making business decisions about technology are very often  not technologists, the technology jargon about security is meaningless. Some explanation of who you are, some reassurance that customer’s money is safe, some reassurance of how the service is underwritten and this could be a real goer. Or am I being a curmudgeon here?

I’ve been asked to be a judge for 2009’s Mobile Messaging Awards which is very exciting. Get those entries in! I’m also judging this year’s Webby Awards… still very North American in its focus which is a shame as I firmly believe there is mobile talent beyond those shores. I guess there’s always next year to enter…

Technorati Tags: links,mobile,statistics,m-commerce,m-payments,m-retail,m-transactions,awards,160characters,mobile web,mobile internet,admob,mobile advertising,iphone

The Mobile Web is live and kicking

Oh yeah baby! It surely is. When I walk down the street or sit on the bus, folks are casually chatting about doing stuff on the mobile web. The combination of the launch of the iphone advertising campaign for O2 (which shows lots of commonly used websites rendered beautifully on the iphone) and the launch of facebook's mobile web version, it feels like the mobile web is taking off.

However, not everyone is singing from the same hymnsheet. The much respected Russell Beattie has closed down Mowser, his reasons being that it wasn't making money and he no longer believed in the mobile web anyway. Or words to that effect. I read his blog post on the topic thoroughly and chatted with a few colleagues on the topic to get their reaction. They were both pretty bullish about the mobile web and felt that Russ had got it wrong this time and that maybe Mowser was always destined to fail. Bad news for Mowser, but good news for the mobile web in general.

And it would seem that the latest round of statistics from the GSMA, Admob and m:metrics would suggest that all is well in the land of the mobile web.

First off, the GSMA announced that there are 3 billion active mobile subscribers globally. Yes, that's right THREE billion.

M:metrics shows us (full press release and tables here) that consumption of mobile media is pretty healthy too with 36% of 18 to 34 year old males in western Europeaccessing mobile media and 9% of them responding to a text message advert (versus a 4% market average).

Interestingly, U.S. mobile users are more active consumers of mobile media, as unlike Europeans they use SMS less frequently for news and information retrieval and are more likely to have data plans, which directly impacts mobile content consumption. Among Europeans, the UK has the highest percentage of mobile media users, at 26.8 percent, while Germany and France lag, at 18.4 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.

And in the UK, mobile media is attracting a highly desirable audience that is 44 percent more likely to be defined as ‘cash rich, time poor ‘than the market average and data from TGI M:Metrics confirms that one third of all UK mobile media users agree they are tempted to buy products they’ve seen advertised.

Meanwhile, over at Admob, they've just released their March report where traffic is up 10% on the previous month, 24.5% of ad requests globally were from smartphones and the Nokia n70 moved into the top spot for India. Interesting stuff. Read the full pdf report here.

And if those stats aren't enough, then check this post out from mjelly. 10 reasons why the mobile web isn't dead including the fact that 17 million Brits played on the mobile web in December 2007, 500k sites have been built on Peperonity, Admob publishes 2.5billion mobile web adverts monthly, flirtomatic mobile traffic triples their pc web traffic and getjar has delivered over 100m mobile downloads in the last 2 years.

Pah, doesn't sound like the mobile web is dead to me Mr Beattie.

Monday's mobile marketing tidbits

Blyk's delaying its launch until October. No bad thing as July and August are quiet times in retail. IMHO, Blyk should be launching in September to get the school, college and university kids signed up as they go back for the Autumn term, and that starts early September for schools and Sixth Form Colleges. Come October, we'll already be into half-term and well into silly season for Christmas which may be too late to launch something. I wonder if Blyk realises what an enormous task they've taken on? And I wonder if they've managed to sort out data charges so they can offer their customers a proper mobile content and media experience via wap or mobile internet?

Borders is extending their mobile marketing effort to provide sample chapters to customers' phones for free to promote new book titles. Details are currently a bit sketchy. I'm interested to see how this works in practice. The best example I've seen of this in the past was a poster campaign I saw at a railway station promoting a new thriller, Mr Clarinet. You texted in a keyword to a shortcode and by return, got back a link to a wapsite where you could read a synopsis of the book, part of the first chapter, find out more about the author and also click to buy the book. Perfect for whiling away 10 or 20 minutes while you are waiting for a train.

Three UK has launched 3next.mobi which is a user generated catalogue of stuff to do on your phone. A very nice idea where you can add applications and services that you like and add them in with your review of the service. It's free to join and not restricted to Three customers although it's designed specifically for Three's X-Series customers. Worth a look as an example of how to market content services. http://www.3next.mobi

And finally, Admob has now served more than 4 billion wap adverts, the last billion being published in the last 35 days. Way to go!

Random links on a First Monday

Beating congestion with mobile phones: This is nifty. In Rome, the authorities are using mobile phone signals to work out traffic hot spots over time so they can work out where the traffic jams will be in the future and therefore work out ways of keeping the traffic moving.

A very thorough article on how to monetise your mobile site with advertising including top tips on using the major players - Admob, Yahoo, Google and also some technical tips and hints. Well worth a look.

A write up by pal Tom on agency.com's buzzword take on online social networking. I have to say, I agree with him which is why I haven't written a piece on it and instead I am directing you to read his instead.

Whilst I was enjoying the Carnival that was Glastonbury, my fellow mobilists have been busy beavering away at the latest two instalments of the carnival of the mobilists... No 79 from Jag at Route 79 is rather good (well I would say that as he gives me a plug!) and incredibly thorough. And this week's, No 80, from my fellow female mobilist, Debi over at Mobile Jones., where she does a top job of rounding up this week's mobile writing.

Some older news but worth noting anyway...

Pandora launches personal radio for mobile. A great step forward, but until we have proper flat rate data plans, this ain't gonna fly which is why the launch is with Sprint so I can't test it to tell you what it's like.

Borders are doing mobile couponing in the UK and it appears to be an unqualified success. Although I'd love to see a comparision with other similar couponing activity they may have done and I'd also like to take a gander at the point of sale materials. The fact that it's mobile is possibly not the critical success factor here and I expect it's a combination of things.. can anyone give me any more info?

Mobile advertising - all hype?

I ran a session for the Institute of Direct Marketing last week and shortly after the session I got an email from one of my students who'd picked up on this article from Simon Mansell of TBG London. Said student thought it was quite amusing and a juxtaposition of what I'd been talking about for two hours that morning.

The article's not particularly well written so, to give Simon the benefit of the doubt, maybe it was a rush job, or it was heavily edited to fit the page or maybe Simon isn't exposed to the world of mobile [yet]. Or any combination thereof. But the facts just aren't straight.

The gist of the article is that mobile advertising has failed to deliver, the example being that the Google search interface is incompatible with mobile. And to some extent I agree - at least with the mobile search issues. I don't think that problem has been fixed yet, but it will be, over time. And actually mobile search is still a very small part of the mobile advertising, let alone mobile marketing, mix.

However, Simon really missed the elephant in the room and that is wap and the related wap advertising. You may think that wap is cr@p and isn't working and is expensive and at times, I'd have to agree with you. But we are seeing flat rate data plans from the network operators, including Pay As You Go customers, and the opening of the walled gardens from the operators with T-Mobile's web 'n walk for example.

But things really are moving with wap and wap advertising. The latest M:Metrics statistics show that 89.5% of UK mobile subscribers have a mobile phone with a web browser and some 44.8% of active users access news/information at least once a week and about a third of all UK subscribers browsed or downloaded from wap in the last month. None of that is to be sniffed at. And if you look globally, active usage is very much higher in India and South Africa, where data charges are almost nil. This is a ripe environment for wap advertising.

Add to that, that big brands are using wap advertising (think Coca Cola, The Times, Adidas), and that the GSMA has launched the first mobile advertising standards in conjunction with the MMA and that Admob has already served almost 3.5 billion wap adverts in its short existence, plus the acquisitions of Screen Tonic and Third Screen by Microsoft and AOL respectively, this is becoming major league.

Wap advertising is just one element of the mobile marketing mix but it's already an increasingly important one. It occurs to me both as observer and participant in mobile marketing and advertising that this wap advertising thing is really really happening and those who choose to ignore it do so at their peril.

top tips on increasing the click thru rates of your mobile ads

I'm just wading through my emails and backlog of things to do and spotted this from the guys at award-winning Admob, the largest wap advertising network globally and is growing at a pretty fast and furious rate. I thought it was advice well worth sharing. I've added my comments in italics.

5 Tips to increase the Click thru Rates of your mobile adverts

1. Change ad text frequently. Keep your campaign fresh and get the highest ROI (return on investment) by frequently changing ad text. Customers are more likely to click on ads that they haven't seen before. [People get bored, so it's not *that* difficult to expect to have to come up with new stuff is it?]

2. Use relevant links. Be sure that the click through URL takes your audience to a relevant landing page and that the product you are promoting is easy to find. [The right landing pages are crucial on web or wap. But get it wrong on wap and it's even worse as you don't have the space to play around with navigation on a phone for someone to bother finding the right page.]

3. Customize your advert. Include the user's phone model into the text of your ad, making it more relevant and dynamic. You can do so by inserting the %phn% tag into the text of your ad. For example, "Share pictures on your %phn%" would become "Share pictures on your RAZR" to a user viewing that ad from a RAZR. [This is particularly important for mobile content providers, and probably not so relevant to non-mobile brands]

4. Be timely. Reference hot products, sales, events and holidays. Be sure to update your text once time sensitive events are over. [Don't do a T-Mobile and send out a message promoting England football mobile content a) to a non-football fan and b) the day after England lost their Euro 2004 match!]

5. Experiment often. Try new ad text and targeting. Experiment with the Run of Network offering to attract more global traffic. Continually trying new things will help you to determine what works best for your business, as well as to ensure your ads are fresh. [I would add to this that you need to monitor closely to work out what is effective and what isn't. Define what success looks like and work backwards from that and measure. What you measure will vary from brand to brand and campaign to campaign, but unless you measure, you'll not be able to compare like with like.]

Mobile Advertising Guidelines published

If you're reading this blog, then the chances are that you have some kind of interest in mobile advertising. In which case, it's worth checking out the Mobile Marketing Asssociation's Mobile Advertising Guidelines document (pdf). It's US focussed but most of the rules apply over here in the UK and Europe. There are tips there about the different type of banner or click through campaigns you can do and some examples of how you might use them so well worth a look.

I've been using mobile advertising successfully for some of my clients in the last 6 months or so and I've been impressed with the results and conversion rates. Why not try it for yourself here with Admob who are one of the largest mobile advertising firms.

And finally, if you're after some new case studies to check out, then it's worth you have a look at the 2006 MMA Annual Mobile Marketing Guide in Association with Advertising Age (pdf). It was published in December 2006 so the information is still recent enough and it covers case studies from across the world, not just the USA.