Internet Ads Work As Well as TV Ads, says comScore

Internet advertising is just as effective, if not more effective, than traditional TV advertising, comScore has found in a recent study.

Over the course of twelve weeks, online ad campaigns with an average reach of 40 percent of their target segment successfully grew retail sales of the advertised brands by an average of nine percent, says comScore. This compares to an average lift of eight percent for TV advertising as measured by Information Resources, Inc.

About 80 percent of the Internet campaigns showed statistically-significant sales lift, compared to 36 percent of the TV campaigns, comScore says.

The comScore research was based on results from 200,000 panelists who are members of supermarket loyalty programs and whose retail buying behavior was measured through point-of-sale UPC scanners when the panelists presented their membership cards at the checkout lanes of participating supermarket stores.

Those results are for campaigns supporting consumer packaged goods. It is not clear how business-to-business campaigns might compare.

Prepaid Slowdown?

There's a bit of a cloud now hanging over the mobile prepaid segment as some larger prepaid providers have reported financial results that indicate slower growth.

Most-recent MetroPCS, Leap Wireless and Virgin Mobile USA quaterly results show slower customer growth. This will bear watching. Prepaid had been on a tear over the last year or so so investors are a bit rattled by the slowdown.

Prepaid wireless has been much more popular in Europe and elsewhere in the world than in the United States. About 19 percent of U.S. accounts are billed using prepad mechanisms, according to Pali Research.

In Western Europe, the prepaid share of total mobile connections varies significantly by country, but on average it was 57 percent at the end of 2008, according to the Yankee Group. That might decline to 47 percent by 2013.

In developing markets, prepaid dominates. For example, in Latin America prepaid accounts for 84 percent of mobile connections today. Yankee Group is predicting this percentage will remain flat during the next five years.

There are a couple of big questions about the U.S. market. The first is whether users who seem to be migrating to prepaid because of the recession will stay in prepaid mode after the recession ends. The other question is whether the market segments prepaid represents will change. Up to this point prepaid has been aimed at a lower-income user.

But wtih the growth of prepaid unlimited plans in the $45 to $50 range, one wonders how long it can be before smart phones start to become available, enticing users that would otherwise be buyers of post-paid service.

For Mobile Web, "Developed" and "Developing" Markets Are the Same

Is “Developing Market” a meaningless term where it comes to use of the mobile Web? Declan Lonergan, Yankee Group analyst, thinks so. That doesn't mean the markets are identical. Developing markets rely on handsets whose monthly cost is $5, developed market users often pay $40 to $80 a month.

Despite those differences, consumers everywhere want access to the mobile Web. When they get it, their usage profiles are surprisingly consistent, Longergan says.

The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage during June 2009 were Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S., U.K., Poland and Nigeria. India continued to move up the rankings, overtaking China for third place, Opera reports. These results demonstrate the huge appetite for access to the mobile Web in developing markets.

Yankee Group in 2008 found use of the top-10 most popular mobile phone services were almost identical in developed and developing regions.

Penetration of mobile Web browsing in the Gulf (11 percent) and in Europe (14 percent) was also very close.

América Móvil (AMX) as a point of reference. AMX is a leading provider of mobile services in Latin America, with subsidiaries in 18 countries including Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. As of June 30, 2009, it had more than 190 million mobile customers and three million land lines in the Americas. In most countries, AMX targets primarily low-ARPU prepaid customers. It has 42 percent mobile customer market share in Latin America. Its closest challenger is Telefonica with 29 percent.

The differences between developed and developing markets are small, Lonergan says. The most successful services are consistently messaging (dominated by SMS), mobile broadband, personalization (ringtones) and mobile Web. Mobile Web use is being driven by consumers accessing social networking sites like Facebook.

AMX is emphasizing mobile social networking by providing access to brands like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut (Google) in Brazil. It also offers branded chat, photo and video blog services. AMX’s subsidiaries Telcel and Comcel provide public photo- and video-sharing sites.

Telcel offers a B2C interface that allows amateur contributions to be uploaded and purchased.

The most frequently visited sites by customers using Vodafone’s mobile Internet service are Facebook, Google, BBC, YouTube, Windows Live, Bebo and eBay "We can conclude, therefore, that operators in developing and developed markets are offering broadly similar MI service portfolios," says Lonergan.

But some differences will persist, particularly when we focus on the least advanced markets. The use of SMS is one example. In sub-Saharan Africa, SMS remains a critical platform for service innovation and will continue to be the focal point for local entrepreneurial initiatives.

Mobile data services account for 15 percent of AMX’s revenue today while European operators typically achieve 20 to 30 percent.

"In our conversations with various players throughout developing regions, we have heard evidence of average consumption of up to 1.5 GB per month per user," says Lonergan. "This is close to levels generally seen among low-end users on land line connections."

How Long Before Mobiles Eclipse PCs as Internet Platform?

It long has been the conventional wisdom that mobile phones will be the way most people in developing markets access the Internet. And though that likely will not prove true in developed markets, it does seem inevitable that a significant percentage of total Internet and Web usage originates from smart phones.

Whether it is ultimately 25 percent or 50 percent of usage that is initiated from mobiles is not clear. What is clear is that the percentage of Web and Internet application usage from mobiles is growing with no natural limit in sight.

And at least some observers think 2010 could be the year more sessions originate from mobiles than from PCs. To be sure, that prediction assumes heavy use of social networking, instant messaging and other communications activities, plus Web-based entertainment, will drive mobile Web activities.

The prediction likely would not be correct if one counted the length of sessions or Web browsing activities. But social networking is an application growing fast, and which is ideally suited for mobile sharing and updating.

Demand for smart phones will make up 70 per cent of new device sales by 2012, while sales of "mid-tier" feature phones declines, according to researchers at Gartner.

Worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 286.1 million units in the second quarter of 2009, a 6.1 per cent decrease from the second quarter of 2008, but smart phone sales surpassed 40 million units, a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year, representing the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market.

Leap Wireless Applies for Stimulus Funds

Though major telcos and cable companies, as well as many independent rural telcos seem to be passing on applying for broadband stimulus funds, it appears wireless firms are active.

Leap Wireless says it has applied for a grant to supply 23,000 low-income families in Baltimore, Houston, Memphis, San Diego and Washington, D.C. broadband access and digital literacy training.

Yonder Media, a Reno-based wireless broadband provider to rural communities, also has applied for funds to deploy 150 3G rural wireless broadband networks, serving 400 communities.

Qwest, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon did not apply, and that was not unexpected. The Rural Utilities Service rules generally bar firms such as Qwest from applying for support for their rural operations if they also serve at least one metro market in a state. And none of the major providers were too happy about strings attached to the receipt of funds, which affect the business models and practices the companies can use.

Level 3 Communications likely will apply for funds to support middle-mile facilities that can be used by local access providers.

Sprint Launches 4G in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Portland, Ore.

Sprint Nextel has launch its 4G mobile broadband service in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Portland metro areas. The service offers peak downlink speeds of more than 10 Mbps and average downlink speeds of 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps, three to five times faster than the 3G service offered by any carrier today, based on average download speeds, and without bandwidth caps, for $70 a month.

If you are a typical 3G user the unlimited service won't mean that much. Few 3G users use anywhere near the 5 Gbyte monthly cap, costing $60 a month.

Heavy video users might want to consider it, though. The additonal bandwidth is more than adequate for quality video viewing, and the lack of a cap means you won't have to worry about blasting through your cap.

Of course, the decision also depends on where you live, and where you use mobile broadband. If you are a road warrior, the coverage simply isn't wide enough to be of exceptional use, though the modem also will allow you to use the Sprint 3G network anyplace there is 3G service.

For users who normally use 3G, Sprint Nextel offers a $10 a day pass that allows 4G access when a user is in an activated market.

DirecTV Launches Broadband-Only Sunday Ticket

Broadband access providers rightly are concerned that their big broadband pipes over time will allow users to bypass service provider voice and video services, and DirecTV just fired a limited shot in that direction.

Though direct competition from Hulu and other sites is a bit muted since those services typically make sure online content is not made available at the same time the same content is showing on the linear networks, the new Sunday Ticket package will do precisely that.

Though I frankly don't know how DirecTV is going to ascertain which consumers, in which locations, actually cannot get a DirecTV signal, users who are in that predicament will be able to buy the National Football League "Sunday Ticket" package as a stand-alone, without paying for a subscription to DirecTV's other linear video offerings, and have that programming delivered over their broadband Internet access connections.

There will be some locations where landlords or property associations may not allow satellite dishes, which might be easier to ascertain. But it will be harder to determine, without a site visit, where direct line of sight is not available.

The new offering is an "over the top" service that does not require DirecTV to pay a cent to the broadband access providers whose access services are used to support it.

The package will sell for $349, $100 more than most DirecTV subscribers pay.

O2 Germany Now Fully Supports Mobile VoIP

Generally speaking, potentially-disruptive innovation in the mobile business happens when a smaller provider launches new assaults. That appears to be the case in the German mobile market, as Telefónica's O2 Germany business launches mobile Internet packages that allow users total access to VoIP services at no extra charge.

The operator is pushing two data plans in particluar: Internet-Pack-M and Internet-Pack-L. Pack M gives the subscriber a data limit of 200 MB per month for 10 euros. The larger plan, Internet Pack L, increases this limit to 5 GBytes for 25 euros a month. Neither of the plans actually cuts users off when they hit those limits, but connection speeds are reduced.

“We operate one of the most modern and most rapid mobile data networks in Europe and our customers are to experience it without limitations, no matter whether they surf, email, use instant messaging or make phone calls”, says Lutz Schüler, Managing Director Marketing & Sales, Telefónica O2 Germany. “By opening our mobile high-speed network for VoIP services, we set new standards in the area of the mobile internet.”

The issue in the U.S. market is probably when, not "if" some provider ultimately will decide to take that gamble as well. And it might not even be an upstart provider, though that likely makes the most sense. At some point, leading providers with their own termination facilities and backbone networks might well conclude that it makes sense to do so.

When AT&T launched its "Digital One Rate" plan, which eliminated the distinction between local and long distance calls, it revolutionized pricing industry wide.

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire would seem perennial candidates to launch a disruptive attack, in part because they have no landline voice revenues to cannibalize.

That was one reason AT&T thought Digital One Rate would work (before its acquisition by or merger with SBC Communications, AT&T had no significant local access customers, and none supported over owned facilities).

Right now the leading providers probably are right in concluding they are better off avoiding such disruption. Voice revenues still are too important to risk. But that will change with time. And then an O2-style move will make more sense.

Is Qwest VOD Coming?

Qwest Communications is a laboratory of sorts for incumbent telcos that do not have the resources and customer heft to justify launching IPTV services. Many small, rural telcos with small subscriber bases find that most customers already subscribe either to a satellite TV service or a competing cable TV service, for example.

Qwest has decided to rely on partner DirecTV for its multi-channel video offering, but has been interested for years in ways to use its broadband access plant to supplement linear TV with true video-on-demand services. Now that Qwest has upgraded many of its metro networks to operate at 40 Mbps in the downstream, with plans to serve 23 metro markets with services that fast, we might finally see some movement in that direction.

That would have important ramifications for many smaller and independent firms as well. If it works, if revenue for a true VOD service, built in conjunctionw with DirecTV does prove financially interesting, the same approach can be taken by many smaller operators as well.

That is not to say IPTV cannot work. AT&T and Verizon are prime examples of firms with enough customer base and resources to do so. And many indpendent telcos have concluded that IPTV still makes sense. But IPTV remains a tough proposition for many smaller providers. On-demand video might offer a solution. But Qwest likely will be the key test of that theory.

Qwest's approach also might prove helpful if cannibalization of linear multi-channel video actually does start to happen on a significant level. In that case, Qwest will have preserved scarce capital for robust access bandwidth upgrades, and then will be in positiont to push ahead aggressively with a VOD plan without risk of cannibalizing its linear video base.

That would challenge the conventional wisdom, which is that a stand-alone VOD effort will fail without the ability to offer linear TV as well. Of course, Qwest already has that covered, with its DirecTV partnership.

BT Rolls Out 20 Mbps, FTTH Danger Remains

BT is rolling out 20-Mbps broadband access services to about 40 percent of its network terminations, up from 8 Mbps possible before BT upgraded many of its Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers to the ADSL2+ standard.

Actual connection speeds people will see will vary based largely on the amount of metallic cable between their home and the telephone exchange, as always is the case for DSL. Speed increases will be most noticeble in the upstream direction.

Most BT retail customers connect at up to 448 kbps on the upstream when using ADSL, but this will double to up to 1 Mbps using ADSL2+. The new upgrades will be provided at no charge.

Faster speeds are possible if a further upgrade to VDSL is made, but that also would entail deploying much more fiber in the network.

And while BT faces criticism for not deploying fiber to the home, Fitch Ratings investment analysts say FTTH deployments are highly risky for European service providers facing cable operators. Fitch analysts estimate a telco FTTH upgrade in the U.K. market might cost BT about six times more money per connected home than it will cost cable operators to upgrade using DOCSIS 3.0.

The obvious risk there is financial return. In a competitive sales environment, BT likely could not charge six times more for its offering than a cable operator would. For that reason, Fitch analysts say fiber "to the curb," which costsly significantly less, will be the preferred upgrade strategy.

"FTTH is not commercially viable for much of the incumbents’ networks," though some greenfield builds will be feasible, Fitch Ratings argues.

The point is that Fitch believes wide FTTH deployments are highly risky for European telcos facing serious cable competition.

The broader point is that though fiber to the home likely is the "best" access technology in terms of bandwidth, it is highly financially risky, because the incremental revenue might not cover the incremental cost of the new facilities. It is one thing to mandate national broadband policies. It is quite another thing to require service providers to make investments that are demonstrably highly risky.

That said, there are financial risks either way. Underinvest and telcos are vulnerable to cable operators taking dangerous amounts of market share. Overinvest and a return is not assured.

All that said, actual facts on the ground are decisive. FTTH is more feasible where densities are high and where there is lots of aerial plant, compared to underground. The reason is that it is cheaper to rebuild aerial plant than underground plant. High density helps because loops are shorter and more shared infrastructure can be used. Shared infrastructure always is cheaper than dedicated infrastructure.

But cable operators face the same general financial problem. As fiber is pulled closer to end user locations, the cost rises dramatically. At some point, after DOCSIS 3.0 is deployed and bandwidth is reclaimed by moving to digital video, raw bandwidth might still have to be increased. And that is going to take significant capital investment.

For the most part, then, copper drops of one sort or another are likely to be with us for quite some time.

National Broadband Plans Not That Effective?

As the Federal Communications Commission starts work on creation of a "national broadband plan," it is worth keeping in mind the relatively slight impact such policies have.

In fact, 91 percent of the differences in fixed broadband adoption rates in the 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries can be explained by reference solely to differences in income, education, population age, and other demographic factors that bear little relationship to broadband or telecommunications policy," the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies. says in a new study.

In fact, perhaps 87 percent of the variation in broadband subscription rates across the OECD can be explained by a few inputs.

On average, a $10,000 increase in gross domestic product per capita increases the connection rate per capita by 1.97 percentage points. A 10 percentage point rise in the percentage of a population living in an urban area, or a 10 percentage point decline in the share of persons over 65 years of age, both increase the subscription rate by about 3.0 percentage points, on average.

Beyond, one of the deficiencies of the OECD study is that it does not include other popular methods used by people for Internet access, such as at libraries and public Internet connection centers, for example. Nor do OECD studies include mobile Internet access, a more-serious problem as mobile connections grow.

Fully 56 percent of Americans saying that have "at some point used wireless means for online access," according to researchers at the Pew Center Internet & American Life Project say. Notebook PCs are the main way most Americans get online wirelessly, with 39 percent saying it is their "most prevalent means of wireless access," and 32 percent saying they have used a cell phone "or other hand-held device to check e-mail, access the Internet for information, or send instant messages."

More important, 69 percent of Americans also are also starting to use their cell phones for texting, e-mailing, getting directions, snapping and sending photos, Pew says.

Ignoring mobile broadband access under such conditions is a major flaw.

"Mobile broadband is likely to be very important for users who do not own or know how to use a computer, since Internet access is also possible through smart mobile phones and other small, portable devices such as Netbooks," the Phoenix Center says. "Indeed, broadband provided over mobile networks may replace fixed connectivity for many users."

In Portugal, for example, more than half of all broadband connections use mobile technologies, and 10 percent of broadband connected persons in the country use only a mobile access method.

Are Younger Users Cooling to Social Networking?

U.K. communications regulator Ofcom says the percentage of 15- to 24-year-olds with a profile on a social networking site has dropped for the first time, from 55 percent at the start of last year to 50 percent this year.

Some have suggested this means younger users are abandoning sites such as Facebook that no longer are attractive now that their parents use the sites as well.

The other explanation is that users are starting to settle in at fewer sites, says comScore.

Younger users are increasingly moving towards Facebook as their primary social networking destination, and using other sites less.

Inertia A Challenge for Yahoo, Microsoft

It's always hard to get users to change their habits. That is one reason media and content companies spend so much time and money on promotion and marketing. And it appears that applies to the ways people find content as well.

According to comScore, one obstacle the Yahoo!-Microsoft partnership faces is changing user habits. The reason is simply habit. Users who search on Google tend to stick with Google for most searches, comScore notes. About 69 percent of users conducted their searches on Google-owned sites.

Users of the engines at the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft Sites conducted 32.6 percent of their searches on the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft Sites, but a much higher 60.7 percent of their searches on Google sites.

In the content business as well as in the real world, friction and inertia require inputs of energy to "force" objects to change direction.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/8/comScore_Study_Highlights_Challenges_and_Opportunities_for_Microsoft-Yahoo!_Search_Partnership

More U.S. Mobile Internet Than PC Users by 2010?

"By 2010, the number one way U.S. users will interact with Web is through the phone, not the PC," says Rodney Mason, Moosylvania CMO. That would be a huge change, more in line with what forecasters have been predicting about Internet access methods in the developing world.

If it turns out the mobile device becomes the most-common means of access, the way Web applications and services are designed also will start to change.

Smart phones and mobile broadband networks should lead to "TV everywhere" services, for example. And that could break the hold multichannel video services have on the delivery of video.

Sales of smart phones matter for several reasons, among them the creation of new markets for mobile applications. Handset suppliers and mobile service providers have a huge stake as well.

Nearly a quarter of all handsets sold in the U.S. market during the fourth quarter of 2008 were smart phones, up from 12 percent of all phone sales in the same quarter of 2007, according to the NPD Group. But the rate of growth seems to have slowed because of the recession.

IDC forecasts a U.S. smart phone growth rate of between four and five percent for 2009, a far cry from last year’s 68 percent growth, and Stela Bokun, Pyramid Research analyst, warns that slowdowns in Europe and other markets could negatively affect service provider data revenue growth.

'If smart phones do not get cheaper and if mobile customers remain the only ones bearing the risks related to currency fluctuations in individual markets, uptake will suffer in a prolonged recession and post-recession data services revenue will take longer to recover," she says.

Of the 263 million new handsets sold in Europe in 2008, 14 percent were smartphones. These 36 million units accounted for roughly 24.4 percent of all smart phones sold globally that year, Bokun says.

"We expect handset unit sales in Western Europe to fall 20 percent in 2009; the situation is even worse in Central and Eastern Europe, where new handset sales are expected to fall 25 percent this year," she says.

Globally, Nokia leads in sales of new smart phones, while Research in Motion is second and Apple is third.

Nokia sold 18,441,000 smart phones in the 2nd quarter of 2009, and RIM sold 7,678,900 unit, while Apple sold 5.4 million devices.

Fixed Wireless Likely Big Winner in Broadband Stimulus First Round

Perhaps the biggest first round winners of broadband stimulus grants, after the close of application deadlines Aug. 14 or Aug. 20, 2009 (larger projects will have the Aug. 20 deadline by virtue of an extension granted for electronic filers) are wireless providers, especially firms using terrestrial broadband for access.

There are several reasons. Wireless networks can be built faster, at lower cost, than wired networks, giving wireless providers a better chance of completing larger projects in the required time frame. The largest wired service providers seem to have decided not to apply, for a variety of reasons having to do with the way the rules are constructed and strings attached to receipt of funds.

Also, existing wireless providers, especially independents, have the infrastructure and business acumen required to run such networks, and huge incentive to build out their networks.

In the last major investment wave in the U.S. telecommunications market, though there were hundreds of upstart firms launched, most market share was controlled by just tow companies, AT&T and MCI. Since it appears the largest carriers will sit out the broadband stimulus program, the field is cleared for medium-sized firms to get the funding.

Most of those companies, even those building new middle-mile optical trunking facilities, will rely on wireless for the final mile connections.