The Best Screen Now -- an Ever-Present, Personal Connection to Consumers
In a multi-screen world, the mobile device is the only screen that is with a consumer nearly every waking hour of the day. People have personal connections to their phones, and that means content companies, carriers and marketers have huge opportunities to make personal connections also. In order to achieve success, however, they must understand mobile’s role among the consumer’s "screens" and its unique characteristics. This is not the PC, and it is not the TV. The head of ESPN mobile lays out the unique role of mobile screens in a multi-screen world.
The Brand’s Eye View: Partnering With the Consumer
Mobile offers consumer brands the opportunity to change the relationship between seller and buyer, to become a persistent presence in a user’s everyday life and even to be of service. From mobile applications to couponing, point-of-sale promotions to an SMS conversation, the possibilities for crafting a new dimension to the brand story and image seem limitless. But what do brands need from the mobile marketing industry to get there? Are the real drivers of the mobile marketing economy finding in mobile the platform they need to scale these ambitions and find ROI? And how will mobile programs inform and change everything else they do? Our panel of brand executives explains their approach to the mobile dimension.
10:30 AM
Seeing in 3D: How Agencies are Triaging the Mobile Dimensions
Which comes first? The SMS pull or the ad banner push? Can we leverage that phone cam and MMS with our demographic, and does that align with our brand’s image? Would our target be more comfortable with an IVR approach, a free ringtone, or a live tweet-up? While often lumped into one thing, mobile phones represent a series of marketing platforms, because handsets are the purest convergence of digital multimedia and interactivity we have seen. Our traditional panel of mobile and ad agency executives goes into triage mode, sharing what they have learned about how to map the various mobile platforms against brand and campaign goals. What’s working…and what isn’t.
11:15 AM
Coffee BreakLocation: Olympic Ballroom Foyer
11:30 AM
Genesis - Mobile Finally Begins
Mobile has finally arrived…or has it? One of the most experienced agency evangelists of mobile marketing looks at real brand data to confirm that – surprise! - mobile users are indeed making purchases, big purchases, with their phones and are driving real revenue for brands. The question is how did they get there and where are they going? What are the proven and practical tools marketers have developed for a winning strategy? And who are the most likely victims of the mobile revolution? Isobar’s legendary man in mobile, Gene Keenan, will answer these questions and give some questions of your own to bring back to your partners.
12:00 PM
Oh, No. Not Again! Will Mobile Ad Networks Make or Break Mobile Content?
Here we go again. Just as they do online, major media are starting to complain that the mobile ad networks are depressing CPMs, commoditizing ad inventory, and making it impossible for publishers to generate the revenue they need to create robust mobilized content. And yet, few sales staffs on the publisher side have the expertise or the incentive to sell mobile on their own. Publishers remain dependent on the mobile nets to rep the sites and fill the inventory. Is the mobile ad environment evolving any differently than it has online? Will the revenue from this channel be enough to finance standalone content operations or will publishers have to migrate away from the ad network model in order to monetize mobile fully?
Mobile’s uptake as a marketing platform is being held back by issues of measurement. Mobile analyst Elise Neel contextualizes the mobile measurement conundrum by showing us where the industry has been and where it needs to go. The terrain of audience measurement tools and practices is cluttered: surveys, meters, log files, data fusions, cross media measurement, etc. Neel will explore the ways in which device types and modality of use need to inform marketing efforts and how census-based and cross-platform measurement are emerging on the scene. Where should mobile metrics head next?
Mobilizing the Tip of the Funnel: Retail’s New Opportunity
The cell phone already changes the way some of us shop, but when will marketers catch up to the greatest innovation in retail since the end cap? In every store aisle someone is phoning home for a consultation about an item on a shelf. On every car lot, potential buyers are checking car model specs and dealer invoices. Local search, store locators, inventory checks are becoming standard features in the latest generation of applications, and every major retailer has a mobile presence. But what consumer relationship is best positioned to capitalize on this last ten yards to the cash register? The manufacturer brands, The stores? Intermediaries like coupon aggregators and malls? Who will control the mobile value add at the very tip of the shopping funnel?
3:00 PM
Location, Location, Location: Mobile Targets the Spatial Dimension
GPS and a host of other geo-location techniques have finally turned on the spatial dimension in mobile marketing. Location-based mobile services have become a hot spot for VC funding and a hot bed for innovation. From Foursquare to loopt, Whrrl to Yelp, developers are trying to leverage locating the user in space and time. Geo-location lets a developer and a marketer know not only who you are and what you have been doing but where you are at any given moment. It is in the intersection of time, space and personalization that may drive the next generation of value for the consumers.
3:45 PM
Coffee BreakLocation: Olympic Ballroom Foyer
4:00 PM
Tune-In or Tweet Out: Can Hollywood Manage the Crowds?
From ticket sales to tune-in alerts, banner campaigns to mobile video clips, the entertainment category emerged this year as the leading advertiser on mobile. The segment not only spends more but also thinks harder about how mobile integrates with larger multi-platform campaigns. But just as mobile helps marketers reach filmgoers more effectively than ever before, it also lets audience reach each other in unprecedented ways. Twitter and SMS have created a real-time word-of-mouth engine that poses real-time challenges to the best entertainment marketing plans. In this panel focusing on the film/TV/gaming vertical. Marketers share their best practices and best defense on a platform where audiences can talk to each other as readily as they can talk to you.
4:45 PM
Up Your App! The Application Platform Vs. The Mobile Web
To app or not to app, that is the question. Every brand comes to every mobile marketing agency saying that they want their own cool iPhone or Blackberry or Android App. Should you give it to them, knowing full well that the mobile Web reaches far more users across more demographics and locales? And after all, is having applications dedicated to a single brand really the right paradigm for mobile media moving forward? Will we really do without portals, aggregators, easy cross-linking or the carrier deck? Don’t look now, but the application revolution could be a fad.
