Tricia Duryee of MocoNews highlighted a New Year's Day story in the Financial Times (FT), which sums up some of the challenges facing Nokia, including its Comes with Music Service. The FT article frankly highlights what we already know - there are significant challenges in getting consumers to pay for mobile music and other content. And, this has been made even more difficult in this soft economy. The article includes an interview with Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive, and also includes an unattributed quote to someone who commented on the just "OK" UK sales of Comes with Music.

Nokia has even more challenges in the U.S. market with this service, as Apple continues to be the dominant force in digital music sales. Then there is what we already know - that the vast majority of music continues to be unlawfully pirated. And, in this economy, I suspect that these behaviors will be reinforced even more. Clearly the participants in the paid mobile content space, and particularly music, needs to even more urgently consider new business models.

Interesting article in MediaPost by Liz Tascio highlights what I've been hearing from folks on the ground in the mobile advertising space - there is an increasing emphasis on measurable media. I touched upon this in my blog post "Is the Economy Impacting Mobile Ad Buys?," which highlighted a growing interest on performance-based mobile advertising.

In sum, the MediaPost piece highlights what I've been hearing - there is a growing focus on ROI, and measurable media (search, click-to-purchase, etc.). And, a tempered direct marketing approach, particularly for those advertisers that are still in the mobile experimentation, test and learn phase. There is also mention of the mobile couponing space, a space that I've covered already covered in multiple posts. Clearly with a focus on cost savings, couponing has and will continue to see a revival of sorts, and particularly in the emerging mobile space.

A ChannelWeb brief story by Ed Moltzen provided another data point that highlights the significance of the mobile web. Now mind you that the audience for ChannelWeb is likely more tech savvy than the other websites, it still is significant that the analytics for a recent article found that one-third of people who viewed a particular story viewed it from their mobile phone. And, with the growing installed base of smartphones more and more consumers will increasingly look to their phones first to stay connected to their preferred web content.

So, it becomes increasingly important for media and content owners to not only ensure that they have a mobile web presence, but that it is compelling and takes into consideration the mobile context.

So, I received this today from Verizon Wireless:

"Verizon Wireless processed about 1.6 billion text messages on New Year's Eve. (20% higher than an average Wed. in December 2008).

Verizon Wireless processed nearly 1.6 billion text messages on New Year's Day. (20% higher than an average Thurs. in December 2008).

Christmas Day 2008: 1.7 billion text messages sent and received."

And while the numbers only highlight the person-to-person (P2P) channel, it does point to how much text messaging has become a critical communications channel for mobile consumers. All in all, a solid indicator for potential consumer engagement in (compelling) mobile marketing campaignss.

As a new fan of Nature, produced by Thirteen/WNET New York, and in its 27th season on PBS, I just figured that I had to point you all to a fun New York Times article that I read on New Year's Day - "When the Call of the Wild Is Nothing but the Phone in Your Pocket." Yes, I know that ringtones have already hit their peak, but there's nothing like The Center for Biological Diversity getting into the business. And, 200,000 downloads to date of 80 sounds of endangered and not yet endangered creatures while not significant, fascinated me. While the No. 1 and No. 2 on the charts are the killer whale and Mexican grey wolf, respectively, my personal favorite so far is currently the Common loon (Greenland and Northern North America).

The article pointed out the potential hazard of the download - that is if you stupidly forgot that you had downloaded the sound of something ominous while you are out in nature. A potential greater hazard in my mind, even for the nature lover that I am, is the response from those four-legged humans around you. The plain fact of the matter is that ringtones, no matter what they are, while novel at first, turn to grating quite quickly.

Wanted to point you to an article by Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times about how mobile will play from an investment perspective for Silicon Valley venture capitalists in 2009. So, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Well, in the spirit of "this year has to be better than last year" attitude, the good news first. The article points to anticipated continued mobile investments in tried and true, so "...what they know makes money in telecommunications, like carriers and makers of phones and accessories." And, the bad news is that it is not looking good for companies in the mobile advertising and mobile content space, as "...investors are not convinced that selling ads or content like applications on mobile phones can make much money for them."

I guess that what comes up (i.e., the Year of the iPhone), had to come down. This news is not too promising for mobile advertising or mobile content companies banking on VC money in the near-term.

After we rang in 2009, I couldn't help but think that this year has to be better than 2008, doesn't it? But we really don't know yet if this will hold true for the mobile advertising space. I have posted a number of blog entries about all of the contradictory opinions out there. Will mobile ad spend be up? Will it be down? Do we even have enough trend data to know yet with any certainty?

Well, to start off the year with the "it's got to be better than 2008" mentality, I took a quick perusal of Chetan Sharma Consulting's Mobile Industry Predictions 2009 and it seems that many out there have that view of mobile advertising. The sample is comprised of 200 "executives and insiders from leading mobile companies across the value chain and around the world." To the question, "Will Mobile Advertising see a rise in ad-spend in 2009?," respondents were on the whole positive. According to the survey, nearly 30% indicated that "there will be a significant increase in mobile spend," well over 40% indicated "there will be a minor increase in mobile spend, whereas less than 20% indicated that "there will be no major change" and 10% indicated that there will be a "decrease in ad spend."

I can certainly understand why mobile insiders would be positive, but I wonder if a pool of agency/media insiders would have that glass half full attitude.

Emily Steel's Wall Street Journal story on how mobile ad start-ups are trying to leverage Obama's digital campaign success into 2009 momentum makes complete sense to me. As I've written about in past blog posts (see "Lessons Learned from Obama Mobile"), Obama's use of mobile was really groundbreaking for the political landscape. So for those companies involved from a mobile perspective, including Distributive Networks and Quattro Wireless, their involvement in such a successful mobile marketing campaign has had a positive impact on their own marketing efforts, and has translated into new business opportunities.

All in all a great reference account for firms to showcase what can be accomplished with text messaging, short codes and mobile web display advertising.

So, once again, I am off the rest of the week.

I want to wish all of you a wonderful New Year.

I will be back Monday of next week, so catch you all in 2009!

OK - so the time is upon us. The end of 2008 and a look to 2009. Seeing that I'm off tomorrow, I wanted to highlight my top 10 list of questions and topics that I'm focused on illuminating on in the coming year.

To do this, I would like to refer you back to my early November post (and second ever post for me after joining Jupitermedia), and extend the list to include my top 10 questions here (see my blog post "Just Some Questions I'm Pondering").

continued...

I sort of agree with Eric Benderoff's thoughts from his Chicago Tribune piece that appeared on Christmas Day when he said "I doubt 2008 will be remembered as a year of great innovation. Rather, it was a year that saw the Web grow more critical as a mobile platform, adding to the role it carved out years ago in our homes and offices." This courtesy of the iPhone effect and the ever-diversifying, high-growth smartphone category, in which the mobile web experience (and better browsers) are front and center. I do believe that in 2009 the mobile web will have an even greater impact as we see a larger installed base of consumers with smarthones and and more carriers (think T-Mobile) improve coverage on their 3G networks. And, then there is the WiFi effect. Just look at AdMob's November Metrics Report for trends on consumer usage of WiFi (see my blog post "AdMob November Metrics Report Shows Significant Growth in Wi-Fi Usage"). All this should be good news for advertisers (i.e., growing consumer audience with better phones/better browsers on faster networks). Despite the economic impact on all sector, I for one look forward to watching the mobile web in 2009.

So, seems like Twitter may be the new low-cost focus group. This according to an AdvertisingAge story by Lee Mikles, CEO and founder of The Archer Group. The short article references the impact that Twitter had on a new product that a CPG client did not put advertising dollars behind. After watching the tweets, the CPG client then put advertising dollars behind the new product and saw significantly better performance (55% higher click-through rate) relative to the rest of the campaign.

Just one example of growing impact and power of social networking, and obviously with Twitter, the natural impact of mobile on advertiser and marketers.

While we will have to wait until mid-January 2009 when the Red Herring best 100 tech startups in the world will be revealed, it is worth taking a look at the list of the 200 finalists to see how prominent a role mobile companies, and more specifically mobile marketing/advertising, take on the list.

Among my quick perusal, among the companies I noted in the mobile marketing and advertising space include two mobile search specialists - JumpTap and Medio Systems - and mobile ad network, Millennial Media. And, there are many more on the list that are mobile-focused. The winners will be announced at Red Herring's event 14-16 January in San Diego.

Mobile photo sharing site SnapMyLife yesterday announced that it is encouraging current users (some 500,000) and anyone with a camera phone to take pictures of what they are doing around the world during 11:59 pm and 12:01 am and upload them (via email or MMS) to the site, and others to peruse the site for views of snapshots from around the world, from specific countries or cities. Because the site is viewed globally, SnapMyLife wanted to showcase how people will be ringing in the New Year around the world, creating the first grass roots mobile photo collage of a world event. Anyone can look at people's pictures and post comments and see where they have been taken using the location-tagging feature. They can even upload their own shots.

Just a few weeks ago, SnapMylife completed its second round of funding (see my blog post "SnapMyLife Scores $5 million in Second Round Funding"). It is a great way to get the existing community galvanized and engaged when they are ringing in 2009. Beyond its current user base, it is unclear as to how non-users discover the event, but I guess that it is just viral.

While I missed Randall Stross's New York Times article on TXTING, I thank MG Sielger from VentureBeat for flagging it for me (from its easy to miss day after Christmas publish date). Bottom line is that for wireless carriers, text messaging is and continues to be a highly profitable business. The article highlights an inquiry by Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, into potential price-fixing. While I've long known how profitable text messaging is for the wireless carriers, the article also highlights some of the gold in them there text messaging hills: text messaging pay-per-use pricing has doubled over the 2005-2008, from $0.10 to $0.20, while during the same period the number of nationwide carriers shrunk from six to four; and the volume of text messaging has grown ten-fold over the same period.

AT&T and T-Mobile contend that pay-per-use models do not drive the lion's share of the revenue, which are driven by text messaging buckets (a la the $15-20 monthly unlimited plans), and which can further dilute carrier profitability to as little as $0.01 per message. T-Mobile indicated that its text messaging revenue per message declined by more 50% over the past three years, however, what was not addressed is how costs changed with the increase in volumes, and the overall impact on revenues and profitability.

Bottom line is that text messaging is still the most profitable mobile data business for the carriers. They are trying to milk it for all its worth. The rise in pay-per-use was not only a way to squeeze more revenues out of the occasional user, but to try to convert them into monthly, predictable buckets. I'm not entirely sure that consumers think that text messaging is too expensive and for many consumers it is a critical part of their mobile day. I guess that it is all about value-creation and the fact that the pricing all looks the same.