Eswar Priyadarshan, CTO
iPhone 2.0, iPhone 3G, iPhone applications and the arrival of mobile browsers like Skyfire are prompting a lot of questions about the future direction of content adaptation for mobile and mobile advertising. As an entrepreneur who thrives in times of change, it is awesome to be wrestling with these huge strategic questions in a fast-moving, extremely visible space with lots of innovation and marketing dollars (and Euros, and Yuan and Rupees) at stake.
Let’s start with the full browser on the phone. Skyfire seems like the real deal (at least from the videos on the Skyfire site) – supporting all major Web content types with slick performance to boot. Safari on the iPhone just got a boost with 3G speeds and Blackberry will be arriving soon with a full Webkit-based browser (same as Safari). So is this good or bad for mobile adaptation specialists like Quattro Wireless?
I think it’s great that we’re getting real Javascript/Ajax browsers on mobile. It will make our creative and development lives much easier – basically we win on the mobilization side if we blow away both publisher and advertiser expectations on what mobile could be for them – what better way than if we had a real browsing platform to build on.
As for the publisher/advertiser who wants to leave their site alone because they don’t believe they have to adapt? The most compelling argument we can make to them is to show better click-thrus and higher ad revenue/eCPM on an adapted site versus an un-adapted one.
We’re working on such a study within Quattro right now (more to come soon) but the intuitive argument is pretty simple – take your average 1024x768 designed wired web page with perhaps 5 ad slots from Doubleclick, Google Syndication, AdBrite and the like – that works out to about 15-20 ads per page. Can all the ads actually be seen on a small display? Can the text CPC ads be read? Why have wired-targeted, wired centric ads that point to wired centric landing pages when you could be bringing in mobile targeted and mobile specific ads (with higher payouts) with smaller, lighter landing pages and microsites? Once you buy that mobile-targeted ads might be a good thing to try, shouldn’t you adapt your overall content user experience a bit with fewer ads and better targeting and placement?
What about the threat or promise implied by the iPhone application platform?
When I play Texas Hold’em on the iPhone, I realize that what I have in my hands is a whole new mobile content paradigm and it just throws out what we know about apps/Flash/web/mouse/trackball and replaces our old phone-with-data quaint notions with a handheld, touch-screen computer that happens to be a phone.
I believe that the new mobile platform, as now defined by iPhone 2.0, will be embraced by major media and consumer companies as their handheld portal or integrated remote-control – they should all race to provide their full content catalog within branded apps - especially the video catalog – perhaps with subscription, sponsorship and advertising tie-ins to their TV and cable offerings. I would expect to eventually see the phone app have remote control capabilities to drive what’s playing on the closest household TV or airplane seat TV monitor – maybe knocking off one of the 3 screens (Web) down to 2 (mobile and television). Of course, they’ll have an adapted mobile web site as well but it may be where a subset of the content catalog resides (e.g. the popular stuff).
What this means for mobile content and advertising platform providers like us is to realize that we have to adapt to a hybrid world where both browser-to-server and full-feature-app-to-server co-exist and where we should support the bigger matrix of content revenue models that these hybrid experiences open up. Like I said at the outset, it’s awesome to be wrestling with these questions – since behind them lay huge opportunities to add real value.
What this means for mobile content and advertising platform providers like us is to realize that we have to adapt to a hybrid world where both browser-to-server and full-feature-app-to-server co-exist and where we should support the bigger matrix of content revenue models that these hybrid experiences open up.
Posted by: eveonline isk | June 19, 2009 at 11:33 PM