It turns out Mobilista is no longer my number one baby!  That’s right, I’m on maternity leave, due to re-emerge around the middle of 2010.   I won’t bore you with the details, but keeping business afloat while pregnant has been more than enough of a challenge over the last 6 months and I’m afraid this blog has suffered some neglect.

I’m always keen to hear from people with opinions to share & stories to tell about our local mobile industry, so if you have an article you’d like to contribute to Mobilista, please drop me a line and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, go forth and multiply your mobile activities and give me some juicy activities to write about when I return, with a vengeance, later in this year of mobile.  (Did you know 2010 is the year of mobile - again!??)

Carnival of the Mobilists

There’s always a lot happening in mobile, but I try to keep the focus of Mobilista on Australian happenings as there are plenty of places to go for global mobile news.  If you’re keen to tap into some of these global blogs and discussions, you might want to check out the Carnival of the Mobilists,  a weekly wrap up of blog posts talking about mobile.   The Carnival has a global focus so the news isn’t always relevant in Australia, but it’s a great backgrounder.  Each week the Carnival is hosted by a different mobile blogger, so everyone benefits from the traffic & exposure.  The host researches and selects the best articles from the week, and provides a quick summary and links.   This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Caroline Lewko from wipJAM.

MMA Mobile Marketing Forum, Berlin

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is holding their Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin this week. Aussie mobilist Oliver Palmer from Tigerspike is there and has been live tweeting from the event.   You can follow Oliver on Twitter to keep up with what’s happening, or use Twitter Search for the hashtag #mmf09 to see everybody’s tweets from the event.  Several of the presentations are already live on the MMF website and general feeling from the event is that it is a very exciting time for mobile marketing and advertising (OMG did someone say  THIS is the year of mobile??)

mNet to merge with Mercury Mobility

In more local news, Australian business mNet Corporation announced yesterday that they will be merging with mobile content & personalisation company Mercury Mobility. According to the press release, the combined business will produce ”a new generation of mobile expertise and capabilities, targeting global mobile carriers, media companies and content and brand owners”.  This article in Computerworld provides a good overview of the merger details, and you can follow mNet CEO Horden Wiltshire on Twitter.

The first article is from Jonny Schneider, a Melbourne based mobile-web Producer, currently working on Yellow Mobile.  In this article Jonny talks about the differences between Online and Mobile SEO and the importance of developing a differentiated strategy to ensure that finding your mobile site is easier than finding a needle in a haystack!

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So why do I need Mobile SEO?

It’s easy to throw the term SEO around, and now that mobile web has arrived, there’re a lot of people asking what Mobile SEO is all about. A good place to start is to get right back to basics, what is SEO? Don’t dig too deep, just think about the acronym ‘SEO’ for a moment - it stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It deals with optimising your content to increase its find-ability through search engines, which brings more exposure to your product. Okay, easy. So Mobile SEO is about optimising mobile content for mobile search engines.

If you already know what SEO is, stay with me, in this article, we’ll discuss Platform and Context; why it matters for mobile content; and how this might influence your SEO strategy.

We’ve already established that SEO is basically about making content play nice with search engines. If you’ve got simple, text-heavy content published for web and you’re targeting people searching for specific information through mainstream search engines, then it’s a pinch - you can employ one of the tried and tested optimisation techniques and watch your organic traffic gradually increase in response. If your mobile content has similar structure and is targeted in the same way, then some of those techniques can be modified for mobile and may yield some results.

However, mobile content doesn’t usually have many similarities with online content. That’s because the context is different. Mobile content might be more concerned with things like location and immediacy. I need something near me, right now. Or perhaps you’re after something specific to a particular device, like a ring tone, application or game. We’ve now got the complexity of non-standard content along with a new context to consider. Here’s an example: if your product is targeted at a geographic region, is it possible to optimise your site content to give a higher rank when someone does a search while physically occupying that geographic region?

Mobile as a Platform brings another layer of complexity.

Let’s start with coding standards for mobile web. Basically, there are none. This is not for lack of trying, it’s got more to do with the hundreds of handset manufacturers producing devices according to their own specifications all handling web browsing in their own unique way. This creates complexity, and means that mobile web content that is suitable for everyone is often restricted by the lowest common denominator.

Then we have the confusion created by mobile search engines and more specifically how they determine what’s ’mobile’ and what’s not. Let’s not go into detail on that now but you might want to read the full analysis in this article.

What if you have both online and mobile content? For example, a strong online presence supported by a cut-down mobile version. Or perhaps you have mobile ad campaigns using mobile landing pages that advertise an online brand. How can you stop your mobile content from ‘competing’ with it’s online equivalent in search engines and how do you make sure mobile users don’t get the online content and vice versa? Next generation devices like Android and iPhone are making this even more difficult as the lines between mobile and online are blurred further.

By now you can see there are as many similarities as there are differences when talking about mobile and online content. No doubt, your content is also different to your competitor’s. These factors combine to suggest that SEO can’t be store bought - it has nuances and the best solutions are tailored to consider your content, your platforms and your target audiences.

If you’re just getting started though, here’re a few useful things to get you on your way:

MobiReady

MobiReady is an automated analysis tool designed to help you understand potential problems on your site that may hinder search engines from finding and classifying your content properly. It’s not focused specifically on SEO, but it does give an indication of the suitability of your site for mobile devices. Generally, the more mobile ready your site is, the easier it will be for a search engine to index.

MetaTXT Discoverability Standard

In simple terms, MetaTXT is a set of instructions used to help search engines to understand the relationship between an online and mobile site for SEO purposes. These instructions help search engine indexers find the mobile version of your site from the online version and vice versa by giving information such as the location of sitemaps, and target URLs for both online and mobile sites in a single file. It’s quite straight forward, and you can find everything you need to implement it at http://metatxt.org/.

Go Mobile SEO Tool

In April 2009 Visibility Mobile launched the first ever Mobile SEO tool in Go Mobile SEO. It’s aimed at the DIY audience and offers a range of optimisation tips and techniques based on automated analysis specific to your site. It’s a per-use service, and the toolkit is designed to get your site ready for the major mobile search engines.

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This article was written by Jonny Schneider as a guest on Mobilista.   You can read more from Jonny on his blog Rogerwilco and he’s also available for Mobile SEO consulting if you’d like to delve a little deeper into the area.

Today’s article in the Australian gives us the usual launch and press release stuff but is pretty light on details.   B&T have managed to dig out a bit more information, including a name (Dawn Goh) to head up this new division and a URL from the Optus site www.optus.com.au/advertise (a search for Mobile Advertising on the Optus Home page still draws a blank).

We heard last week from Brad over at Digital Ministry that Optus will be using MIA’s AdFactory solution to serve and manage their mobile ad campaigns.

Although we’ve seen releases before from Optus talking about mobile advertising, with the appointment of a solution provider, it looks like it might finally be happening.  There is also a bona fide rate card up on their site, with CPM rates for banners and M-Site Builds.

No surprises there - rates are generally comparable to the other players in the market, if a big high (untargeted banners are $30-$40 CPM) and there’s not much info about targeting capability.

With Optus servicing a large portion of Australia’s iPhone customers it would be quite a coup if they could offer iPhone targeting early on.

Speaking of which, I recently heard of another  local carrier offering iPhone targeting, even though it’s not an advertised  service.  Anyone got any light to shed on this?   I regularly target iPhone users via AdMob for my clients and I am not yet aware of any other Aus business offering this - would love to know more if you know otherwise?

MEGA (mobile enterprise growth alliance) is a programme that brings together industry & government with entrepeneurs to build our local mobile industry.  The supporters of MEGA reads like a who’s who of the mobile industry in Australia.   Dozens of local mobile practitioners with a broad mix of technical, creative and business skills have volunteered their time to teach and mentor MEGA participants over the duration of the 4 month programme. The culmination is a pitch day, when participants have the opportunity to lay out their business plans in front of potential investors and business people.

The closing date for applications is this Friday and participants will be selected based on their background, experience, project ideas and above all their passion and enthusiasm.   Passion was a key theme of the info session actually.  The inimitable Justin Brow is a walking advertisement for passion, and his enthusiasm had rubbed off on everyone by the end of the session.  I think this is a genuinely exciting programme and one I am proud to be a supporter of.

You can’t beat the opportunity to be guided by industry experts and introduced to high profile business leaders in your field of interest.  If you have a mobile idea, or just really want to get a foot in the door in the mobile industry, this could be the opportunity you’ve been looking for.

You’ve got til next Friday to apply, so get onto it ASAP!  And, if I can give you a little hint - I heard it said at the info session that if your application is overflowing with nothing but passion & enthusiasm - you’re a sure thing to be selected!

Any Melbournites with an interest in our local mobile industry, this is your chance to get involved. Non-members are welcome to come along and check things out, and I highly recommend it. The more enthusiastic, active participants we can encourage to join this kind of industry group, the better for us all.

The meeting will be held at Tress Cox offices in both Melbourne and Sydney on July 14^th (3pm – 5pm) with a video hook up to the Sydney folk.

Sydney:        Level 20, 135 King St, Sydney
Melbourne:    Level 9, 469 La Trobe St, Melbourne

MIG’s recent newsletter reminder included an overview of some of the projects the group has been working on lately – and (with apologies to Jennifer Wilson) I’ve reproduced large chunks of it below verbatim!

QR Codes

We’ve been talking about the need for education around QR codes. There is some interest from AMTA in considering stricter regulation of these (including the potential of mediating these through linking to the carrier for confirmation rather than directly to the content. MIG’s view is that we are opposed to mediation and want to retain direct access). We are setting up an education site (scanme.com.au) to provide information and access to a QR code reader for consumers.

MMA Council

We’ve also talked about whether we need a separate MMA Council in Australia outside of MIG, and our general view is that we strongly support stronger links with MMA (we already have good relations) but we really don’t want to fragment the industry so we’d rather MIG took this role.

Wholesale Data rates for advertisers

We talked about a few carrier related issues, including whether we can get agreement on wholesale data rates (for advertising, notably where delivered off-deck); how we can extend mCommerce (including WAP billing); and getting more GPS information (such as the location of a specific handset or a list of all the handsets in a particular area). As work on this is already being done by Comms Alliance, we’ve met with them and are talking to the Mobile Content and Services committee to see if we can coordinate agendas on this.

Intern Program

We have an Intern program, which may have already taken advantage of. There are several great candidates available at the moment and Julia will be able to update us and take any requests from companies who are interested in taking on an intern.

Mobile Newsletter & You Can On a Mobile

We also have the monthly AIMIA Mobile Newsletter (edited by Eduardo Chavez). Please send any new launched, articles, ideas or sites you like to Eduardo.

Additionally, we are revamping the education site (You Can on a Mobile) and will be listing sites that we like (self promotion is strongly encouraged) so do send through sites that you’ve built that you would like featured or talked about.

Mobile Ad Guidelines, Mobile Measurement & AMPLI

We launched the Mobile Advertising Guidelines earlier this month; have a new Mobile Traffic Measurement Index due out fairly soon (covering the quarter to March) and have just launched the data gather exercise which underpins the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle index Survey (AMPLIS) – which will be launched around September.

If there’s anything you’d like to raise for discussion at the next meeting, don’t hesitate to send agenda items through to MIG Chair, Jennifer Wilson

I’ll be helping to coordinate the meeting here in Melbourne on July 14^th, so feel free to get in touch with any questions.

The original document is here AIMIA Mobile Advertising Guidelines and see launch comments below from AIMIA:

“Mobile advertising is the placement of advertisements (currently display and search are the most commonly used) on mobile internet sites - both on the carrier portal and off-portal. Mobile advertising has the potential to deliver highly targeted, highly personalised advertising to a majority of the population - all those that have a mobile phone. Brands, publishers and agencies have begun to use mobile advertising for a wide variety of marketing motivations including customer acquisition, revenue generation, brand awareness and distribution.

Following extensive consultation with carriers, publishers, content aggregators and content providers here in Australia, and with industry bodies internationally, the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group has formulated Mobile Advertising Guidelines to support the professional growth and development of Mobile Advertising in Australia. The guidelines have also been endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia. This is intended to be a living document, growing and changing as the mobile advertising industry grows and matures.”

Given AIMIA intends for this to be a living document - I thought it would be good to have a central place to encourage discussion on its future.

Things move very fast in this industry, and no sooner is a document published than new handsets, browsers and standards emerge.  If you have an opinion on the AIMIA Mobile Advertising Guidelines, or thoughts on where future guidelines ought to focus, please comment below.

I’ll also update this post with links to any discussions elsewhere if you send them through.

This latest report is based an about 100 mobile campaigns, from Amethon’s global customer base. All of the data comes from developed countries with similar mobile penetration and is normalisd by population. Given this, and the fact that Amethon is an Australian company, I would suggest the data is fairly relevant to Australia.

The report ‘Mobile Advertising – After the Click-Through’ focuses on user interaction for mobile campaigns AFTER clicking on a banner ad.

Some of Amethon’s findings

• Mobile Sites (including Telco & off-deck) make up 23% of all mobile campaigns
• Automotive, Movie and Alcohol categories make up 44% of all mobile campaigns
• 50% of Movie category campaigns and 38% of Alcohol campaigns have a downloadable component
• Page views per visit were almost identical for campaigns with/without downloads
• Average page views per visist is 1.53
• Bounce rates for mobile campaigns sites are very high – 67%
• Excluding bounce visits (leaving after 1 page) average page views is high – 4.15%
• Only 33% of consumers venture beyond the first page of a mobile campaign site
• Mobile Services are the most common campaign type (22%) however these have below average page views per visit (1.35)

I thought the report successfully highlighted the current failure of our industry to deliver campaign microsites that offer a compelling, engaging experience.

Bounce rates (the number of people who leave after the first page) are significantly higher than online, where you might aim for 20 – 30% as an ideal. This highlights just how badly we as an industry are using ‘micro-sites’ in my opinion. While Mobile Advertising boasts higher than average click through rates, advertisers are clearly not optimising their campaigns to hold on to customers once they have clicked through.

Another observation made by Amethon is that campaigns have little ‘made for mobile’ content – ie. they are repurposing TV ads, movie trailers and the like. In my mind this is closely linked to the high bounce rates.

Mobile is a unique medium with obvious advantages for interaction, conversation and engagement. If we squander this opportunity by throwing old, re-used content at mobile users, we should expect little more.

Mobile Advertising is not just about getting the click throughs – it’s about what happens next, and it makes me tired to see the same old strategies being trotted out time and time again. It’s actually been years now. Let’s try something different!!

So what do you have to do to bring those bounce rates down and pick up average page views per visit?

• Clearly communicate the benefit of clicking on an ad – and don’t disappoint the customer once they arrive
• Use your mobile destination to create a MOBILE specific interaction by taking advantage of the unique properties of the medium (location, context, identity, mobility, immediacy)
• Don’t repurpose content from another medium – unless it makes perfect sense to do so (Movie trailers are an example that work. TV Ads are generally not)
• Use a mobile specialist to build your mobile site / micro-site / landing page. They know how to work with the small screen and optimise for different handsets. An average (or crappy) user experience does not encourage your customers to stick around.
• Think about mobile at the beginning of your campaign plan and integrate with online & offline components, with mobile to tie it all together.
• Be creative (please???)

Mobile is not ‘the little web’. It’s something else altogether – a whole new medium. Use it that way, and you WILL see results.

Now let’s cross our fingers that Amethon’s report this time next year will show a prettier picture and prove we’ve learned our lessons and moved on from here!

For more information and to request a copy of the report, visit Amethon.

The AIMIA Mobile Industry Group is launching the updated AIMIA Mobile Advertising Guidelines on June 10, 2009 in Sydney. The launch event is from 9.30 - 12.00 on the 10th at the KPMG Auditorium and includes presentations on Mobile Advertising from Kelly Ajai (Communicator), Kerry Field (Mindshare), Jon Slade (NineMSN) and Angus Beattie (3 Mobile). The morning will be moderated by the inimitable Jennifer Wilson, Chair of the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group.

This will be a good chance to mix it with the local mobile advertising crew, and hear about mobile advertising from the experts. I’ll be there! More info and registration details from AIMIA.

It’s now time to up the stakes and create a new, more professional home on the web.   So welcome to the brand new Mobilista, full of all sorts of mobile industry goodness for Australia!

The centrepiece to this site is my blog about mobile advertising and marketing in Australia, but there’s more to it than that.  I hope to provide a valuable resource to the Australian mobile industry by consolidating links, articles and information that will help businesses work with the mobile channel in Australia.

The launch of this site marks phase 1 in a rebranding of my consulting business as well.   Over time the blog has grown to become core to the business, and so “Mobilist” is in the process of becoming “MobilistA“ as well. No more confusion!

Take a look around and please let me know what you think.  The site and content are a work in progress and I am very keen to hear suggestions on what else to include.

I’m also open to hearing from contributors who have an opinion about our local mobile industry.  If you already write about mobile stuff, please drop me a line with links to your content - I’d love to reference it.  If you’d like to write about something that is relevant to the audience of Mobilista, get in touch and I’d be happy to invite you to write a guest post here.  And finally comments on all posts are very welcome, whether you agree with the opinions or not.  It would be great to get some discussion going on some of the current issues facing us all.

The site also includes  information about the consulting, training, speaking and mobile advertising services that Mobilista offers.

Thanks to everyone I have met over the last few years, and for all your encouragement and support in making Mobilista a viable business.  Getting to this point would not have been possible without the awesomeness of groups like Mobile Monday, the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group and all of the passionate individuals that make up our  strong and vibrant mobile community down under.

I hope to see, speak, tweet, comment, facebook, email, chat or hear from you soon!

Emily