Web 2.0 Expo - Session Summaries Part 2

In my last post I only gave a summary for 2 of the 5 sessions I attended. Here I will provide key takeaways from the following sessions: Social Advertising and Social Media, Widgetizing the Web and Designing the Mobile Web.

Social Advertising and Social Media

Moderated by Barbara Coll, Founder and Search Specialist at WebMama with the following panelists: Cam Balzer, Vice President of Emerging Media at Doubleclick Performics, Rajiv Parikh, CEO of Position2 and Kent Lindstrom, President of Friendster.

Cam was a big promoter of advertising on social media sites where 20% of the internet visits reside. He specifically used Facebook as an example where he touted the ability to target your ads based on demographics and geography as well as keywords based on profile content. You can run target counts from the Facebook site without having to pay any ad costs here.

Rajiv promoted TubeMogul where from one site you can have your videos posted to multiple sites including YouTube, MySpace, Google, Yahoo!, MetaCafe, and Revver. Rajiv also provided some obvious and useful tips when it comes to advertising:

1. Know your target audience
2. Develop content and apps that appeal to the audience
3. Reward helpful and valuable users (ie. those who contribute)
4. Be consistent
5. Continually optimize

Kent talked about Friendsters popularity with 10B page views/month with an average engagement of 220 minutes/month however he took the opposing view of Cam and questioned the ability to effectively advertise to this audience for the following reasons:

• The state that users are in - the are not there to buy
• Ability to create inventory
• Quality of targeting - "we know a lot but it's not always valuable"

Widgetizing the Web

Named moderator was Neil Patel, Internet Marketing Consultant and PronetAdvertising however he didn't play that role and instead just took up a seat on stage. Panel speakers included Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring, Pradeep Javangula, CTO of Tumri and Gary Baker, CEO of ClipBlast!.

Unfortunately this session was a waste of time. It had no structure and even the panelists bored and uninterested - at one point is looked like the moderator was dozing off. I ended up taking this time to catch up on a few emails...

Designing the Mobile Web

Moderated by Julie Ask, Vice President & Research Director of Jupiter Research. The panelists included Barbara Ballard, Founder & President of Little Springs Design, Ain Indermitte, Senior Developer Relations Manager of Forum Nokia and Brand Lassey of Mozilla.

I thought Julie did a great job moderating this session although I heard others say she was a bit combative towards the panelists. I found it entertaining and she kept the session on topic and didn't let the panelists dance around a question.

> Why go mobile?

Brad shares the growth of mobile access by telling us know that more first time internet connections came from a phone as opposed to a PC and argued that since this is their first experience with the internet it's worth the investment to ensure it's a good one. He also mentioned that Barnes & Nobel and Amazon have been mobile since 1999 (I thought that was interesting). Although on the flip side he pointed out that less than 5% of phones in the US offer a browser experience.

Barbara says it only makes sense for the "head" (not the long tail) and it just depends on who and where your users are. She also made the point that if your targeting India the answer is a definite 'yes.'

Ain talked about Nokia's mobile offering and says that there are now phones that retail for under $100 that offer internet browsing. This will surely effect that 5% number that Brad mentions within the next few years. He also talked about the enhanced web experience that can come from a mobile phone based on location services and the fact that users are voice and camera enabled.

> How many mobile users are looking for specific information vs.. surfing the web?

Brad - Users want to get information and they want to get it fast.

Barbara agreed which is why it's important to optimize the site upfront for mobile users but at the same time, she warns not to lock users out of the full site and to offer links for more information.

> How much should people allocate to building a mobile web?

This ended up being a repeat to the first question and the answer boils down to 'it depends' - if your users are mobile that you should definitely have a mobile site but if they are not then it probably doesn't make sense. There is also some degree of strategy and how having a mobile site will effect your brand.

> What does a 'smaller' mobile site need?

Here are a few tips from the panelists: Less is better and make sure to put your key messages at the top. Design for 'blind users.' Barbara recommended Little Springs Design. There was a small debate on the use of apps but my conclusion is that most phones aren't ready for them yet so don't waste your time/money but it's a space worth following especially if your users are mobile.

The most important point - don't just shrink your site, you need to build from scratch.

> What does Mozilla's mobile browser and roadmap look like?

• The engineering effort has been launched
• There will be a new look and user interface
• Integrate with desktop Firefox with added ' send to phone' options
• Fully support AJAX and trying to work with Adobe for Flash support

That pretty much sums up this event. Although I am a big fan of WebGuild I have to admit I wasn't impressed by the overall schedule and organization. Next time I hope they'll take things a little deeper rather than trying to pack the day with 45-minute sessions that just scratched the surface.

To Mobile or Not to Mobile

20 years ago the idea of using a multimedia marketing campaign over the wireless network would have been difficult to grasp. For a number of reasons, marketing to mobile phones, especially for a business to business campaign, has been a non-starter. Le Grand Roadblock has always been that unlike the phone or email at work, mobile phones are personal domain. You wouldn’t want to market to someone’s mobile phone for the same reason you wouldn’t want to call them at night at home: it’s their personal space and they’re more likely to resent you for the intrusion than thank you for the valuable information or idea you’re marketing.

But more than that, mobile phones up until now haven’t been universally adopted as web clients, and using them as such requires a pretty big leap of faith from a demographic and adoption standpoint. Take the case of mobile email for example. In my social network they’re ubiquitous, but Gartner Group tells us that only 2% of email accounts are wireless and even by 2010, a light year in Web2.0 time, only 20% of email accounts will be accessed on mobile devices.

Although the multi-billion dollar B2C revenue projections for mobile devices seem impressive, most of that is what could be considered “mobile accessories” like wallpapers, music, graphics, ring tones, etc. That’s not going to convince me to dump ad dollars into a campaign for a non-wireless product.

In the US, where 85% of the people have cellphones, Telephia and comScore claim that 30 million people in the US are using the mobile web. If that’s true, that’s a pretty significant adoption rate – especially if it’s growing as quickly as they claim.

I’m excited for the prospects of Mobikade and will be tracking its progress as it tries to get a foothold in a market where PCs are more prevalent than in its native Japan. Also Mozes seems like an interesting test for the tolerance of frequent and unsolicited text messages, but even when explaining those concepts people are careful to point out that they’d be less receptive to the same interaction with corporations.

Even with all these questions about market size and adoption, I still think there are opportunities that corporate marketers can take advantage of to accommodate the mobile workforce.

According to Gartner Group, there will be three billion mobile subscribers in the world by 2010 – that’s just under half of well, everybody.

My mobile strategy will consider those with smart phone functionality as well as those still getting by with just dial tone. After doing some homework, I think this strategy will be broken down into three areas of focus:

1. Mobile Campaigns - This is a one-off approach that involves creating a way for mobile users to participate in your marketing campaign efforts. Here are a few examples:

Audio Entries - The "My WebEx Moment" campaign is a good example of focusing on mobile users. The 'My WebEx Moment' campaign is a way for users to submit interesting stories of ways that WebEx transforms their lives. Mobile users can call in and submit an audio entry.

Text Entries- Although this is not a B2B example, American Idol (and most other reality shows that require user participation) does this well by allowing voters to text their votes - this same process can be used for surveys.

Mobile Ads/Videos - I don't plan on spending too much time here if any since only a small percentage of phones are web and video-enabled but for the right campaign it might make sense.

Mobile Coupons - Although this is more for a B2C marketer, B2B marketers can still use mobile coupons as incentives for mobile participants in their campaigns.

Mobile Extras - Other fun stuff to consider is offering mobile wall paper,
downloadable ring tones or mobile games.

2. Mobilize Your Content: Voice publish your content with audio casts - and I'm not just talking podcasts. Unwired Nation allows you to turn your web content into an audio file. I always wondered why more companies don't convert their white papers into audio casts - it seems like a natural transition from audio books. I haven't tried it myself but it's on my 'to-do-list' for FY08.

3. Mobile Web: This is the biggest commitment. This involves optimizing your website (or a subset of your website) for smart phones. Cisco was nominated for the Webby Awards for it's mobile web which involved recreating a subset of Cisco.com for mobile devices.

The mobile marketing space is uncharted grounds for me so I would love to hear about any good or bad experiences any of you have had when trying to tap into this market.