Here’s a quick snapshot:   

My new article on Digital Ministry Driving Traffic to a Mobile Site describes some of the options available to mobile site owners for generating mobile traffic in Australia.

I introduce carrier portals, mobile search/SEM, mobile banners & SMS shortcodes, and discuss the local environment in some detail.

The article also includes examples of how local publishers are generating traffic to their mobile sites, including NineMSN, Fairfax, Sensis and News. I’d love to hear about any other examples seen locally.

In my last article I talked about using a mobile website as a content or advertising medium. Once you have a mobile site, you would naturally be keen to drive traffic to it.  Discoverability is a significant challenge in the mobile market today.

Accessing a mobile website on a phone can be quite cumbersome.  Almost all new mobile phones are released now with a mobile web browser resident on the handset.  Each handset is different, but usually there’s a menu item or button called ‘Web’ or ‘Internet’ that the user can select to load up the browser. 

To enter a URL you usually have to navigate through several menu options (eg. Bookmarks, Edit Bookmarks, Enter New Bookmark), then type in a URL using the mobile keypad. Although new handsets like the iPhone make this process far more intuitive, finding all the necessary dots & symbols on some handsets can be clunky & tiresome and many people don’t make it that far.

Given this barrier, solutions for the discovery of mobile websites are paramount, at least until more mobile phones are intuitive for URL entry & uptake of these devices reaches the mass market.  

Carrier Portals

The most common way that mobile website are discovered is through their Carrier’s content portal.  Each of Telstra, Optus, 3 & Vodafone operate a mobile content portal, on which selected content & information services are listed.  In many cases, users are unaware of any other way to access mobile content from their phone.

For the content owner, being included on one or more of these portals can be a challenge.  Each carrier operates a different policy for management of their portal.  Some require a revenue share of profits from the mobile site, others pay a fee to brands & content that complement their vision, while others include only content that they have commissioned & developed internally or with business partners.  

As an example, Telstra has recently divided their mobile portal into two sections labelled ‘Home’ and ‘Web’.  The mobile content and sites on the ‘Home’ tab have been endorsed by Telstra, and are free to browse (ie. there are no data charges for accessing any content), whereas sites linked to from the Web tab are independent and users will face data charges for browsing.

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In the current Australian market, inclusion in some way on a carrier portal is almost a guarantee of usage & awareness but as the market becomes saturated with content offerings, and ‘slots’ on portals are increasingly difficult to acquire, content owners are becoming more innovative in their attempts to attract usage.  

Mobile Search

Not unlike the mobile industry today, In the very early days of internet, people would find websites by visiting portals.  Usually these portals were the homepage of their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and included lists of links to recommended websites.   Before too long, users discovered that there was a world of content outside this “walled garden” and began exploring the wider web.  Search made that possible.  These days, it would be almost unthinkable to attempt to find ‘web content’ without using a search engine like Google.

The mobile web is currently a little like the early days of internet.  All of the major search engines have a mobile service and people are beginning to realise they can search the mobile web, just as they currently search the ‘normal’ web.  Try Google Mobile by entering http://m.google.com.au in your mobile browser.

In Australia the major carriers are embarking on relationships with search engines and implementing search on their portals.  For example Optus makes Google available on their mobile portal so that users can carry out mobile searches without having to leave the portal and enter in the Google URL.  Telstra also recently signed a deal with Yahoo to deliver Yahoo results in searches made from the BigPond mobile portal. 

As in the online industry, it is possible to use Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to buy mobile keywords, so that customers will see your text ad above mobile search results.  It is early days for Mobile SEM in Australia, but local publishers including CarsGuide, Fairfax & Sensis already buy mobile SEM keywords using Google, and traffic from mobile specific ad networks like AdMob (more on this in a future article).

Mobile Banners

Increasingly, local advertisers are testing the water with mobile banner campaigns.  A mobile banner behaves exactly the same way as a simple online banner, in that a clickable graphic is served onto a mobile website.  <
/span>When clicked on, the banner takes the user to a mobile destination site. NineMSN regularly serves mobile banners on their mobile sites, including  http://news.ninemsn.com.au/mobile/ (the 9 News mobile site).

Depending on campaign goals, the click through destination could be a permanent mobile site (such as http://mobile.whereis.com.au) to which the advertiser is attempting to drive traffic.  Alternatively the destination could be a campaign site which has been set up specifically.  Peugot recently ran a campaign whereby mobile banners were served on NineMSN’s mobile network.  The banners clicked through to a mobile campaign site for the Peugot 308.

Buying media for a local mobile banner campaign remains fairly fragmented.  Each of the carriers controls access to its own mobile customers, and although NineMSN performs something of a aggregator role as well as serving ads on their own network of mobile sites, each o
f the networks prefers to encourage advertisers to use only their mobile properties. Melbourne startup MDigital now offers a mobile media buying aggregation service, and my own business Mobilist can also help out in this area.  Before making mobile media decisions I highly recommend looking into all of the options as no single network can offer comprehensive coverage of the Australian market. 

SMS Shortcodes

Another way to cut out the tedious typing of a URL into a mobile phone browser is to send users a link via SMS. Many larger companies with mobile sites have established an SMS shortcode to simplify discoverability for new users.  

Usually the shortcode number is listed on a website, or included in an ‘offline’ advertisement (eg. magazine, bus shelter,  billboard etc).  Users send an SMS to the shortcode and receive a link back instantaneously via SMS.   Eg. to save entering http://cleo.mobi you could instead text the word ‘cleo’ to 19 34 34.and receive an SMS response containing a clickable link to the mobile version of Cleo Magazine.

The AIMIA ‘You can on a Mobile’ campaign website lists URLs and SMS Shortcodes for accessing many local mobile sites. (http://www.youcanonamobile.com.au/top-sites.html)

NOTE: This  article was originally published on Digital Ministry in April 2008, but has since been moved or deleted (?)  I have reposted it below so that it will have a permanent bookmark. 

NOTE: some details changed to update facts / links etc since April 08

The mobile site includes all the basic new car brochure-ware, as well as a simple dealer search function (by state only) and some wallpaper ‘goodies’ to download.

Guinness have launched a pub finder mobile site as a St Patrick’s day planner. Interesting to note they are hosting the campaign site on their own sub-domain at m.guinness.com.au.

Customers enter their birth date (presumably to preclude the under 18s) then choose a location to see a list of irish pubs in the area. They can then select pubs, add them to a planner and send the details to friends.

The site uses Google Maps to show pub locations. This campaign is simple & fun, and the user experience is intuitive. The premise is not only clear & compelling but also useful… I like!

Theoretically, mobile content is any type of media that can be accessed via a mobile phone, and mobile advertising is any advertising message using a mobile phone as a delivery mechanism.  Depending on who you are and what you’re trying to achieve, this could mean anything from a simple text based SMS message to a full scale mobile TV production.

So if your client demands that you include ‘mobile’ in their next campaign, do they know what they’re asking for?  Do you? Are they expecting you to tell them??

The mobile phone can be used as a content & advertising mechanism in many different ways, each suited to a different type of content or message, and each reaching a different kind of audience.

In this article we look at using SMS/MMS, mobile websites and downloadable applications as mechanisms for delivering content & messages via the mobile phone.

Messaging (SMS & MMS)

SMS is a useful medium for delivery of short snippets of information such as weather, wee
kly updates or directory services.  Users can subscribe to a regular SMS alert by signing up on a website such as Margaret & David’s ‘At the Movies’ site on the ABC http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/sms/   Customers text the word ‘movies’ to 197 00 222 to receive weekly reminders and movie star ratings via SMS.  This type of service is usually made available for a fee, either as an upfront cost (eg. $5 per month) or per SMS (eg. $0 25 per message). 

Other services operate on a request/response mechanism whereby users send an SMS to a designated number requesting the information they desire.  Bongo is an example of this type of service.  Users can send any question to 199 26646 (199 BONGO) and receive an answer in response. Eg. Send ‘Why is the sky blue?’ to 199 BONGO and receive a response back via SMS.  This kind of service is usually charged by Premium SMS based on the customer’s request.  eg. Bongo charges users $3.50 for every SMS request they make!

MMS can be used to deliver content that is graphical or video based, via either of the above mechanisms, although this depends on a mobile phone’s ability to receive MMS messages.

The Mobile Web

Mobile content that is not alert or snippet based is usually found or made available via the Mobile Web.
an class=”Apple-style-span” style=”">  Mobile websites are simply web pages which are designed to look right on a small screen .  Mobile phones are not (yet) as powerful as PCs and bandwith is generally significantly less across mobile phone networks,  so mobile websites need to be very simple, with limited graphics & audio visual components in order to operate successfully.  Over time however, increasingly complex & interactive mobile sites will be possible, as faster bandwidth & higher-end handsets become available (eg. the iPhone)

The ’Mobile’ web is in fact the same web as the ‘online’ web that most people are familiar with.  A mobile web page exists at a URL in the same way as a normal website.  eg. http://www.company.com.au    Mobile web sites are often given a slightly different URL to make them easily identifiable to mobile users.  This is not a technical requirement, but is becoming increasingly common.  While there’s no accepted convention, certain standards are encouraged, and the following variations are most regularly applied:

1. http://m.company.com.au

2. http://mobile.company.com.au
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3. http://www.company.mobi

4. http://www.company.com.au/mobile 

There is presently a great deal of demand for and interest in .mobi domain names and many brands are securing their web URL as a ‘dot mobi’ just in case.  As yet there is no trend towards any one of the above examples, but many well known web sites currently use a subdomain such as m. or mobile. for ther mobile version (see examples 1& 2 above).

Downloadable Applications

Some mobile services are accessed by downloading an application to the mobile phone itself.   Downloading applications used to be the preserve of more advanced users, but with handsets like the iPhone, this is becoming more & more common.   iPhone users can access an ‘App Store’ from their phone to quickly & easily download applications to use immediately.  This ease of download will soon become commonplace, but for most other devices it is still more tedious.  To get application software onto a (non iPhone) handset, users can connect to their PC with a USB cable and install the application using the PC software that came with their mobile phone.  Alternatively, many services now direct you to a mobile website URL where you can simply click on the ‘download’ link and follow the step by step instructions to install.

Shozu is a photo uploading tool that users can download from the Shozu mobile site http://m.shozu.com.  On visiting the URL, you’ll see a link to download the application.  Following the prompts will install the app on the phone and set up links to various photo sharing websites (eg. Flickr).   Once installed, shozu prompts with a message each time a photo is taken using the camera phone, asking if you’d like to send the photo instantly to Flickr.

Other applications that can be downloaded in this way include email software to allow mobile access to your account, local maps or instant messaging tools.  Try visiting http://www.fring.com on your mobile browser and download the Fring application to access your favourite IM service via your mobile, using VOIP.

Some companies that operate mobile websites also develop a downloadable version of their site for advanced users.  The downloadable version is usually more graphical, faster & easier to use, and often includes additional functionality not available on the mobile site.  Check out the downloadable version of Google maps by visiting http://m.google.com.au/maps on your mobile browser, and click on the link to ‘Install Now’.

Watch out with mobile applications though, as they can churn through a lot more data than a simple mobile site and you could be in for a shock when you receive your next mobile bill.  More on data charging and mobile site discoverability in future articles. 

NOTE: This article was originally published on Digital Ministry in Feb 2008, but has since been moved or deleted (?)  I have reposted it below so that it will have a permanent bookmark.

NOTE: some details changed to update facts / links etc.

The app crashed and hung my handset while attempting to retrieve festival data from the internet. There was no indication of the size of the data being retrieved, so perhaps it’s just as well!

Previous Advertisers include Amex, Pizza Hut & Best Western. Users enter their location details (Telstra users auto-located) and a mobile number on the Ad-site, to receive a coupon via SMS to claim the offer.

The HSBC adsite is very simple, with logo, text & links. It is a functional, template based design with little ‘branding’ other than logo. It’s unusual to see this kind of simplicity clearing the strict marketing controls of a bank, a necessary obstacle when introducing large corporates to the mobile channel.

The site for new Teen movie ‘Juno‘ is more complex, with links to session times, reviews, synopsis, downloads and a competition. The icing on the cake is some really clever integration withe NineMSN’s movie guide content. Session times for Juno are listed for my favourite cinemas (or includes a link for me to add cinemas if it’s not showing at any of my faves) and lets me click straight through to today’s sessions.