MMF panel: Off-deck portals face challenges
November 14, 2007
Off-deck portal sales will surpass on-deck by 2010
LOS ANGELES – There are many challenges with off-deck mobile content and that’s why on-deck portal sales currently surpass those of off-deck. However, the growth rate of off-deck is higher than that of on-deck. Therefore, it is projected that by 2010, off-deck sales will surpass those of on-deck.
Confused? Profitability is one of the key challenges in off-deck – content that’s outside the on-deck walled garden maintained by carriers – due to the high cost of processing off-portal transactions.
"With off-deck we run into customer care issues, high refund rates, brand risk, negative press and lawsuits and policy monitoring," said Roger Parks, vice president of products and partnerships at Seattle-based Amdocs, at the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum.
Mr. Parks was addressing a session titled, "Off-Deck Mobile Content: Driving Profit and Growth” at the show in Los Angeles’ Westin Bonaventure Hotel.
Merchants run into problems with off-deck as well, he said. They are unable to achieve profitability due to small margins. They often claim that off-deck lacks visibility and financial transparency, which is something that consumers prefer. Off-deck tends to have high transaction failure rates and non-reconciled revenue receivables.
For business management, this means compromised branding.
"To achieve growth we must fix the current off-portal infrastructure by improving operator insight into activity," Mr. Parks said. "It's important to provide faster reporting and enable more services for merchants."
Mr. Parks suggested evaluating merchants as online retailer Amazon does.
"Let the service provider run a best-in-class marketplace like Amazon," he said.
How? Provision short codes so new campaigns can be launched quicker. Also configure controls on specific campaign content partners.
"Manage all stages of the digital commerce lifecycle to ensure maximum profits from your revenue growth," Mr. Parks said. “Drive end-to-end growth."