PeterEvers.net

The story behind Google Switch

Peter Evers — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:27:13 +0000

For this story I’m taking you back to an age long long ago, before the release of the Samsung Omnia, Blackberry Bold, T-Mobile G1 and iPhone 3G, even before the release of the Nokia N95 or the iPod Touch. Let me take you back to August 2006…

Around this time students Egbert Veenstra, Sytse-Jan Kooistra and Sam Baas were philosophizing about a new school project they had to work on. And as they were having a drink and a laugh in the summer sun they came up with the perfect idea for their project. They realized that the phone as we knew it back in 2006 could be so much more and wanted to develop a new revolutionary phone. Well, develop…they obviously did not have the resources to actually build a new phone, but they were armed with a much bigger weapon: their creative minds. And as they put their minds to work they developed a concept of the ultimate new phone. It had a touch screen that didn’t require a stylus, service-side processor power (whatever that is, but sounds really cool) and some ingenious ways for finger-touch text input. So they developed a concept phone by using some 3D designing software they used for their study and by making a picture of a table and a screenshot of their own phone’s screen they pulled together a nice mock-up. Now they only had to come up with a name and given the total switch their phone would make in people’s perception of a mobile phone they decided that it had to be named Switch. But while they were working on their project, they were also thinking of sending their concept phone to some leading tech blogs to see how hard it was to fool those guys. They only needed to associate their concept with a big company. Apple? Google? Microsoft? (more…)

How online brands stay away from mobile and give operators even more power

Peter Evers — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:11:13 +0000

Operator portals were doomed to disappear when the walled gardens opened up about two years ago, but after the rise of the smartphone and introduction of unlimited data packages they are doing better than ever. Still, most of the mobile internet use takes place within the borders of these portals. The predicted growth of off portal inventory goes much slower than predicted.

Smart mobile start-ups

However, it must be noted that a couple of smart mobile startups did a great job filling up this new space. Mobile-only communities like Itsmy.com, myGamma, and Flirtomatic are growing rapidly these days. Their big advantage is the painful absence of the bigger brands on mobile Internet, which results in most of the off portal advertising budget ending up in their pockets.

No mobile versions

On the other hand, this is exactly what’s withholding mobile media buyers to spend more budget off portal. Most established websites do simply not offer a mobile version of their successful online product. This is why media buyers who represent big consumer brands don’t want to spend budget off portal. Brands attract brands. Simple as that.

Be ahead of the pack

So why are these online brands still not available on the mobile Internet? I guess they’re simply waiting when the time is right, but they should be ahead of the pack because they are the main drivers behind the availability of premium off portal inventory. Their motivation might be that it’s still hard to drive traffic to a mobile site. While using their phone, people are often too lazy to enter a URL.

So all the traffic derives from really motivated people that are dedicated to find a certain mobile site and Google Mobile (which seldom directs you to a mobile site). Well, what about directing people to your mobile site from your online site? Offering an on-the-go version of your brand? Enhancing your site with an extra service because you like your users so much and want to offer them your content whenever they want to?

Best place to start? What about TheNextWeb? That picture is TheNextWeb on a mobile phone looks like at the moment, as the brand new mobile editor this is definitely the first challenge ahead of me. TheNextWeb is going mobile! Keep you posted.

I’m The Next Web’s new mobile editor!

Peter Evers — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:06:34 +0000

A week ago I suddenly realised that this blog is a way for me to show what I can do and what I know. A so-called portfolio blog. I never had the intention to grow a big audience here. I just needed a site to point people to that are interested in me or my work. However, after a while I became a bit disappointed about the lack of comments at my blog. Although I was completely aware that I wouldn’t get a big audience without daily blogging and some SEO work, I started to miss an audience to share and discuss my views with. At that moment I decided to contact a close friend, Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in-chief of The Next Web, to ask him if he could use some expertise on mobile on The Next Web. Fortunately his answer was positive.

Nothing will actually change here, everything I’ll write on The Next Web will be found here as well. Even a bit more (like this nice little post). If you have never heard of The Next Web (shame on you) do pay us a visit (and bookmark and/or subscribe to the RSS feed). The Next Web is best described as the European TechCrunch. The Next Web focuses on European start-ups in the digital industry and addresses all the issues this young industry and the young people who work in it, have to deal with.

Mobile is going to be big (really!)

Peter Evers — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:02:52 +0000

According to most mobile marketeers the last ten years were all ‘the year of mobile’. Every year again they were telling that ‘mobile is really going to take off this year’. Well, since the end of 2007 I’m working in mobile and I think I’ve stepped in at the perfect moment. Although mobile marketing revenue might not be flying in at the moment, 2008 has until now really been the year of educating agencies and advertisers. Most of the big brands have run a trial campaign by now, and most of these campaigns gave a reason to proceed spending advertising budget on mobile. It makes sense to predict that in 2009 mobile marketing will manifest itself as a frequent part of the media mix.

Last Tuesday I attended a mobile marketing roundtable at the offices of MVNO Blyk. In this two hour discussion among thirty mobile experts it became clear that the mobile marketing industry is still not fully understood by agencies and advertisers. Because of the multiple mobile marketing possibilities, agencies and advertisers tend to get confused and switch off. (more…)

The 3 M’s of the Mobile Audience

Peter Evers — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:30:59 +0000

Last week at Ad:Tech in London I witnessed an interesting presentation by Jana Eisenstein, General Manager at ScreenTonic, a mobile advertising sales house owned by Microsoft. Although the content was all pretty generic for someone who’s already working in mobile advertising (but we’re still evangelizing so great job!) I can’t get one thing out of my head. The three M’s of the mobile audience:

Married to their mobile phone.
Motivated to find the content they’re looking for.
Multi-location, they’re always on the move.

Always a good one for a presentation or media pack!

Mobile Idea: Texting with my sponsored child

Peter Evers — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:10:25 +0000

Recently I became a Child Sponsor at World Vision, a charity organization that improves children’s lifes all over the world. I’ve always been very sensitive to the argument that we’re very lucky to have grown up in a wealthy countries with all the support and opportunities we could wish for. The tough part is, that this argument is applicable to at least ninety percent of all the NGO’s in the world. So I’m currently managing my charity organization subscriptions on a FIFO basis. Anyway, looking at the picture of my newly sponsored child, Scola Jalale (in Malawi that’s a real common name), a mobile idea popped up.

About a year ago I wrote an article about mobile charity payments on TheNextWeb. In this article I argue that since the mobile payment system is already in use in Africa, we could use it to send money directly to certain African based people we care about. And now I’m Scola’s sponsor I had to think of it again. Scola is eight years old and currently at school, how fantastic would it be if World Vision could somehow provide her with a phone so we could text each other? This project would seemlessly fit in her school program and the money I would send her would benefit her and her community. (more…)

Oyster Mobile is coming

Peter Evers — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:51:56 +0000

I actually wanted to introduce a new section at my blog here, it would have been called ‘mobile ideas’. But sometimes your idea is just too simple and you realize you can’t be the only one thinking about it. My idea was Oyster Mobile. For non-Londoners: an Oyster Card is a card used for payments in public transport, used when entering and exiting the tube stations of London. You pay by touching an ‘oyster’, which is shown in the picture, with your card. The technology behind this is called Near Field Communication, which basically means that there are two chips and a wireless signal which is received when the chips are near each other. This technology can also be used for payments with your mobile phone. You can simply provide a phone with an NFC chip and connect it to an application on your phone to make payments. This was my initial idea, a bad one (more…)

How to monetize a mobile service?

Peter Evers — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:53:11 +0000

The last two weeks of August I was on holiday in my home town Amsterdam. As I can’t sit still for a minute, never mind two weeks, I helped Edial Dekker, a friend, with a business plan for his mobile startup MapTheGap. He is currently participating in a startup competition by Vodafone and just today, he made it to the last six startups in the race to win 100,000 euro of investment money! Hopefully partially thanks to my mobile marketing advice. It inspired me to write this post.

I think one of the most common mistakes startups make is choosing the sell out strategy. They hope to make their service so appealing that a big player has no choice but to acquire them. What if that’s not happening? Well, then you run out of money sooner or later, go bankrupt, and your startup has stayed a startup forever. In these times of economic slowdown it seems a pretty risky strategy. (more…)

Back on track

Peter Evers — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:38:52 +0000

Wow, the last couple of weeks were pretty impressive. Working in London can be really tiring and working in mobile can result in absolute exhaustion if you’re not careful. Ok, it’s not that hard, but I need to come up with some kind of excuse for not having posted anything for six weeks. It’s absolutely terrible, I know. But I was too busy getting used to my London life and job, and on top of that I’ve also been two weeks off the job.

But now I’m back, better and stronger than ever before and dedicated to bring you compelling mobile stories. A new one every week (good ones, no boring newsflashes or too personal stories) and maybe some tiny snacks in between. Although I didn’t write anything for a while, I can say that I learned a lot about mobile marketing recently. And I only just started.

Right now I’m working on a story about monetizing mobile services, it is going to be a good one, so stay tuned!

London Calling Volume 3: First week at work

Peter Evers — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:40:04 +0000

This is the third episode of London Calling, a series of posts about my experiences in London accompanied with a short soundtrack. Press play and start reading.

Last week I started with my job as a mobile executive at Unanimis. It was a dive into the deep end, as the mobile advertising business is booming. I am forced the learn everything in the quickest possible way. And I think that’s the best way. My colleagues are great too, they are really helpful and patient when it comes to employees from abroad. I also have a fellow colleague from abroad, he’s from France. It’s funny how much things you have in common when you’re both working abroad for the first time. So after seven working days and a company party I really feel in the right place. Although every now and then I still need to get used to some British things. Like having beer during lunch, that would probably get you fired in the Netherlands, but here in the UK it seems a common thing. (more…)