Bill Slawski wrote up a nice review of the Google paper on mobile search…definitely good analysis to a nice research piece on the most perplexing bottleneck – mobile data input.

It’s my expectation that interest in innovation in the text input, voice input or even new forms of shortcuts will accelerate in the near future as it’s a critical area to create an optimal user experience while increasing frequency of usage and monetization potential.

Are you aware of companies doing interesting work in this arena?

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Yahoo! Go has several exciting announcements that are launching today:

· Yahoo! Go 3.0 beta:
o New features include:
§ Enhanced user interface, optimized for the mobile phone
§ Improved performance
§ For the first time, consumers will have access to third-party widgets from leading publishers through Yahoo! Go.
o Yahoo! Go 3.0 also includes display advertising from Yahoo!’s major global advertisers. Consumers will be able to interact with these ads by clicking to call the advertiser directly or to learn more about the offer.

· New Open Mobile Widget Platform:
o The platform is an open environment for deverlopers to create mobile Widgets for instant access by millions of consumers.
o Widgets created on the Mobile Widget Platform will be available to consumers from various starting points, including Yahoo! Go 3.0 and Yahoo!’s new mobile homepage.
o The platform will enable developers to write code once and publish their content across Yahoo!’s mobile network, allowing accelerated delivery of a feature-rich mobile experience.
o The platform will enable consumers more control over their experience, as well, by providing the functionality to add and delete Widgets at any time.
o Full-featured SDK for developers to be introduced over the coming weeks.
o Third-party Widget launch partners include, eBay, MySpace, and MTV.

· Redesigned Mobile Homepage
o New features:
§ Completely redesigned and engineered mobile interface from the ground up.
§ Homepage centers around intuitive navigational structure where consumers can tailor content according to needs, interests and location.
§ Available to consumers in the United States on high-end mobile browsers, which are included in devices such as the Apple iPhone, sever Nokia Seies 60 devices, including the N95, and select Windows Mobile devices. Availability across additional devices and countries to come in the near future.
o Key features:
§ Personal Vitality and Status Updates: Provides an at-a-glance update of what’s new since the last visit – including recent emails, Flickr photos from your friends, upcoming calendar appointments and status of Messenger contacts – without moving away from the home screen or logging into a separate application.
§ Customizable Content: Offers a collection of mobile content modules – or Snippets – that provide previews of the user’s favorite content – news headlines, weather conditions, etc – whatever the user wants. In many cases, Snippets are extensions of mobile widgets and can be used to launch a full-featured widget built on Yahoo!’s Mobile Widget Platform.
§ Quick Links: Customizable links at the bottom of the page, providing fast access to the Yahoo! features or sites across the Internet that consumers use the most. Consumers can easily add and remove Quick Links as they desire.

That’s alot to digest! Will 2008 be the year mobile breaks through?

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I received this form Medio Systems late last night:

Medio Systems, Inc., the leading provider of mobile search and advertising solutions, today announced the availability of its performance-based Medio MobileNow™ Ad Network to advertisers and mobile publishers in the UK and beyond. A component of Medio’s complete mobile search ecosystem, the ad network maximises the latent potential of the mobile phone by targeting mobile consumers with relevant, pay-per-click ads. With the incorporation of search-based advertising in 2008, Medio MobileNow will create additional revenue streams for mobile operators, publishers and other off-deck mobile properties while offering advertisers even more targeting precision through highly relevant ad messages based on consumers’ search queries.

The Medio MobileNow Ad network has been live in the United States since its launch in March this year. The expanded network has already begun to serve ads for advertisers in the UK , Germany , France , Spain , Australia and South Africa , achieving conversion rates of up to 15% with access to over 100 million page impressions per month across an international network of publishers.

Notice that last reference, it talks about potential. This Business Week article questions the growth rates of the mobile advertising industry not reaching projections, likely due to carrier friction rather than the lack of actual potential. This is why my recent endeavors have focused on local, traditional Internet and other spaces, it appears the will to bring in the needed financial services backgrounds to take mobile search and advertising to the next level just isn’t there right now. Not because they don’t need it to go to the next level, but more likely that they can’t afford the eventual differentiation luxury under current burn rates.

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Microsoft just announced the launch of mobile advertising on MSN Mobile.

I wish they would have given more details about the release instead of pointing us back to overly dated speeches on the mobile advertising subject. I would have expected to see more examples than just movie tickets.

Microsoft has the potential to lead this market with it’s array of assets if they are integrated in the right manner – see my post on Web 2.0 was NEVER a business strategy for business strategy ideas.

Maybe they will start a larger conversation on this subject once they see this post? We’ll see.

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My question is simply this…

Low marginal cost public relations opportunity or serious about participating in the auction?

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I rarely see things like this anymore, but oh my what an amazingly well researched story by John Markoff about Andy Rubin at Google.

The article talks about the changing face of the smart phone market and you really get a feel for the history of Mr. Rubin. While the parts about Mr. Rubin’s doorbells and girlfriend dismissal methods are certainly interesting, I found the article to be lacking in one major area – his history of successfully monetizing any of the projects he has worked on in the past.

It is great reading about him as a person though and hope to see people expand on the overlooked area as time goes by.

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Presenter: Charles Golvin, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

I didn’t get around to posting this last week, these are some high points of Charles’ all too short talk:

Mobile data adoption is growing, but skews young. Many people still have not been exposed to mobile ads.

They don’t trust SMS ads. They also don’t want to pay for something in lieu of advertising. In the current state this creates contradictions.

The most interesting thing he said in his talk was when he showed Google mobile search and then stated, “I think Google imitated Yahoo! in this regard”.

Offline visual codes are powerful mechanisms for simplifying mobile call-to-action. (I’d expand this to state that it will become powerful for creating an effective multi-channel strategy as many people are too focused on mobile alone.)

Mobile should eventually be abbreviated, transactional, measurable and integrated with physical world.

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I’ve been informed that Yahoo! Onesearch has added content starting today…

Yahoo! is giving mobile search results a boost by integrating Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia content into Yahoo! oneSearch results (available in 18+ countries, including all of North America, the UK, a variety of other European, Latin American, and Asian countries). In recent months, Yahoo! has added to the functionality of the oneSearch experience in an effort to deliver instant answers and relevant results to consumers on the go. With this latest addition, Yahoo! is augmenting its mobile search product with community-based information from the largest knowledge-sharing community and reference site on the Web.

Of higher relevancy to me is the addition of airline flight time information via a simple query. This week I rushed to the airport only to learn that my flight would be delayed for takeoff by 90 minutes! Assuming the airline data is accurate at the time of the query this is an example of a highly useful mobile query.  A query of UA 90 shows a canceled flight today. It’s great to see incremental improvements like this being made to Yahoo! Onesearch.

To try mobile search on Yahoo! Onesearch visit http://us.m.yahoo.com/

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Chicagoland’s very own eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007. You can join the fun and learning from anywhere in the world though!

eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.

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Moderator:
Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Marketing Speakers:
Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
Shawn Riegsecker, Chairman & CEO, Centro
Justin Sanger, CEO, LocalLaunch
Alfred Chow, Head, Yellowbook

Justin Sanger, Local Launch

I can’t help but get caught up in some of the hype. “Context galactic scale” – thanks Google. He then said, “Talking about local search in 10 minutes is like spitting into the grand canyon.” Then said a few words to get Greg Sterling to actually blush! Really funny stuff.

Tremendous opportunities in the IYPs. Local and vertical are merging. Social networking is also converging with local. What is the differentiation of these local search sites? Even within Yahoo! you have a multitude of options. SMEs are overwhelmed and confused. The mission of marketplace consolidations – our goal is to remove the complexity not only for our small businesses but for our sales forces as well. The traditional relationships

$                                             Cost of Traffic                     $$$
Content>>Proprietary>>Organic/SEO>>Paid Placement>>Paid Search / SEM

Silos and advertisers don/t mix in local search!!!

You need to be inventory agnostic…

Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro

Brand marketing increases future clicks. Newspaper growth is slowing in terms of rates of growth, national advertisers are exploding this year. Next will be the regional advertisers, which now comprise less than 3% of advertising.

Ian White, CEO, Urbanmapping

? Where the hell is the money?

7FTE, San Francisco based, geo-spacial data to enable advertisers

Why and what?

Technical limitations

User behavior

Search Engine “Keyword Lockdown”

GEO IP lookup “geotargeting” SUCKS

99% accuracy country level

95% accuracy state level

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Moderator:
Gary Price, Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com, resourceshelf.com

Marketing Speakers:
Omar Tawakol, Chief Advertising Officer, Medio
Matthew Snyder, Header of Business Development, Nokia
Brendan Benzing, Vice President Mobile Search and Marketing, InfoSpace
Matt Tengler, Senior Product Manager, JumpTap

Gary Price, ask.com, resourceshelf.com
http://tinyurl.com/2fy249 (awesome resource his full presentation)

Omar Tawakol, Medio

Mobile is a new media and there is an assumption that Internet players will dominate, this does not make sense. People thought TV companies would dominate the Internet. None of them are. Top spenders in mobile will not be the same as TV or Internet.

Browse the mobile Internet – the searches are still early in nature – downloadables.

On handset, downloadables, information and off-portal

Search ads are perceived differently. Banners are not content. Sponsored links have the same relevancy as other engines.

Matthew Snyder, Nokia

Fragmentation of media consumption

Rise of Advertising and Mobile

Mobile as a cross-media local interactive medium is emerging

Shift to Multimedia Computer

Opportunities in mobile search

Mobile phones will have as many full browsers in 2010 as PCs!!!

Embedded experience – mobilesearch.nokia.com

Medio was in this but is not now…

Discussed “active idol” concept.

Mobile is the ultimate advertising platform
- Personal however, double-edge sword
- Always-on
- Always with you serendipity
- Billing and payment is possible

Nokia Platform – syndications, syndications

Brendan Benzing, Infospace

MCore – portals, storefront, search, messaging and managed web

Has a partnership with Infogen in Israel

Accessed through – downloadables, mobile sites, www sites, vertical apps

Recently launched – Infospace Search at Sprint

Matt Tengler, Jumptap

Products
- Mobile Search
- Mcommerce, operator storefront and operator, deck search solutions
- Full “off-deck” search capabilities across the mobile web and web

Deliver ALL content that is relevant to the user and capabilities of their handset

check out ppc.jumptap.com

Carrier intention platform

The iphone was never mentioned in this session – WOW!

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So Nokia won the NAVTEQ derby – assuming there is not hostile takeover counter bid. This is one of my favorite acquisitions of 2007. Why? Quite simply, it’s a highly strategic move that I don’t think many will appreciate the importance of for quite some time.

The comments at Techcrunch are not only positive – they are all highly intelligent.

Clear positives:

- Ability to drive standards

- Ability to reprice a scarce resource

- Relationship acquisition in new markets that matter to Nokia like automobiles

- Clear indicator of my belief that Nokia is determined make serious attempt at being the world’s premier mobile search and advertising engine.

Concerns/Risks/Potential Mispricing:

- Lack of execution of deal due to anti-trust concerns

- Has Google been building it’s own Navteq-like map database?

- Transformation of revenue streams to Internet and mobile models with existing partners

- Corporate culture – the differences in the culture of these two companies could not be more different – can Nokia reconcile these without difficulty or disruption?

What are your thoughts? I’d like to hear them.

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Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Marketing Speakers:
Alex Porter, Vice President, Location3 Media
Alan Beiagi, Director and GM, Mapquest
Michael T. Jones, Ciheif Technologist, Googl eEarth, Maps and Local

Alex Porter, Vice President, Location3 Media

Offshore Data Entry >>>Axciom, Infousa, Amacai >>>Search Engines Directories, IYPS, etc

How to incorporate into marketing? Directly submit to each engine for a free basic listing it results in an enhanced map listing.

ROI measurement:
Utilize call tracking
Employ trackable URL and coupons

Alan Beiagi, Director and GM, Mapquest

The next wave of Internet user growth will come from mobile and offline usage.

Creating experiences – friend is in Denver, you decide to get a ticket to tonight’s playoff tiebreaker. Only 15% of 233M cell owners use data services. 85% of the market to go!

Search for your destination, get directions, find parking, watch video of player interview, etc.

Is this reality? All of this is already possible but you have to reach 30 different web sites. Mapquest.

Michael Jones, Google

Showed maps, API and other ideas, visit Google Maps Mania – talk about an example he asked to stay in the circle.

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Michael T Jones, Chief Technologist, Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Local Search

What and Why? Ask yourself during the conference – “Is this the right problem to solve?”

Understanding the Competition
Discreet (Privacy)
Courteous (Did you mean?)
Empathetic
Multi-lingual (Translation)
Quick Spirited (Transactional)

Concierges must know their
Hotel (Hyper Local)
City (Local)
Country (National to Global)
Colleagues (Universal Search)

In a world where the present is everything, concierges must “get a feel” for clients and their needs without fail and in a very short lapse of time.

I *REALLY* liked Michael’s concierge analogy because it showed the ideal future state with optimal characteristics.

Users might type a question…
Web page of local results

Users might ask a question
Sequence of spoken local results

Expanding definition of Local Data
Traditional –
YP business listings
Public resources
City and restaurant guides
Map-related data

Emerging Local data
User reviews
Business self listings
Neighborhood definitions
Local weather forecast
Local traffic status

Books mentioning Denver, Colorado

This 1863 GPO book sentence is a local search result

Google Geo Mission

“To geographically organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Showed some Google Earth then said – context at a planetary scale…and beyond interplanetary and galactic.

Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) Google Earth Fatal Crashes – showed maps.

Election results in France

How do you connect the last mile?
Web browser > map

Pages intersect with Map/Globe
KML Geosearch attribution - attribution is not linking!!!!

Users are the Local Experts.

SMXLOMO

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I’m here in the lobby of the hotel in Denver where the first ever Search Marketing Expo Local and Mobile show is being held. I’m thrilled to be here to see the creation of Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling! Karen Deweese was here to greet me with a great big hug and is hard at work making last minute preparations. It’s so great to see Karen, I had not seen her since last December! The SMX complimentary Internet is already up and running to. This rocks! I’m looking forward to this cozy and focused show, it’s going to be awesome.

I haven’t been to Denver in a long time, it’s such a wonderful city. It’s a gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky. So much clean, wide open space with those mountains teasing you to want to drive your rental car westward and forget why you are here! It’s a city I certainly wouldn’t mind living in someday if I was asked to.

It should be a fun evening of getting to know some great search engine and marketing pioneers before the show starts Monday!

SMXLOMO 2007

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It sounds like Scott Karp should be attending the SMX Local and Mobile next week as two of the five areas he gripes about will be covered in detail there. While his carrier and wifi complaints are somewhat relevant, the rest is unfortunately plain ignorance.

Russell Beattie is a quite a bit more blunt in his not safe for work response. His web 2.0 comment makes me chuckle in quite a few ways.

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I’ll be attending the first ever SMX Local & Mobile conference next week in Denver!!! Chris Sherman, who talks about why he is excited about the event in this post, and Greg Sterling have both put in a tremendous amount of work into researching and programming this highly unique and special event.

You may view the full agenda and you may still register for the event.

I arrive at Noon on Sunday (where is the Sunday pre-conference meetup – The Hyatt?) and hope to meet with as many attendees as possible before and during the event as I look forward to learning about people and seeing the demos in this soon to be revolutionary space.

See you in Denver! I’ll also have room for one or two on the way back to the airport as I’m renting a car while there.

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Moderator:
Detlev Johnson, VP, Director of Consulting, Position Technologies
Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works
Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing, iCrossing
Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC

Cindy Crum, Blue Moon Works

- Many aspects of Mobile Optimization follow Traditional SEO Wisdom
- Optimal Mobile Experience = Return Mobile Traffic = Better Results in Mobile Search Engines
- Device Independence: Traditional sites being viewed on Mobile Technology

What is Different About Mobile?
- Industry is in infancy
- Different bots / Crawlers
- Mobile Search Engines More Like Portals
- Many Different Browsers possible
- Slow Download Speed and Connectivity Issues

Development Best Practices
XHTML
Traditional Browsers are forgiving – Mobile Browsers are not
Infinite Combinations possible
Right Accessibility Standards Make it ideal
Avoid unnecessary code
Separate Content from design with CSS

External CSS
- Separates content from design
- Minimizes Code Required
- Decreases Load Time
- Ensures Correct Display on Different Screen Resolutions
- Allows you to specify rendering

Have mobile specific stylesheets
- One set of code, two stylesheets
- Screen first, handheld is second one in cascade
- Caveat: “display:none” to hide elements in either rendering

Use appropriate headers – HTTP User-agent, Accept and MIME types

iPhone

Google has a separate search page for the iPhone

Log in omitted, features and some ads are omitted

Follow all SEO Best Preactices
- Minimize File Size
- Submit your Site to Mobile Search Engines

Testing is important
- Opera, Skeezer, Google device simulators
- Test transcoded versus non-transcoded versions of Your Site

Validate your Site with mobile code checkers…

Embrace the Interactivity
- Provide relevant Info for People who are mobile
- Include your main address in the footer
- Make Phone Numbers and Email Addresses

Move your navigation to the bottom

Gregory Markel, Infuse Creative, LLC

No longer a WAP/Mobi world

Nokia S60 and Opera True web browser

Goog-411 (live demo rendered incorrect result)

Get listed in Google Local Business Listings

.mobi is diminishing in important

Optimization is synomonous with marketing

Mobile voice search is becoming more important

Rachel Pasqua, iCrossing

iCrossing started looking at mobile in 2005

3rd screen will come first

2.3 billion mobile subscribers as opposed to 1 billion users

Summarized the iCrossing “How America Searches Mobile, April 2007” report

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Marketing Keynote Speaker Senior Product Manager Farhan Memon discussed the recent launch of AOL mobile search over a special lunch session. I was impressed by his presentation.

One thing that is quite clear is that they clearly get that mobile search is about leveraging data from other traditional web properties (which AOL has plenty of) and for this reason, I now wish to learn more about their offering and plans. Presently, they get ads from a combination of Ingenio and Third Screen Media a recent acquisition. It’s unclear what causes which ad type to show up when.

Afterwards Farhan and Scott Knowles, Senior Program Manager said they’d follow up with me in more detail, I look forward to learning more about the offering.

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As reported by Search Engine Journal and elsewhere - FAST is laying off 148 employees. Based on the last public number I have of 735 this would be about 20% of the workforce, which is rather significant.

A 23 minute audio presentation by FAST is available here in English at the bottom. There is no information on the breakdown of the country distribution of the layoffs or how this will affect mobile search though it would seem that it might cause a slowdown of this activity.

This news may rekindle the news of potential merger of FAST with Infospace.

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I look forward to seeing all of my wonderful search engine, mobile search and mobile advertising friends next week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose!  While I’ll definitely be in Mountain View for the Google Dance (hopefully they won’t run out of XL t-shirts in 2 minutes like last year), I’m unsure whether I’ll make it to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Oakland, Monterey or Santa Cruz to visit and see some other awesome things. I do hope to make it to Barcamp Block.

Who else will be there and what spontaneous events, product launches and parties are you looking most forward to? I’m getting very close to some of my goals! I look forward to seeing you.

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August 1, 2007 session…

MODERATOR:
Chris Bowler, VP, Media Director, Agency.com

PANELISTS:
Warren Kay, Director of Emerging Products, Yahoo! Search Marketing (not present)

Dominic Preuss, Product Manager, Local Advertising, Google

Janice Rohn, VP of Consumer Experience, Yellowpages.com

John du Pre Gauntt, Senior Analyst, eMarketer

The most important thing about this session is that half of the people from the previous session left – it shows that people don’t understand search and understand its’ importance in the eventual mobile domination. This session was presentations and much less dynamic.

Dominic –
Local and mobile are very much the same. Google Maps changes the way that people uses maps. Google Earth has some great partnerships. Google search on the wap browser. Gmail is an important part of our strategy. It is in a single repository. Discussed local business center. Make sure your information is up to date. Coupons for Maps. Regional targeting, country, state, city and radius. Google Local Business Ads. Google Mobile Ads – shorter messaging, link to mobile website, click to call enabled, carrier targeting, markup language targeting.

Janice Rohn – unfortunately had to leave the room for almost all of her talk…

John – Technical scale is not an issue. It’s about answers not links. It’s about all the collateral as well. The pain is very high. The carriers are not supporting a cookie like feature. Cross-carrier targeting it hard. Talked about a number of challenges facing the space and the fragmentation issues. For every $1 you spend on mobile spend $2 on training your staff. If you have the most wonderful mobile experience and a lousy customer experience, it does not matter! I couldn’t agree more.

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I just got an email from an SEM shop saying that Google offering “is now offering vouchers worth up to $150 to be used in targeted Google Mobile AdWords campaigns”

Is anyone using this so far? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

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With today’s possible cab strike in Chicago, I thought it would be a good idea to post CTA bus options to arrive at the west end of Navy Pier. Please note that even with these bus options, it is a10 minute walk to the east end of Navy Pier where the Festival Hall is located. I highly suggest taking the bus instead of walking the entire distance and wish the actually CTA stopped at Navy Pier East Entrance #2. Please check out my current question on Yahoo! Answers regarding Navy Pier.

Here are some tips on how to navigate via CTA to Navy Pier. Cash fare on the CTA is currently $2. This is a pdf map of the areas described below.

From the Sheraton: the #29, #65 and #124 buses stop in front of the Sheraton on Illinois and terminate and 600 East Grand Avenue, this will save you three blocks of walking.

The number#124 bus starts in the West Loop at Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center and terminates at 600 East Grand Avenue.

If traveling from Midway Airport, take the Orange line to Roosevelt, walk down the stairs and travel one block west to State Street. Take the#29 State bus northbound to 600 East Grand Avenue.

If traveling from O’hare Airport, take the blue line to Monroe, walk up the stairs, then walk one block east to State Street. Take the#29 State bus northbound to 600 East Grand Avenue.

For those staying at a hotel a bit further north, the #66 bus travels east on Chicago Avenue, then south on Fairbanks to Grand to 600 East Grand Avenue.

For those of you attending ad:tech, I have the following high level networking objectives and look forward to speaking with you (please drop me an email contained on my Bio page):

1) I’m seeking anyone with senior contacts at major search engines

2) Anyone with ideas or connections to publishers, advertisers or investors regarding mobile search and mobile advertising.

Have a great show!

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As per this press release, Medio Systems named Robert P. Lilleness Chief Operating Officer this month.

It’s notable to me  in that he has no previous direct search or advertising experience.

His ownership of Smarthome is certainly an interesting wrinkle. Perhaps Medio sees a potential revenue model in providing services to control devices in your home from the mobile phone someday?

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Search, Social Media, Video, Gaming and Mobile Advertising leaders will gather in Chicago at a new location on Navy Pier on July 31 and August 1. Many new marketing speakers in Chicago this year. I look forward to seeing you there!

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It was a pleasure meeting Chetan at CTIA in March. Chetan just released a white paper you can get here.

I wish I would have gotten to talk with him more, hopefully we can do this during his Chicago visit later this month.

He also chaired a mobile panel discussion in April in Seattle which you can read about here.

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“There has to be all sorts of models, both subscription and ad-supported,” Fox Interactive senior vice president and general manager John Smelzer said, speaking at the iHollywood Forum’s Mobile Entertainment Summit. While the revenue mix may be different, he added that the key to driving user adoption of all types of content is “to make the entry point easy.” Source Article

I couldn’t agree with this more. There are too many subscription only mobile models emerging, this will slow adoption in an already fragmented market.  The mobile medium is not a failure, many of the business models are. It’s a fascinating paradox. There are too many 20th Century business cases that are being built that work on paper but not in reality.

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One year ago today, I started and made my first post on this blog! More importantly, I started an international and quite unpredictable journey of connectedness, friendship acquisition, learning, assumption questioning and personal growth that still amazes me on a daily basis by it’s power to transform my life and the people around me in positive and forceful ways. I’ve had people that I’ve never met provide introductions to people that have changed my life in ways I could not have imagined and have had acts of kindness and generosity that are simply too numerous to list.

In this first year, I’ve teethed, bruised myself and made some mistakes! In the next year, I hope to start walking as I progress from my crawling phase.

Sometimes people ask me what my goals are for this blog. In the short-term, they are career oriented as I am seeking a leadership position in a transformative, growth company, in the long term they about doing everything I can to make the world a better experience for everyone.

So my primary goals are:

1) Using my financial services, Internet and high growth company experiences and competencies to become one of the world’s leaders in mobile search and monetization. It is my belief that over time the lines between financial services, search and social networks will blur in ways that will amaze the world.

2) Use the Peter Drucker principles and quotes I live to help craft and execute elite experiences for those who interact with the companies I’ve serve in the future.

3) Build a transformative relationships in everyday life, as a business keynote speaker at conferences and within the blogosphere.

I thank you for your love and support during this first year and I look forward to the year to come being even better. Give yourself a round of well deserved applause and tell your friends and neighbors what a good job you’ve done supporting me! See you soon. Thanks again!

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The main parts of the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit are today and Wednesday, here is the schedule. My initial thoughts:

1) I wish it were broadcast online, even the Chris Cornell concert, this is a lost opportunity for exposure to those who can’t be at the summit and build positive PR.

2) We’re going to hear another round of Yahoo! and Microsoft merger talk. Much like Charlene Li, I do not think this is the best path. They would be better off hiring teams of people with experience innovating products and services in different industries. This get past the limiting beliefs of continually hiring passive candidates who demonstrate no loyalty or passion for their present companies.

3) Why is John Battelle the only person at the summit blogging his thoughts? His post is the only one I could find about the opening night’s festivities.

4) I’m interested in information about the people shaping mobile search at the summit, please contact me.

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Mobile Entertainment reports that “Griffiths will be responsible for the overall strategy and direction of the mobile division within the Online Services Group division.”

It’s interesting to see Microsoft bringing in outside talent for this type of role, we’ll see how this develops. Hugh sounds like someone I’d like to get to know.

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While at the recent CTIA conference, I met Victor Brilon and his immensely helpful Nokia publicist. We shared a dynamic conversation that was amazingly informative regarding Nokia and it’s unique ideas regarding the various types of emerging Internet convergence. The Nokia N800 is a device that is clearly “on the other side of the chasm” as Victor proudly describes it. In the time that has followed my visit to CTIA two themes have emerged regarding Nokia 1) They understand the blogosphere and see a significant event in convergence coming and are preparing for these possibilities and 2) The frame I saw when at their booth was one of company who views themselves as “more than just a device maker”. I like that point of view.

Please enjoy my attempt to recreate the magic of my first unplanned meeting with Victor via this podcast. I welcome your feedback on the discussion from yourself and others, especially in regards to your thoughts on the vision for convergence. Thanks!

Listen to the interview: Nokia_N800_Victor_Brilon

Related posts:
10 Ways The Nokia N800 Is Better Than Apple’s iPhone
Justin Dolske’s blog
N800 WOM World
CES 2007

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I will not have a blog entry on this panel. With 6 participants of various backgrounds – it wasn’t focused. The sound was also terrible. There was little flow to the conversation.  The session was obviously frustrating to the audience as half of them left before it was over.  

There was a minimum of three panels merged into one here – white label mobile search, LBS in conjunction mobile search and voice with mobile search. My view is that CTIA doesn’t fully appreciate the importance of mobile search yet and that the mobile search discussions during the Billboard event on Monday were of superior quality.

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Moderator: Tom Wheeler, Managing Director, Core Capital Partners (extremely well prepared moderator – great job Tom)

Marketing Speaker: Jim Ryan, VP, Consumer Data Products, ATT (Cingular)

Business Speaker: Larry Shapiro, EVP Business Development, Operations, Walt Disney Internet Group

This is an amazing panel – the session is way too fast paced to blog well enough to be worthy of it’s immense quality. I think I have good audio (thank you to the kind and fine people at Roland for providing me a review copy of the Edirol R-09 last week for usage at this conference) Speaking of audio has anyone found a Youtube type service for audio serving other than yousendit or putting it on a peer to peer network? I’ll try to contact you with it if you leave me comment with a valid email address. An audience poll of this session showed 70% of the people thought there was a role for an aggregator in the process (note – an earlier poll showed the audience to be about 30% carrier folks).

ctiawireless2007 Billboard Mobile Entertainment Live 2007

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I’m sitting three tables from the front left, please stop by and say hello.

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I’m interested in meeting anyone and everyone in the mobile search industry to learn about what you are up to!!! Drop me a line if you are going.

I’m still seeking a pass +1 for the LG Foo Fighters party on Tuesday.

Lastly, I’m interested in speaking with anyone who can provide me a cell phone that will actually work reliably with my Tmobile cell phone service in my current residence. You are a very special person I’ve been seeking to meet for quite some time!

nonofficial tag (why isn’t there and official tag?): citawireless2007 Orlando

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Mobile Ad Network, it’s interesting to see the hyper competitiveness of this keyword term as it implies a push marketing channel instead of a pull channel such as mobile search. We’ve trained consumers to search for a decade now, why would they want to regress to push models instead of using true mobile search? They have been trained to pull and will eventually demand the same mobile search experience on mobile devices. Hence, while Mobile Ad Network may be a popular term today, it likely will be replaced in the future with keyword terms based on derivatives of mobile search.

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Alvin Wang Graylin, CEO of mInfo, Inc., a Chinese mobile search firm, was interviewed at 3GSM 2007:

Bena Roberts podcast

Jan Kuczynski podcast

mInfo also released a 2006 mobile search results survey. The podcasts provide some insight into the China mobile search marketplace.

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Infospace (INSP) was scheduled to appear at the JPMorgan Global Internet Conference today. It appears that they have canceled the appearance as the timeslot has passed and they are no longer on the schedule.

Tom Sandell, the CEO and Senior Portfolio Manager of Sandell Asset Management  Corp., holder of 8.8% of Infospace, stated in a press release today that “We believe that InfoSpace shares are materially undervalued and the board and management should take immediate steps to improve that value. If the company and the board are unable or unwilling to take these steps, we think the company should be sold. As the company’s largest shareholder, our interests are directly aligned with the rest of the shareholder base in seeing value maximized and we may seek representation on the board to protect those interests.” 

For more detail on Sandell’s valuation assessment, visit page 23 and 24 of this SEC pdf filing.

In your opinion, who would make good acquirers of Infospace and why do you think that?

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I thought you’d like to be aware of these, it’s interesting that they announed these almost simultaneously.

Yahoo! to present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference and
Thomas Weisel Partners Internet Digital Media Conference

Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO, and Susan Decker, Executive Vice
President, Head of Advertiser and Publisher Group and acting Chief Financial
Officer, will present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference.  The
presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 12:30pm
Eastern Time / 9:30am Pacific Time.  

Jerry Yang, Co-Founder and Chief Yahoo!, will present at the Thomas
Weisel Partners Internet & Digital Media Conference.  The presentation
will take place on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:15pm Eastern Time /
3:15pm Pacific Time. 

A live webcast of both presentations will be available on the Investor
Relations website at
This link on Yahoo! Investor Relations website

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
announced today that Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer, will
present at the following investor events:

Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
Monday, March 5, 2007
3:15 p.m. ET / 12:15 p.m. PT

Bear Stearns 20th Annual Media Conference
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
8:45 a.m. ET / 5:45 a.m. PT

To access the audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit
This link on the Google Investor Relations website

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At SES Chicago 2006, Tim Daly from SENTEC stated that it would be nice if “SEMPO became more than just a cocktail party” during a session on Search Arbitrage issues. It’s an interesting statement, but based on the recent election results for the board of directors it appears that Mr. Daly will not be influencing that opinion directly during 2007.  

Well apparently SEMPO actually is more than a cocktail party as they released a research report the other day. They did not send me the report referenced here, but I find the following to be interesting: 

• Marketers are even more reluctant to pay for mobile search as almost half of the respondents said they would not pay a premium for that technology.
• Almost 25 percent of respondents said they prefer to pay less for mobile search than for traditional search. About two-thirds said they were interested in contextually targeted advertising delivered to mobile search users.

Commentary: I recently used Linkedin Answers to ask the question,  ”In your opinion, who are the emerging start up leaders in providing mobile search marketing and related services?” The result? Nobody answered the question publicly and I got a ton of private answers saying “that is a good question”, “I don’t know yet”, etc. How can one make a judgment about the pricing of a medium if they do not have the complete value proposition and in many cases do not even know who the alternatives to traditional search engines are and how they are unique yet? 

• “The reluctance to hike budgets for video and mobile search reflects the industry’s trend toward an overall pricing plateau,” the survey said. Twenty-five percent of the respondents reported they had reached their pricing ceiling for paid placement. Of the remaining 75 percent, half said the most they could afford in a price increase was 30 percent.

Commentary: Frequently new mediums take revenue streams from other existing mediums. Business history has some dramatic examples of how organizations did not adapt to change because they were afraid of cannibalizing existing revenue streams and it ultimately led to obsolescence. It is just one of a long list of reasons that this period of time is extremely exciting to me.

I didn’t see the survey during the answer gathering. I’m curious to know if ”I don’t have enough information to answer that yet” was an option for the mobile search questions? Thanks.

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Of course this data source is only a proxy at best, but it’s interesting to look at trends, correlate news events and ponder possible meanings. Enjoy.

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Interesting discussion that starts to talk about behaviorial targeting.

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3GSM World Congress starts Monday in Barcelona. It bills itself as “the world’s leading mobile communications conference and exhibition” (in lower case letters just like that too). There is rumored to be some serious negotiations going on in terms of white label mobiel search providers and the cell phone carriers (if you hear anything interesting drop me a note). If you’re going or are there, please drop me a line. You are someone I should know.

I want to praise something – I *love* the way this press contact list is set up for the exhibitors. It should become a standard practice.

It appears there is another white label search player emerging – MCN.
Among bloggers, these folks have caught my eye with posts so far: Dan Appelquist, Alessandro Pace and others!

tag: 3GSMworldcongress2007

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Goobile had a write up about it.

WPP had more on the release here. This is an extremely interesting investment from an untraditional source. Time will tell what is means fully.

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A surprisingly very lightly reported news story talked about the dark side of SMS, text spammers. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently filed a federal lawsuit against a pair of Florida SMS spammers who sent 5 million unsolicited text messages!!!

Increasingly I’m seeing a consumer backlash against untargeted SMS messages. We’ve trained people to search for the past ten years. The quicker we migrate to a search oriented mobile society from a mainly SMS based one, the better the customer experience will be!

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John Sun puts together a nice aggregation of mobile news on a daily basis that I’ve added to my feed reader. You should check it out!

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See the details here. If Ojas Rege would like elaborate in an interview on this blog, it would be welcomed. Thanks!

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On October 9th, I wrote this about Kathy Sierra’s “Knocking the Exuberance Out of Employees”.

It’s a great post and it relates to a lot of problems in the business world in terms of having innovative customer service. Let’s hope her post prompted some people to realize that operating in this manner is a mistake.

Congrats!

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I recently noticed that Google started a Mobile Ads guideline page. The following is of great interest to me:

“Follow proper grammar conventions.

You may use common text message abbreviations.”

I’d like to see some more detail about what is meant exactly by “You may use common text message abbreviations.”

The #1 result for “text message abbreviations” in Google currently has this web page. In a world where relevance is critical to click through and conversion rates, is an ad that has abbreviations that a viewer doesn’t understand certainly doesn’t meet the relevancy requirement as that viewer certainly won’t take action on an ad that he or she can not interpret. My preliminary thought is that this should allow the user to self select the type of mobile search marketing ad style that they are most comfortable with and this likely will have a strong correlation with the age of the user/ad viewer. But it also means that eventually you might need more than one style of mobile text ad, one with abbreviations and one without abbreviations. This is certainly an interesting area that I’m will likely see new standards and metrices over time.

What do you think the standards should be? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts and discussion of this issue.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world.
- Albert Einstein

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Charles S. Golvin, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Where do you fit in? Discussed Crest toothpaste mobile campaign example

What tools are available, what is the reach, what are the learnings?

Tools available today:
- Messaging
 - Voting
 - Promotions
 - Search
- Mobile Browser
 - Banners
 - Interstitial
 - Search-based
- Applications and content
 - Free / discounted services

New mechanisms are emerging
 - Physical proximity
 - Coupons and loyalty (Cellfire)
 - Using location (opt-in) to improve targeting

Where does mobile fit?
Eyeballs>>Awareness>>Consideration>>Preference>>Personal>>Loyalty

What is the reach of these tools?
1 in 4 receive text messages regularly

Youth see their mobile phone differently

Think Europe is so far ahead? Think again…
 - Internet penetration is higher in USA than Europe

What does the data mean?
 - Mobile campaigns need to target data adopters

It’s still early
 - Most US consumers still use voice
 - Mobile formats are small and generally difficult to use
 - Ad Standards need to be developed
 - Mobile is a unique channel

Compared with the fixed Web, consumers’ mobile experiences are:
 - Abbreviated
 - Transactional
 - More tied to the physical world
 - Successful campaigns embrace these differences

Best practices
 - Target mobile early adopters
 - Immediacy factor
 - Tailor content to mobile screen and user’s process
 - Use promotions to boost response rate
 - Employ creative or ad formats that match product or service
 - Time campaigns for maximum business ROI
 - Tie mobile to offline marketing

Tomorrow’s mobile marketing next practices
 - Integrated marketing campaigns
 - Performance-based metrics
 - Smart use of innovative functionality
 - Location sensitivity

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I would love it if you could take a few moments to log into www.ecomxpo.com

- Visit education center

- On demand presentations

- Click on attend now on my speech after scrolling down

Please enter my blogging contest.

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In conjunction with my discussion at eComXpo about “Mobile Search Marketing: The Coming Evolution of Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Customer Officer”, I’m announing a contest! Prizes will be awarded via random drawing on Monday, October 30th, 2006, odds of winning depend on number of entries received and viewed via blog search engines.
Prize #1 – Dalka will be giving out one of his famous blog interviews to one lucky winner! (estimated value – priceless!)
Prize #2 – One eComXpo University Pass to allow leisurely viewing of content at a later time after the close of the conference, a great value if you missed part of the show. (estimated value – $99)

To enter, simply answer the following questions in a blog entry before the close of eComXpo:
1) Who exports what cereal to what country and why?
2) Who had a flat tire?
3) What three disparate data sets does David advocate tying together to create a customer driven experience?

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I arrived to the session late….

Corporate bloggers must have thick skin.

Community Manager – gather sources and send them away…they will come back.

How do I get all employees involved?

Community marketing allows engagement.

Responding to complaints:
- Engage the blogger – “we hear you”

Blogger relationships – treat them with respect and analyst.

Bloggers are egotistical.

I’m not in PR.

Prospects trust other customers than anything else. Embrace and use your current customers.

Let go, to gain more.

Do not over structure corporate blogs for product announcements.

Blogoshpere conversation benchmark tools are important. 
 
Rift between corporate communications and web – often exists.

You should educate people to overcome that rift. Social Media consultant.

Just do it . The tools will evolve.

Give to the community and they will give back. 

You need to trust and love your employers. IBM built it’s blogging policy with a Wiki.

Vivid examples given about how to use Myspace.

Wells Fargo has a blog, teaching credit. Useful content build trust.

 Links, activity, forum and stickyness.
 
C-level blogs can save time as the future meetings are framed.

Sun, says C-level leader is to communicate. 

“Social media is gray.”

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I’m researching mobile marketing and mobile search, a lot, lately. There are articles everywhere you look.

The following are opinions I seek:
- What do you want to see on your mobile device?
- What don’t you want to see on your mobile device (perhaps more important actually)?
- What companies are the leaders in the mobile marketing/SMS/messaging space?
- Who are the movers and shakers in the mobile marketing/SMS/messaging space?
- Who are the thought leaders in the mobile marketing/SMS/messaging space?
- What are the barriers to international standards and metrics creation?
- Will pay per call truly migrate to the mobile device? How will it be different?
- What are the other barriers to success of the space?
- What oligopolistic and/or blocking will prevent adoption of superior technology?
- Will customers true needs and desires be considered fully first? 

Gee, that’s a lot of upside down M’s at the start of the thoughts above!
Other links for you to consider for discussion:  Mobile Marketing Magazine, Engadget, The Mobile Weblog, Mobile Marketing & Spam, 4Info, Goobile,  etc

OK now, please comment away and ask your friends to do the same (heck even link it if you want), I want this discussion to focus on your thoughts and ideas and drive my future research and discussions here. Thanks for your time.

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Danny Sullivan has a nice summary post this morning…always in his funny and light-hearted way. Danny is the glue that holds a fragmented community together.  

Google Blogoscoped linked to posted video of Danny Sullivan’s interview of Eric Schmidt at SES and Danny also posted full press conference transcript that Google posted - wish I would have known that this was out there – it would have been helpful to me and I’ve bookmarked the page – props to David Krane and his PR team Google for posting that including the retracted comment portion – in other words if you read this please read the whole thing! I would urge him to change the segmentation of this information however as this transcript was not sent out via the normal Google product promotion press release channels like email.

RustyBrick points out an article suggesting that Google has hit the “topping point“.  

Easton Ellsworth discusses a few of his favorite blogging promotion concepts.

This includes Andy Hagan’s and Aaron Wall’s recent 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.

Steve Rubel is challenging marketers to think like Venture Capitalists.

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Rustybrick wrote an amazing post on the new SES API session – my PC was in dead battery mode and no plug available mode during this session. Please enjoy his post. He did mis Erynn B. Petersen’s of Microsoft because they accidently went to questions before she gave her speech, which was an awkward moment that she handled amazingly well. I had a nice chat with her afterwards, she is one of the people who really gets what this is all about and for that I appreciate her.

This is a great session that reminds me of how much search is like financial services, where there are a number of vendors that provide mission critical API’s – the fact that API’s are just starting to become transparent to the masses is a sign of how early in all of this we truly are.

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Lately, Google has been showing that is it participating in customer listening. This is good! I hope it continues.

Since I’ve started studying search engine marketing these past full months full time, I’ve been applying to Google – even with employee referrals of former co-workers and people I’ve met at Search Engine Strategies, etc. with out the applications executed in a way I consider appropriate – that is the politest way I can say it. I’d like to see that change, I’m presently seeking post-MBA level leadership roles within your Search Services/ Syndication, Advertising Sales, Marketing or other leading areas driving customer satisfaction and impacting revenue as you grow new product lines. Ideally I’d love to work within local, dMarc or mobile. I resubmitted (again) today for numerous post-MBA leadership positions.

So I launched nextgoogleceo.com which is a cute take of HR microsites (and discusses how next Microsoft is obsolete now that google is a common verb in our language), except that I’ve changed the wording a bit to demonstrate my increasingly dynamic understanding of both search and viral marketing and the future thereof. As soon as I hit send, I’m leaving for Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 and look forward to meeting your wonderful business unit leaders speak once again.

I would of course invite aspiring competitors or “next google’s” to come up and talk to me about their ideas as well. I look forward to learning and adding to my large and growing list of amazing people that are making the Internet a special place.

I look forward to seeing all of my fabulous friends at SES San Jose. It’s going to be both great fun and great learning. It’s the 3rd or 4th time I’ll be seeing some of you and I feel like I’m going on a trip to visit family…that is because that is exactly what it is! I look forward to meeting many new folks to and learning many new and great things. Thank you and please travel safely. See you in San Jose!

I leave you with this parting thought: In the book, Creating Customer Evangelists, the chapters on Mark Cuban stand out in regards to the hiring of Matt Fitzgerald as Chief Marketing Maverick: “Instead of selecting a marketing person from the NBA or the sports industry, Mark consciously made a decision to hire someone from outside the industry,” Fitzgerald says. “He believed the NBA marketing community was too in-bred so [Cuban] was looking for a marketing person with a fresh perspective and ideas.”

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The one that is clear to me is that the mobile marketing space has more questions than answers.

Panel:
Peter Fuller – Founder and Managing Partner, i-Jump
Courtney Jane Acuff, Associate Director, Denuo

Numerous doors of entry:
Reaching consumers:
SMS (text messaging)
WAP (wireless web)
MMS (multimedia)
WAP banners
Video
Starstar dialing (new data dialing service)

Wireless web – about 5% using it currently.

Rich brand experience coming via MMS

The carriers don’t always play nice in the sandbox. Aggregators play a role. Agencies need to understand

Zoove.com – domains

Putting it all together:
Think of the mobile phone as a newspaper, television, Internet, game player, note passer (text), wallet and telephone – in one.

Create a complete user and brand experience, as you would create typical offline cross-media campaign.

Services that you can make money on like service communications are interesting.

Metrics piece needs to be figured out.

In the end it’s all about money, revenue streams are in question.

It’s frustrating and exciting, that things become obsolete constantly.

A discussion about best practices and the challenges of making them work is adopted.

McDonald’s – 15 million Big Mac boxes – game pieces – lead to opt-in.

Axe – free ring tone promotion

Kellogg’s – healthy eating tips.

Cost – $50,000 minimum to play – technical integration, properly, short code, hosting – the media to support it.

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