Vibes Media Acquires Zeep Mobile

Vibes Media announced that it has acquired self-service mobile advertising company Zeep Mobile. Under the terms of the agreement, Zeep’s mobile messaging technology will be integrated into the Vibes platform and all Zeep employees will become part of Vibes Media. Zeep’s network of over 10,000 developers will also be integrated into Vibes. Additionally, Zeep President and CEO Scott Robertson will relocate to Vibes’ headquarters in Chicago, as will the engineering team currently located in Vancouver Canada.

Founded in 2008 by a team of top engineers and headed by Robertson, Zeep Mobile developed innovative technology that helped monetize SMS traffic for publishers and deliver exceptional ROI for marketers and advertisers. This approach made ads extremely relevant to the end user through a combination of bidding and proprietary algorithms.

“Our experience with mobile marketing has taught us that in the world of mobile, relevance is paramount,” said Jack Philbin, founder and president of Vibes Media.

“Scott and his team at Zeep have built a powerful SMS platform that fundamentally understands how behavior, location, and relevance make or break SMS advertising. By combining Zeep’s technology into our platform, we create the most powerful and relevant advertising platform for SMS.”

“Vibes has the scale and the experience to make our technology really valuable in mobile marketing. Vibes has worked hard to become one of only nine companies with tier 1 connectivity to the carriers, they manage more short codes than anyone, and have a roster of clients that’s absolutely unparalleled in the mobile marketing space,” said Robertson. “It’s the ideal home for propelling our unique platform to new possibilities as we work to realize Vibes’ aggressive growth trajectory.”

“From our clients’ perspectives, this deal opens up a broad range of new opportunities. Publishers will be able to monetize their content in ways that actually help their fans, listeners and viewers. Marketers will be able to take advantage of the tremendous power of SMS advertising, which makes up more than half of the mobile advertising market today. Here at Vibes, we’re assembling the right elements to enhance our approach to providing truly comprehensive mobile marketing campaigns and solutions to major brands, agencies and publishers across the country,” added Alex Campbell, Vibes’ co-founder and CEO.

Source: Mobile Marketing Watch

Vibes Media Predicts Record Growth in 2010

Vibes Media, the mobile marketing leader, revealed that record 2009 sales bookings in combination with a recently expanded leadership team and technological investments, poise the company for a record year of profitable growth, despite one of the worst economic environments of the past 80 years.

Vibes reached the eight figure revenue level in 2007 and has continued to grow every year. In 2009, Vibes invested in growth and increased its focus on leveraging the company’s connectivity, award-winning client service and core technology platforms to market and sell a robust self-service platform for publishers, while maintaining its leadership as the premier full service partner for dozens of marketers and agencies. This investment and commitment to innovation and revenue growth in a very harsh economic environment in 2009 has provided an incredible foundation for 2010. Among the company’s key clients are Univision, Emmis, Entercom, CBS, Tribune, Best Buy, RIM, Diageo, Red Box, AT&T, Versus, MSG Interactive, Verizon, BET, T-Mobile, Accuweather and Gray Television, who is leveraging Vibes’ new enterprise content alerts module within the publisher platform.

“We chose Vibes because of their extensive experience and track record working with leading publishers” said Lisa Bishop, VP of Internet Operations & New Media, Gray Television. “Vibes has a lengthy history of innovation and we look forward to leveraging their unique combination of platform, service and connectivity to drive business results.”

Jack Philbin, Vibes’ president and co-founder says, “Despite the recession, we made the strategic decision in 2009 to continue to hire great people and invest heavily in our growth because we believe there are serious indications that the future of mobile advertising and marketing is upon us. Given the acquisition of AdMob by Google, and more recently Quattro by Apple, the category is receiving great validation of its endless potential. Innovation is likely to move faster, and there’ll be a corresponding impact on mobile advertising business models for companies like Vibes and the marketers and publishers we serve.”

Despite the company’s achievements in 2009, Vibes’ Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Drew Green understands that the opportunity in mobile continues to evolve rapidly, “We’ve got an incredible leadership team that believes success comes through a commitment to people, product and profit. Our planned success in 2009 was executed by an incredible group of people at Vibes who are devoted to meeting the objectives of a deep roster of clients. Our clients are delighted with our approach to mobile marketing and benefit from a platform in which we continue to invest in order to capture more and more of the mobile budget. Our team understands that no other device is as personal, interactive and constantly within reach as a mobile phone, and that new developments in 2010 will let advertisers target whole new parameters, such as location and context. There is a tremendous opportunity to continue the momentum in 2010 and extend our leadership position.”

Source: Vibes Media

Vibes Taps AOL Third Screen Media Engineering Team

Vibes Media has added a number of key members from the AOL Third Screen Media engineering team to its growing roster of 75 employees. Rishi Bhatia, former head of engineering for Third Screen, is joining Vibes Media under the same title where he is in charge of guiding and executing the evolution of the company’s mobile marketing platform. Also joining Vibes from Bhatia’s team at Third Screen are Mark Hoffman as architect and Varma Vetukuri as senior QA engineer.

A senior executive with more than 15 years of experience in technological innovation, Bhatia was most recently the head of engineering for Third Screen Media, the mobile engineering subsidiary of AOL. Third Screen Media, acquired by AOL in 2007, was the first to create a mobile ad network and offer an integrated and scalable platform for connecting mobile ad buyers and sellers. Bhatia was responsible for the engineering division and product delivery of mobile advertising, successfully rebuilding the entire engineering organization after the acquisition. Prior to Third Screen Media, Bhatia spent a long career with Computer Associates, ultimately as director of development engineering. In that role, he reduced the development cycle for his products by 70 percent while overseeing product delivery for multiple solutions.

“Joining the team was an easy decision. Vibes Media is one of the few bright stars in this crowded and fragmented mobile marketing category,” said Bhatia. “No other company is poised to win in this market like Vibes. They view mobile marketing at least two years out — and they have aligned tightly with this vision.”

“The addition of Rishi and his team marks the beginning of an important innovation cycle for Vibes. Over the next few months we will be revealing a number of major initiatives that will advance the mobile marketing and mobile advertising landscape,” added Philbin.

Source: BusinessInsider.com

Digital Ad Spend to Surpass Print in 2010 for First Time

For the first time ever, advertisers will spend more on digital than print, according to a new study by Outsell released today titled “Marketing and Ad Spending Study 2010: Total US and B2B Advertising.” But mobile marketing isn’t quite ready for the spotlight yet, and will see a spending decline in the coming year. The study finds that advertisers will spend 16% less on mobile in 2010.

Of the $368 billion marketers will spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital, 30.3% will go towards print. “It’s a watershed moment,” lead author of the study and Outsell vice president Chuck Richard told Forbes.com. However, in regards to mobile marketing, “the proof isn’t in yet that mobile spending is all that effective,” Richard adds in the article. He gives the example of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit iPhone app which was the 33rd-highest-grossing mobile app in the iPhone store — 32,000 people paid $2 to download the app, netting $64k. However, one page of advertising in the issue makes $135,000. Richard obviously isn’t a fan of mobile marketing. “It’s time for a reality check,” he says.

But mobile marketing isn’t just about iPhone apps, and comparing the amount of money made from an iPhone app to the money made from print advertising is comparing apples to bananas. If you’re a brand, you don’t necessarily build an iPhone app just to make money from that app. The app may also be for increasing brand loyalty and seen as a digital PR move. Also, iPhone apps can make money later with in-app advertising that makes the app download fee worth more than the original purchase price.

The Outsell study collected data from 1,008 US advertisers in both consumer and B2B that marketers in December 2009. Stats that advertisers will spend 16% less on mobile in 2010 might scare mobile marketers, but it’s a natural pause after a growth spurt in the industry. Over the past year, there was a lot of excitement and experimentation in mobile marketing and advertising, and likely advertisers had unrealistic expectations in ROI in a still young smartphone market.

In the year’s to come, mobile advertising spend will likely go up. That’s according to me, not the Outsell study. The reason for this? Mobile is more than phones, and in the coming years we’ll see mobile-connected devices become more popular in the mainstream. Tablets, netbooks, portable network-connected gaming devices (like Sony’s upcoming PlayStation phone) will allow the rise in digital ad spending to leak into mobile and grow mobile ad spend in the next decade.

Source: Mobile Marketing Watch

Check out Vibes.com for a Streamlined Look and Great New Content

As a leader in the mobile marketing industry, we’ve focused tirelessly on filling our website with informative content not just about what we can do for our clients, but also about the mobile marketing industry as a whole. With the most recent update to Vibes.com we’ve made that content even easier to consumer. Here’s what to look for: A redesigned homepage with a number of innovative features and graphical elements to help guide you to the pages that matter most to you. A sleeker navigation to help you find the content you’re looking for as quickly as possible. Updated vertical pages with targeted case studies to provide one convenient spot for all relevant information. On top of all that, we’ve added a wealth of great new content and other graphical updates to provide you with a rewarding and user-friendly browsing experience. Check out Vibes.com to see these new changes and more.

Introducing the Vibes Blog

On behalf of all of Vibes I’d like to introduce you to our Blog, which you can visit by clicking here. The mobile marketing industry continues to grow and mature at an astounding rate, and we’re excited to be at the forefront of that development. We’re also excited to share the expertise we’ve gained after more than twelve years in the industry, and to open up dialogues about opportunity, trends, news and our innovations as it relates to product and technology.

After delivering over 100,000 mobile marketing campaigns and generating nearly 700,000,000 messages, we’ve gained a wealth of experience and insight. But we also understand innovation comes from collaboration and active dialogues, so we hope you’ll provide feedback and begin some conversations of your own.

Drew Green, SVP Sales & Marketing at Vibes

For Teenagers, Messaging on the Go

Sending text messages from cellphones has shot past instant messaging from computers as a way for teens to communicate, according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence, a market research company.

Instant messaging was widely commercialized in the 1990s. It still had 26 percent more frequent users in 2007, but by 2008, texting and instant messaging were nearly tied. Today, texting is definitively more popular, according to Mediamark, which asked a nationally representative sample of teenagers whether they had used either form of communication in the last 30 days.

“This is just another example of the way that we’re all getting more mobile,” said Anne Marie Kelly, an executive with Mediamark.

Although the survey did not ask teenagers why they preferred text messaging, other research has linked its rise to providers’ sale of cheap packages of several hundred messages. The profusion of phones with QWERTY keyboards may also play a role.

Source: NY Times

Do All Small Businesses Need a Mobile Strategy?

At the Mobile Premier Awards — an international competition for mobile start-ups held last month at the Mobile World Congress — the message was clear: Web sites are old school, and mobile is a growing requirement for every industry and business.

Investors and entrepreneurs who judged and won at the M.P.A. competition were eager to offer tips and predictions to help all business owners — not just those with technology companies — prepare a mobile strategy. Here are some of their suggestions:

• First, every company should try to become “visible” to mobile devices. “The idea is that if a consumer is looking for you on the run,” said Chetan Sharma, a mobile consultant who judged at the M.P.A. competition, “your info must be available in any format where they are looking to consume that information — or else you miss an opportunity.”

• While smartphones can access most Web sites, the content in most sites isn’t coded to be read or found by people using devices on the go, with small screens and mobile browsers, search engines and operating systems. Smartphones, for example, can’t read Flash content, which many dance clubs and restaurants favor to create aesthetically pleasing sites.

• Mr. Sharma recommends checking business directories, map and review sites and apps already popular with mobile users to see if your company is listed. If not, you can list basic details like your location, contact information and a short description free on many sites and apps. You should check Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Nokia’s Ovi Prime Place, Microsoft’s Bing Local Listings, Yelp and Foursquare.

• You might also optimize your company’s existing Web content, suggested David Harper, chief executive of Percent Mobile, a New York-based mobile analytics company that won a Gold Award for Early Stage Innovation. If you maintain a blog on WordPress, for example, you can use the free WordPress Mobile Pack to convert the blog to a format that is fast-loading and readable on a smaller screen.

Other free and affordable things you can do include building a list of mobile phone numbers for customers who are willing to receive text-message alerts or text-message coupons; creating a mobile microsite coded in XHTML, CSS or other languages easily read by new mobile Web browsers and devices; or building a branded app and mobile ads to promote it using the services of companies like AdMob, GetJar, Mofuse, Mippin and MediaLets.

All entrepreneurs should be able to develop or use more powerful mobile apps to their advantage soon, said Rich Wong, a partner and venture investor with Accel Partners in Palo Alto who invested in AdMob (and GetJar) early on. That’s because, Mr. Wong said, new mobile devices, from their hardware features to their more open operating systems, are serving as “a richer substrata on which to build apps.”

He predicts geo-location services and “augmented reality” will begin to figure more prominently for traditional businesses. Augmented reality uses a phone’s camera, GPS and compass capabilities to create a street-view image that is layered with real-time information and hyperlinks. (It’s reminiscent of a scene included at 0:25 in the trailer for the movie “Fight Club.”)

At the M.P.A. event, a company called Layar presented an augmented reality mobile browser that impressed Mr. Wong. For example, he said, “With an augmented reality browser like Layar, you can hold up your phone, scan the neighborhood around you somewhere in Asia, and get back information on stores in the immediate area, including prices with a currency conversion back to U.S. dollars, or listings and discounts for a film that’s about to screen in a nearby cinema.”

Despite all of the new technology, a basic function of the mobile phone is still making phone calls. But even that’s changing. Adaffix, an Austrian company that won a Best in Female Entrepreneurship Mobile Premier Award, is offering voice calls that use search listings and social media data as a supplement.

That means a mobile user with an Adaffix app running can call a taxi service and get no answer but know that, upon hanging up, three alternative listings will be presented. The taxi services can offer coupons to try to scoop up the business. It’s a high-tech way to advertise that could serve traditional Main Street businesses well, said Adaffix founder and chief executive Claudia Poepperl.

Most important, understand that mobile and Web audiences are very different, said Mr. Harper of Percent Mobile. Someone at a home computer who checks out your restaurant’s Web site may be interested in videos of your chef or a PDF menu. Someone accessing your site by mobile is more likely to need to get directions instantly or to see if you have an open table. If you know, Mr. Harper said, “how the majority of your users are accessing your brand on mobile — are they using iPhone or BlackBerry or something else? — and what content they mostly need, you can be sure that they have a positive experience.”

Source: NY Times Blog