Oct 07
Posted: under advertising, Digital Migration, Mobile advertising technology, monetizing mobile content, Multimedia, new media, Web Tech.
I know how you feel, Barry. This quote from an excellent Wall St. Journal interview with one of the smarter (and more ruthless) guys in the media biz. He’s coming forward to explain why he busted up IAC. “You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. Social-networking advertising is being discounted [...] [...more]
I know how you feel, Barry.
This quote from an excellent Wall St. Journal interview with one of the smarter (and more ruthless) guys in the media biz. He’s coming forward to explain why he busted up IAC.
“You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. Social-networking advertising is being discounted because there is so much inventory [of available ad spots], and because methods have not yet been found to make it very effective. Will that get figured out? I absolutely believe it will. What form will it take? Absolutely unknown.”
Technorati Tags: Barry Diller, internet advertising, social networking, monetizing content
Sep 27
Posted: under Digital Migration, Mobile commerce, monetizing mobile content, new media.
Tags: Mobile commerce
Another quick hit, as I prepare content for the soon-to-be launched blog on Artesian Media. This one has to do with a “killer app” that already is a big hit in the rest of the world, but that has yet to take off here in the U.S. Last week, one of the more interesting announced [...] [...more]
Another quick hit, as I prepare content for the soon-to-be launched blog on Artesian Media. This one has to do with a “killer app” that already is a big hit in the rest of the world, but that has yet to take off here in the U.S.
Last week, one of the more interesting announced capabilities of Android/Gphone was the ability to form Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data connections. They billed it as a way that the Home Office can send secure data to its salesforce, or that users can securely share data with each other’s handsets, but … the first thing I thought of was that it would allow us all to access our bank accounts/credit cards/401(k)s from on our cellphones. Personally, I think it’s a useful app, but one that gives me the creeps, because for some reason I worry more about typing in the password to my bank account on my cellphone than I do on a desktop computer connected via broadband.
Why would that be, I wonder…? Hmmm… I’ll think of it in a moment. 
Well, Cnet is kinda dousing this idea with a bucket of cold Reality Water.
But despite the fact that there are many options and opportunities for cell phone subscribers to access their banking information and pay their bills on their mobile phones, the uptake for these applications and services has been pretty weak. According to Forrester Research, only about 3 percent of mobile subscribers in North America check financial accounts on their mobile phone at least once a month. This rate of adoption is lower than that of services like music downloading, which 5 percent of mobile users say they do at least once monthly.
“Mobile banking and bill payment has been available for a while now,” said Charles Golvin, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. “But it has yet to set the world on fire.”
In Third World countries, where a trip to the bank is kinda like tying pork chops to your torso and swimming through a crocodile pit, the prospect of being able to handle banking & money transactions without having to brave the cordons of thieves, muggers, kidnappers & encyclopedia salesmen that ring banks, looking for people with fat wallets, is a good one. I have to say, back when I was the managing editor of the Caracas Daily Journal, the locals in the print shop used to warn me not to carry my paycheck openly to the bank to cash it, because “ladrones y asesinos” were lurking in the streets, looking for the telltale business envelopes in people’s hands. Especially big, dumb gringoes like me … although, I have to say, if anyone were looking for a likely mark to shake down, I don’t think an envelope in my hand or not would really make that much of a difference.
Anyway – we have long used the difference in online banking in Brazil, as contrasted with the U.S., as a teaching tool in our New Media training sessions. The point of the exercise is not to dwell on how much banks in other countries are f’d up, as compared to the U.S., but to think about how a digital, online solution to a problem can be specific to a single market, or market condition. Viz:
Besides the convenience factor, another reason mobile banking hasn’t take off is that there are few compelling reasons to access bank or bill-paying information on a mobile phone when most people in the U.S. have easy access to a computer. With overdraft protection, automatic bill paying, and convenient and easy access to ATM cash machines, most people don’t need up-to-the minute check balance information, nor do they need to be able to pay bills while walking around town.
Technorati Tags: mobile banking, Google Android, SSL connections
Sep 11
Posted: under advertising, Community, Design, Digital Migration, google, Mobile advertising technology, monetizing mobile content, new media, Newspaper Deathwatch, Newspapers, Online Video, visual storytelling, Web Tech, Yahoo oneConnect.
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them. 1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – [...] [...more]
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them.
1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – tying together 
all our virtual identities with its oneConnect application. It’s been said, over and over (AND OVER) again that the first company to figure out how to provide the one-stop platform for social media interactivity over cellphones, is going to be the next Google (if Google itself doesn’t snarf up that space as well). The dream is that oneConnect (or whatever) becomes the way to keep up with what your friends on Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, etc. etc. are doing, and a way to post constant updates on where/what/why/with whom/teh awesum!1!/go away now/overload to all the places where you share your life’s experiences with the world.
Leaving aside for the moment the sneaking suspicion that aggregating all our identities through one company’s pipe may not turn out to be such a bright idea, the software is apparently generating the skepticism already.
Yahoo has been trying to hype this app since, oh, Barcelone in February, and to my knowledge, they really haven’t gotten that much traction with it, despite the best efforts of their developers.
I’d like to see Yahoo manage to pull this off; like many others, I’m starting to get more & more uneasy about Google’s unchallenged dominance, and I’d just as soon they not have complete control over what I do, see, say & hear, as well as knowing who I’m doing said communicating with/near/for/against.
Moving on.
2. Pointroll is wowing the attendees at the CTIA, offering easy(ier?) ways of taking rich media ads and porting them over to the mobile platform. Their demo of interactive ads on the iPhone, done through and with USA Today, has publishers and advertisers pondering if the time has actually come to start migrating the TV ad spending over to the phones that the 14-24s are actually using, paying attention to, and carrying with them everywhere.
The bad news for Yahoo is that PointRoll is hyping that using their platform will allow ads to run across the entire Google content network. Viz:
The Google content network encompasses hundreds of thousands of
websites, including premium publishers and long-tail niche sites.
Google and PointRoll worked together to ensure that the ads served to
the Google content network meet Google’s policies and specifications.
After completing Google’s certification process, PointRoll’s
sophisticated targeting technologies can now optimize the breadth of
Google’s sites and categories, matching advertisers’ messages to the
users who find them most relevant.
Again, nice hype. But in light of the struggles that Google has had with Android, I remain skeptical that they have managed to so quickly solve all the problems with serving mobile ads in anything like a timely manner. I just think that there’s still too much market fragmentation to be able to claim that this One Size Fits All app will reach a mass audience.
To backup my point, allow me to quote a piece in the paper today: one of the problems many sites are running into is that about 25% of web users are still limping along with Internet Explorer 6.0.
(Pause to allow veteran web developers to spit, vomit, scream, make the two-fingered “sign of the devil’s horns” to ward off evil.)
IE 6.0 is widely recognized as the shittiest web browser ever inflicted on the public. It was launched in 2001. Since then, Microsoft has bugged users to upgrade, remove, kill, quash, forget, shred, this browser. The fact that a quarte
r of users in the U.S. still view the web through its Funhouse Mirror interface shows that 1) A large proportion of the public continues to employ legacy technology no matter how Christawful it is, 2) these folks ignore new technology, no matter how much better it is, for fear that upgrading will somehow cause them a problem, and 3) any tech solution based on the assumption that people will be running the latest&greatest hardware and software is doomed to die like like a possum wandering onto the Indy 500 speedway.
3. Millennial Media is competing with PointRoll to serve multimedia ads to the mobile market. And we’re going to have to stop here, because it’s time to load up the Conestoga wagon and head back to LA.
Technorati Tags: monetizing mobile, google, yahoo oneconnect, PointRoll
