It remains unclear whether marketers and NBC will seize the “Olympic moment” to mainstream mobile marketing. I’m skeptical. But clearly fans will be tapping mobile resources (WAP, SMS) to check results and standings. Nielsen Mobile (via Fierce Wireless) has found strong interest in access to Olympics coverage and results on mobile:

What information do users want on the mobile internet?

US mobile users:

1.  Event Results (66.3%)
2.  Medal Counts (44.3%)
3.  TV Schedule (43.7%)

UK mobile users:

1. Event Results (73.5%)
2. Read Articles (37.4%)
3. Medal Counts (34.2%)

On the desktop, Google and Yahoo have created shortcuts and special “onebox” features to showcase the medal counts and standings. Yahoo has also developed a mobile site (as well as SMS alerts) to provide coverage to mobile users:

Note the Visa banner, which when clicked leads to this site:

The near-term growth for mobile marketing and advertising will come in the form of “mobile response” or other mobile tie-ins with traditional media (e.g., TV, newspapers, magazines). The benefits of this are more self-evident to advertisers and there are fewer questions about reach, analytics, etc.

It will be interesting to see how much mobile is referenced or otherwise promoted by NBC and/or its sponsors during the games. I’m guessing not much. If not, however, it will be a missed opportunity given the huge audiences that are expected to tune in.

Forrester’s latest demographic research contrasts technology usage and adoption among “Gen X” and members of “Gen Y.” Those in Gen Y are currently 18-28 years old, while Gen X are 29-42. (A “generation” used to be 20 years.)

The big “takeaway” is that Gen Y is the first “native online population.” That means technology and the Internet are more central to their lives that previous generations, even Gen X.

Here are some of the characteristics of the group according to the Forrester research:

• Gen Y is online more hours than its members watch TV (this is the first group to do so)
• Just over 80% of Gen Y members own mobile phones
• 72% of Gen Y mobile phone owners are SMS users
• About 20% access the mobile Internet at least monthly

In another “generation” we’ll see some of these numbers grow higher, even mobile phone penetration and especially mobile Internet access. Data plan penetration will likely drive more mobile Internet and a further erosion of landlines. We may even see mobile become the primary Internet access vehicle for some number of users.

The Mobile LinuxWorld conerence, covered by both InternetNews and InformationWeek, representatives of the LiMo Foundation appeared to reach out to competitor Android/Google to join forces on a common platform to expedite development and create broader reach. Google, for its part, appeared to resist the call:

“Unification for the sake of unification is not the path we decided to go down,” [Google’s Eric Chu] said during a panel discussion of the mobile marketplace at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco. “In the end, what matters most is what consumers are looking for. But having too many people on the design phase, especially early on, would have hurt the project. You could have three different user interfaces and a couple of application layers. That doesn’t make sense.”

LiMo already has a range of phones from Motorola, LG, Panasonic and others in various markets today. Android phones are supposed to be out (from T-Mobile, HTC) by the end of this year.

There are a number of overlapping members in both the LiMo Foundation and the Open Handset Alliance.

US number three carrier Sprint released Q2 results. Losses continued but the company suggested that things were stabilizing:

• Stable post-paid ARPU, driven by the success of Simply Everything with high value customers, and lower operating expense drive $87 million sequential improvement to Consolidated Adjusted OIBDA of $2.1 billion
• Post-paid churn improves more than 45 basis points from 1Q ‘08, to below 2.0%

Yet:

• The company served 51.9 million customers at the end of the period, compared to 54.0 million at the end of the second quarter of 2007. The company’s mix of prime customers improved sequentially and year-over-year for new customers and the post-paid base.
• For the quarter, total wireless customers declined by 901,000, including losses of 776,000 post-paid customers and 250,000 traditional prepaid users, partially offset by gains of 112,000 Boost Unlimited customers and a 13,000 increase in the number of wholesale and affiliate subscribers.
• At the end of the second quarter, the company served 38.9 million post-paid subscribers, 4.2 million prepaid subscribers and 8.7 million wholesale and affiliate subscribers.
• Subscribers by network platform include 35.5 million on CDMA, 14.6 million on iDEN and 1.7 million PowerSource users who utilize both networks.
• In the second quarter, the company added to its device and service capabilities with the launch of the Instinct, the nationwide introduction of four Nextel Direct Connect handsets on CDMA using the EVDO-Rev A network, and the Blackberry Curve. The company also simplified its service pricing and completed its conversion of post-paid subscribers to a new unified billing platform.

(emphasis added).

These continuing subscriber losses compare unfavorably with AT&T and Verizon, which posted subscriber and revenue gains.

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Here’s more on the Q2 financial results from Bloomberg.

A post on TechCrunch yesterday suggested ChaCha was cutting the pay rate of its human guides to save costs as a prelude to “implosion.” When I had last spoken to ChaCha the company had presented a very different picture so I decided to investigate and contacted co-founder Brad Bostic.

Bostic told me that ChaCha had been seeing near triple digit growth in query volume and that the company was beginning to introduce advertising, having done a successful mobile campaign with Coke around MyCokeRewards in connection with a Nascar event. He also said ChaCha was gearing up for mobile commerce.

Regarding the compensation of guides, Bostic said that the company was trying to improve the compensation of efficient and successful guides and do the opposite with those who weren’t performing. He told me this was just another step in an ongoing process of refining their compensation.

Based on my history of conversations with Bostic and dealings with ChaCha I have no reason to doubt the veracity of what he’s telling me. But if one was a skeptic one might want additional, “empirical” confirmation of Bostic’s growth claims. I asked the company for some data.

The rest of this post is at Screenwerk. 

We got time with TheFind CEO Siva Kumar a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of the company’s iPhone launch. The company has formally announced its app and it’s likely to be a game changer for TheFind, which is a terrific engine but has had limited consumer awareness on the desktop:

TheFind: Where to Shop bridges the gap between online research and offline purchases, enabling shoppers to compare products and pricing – while out and about — and ensuring that they find exactly what they’re searching for, quickly and easily within their neighborhood. With a comprehensive index of more than 250 million products covering 200,000 store locations, TheFind’s iPhone application aims to be the best resource for savvy shoppers.

TheFind is sourcing local inventory data from Krillion and NearbyNow and will bring that information to the iPhone, together with the phone’s location awareness. (Slifter offers a less elegantly presented version of this content.) That means individuals out and about will be able to determine what store near them has the desired pair of Brooks running shoes or the particular flat-panel TV they’re interested in.

When they’re in store X and it’s out of a particular item people will be able to check and see if another nearby store offers the same or a comparable product. There’s also nice continuity between the desktop and mobile.

Mobile users are already doing in-store price comparisons on mobile devices and this new iPhone app represents a more complete mobile shopping experience.

On the desktop TheFind offers local shopping as well:

Consistently consumers use the Internet to conduct product research before buying in local stores. Krillion, Where2GetIt, Shopatron, Channel Intelligence and NearbyNow are creating the inventory data and infrastructure that make possible mobile applications like TheFind and Slifter.

NearbyNow in fact is doing some amazing things with text-based advertising after users reserve products for in-store pick up.

Retail/shopping is a near-term mobile use case and advertising opportunity for obvious reasons.  These mobile apps and the supporting inventory data show that product search is just as much a part of “local” as service business lookups.

ABI Research has predicted that mobile social networking with generate $3.3 billion in revenues by 2013. While we agree that mobile applications with social elements will be popular — although there’s very limited adoption today — there’s almost no chance that this sort of revenue can be generated by advertising alone (the release doesn’t in fact say advertising will drive all the revenue).It’s also doubtful that subscription revenues can exist in a competitive atmosphere where most companies will offer or already do offer free services. If Facebook and MySpace Mobile are free, how can anyone think about charging except on a one-time-only download basis (if then)?

In limited cases, companies such as Pelago/Whrrl or Citysense might be able to charge retailers, some restaurants and selected others for B2B intelligence and data based on tracking of foot traffic and user movements from business to business.

For advertising to work on mobile social networks either targeting or scale or both are required. Blyk, an MVNO in the UK, presents itself in a youth marketing channel, for example. However mobile ad networks may be able to support some companies if they have “enough” scale to cover their basic costs. Yet for other than the largest social networks it’s a big challenge to live off ad-support until they can get to scale, if ever.

In all likelihood there will need to be a patchwork of advertising options employed by these sites: search, display and text. Even then it will be tough at the present stage of market development.

Source: Opus-LMS/Multiplied Media (2008), n=826

Think American Idol or other television shows that involve audience voting via SMS or similar text messaging calls to action. Confirming messages or responses will now likely offer ads via SinglePoint’s new “SingleBrand” ad platform. According to the release:

SingleBrand provides advertisers with the ability to insert advertising into existing mobile interactive TV campaigns delivered by SinglePoint. For example, when a TV viewer responds to a call to action to cast a vote for their favorite performer via their mobile phone, they may receive a confirmation reply thanking them for voting that also includes an ad message . . .

The US TV networks will employ this or similar systems and likely take a revenue share of any CPM or PPC inventory. What’s interesting about this, as we’ve discussed before, is the capacity to extend, measure and enhance traditional media using text messaging. What’s also interesting about this are the following:

• The mass audience that TV represents and the millions of impressions (”inventory”) that could be quickly created when TV and text are tied together
• The “mobile advertising” revenues that could be quickly generated in such scenarios
• TV shows often have distinct audiences so there’s a demographic targeting angle here as well

All of the above, to varying degrees, depend on how widely deployed the system or similar systems are and how widely viewed the participating shows are.

Fifty to 70%+ of the US mobile subscriber base uses text messaging with some degree of regularity. And when you consider that more than 100 million people in the US and hundreds of millions globally will be watching the Olympics, if SingleBrand were deployed by NBC and other coverage providers, that could represent millions and millions in SMS-related ad revenue. It’s not clear to me whether NBC (or any of the Olympic sponsors) are integrating mobile into their marketing efforts. They would be foolish not to.

Yahoo is offering a dedicated mobile Olympics site, which will have advertising.

We’re likely to see more and more, similar efforts to link SMS and traditional media, with corresponding and contextually relevant ads inserted into those texts.

The EU has moved toward broad access to in-flight mobile phone usage and related Internet services. However, the U.S. House of Representatives last Friday voted to advance a bill that would “permanently ban” cellphone use on flights in U.S. airspace.

I agree generally that the prospect of dozens of people talking on cellphones might be disruptive, although one could argue it’s no more disruptive than people talking to one another on the plane.

It’s likely that the following situation will now arise on EU-based carriers leaving U.S. airspace: “We’ve just left the United States, you may use your mobile phones.” A compromise position which will likely survive in the U.S. will be “Internet” but not mobile Internet access. (But if access is permitted via laptops how would they prevent VoIP calls?)

American was the first U.S. carrier to introduce in-flight Internet access on selected flights. Others in the U.S., that have announced similar plans are Virgin America, JetBlue and Alaska. Virgin would allow Internet and email access via a console that is part of the carrier’s in-flight entertainment system (”Red”).

Eventually all major U.S. carriers will probably offer Internet but the question is: will it be available in coach or only business class?

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Delta just announced that it will offer broadband on its full fleet.

Idearc’s Superpages currently has a distribution relationship with domain-based cityguide and local network “Hello Metro,” which offers yellow pages and other listings under “HelloDomain” sites: e.g., HelloEugene.com.

That relationship has now been extended to the “.mobi” version of the sites:

HelloMetro claims 2.7 million unique users across its network. However the mobile version of the sites probably have scant usage at this point.