Google testing location-based ads

According to BusinessWeek (print edition dt April 20, 2009), Google is testing location-based advertising to drive more bang for the advertising buck. In March, Google started placing local-business ads on Urbanspoon, A GPS enabled mobile app. This app has capability to identify the user’s location and then recommends places to eat nearby. This allow Google to provide a better return on advertising dollars. In a down economy, advertisers are looking to get better return on their advertising investments.

Attended Wireless Technology Forum’s Mobile Media SIG event

Had the pleasure of attending the Wireless Technology Forum‘s SIG on Wireless Apps and Mobile Media. Today we had the iPhone Product Manager for autotrader.com – Nick Park presenting. 

Excellent presentation Nick. Thanks. Enjoyed the session

Nick was speaking about autotrader’s mobile web app. Some key aspects from his presentation :

Autotrader is primarily focused on iPhone but its web app works on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile too. AutoTrader’s app is about finding new and used cars, their pricing and nearby dealerships based on a number of criteria. AutoTrader is part of the Cox family. Some stats on autotrader :

• 14 million unique visitors each month
• 40000 dealers use AutoTrader
• 3 mill cars in inventory
• 250K private sellers
• 220 employees

Audience of AutoTrader :

• 78% visitors are males
• Average age is 43.7 years
• Average income $74300
• 40% have graduated college
• 63% are married

Basically the primary market audience is mid-market customers.

Another interesting stat : 83% of AutoTrader’s audience are looking for used cars. Only 10% visit to sell their cars on AutoTrader. So not a big selling platform. It is primarily search and find.

Critical aspects of AutoTrader strategy which also define its mobile app are : Portable, Rich Media, Local, Brand. Portability was a challenge as earlier strategies involved print media localized to communities. The mobile app was originally developed for portability reasons (in-pocket accessibility) and also to keep the brand fresh and young.

AutoTrader thought best to go with a mobile website as opposed to a device app. This was the easy thing to start with as it allowed them to leverage most of the backend web app and data environment. Mobile resident app would be more work and is in the future.

AutoTrader’s other brands include : AutoTrader Classic (Classic cars), AutoTrader Latino (heavy SMS usage), and AutoMart (popular with women). These three profiles require a different strategy in mobile world too.

Dealers have a substantial presence on AutoTrader. The latter enables inventory management, merchandising and auction support for dealers. AutoTrader has deep relationships with Kelley Blue Book, MSN Auto, Univision and NADA Guides.

Mobile version of AutoTrader was a result of a need to provide scalability to distributors. The mobile web app is being tightly coupled to the main web app. There is an effort to merge the business and analytics engine of the mobile app with the main web app. This helps in fast turnaround on changes and experimentation.

Functionally speaking, searching a car requires a lot of parameters to return an accurate result set. Also getting credit for referring customers to dealers has been difficult for AutoTrader so they are experimenting with coupons and such. The mapping function of the AutoTrader mobile app finds the nearest dealer having the desired car.

                                                               

                                                       autotrader.com on iPhone

Some key aspects needed to sell cars :

– photo is critical for used cars

– video is important and useful with lot of mobile users checking auto videos on mobile phones

– maps are popular to find cars in nearby vicinity dealerships

 

Next steps for AutoTrader mobile consist of : experimenting with more iPhone apps, developing for other platforms like Android, mobile / web hybrid apps and fast turnaround on application development and releases.

Thanks to WAMM (Wireless Apps and Mobile Media) SIG at the WTF for arranging this excellent presentation.

A Primer on LTE

LTE or Long Term Evolution is a 4G wireless technology and is considered the next in line in the GSM evolution path after UMTS/HSPDA 3G technologies. LTE is espoused and standardized via the 3GPP or 3rd Generation Partnership Project members. 3GPP is a global telecommunications consortium having members in most GSM dominant countries. 3GPP specifications are based on GSM evolution path of wireless communications. GSM is the most prevalent wireless standard in the world and has maximum number of subscribers globally.

The impact of LTE is so big that even powerful carriers which were on the alternate CDMA path like Verizon Wireless of United States, have decided to go with LTE in their next generation 4G evolution. Firms like Verizon and MetroPCS of USA have all but dumped the CDMA technology path almost dealing a blow to the CDMA owner Qualcomm, although the latter is much more diversified so it is not really short of business models.

LTE vs WiMAX
Whereas WiMAX emerged from the WiFi IP paradigm, LTE is a result of the classic GSM technology path. LTE is behind in the race to 4G with WiMAX getting an early lead with the likes of Sprint ClearWire and several operators in Asia opting to go with WiMAX in the near term. So where WiMAX has a speed to market advantage, LTE has massive adoption and GSM parenthood to back it up.

It is widely believed by market analysts that LTE will win ultimately but WiMAX will find adoption in frontrunner communities and niche business models which tend to take up technology faster. WiMAX vendors will have you believe that speed to market is too important to ignore. History suggests otherwise in case of wireless industry. It is also believed that ultimately, wireless industry will figure out a way to wed the two 4G technologies so the end product in few years might be a nice amalgam.

So ultimately, what standard an operator uses might be a moot point in the long run. The inter-operability would be just too great to get hung up on the wireless standard. The fact that both WiMAX and LTE are all-IP means that a cross-connection will be a piece of cake at some point in future.

In terms of speed, Fixed WiMAX lacks LTE in speed but Mobile WiMAX may catch up with LTE on this front. For an overview on WiMAX, refer to our post “A Primer on WiMAX“.

LTE Technology
LTE builds on 3GPP family which includes GSM, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) etc. LTE is an all-IP standard like its peer WiMAX. LTE allows for rich applications and business models which include ultra-high speed voice, video and data. It also enables integration with the classic internet infrastructure which is all-IP based.

HSPA (High Speed Packet Access), the 3G GSM standard popular over near-term, offers uplink speeds of 11.5 MBPS and downlink of 28 MBPS. Whereas LTE offers 75-100 MBPS Uplink speeds and 250-300 MBPS downlink speeds. Compare this with 20 MBPS U-verse speeds of AT&T wired broadband network U-verse and 50 MBPS speeds in Verizon FIOS TV service. In a nutshell, LTE will beat the fastest wired broadband delivery High Def TV today (in USA) by order of 1 to 4 or 1 to 2 depending on which wired broadband we are talking about. That said, many carriers like AT&T believe that HSPA and its faster cousin HSPA+ will compare well with early WiMAX speeds and so there is no rush to LTE yet for these kind of carriers.

Some key characteristics of LTE are described below :

• Increased Data Rates and High Efficiency : LTE is based on OFDM Radio Access technology and MIMO antenna technology (just like its cousin WiMAX) which offer excellent modulation technique for achieving powerful spectral efficiency.  Think of the OFDM wireless spectrum as a series of very fine and narrow wireless  bands and each band gets allocated to various service providers.  LTE offers higher data transmission rates while utilizing the spectrum more efficiently. This translates to an ability to support many more multitude of subscribers than is possible with pre-4G spectral frequencies. LTE is 2 to 5 times more efficient in spectrum utilization than the most advanced 3G networks.
• Radio Planning : LTE signal goes far and wide and covers a larger geographic territory. LTE signal is way faster than the existing wireless transmission resulting in higher user response times.
• IP environment : LTE is all-IP which permits new enhanced applications like real time voice, video, gaming, social networking and location-based services.  The concept of wireless ubiquity comes alive with LTE processor chips in everything from netbooks to mobile phones to consumer devices; all these devices talk to each other seamlessly and effortlessly.
• Inter-operability : LTE IP network co-operates with circuit-switched legacy networks resulting in a seamless network environment and signals are exchanged between traditional networks, the new 4G network and the IP-based internet seamlessly.

LTE Applications
LTE will enable applications previously unheard of. Wireless ubiquity is a given. All consumer devices. communication and computing resources may be enabled on the wireless network courtesy of chipmakers like Intel who are eagerly building in WiMAX and LTE in future chipsets which will be embedded in all sorts of technology devices that one can imagine.  Social Networking and human-technology interaction (HTI) will take on a new meaning. Human-technology interface and resultant communication could be as seamless and as effortless as the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report makes it out to be (ok we are bragging a bit now).

Web 4.0, if you will, may just comprise the Wireless as an integral element of the hyper-connected world via LTE and WiMAX enablement.  Broadband TV might not need wired cables anymore and new MVNO service providers may emerge who enable wirelessly driven TV and broadband internet. Business users might exchange massive amounts of data while on the go at the flick of a button (or touch). Interacting with your Flickr and Picasas photo streams from mobile devices might be a breeze. Games will cross wired / wireless domains and mobile location will figure in the gaming context naturally. Location-based may take a new meaning with location being the true IP beacon determining the application context in a flash, thereby offering a ultra-personalized mobile experience to the user.

LTE Timeline
Operators are just now fully deploying 3G using WCDMA or UMTS/HSPDA. WiMAX is coming in via ClearWire in USA and several operators like BSNL in India and many others in Middle East and Africa. The first LTE deployment in USA is with relatively tiny MetroPCS which may just beat the big 3 LTE carriers (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) in the race to 4G. Verizon is claiming 2010 LTE deployment and AT&T is taking a more patient approach and states that LTE is in 2011-12 timeframe. China is unique, as usual. They have taken the TD-SCDMA 3G route which is a “unique to China” standard.  Chinese 4G strategy is not clear still. India is more LTE centric like the West with major carriers like Airtel and Vodafone adopting the LTE route. LTE in India is many years away as India’s regulator TRAI has not even awarded the 3G spectrum licenses yet.

Japan, we won’t even go there..

A Primer on WiMAX – see our post referenced on wikipedia

Our article on “A Primer on WiMAX” was liked so much that a link to it was created on wikipedia under Notes and References section of the main WiMAX page :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

Thanks to the team or individual who put our post on wikipedia. So we have decided to create “A Primer on LTE”. LTE is the competing 4G technology and coming a little later than WiMAX. Stay tuned for the LTE primer on this blog.

5 LBS Apps on iPhone

Apple’s new iPhone software with the iPhone OS 3.0 update will include Google Maps integration. With this I feel there will be an explosion of location-based apps to start appearing in the App Store. This again will be followed by other app store hope-fulls like RIM, Nokia etc. There are already a few location-based apps available now and here are five that are worth a look.

uSonar (Free)

There are lots of apps available that let you keep up with your social networks while you’re on the go, but what about when you’re bored and want to find someone local to hang with? uSonar lets you know who’s around and what they’re up to, whether they are someone you already know or not. Members post “blips” about their activities and locations, then you can message them directly through your iPhone or iPod touch. Everything about uSonar is opt-in, so you’re in control of who can see where you are, or send you a message or email. You can even post anonymously if you’d like.

Loopt (Free)

If you want people outside your immediate location to be able to find you, try Loopt. This app lets you broadcast your whereabouts or send pictures to everyone in your social networks, like Twitter and Facebook. It works across all major mobile phone carriers and supports over 100 different models of phones so your buddies without iPhones can find you. It’s famous among youth of UK

Hear Planet (Free)

If you like to go sightseeing when you travel, then you’ll love Hear Planet. It uses geolocation to determine where you are, then feeds you tons of information about the area’s landmarks, famous buildings, historical sites, and more via your headphones. More than just an audio tour guide, listen while you drive around running errands and you just might learn something you never knew about your hometown.

Whrrl (Free)

Some folks love micro-blogging so much that they want to document every minute of their day. If that’s your thing, let Whrrl help. Use your iPhone’s camera to snap pictures of your lunch, trip to the market, and visit to the dentist, uploading to Whrrl as you go. You can even add text and messages if you choose. Your location and micro-stories are shown on a map, which is really neat if you happen to be around other Whrrl users doing the same thing as you. Imagine attending the IPL Cricket matches and updating the experience as it happens, while simultaneously watching someone else across the stadium do the same.

Traffic ($1.99)

This app will let you know what the traffic conditions are like in your area and display them in list form or superimposed on a map. Traffic gives you details on how severe the traffic situations are. The app automatically locates where you are, but you can enter the location of your choice so you can get traffic conditions anywhere.

pre-CTIA event summary 31 March ’09

Here are interesting happenings from the halos of CTIA Wireless site in Vegas (the event starts tomorrow but there were interesting pre-event conferences/announcements)

• Skype released on iPhone and BlackBerry. We downloaded it and really like what we see. Only issue : it works only on WiFi networks. For now TruPhone wins on this one as TruPhone works on operator network also using its AnyWhere service. We are sure Skype will provide that later. Skype for BlackBerry to be made available this summer.
• RIM to unveil the BlackBerry App World (mobile app store). Nokia Ovi Store comes this summer. MSFT Windows Mobile App Store called Sky Market is later part of this year.
• Handango, one of the initial mobile app developer, launches App Store Accelerator, yet another app store for mobile.
• MSFT thinks that mobile devices are fashion accessories. As such it is teaming up with top designers for designing mobile phone colors and schemes.
• MSFT is collaborating with AT&T for its PlayReady triple-play content management software for synchronized content delivery on three channels – TV, broadband and mobile.
• Go2 Media to create app like experience in mobile browsers like Safari
• AT&T to launch in-vehicle satellite TV service called CruiseCast. If you have seen Uverse from AT&T, you know what AT&T has mastered TV
• Samsung launches first WiMAX device for ClearWire. It is an internet tablet PC.

Stay tuned for more from CTIA as the conference kicks off tomorrow in Vegas.

What is bit.ly ?

http://bit.ly is a URL shortening service. You can go to http://bit.ly website and type any URL and bit.ly creates a mapping to a much shortened URL of the form http://bit.ly/18l5h which is a simple HTML redirector to the actual website.

Eg we typed https://cellstrat.wordpress.com in http://bit.ly  website and bitly translated it to http://bit.ly/18l5h. The shortened URL leads to the CellStrat wordpress blog.

How this helps : We use twitter and twitter has a 140 character limit (same as a regular SMS). The shortened bit.ly URLs can be referenced in tweets without taking too much space needed by classic URLs.

Innovative, shall we call it..

The major competitor to bit.ly is http://tinyurl.com/

twittering

We started twittering today. Amazing experience. Quite a service. Of course we are twittering from our iPhone using twitterific app also in addition to twittering directly on the twitter website. We immediately got 12 followers and we started following 12 interesting personalities.

Follow us on twitter at : http://twitter.com/CellStrat

More on this as time goes on.

CellStrat on twitter now

We are pleased to announce that CellStrat is on twitter now. So if you are really really interested in checking what we are doing at the moment, feel free to follow us on twitter.

http://twitter.com/CellStrat

We will be providing tweets as they call them. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 bytes in length. Twitter is an interesting micro-blogging service to post one liners – it is what they are now referring to as “Real-time Web”. A web which changes by the minute and people publish their thoughts on the go. Other people can follow the tweets by a person whereas that person can follow other peoples’ tweets. It becomes more relevant from a mobile perspective as one can post tweets while on the go. So we downloaded the twitter client “twitterific” from iPhone AppStore. This has been created by a firm called “the iconfactory“. Twitterific is fabulous as is twitter.

This is a new model which has evolved over last one year. It has been adopted by one and all around the world from celebrities to businessmen to evangelists.

So chase us on http://twitter.com/CellStrat …

Attended Atlanta Interactive Marketing Assoc Seminar on Ad Networks and Exchanges

I attended a very interesting session at the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AIMA)’s March event. The topic was “How businesses can leverage Ad Networks and Exchanges to drive sales in a down economy“. Four leading ad networks were present to show how their customers are using their platforms in unique and creative ways.

The panelists were :

Lexi Reese, Director Google Ad Network

James Fellows, VP Product Management, Platform-A (AOL)

Marc Grabowski, Executive Director, Yahoo Network Sales

Jay Sears, EVP Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb/ADSDAQ

Moderator : Joel Lunenfeld, Chief Innovation Officer, Moxie Interactive 

 

It was an interesting discussion with lots of insights on internet ad networks and the success factors in internet advertising. Here are some key discussion notes from the panel discussion :

Ad Networks are growing much faster than the overall display market. Advertising is at an all time low but this offers opportunity for advertisers in various ways. The merger and acquisition market is going wild with all sorts of media, tech and ad firms buying each other across industry categories and business verticals. The ad network exchange is now called the super network.

The three pillars of the ad ecosystem are :

Technology, audience and data. All three interplay to provide a compelling ad offering.

According to eMarketer/ComScore, the highest ad network inventory is with Platform A (AOL) although this may be disputed by Google and Yahoo. The latter two follow close behind according to eMarketer.

Lexi’s (Google) presentation :-

With merger with DoubleClick, Google has seen acceleration in display ad category.

Savvier customers are turning to web. 54% customers researching products online before they make buying decisions. Reach is a key factor. With perspective to Reach, Long Tail (vast customer base) drives engagement.

Lexi mentioned that 2x more customers look at niche ad sites. Providing user with choice drives value. Transparency and Flexibility drive ROI.

Lexi gave an example where a major retailer drove down cost of online card redemption by 77% by reviewing Google reports on ad placement and success. Google is also using tools like Conversion Optimizer to determine what price leads to most conversion.

James (Platform A/AOL / advertising.com) :

According to James, the challenges for an advertiser include Fragmentation, Reach, Lack of trust, Quality, Need for ROI and Results. James mentioned that ad market is highly performance oriented now and pays for performance. Platform A’s predecessor Advertising.com is the leading web display network. It has #1 reach, experience and high quality to serve advertisers. Platform A has tools like AdSonar for premium placement targetting. It also offers self-service management for advertisers which is a popular concept.

Marc (Yahoo) :-

Marc mentioned some ideas from perspective of Yahoo :

– It is a matter of reach vs frequency. Frequency is important in advertising.

– Context makes difference.

– Place where an ad is exposed matters. Yahoo ranked within top 3 in 26 vertical categories (eg Sports, Finance etc)

– Specialization is key. This is where Yahoo’s extensive partner network helps.

Jay (ContextWeb) :-

We are in Media Buying 2.0 phase. There is a concept of Fat Tail vs Long Tail of Ad audience. While most eyeballs are spread across Long Tail, 77% of dollars are in Fat Tail. Audience are leaving portals and search is becoming the default portal. There are 100,000 blogs created everyday (wow!). There are 160 million registered web domains today.  As to how marketplace is reacting to the media world now :

Google bought DoubleClick

Yahoo bought RightMedia and BlueLithium

Microsoft bought aQuantive and adECN

AOL bought Tacida and Quito to create Platform A

Agencies are busy building “demand platforms” for ads. 

 

As to what is the way these ad networks differentiate from each other :

Google – targetting

Yahoo – data. Has user attributes and their web behavior stats.

Platform A – Technology and Complete Package plus the ability to act on these factors.

 

All panelists agree that emotional aspect needs improvement in ad business. Eg Video Advertising brings up human emotional aspects.

On Mobile Advertising (the topic we love) : the panelists said that it is a new area yet to be cracked. There are massive liquidity and technology issues in mobile. Although personalization is more advanced in mobile. But really mobile is another channel for advertisers to reach their audience.