Can you describe the trial and how it operated?<\/strong>
\nSure. The basic content consisted of 3 television channels (a sports channel and 2 talk channels) plus 4 radio channels. The customer would download and install a client application into their handset, which would enable them to play the content and to switch very quickly and easily between the channels. <\/p>\n

During the signup process, each subscriber was asked to answer 7 short questions about their personal interests. This provided us with a basic profile. This information was used by the the Ericsson platform to select and serve appropriate ads when the subscriber accessed the TV channels.<\/p>\n

So here is the real question: What was the feedback from your customers?<\/strong>
\nThere were quite a few conclusions from the trial, but here are the 3 most important:
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Satisfaction<\/em>:<\/strong> We asked we asked subscribers what they thought about mobile TV with advertising. 70% said they really liked it, and gave a score of 5 or 6 on a scale from 1 to 6. So this was really surprising. One interesting thing, the trial participants still had to pay for their data traffic, the cost in Norway is about \u20ac0.80 per minute ($1.25). So they liked it even though they weren’t getting the content for free!<\/p>\n

Viewing time<\/em>:<\/strong> The average viewing time on TV channels went from 2 1\/2 minutes to over 7 minutes when people interacted with an advertisement. In other words, when a subscriber clicked on an ad, they almost tripled the session time.<\/p>\n

Click through<\/strong><\/em>:<\/strong> Here’s the real surprise: we had a click through rate (CTR) of 13% on this trial. This compares with normal click through rates on the internet of typically 0.1% to 0.3%.<\/p>\n

Isn’t it possible that the high click through rate was mostly because it was a new service and people wanted to see how it worked?<\/strong>
\nActually this question occurred to us as well. So just over a month ago we stopped any new people from being able to sign up for the service. So for the past month we have not had any new users, yet the click through rate has remained essentially stable at around 13%. We feel this proves that it is not simply interest in a new service that caused this high rate.<\/p>\n

What type of ads were shown on the service?<\/strong>
\nWhen a user first goes into the service, a couple of pre-loaded targeted ads are shown. Then while they are watching the TV, ads were shown on a split screen, with banner ads or scrolling text. Once the subscriber clicked on the ad, it would go to the advertisers WAP page. Some of the advertiser WAP pages were quite simple with just product information, others were quite interactive with possibility to download video, stream video, download ringtones, etc. <\/p>\n

(note: to see more images and video from the trial go to the MobiADNews Campaign Watch<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Can you tell me something about the advertisers who joined the trial. Was it hard to convince them to participate?<\/strong>
\nActually we found it very easy to recruit advertisers. For this activity, we partnered with an ad agency, Proximity, the Norwegian branch of BBDO. Then we just went and asked a number of major companies if they wanted to participate. Since the mobile penetration in Norway is 104%, all the advertisers were quite aware of the potential for mobile advertising. None of the companies said no, in fact their reaction was more “wow, yes we definitely want to take part”.<\/p>\n

In the end, I think we had a good variety. There were 15 different companies, including the Norwegian post office, Yoplait (food brand), a film (Happy Feet), a local social community site (like MySpace), a travel company, 2 car companies, and 2 mobile operators (Telenor, Netcom).<\/p>\n

Your trial required the download and installation of a client software application in the handset. This clearly lets you offer a better user experience, but it does require more user knowledge. Do you think this was some kind of barrier?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, we know it is a barrier. Even in Norway, where we have very experienced mobile users, we figure that about 70% of the subscribers won’t even attempt to download and install client software – maybe they tried downloads before and it didn’t work, or maybe they are afraid there is a virus there. And of the ones that do download, probably 10% to 15% can’t make it work. This will get better over time, but it is an issue today.<\/p>\n

\n
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Is NRK planning on doing additional trials in the future?<\/strong>
\nWell first of all we plan to keep this trial running into June. We will be able to report back more figures then.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, I can think of loads of different things we could do next: more sophisticated profiling using other information we have about the customer as well as information on their TV viewing patterns; we could experiment by cutting our programs into, say, 3 minute segments and adding inserting ads; we could experiment with additional interactivity; etc.<\/p>\n

But most of all we need to make sure that it is still acceptable to customers and they don’t get worried that there is too much information about them. We have to be very careful as we are a public service broadcaster, so we need to be sure people don’t feel we are intruding on them, whereas some commercial companies might be less worried about that.<\/p>\n

Final question, do you have any advice for a broadcaster who is considering adding interactivity and advertising to a TV portal?<\/strong>
\nSure.
\nFirst of all, do it!
\nSecond, usability is most important, it has to be simple, all settings have to be right, no need to change things.
\nThird, make it alive – have an editorial staff that can make it change and give people a reason to visit it regularly. not the same all the time.
\nFinally, make sure you have different types of services and different kinds of interactivity, and that you tell people about it. For example, you should tell people “on this show you can get a ringtone”, or “on this show you can upload a picture”, etc.<\/p>\n

Gunnar, thank you very much, we look forward to checking back with you as you publish more results from your trials.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can download Gunnar’s full MIPTV presentation by clicking on the button below. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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Note: if you don’t see a Download button, then copy the following URL into your browser and the file will be downloaded: http:\/\/www.momad.tv\/adserver\/adclick.php?n=a746319b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview with Gunnar Garfors, Director of Development, NRK. Last week NRK (the Norwegian public broadcaster) announced the results of a major mobile advertising trial they have been running for the past 5 months in partnership with Ericsson Mobility World. The trial showed very positive response to adding advertising to live mobile video channels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}