Blond Mobile

Following the success of the first mobile advertisement conference, IMA held another conference this year. This years conference included world known participants from the field of mobile advertisement and mobile content in addition to the mobile operator O2.

Mark Wachter, founder of the Mobile Monday German chapters and from WMC.mobi  opened the conference by giving a very interesting overview, starting from the past of mobile marketing and advertisement  to the future.   Wachter discussed various Mobile Advertising methods such as targeted advertising which is one the benefits of  using mobile advertisement,  since the advertiser has a clear user profile, interactive advertisement, advertising by SMS  and LBS (location based services). The lecture also discussed the future of mobile advertisement and marketing and how things changed due to the entrance of social media, specially twitter, which increases the mobile internet traffic very dramatically.  He explained that the main guidelines for good mobile adv. and marketing are to keep the users privacy, have a value for the end-user and not spam users and be interactive. Wachter explained that there is no specific business model yet, since the world of mobile is constantly changing, especially with the entrance of twitter. In order to explain where the mobile is going, he showed the below movie, which is taking from mocom2020 and includes key events and innovation over a timeline, and what is expected to come.

Future of Mobile

The main emphasis of mobile advertising is that the mobile handset is a personal tool that goes every place with the  end user and with it a specific consumer profile can be achieved, making the advertisement and marketing very user targeted and have the customer benefit from it and actually want to get the advertisements. Examples of benefits are ordering a taxi to the location of the customer, free calls and SMS’s sponsored by the advertiser many more…

Mobile advertisement makes the advertisement and marketing  very efficient in compare to advertising on TV or the interne, where the customer is not fully defined.

To download Mark’s presentation and other presentation from the conference please go here

MobileMonday TLV  are giving away a *free* entrance to the IMA’s Mobile Advertising Conference.  This is the second time they are having this conference, the first one was great (you can read about the first conference here).The ticket is worth 390 NIS + vat. full Agenda here.

In order to win a free entrance you need to fill out a feedback form about Mobile Monday TLV. The winner will be announced on the 22nd of Jun. (you need to have been in our events to answer it).

Below are all the interesting events – at least the ones I find interesting. If you think I forget something, please feel free to email or tweet me.

a crazy week of events is ahead of us.  even if you are not going to CTIA, there are allot of hi tech related events this week! (if you are going to CTIA, look below for my recommendations)  I don’t know if its because the Kinnernet camp or because the upcoming holidays. anyway, below you may find a list of upcoming events so it will be much more easier to track and not miss on something you would like to attend:

 24/3:  GarageGeeks hosting Allen Hurff from MySpace: although this event was yesterday, its worth mentioning it in the list, Allen gave a great lecture about Open Platform, Open Social and Open ID and got me thinking….

25/3 Pre-Kinnernet Get Together: a get together with the Kinnernet participants from Israel and overseas. the event will take place in Uptown (formerly Galina Beach Club), from 20:00 to 22:00 and is hosted by Genesis Partners & 013Netvision. first free drinks are free. to RSVP: http://prekinnernet2009.eventbrite.com/

26/3-28/3 The annual Kinnernet camp: Will take place at  the see of Galilee. for more info: http://2009.kinnernet.com/

29/9 COM.Vention09: The annual Internet convention of TheMarker. the convention will have two tracks; International track which will be in English and include speakers from the Kinnernet Camp, and an Israeli track, which will focus Israeli scene. For more info and registration: http://conventions.themarker.com/article.asp?rId=138

29/3 Entrepreneur  Day: The first day (out of two) of the Entrepreneur Day, by MIT forum.  You will be able to hear about new strategies for Starting Up, Using IP for converting ideas into businesses and much more. For more details: http://www.mit-forum.org.il/events/event.aspx?id=72

29/3 Post Kinnernet Party, hosted by the GarageGeeks. the event will start at 19:30 in the Geek Garage (40 Hapeled St, Holon)

30/3 Tel Aviv branch of the Startups and Societal Ventures Network. Speakers are not yet published. The events will start at 18:00 and will take place at HP Offices, Raanana: http://www.meetup.com/SSVNetworkISRAEL/calendar/9904102/?a=ce1p_grp

30/3 GarageGeeks Sessions: Creative Commons Think Alike. The garage is busy this week! for info about this session: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=65575522591

31/3 Breakfast with Jeff Pulver: The breakfast is from 8:30 to 10:30, and will is held at ZOA House – 1 Daniel Frisch Tel-Aviv

31/3 Techonomy: Right after Jeff’s breakfast and in the same place! comfortable! The event will showcase new innovative startups that are aiming to change the way we think about Web2.0. The event is free but you need to RSVP at: http://techonomy.eventbrite.com/

31/3 Yahoo! Developer Session: The session is hosted by the.co.il’s and will discuss Yahoo! Developer Network and Open Strategy. The events starts at 19:00 and is at IDC.

1/4 Entrepreneur Day: The second day of the Entrepreneur Day, in this day there will be a highlight on getting Investments. for more info: http://www.mit-forum.org.il/events/event.aspx?id=74

1/4 The Annual Morrison & Foerster IP Seminar: at this event you will be able to learn about he emerging marketplace for Intellectual Property. The event will take place the Hilton Hotel and is from 9:00 to 14:00. Registration: http://snurl.com/cfc79

1/4 IMA’s Knowledge Cafe: The topic is: “Cybercrime Threats: From Internet to Mobile”. the event will take place at Sun’s offices, from 13:30- 17:30. for agenda: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=520 for registration: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=521

Let me know if I forgot something.

If you are planing on going to CTIA I recommend going to:

MobileMonday @ CTIA Wireless 2009:http://www.facebook.com//event.php?eid=68414518125

The Mobile Mashup: The Glitterati After Party at CTIA hosted my MobileMonday New York: http://mashupctia09-fbnews.eventbrite.com/

Caroline’s WIP Jam: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148397450064, I attended twice and was super inspiring!

WIP Jam After Party:  http://wipjam.com/2009/03/wip-jam-after-party-at-ctia-wireless-in-vegas-april-2/

The Mobile Monday Peer Awards where held during the MWC 2009. Different MobileMonday chapters from all over the world sent their chosen startup. Each startup had 3 minutes to introduce themselves. My favorite presentation was by Jaime Lanchares, Unkasoft CEO.  In his presentation he “talked” to his application and demonstrated what the application can do…  I recommend you have a look at his presentation . The Tel Aviv chapter sent Fring, which started as a mobile VoIP client, and enhanced to a mobile clients that allows various ways of interactions with your contacts. There were three award categories; jury award, audience award and the chapter award. PopCatcher won the jury award,  Unkasoft won the audience award, as I said before the presentation was amazing! Fring won the chapter award and also got second place in the jury awards.

following the presentations there was a cocktail party, where I got the opportunity to meet some very interesting  people…

last week we  had the 4th MoMo TLV event. it was in Tel Aviv, at the Mandy’s.

The event included special guest from abroad and was full. this was the first time that we actually had a waiting list. Orange handed out some very cool beer glasses and books (beer and books go great together). There where allot of women. This time I counted 14 women, which 4 of them, not including me were blond.  I was very happy to know, that the blond women where not only smart but in a high managing position. for example  Nurit Roth, Co-Founder and Director at 3DVU and Tami Bronner, CEO of Cellerium . girl power! or even better, blond girl power!

Michal Carmi, Tripletec CEO – another smart blond

In addition to the speakers, Eero Bragge, Senior technical consultant, from forum Nokia attended and was nice enough to let me ask him allot of technical Symbian related question, even though a day after the MoMo TLV event he was the key lecturer of the IMA technical session. as always we had refreshments and a fun atmosphere..

for more pictures please visit our picture album

Next week, there are three mobile events. the first is the September Mobile Monday Tel Aviv (MoMo Tlv) event, and the theme is "Global mobile Partnership". for this event we have some special guest from abroad; Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer, GSM Association, Stephane Gantchev, Head of Orange Trial Factory, Orange-France and Gian-Luca Cioletti, Head of BizDev EMEA,  Forum Nokia. the event will be on September 15th in Tel Aviv and as always will include free drinks and refreshments. for more info and registration visit http://momotlv.eventsbot.com/

The second event, is a technical workshop that IMA are organizing with Forum Nokia. it’s on September 16th morning. it will include Nokia’s tools and SDK’s, development platforms such as J2me, Symbian, flash, widgest etc. The latest on S60 Platform, location API’s and much more. all sessions will be presented by Eero Bragge, from Forum Nokia. for more info please visit: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=459

The third mobile event for next week is the GSMA Global Competition, where the winner of the competition will be announced. this event is with Carmel Ventures and is on September 16th, after the forum Nokia session, so if your quick you can make them both…. for more info please visit http://www.carmelventures.com/Event.asp?Pid=0.51.543&id=539

Yesterday we held the 3rd MoMo TLV event. It was at Mandy’s, on the Yarkon and the topic was mobile content. 130 guest came and orange handed out gifts. I spotted 3 blond women other than me, next event I promise to take a photo of blonds…,

We had a speed lecture session; each person talked 15 min. we had a special guest from China – Ori Elraviv, Dragon ports Co-Founder, that talked about the mobile scene in china, and mostly answered question. Aviv Revach, Mominis Co-Founder, gave a short intro about mobile gaming. Guy Ami-Ad from Mobi, talked about mobile advertising and was charming as always, Aviad Rabinovich, Oranges Music Manager talked in addition to the regular "listening to music on your handset" about using your mobile for getting to know more music, music campaigns and song recognition, which I liked the most. It works by sending a part of a song recording to some server, and receiving the name of the band, song name and the album in a few seconds from the server. I was impressed, even more than seeing 3 other blonds in a mobile event.  I already know some sites that do something similar, such as WatZatSong, but in those sites you need to wait for users to recognize the song and say what it is. I don’t know what was the application that Aviad was using, but I liked it very much and Ill will find out…

As always we had an open bar, thanks to our sponsors Orange, BlueRun Amdocs and Eurocom.

More pictures from the event can be found here.

Last Monday was the second event of Mobile Monday Tel Aviv. The theme was mobile VoIp, a theme close to me. Although sceduled to start the lectures at 19:30, we started at 20:00, half an hour late, due to guests that were still arriving. I think that for the next MoMo event we should allow more time till the lectures start….:) on the bar were cool blue shot glasses courtesy of Sun.

We started with a lecture of Yossi Cohen from DSP-IP, that talked about Mobile VoIP technology and Mobile VoIP business models (lecture can be found here). After the lecture we had a panel with Tzahi Efrat from Jajah, Roy Timor-Rousso from Fring and Oded Goldenberg from Skuku that presented the VoIP companies and Yossi Hasson from BlueRun that presented a venture capital company. Having Jajah and Fring at the same table, makes you feel that Truphone are missing. although Truphone wanted to be at this Mobile Monday VoIP event, they could not make it. lucky us, James Tagg and James Body from Truphone were in Israel prior to the Mobile VoIP MoMo Event, and James Tagg answered the same questions on video. The video was filmed by James Body with my home camera at Jajah’s offices and I was asking the questions. I apologize for the bad quality

James Tagg,Truphone

We had an interesting discussion on how mobile VoIP companies make their revenue, relations with operators and the future of mobile VoIP. It was intersting to know, that JAJAH, Skuku and Truphone make money, but Fring do not make money AND do not intended of making money. they have money from their VC. We had Yossi from BlueRun answer what is the reason for investing in a company that does not have any revenue. Does this mean that Fring will keep on receiving more and more founding from investors or at some point they will finish all their money and will have to close?

We had fun, interest, new acquaintances, drinks and blue shot glasses!

We are planing the next MoMo TLV event and looking for the next air conditioned location…if you have any suggestions, please email me!

See you in the next MoMo TLV event!

At the beginning of the week I attended the IMA’s Mobile Advertising event that took place in Tel Aviv. the event was very well planed, and on schedule, every lecture started and ended on time! that was so surprising. I think that was the first event I have been to in Israel that corresponded to the time table! the place was full, it looked that there where allot of women, compared to other mobile events I have been to. I was proud…

The lectures where interesting. Most of them demonstrated the extra creativity needed for mobile advertisement. TurkCell showed some very interesting ways to advertise, which involves users consent to get advertisements. They talked about coupons that users receive from their favorite brands which are discounts only available for mobile users, and that way making users want to receive the advertisement. The most interesting thing they talked about was commercial ring tones, the user sends a SMS with a short code and then he "subscribes" to a ringtone of some brand. Every time the rington is played (i.e  the user has an incoming call), the user gets credit-his phone bill is reduced. the number of times the ringtone is played is monitored. The technology used is called RBT (Ring Back Tone).  This is the song we hear when calling a friend. Turkcell uses a company called TonlaKazan (meaning Tone&Win) to achieve this.

Guy Ami-Ad,from Mobi, gave a rememberable lecture with allot of examples of innovated advertisements. a basic idea is that with a mobile, you can get to the user any time and any place, in the bed before he sleeps, or even in the bathroom…. he talked about having loyal users, and doing it by billing them only "after a few clicks".. and how important is it to make the users involved in the brands advertisements.  there were many more interesting lectures and talks.

I think there are many advantages for mobile advertising. from the advertiser side, the user is available at any time and any place, tracking and monitoring the result are very easy and there is no better way of knowing your target client by his  profile and interests whereas just having an advertisement on TV.

From the developer and business side, I think there is a barrier of where the technology in the mobile industry can develop and this is just because every thing in mobile cost money. Having advertisement to cover various charges on the mobile will increase demand in mobile technology.

Disadvantages? none, or am I  grafted? the only issue I see is spamming users with advertisements, but in the case of mobile advertisement the user needs to consent getting advertisement or coupons…