Mobile television is becoming an increasing part of the media mix, offering new channels and potential advertising revenues to canny marketers.
Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, a panel of industry experts from the main operators outlined the benefits and explained what their companies were doing in order to cash in on this new technology.
Graham Ferguson, director of global content services at Vodafone; asserted that mobile television was definitely something that consumers wanted, but the underlying issue for service providers was “how to get more content.”
Chaired by Peter Cowley, director of interactive media, Endemol UK, the panel discussed the mass market that could be reached via mobile content, and stressed the uniqueness of the medium as reaching a target audience through the power of the mobile phone.
Ferguson stressed that mobile devices were a “very personal and a very powerful marketing medium”, a very attractive quality to advertisers wanting great impact.
Deborah Tonroe, head of commercial development at Orange, argued that “everyone has a TV and a mobile phone, there’s a real marriage there.”
The problem, however, is how content creators should engage with viewers in order to take advantage of this mass audience, with Cowley pointing out, “in two years’ time 25 million people in the UK will have handsets and, globally, there will be over half a billion in circulation”.
Orange already has seven mobile channels accessible via 3G handsets, with a number of new channels being developed, offering a wealth of opportunities for advertisers.
An issue raised by the panel, however, is who will own the rights to these new streams of content; producers, service providers or media owners.
According to Justine Judd, director of i-rights, there is a “lack of clarity” about how to split the revenues because it is a new platform.
Tonroe, asserted, however that Orange was not concerned about buying the rights, just “providing access to this huge audience.”
She added: “The mobile industry is about volume, it’s about selling these services to volumes and taking pennies from the masses.”
There is no doubt that mobile TV will be a force within the mobile community, with the consensus of opinion at the television festival that providers had spent such a vast amount on 3G technology that they had to make it work.
According to Informa Telecoms & Media’s new Mobile Entertainment report, consumers are increasingly using their mobile phones to play music and games, opening up lucrative new revenue streams for mobile and content industries, resulting in a global mobile entertainment market predicted to be worth $42.8 billion by 2010 (see Global Entertainment Market To Reach $42.8 Billion By 2010).
The report claims that emerging new markets, such as mobile TV, user generated services and personalisation, graphics and visual themes, are forecast to contribute a further $11 billion in revenues by 2010 as the market expands.
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