Recently there has been lot of talk about virtual goods which are sometimes referred also as microtransactions.

According to wikipedia definition:

Virtual goods are non-physical objects that are purchased for use in online communities or online games.[1] They have no intrinsic value and, by definition, are intangible.[1] Virtual goods include such things as digital gifts[2][3] and digital clothing for avatars.

Martin wrote recently here that
analysts estimate, this year, virtual goods revenue will be $1 billion in the U.S. and about $5 billion worldwide. Another analyst predicts annual revenues will reach $15 billion by 2012.
Not a small amount considering that they have no intrinsic value (beside online environment they are sold in). Most analyst agree that this is just a beginning  and that market is only starting to evolve into serious player in mobile services world.

p>Sometimes simple ideas can lead to rather interesting business. And this presentation below describes the possibility of developing location based games which can be played through SMS.

Enjoy!

It is a somewhat refreshing experience to read this research conducted by AppTrigger. Unlike many similar articles and research summaries, there is little hype here and it lacks radical visions on how in two or three years time the whole life has moved into the mobile phone. Here they tell you that despite the avalanche of new mobile services, more than half of the mobile users in the UK use the phone still for the same activities as in 2003. The interpretation of figures is even too pessimistic in my opinion – standing in the midst of mobile services it is easy to overestimate their influence on an average user and sometimes a statistical reality check does you good. In my opinion it is good that a bit less than half of the mobile users have changed their habits in last couple of years.

Of those who use more advanced services, the following data emerged:

* Within the youth market (16 – 24 year olds) 62 per cent said that they download music or games;
* The ‘young careerist’ market (aged 25 – 34) said they are more likely to use their phones for PDA tools (diary, contacts and email) and checking websites (62 per cent and 69 per cent respectively);
* The mainstream age market (aged 35-44) make commercial transactions with their phones (39 per cent said they conduct transactions such as topping up their balance);
* The mature age group (45 to 55 year olds) were most likely to user their phones for checking websites;
* Only 22 per cent of mobile phone owners in all age groups said they have used Location-Based Services (LBS)

For several years the Nordic Mobile Media conference has been organized in Latvia and Lithuania. Now the scope has been broadened and the first Central European mobile media conference has been organized – mid-May in Prague. As expected, a lot of people were present, including my humble self, to find out how the Central European market differs from ours and what could we learn from them or take over. And vice versa.

After two days at the conference it seems that services like m-parking, m-payment, m-state etc. that are quite spread here, are viewed as “emerging services” – which is definitely a step ahead compared to the time some years ago, when no one even talked about those services. At the same time SMS services with periodic taxation (so called “clubs”) are more spread in Central and Eastern Europe than here. Our service providers are only making first tests with these.

Widely discussed new “future services” like mobile TV, selling full-length songs through mobile phones, mobile search etc. are still in the testing phase everywhere – some have achieved promising results, the majority still has nothing else to show than the bare existence of the service.

I’d better finish now. For those who are more interested, the organizers have put up slides of the speakers, from which I would bring out good overviews about mobile (service) market in Russia, the Czech Republic and the whole of Central and Eastern Europe.

One of the best overviews published lately on how the marketers today should feel about mobile marketing and where to start from, is Laura Marriott’s column The ABC’s of Mobile Marketing. The quick overview is divided into three parts and it is quite practical in nature, giving concrete suggestions on how and where to start in mobile marketing. As it is a topic which should precede my own few-months-old posting specifically on the psyche of SMS-campaigns, I would like to post Marriott’s ideas also here and supplement them with a few words.

The first of the three columns concentrates on different technologies incorporated under the flag of mobile marketing and the classifications of the channels. European marketers are familiar with the majority of those channels – special-priced messages, regular messages, even MMS in some cases are rather frequently used in mobile campaigns born in Europe, less so in North America.

Instead Marriott encourages to see the whole spectrum of mobile technologies and test various ones. I am sure that also WAP is a channel that would be willingly used, considering its sudden rise in popularity in all the Baltic States. WAP would be a great channel for distributing some exciting brand mobile videos. Since mobile marketing has gone through a 200% rise in the United States in 2005 and it is still allegedly lagging behind us (Europe) by a year or two, the experience gained from trying out exciting projects right now is very valuable and right on time.

The second part of Marriott’s column focuses on the choice of a partner. I agree that in areas where the marketer lacks competence, the choice of a right partner is of strategic importance. I believe that the majority of marketers would agree with me when I say that the choice of a partner is strategically important when selecting an advertising agency – long-term cooperation ensures stable quality. In addition to that, once the project managers get to know the products and brands, they can play with the solutions more and more creatively relying on the client’s visions and rules. Relying on my experience I dare to project the development of such synergy also to the relationship between a mobile marketing company and their clients.

But what to study and consider when choosing a provider of mobile services? Naturally, first one should go through all the links in the chain, starting from which operators the specific service provider cooperates with to which services the prospective service provider itself offers. Simple and logical? Yes, but at the same time so easily forgotten?

From other questions suggested by Marriott, I on my part would stress the topic of to what extent the prospective partner is concentrated on the solutions of mobile marketing. Mobile operators can be used as a good example here as they also can send messages in the required direction, but their main activities lie elsewhere. Similarly, there are many different activity niches among smaller service providers.

In the third and final text a few wide-spread mobile-connected myths are viewed. The most commonly known of those is the belief that mobile services are mostly used, and hence targeted at teenagers. The age dilemma has accompanied the field since its birth and stems from the fact that teenagers are indeed very active users of mobile services. But this fact does not justify excluding all the adults.

It is true that from certain age limit on the pattern according to which people use their mobile phones changes, but it would be wrong to assume that consumers in their forties or fifties only know how to use the green and the red button. The clue in approaching the target group is rather in the message, content and structure of the campaign. My retired grandfather looks very offended when I suggest that I could text message the solution of the crossword puzzle myself.

I hope that Laura Marriott’s thoughts make all the readers ponder about them – as you can see, they made me even write. Finally, my favourite quote, used by the author to sum up her thoughts – I believe it suits as an echo to my commentaries.

Mobile is now a mainstream marketing element. On “The Apprentice”
this past Tuesday night, Donald Trump encouraged the candidates to
boost consumer participation in a text-based campaign for Gillette.
If The Donald is doing it, shouldn’t you be, too?

/Laura Marriott,
Mobile Marketing Association <http://mmaglobal.com/> /

A while ago I-Touch Movilisto published some facts that had caught their attention during the three years of being in business. Despite the fact that the success of a marketing campaign is determined by approximately zillion different factors starting from the product characteristics and target group profile to the timing and context of the campaign, Movilisto dared to come forth with some concrete numbers. Thanks to that we are able to compare their experiences with those of us much more objectively.

Thus, without further delay, I would like to point out three observations from this study, which as a rule apply also to Canada and North America:

*5–20% of the target group usually respond to the call to send a text message and participate in a prize campaign.

To be precise, Movilisto’s analysis talks about people who come in contact with the calls for participation. At the same time one should mind the fact that in the context of sales promotion campaigns, “people who come in contact with the calls” are basically the buyers of the product. Of the latter some have chosen the campaign product because of the prize game and some have not – both groups notice the game targeted at them at some point or another and may participate in it if they wish to. Be it as may, with my experience based on conducting about 120 consumer games with Mobi, I honestly think that the participation percentage suggested by Movilisto can be used as a rule of thumb, with some excellent campaigns outdoing it from time to time.

*48% of people aged 20-40 participate in a suitable marketing campaign preferably via text messages.

The Internet follows with only 26% presumably because a text message can be quickly sent precisely at that moment when mouth-watering campaign prizes and attractive appeals printed on the box are discovered. As that may happen in a checkout line, by the stove or on a tram, the chances that a working Internet connection is at hand, is pretty slim. 19% of people allegedly respond preferably by calling and 7% of the people wish to participate via snail mail.

While viewing the present statistics, one should definitely take into consideration the context in which the response takes place – I believe that people participate in campaigns on product home pages which they can reach during their lunch break at the office by clicking on a banner, at the same time as the majority of consumer games have written their direct communication and participation instructions on labels, which can be studied anywhere.

*As a rule 65% of the campaigns use many response channels (the Internet, snail mail, etc.) and do not rely on mobile phones as the most preferred communication channel. The remaining 35% of the campaigns enabled participation only via text messages. My suggestion to the planners of similar campaigns is that if it is not a typical situation of a very specific participation, then all channels can be used, so as not to limit needlessly the participation in the campaign

I believe that those three facts and suggestions enable all consumer game planners to predict better their participation numbers. As a final commentary may it be said that I-Touch has connections with 95 operators all over the world and thus reaches 400 million end users.