Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

I am inspired to throw in a quick note today after watching this video on Mark Ramsey’s blog about what agencies think about radio today.

A couple of the points I especially liked were the references to windshield brands and the effective opportunities ahead as radio goes interactive. We have been looking at developing local advertising at this stage and proving this concept as valuable. National initiatives for large scale deployment have been a tough road, but we think we can get more marketing interest thrrough local tests like this.

More information to come. Contact me to discuss what we can do now for your brand in a local market.

The best way to responsibly understand and share with others what mobile advertising is, read the wikipedia article now.

This post will be just restating the obvious for the new media readers among us, but even then, you have to keep up daily to maintain a clear head about what is relevant vs what is mere intrigue.

The bottom line in case anyone asks you, mobile advertising, the little $600 million step-child to internet advertising altogether, consists of two main things:
1) Little banner on on little screens on phone browsers.
2) Sponsored text messages, or some other way to use text messaging without crossing the line into spam.

Although mobile marketers only talk openly about a steady increase in this existing paradigm, as no one apart from visionary entrepreneurs wants to be pinned to specific predictions, the real gut about the exciting future of mobile advertising lies in emerging disruptive mobile media ideas and innovations. We’ll see quite a few things fail, and a few things rise to redefine the mobile landscape. Of course as an self-promoting entrepreneur myself I believe our audio advertising model will be one of the disruptors.

Take a look at this chart I found from a post last summer…

I bet if we got a focus group of 20 mobile executives together now, most would say this revenue breakdown is already outdated. I would be one of them, and would argue purely from changes in pricing and consumer trends since last year, that the pie will be cut in a whole different way.

This manner of consolidation might streamline ad distribution, or it might create a bottleneck that limits radio’s desperate need to innovate and work in line with the changing landscape of advertising toward the interactive age.

We can only speak as pioneers of a new kind of radio advertising that requires a degree of creative thought from our partners. With creative independence being in short supply these days, my initial reaction to this announcement is that of concern.

There is something very sweet about being in the right place just ahead of the right time.

Informa Telecoms and Media report, entitled “Mobile Advertising Services: Generating revenue through subsidised content” points to great trends coming into being, but even they can’t predict newer types of mobile advertising that is not even on the radar yet.

We are in that spot, with interactive spots available now, highly measurable and profitable.

This article from Ad Age on the growth of alternative advertising is a must-read for CMO’s and agencies looking to gain or maintain leadership.

Although covering a very broad topic, the elements related to mobile advertising, and what radio categorizes as NTR or non-traditional advertising is the most dynamic area of growth in alternative advertising. Having said that, this growing quarter of the larger set is disruptive, volatile, and dynamic. The numbers are impossible to predict, although we all welcome consultants doing their prognostications anyway — that’s what they do.

What will the affect of CelleCasting be for radio advertising by making it interactive? What will be the affect of social media as people begin to share their ad preferences, and use RSS more and more to get informed on their own terms? What other innovations in mobile advertising are on the horizon?

No one knows… but you can bet the CMO’s and agencies who are investing ahead into new media pioneers now will be rewarded. Toyota set 10% of their 2008 ad budget aside for alternative, experimental media. I feel this is the right amount of seed to plant into the future of advertising.

As the jewel of his keynote in the RAB Radio conference yesterday, Jeff Haley said that if radio was available on every mobile phone, and if half the subscribers listened to it for half an hour a day, then that would create $3 billion annual increase in radio advertising revenue. Then he said we need to commit to seeing this happen. Here it for yourself.

We are with you Jeff, and dare I say, already a few steps down the road. We have enabled any talk format radio to be delivered to all 243 million cell phones as well as the 181 million landlines anywhere, anytime on CelleCast. It is not dependent on FM tuners being put into handsets and the instant on-demand capabilities create the kind of passion re-ignition value needed to reach todays consumer.

Having developed the technical network to make this happen and as we prepare to launch the Dr. Laura Program as our marquis program cellecast, we are now ready to engage the advertising community squarely to accelerate the achievement of the 2020 goals.

To give you the three points of what the Radio 2020 initiative is, here it is from Jeff’s speech:

1) Address perceived concerns about the health of Radio head on.
2) Engage the industry head on to connect stations, producers to “build an entire radio ecosystem”.
3) engage consumers to reignite their passion for radio.

BTW, this initiative was first presented by NAB’s David Rehr at the 07 NAB Radio show in Charlotte. He had 4 points. I remember then that we were poised to deliver 3 of the 4. When I speak at the Radio Convergence Conference in San Jose next month, I’ll be sure to bring this up.

Also of interest from Jeff’s state of the industry address:
Katz and Interep and RAB are creating a new hub for advertising communication. What will these mean for media buyers?

There are many times in life where being new makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. Remember your first day at school? Even your first year in middle school. CelleCast has been this fresh entrant into the world of media in various forms over the last year and it is often very tempting to feel like an imposing newbie in a world of big veterans. So I thought this post would be a good way to let you know how I deal with it. What I try to do is to see our fledgling start up more like this:

Cute, adorable and full of amazing potential to add great value to the lives we touch.
Yes that is us.

So now is the time to adopt CelleCast into your NTR outlets, while we are still light enough to pick up and well trained to complement the changing world of radio.

Anyway, although I couldn’t resist the analogy, the original intent of this post is to let everyone know I’ll be working in the Bay Area from 2/11 to 2/23 while getting certified to to guide our daughters canine companion and bring it home to Vancouver. That should make me a very sensitive and more sympathetic exec as well.

Interactive revenues.

What once was a great opportunity for radio, has now become an area of intense pressure for sales managers. Produce here or die. I kinda wish the opportunity side of the ideas had more time for exploration first, then perhaps the tools that can produce a long term benefit will be discovered. Short term thinking stemming from a need to stop the bleed only addresses the symptoms, not the cause.

This is relevant to us as we have indeed created a great advertising platform that works with the power of what radio is, while pioneering a new level of interactivity for radio spot advertising. The problem we face is the short attention span within the industry. The pressure for revenue now hinders the collaborative thinking that will create what is really needed… a permanent correction to the revenue graphs in the radio industry.

What kind of non-traditional ad channels are a good fit for radio? The ones that answer yes to the following:

• Is it measurable, and therefore no-risk?
• Is there a growing audience?
• Is it audio based and complementary to terrestrial radio?
• Is it highly targeted?
• Does it promote the producer as a pioneer in new media?

We are glad to say we hit a 100% yes on all of these factors and more.

Have your interactive managers give us a call to discuss how we can help turn the tide in your 08 forecasts.

Stuttgart-based Liquid Air Labs has been rolling out its mobile radio and podcasting service across Europe for the past three years. Now it’s gearing up for a Fall launch in the United States.

It has quietly been signing deals with nearly all the large broadcast groups to provide content on its Spodtronic service. Liquid Air SVP Zef Cheema isn’t offering many specifics, but they’ll launch in October with a number of formats and high-profile stations as part of their channel line-up.

He says “We’ve been aggressively adding terrestrial radio stations” who are signing-on “because they need to have a wireless strategy.” Liquid Air also has deals on paper with handset makers and wireless carriers. It’s not the first to offer radio on cell phones, however it is set to become the largest to offer it for free. It will be marketed as a “premium service” for wireless subscribers.

Liquid Air will get a portion of those revenues, plus the ability to sell pre-roll advertising and premium audio content. Cheema says focus groups show American consumers don’t want a subscription-based mobile audio product. He says “it’s been a very slow growth” for their competitors that have moved in that direction. Clear Channel and CBS scrapped subscription mobile programs earlier this year.

They are anything but. Google has dedicated a wing of it’s vast resources into doing roughly the same thing Apple did with the iPhone. By this time next year it will all be very clear, and you can get a phone with Google apps preloaded and ready to go. The WSJ has chronicled Googles plans pretty well. (permalink)

My take here as we consider their work in light of the fourth speaker philosophy, is that this validates our point that phone apps need to be pre-loaded to actually get used. That is why we are working on getting content to phones without the need for apps of any kind. I also believe, as do others cited in the WSJ article, that they are headed down a road already proven by ESPN to be disappointing. A phone with niche apps can isolate a market just as easily as it can expand one. We’ll see.

The recurring theme we enjoy seeing constantly revalidated appears in the article as well…

The Mountain View, Calif., company has made clear it is serious about developing advanced software and services for cellphones. “What’s interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the nonmobile phone ads because they’re more personal,” said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt

Building a future where ads are heavily noise-reduced is our passion. Mobile users deserve relevant offers and an unprecedented level of control over thier own programming.

One more thing…
Eric, if you are listening, please make sure your new phones have one of those cool things called a headphone jack. Many recent handsets have forgotten this feature.