The many ways of delivering mobile video

May 16, 2008

Dave Sloan is director of product marketing at Avot Media

By Dave Sloan

We find ourselves at a critical point on the timeline of the evolution of mobile adoption. Although voice is still king, SMS and data services like email have become mainstream with popular handsets like Nokia and BlackBerry and operating systems such as Windows Mobile.

Apple last year changed the rules of the game by introducing a powerful, easy-to-use browser in its first edition of the iPhone. As Apple rivals Google, Microsoft, HTC and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion scramble to respond to the iPhone buzz, the future is clear: the mobile Internet has arrived.

Wireless carriers and device manufacturers are furiously designing content services and Internet-enabled phones for broader, more price-sensitive customer segments that won't select the iPhone.

Advertisers have stayed on the sidelines and are watching the mobile ecosystem evolve. They know that entering the mobile space will guarantee increase in their viewership by an order of magnitude.

Power in the advertising value chain is shifting as print media becomes less relevant, search/keyword advertising continues to grow and non-traditional advertising models such as product placements gain momentum.

Today, most advertisers claim that mobile advertising is not appropriate for their products. Yet sales of mobile devices dwarf all other Internet devices: television sets, video games, even PCs.

With successful mobile campaigns such as SMS-voting on the "American Idol" TV program, SMS marketing has proved to have high-volume potential.

Obviously, mobile video will be much more effective at communicating a brand message than a few text characters.

Advertisers agree that the next frontier is mobile video, but the question remains: How can advertisers successfully deliver mobile video ads to the majority of their target customers?

Today, consumers have not widely adopted mobile video due to complexity (bad user experience), price (carriers adding additional monthly fees), slow downloads (slow data connections), poor image quality and lack of meaningful content.

Per Nielsen Mobile, only 2 percent of users watched a mobile video in 2007. At the other end of the spectrum, as many as 56 percent of iPhone users watch YouTube videos, according to carrier AT&T, proving that the barriers to adoption are dropping.

The next wave of mobile innovation will be in delivery of relevant Web video.

In 2008, 300 million video-enabled mobile devices will ship worldwide. By 2012, two-thirds of the world population will have a mobile phone.

The key to creating a great video streaming experience is quick start-up time and smooth playback. An important next step is supporting the myriad of devices and networks that customers use. Mobile advertisers want to reach all mobile users, not just the sliver of users with a specific phone.

Building a better video delivery platform is only the beginning. The key to triggering mass adoption of mobile content is to nail the user-experience. Mobile users need video delivered to them easily, with few clicks, and without having to struggle with search engines or crowded Web sites.

Once users are given quick, intuitive ways to discovery content that is meaningful to them, significant adoption will follow. The following are a few easy ways that mobile users will discover video content that they want.

Click on a link in a wireless email. Advertisers can include mobile-ready video links in their direct email messaging.

For example, Johnny is reading an email from eBay on his BlackBerry on the train. He sees a link in his email. He clicks on the link. The request is detected as being sent from a mobile device so he is quickly presented with a mobile video rather than a WAP site or an HTML Web site.

Send an SMS to get the video. Linda sees a movie poster with the message "Send the word BATMAN to 95954 to see the trailer." She sends the SMS via her Motorola Moto Razr and gets back a URL. She clicks on the URL and sees the trailer. Seeing the trailer helps her decide if she wants to see the movie or not.

Voice to SMS. Advertisers can create awareness about their promotional videos in their automated integrated voice response systems.

For instance, Darlene is on an IVR service such as 1-800-Flowers. She hears an option "press 5 to have a video of these flowers sent to your mobile." She presses 5, gets the SMS and clicks on the URL. Seeing the video helps her choose the right flower arrangement for the occasion.

Send to mobile. Desmond is watching an embedded video from an ESPN Web site from his MacBook. He clicks on "Send to mobile" and enters a mobile phone number in the browser. He gets a URL delivered via SMS to his phone.

Desmond can easily share videos with friends or have the link to the video available on his mobile device for viewing later.

WAP link. Frank is on Facebook Mobile on his Nokia N95 phone. He sees that his friend has posted a video. He clicks on the video thumbnail and the video is streamed to his device. Facebook detects that the request is being sent from a mobile device so it formats and delivers it for mobile conditions.

Seeing the movie allows Frank to stay connected to his Facebook community while away from his PC.

In all these cases, users quickly receive and view a mobile video without having to go through tedious steps to find it. Click-and-view videos will be an important tool in mobile video advertising, once advertisers catch on to its ease of use and efficacy.

David Sloan is director of product marketing at mobile video services specialist Avot Media, Sunnyvale, CA. Reach him at .

Comments on "The many ways of delivering mobile video "

1. Frank Chindamo says:

   May 16, 2008 at 12:12pm

   I teach the Mobile Video production classes at both USC and UCLA, and as I tell my students, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million." The sooner we get mobile video deployed in the ways above, the better, and the parent company I work for ROK Entertainment Group in London, is leading the charge.
   -Frank Chindamo, President
   Fun Little Movies

2. Ron McEarchern says:

   May 16, 2008 at 10:21am

   Right now, the link on a WAP page is the easiest for users to understand. It has been done for the Hawaii visitors bureau on the mobile site for ABC's local O&Os. The site got a lot of traffic. http://localwireless.com/wap/sponsor/a/?sid=10&aid=150
   
   Sending the video by MMS is still an issue due to carrier reluctance to allow businesses to send MMS, especially when using a short code. We've been trying to work that out with them for a while.