Wednesday 17 July 2013

Analysis: Yahoo's Q2 Results and Mayer's First Year as CEO

Yahoo’s Q2 earnings call is something of a judgement on Marissa Mayer’s first 12 months in the job - as she took over as CEO almost exactly a year ago – but the mixed picture shows that much of the hard work is still to be done. 

GAAP revenue stood at $1.14bn (£750m), a seven per cent decrease on a year ago, but on a brighter note, profits increased by 46 per cent to $331m, largely as a result of Yahoo's investment in Chinese eCommerce site, Alibaba. If you take revenues minus traffic acquisition costs (the money internet companies pay out to affiliates and other third parties who drive traffic to their sites), revenues are down just 1 per cent from $1.08bn to $1.07bn, and remain flat from the previous quarter. Yahoo's display revenue was $472m, a 12 per cent decrease compared to a year ago, and search was down nine per cent to $418m. 


Reacting to the results, Karsten Weide, IDC's program VP of digital media and entertainment, told Mobile Marketing: "Yahoo's stock price has gone up by 70 per cent since Marissa Mayer took over, and that has made a lot of people happy. However, most of that growth was due the perceived value of Yahoo's stake in Alibaba. Alibaba will soon go public, and people think it is going to send a lot of money Yahoo's way, and theirs. 


“In terms of Yahoo's core business, not much has happened that would justify this increase in stock price. Display advertising has been weak lately. For one, that's because a lot of display advertising now goes mobile, and Yahoo is weak on the mobile platform. For another, a lot of advertising agencies now want to buy advertising automatically and in this new, so-called 'programmatic trading' segment, Yahoo is weak, while Google and Facebook are strong.” 


Acquisitions 


Yahoo spent a net $1bn in cash for acquisitions during the period, $970m of this on Tumblr. Mayer counts eight buyouts, including Astrid, GoPollGo, MileWise, Loki Studios, Tumblr, Playerscale, Ghostbird and Rondee, plus Summly, although this closed late in Q1 and was announced in the previous earnings call. Eight of these had some mobile element to them, everything from the Summly news aggregator to Astrid’s popular productivity apps and location-aware gaming from Loki Studios. 


“Generally, companies of their size are buying mobile start-ups - they need the talent, especially user interface and user experience, along with audience and ideas,” said Julie Ask, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. “Consumers' time is increasingly spent on mobile devices - whether a phone or a tablet or other. Yahoo and others who depend on ad revenue need large, engaged audiences there - not only for growth, but also to maintain a revenue base.”  


While six of these 'acqui-hire' companies have closed and been rolled into Yahoo’s mobile teams out of NYC and California, including putting Summly centre stage in the new Yahoo app, Tumblr and cross-platform back-end gaming service Playerscale have remained intact, with Astrid, which had 4m users in September last year, to remain in operation for 90 days from 1 May. 


Yahoo believes that the combination of Tumblr and Yahoo will grow its audience to more than 1bn monthly visitors from 300m in Q1.  Although a great deal has been made of Yahoo’s aggressive acquisition strategy, totalling 12 for the first half of this year, Google has actually made almost 150 acquisitions in its 12-year history, compared to Yahoo’s 83 in 16 years. 


Marcos Sanchez, VP Global Corporate Communications at App Annie, is positive about the work being done to change Yahoo's fortunes. “From all accounts, Mayer has been doing a great job of breathing life back in to Yahoo, from re-focusing, to improving company morale to revamping products with a definite mobile bent," he said. 


“The mobile products have been streamlined and she's put a focus on usability, which is likely to be a contributing factor to the apps at least not losing ground. From an acquisition standpoint, don't forget, there are many reasons for an acquisition, and not just for a technology. Mayer has proven savvy even here, shuttering some, keeping a few alive, but maintaining teams that are focused on bringing yahoo back to its' glory days.”


Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/analysis-yahoos-q2-earnings-and-meyers-first-year-ceo#pGVPFJh7WI2b55Gf.99

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Q&A with novelist Polly Courtney for Let's Be Brief

With her first novel, Golden Handcuffs, Polly Courtney turned her back on a “so-called” high-flying career in the City to expose the toxic culture of the industry she worked in.
After this early self-publishing success she won what looked like her dream contract with HarperCollins but quickly found herself part of another corporate machine. Polly very publicly walked out on the deal and has just self-published her latest book, a fictional look at the UK riots in the summer of 2011. And there’s even a movie on the cards.
Q) When did you start writing and why?
It happened by accident. I was working as an investment banker in the city, becoming more and more miserable by the day. I was so disillusioned with my so-called ‘high flying’ career that I felt compelled to write about it so that the world could see the futile work, the hierarchy, the sexism, the greed, narcissism and toxic culture. (This was back in the early 2000s and at that time there was still a perception that banking was an industry that young people should aspire to work in.) Publishers weren’t convinced that readers would want to know about this dark, dirty side, so they suggested I ‘glam it up a bit’. This was the opposite of my goal, so I decided to publish the novel myself. It went on to become one of my best-selling novels, Golden Handcuffs.
Q) Your books are on quite controversial topics – can you tell us a bit about them? And what’s the deal with your (ex) publisher? 
I love to expose some kind of injustice in society. My latest novel is written from the perspective of a disenfranchised 15-year-old and set in the build-up to the August riots, covering the various frustrations that led to so many young people taking to the streets in 2011. Poles Apart is about a Polish migrant and the unspoken prejudice she faces in everyday life. Having successfully self-published Golden Handcuffs and Poles Apart, I was thrilled to get a publishing contract with an imprint of HarperCollins. I didn’t realise at the time, but in signing this deal, I was effectively pushing my writing career in a new direction – and not a direction I wanted to go in.
Q) So what changed?
It felt as though the very thing that made my books different (their ‘social conscience’) was being swept aside as book after book came out like mass market fiction with a ‘chick lit’ title and cover. The final straw was when my fifth novel, a story of a young woman grappling with sexism and ‘lad mag culture’, was given the title It’s a Man’s World and adorned with a trashy cover featuring mainly legs that was cloned from a movie poster. I decided to publicly walk out on my publisher at the book launch and announce my return to self-publishing. When I did, lots of authors got in touch to say ‘me too’!
Q) What project have you done that you are most proud of and why?
Feral Youth, my latest book – partly because it was such a collaborative effort between me and everyone involved, but mainly because of the subject matter. It was a big step for me, writing from the perspective of an angry teenage girl from South London. I was advised against it; people told me I could never make it authentic – but I was determined to try. I think Alesha’s story is an important one that needs to be told.
Q) How important is independent thinking and doing and where do you get it from?
The idea of doing something ‘because that’s what everyone does’ makes no sense to me. Everyone wants to earn lots of money. I don’t. Everyone wants a publishing deal. I don’t. Everyone likes to read books that are just like all the other books out there. Really? Well, I don’t.
My dad had his own business, which evolved as I was growing up, so perhaps I got my aptitude for taking calculated risks from him. My parents have always instilled in me that the most important thing in life is to be happy and frankly, I’m not happy when I’m just following the herd.
Q) What is the key issue for you right now?
It’s the message I’m trying to put out with Feral Youth: that we need to think harder about young people and the stereotypes we’re shown in the press. They’re not ‘mindless criminals’ and they’re not ‘feral’. They’re people and they’re a product of their experiences – so why don’t we focus on making those experiences good?
Q) What’s next?
Feral Youth the movie. Seriously!
::
Polly Courtney’s Q&A is part of the State of Independence series
State of Independence Pop-up Island | 22-28th July 2013
Unit 17 | Boxpark Shoreditch | 2-4 Bethnal Green Rd | London | E1 6GY

Friday 12 July 2013

Half of MailOnline's UK Readers are Mobile

The Daily Mail has revealed that 19.9m people in the UK visit the MailOnline site from their mobile device every month, 46 per cent of its monthly web audience here. 

According to figures shared exclusively with Mobile Marketing, 12.1m of those use the mobile web on their smartphone, with a further 6.1m using a tablet. The MailOnline for iPhone is its most popular app, the company said, with 2.9m downloads to date, of which there are 641,000 monthly active users and 310,103 daily visitors. On average, 40 visits are made to the app, with sessions lasting 12 minutes and 50 pages viewed.


The Android app has seen 1.1m downloads, with 460,000 monthly users and 147,024 coming back daily. The iPad app has been downloaded 1.4m times. It has 174,000 montlhy users and 42,593 daily users. 


The Daily Mail Group has announced a new Sunday edition of its iPad app, called the Mail on Sunday Plus, which will form part of a weekly subscription package or be offered as a one-off purchase. It features re-formatted Sunday magazines You and Event plus more sport, interactive TV listings and 30 puzzles. A seven-day Mail Plus subscription will start at £9.99 per month. Google Play and Kindle users will also see their subscription costs brought in line with iOS users.


Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/half-mailonline-uk-readers-are-mobile#loSytwzWJthm7g6w.99

Thursday 11 July 2013

Q&A with Jenny Theolin curator of the first Lolcat exhibition

Jenny Theolin is the director of collaborative agency Soapbox & Sons. In January she curated the world’s first lolcat exhibition and art sale, in aid of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. What started with a challenge to a friend turned into an online lolcatalogue, which the Swedish creative brought to the real world with her LOLCAT – Teh Exhibishun. 4m people shared the story on Twitter and the BBC came down with a film crew. Her community even turned Grumpy Cat on The Independent’s Tom Peck after an unfavourable review.
Q) What is Soapbox & Sons and why did you found it?
Soapbox & Sons is a very different entity.
It’s essentially a creative, collaborative network founded, organised and managed by me, Jenny Theolin.
I believe that to deliver the best work, you work with the best people. So, over the past decade, I’ve gathered together a pool of talent made up of dozens of brilliant individuals. Their skills span disciplines from design and copywriting to illustration, fine art, film-making, event management, PR and more.
Like any creative agency, Soapbox & Sons has a range of services it offers.
Some of these, such as events, PR, advertising, marketing and digital mirror those offered by traditional marketing agencies. Yet Soapbox & Sons is also happy to take a leap into the unknown. Sometimes I’ve taken on projects to earn a living. Other times, I’ve done them just for the hell of challenging convention.
And underneath these projects I’ve held a very successful career as an award-winning art director in advertising and marketing agencies.
Soapbox & Sons is designed to be portable. Literally, an agency in a box (well, suitcase).
I can run and organize projects from almost anywhere. So if you need someone on site, or working alongside you in your office, I can be there.
Modern communications, from video conferencing, mobile technology, collaborative working practices and file transfer sites enable me to manage the team picked for you with ease, from anywhere.
Which also brings to life my vision of doing interesting things, in interesting places, with interesting people.
Q) What project have you done that you are most proud of?
I think ‘LOLCAT – Teh Exhibishun’ was one of my biggest successes. This exhibition was a 4-week long group art show exploring the weird and wonderful world of this popular internet meme.
Q) Are you fur real?
Yes. I brought together an array of cool cats and witty kitties – including graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, animators, and writers. Ignoring the crudely makeshift LOLCAT aesthetic, each of these artists came up with their unique take on the theme to create a piece of beautiful, amusing and exquisitely crafted LOLCAT art. The exhibition took place at The Framers Gallery and was held in aid of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.
I am particularly proud of the results, the exhibition links were shared with over 4m Twitter users, BBC came with their film crew to cover it, and we ended up on the BBC Homepage. Plus we had amazing coverage, both national and international!
Q) How important is independent thinking and doing and where do you get it from?
Independent thinking is just important as collaborative thinking. If you manage to find like-minded individuals/businesses to partner up with; Bob’s your uncle!
My work is quite risky since one of my aims is to keep doing things I have never done before. So, my independent thinking combined with collaborator and client trust is essential.
I have a never-ending resource of enthusiasm for everything I do, it comes natural. And I definitely feed on my collaborators passion and expertise. That definitely propels me forward.
Q) What is the key issue for you right now?
My business has only been a limited company for a couple of months, so my biggest hurdles are learning all the business side of things as well as finding new clients.
Most of them come through personal recommendations from the network I have managed to build over the last decade, but because I am independent, brand new business is definitely competitive. Fortunately, my work is built on collaboration, so clients I find I share, and vice versa.
Q) What’s next? 
I have a few big projects in the pipeline; an experiential food/music event, branding and launching a couple new businesses – and am working very hard on the Soapbox & Sons launch event, ‘Beatbox & Sun’, this summer. Keep an eye on Twitter to find out more!
::
Jenny Theolin’s Q&A is part of the State of Independence series
State of Independence Pop-up Island | 22-28th July 2013
Unit 17 | Boxpark Shoreditch | 2-4 Bethnal Green Rd | London | E1 6GY

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Facebook – The Daily Telegraph of the Digital Age?

Born in 1988, I’m slap bang in the middle of Generation Y, or the Millennials. Or even Gen C. Which isn’t actually a generation, but more of a state of mind, according to Google. This 20 year period covers people born between 1977 to 1996, or alternatively 1982 to 2001, depending on who you ask. Simple. 

But the rate of technological change over the last 10 years has seen Myspace giving way to Facebook and then Twitter then Pinterest then - you get the picture.  I’m part of the begrudging, but enslaved Facebook faithful. I text and use Whatsapp. Email and Twitter are both indispensable. 


So can you really say that someone born in 1998 uses technology in the same way as me?  We decided to find out, so we interviewed two 14-year-olds, a boy and girl, to see how they are using the devices they own and share. Surely those with digital in their DNA will run rings around me, a mere digital native? 


Surprisingly, or not for a couple of teenagers, they were as excited about tech as they are about everything, which is rather little, but they clearly can’t live without it. 


Five messaging apps in one day 


Freya, disgruntled owner of a failing BlackBerry, as well as an iPod, hops between the two devices depending on the task at hand. That means BBMing and chatting with her friends and following funny accounts on Twitter when her main handset allows. She switches when she wants to use Instagram and Snapchat – for chatting to people without BBM, and the “funny pictures” that make it better than Whatsapp. All on a daily basis. Add to that Skype, Facetime and ooVoo – for those urgent group video chats – and you’d think they’d have run out of things to say.  


She uses a computer “if I have to”. And Facebook? “I deactivated my account. It’s boring.” I feel a twinge of sadness for my twisted old friend. So what would Ben have to say about a platform that has changed my ability to communicate as much as it has my concept of privacy? “I just left my profile. It’s boring,” he confirmed. Ouch. 


No TV, no computer, iPad gathers dust 


Ben’s a lucky iPhone 5 user, and also shares an iPad 2 with his brother, but he doesn’t use it. “I don’t watch TV. I don’t use a computer except at school for course work. Nah, I don't have email. I tend to just use my phone. And that’s really just for apps.” Like Freya, he uses a combination of messaging services, iMessage, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter every day. When people don’t have iMessage, he texts people.  


Uninterested in the latest games consoles, he plays Clash of the Clans four times a week, where he sees ads for games in-app, but just ignores them. Freya identifies 4Pics1Word as a game that’s been doing the rounds at school, in the past she would have clicked on the “silly pop-up banners”, but not anymore, she says. Apart from that, neither consumes a great deal of content other than funny things their friends allegedly spew out all day long. Even wearable tech doesn't really strike a chord with our teens. 


Battery life an inter-generation concern 


So what’s the best thing about their phone? “Being in touch with everybody, otherwise you’d just bored out of your head and have nothing to do,” Ben said. “And music I guess. When you’re travelling a long way.” He admits Maps is useful “but I don’t really use it,” he says. “I can talk to friends I don't see often and it entertains me,” Freya adds. Both identify battery life as the killer of their mass communication lifestyle. 


Ben also says load times between apps are annoying, as well as the sign-up process when connecting to wi-fi. He suggests making it automatic. Freya, a lone Spotify Premium owner at school, thinks it would be good if more than one person could listen to the music service. But she complains it takes too long to get new music. 


Tech jobs?? 


And despite this heavy usage, both have little knowledge of the fact that they could make a career out of all this. Phones are banned in school, and will be confiscated, they say. When they do IT, Freya admits she “doesn’t really get it,” while Ben says “they don’t really talk about technology jobs at school.” So. Facebook is about to become an antique, at least in developed markets, facing similar problems in the future as the printed press does today. Email's days could be numbered, and while there is no dominant messaging platform for this Chat Generation, the medium is certainly smartphones for the forseeable. 


Let’s hope it’s not too late to funnel this constant connectivity and conversation into something useful. Lol?


Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here:  http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/facebook-%E2%80%93-daily-telegraph-digital-age#MmHiAA4isLQZlmjD.99

Tuesday 9 July 2013

Q&A with comedian Chris Coltrane for Let's Be Brief

Chris Coltrane is a stand-up comedian by night, a writer by day and “a thorn in politician’s arses whenever the opportunity arises”. He recently appeared in No More Page 3 and Everyday Sexism’s Stand Up to Sexism, and yes it was funny, as well as at the People’s Assembly where he talked about his activism with UK Uncut. This included setting up a library in an unscrupulous bank with a load of school children, with of course, comical results. He also runs Lolitics – a comedy night in north London.
Q) Why and how did you get involved with political activism?
I used to watch a lot of activism on TV when I was younger. You had shows like Monty Python’s Flying Neoliberalism, or Jasper Carrott’s Capitalism Smackdown, and I used to watch them on repeat, memorising all the chants. Then as I got older and moved to London, I heard about all these open-mic activist nights around town, where anyone could get on stage and protest for 5 minutes. So I made a few calls and booked some in, and of course you’d get ever so nervous before the gig, but as I did more my five minutes moved to 10, and before long I was taking an entire occupation up to the Edinburgh festival. I took over a branch of Gregg’s in the town, which Chortle gave a lovely 4-star review to. I’ve never looked back, really.
Q) Is it easy to do comedy about such serious topics?
Yeah, it is for me, because I come from a long line of satirists. My great great grandfather, Dicky “The Dick” Coltrane, was one of the old music-hall satirists in the East End. One of his sketches about Archduke Ferdinand was so powerful that he ended up stalling World War I by an entire month. Sobering to think how many lives were saved, thanks to one simple sketch about a world leader, a bag of feathers, and a giant magnet…
Q) What project have you done that you are most proud of and why?
Probably the time I temporarily changed my name to Edward Snowden, had massive facial re-constructive surgery, leaked the biggest intelligence story in history, and then had all the surgery reversed to escape detection. At the time of writing they think I’m on a plane to Bolivia. Ha! Idiots.
Q) Are there any drawbacks with being politically active?
Not really. I mean, there is the fact that the police are more likely to beat you up, or that the police are more likely to knock on your door to suggest you don’t go to a certain protest, or that the police are more likely to monitor your phone calls, or that the police are more likely to lie to try to get you in trouble. But other than that, it’s a pretty sweet life.
Q) How important is independent thinking and doing and where do you get it from?
Independent thinking is important, but sometimes I think it’s gone too far the other way. For example, did you know that there are men called Keith who are allowed to vote? I’m not sure what I think about that. Can you think of a single trustworthy Keith? Keith Chegwin, Keith Sweat, Keith Floyd… no no, it simply won’t do.
Q) What is the key issue for you right now?
A lot of my friends are very passionate about a woman’s right to chews. Can you believe that in the 21st century women aren’t even allowed to buy sweets? It’s stupid. I can see why my friends campaign so hard to fight it. As far as I’m concerned, women should be allowed whatever confectionery they want – Chewits, pancakes, even popping candy (I’m a member of the radical-left, and I make no apologies for it.)
Q) What’s next?
Bargain Hunt is coming up on BBC1, and BBC2 has Wimbledon coverage… but I expect that’ll probably be out of date by the time this goes to print, so I can’t help you with that one. Sorry.
::
Chris Coltrane’s Q&A is part of the State of Independence series
State of Independence Pop-up Island | 22-28th July 2013
Unit 17 | Boxpark Shoreditch | 2-4 Bethnal Green Rd | London | E1 6GY

“Banks are terrified that Amazon will be a formal bank”

“Banks are terrified that Amazon will be a formal bank,” Deborah Perry Piscione - Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of Silicon Valley Whispers - told her audience at an event at the London School of Economics. “Amazon knows how its sellers are doing at any given moment at any given day.” She said that applying for a loan with them, therefore, could happen in just six questions. 

Piscione spent the early years of her career working in national politics and the media in the US, reaching both Capitol Hill and the Whitehouse. On moving to Silicon Valley, at a time when Google was just starting to take shape and Zuckerberg was merely a topic of conversation, she found a culture quite different to the corporate world she was used to. “In Washington, we were indoctrinated into this cult that you withhold information and don’t share it,” she told an audience of students and entrepreneurs at LSE. 


“Silicon Valley was a land completely of the unknown. It took me a long time to realise what made this place so unbelievably unique. It is incredibly open and you have to get used to information sharing - often sharing with direct competitors because they can help validate your platform or product.” 


In her book, Piscione discusses what makes the culture of Silicon Valley so different. She said it’s the kind of place that can take a 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg seriously because, unlike the hierarchies of Washington or London, people there don’t care about your age, gender or the colour of your skin. “The perception is that you’re smart and what you’re building is growing really quickly.” 


Unlimited vacation and intropreneurialsm 


She highlighted Google’s Campus, where you can get a haircut, see a doctor and even get your car’s oil changed, as an example to other businesses around the world. “So you’re not thinking about all those other tasks that bog you down on a daily basis. Netflix gives its employees unlimited vacation time. How do you motivate people based on valuing them?” 


There is also a culture of intropreneurialism, exemplified with the story of Youtube, where its founders were working at PayPal during the day and then on the platform, which started out life as a dating site, at night. And, unlike in Europe, people are allowed to fail. In fact, it might mean they are taken more seriously. She added that there is nothing more important than what is going on in HR. Focusing on people makes a “greater difference between success and failure overall.” 


Comparing Silicon Valley to London, and not without highlighting the better weather and outdoors lifestyle, she said: “Traffic in London has just gotten worse and worse.” She suggests scattering work hours around rush hour to ensure staff are less stressed and so more creative. 


The Valley’s close links with Stanford, which was founded in the 19th century with a commitment to ensure that students, faculty and professors had a connection with the local community, as well the university’s great support for the next generation, have set it apart. The heritage of VCs, the opportunity to build relationship and the supporting infrastructure, likewise. “VCs do everything possible to make that entrepreneur a success.” But its bubble-based economy, Piscione said, tends towards get rich quick rather than value creation which means: “VCs have huge pressure on them to get a quick ROI.” She said she believes platforms like Kickstarter are changing the funding game but highlighted that Silicon Valley has the support system, the networks and the people to make it more likely that a business can succeed. 


Failing national education 


But, while the Ivy League prospers, she said that primary and secondary education, as in the UK, is not doing a great job of preparing its young people for the jobs of the 21st century. California is 48th out of 50 states in terms of spending per pupil. “I’m not sure Silicon Valley has the answer on that front.” 


An audience member highlighted the latest draft of the national curriculum, which will now prioritise advanced IT from an early age. “Computing is not even the future, it’s the here and now. There has been a massive shift in the economy but the education is not giving kids, particularly girls, exposure to STEM subjects. It takes effort and really thinking outside of the box in not continuing to do things you’ve done over the last 50 years, but asking what are you going to do over the next 50 years.” 


She highlighted that PayPal founder Peter Thiel has now started his own fellowship programme, which encourages young people to opt-out of college. On the issue of working visas, she added:  “We certainly have to stop educating people at MIT, Harvard and Stanford and then sending them back home.” 


IP issues 


Asked about growing concerns around intellectual property, Piscione highlighted that Cisco spent $59m (£39.7m) last year defending their patents from “patent trolls” and suggested the need for a new international governing body on this. While many complain that the stealing only goes one way, she also pointed out that eBay “kind of copied a company out of China. Who takes it on, I don’t know – that’s got to be the conversation and the dialogue.” 


Will Apple really have the next new new thing? 


Asked about the future of some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies, she said: “There’s lots of conversation in Silicon Valley around will Apple have that next generation – what that new new thing is?” On the current ubiquity of services like Facebook and Google, she said: “You can’t imagine it being in your life - I just got a smartphone not long ago - you continue to resist and then can’t imagine life without it. But there will definitely be something else after Facebook and twitter – and soon.” 

Piscione questioned how much tech we really need, and whether younger generations will suffer from burnout, although she did highlight support from some in Silicon Valley towards biotech. She also warned against focusing on whether it’s web 2.0 or mobile: “because they’re all in there, we now need to look to continue to diversify our economy.”

Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here:
http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/%E2%80%9Cbanks-are-terrified-amazon-will-be-formal-bank%E2%80%9D#Q1zC3BL6d06YlRTA.99

Monday 1 July 2013

Goodbye Visa, Hello Fingerprint Payments?

Last week’s news that a host of high profile investors have contributed a record $25m (£16.4m) seed funding for mobile payments startup Clinkle has certainly caused a stir in the industry.  

While everyone from banks, operators, retailers, payment providers, OEMs, and of course consumers seek to benefit from the innovation going on, could mobile payments end up being something of a mythical El Dorado city of gold? 

Traditional players are joining forces in some areas and appear to be thinking creatively, but do they have the agility to succeed? And what chance do startups have in taking a share of an industry which is set to be worth $235.4bn (£153.8bn) by the end of 2013? 

I spoke to two mobile payments specialists, Michael Nuciforo, futurist and former head of mobile at RBS and Australian bank ANZ, and Roy Vella, ex-PayPal and Visa Europe exec, about the current state of the market. Both now work as consultants advising major players in the mobile payments space so we asked them who they think ultimately wins in a crowded market like this. Does the market own the customer, or will consumer choice prevail?  

Truth or crap? 

While a lot of noise is being made from vendors selling ‘the next big thing’, both men urge caution. “We need to distinguish between the truth and the crap,” says Nuciforo. “When we look at what’s happening in the market, the first thing you have to understand is that a lot of the announcements that you see are purely that, they’re not necessarily fully functioning services.”  

Although consolidation may help, Vella doesn’t see this happening any time soon: “I think money’s going to get more fragmented not less. The idea that there’s a winner in mobile money is just PR.” And as operators, banks and payment providers continue to carve up their customers, Vella adds: “This ‘we’re going to own the customer and that’s going to be forever’ is ridiculous. That’s never going to happen again. It’s now as easy to move as a touch of the finger.”  

Initiatives from the biggest names in the payments industry have been slow to start or are yet to take hold but Nuciforo is betting on the banks, at least in developed markets: “Joint ventures like Weve really have to rely on coming together and trying to attack the market as a group because if they were to do that on their own, they would have no chance. But success really depends on regions and market sophistication. "In Europe, the UK, the US and parts of Australasia, I think the banks stand the strongest chance from the perspective that they have the opportunity to come together, which a lot of them still haven’t yet,” says Nuciforo. “Most importantly, payments are driven by the fact that your salary is paid into a bank account." 

Vella takes a more critical view of these traditional players. “The banks and the operators are both trending towards commodity utilities. They’re just a central clearing house for data. The one who’s going to win is the one who provides the most convenience for the customer at that time for that particular transaction. "But it could be any brand. It could be Tesco. It could be Virgin. It could be Apple. People have brand affiliations that they like and if that brand offers them service and convenience and value, that’s what they’re going to use.” 

Middlemen will lose out 

He sees the traditional customer-merchant relationship coming back to the fore. “I think merchants and consumers are going to connect directly in as many cases as possible,” Vella says. “The losers are going to be the intermediaries like Visa and Mastercard who are trying to connect the dots between two individuals. That clearing system in the middle is not required anymore. If they’re not worrying, they ought to be." 

In the US, the likes of Walmart, Target and Gap have come together as the Merchant Exchange to seize on the energy of mobile payments. Vella points to the potential of closed-loop merchant systems: “The most successful mobile money implementation in the developed world today is run by a coffee shop. Starbucks is holding $1.5bn in balance. Coffee that’s been purchased but not even drunk yet.  “What we all forget because we weren’t born then is that payments used to be run by the merchant. In the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, they outsourced payments to Visa and Mastercard and now they’re going to insource them back.” 

He sees this as a key time for shoppers to reassert themselves. “Consumers are definitely flexing their power in terms of transparency and understanding the market. They are going into retail stores now and bringing their phone with them and they know exactly the price of the item in front of them, globally, in every currency and they know how well it performs. I know what I know, and what everyone else I know knows, and what everyone they know knows," he says. 

The future is Square

 So what of the weekly announcements from mobile money startups? Nuciforo is sceptical. “It is difficult to see a big player emerge though there is a lot of interesting tech coming out. Eventually I see a huge amalgamation of all these startups; some of them will die off, some of them will be bought.” Vella is more keen. “The future is Square [Wallet]. I don’t touch anything. I walk in and I walk out. I don’t want to touch my phone, I don’t want to touch my wallet. That’s the world we’re going to live in.” 

Both point to biometric as the next battleground. In Nuciforo’s native Australia, where the futurist usually looks for consumer trends yet to hit the UK, his former employer ANZ bank is already investing a huge amount in fingerprint cash machine. He says the next step for this would be fingerprint payments. 

NFC, a key element of the Weve Wallet to launch mid-2014 is a pet hate of Vella’s. “One, it’s not fast and two, nobody cares,” he said. “The difference between swiping, chipping and pinning and almost touching a reader – nobody cares. That’s not important. No value has been added. "Eventually maybe it’ll be biometric - the whole Minority Report thing - we are not far from that."

Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and first published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/goodbye-visa-hello-fingerprint-payments#GAyGfT9ZvJLsIImV.99