Conference Recap: Open Mobile Summit

@catrjones went to the Open Mobile Summit last week. The event explored critical issues in mobile and Internet convergence while providing a view of the immediate future of mobile networks, Internet, applications, platforms, devices and commerce. Here are some of the highlights:

Mobile Advertising - Panel (listen here)

• The space is too small for a mobile only video ad network at the moment (too few publishers) - Andy Miller, General Partner, Highland Capital (formerly Apple)
• NYT ipad and tablet inventory is really expensive: super premium - Todd Haskell, VP Advertising, New York Times
• Networks all use same sites and advertisers so differentiation is about intelligence and targeting - George Bell, CEO, Jumptap
• Majority of Millennial audience comes from apps not web - Isaac Babbs, SVP, Millennial Media
• Brandon Lucas, VP and GM Mobile, Black Entertainment TV:
  • Would like to see frequency capping on CPC networks
  • Would love to just book ads, and run them cross platform
  • Just can't give people enough video content. They mostly run pre-rolls but would like to see more interactivity with video

Video Everywhere and the Future of TV - Panel (listen here)

• It's not mobile, or tablet - it's multiplatform: the experience has to be unified across all devices. They're all crossing over anyway (Marc DeBevoise, SVP & GM Entertainment, CBS Interactive & Pete Distad, VP Distribution, Hulu)
• Make the programme better: provide companion experiences on mobile devices (Pete Distad, VP Distribution, Hulu) - example: a companion app for the Oscars which let you choose the camera you wanted to watch from the red carpet (Albert Cheng, EVP Digital Media, Disney/ABC)
• Youtube are seeing video uploads of 2hrs/minute on mobile devices, so it's not just video consumption (Francisco Varela, Global Head of Platform, You Tube)
• Want content consumed on different devices to get closer to a TV like experience (Daniel Danker, GM Programmes & On-Demand, BBC)
• We're just starting to get to the point where content changes to multidevice content, & we'll probably see this first with news (Daniel Danker, GM Programmes & On-Demand, BBC)

Mobile Video: Innovation in Delivery and Monetization - Panel (listen here)

• By 2013 we will have a spectrum deficit as more people watch mobile video: there will be too much data demand and as the networks currently are, they will crash (there's more about this here). The mobile broadband network of 2010 would have supported just 1 day's worth of the video delivered in 2010 - Robert Khedouri, VP, Sandisk
• Mobile devices will be used to augment the TV experience - Peter Yared, CTO CBS Interactive
• We are going to run in to data capping issues - Kevin Shatzamer - Chief Mobility Architect - Cisco

Wallet Wars - the race to contactless mobile payments - Panel (listen here)

• Osama Bedier, Vice President Payments, Google
  • Need to tie online and offline shopping experience together seamlessly
  • Adoption of wallets by merchants will depend on two things: does it generate sales? how efficiently?
• Bill Gajda, Global Head of Mobile, Visa
  • Mobile devices allow person to person time and place dependent payments: a new payment type for card providers (these sort of payments are currently done using cash / cheque). Users will pay for this service
  • NFC tags could be used to identify customers for a broad commerce experience
  • Receipt data belongs to merchant, payment data belongs to bank
  • NFC enabled phones will be available so the restriction is at the merchant level
• Dickson Chu, Managing Director Global Enterprise Payments, Citi
  • A VP Corporate Dev for a big merchant set 6,000 associates up in their store with mobile devices to use at the point of sale. Shopping should be a no paper experience.
  • Would be good to see a way of flagging top customers on these store attendant's mobile devices, and giving the attendant background on customer, likes, purchasing habits for a personalised shopping experience
• David Marcus, VP Mobile, PayPal
  • Users will be offered multiple wallets but will only choose one. Wallets will live in clouds, to be pulled down onto whichever device you are using at the time of payment
  • Handset manufacturers & operators have a role in mobile wallets: distribution to end users

The Industry Time Forgot - Matt Freeman, CIO, McCann Erickson Worldwide

Audio, Presentation

• Agencies used to do it all: invention, M&A, etc - now it's just advertising. McCann want to go back, and start promoting innovation again. They are launching an Open Agency platform on 13th November

Beyond Digital - Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman & Founder, One Laptop per Child Foundation

Audio, Presentation

• One Laptop per Child has spent $1B since 2005: 100 laptops, each with 100 (different) books: suddenly a bookless village has 10k books. OLPC have seen children teach themselves to use laptops within 15 minutes with no instruction, they want to leverage the children to educate communities, using connectivity
• New initiative: One Tablet per Child - tablets with solar panel covers
• New challenge: can children in illiterate communities teach themselves to read? OTPC are doing an experiment where they drop tablets in to villages with no literacy, no schools etc. A year later, they'll go back and see whether the children can read

Comments

[Vivian Kendricks]

This explains the real age of modern technology. Thanks for the post!