Seeing into the Future
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Calvin Carter discusses his observations from Mobile World Congress 2015, noting several key trends: 1. Security was a major focus, with many companies showcasing new security and malware protection features for both hardware and software platforms. 2. Video content was prominently featured, even within non-video apps, showing how important video has become for generating ad revenue. 3. Notifications continue to be a critical area of focus, with companies innovating in push notifications, messaging across channels, and analytics for tracking notification strategies. 4. Emerging technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality and beacons are still in early stages but showed promise, though widespread adoption may be a few years off.
Seeing into the Future
- 1. seeing into The Future Calvin Carter, Founder & President of Bottle Rocket, dishes on Mobile World Congress 2015 2015
- 2. 1 MWC is No CES For years i’ve noticed something about CES in Las Vegas. Not only do I feel my personal values don’t fit the impressive display we have come to expect, I have also noticed Vegas has a “tell”. Every year I like to see what booths are small one year, and huge the following. A few years back it was 3D printers. Who the heck needed one of those? The vendors’ booth size said so, we didn’t have to ask. But the line to see the booth said something else. A year later it was “wearables”. Then it was “drones”. CES, at least the cheap seats, is an oracle of the future. Yes, that’s insanely embellished. But it’s what I have seen myself. Barcelona is different. First off, there are no cheap seats. “Small booths” are usually found as a child to a mega booth. For example, France or Catalonia will host a booth so that companies inside that region can have their own 5x5. That is something we simply don’t see in Vegas. But the biggest difference, and this is a “duh” moment, is Barcelona is, as advertised, all about mobile. Barcelona deserves many things, including props for seeing at least a few years into the future when they saw that mobile might one day be something big. The spirit here is amazing. Open to the future and ready to write it. So, what did I find in the city of mobile?
- 3. 2 not for the tire kicker there are no cheap seats. I’m not sure if this is the congress itself, insuring that no riff raff makes it in, but from the cost of the tickets to the travel required to the cost of the booth, it works. Everyone I met was “industry”. Take it or leave it, MWC is not for the tire kicker. It, however and unfortunately, favors the established. Even the booths from companies you could tell were throwing a hail mary were well-healed. This is a place you come when you have arrived or you are traveling with someone who has. I was looking for the cheap seats. I didn’t find them. But I did find some amazing opportunities in the regional “combined groups”.
- 4. 3 security, security, security it’s all about not getting hacked. Security, malware protection, hardened hardware, and secure platforms were all huge trends this year. They were last year, too, but with an even bigger focus in 2015. Not only are there platform solutions (use the apps from said provider to send texts, make calls, and send emails and you will be safe) but now very, very well-designed phones (hardware) are showing up for very, very high end privacy and security. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. But it’s the first time I’ve seen it in multiple booths, at once, with platform options available for non-hardware options like iOS, and pretty darn good-looking phones at that. This is a small market. I get that. But it’s an important market. Sikur and LockPhone stood out as strong contenders, and as a sign of things to come in major provider handsets as a feature.
- 5. 4 video killed the display star video ads continue to make a lot of money compared to their display (banner) counterpart. I noticed this year the ingenious use of video in non-video apps. Like Teads.tv, who will put high- quality video units in your non-video app to get video-level CPM’s. Interesting note: they act like the auto-play Facebook videos you’ve seen in your friends’ feeds, but they didn’t copy Facebook. Who knows if it’s true, but word has it they did it before Facebook.
- 6. 5 engagement overload? it’s all about engagement. Maybe too much so. If there is a word more overused at MWC than engagement, it might be innovation. But innovation still has a fresh smell to it. Engagement has gone to the dark side. Too often did a company misuse engagement in booth signage to mean cross-channel attribution, shopper activation, download, referral, social activation, or any number of other things. What I learned is that it’s nearly impossible for a non-expert to make sense of these companies and their claims. Fortunately there are still a few companies who understand the difference between engagement, promotion, advertisement and activation. See the next slide...
- 7. 6 notification nation NOTIFICATIONS, NOTIFICATIONS, NOTIFICATIONS. Urban Airship has always been a dear friend and they continue to innovate the push notification space. I also have my eye on other companies that honestly don’t do push like UA does, but do provide a wide range of messaging options like email, SMS, MMS and other non-native techniques like mGage. These are very different companies, but they are converging on similar grounds. The future is centered on what UA is doing, but the day-to-day needs of a major brand involves what mGage is focused on as well. This is not a battle, it’s more of a conversation. And the conversation is so important there are very interesting feeder companies that you should be aware of. Take a look at batch.com. For free (or paid, if you want to do it right) they’ll monitor any app you want and track every single push it gets, no matter how granular the business rules are. Bottle Rocket builds some pretty amazing notification strategies and I was very impressed with their no-nonsense approach to reporting. We’re going to start using it Monday to track our clients and their competitors push strategies. Simple, but powerful. If there is one thing I will tell you in 2015, it’s that notification strategy is your most important thing to focus on. Was that subtle enough?
- 8. 7 Attribution and native mobile Cross-channel attribution, when it comes to native mobile, is still tricky. Most groups had “just launched an SDK” to match their web-based features. First off, it can’t match the web-based features, and secondly, a first gen SDK is rough. Trust us. But this is something worth continuing to watch. Cake had an interesting product. Frankly, so did five others. I say we watch them all.
- 9. 8 virtual reality in due time Google Glass and headset Virtual Reality is still young. It is coming though. It’s so cool. Insanely cool. But it needs a few cycles; all of them, not just Google, Oculus, and Gear. It’s coming soon though. Until then, there are tons of cool applications for stand-out ideas to take advantage of the feeling of magic it still creates like the Jim Beam work Bottle Rocket released recently for Devil’s Cut.
- 10. 9 scaling is hard scaling is hard. Try it on millions of end points. Then, it is even harder. As an app developer, we’ve had to roll our own tools to track “issues” with our work. We aren’t perfect, and neither is our work. And, while Bottle Rocket has some of the best quality assurance services in the industry, it’s hard even for us to keep on top of the releases, track issues, determine fixes and roll them out quickly. Fortunately, we saw better solutions this year than we have in the past. But not as good as I’d like. This is an area of opportunity for the industry. There are a few strong companies here. There could be more.
- 11. 10 social isn’t a broadcast chris moody from twitter gave a great presentation with client and friend Arlie Sisson from Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Arlie delivered a strong message about the importance of a brand having the confidence to go first combined with a focus on putting the customer’s needs, desires, and curiosities for new experiences above anything else. Chris noted the importance of voice of brand and the fact that, before social, was voice of brand even possible? Social is more than what you tweet, it’s what you hear and what you respond to. It’s a conversation, not a broadcast.
- 12. 11 Buzzword overkill buzzwords mean nothing, including at MWC. Here are the exact words from a flyer I picked up: “We help businesses to communicate more efficiently through smarter mobile engagement. Our solutions allow us to use mobile as a channel to create new revenue streams and as a channel to improve business operations. At the heart of all our products and solutions is the philosophy of leveraging intelligence to deliver service excellence”. We all can, and must be, a lot more clear in instances like this.
- 13. 12 rip sms and mms? not quite the world still cares about SMS and MMS, and maybe North America should too. There are a lot of meaningful companies providing very well-orchestrated email, MMS and SMS messaging campaigns, services, analytics, and attribution models. Maybe we need to be creating holistic messaging strategies that truly combines all the ways a company can message including push, local, MMS, SMS, email, social, referral, and other means.
- 14. 13 bring your hardware beacon networks are growing, but still in pockets. MWC is a global event. So everyone gets to come. However, it was disappointing to be talking to a group about the success they’ve had with beacons, only to learn it was in one city of only 1M people. That’s not a bad thing. But as an app developer ready to use a tapestry of BLE beacons, it reminded me why we manage proprietary solutions for our clients. Big brands still need to bring their own hardware if they want to do it right.
- 15. 14 early days of augmented reality ar is alive and well, and still in the future. The guys at Metaio are keeping it real and finding very, very cool ways to use AR for real-world issues. But wide use is still a ways off. That’s ok. So look for bigger and bigger “booths” in this area for the next 3 to 5 years. Oculus and Samsung are making serious moves here. This will happen. And those that show up early to the party will be rewarded with more than just great PR. But this is a big thing and it will take a while to unpack its full potential. From this we will not return.
- 16. 15 pay it forward? payments are still a mess. Too many players. Wait a year. But lean into Apple Pay if you’re riding the fence. Wait on the rest or take small chances to learn.