Posts by Julie Ask from August 04, 2008

Julie Ask | August 04, 2008, 04:34 PM
SinglePoint's Ad Insertion Technology

SinglePoint announced today their availability of dynamic ad insertion technology. Kudos to them for getting this done. Ads a layer of targeting to SMS that has been limited to content to date. Granted, there isn't much space in an SMS for much advertising, but it's a big step in the right direction in terms of increasing the relevance and value of the inventory.

Julie Ask | August 04, 2008, 12:44 PM
My Tivo Phone

I was reading this post on MocoNews this morning on Toshiba closing down their mobile TV subsidiary. I wasn't surprised - I think anyone in mobile video delivered to cell phones will need to have cash and patience to see this through. I found a link in the article to One-Seg and their 20 million-handset mark. This intrigued me. At the same time, MobiTV announced today that they had reached four million subscribers. (Congratulations!) The same article estimated MediaFLO's subscriber base at about 200,000. Also notable is the slowing in growth of mobile video add's.

So, a lot of interesting news around mobile video today. Our research confirms the waning to flat consumer interest in mobile video. At the same time, interest and consumption of video online has never been higher. People want to time-shift, place-shift, catch-up on what they've missed on TV and see UGC among other types. Certainly a PC offers a different experience than a handheld, but on a plane ... an iPhone-sized experience, I think, is a very good one. OneSeg seems to have hit on a winning experience with free service on a terrestrial network, DRM-free, and time-shifting by allowing consumers to record video on their devices. Ok, so they haven't exactly identified a revenue stream, but they have figured out how to get consumers to watch.