There are two hot events going on February 29th during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year…  Depending on your interests, both are must-see events…

If you like staying on top of the trends and are a interested in the latest in mobile innovation, check out Bubble over Barcelona (BOB) is a mini-conference (11am-2pm) happening off-site (away from FIRA) at the Museu del Rock.  Please note, BoB just announced an updated time for this event. Instead of 2pm-5pm as originally planned it’ll be from 11am-2pm with lunch and an open bar provided at 1pm. BoB aims to bring together mobile disruptors, innovators and luminaries for an afternoon of cross-pollination. There are some awesome speakers and amazing companies represented at this event. Check out the website for all of the details.

If you’re a big brand, retailer, or mobile company specializing in social/location apps, you’ll want to attend Mobile-Loco: The Future of the Social-Location Revolution. It is free to attend for Mobile World Congress ticket holders, but there is very limited capacity, so you must RSVP. The event is happening on-site at the FIRA.  This all-day event is focused on connnecting brands and agencies with mobile innovators that specialize in social and/or location offferings.  The details of this event are a little lacking on-line, so I’ve taken the liberty of pasting bits of an email I received from one of the organizers below:

Mobile-Loco: The Future of the Social-Location Revolution: RSVP NOW The mobile advertising opportunities from social-location are just now coming into focus for major brands and agencies looking for an edge in connecting with consumers.  However, there is still a gulf between the forecast potential of this market (projected to be in excess of $15B) and the actual execution of social location marketing:  who are the players? Which tactics work? How do brands get started? Converge Labs in partnership with Nokia will provide MWC attendees with a closer look at this new market and the potential opportunities for brands, agencies and tech companies.

Mobile-Loco @ mPower Brands: Mobile-Loco will offer content, meeting space and a discussion venue to spark directed conversations between brand representatives attending MWC and the leading companies in the Social-Location market.  We will help brands learn how social location can be used to meet their marketing objectives.  Specifically, we’ll be working with the brands, agencies and tech companies group to:

• Facilitate discussions involving leading companies in the Social-Location market on current best practices. Provide opportunities for thought leadership and exchange between brands and startups.
• Arrange 1:1 meetings between brands and leading Social-Location companies

This content will enhance the mPowered Brand experience by giving attendees from major brands concrete learnings about this exciting new space and real contacts with leading companies.

MOBILE-LOCO AGENDA FOR WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29^TH @ MWC
9:30   Light Breakfast and Networking
10:00  Opening Remarks and the Big Picture: Social, Local, and Mobile Converge
10:05  Show Me the Money: Where’s the ROI in Social-Location Marketing?
10:35  Keynote: Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze
11:00  The Social-Location Revolution: How Social + Local + Mobile Will Drive the Next 10 Years of Marketing
11:30  Keynote: Nokia
12:00  Lunch
13:00  The Future of Mobile Marketing is Now: Proximity, Intent and Content = Engagement and $$$
13:30  How to Go Big in Mobile Marketing and Win: Agency Case Study
14:00  Engaging Consumers, Who Has the Best Platform: Google, Facebook, or Someone Else
14:30  Fireside Chat (TBA)
15:00  Break
15:30  What’s in Your Wallet? The Future(S) Mobile-Loco Commerce
16:00  Fireside Chat (TBA)
16:30  Back to the Future: Reinventing Brand Loyalty Through Social-Location (SoLoMo)

RSVP NOW (space is very limited)

• Session 1: Show Me the Money: Wednesday March 23, 11:00am -12:30pm
• Session 2: Mobile Enterprise Apps: Wednesday March 23, 1:30pm – 3:00pm
• Session 3: Multiplatform Strategies: Wednesday March 23, 3:30pm – 5:00pm

For more information and to apply to get involved, go here.

The relationships between the players in the mobile ecosystem and mobile business models are evolving.  In some cases, OEMs and Operators are taking a page out of the PC world – asking developers to pay a per-unit cost for preferred app placement, URL pre-loading, etc..  In other cases, they’re asking developers to share a percentage of the advertising revenue generated inside of a mobile app in exchange for preferred placement.  For developers, it’s difficult to know whether it’s worth it to share revenue or pay for improved placement.

In the PC world, where the advertising ecosystem is mature, it is common for websites to pay a device manufacturer a per-unit fee (often $.20-.30) to bookmark their URL inside the browser on a PC.  Websites that heavily rely on web traffic to generate advertising revenue (particularly CPM) are often willing to pay for placement that drives traffic because that traffic can significantly increase revenue.  However, in the mobile world, the advertising ecosystem and mobile web are still (despite progress) in their infancy.  Most mobile developers have a fragmented mobile presence.  With so many OSes to choose from and limited capabilities on the mobile web, it is more difficult for mobile developers to monetize through advertising than it is for traditional PC-based web developers. As a result, paying a per-unit fee for placement in the mobile world (i.e. paying for a bookmarked mobile URL) doesn’t often make good business sense.

In the early days of smartphone apps, before mobile advertising was viable, mobile OEMs often paid the “hottest” developers with the “coolest” apps a licensing fee to pre-load apps on phones.  OEMs felt that pre-loading cool apps on their devices would give them a competitive advantage, and developers were happy to oblige because doing so gave them more distribution and revenue than they could get on early app stores. Today, paid pre-load opportunities are few and far between.

These days, distribution on mobile app stores like Apple’s App Store and Android Market present a much better opportunity for mobile app distribution than the smartphone app stores of yesterday, and paid mobile pre-loads aren’t as common as they once were.  Mobile OEMs aren’t willing to pay developers for something that the consumer can easily get on an app store, and developers, are reluctant to offer long exclusives on their content because doing so can inhibit virality and stifle revenue.

Despite the improved app store opportunity on many smartphone platforms, there’s an overabundance of mobile apps in popular categories on mobile app stores, and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.  Just last week, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article about how some of the most well-distributed mobile photo sharing apps aren’t making money and are struggling to find a suitable business model.  Thomas McLeod, president of app maker Imaginary Feet LLC, is quoted as saying:

“It’s hard to monetize the apps right now because there are so many especially in the photography space… It’s hard not to get lost in the over-saturation of the other apps.”

McLeod is right, and it’s not just photography apps… It’s about many of the apps in the most popular categories on the App Store and Android Market.  While much has changed in mobile since the article I wrote about mobile developers’ financial struggles in June 2009, one thing that hasn’t changed is that some of the coolest mobile apps still aren’t turning a profit.

A large number developers are opting for a free, ad supported model, even when they don’t have the kind of app that will generate a ton of page views and therefore ad revenue.  Why?  Consumers often overlook paid apps in crowded categories where there are decent free alternatives.  It’s easy to see why a developer whose paid app has been overlooked, might want to switch to a free model in the hopes of increasing downloads.  In addition, plenty of mobile app developers aren’t in it for the money. Hobbyist developers are making apps in their spare time for the fun of it – often without a sound business model.  This ethos puts pressure on career app developers who would normally charge for their products, to compete with “free,” even when that’s not the best move for revenue generation.

A free, ad-based model isn’t right for every app.  Just because an app is ‘sexy’ / ‘cool’ doesn’t mean that it will generate a lot of revenue through advertising.  Gaining distribution is only half of the revenue battle for free, ad-supported apps.  The other half of the revenue battle is keeping customers coming back regularly to increase ad impressions and therefore revenue. That can be even more difficult than getting distribution.  Developers can pay OEMs and Operators for distribution, but they can’t pay to ensure ongoing app engagement and usage, which is what generates ad revenue.  OEMs and Operators often ask for upwards of 30% of ad revenue in exchange for distribution/placement, and unless an app generates a ton of impressions, there may not be enough revenue that developers can afford to share and still keep the lights on.

If you talk to major mobile OEMs, they’ll tell you that some of their biggest revenue generators through ad rev sharing arrangements are with what I would call ‘un-sexy’ weather apps, because users engage with these apps regularly – often multiple times a day and therefore impression-based ad revenue is strong. When creating a business model, it’s important for developers to remember that mobile apps that are only used periodically don’t generate as much advertising revenue as apps that are used multiple times a day.  Unfortunately, even if an app is amazing, if it’s not used regularly, an advertising-only model does not often make good business sense. Despite the pressure to provide a ‘free,’ ad-supported service, not all developers can afford it.

Another way to generate revenue inside free apps, besides advertising is offering a “freemium” service.  With a freemium model, developers provide a basic app for free and up-sell users on new features, content, and/or goods.  Developers can also incorporate virtual goods/ virtual currency into their apps to generate increased revenue.  Introducing gaming mechanics into an app that leverages virtual goods/ currencies can also fuel virality and therefore revenue.  Companies like gWallet and OpenFeint offer services that help developers (particularly games developers) expedite creation of freemium apps.  Other mobile app developers including Flirtomatic, Booyah, etc. implement their own platform for virtual goods inside their freemium apps.

One of the companies featured in the Wall Street Journal article that successfully launched a paid-app business model that also up-sells users within their app is Synthetic Corp., developer of photo sharing app, Hipstamatic. According to the article, “Since Hipstamatic’s launch in December 2009, the $1.99 app has been downloaded more than 1.7 million times. The app allows users to choose different lenses, films and flashes. The firm charges 99 cents for a package of add-ons such as infrared.”

Hipstamatic has generated over $3.3 Million dollars on downloads alone, and presumably, the 99 cent add-ons also represent a sizable source of revenue.  This is a good example of a developer that is making money in a crowded category without in-app advertising. They’ve built a useful, sticky, sexy product that is inherently viral, and people are willing to pay for it.  Hipstamatic’s success goes to prove that developers don’t need to force “free” if they’ve got a stellar, viral product.

If you are a mobile developer, here are a few key tips for creating a mobile app revenue model that works:

• When deciding between a ‘free’ ad-supported business model and a “paid” app business model, crunch the numbers first.
  • Model the revenue you think you can get per user on a free vs. paid model and the number of users you think you can realistically get with each.
    • Be conservative when you estimate the number of impressions you’ll get per day/week per user for your ad model
    • Make sure that your model includes a reasonable growth rate. Remember, growth is usually organic. You won’t start with millions of users overnight.
  • If you’re leaning towards a free, ad-supported model, make sure it’s scalable (i.e. that your margins are significant enough that you can afford to share revenue with partners in exchange for distribution ~30% and that you can afford to pay for good marketing and business development to expand your reach.)
  • If you want to have a free, ad-supported model but you can’t afford it, consider whether a”freemium” model would work for you. Again, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got enough margin built in to share revenue with partners that help you with distribution (+/- ~30%).
    • Apple asks for 30% on in-app purchases for apps distributed through the App Store, and OEMs and Operators typically want around the same percentage of revenue in exchange for pre-loading or providing premium placement on their app stores.
  • Don’t be afraid to charge for your app if it is better than other apps out there and is inherently viral. Know that you may need to try a bit harder to get downloads.  Be prepared to invest in marketing to rise above the ‘free’ competition.
• Make your mobile app inherently viral.  For more specific hints and tips, check out my post about virality in mobile and my how-to slideshow on fueling virality.
• If you want to make money on your app, invest in good social media marketing and business development.  Having the right placement online and in an app store is critical to success. To make both happen, it helps to work directly with influencers and decision makers at the app store, OEM, and operator levels.
  • Be willing to pay for good advice.
  • If you need help with your business model or creating executing your business development or marketing strategy, I can help. Contact me if you’d like to discuss a project.

The Points of Control map is a fun idea- particularly for arm-chair corporate development and business development types.  It’s the kind of thing that could suck hours of a social media and mobile geek’s free time.  The latest feature on the map is “acquisition mode,” which lets users suggest and rate the potential of web and mobile acquisitions.  So far the conversations are limited, but I can see it taking off as more companies are added to the map.

As I looked at the landscape, I noticed a few things that are missing… For starters, Photobucket (my current consulting client) should be on the map in:

• Plains of Content
• Land of Search
• Cliffs of Media Access
• Subcontinent of Advertising
• Location Basin
• Union of Social Networks

Here’s why:

Plains of Content and Land of Search

Photobucket is the largest independent photo sharing site on the web, with more than twice as many photos as Flickr and nearly 26,683,225 monthly unique visitors – that’s more than Flickr, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, and Snapfish (as seen in the chart from Compete.com, below).

As far as I’m aware, it is the largest repository of clean, findable images on the web (outside of search engines), and it is one of the most significant single sources of images for search engines like Google and Bing.  Photobucket Corp has:

• 100+ million total registered users
• 26.5 million total uniques/mo, US*
• 7.8 billion digital assets uploaded
• 4.3 million images and videos uploaded daily
• 3.2 billion images and videos served daily

Cliffs of Media Access and Union of Social Networks

Photobucket was once part of Fox Interactive Media (NewsCorp) (same company that owns MySpace, etc.), but it now an independent company (merging with Ontela in December 2009).  Photobucket Corp owns three media sites (as seen in the below Compete.com graph):

• Photobucket.com, which as seen in the chart above has the most monthly visitors
• TinyPic.com, which, though not plotted on the above chart, has X monthly unique visitors – more than Shutterfly, Snapfish and Kodakgallery.com
• Twitgoo, which, is a media sharing service for Twitter, not unlike TwitPic and YFrog.  It was recently incorporated into the “New Twitter” (i.e. the re-vamped Twitter.com site)

Photobucket.com is more than just a massive image repository for clean, findable images and video, it also hosts and serves billions of images to millions of websites all over the web it is at the intersection of the “Union of Social Media”.  Photobucket enables users to keep their photos and videos in one place and easily syndicate that media content to their favorite social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.  One of the most interesting piece of I.P. that Photobucket owns is a patented, zero-click uploader that allows users to automatically back up their photos from a mobile device to any site requiring authentication.  This brings me to mobile…

The Photobucket service is also available in the form of a mobile app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and mobile internet. It is  pre-loaded and/or natively integrated with a variety of mobile phones including all phones with Motorola’s MOTOTBLUR service,  T-Mobile’s new G2 (2nd generation Android device), and many more devices.  Photobucket is integrated beyond just mobile phones and is include with many consumer electronics products including the Sony Dash, many of Sony’s TVs, Sony Cameras, many HP printers, and more.

Cliffs of Media Access and Subcontinent of Advertising

Photobucket generates revenue in two primary ways – advertising and subscriptions.  Users can sign up for a free Photobucket.com account in exchange for seeing advertisements (typically branded campaigns from big advertisers) and get 500MB of media storage a month, or they can pay $24.95 a year (or $39.90 for two years) for a Photobucket Pro Subscription, which offers unlimited storage and bandwidth to users.  Photobucket has its own, dedicated as sales team, and its advertisers include major brands doing homepage and other branded advertising campaigns.

Aside from Photobucket, I propose two additional areas and corresponding companies be added to the map including:

• Facial Detection and Recognition:  Apple (which recently acquired Polar Rose, Face.com (one of my former clients), Viewdle, etc.: Watch this space… It’s going to be huge.  For example… I think it’s really interesting that Facebook, for example doesn’t prohibit 3rd party developers like those above from identifying people and photos and storing maps of their faces so that those faces can be recognized on other sites/areas of the web.
• Interactive, Connected TV: From GoogleTV to Samsung Apps, major players in the world of consumer electronics are making a play for an internect connected living room.  As I’ve said in a previous post, I think TV apps could just be the next big thing in convergence.

What do you think of the Points of Control Map, and what would you like to see added?

The keynote speaker was  Pandora Founder, Tim Westergren, and there were other headliners as well including Chuck Pagano, Executive Vice President of Technology at ESPN and (my personal favorite), The Woz (Steve Wozniak), co-founder of Apple.  It was amazing to see how many attendees at the Samsung event came from big-name internet and mobile companies…  TV seems to be the next frontier for content distribution and monetization.

The highlight of the Samsung event for me was meeting The Woz, who spoke on stage in a fireside chat about the opportunity of internet-connected TV (note: It was interesting to see him speaking on stage about Samsung TV rather than Apple TV, but Samsung is a key partner of his current company, fusion-io.)

The second highlight for me was winning a Samsung Blu-Ray player.  It’s loaded with Samsung Apps, the app store for your TV.  I see a lot of potential for internet-enabled TV and apps, and it’s been fun trying new apps on my TV.   At this point, the app selection is limited, but the apps that are on Samsung’s Smart TVs are fun and include many of the popular web properties – Hulu, Pandora, Netflix, Facebook, and more.  I wish there was a built-in internet browser and a full keyboard included with the product, but even without those features as an early effort, it’s pretty good.

Samsung Apps is one of several technologies that is getting me very excited about the potential for internet connected, app enabled TVs.  The other internet-TV technologies I’ve seen include: GoogleTV, Boxee, Yahoo Connected TV, AppleTV, Sony Bravia Internet Video platform, etc.  Some of these products focus purely on apps, while others combine apps and internet browsing (which for me is a must-have feature for any internet connected TV that I buy in the future).

There will be a big distribution opportunity for developers and content providers via TV, but it may not necessarily be through apps.  There is a lot of fragmentation in the TV apps market, and monetization of apps will prove difficult, unless one of the companies in this space dramatically rises above all others and provides a robust app distribution and monetization platform (Google in particular is making a big move in this space thanks to it’s existing Android efforts).  Regardless of how the TV app ecosystem evolves, there is a growing opportunity is emerging for developers to create TV-optimized websites and monetize through subscriptions and/or advertising.

I look forward to seeing how the TV industry continues to evolve and converge with web and mobile – particularly over the next 24 months.

As you might guess, this show is all about apps and monetization – mobile apps, social apps, TV apps – you name it.  The speaker list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of mobile, web, media and agencies – well worth checking out.  SocializeMobilize.com readers will get 25% off the full conference pass by using the code MHFC25 during registration.

There’s also great opportunity for developers to show off their skills, gain some cross-industry exposure, and potentially win cash through the “Pimp My App Contest”.  Here’s the scoop:

One Great Contest — Two Cool Partners. We are calling on all developers to show off your skills by Pimping The App for Fox’s television show “Fringe”, The City of San Francisco’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau or both. Enter as many individual apps as you like for either or both of our partners. There are separate grand prizes so, who knows, maybe you’ll hack your way to victory for both contests. Sort of like winning both showcases on the Price is Right!. So, start hacking as you have until September 3rd to submit your entries.

The panelists included:

• Gene Kennan, VP of Mobile Strategy at Isobar, a big digital agency that represents companies including Adidas and Marriott.  He also sits on the MMA board.
• Cheryl Lucanegrow is the SVP of Ad Sales at Pandora. Things started happening for Pandora when they started developing for iPhone, causing the company to change their whole strategy to leverage mobile.
• Orr Orenstein from Photobucket (one of my clients) leads the mobile initiative and manages all mobile advertising.
• Philip Browning is the Director of Advertising and Operations, Mobile at CBS Interactive and focuses on monetization and network.

The session was moderated by Adam Towvim, the Senior Director of Business Development at Jumptap

Gene believes advertising inside of apps is exciting for brands and agencies, but very few agencies know how to execute inside of mobile.  Most agencies can handle advertising inside of apps, but after ads, the big stumbling block for brands is agencies and their perception that mobile has limited reach. Isobar thinks differently about mobile – especially for advertising consumer product goods (CPG) companies.  Gene pointed out that 15% of teens in the US have access to an app-enabled phone, and once you hook a kid on a specific brand in CPG, they rarely switch.

Advertising’s golden rule is hitting the younger audience and getting them loyal to your product. According to the panel, Proctor and Gamble (P&G) are thinking less about online and more about what’s happening in-store and how mobile can be used to influence the consumer’s decision to influence purchase in-store.  They’re backing their entire mobile strategy out from the in-store experience out.

Cheryl likes mobile because it allows you to reach consumers throughout the day.  Pandora knows your age, gender, and zip code, and they know what you’re doing inside an app. That allows them to offer relevant advertising that targets users in a more meaningful way.

Understanding who your users are is hugely important to mobile advertising. Showing brands what your users are doing inside the app and where the engagement points are most successful is critical to advertising success. Designing your placements, banner units, interstitials, etc. accordingly is key to engaging users with ads. Understand your analytics and help your click through rates by only placing ads where you think they’ll be likely to be clicked is also important.  Doing this will help you command higher ad rates for your inventory.

Orr from Photobucket said he’s seen 18-20x click through on mobile vs. web property. So, monetizing mobile inventory has been incredibly successful.

Philip said developers should think carefully about which ad networks you partner with versus building your own ad sales team.  If you’ve got a good app, with lots of eyeballs, you can plan for advertising success if you plan carefully.  There are lots of ways to tie into the available market.

Adam agreed with Orr and Philip saying if you can make changes in the way you segment parts of your inventory by click-through rate, you can maximize the value of your inventory.

Gene referenced an Inside Express study that did a study of mobile ads served in the last year.  Brands need to strive to achieve high click through with low annoyance – particularly on mobile. The ad units that have the highest click through rates with the lowest annoyance rates in mobile are standard banner ads, not interstitials.  There was a little bit of a diverging opinion on the panel.  Philip agreed that banner units are less annoying, but he said CBS has had some success with interstitials.  He pointed out that you really don’t know what’s going to work until you try it, test it and evaluate measurement.  I agree – There’s a certain amount of experimentation involved with good advertising.  Gene, added a good point, saying that to a certain extent, if developers and agencies use their good judgment, they can figure out what kind of ads will annoy customers before the customers get annoyed.  The annoyance factor on interstitials and pop unders are high on web, and he thinks that this will mirror on mobile. So, he encourages his clients to think before they place those kinds of ads.

Everyone agrees that in time, we’ll see what will work well in mobile advertising. The ROI on rich media units is unclear. Cheryl said she sees lower response rates on Blackberry with a smaller screen and less touch-enabled than say, on iPhone where CTR seems to be higher.  Orr said Android click through is 4x what it is on iPhone.  The point is that the audiences on different mobile devices may be different, and you need to think about that when you insert the ads.

Orr recommended developers look at their app analytics and merge them with their ad analytics to ensure that brands are willing to spend with you over and over again.  Iterating is very important to ensuring success for the brands that advertise in your app.

A member of the audience asked about why Photobucket is seeing 4x higher CTR on Android over iPhone.  Orr said that on Android, Photobucket’s users appear to be a little older.  Many of Photobucket’s iPhone OS users use iPod touches, and they tend to be younger. So, when Photobucket puts ads on iPod touch devices, they think very differently about what kind of ads to serve (i.e. don’t show car ads to kids that don’t have their driver’s license).

Philip sees the same thing on Android. They’ve got an application called tv.com. It’s on both iPhone and Android, and 1 million people are using it on each platform. But on Android, they’re seeing 1-2x more page views and CTR on video than on iPhone.  Cheryl says she’s seeing a similar trend on the Pandora app.

When Isobar does media buys, they do network buys with large publishers, rather than small ISVs.  They’re often looking for 13-17 years audience, and it takes a bit too much time to do advertising inside small apps. However, they will do things like sponsor of smaller apps.

Adam asked the panel how app developers can create an opportunity for flexibility around skinning an app?  Gene talked a bit about Tap Tap revenge, pointing out how well they did at positioning their apps for sponsorship.  Philip cautions that you’ve got to get the audience first before you can get the advertising agencies interested.  You need to do marketing of your apps.  Others agree.  Developers should think about advertising their own stuff inside your apps and other apps to get a footprint to let people know about your product.

Cheryl recommends building in a budget to get users to your app… “It’s almost like you’ve got to budget double what it cost you to develop your app to market your app.”

Gene suggested developers work with ad agencies to find a slow day for advertisers in which to advertise their app.  If you do your advertising all in 1 day and get in the top 20 ads, you’ll get better exposure for your app and hopefully higher conversion to download.

Someone asks – If the CTR is higher, is the conversion higher too?  Gene said that there are certain companies Isobar won’t buy from because they create high click through rates, but few conversions. He uses the example of advertising a hotel chain… The customers are clicking through, but are they actually booking a room?

Orr pointed out the common theme of relevance in advertising. Developer should make sure their ads are relevant to their audience and make sure that they have engagement with their app.  Don’t serve an ad just because you can. Find the demographic that will find the ad relevant, and serve it to them. Even if you’re only driving a .1% click through rate, if each of the users that see an ad convert, you’re onto something positive.

Philip and Gene talked about how important it is to understand what’s going on downstream. Understand what your advertisers saw in terms of conversion. There’s a huge problem with conversion tracking at the moment. There’s a lot that needs to get done with conversion tracking downstream to make sure ads are truly working.  Advertisers want to know how long users you’ve sent them stay on their website.

Another important consideration for developers is how gracefully a user can interact with ads and get back into the app. On iPhone, this has traditionally been difficult, but with multi-tasking OS4, this is going to get easier. The challenge will be waiting for the iPhone user base to upgrade to OS4.  Bottom line – by placing ads on apps inside multitasking OSes, it’s easier to ensure that you’re not cannibalizing your users to advertisers if the OS you’re working on lets you swap back and forth between ads and apps.

The last piece of good advice from the panel was to investigate multiple ad networks to serve your ads. By investigating multiple ad networks, you’ll end up getting a better deal, but you’ll have to do a bit more management.

UPLINQ is a two-day mobile conference with a business track, a technical track, keynotes by executives from Qualcomm, AT&T, Verizon, etc., and a special, beach-themed mini WIPJam (full conference agenda here).  As an added bonus, Qualcomm has organized discounts on hotel and airfare and a huge party featuring a special performance from the band, Train (of “Hey Soul Sister” fame).

So, if you were looking for the perfect excuse to hit the road for business to hobnob with the movers and shakers in the mobile industry, this is it. 

Here’s how you can get a free ticket to UPLINQ through Socialize Mobilize:

• Be one of the first three people to comment on this post (below) with a creative and useful tip (i.e. a device shortcut, an app, etc.) that will benefit other smart phone users.  Make sure to specify which device and/or OS the tip is for.  If you’re one of the first three posters, go to the contact page and paste your comment in a note to me with your email address, and I’ll send you a registration code.
• Follow @lisawhelan on Twitter for other opportunities to win in the coming week!

They’re rolling out what they’re calling an “insight engine”, that combines Openwave Analytics, a solution that helps mobile operators monitor data network traffic and trends in user behavior to diagnose and address bandwidth constraints with Nielsen PRIZM, a user segmentation solution that creates a common language to segment various types of users and helps marketers address different segments of users based on demographics, behavior, and geography. 

The combined product will allow mobile operators and other drivers of the mobile ecosystem to better understand, target and monetize their customers and the mobile internet more effectively.  It should also help advertisers better understand mobile user behavior and target that behavior more meaningfully with advertising.  And, lastly, for consumers it should ultimately mean that the marketing they see should be more relevant over time.

In order for mobile to become a long-term viable and profitable medium for marketing and advertising, the various players in the mobile ecosystem need to better understand mobile customer behavior.  Mark Nelson, senior vice president of the Nielsen Claritas Corporate Partner Program, described the benefits of the Openwave collaboration by saying:

By combining carrier-related mobile analytics with Nielsen’s PRIZM and ConneXions segmentation, carriers can analyze and measure mobile behaviors in terms that advertisers understand.  We believe this integrated approach will help drive adoption of mobile as a viable advertising platform.

The collaboration is certainly a good first step towards ensuring that there is a better common understanding of mobile consumers between various stakeholders in the mobile ecosystem.  By better recognizing consumer preferences and where they impact the network, mobile operators can begin to price services more effectively.  John Giere, senior vice president, products and marketing, Openwave pointed out:

The long standing belief within the advertising industry is that one half of the budget is generating results, but nobody knows which half.  We hope to arm the industry with actionable solutions which provide better response rates and more measurable mobile campaigns…We believe our collaboration with Nielsen will help improve the mobile operator’s understanding of their network usage and facilitate new revenue opportunities for ecosystem players.

I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this collaboration and which operators engage with it longer term.

Today, Open Mobile Solutions (OMS) announced which mobile apps will be demoed at the four Developer Pitch Sessions at CTIA Wireless next week.  The line-up of developers and mobile applications/ products looks great:

• Soundtrckr
• Mobisante
• TextArrest
• Nearbynow
• Anttenna
• Right Deal Right Now
• Caregive
• Live Colony
• Micello
• Lumosity
• Asurion Mobile Addressbook
• Glympse
• Rhythm New Media
• Yap
• Xtop
• Fring
• Flirtomatic
• Pageonce
• Snapfinger from Kudzu Interactive
• Inrix Traffic.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I’ll be moderating the second Developer Pitch Session on Distribution on Wednesday, March 24 from 3-4pm in the Las Vegas Convention Center − Apps World, North Hall – Innovation Hall.  The experts for this session are:

• Claudia Backus, Senior Director, Ecosystem Programs, Motorola
• Larry Berkin, Head of Global Alliances, Symbian Foundation
• Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement, Sony Ericsson
• Ian McDonald, Global Manager, BlackBerry Developer Program (UPDATED 3/19/10 – replacing Tyler Lessard)
  
• Asokan Thiyagarajan, Director – Platforms & Technology Strategy, Samsung Telecommunications America
  
• Patrick Mork, Vice President, Marketing, GetJar, Inc.

During this session, developers will pitch the following mobile products:

• Glympse
• Asurion Mobile Address Book
• Yap
• Rhythm New Media
• Xtop from IMS
  

If you still need a ticket to CTIA, here’s instructions on how to get one for free.