Looking back over 2007, Bango reports strong commercial gains for UK operators that moved to open up the mobile web, with Vodafone UK rising to first place in the value of off-portal content sales. Measured across its total base of content providers, Bango saw traffic grow fastest on networks where steps were taken to encourage more browsing off-portal and payout rates increased to content providers.

Key drivers in opening up the mobile web include putting a search box onto the operator portal for off-portal content searching; introducing flat rate data charges to encourage more mobile web browsing; and providing higher price points and high payout rates which encourage content providers to run promotions on these networks as they receive a better return on their marketing investment.

Vodafone has benefitted from being among the first to offer a clean, consumer friendly WAP billing interface. It also supports the move from a portal model to a more open search based model by placing a search box prominently on the Vodafone live! home page. The payout rates are among the highest of all the UK operators.

“2007 was a good year for all UK networks but by moving decisively to support off-portal content sales, Vodafone leapt to the top of the league in value of transactions. We foresee the UK operators battling to offer even better payout rates, approaching that of credit cards.”
- Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango

Compared to Premium SMS where content providers market through the web or in print, today’s content providers are choosing to market more efficiently to users who are already actively browsing the mobile web. Using mobile advertising and search marketing, content providers buy traffic on specific networks and can choose users with certain handsets.

The mobile web gives content providers other important benefits. For example, offers can be targeted to users with Bango identifying between new or repeat customers; marketing campaigns can be tracked to calculate the return on investment and there’s more repeat business within the browse and buy WAP flow.

“More businesses are now launching a mobile web presence so they can engage directly with their consumers anytime and from anywhere. Through a common integration point, Bango makes it easy for them to drive traffic to a mobile website, understand who the visitors are, track marketing campaigns and collect payment for digital content world-wide.”
- Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango

Bango today reports positive key performance indicators, based on an analysis of the first million transactions the company has processed since the launch of Payforit in the UK mobile market earlier this year. 92% of transactions were completed successfully with an error rate of less than 1%. And with refund levels at below 0.01%, there was a significant reduction in the need for expensive customer care.

Bango’s analysis demonstrates that:

• 92% of transactions were successfully completed through the company’s Payforit flow, and at levels exceeding previous types of transactions.
• 1% error rate – incomplete transactions resulting from a payment processing failure, often leading to a retry.
• 7% of transactions failed because users had insufficient funds to complete their purchase.

The UK market has a comparatively high pre-paid user base, accounting for over 60% of all subscribers. The occurrence of insufficient subscriber funds is more noticeable where a high pre-paid base exists and consumers are unaware of the money they have remaining on their phones before making a purchase.

“It is great to see such clear evidence that Payforit is performing so well, Bango’s numbers show that the scheme is delivering a happy end user experience and a successful payment scheme for content providers.”
- Steve Ricketts, Head of Third Party Services at Orange UK

“It is impressive to see the Payforit scheme performing so well for content providers and retailers, while delivering a consistent and trustworthy consumer experience.”
- Gavin Dent, Head of 3rd party services, T-Mobile UK

“This shows great progress for the industry and for our customers who have growing confidence in purchasing a wider choice of mobile web based content. Payforit grew out of a need for consistent operational standards, light touch regulation and interoperability across all networks. As Bango`s results show, this is a very good start.”
- Mike Short, Chairman Mobile Data Association

“We use Bango over a number of our sites and they have made the transition to Payforit incredibly simple. We were already benefiting from Bango’s global WAP billing flow, and we had no technical work to do at all to become Payforit compliant for the UK market – Bango just switched us on.”
- Oli Roxburgh, Commercial Director, Blue Star Mobile

The benefits of the Payforit scheme go beyond maximizing content provider revenue to include widening the content choice available through easy payment and, through web services, offer a significant reduction in the need for expensive customer care. The research shows that the biggest improvement is in very low refund levels being requested, and fewer than one in ten thousand customer refund payments in the UK compared to higher levels approaching 10% with Premium SMS.

As part of its research, Bango also calculated the average transaction speed, a key metric for improved customer experience. This is worked out as the time elapsed between the user clicking the “Buy” link and seeing the confirmation web page. Across all five networks the average is five seconds and in the best cases an average of two seconds is achieved.

In addition to improving the payment flow, the Payforit scheme enables content providers to legitimately and safely market to their consumers by allowing them to “opt in” to marketing campaigns. Bango gives content providers full control over the capture and management of customer marketing within the Payforit rules. By providing content providers with a real-time, updated list of opted in users, they are safe in the knowledge that all marketing activity adheres to the guidelines at all times. Typically, the opt-in page is presented when content is being purchased. With Bango content providers can offer this opt-in page at any point during the browsing process which means those who do not charge for content can still opt consumers in to their marketing messages.

“Bango is delivering the benefits of the Payforit-style WAP model across the world’s leading mobile content markets,In the US this approach to off-portal content is increasingly supported by operators, content providers and though the work of the MMA, to the benefit of consumers and content providers alike.”
- Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing at Bango and chair of the MMA mobile web committee

“Our inclusion on this prestigious list is a testament to our status as a key player in the digital content market, and to our commitment to making the mobile web simple for everyone,”- Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango

The “Get On My Mobile” button from Bango is the latest innovation to supports this. By bridging the gap between the PC and mobile worlds, the Bango Button opens up the world of content to mobile users using the simplicity of the internet and its unique WAP.com technology.

Bango has made it easy to push content, such as photos and music files, from a PC web page to a user’s mobile phone – no special mobile expertise is required. A Bango Button can link directly to photos stored on a PC website, automatically resizing them for different mobile phones and presenting the download page. This removes the need to make them mobile ready or have them located on a mobile website.

The Econtent 100 listing is Bango’s latest accolade in recent months. Bango also was named “Best Billing Provider” at the Mobile Entertainment Awards in September 2007.

Econtent, a leading publication for the digital content industry, put together a judging panel of editorial staff and industry experts to create this year’s list. The panel used a Social text wiki to manage the selection process. Read more about the Econtent 100

Bango today launched the “Get On My Mobile” Bango Button so that anyone using a social website, media sharing site, forum or blog can make their content available to mobile phone users world-wide at the push of a button.

The Bango Button bridges the gap between the PC and mobile worlds by using the simplicity of the internet, opening up the world of content to mobile users. Bango Buttons are perfect for popular sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn, Blogger, Orkut and WordPress.

Bango has made it easy to push content, such as photos and music files, from a PC web page to a user’s mobile phone – no special mobile expertise is required. A Bango Button can link directly to photos stored on a PC website, automatically resizing them for different mobile phones and presenting the download page. This removes the need to make them mobile ready or have them located on a mobile website.

“Like most bands, we have a MySpace site where people can listen to our music and see when we have gigs coming up. Bango Buttons on our site at www.myspace.com/moonlife make it easy for our fans to get wallpapers and ringtones onto their mobile. They’ll even be able to get a map of where we’ll be playing, making it easy to find the venue.”- Claudio Tinnirello of the Californian electro-pop band, Moonlife

According to research firm Yankee Group, 33% of all internet users regularly access social network web sites. “An increasing number of consumers want anytime, anywhere access to their online communities and the content that lives there,” said Jill Aldort, Yankee Group senior analyst. “Unfortunately, sharing that content across platforms is far from seamless. The recent buzz around open platforms is just that – still buzz for now.”

By overcoming the technical challenge of getting digital content into the hands of mobile phone users, Bango enables many more people to publish content to mobiles. After a successful beta program involving thousands of users, the wider PC community now has a chance to test drive the Bango Button.

Anyone can create their own “Get On My Mobile” Bango Button. To do it, visit www.bango.com/button, and insert the generated code into your site, next to a piece of content you want to share. When users click on your button, they get a unique short URL which they can enter into their phone browser to get the content on their mobile. Optionally, a charge can be assigned to a piece of content to create a revenue stream for the content creator.

“I can link a Bango Button to a party photo on my Facebook site and let my friends easily get it on their mobile. It’s difficult for them to find the same photo on the Facebook mobile site because they have to go to the home page of the Facebook mobile site and navigate around to find the photo they want.”- Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango

A Bango Button can also link directly to a mobile website or to mobile versions of popular PC sites such as YouTube or Flickr. They can also be embedded in emails and easily sent to friends.

To highlight the value and enjoyment of easy access to the internet from a mobile phone, Bango today launched the “ilovemobileweb” campaign to increase awareness of the mobile web with consumers around the world. The campaign is additionally a “call to action” for those companies who are destined to play a key role in making the mobile web easy to use through their products and services. dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi domain for mobile phones, is the first organization to announce support for the campaign.

“We are starting a parade.” “We want more people to love the mobile web because it’s fun, it’s sociable and it provides the ultimate in convenience and choice for consumers world-wide.”- Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango

The campaign, which will be launched at the CTIA WIRELESS IT & Entertainment 2007 show in San Francisco, October 23-25, urges companies to actively promote the mobile web to their consumers. The campaign’s charter supports the goals of providing:

• Open access to the mobile web for every phone user
• Choice of content and services for consumers
• Easy pathways for fixed internet content to become mobilized
• Greater standardization of phones and mobile developer platforms

“dotMobi is proud to be a charter member of the ‘ilovemobileweb’ campaign,” said David Ryder, VP of Sales and Marketing of dotMobi. “dotMobi’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of the mobile web, and this campaign is a strong way to make the on-the-go public aware of the benefits of the mobile web.”

“If you have grown-up with the PC web, phones are starting to look and work like a mobile version of what you’re already used to,” Anderson said. “A whole new generation is growing up today expecting easy access to the internet from a mobile phone.”

To join the parade, companies can go to the www.ilovemobileweb.com website to read the charter and sign up. The company may add a logo to the site and link to its own web pages that show how the company supports the mobile web. The company also is asked to publicize “ilovemobileweb” at tradeshows. T-shirts and mugs are available for purchase.