What is I-Wood?
Well a Dutch company i-wood has developed a mobile bannering concept which makes it possible to have mobile advertisement on Idle Screen of a cellular phone. Every time a user starts an application and returns to the main screen the banner advertisement changes. The number of banners is unlimited. Banners are stored locally and are synchronized periodically with the servers of i-wood.

How does the system work:
* Banner rotates after a call is made
* Banner rotates after every application
* Users can scroll through the banners
* The number of banners is unlimited
* Banners can be remotely installed
* Banner does not influence the mobile phone
* Banner statistics

Sounds nice, why do we need Android (gphone) at all ? I-wood even has quite witty promotional video, much better than Google’s

Today i was searching some practical cases about how companies have used Bluetooth marketing. Among others i managed to find quite good success story video, have a look:

It made me think how can it work even better. When you are going to buy a car it is nice to get pictures and videos about the car, but how could Bluetooth marketing bring people to buy a car. Well, there are automated parking machines everywhere, why aren’t we integrating Bluetooth marketing with those. A lot of people have hands-free system in their car with Bluetooth nowadays, it means also that Bluetooth is enabled. Just push through any car related ads and it will most probably reach the audience. To be sure we could also make the car owner pay for the parking via Bluetooth or just give out 30 minutes free parking… car owner gets free parking via Bluetooth i think you follow the pattern now. I think i can bring people to buy cars, tires or whatever.So what are we waiting for, let’s integrate Bluetooth everywhere and see what happens - do we refuse to enable Bluetooth in the future or not.

2 weeks ago i wrote why Google is moving to mobile business and it seemed so obvious. Today i found an interesting survey that says that the number of worldwide mobile phone users is expected to grow from 2 billion in 2005 to approximately 3.3 billion in 2010. Currently, there are over 2.8 billion mobile phone users. At the end of 2006 there were 233 million subscribers in US, which is over 76 percent of the population. While people are already used to the e-mail and other internet based spam, mobile phones could be a great way to reach the right audience, since mobile marketing has the potential to be the next big thing in interactive marketing.

At the same time managing a mobile marketing campaign can be a challenge since there are many different entities contributing to a successful campaign. We have at least the carriers, advertisers, and consumers. But at the same time we have industry organizations like The Mobile Marketing Association, the CTIA Wireless Association, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which provide resources and guidelines for setting the standards to help move the industry forward. Like always we don’t have just perfect things, everything has its own advantages and disadvantages, so has mobile marketing. Marketers just have to think through what is their purpose and whether the selected methods are sustainable.

Positive side:
* Preliminary data shows good response rate for mobile campaigns (5% click rates vs. 1% for conventional web ads).
* New tool for brands and advertisers to reach new customers and target specific audiences.
* Smartphones and iPhone to enhance mobile surfing, promoting mobile marketing success.
* Messages sent to a mobile phone are more likely to be read than email sent to a PC, which can get caught in the spam filter.
* Mobile marketing campaigns are highly targeted and are opt-in, making them more effective than other forms of advertising.
* Mobile marketing can help build a customer database. Once customers opt in to receive an ad, you can use the information for loyalty marketing and customer retention.
* Mobile marketing can help generate buzz about your products/services because your offers will reach consumers while they are actively shopping, socializing, and making buying decisions.
* High penetration of devices with twice as many cell phones as PCs.
* Web searches on mobile devices will eventually exceed searches on PCs.
* Access to many international consumers who can’t afford PCs
* Mobile phones can receive input anywhere-anytime, enabling location-specific and behavioral targeting for local businesses.
* A cell phone is a very personal device that people take with them wherever they go, making it easy for marketers to develop a relationship with customers through this medium.
* Carriers have customer data and location information potentially available for targeting.
* Personalization, immediacy, and interactivity of mobile ads encourage response by consumers on the go.

Negative side:
* Trial and error period required for mobile marketers to learn how to succeed in mobile marketing, which differs from the traditional web marketing.
* Advertisers are wary of consumer privacy issues.
* FCC yet to rule on limiting use and release of customer data, including location information.
* In April, FCC released order requiring mobile marketers to obtain express consent from customers before carriers can release data and to make it easy for customers to opt out.
* Mobile marketing is fragmented and complex because of many different handsets and carriers, different types of functionality, and different preloaded apps (i.e. Google Maps on iPhone).
* Currently, reach is low because consumption of mobile content is small (10% of subscribers), and penetration of 3G devices is still low in most countries.
* Current WAP technology inadequate, discouraging web searching and surfing.
* General intolerance of advertising messages on a personal device.
* Current carrier-imposed “walled garden” approach prevents unfettered mobile web access.
* Adaptation of content and messages to the mobile web results in poor user experience.
* Scarcity of mobile web sites (only 8% of 1,000 top U.S. brands offer a mobile site).
* Current low usage of WAP-based mobile search doesn’t support investment in creating mobile sites because traffic volumes are low, except on search portals and other high-volume sites.
* Establishment of reliable measurement and metrics for advertisers to measure mobile ad effectiveness is needed.

To be honest i have never thought that gPhone is the next great super phone, but it is much cooler to say gPhone than Android- open source operating system for mobile phones by Google

Well at last Google revealed some information and presented finally their new system. If you pay attention then you’ll also find out how are they going to send ads to mobile users. Small hint - see how can they use the notification function. As always it is wise to hear what Steve Ballmer has to say about new products, since he always has something sensible to say. Watch the videos and find out what Android looks like and what Steve thinks about it.

Yesterday i was reading emarketer’s newsletter and found an interesting writing about Google’s plans and why they decided to come out with so called gPhone.

At the moment there are at least twice as many cell phones than pc’s. It is obvious that Google cannot grow fast enough focused only on the PC’s. Idea is that Google should extend search marketing to new interactive platforms.

The chart below shows money today and in the future that Google can and can’t reach with classic pay-per-click Web advertising.
However, Google can reach those offline companies by pay-per-action (pay-per-call) over the mobile phone. Mobile search, maps and other applications enable Google to push search marketing principles into areas where the PC-Internet just can’t reach.

At least for me it seems logical step to make. Google has managed to become a real market leader and pioneer in Internet (for PC’s), they have ideas, knowhow, money and courage to do something crazy. I don’t want to predict anything, but i would buy Google’s stocks with hurry

Fortumo was invited to present at Baltic Development Forum, a high-level summit of business leaders and politicians in Scandinavia and the Baltics, taking place this week in Tallinn.

Rain Rannu, co-founder and CEO of Fortumo participates at a panel “Young Leaders of Today and Tomorrow”. Matching with the vision of Fortumo, his presentation focuses on the role of entrepreneurship in creating growth in Scandinavia.

On Friday Swedish and Danish mobilemagazine wrote a little story about Fortumo and you can find it from here. Unfortunately it is in Danish, but I sent this link through an online translator. The result is a bit technical, but it gives a general idea what was written in mobile.nu. You can read the translated text from here. It may take a while before the page loads completely.

This article managed to bring up some buzz in Denmark but we’ll talk about details soon