Over the past couple of years, marketers have woken up to the fact that mobile is potentially an extremely viable marketing channel. The very personal nature of a consumer’s relationship with their mobile phone makes it a great medium for highly targeted advertising.
And while Western markets are maturing and growth is slowing, in Asia there seems to be no end to consumers’ appetite for content delivered via the mobile channel. “APAC is the region that is growing fastest for us,” confirms Simone Ranucci, CEO and COO of Buongiorno Hong Kong. “We have experienced 100 per cent growth in the region this year, and we are forecasting the same for next year.”
There are two ends of the Asian mobile spectrum. One is the highly sophisticated countries such as Japan and South Korea, where consumers use their mobiles to redeem coupons, pay for goods, and even open the doors to their houses. In other, less sophisticated countries such as India, meanwhile, the mobile sector benefits from the low penetration of PCs. As a result, Indian consumers, like their Chinese counterparts, are comfortable with the idea of accessing mobile internet sites via their phones, and do so in great numbers.
So what then is the opportunity for branded mobile content in the region? Screen Digest, says that mobile media advertising (advertising tied to content, excluding display and search advertising) is expected to be worth euro 1.8 billion (US$ 2.4 billion) globally by 2012, with Asia accounting for 51 per cent of this.
“Mobile TV is expected to be the most potent mobile media in terms of advertising revenue, and fetch 90 per cent of the mobile media advertising market,” says Screen Digest mobile advertising analyst, Julien Theys.
Certainly, there is a healthy market for mobile TV in the region. Screen Digest says there are currently more than 15 million subscribers to mobile TV services in Asia, where the majority of broadcast networks are offered free-to-air. The mobile TV provider, ROK Entertainment Group, has mobile TV deployments with BSNL in India, Celcom Mobile in Malaysia, Telenor in Pakistan and AIS in Thailand. The Thai operation secured 15,000 subscribers in its first seven days of operation. ROK marketing director Bruce Renny says the company is keen to expand its mobile TV portfolio in the region. “Our future growth plans are very heavily focused on the developing world, because this is where the future growth of the mobile industry is going to come from.”
And while the carrier deployments are subscription services, free from advertising, Renny says that the three most popular countries for ROK’s ad-funded FreeBeTV service are India, China and Indonesia. In addition, YuuROK, a new ad-funded service from ROK that offers push e-mail plus content services such as news, sport and comedy video clips, attracted 300,000 users in its 100-day beta trial period, around 60 per cent of whom were based in India. “This tells me that whether you’re offering mobile TV, or just good, usable applications, entertainment and functionality on the mobile, there is a huge untapped market for ad-funded mobile services in the developing world,” says Renny.
Awy Julianto, head of Jamba Asia-Pacific, agrees that there could be a healthy market for branded, ad-funded mobile content in Asia, but says there are a few important issues to be overcome. The first is that Asian consumers are not particularly well educated about ad-funded mobile content, making it a difficult proposition for advertisers to get them to buy into. The second is the fact that most Asian mobile consumers are on pre-pay contract, and of less interest to the advertisers, who typically wish to target the more affluent contract customers. A third problem, says Julianto, lies with the operators, whom he feels need to accept a smaller slice of a larger pie.
“Telcos across board take more than a 50 per cent cut of aggregated content revenues, so it is very hard for the content providers to make money,” says Julianto. “In a market where voice revenues are falling, operators need to evolve. They can either take 60 per cent of $100 or 30 per cent of $1 million.”
If not, says Julianto, consumers will vote with their fingers and make their own choices about where and how they consume mobile content.
At Taiwan-based Far EastTone, Roger Chen, vice-president of business development, believes this is already starting to happen. “Thanks to the improved user interface on many handsets, it’s becoming easier for the user to browse the mobile web and find content themselves, rather than getting it from the operator’s portal. We are starting to see the breakdown of the walled garden.”
Emmanuel Allix, regional technology development director at GroupM Interaction, also believes that Asian consumers will come round to the idea of ad-funded content in time. “Mobile is still dominated by paid content, ringtones and wallpapers,” he says. “But my bet is that this will slow, and consumers will take to getting things for free as WAP and the web come together and the penetration of 3G handsets increases.”
This will take a few years to happen though, says Allix, noting that the very low penetration of 3G in Asia is a barrier to the use of branded rich media content, such as mobile games, for marketing purposes.
For the time being, with the exception of Japan and Korea, the reality is that mobile content is dominated by ring-back tones, where a mobile user pays for a song to be played back to someone calling their number while they are waiting for them to answer the call, which account for around 50 per cent of revenues; and SMS-based services, which account for around 80 per cent of what’s left.
The other notable aspect of Asian mobile content, says Ranucci, is that it is extremely local in nature, with Asian consumers for the most part preferring to consume content from other Asian artists. “In the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Australia, 50 per cent of the content base is more or less the same,” he says. “In Asia, local content is at least 80 per cent.” In India, for example, content associated with Bollywood movies is hugely popular with local consumers. In fact, says Ranucci, there’s an A-D of popular mobile content in India: A for Astrology; B for Bollywood; C for Cricket; and D for dating.
What Ranucci and his peers are now firmly focused on his how best to get to M for Monetisation.
And while Western markets are maturing and growth is slowing, in Asia there seems to be no end to consumers’ appetite for content delivered via the mobile channel. “APAC is the region that is growing fastest for us,” confirms Simone Ranucci, CEO and COO of Buongiorno Hong Kong. “We have experienced 100 per cent growth in the region this year, and we are forecasting the same for next year.”
There are two ends of the Asian mobile spectrum. One is the highly sophisticated countries such as Japan and South Korea, where consumers use their mobiles to redeem coupons, pay for goods, and even open the doors to their houses. In other, less sophisticated countries such as India, meanwhile, the mobile sector benefits from the low penetration of PCs. As a result, Indian consumers, like their Chinese counterparts, are comfortable with the idea of accessing mobile internet sites via their phones, and do so in great numbers.
So what then is the opportunity for branded mobile content in the region? Screen Digest, says that mobile media advertising (advertising tied to content, excluding display and search advertising) is expected to be worth euro 1.8 billion (US$ 2.4 billion) globally by 2012, with Asia accounting for 51 per cent of this.
“Mobile TV is expected to be the most potent mobile media in terms of advertising revenue, and fetch 90 per cent of the mobile media advertising market,” says Screen Digest mobile advertising analyst, Julien Theys.
Certainly, there is a healthy market for mobile TV in the region. Screen Digest says there are currently more than 15 million subscribers to mobile TV services in Asia, where the majority of broadcast networks are offered free-to-air. The mobile TV provider, ROK Entertainment Group, has mobile TV deployments with BSNL in India, Celcom Mobile in Malaysia, Telenor in Pakistan and AIS in Thailand. The Thai operation secured 15,000 subscribers in its first seven days of operation. ROK marketing director Bruce Renny says the company is keen to expand its mobile TV portfolio in the region. “Our future growth plans are very heavily focused on the developing world, because this is where the future growth of the mobile industry is going to come from.” And while the carrier deployments are subscription services, free from advertising, Renny says that the three most popular countries for ROK’s ad-funded FreeBeTV service are India, China and Indonesia. In addition, YuuROK, a new ad-funded service from ROK that offers push e-mail plus content services such as news, sport and comedy video clips, attracted 300,000 users in its 100-day beta trial period, around 60 per cent of whom were based in India. “This tells me that whether you’re offering mobile TV, or just good, usable applications, entertainment and functionality on the mobile, there is a huge untapped market for ad-funded mobile services in the developing world,” says Renny.
Awy Julianto, head of Jamba Asia-Pacific, agrees that there could be a healthy market for branded, ad-funded mobile content in Asia, but says there are a few important issues to be overcome. The first is that Asian consumers are not particularly well educated about ad-funded mobile content, making it a difficult proposition for advertisers to get them to buy into. The second is the fact that most Asian mobile consumers are on pre-pay contract, and of less interest to the advertisers, who typically wish to target the more affluent contract customers. A third problem, says Julianto, lies with the operators, whom he feels need to accept a smaller slice of a larger pie.
“Telcos across board take more than a 50 per cent cut of aggregated content revenues, so it is very hard for the content providers to make money,” says Julianto. “In a market where voice revenues are falling, operators need to evolve. They can either take 60 per cent of $100 or 30 per cent of $1 million.”
If not, says Julianto, consumers will vote with their fingers and make their own choices about where and how they consume mobile content.
At Taiwan-based Far EastTone, Roger Chen, vice-president of business development, believes this is already starting to happen. “Thanks to the improved user interface on many handsets, it’s becoming easier for the user to browse the mobile web and find content themselves, rather than getting it from the operator’s portal. We are starting to see the breakdown of the walled garden.”
Emmanuel Allix, regional technology development director at GroupM Interaction, also believes that Asian consumers will come round to the idea of ad-funded content in time. “Mobile is still dominated by paid content, ringtones and wallpapers,” he says. “But my bet is that this will slow, and consumers will take to getting things for free as WAP and the web come together and the penetration of 3G handsets increases.”This will take a few years to happen though, says Allix, noting that the very low penetration of 3G in Asia is a barrier to the use of branded rich media content, such as mobile games, for marketing purposes.
For the time being, with the exception of Japan and Korea, the reality is that mobile content is dominated by ring-back tones, where a mobile user pays for a song to be played back to someone calling their number while they are waiting for them to answer the call, which account for around 50 per cent of revenues; and SMS-based services, which account for around 80 per cent of what’s left.
The other notable aspect of Asian mobile content, says Ranucci, is that it is extremely local in nature, with Asian consumers for the most part preferring to consume content from other Asian artists. “In the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Australia, 50 per cent of the content base is more or less the same,” he says. “In Asia, local content is at least 80 per cent.” In India, for example, content associated with Bollywood movies is hugely popular with local consumers. In fact, says Ranucci, there’s an A-D of popular mobile content in India: A for Astrology; B for Bollywood; C for Cricket; and D for dating.
What Ranucci and his peers are now firmly focused on his how best to get to M for Monetisation.
.jpeg&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
.png&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
.png&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
.jpeg&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
.jpg&h=268&w=401&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
.jpg&h=268&w=401&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
.jpg&h=268&w=401&q=100&v=20170226&c=1)
