After the success of the 1st Mobile Application Developers’ Meet in Bengaluru, IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) is organizing a Seminar for Mobile Applications Developers’ to provide a common platform to deliberate upon the opportunities and challenges of growth pertaining to the mobile applications services in India.

The seminar, to be held on 23rd Nov 2010 in Chennai, India, endeavours to recognize the way ahead to promote and project the growth in the field of mobile applications’ development with the help of an impressive line-up of experts as speakers. The seminar will also set a stage to encourage innovators and developers to offer an impetus to the industry which is undergoing revolution of sorts and proving to be an attractive revenue generator.

The event is free for all, but prior registration is mandatory. Please register here at http://iamai.in/Events/2nd_mobile_application_developer/register.aspx

Date: 23rd Nov 2010
Venue: Vel Tech University, Avadi, Chennai

The event has several prominent speakers including
» Sunil Rao, Head of Forum, Nokia India
» Prabha Aithal, Chief Technology Officer, CanvasM
» Badri Sanjeevi, Chief Executive Officer, Mauj
» Sandeep Sawhney, Head of New product & Innovation, Aircel Ltd
» Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chairman & Managing Director, One97

Speed dating, wherein participants get to meet the speakers One to One, is also part of the agenda

More details at http://iamai.in/Events/2nd_mobile_application_developer/

Be there tomorrow

Here are a few interesting links what various bloggers had to write about the recently concluded Mobile Ad Conference..

Sneha Menon wrote her experince attending the event:

In the Indian market, with mobile phones being such an ubiquitous medium, and in some regions of the country offering more penetration than TV and the internet, the potential for advertisers to reach a large audience is immense.

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Shrinidhi Hande lists some interesting points from the panel talks…

Most of us get irritated by the unsolicited SMS and voice calls that we get on our mobiles, trying to sell us something. We often vent our anger by shouting at the telemarketing lady or cursing the mobile company and brand for intruding our privacy and wasting our time.

While that’s about us, as consumers, mobile advertising as such is a whole new emerging industry, with heads of marketing companies, mobile operators and brand managers spending lots and lots of effort and time working on new strategies for Mobile advertising.

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WATBlog, our online media partner, published brief summary of all panel discussions

The IAMAI Mobile Ad conference held yesterday was one of the most engaging conferences Ive attended by IAMAI in recent times. There were several discussions among panelists and some key issues were touched upon by all of them. If you missed following our live updates via tweets here is a summary of all that was said at the event.

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24 frames digital have made live the video coverage of the event
View full coverage

Coverage by AFAQs.com

The second mobile ad conference saw a discussion on the convergence of mobile, social networking and location to drive ad revenues. The panellists comprised: Kiran Konduri, cofounder, Asklaila; Arun Bhati, head of solution area service delivery and provisioning, Ericsson; Satya Yerramsetti, chief executive officer, 160by2 and Krishna Kumar, director – business development, InMobi.com.

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BusinessBlogging.org, our Social Media Partners, covered the event live on IAMAI official blog

Arun Bhati is head of Solution Area Delivery and Provisioning, Ericsson

Ericsson’s market research has revealed user attitudes towards mobile advertising. Targeting A, B and C segment cities, they conducted focus groups that revealed that users were extremely dissatisfied by mobile advertising. It was considered intrusive, and even expensive. When users are on roaming, some providers charged to receive smses.

The probe further revealed that users were more satisfied when they had the control over the timing of the ad, and its content. Opt in services helped operators build a good profile.

The whole ecosystem is important. When you look into the overall channels, there are a number of ways and places where users can interact. If you combine all these together, and not expose a subscriber, you can potentially find the right formula.  If you combine the power of social networking with blogging, it can be very powerful.
Further,  profiling- blogs, patterns of information can be a wealth of information for advertisers.

Kiran Konduri, Co Founder, AskLaila

The great opportunity on mobile is local merchants and its not large brands and branding. Lots of traffic is generated on social netwrking sites on mobile. Location can become a commodity. We just need to build the right technologies.

Krishna Kumar from Inmobi.com gave an interesting talk filled with useful insights.

Priceless quote from the talk: Privacy and security are like mother-in-laws. Over-hyped and they don’t bite

Some key points from the talk:

1. Value Proposition for social networking or mobile or anywhere else is value – what is the value that we are providing. It is not about 2G, 3G, LG, it is the value that we are delivering to the customer.
2. The whole value of “value” is also difficult. Somethings can be quantified, somethings can not. For instance, you can not quantify the value of the conversation/ call.
3. If you are Facebook, you have more data of the user than the ISP which provides Internet to you to access Facebook. So, if you can get users engaged and sharing, you will get data.
4. Location is definitely an important concept these days. In future, chipsets prices will continue to fall and handset itself will give you the location of a person.
5. Hence, if you can combine social profile with the location information, this becomes a deadly combination like fuel combined with fire.
6. We also need to look beyond the operators. In India, 80-90% of data goes “off” operators. Hence, an enormous opportunity exists to tap them. Some networks in Indonesia and Turkey have been able to get this data – not only from social profile perspective but also usage profile as well.
7. When we combine social profile with location, we get a deadly combination. When we add usage profile to it, then it is unbeatable.

Also check: inmobi blog

Excerpts from the talkby Satya Yerramsetti, CEO, 160by2

You build up a network which you don’t use [you just accepted the invites] is useless. However, you have 300 contacts on your phone book and 30-40 people are ones you are in regular touch with. That is social networking at its best.

Hence, as a first step to analyze mobile social networks, you must first understand how social networks work, how the users behave online and then try and use creative implementations based on this understanding. We also need to understand that users are also very dicey and picky about how companies use their data. This is separate from privacy – which obviously is an issue and we need to tackle the same. Another interesting thing in the current scenario is location. Every person in future will have a phone with GPS enabled which makes location specific networking and engagement the next obvious statement. Knowing a person’s location can lead to better and more engaging interaction with the consumer.

160by2.com is Gold sponsor for IAMAI Mobile Ad Conference.

Find Satya on Facebook * Twitter*160by2 Blog

Panel Discussion 5: driving mobile advertising revenue at the intersection of mobile social networking AND location

* Analysing different location enabled social networking service offerings in terms of user experience and reach.
* Examining the impact that mobile advertising has on user experience and subscriber volume.
* Can location enabled social networking deliver sufficient reach for advertisers?
* Is location the key enabler for mobile advertising revenues?

Session Moderator: Sanjay Goyal, Founder & CEO, ACL Wireless

Panel members:
Siddhartha Roy: COO, Hungama
Satya Yerramsetti, CEO, 160by2
Kiran Konduri, Co-founder, Ask Laila
Arun Bhati, Head of Solution Area Service Delivery and Provisioning, Ericsson

Q&A Session with moderator
Sum up

Apoorv Kumar is COO, Value First and he shared his perspective on How to deliver successful creative campaigns.

No one does anything creatively on mobile. There’re people who specialize in tv campaign, print campaign etc, who create wonderful campaigns for tv, print etc, but we never come across any sms campaign which we love or wish to forward.

Mobiles are used either to run a contest or poll, nothing beyond that. Creativity is very very low.

Delivery of campaign is separate ball game altogether. Planning and execution. Unfortunately due to lack of creativity, both creating a campaign and delivering it are clubbed together.

Crores of ad spend happens on TV and print based on relatively unrealistic stats like TRP and circulations, which are generic but accepted by the industry. Brand managers spend on tv and print campaigns easily but when it comes to spending on mobile ads, they hesitate and get tough on returns. There’re no strong measurable parameters to calculate effectiveness of mobile ads as of now. If we insist on it,we’re killing a prospect even before it is born.

Sujai Srivastava, Business Head – VAS Marketing and Mobile Advertising, Reliance Communication, well known as Sujai basically talked about these two topics:

1. What we ought to be doing and what are we currently doing?
2. What is creativity in the mobile space?

Sujai said that they have lot of data. For instance, they have all this data:

• Targeting -
  • Prepaid/ postpaid, Bill value/ recharge value, HSD/ Net connect, Roaming Customers, International callers/ receivers
• Demographics -
  • Circle, pincode, gender, name, birthdays
• VAS Usage -
  • Content/ data users/ event subscrubers

The various advertising opportunities include -> Banner/ Brand zone/ Rich call alert/ Aad videos/ SMS 2.0/ Big Map. Scheduling takes care of when to show what advertisement. Sujai said that RCom is now trying to add the filtering capability – for instance, should we talk about upsell to this user or not.

Sujai then went on to cite some examples of successful campaigns include Union Bank of India – focusing on branding and lead generation, Colgate World of Care, Club Mahindra and other FMCG brands. He feels that if you crack the FMCG brand, others follow easily.

The future includes Mobile TV [Live Streaming of Cricket Match].

Jasmeet Gandhi is Head of Devices OPM and Services Marketing, Nokia India.

He asks where does the handset manufacturer fit into the mobile advertising space?

He maintains that the definition of creativity and the essence of advertising has not changed- advertising still involves using whatever device is given to you and reaching out to the consumer to inform and connect.

Mobile advertising is is delivered through a subscription model or that is through your handset. In a market like India, which is at a nascent stage, the usage patterns of handsets will hold a key role in influencing the mobile advertising.

All creative ads do not have to have high costs, they can be basic and cheap. Reach is not a problem, are people thinking creatively enough?

Not everyone currently uses all the technology in a handset. Location based advertising is still not being used to its potential.
We need to create a marriage of the potential of content and the handset to optimize the mobile as an advertising platform.

Gaurav Sarin, Head, Mobile Advertising & Business Solutions, Aircel, talked on his perspectives on challenges in creative mobile ad campaigns. Here are some key points from a brief and informative talk he gave.

Global media spend in 2007-2011: Its just going up-absolute no are not important

India has large media dark population (People who do not have access to TV, newspaper etc)

Mobile is an untapped media vehicle, the mobile is already the second screen in India

We need to change the perspective of spam-the opinion of common man that all mobile ads are spam.

Operators need to hasten their efforts understanding their base & profile them on the fly

Mobile advertising should should be positioned like Radio (AD CRBTs), internet (WAP advertising), DisplayADs (SMS,USSD) BTL (brand/location based). How to we sell holistic campaigns & stop ad hock sales pitches for SMS, WAP, OBDs, AD CRBTs etc is the challenge…

Find Gaurav on LinkedIn * Twitter