There seems to be no way but up for the mobile world and the same can be said for Yahoo! Mobile. Mobile Internet growth rates are definitely picking up around the globe, and Asia is not to be outdone here especially in markets like the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. In fact, in some markets in the Asia Pacific region, mobile Internet usage is actually above what we have on the PC. Yahoo! Mobile’s Matthias Kunze, managing director, Asia Pacific, notes for instance that in Indonesia, nearly twice as many search users do so using the mobile rather than the PC. This he says, points to the great opportunity in front of us for mobile Internet usage. “In many countries the mobile will be the predominant (if not the only) way that consumers connect to the Internet,” he elaborates.

Is it any wonder than that mobile is a key corporate priority for Yahoo!? Their key mobile goal is to continue to build great mobile services that create amazing Yahoo! experiences for their consumers and their advertisers.” The Asia Pacific region presents a tremendous opportunity for us,” shares Kunze. “Asia Pacific mobile subscribers are forecast to reach three billion in the near future, with penetration rates 20 times higher than Internet connectivity in many of those countries. Mobile is the future of the Internet, and Yahoo! is focused on delivering highly compelling and personally relevant mobile Internet experiences to users around the globe.”

The company is doing this by constantly working to connect consumers with the information and people that matter to them through compelling mobile Internet experiences. This is a long-haul strategy of Yahoo! and the company is spurring itself to greater heights, working on always being on the cutting edge here. “Whether users are on a simple web-enabled mass market phone or a high-end smart phone, we continue to develop our mobile products that are relevant to the consumers,” says Kunze.

In line with this, Yahoo! continues to extend compelling experiences to the mobile environment as seen by their recently introduced mobile app versions of their new mobile homepage, Mail, Messenger, Flickr, Finance and others.

“For the last 10 years, Yahoo! has led in mobile by developing innovative products that build audience and drive engagement,” adds Kunze. One of the forte and key advantages that Yahoo! has here is the fact that it can and does leverage on its web properties and technology to create services and content that are personally and locally relevant to their mobile users.

The new Yahoo! mobile homepage offers an open environment within which consumers can bring together their favorite content and services from across the Internet. Consumers can now make their Internet experience on mobile personally relevant through the ability to:

• Discover: via results from Yahoo!'s award-winning mobile search and editor-selected content;
• Stay Connected: through access to email and social network accounts from the most popular Web providers, as well as instant messaging, address book and calendar tools;
• Stay Informed: by bringing together favorite content - Websites, sports teams, news sources, local content, RSS feeds, weather, stocks, horoscopes and more - into a single location.

Additionally, to take advantage of the company’s advanced mobile technology, consumers with more powerful mobile devices like the iPhone, Palm Pre, Android, etc., now have an unparalleled Yahoo! experience.

Some of the mobile homepage enhancements recently introduced for these devices include:

• Dynamically updated content with pagination – without using additional screen real estate or refreshing, users are able to access a wealth of content. For example, the ‘Today’ module now surfaces ten of the leading stories from around the Web and gives users immediate access to 48 of the top news, business, sports and entertainment articles directly to consumers’ fingertips
• An enhanced RSS reader – that now supports photos with captions, and adds the ability to scroll through more headlines from favorite feeds without having to refresh content
• Enhanced movie results (currently only available in the US) - movie posters now show you exactly what’s playing at a theatre near you, and with a few simple clicks you can watch the trailer, read reviews– all directly from your mobile device.

Yahoo!’s mobile strategy seems to be working well. Over the last two years (from August 2007 to August 2009) Yahoo has seen usage of the Yahoo! mobile homepage grow by more than three times worldwide. In Asia, the company has experienced even more dramatic growth, with usage of the mobile homepage growing by more than 6 times. In addition, Yahoo! Mobile’s homepage reach has also spiked tremendously – besides being on more devices than ever, it is now also available in 32 markets around the world.

The company is also completely focused on its partnership approach and strategy, ensuring this works in tandem with their business vision, Currently, Yahoo! has mobile partnerships with 28 operators in Asia Pacific, and more than 100 partnerships with carriers and OEMs globally. These strategic partnerships are important to Yahoo! as it enables them to extend the distribution and discovery of their mobile services.

Explaining how Yahoo! Mobile is monetizing itself moving forward, Kunze explains, “Yahoo!’s mobile revenues comes from text and displays ads and some revenue sharing deals. Our focus on growing audience has set us up to further develop the mobile advertising space – advertising will always follow the consumer. It did so in the '90s with PC display and now, and perhaps with the highest growth rates on a global basis, in mobile”

This definitely ties in with what the industry’s watchers are saying. eMarketer for example predicts that overall worldwide mobile advertising will grow to more than US$19 billion by 2012. In the Asia Pacific region alone, the number is expected to reach US$6.9 billion by 2012. Indeed, Kunze observes that Yahoo! is seeing brands from all major categories starting to think of mobile as an integral part of their overall advertising campaigns and coming to them to navigate the mobile adverting marketplace.

” We’re integrating mobile advertising directly into the product experiences in a meaningful way that compliments the user experience, and working with the advertiser to make the offer compelling for the user,” stresses Kunze. “On a global basis, we’re harnessing different types of advertising formats including everything from expandable banner ads – that reveal a larger ad unit without compromising the overall user experience – to click to an app in Apple’s App store, click to call, integrating mobile-specific landing pages, and allowing brands to offer multiple calls to action within the ad unit itself, including tap-to video, photo galleries, tap-to locate, and more. For us, the consumer experience is paramount. We’re integrating advertising in a way that makes sense for the user, for the advertiser, and for Yahoo!”

By Shanti Anne Morais

Y! MOBILE ADVERTISING CASE STUDIES

Yahoo! has been working with a number of companies in Asia, showing how certain best practices can ensure success for your mobile marketing campaign:

Integrate Mobile into your Overall Campaign – Electronic Arts Games, Malaysia EA Games wanted to drive traffic to their Spore Origins game website and increase downloads. EA maximized their mobile investment by integrating with their non-mobile campaigns (print and SMS broadcasts). The result – 87,000 hits to the Spore Origin page that month (an increase of 173%), 200 downloads a day (a 250% increase).

Keep It Simple – Nike, Philippines In mobile, less is more. Inherent limitations of mobile (typing, navigation, latency) require that mobile web sites make it easy to find information that users are looking for. Nike kept their call-to-action obvious, simple, and capable of being fulfilled from a mobile device. Nike developed a mobile advertising campaign in the Philippines aimed at driving interest around the launch of the Nike Sportswear Collection and new mobile magazine, “Nike 8 Mobizine”. Nike kept the call-to-action obvious, simple, and capable of being fulfilled from a mobile device. The result – over the campaign period of just 2 weeks, 22,000 clicks were sent to Nike 8 Mobizine. A remarkable CTR of 5.09% was achieved on the very first day when banners ran across Yahoo! Mobile Homepage.

Embrace the Medium – PUMA, India Mobile users go to the mobile web to communicate, for entertainment, or because they are looking for specific information, quickly. In India, Puma ran a mobile campaign to coincide with the Indian Premier League to help increase awareness of their brand. Their campaign ran on the Yahoo! Mobile Cricket Property and cricket related search key words. Puma chose to entertain users by providing a free Puma cricket game download on their WAP site. The result – nearly 1 million impressions served with 25,000 clicks.

Banking on the move -- ANZ Vietnam When it comes to banking, being able to conduct transactions while on the move is definitely a bonus. In fact, in Vietnam, it is quickly becoming the default mode of banking. Vietnam’s mobile market passed the 70 million subscriber mark in early 2009, with an annual growth rate in mobile subscribers in excess of 80% and looking set to continue into 2010. (MarketResearch.com) With mobile banking services already launched in ANZ’s branches in New Zealand and Australia, ANZ Vietnam launched the country’s first mobile banking service to draw customers from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. To drive awareness of its banking services, Yahoo! Mobile created WAP site for ANZ Vietnam around their products, and ran mobile advertising on all four of Yahoo! Mobile Vietnam’s products for one month. This campaign delivered a total of 3.6 million impressions, with 99k total clicks and 161k total WAP site page views. The highest CTR was 3.69% on the Vietnam Yahoo! Frontpage, while the campaign saw an overall CTR of 2.75%. “We are very impressed and this has proven to be a very effective new medium for us to reach our target audience,” shared Philip Crouch, Head of Personal Banking at ANZ Vietnam.