With excitement mounting at the Ladbrokes.com Professional World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace in London, darts fans can get all the latest news and enjoy the experience on their mobile phones wherever they are.

For example, fans can download an animation video of Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor who is the hot favourite to win and claim his fourteenth world title by visiting the Mobile section at www.planetdarts.tv.

Also on the site, fans can buy and download other official PDC (Professional Darts Corporation) animated videos or wallpapers of the other leading contenders as well as ringtones featuring popular darts anthems including the timeless: “one hundred and eighty”. AnimationFC, best know for providing animated mobile content to the UK’s top football clubs, has created the content and uses Bango’s billing network to charge for it. For example, an animation or ringtone costs just £3.

The PDC mobile site was developed by Perform Ltd who also built the PDC website. And while the UK has the largest darts following, fans anywhere around the world can access and pay for content on their phone bill thanks to Bango’s global payment system.

“The PDC has recognised the power of mobile to reach out to its huge growing international fan base with a mix of fun and entertaining content,” said Gavin Skelhorn, Director of AnimationFC. “The animations have already proved hugely popular for football clubs and darts enthusiasts, quick to join in and support their favourite players.”

“The mobile web presents an exciting opportunity to any type of sport to engage with a loyal international fan base,” says Sarah Keefe, VP Marketing at Bango. “And with our global billing solution available in any country and on any network, fans anywhere can enjoy the experience while providing a new revenue stream for the official organisers.”

The final for the 2009 Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship runs until the 4th of January 2009.

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1. Advertising via mobile looks a lot more appealing
Tightening marketing budgets demand more controlled spending and better value. Mobile starts to look a lot more appealing, offering attractive costs of acquisition and more precise targeting than offline or PC delivery. Brands will be able to measure mobile ROI with a very high degree of accuracy and use analytics to better deliver mobile campaigns and understand their consumers.

2. “Big Guns” in online retailing eye new opportunities in mobile
We believe that one major “e-commerce” retailer will acquire a D2C mobile content provider to expand its presence in digital content. The big guns in the online music, video and books markets will have identified mobile as an increasingly important media platform and will want to expand into this area. One implication is how such a move from a major player would threaten Apple’s position as a leading music retailer for mobile devices.

3. Music becomes DRM free
Online music retailers follow Amazon and Napster’s lead and meet consumer preference for DRM free music that can be transferred effortlessly between phone and PC. Mobile phones will become the dominant platform for listening to music, boosted by their portability, the high storage capability of the latest phones and the ability to play the ubiquitous MP3 format – DRM free of course!

4. Cash-strapped consumers snip broadband landlines, use mobile data plans to access internet
Over recent years people have started to cancel their landlines in favor of using mobiles for all voice calls. We predict users will start to cancel their fixed line broadband subscriptions and upgrade to smartphones and wireless “dongles” to get on the internet. This consolidation will happen first in the US where nearly 20% of mobile users have a smartphone.

5. Open access fever continues…..
Of the remaining proprietary players, US operator Verizon will finally open up its Brew platform in 2009, enabling it to further grow its data business with a fully realized, open internet offering.

However, the other closed mobile player, Apple, is likely to remain closed on the back of the momentum it has built around the iPhone and its App Store. As if replaying history from 20 years ago, the Apple solution will plateau as more mainstream, open and cost-effective content and application environments emerge.

Which will go on to become the Microsoft of the mobile world? While we predict plenty of activity in 2009, it will be too soon to declare a winner.

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A “quiet revolution” is taking place in the way that media companies and content providers engage with their consumers, says Bango. The opening-up of mobile traffic channels – paying for on-deck links to off-deck sites and mobile advertising through Yahoo! and Google – means that content providers are acquiring customers through the mobile internet rather than via PC web affiliate programs.

“WAP billing is now the preferred way to sell content to customers acquired through mobile marketing, said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango. “This ‘e-commerce for the mobile web’ will, we predict, dominate how subscriptions are marketed and sold in the US within the next 12 months.”

Subscriptions are the mainstay of the mobile content market in the US. Bango’s MMA compliant WAP-based mobile subscription service provides a seamless consumer journey and eliminates the need to send text messages to make a purchase. It offers a safe buying experience for consumers – the price, subscription time period and T&Cs are clearly displayed on-screen before consumers click to purchase.

A recent update to the Bango mobile subscription service provides an API so content providers can immediately see the status of all their subscriptions.

“Bango re-bills consumers on their behalf once the subscription period has finished, notifying the user by text,” continued Malhotra. “Using the Bango API, content providers get up-to-date information on the status of each subscription which is invaluable as they measure the conversion rates of their mobile marketing.”

“The WAP model capitalizes on this year’s surge in mobile web browsing and helps users find what they want and buy more sophisticated offers such as subscriptions with total confidence,” continued Malhotra. “We anticipate US mobile operators will support more flexibility around subscription pricing models next year with the introduction of weekly subs, at price points other than $9.99.”

For more information go to www.bango.com/subscriptions

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Bango and Adversitement have joined forces to give digital marketers the ground breaking ability to access rich PC and mobile web metrics through one console, by combining Omniture’s SiteCatalyst and Bango Analytics.

Adversitement, an e-marketing web analytics and customer intelligence specialist and Europe’s largest authorized service partner of Omniture, is integrating Bango’s mobile analytics service alongside Omniture’s SiteCatalyst to present a complete and complimentary view for their clients. The solution enables companies with a truly digital marketing approach to maximize their return from both the PC and mobile web.

Digital marketers currently face the problem of setting up and using separate solutions for measuring their PC and mobile web activity. This is time consuming and complex with the need for in-house expertise. By bringing the two together, Adversitement offers a turnkey solution enabling clients to immediately start measuring both channels and seeing an integrated view of all activities with an ability to easily compare data.

“Providing a combined solution is a real need for our clients. We’re excited to be able to meet this by providing Bango’s best of breed mobile analytics solution and the leading analytics platform from Omniture in an easily accessible tool,” said Matthijs Keij, Business Consultant at Adversitement.

Omniture’s SiteCatalyst presents detailed web metrics to help review campaigns and website effectiveness. More recently this has expanded to include some mobile metrics which are complimented and extended by Bango’s mobile analytics solution. Bango’s technology enables individual identification of mobile visitors to provide an accurate visitor count, which can also be used by digital marketers to personalize their offering. Details such as network, country and device type are recorded to build a real picture of visitors to a mobile website, with mobile campaign analysis and conversion rate data helping to build a detailed picture of website performance and mobile marketing ROI.

“We see many companies with PC websites who are embracing mobile as a key element of their marketing strategy. These metrics sit perfectly together to standardize the use of web analytics and the analysis of campaign performance across channels. This helps to monitor integrated campaigns and provide a direct comparison of ROI and conversion rates between PC and mobile web,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing & Alliances at Bango.

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When Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC websites* (according to Nielsen Online), they found that half of these sites did not work well on leading mobile phones – despite the fact that typically 5% of visitors to PC websites now come from mobile devices, up from 1% a year ago. The problem is that PC websites are not adapting fast enough to match mobile browsing trends and are failing to present mobile-friendly versions of their sites.

Many online businesses questioned by Bango admitted they do not know how much mobile-originated traffic is hitting their PC site. Bango’s research reveals that between 3-10% of on-line traffic to a PC website now comes from users entering web addresses on their mobile device.

Bango has responded to this significant trend by releasing a service called “Analytics for PCs”. This simple plug-in tool measures the actual number of mobile phone users hitting a PC website and provides detailed metrics of these mobile visitors including, the percentage of mobile traffic as a unique visitor count plus the country, network and device mobile users connect through. It provides the vital data needed by on-line brands to develop their mobile web strategy.

It’s not just iPhone users that are regularly accessing the internet from their phones. Researchers at IDC say that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by end of 2008, and the vast majority of these mobile browsers are using mass market phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

“Our figures indicate that up to 10 out of every 100 customers are now routinely entering web addresses from their phones and hitting a site designed only with PC users in mind, which results in a bad experience,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango. “Businesses should be asking now which handsets, countries and languages matter most to their business and developing a mobile strategy to match this.”

Some mobile network operators are routinely transcoding desktop websites to fit better on their subscriber’s phones. While this improves the formatting of PC web pages when viewed on a phone, it is no substitute for a properly designed mobile site, with thought given to relevant content, the right mobile feature set and easy mobile navigation. Made-for mobile websites generally have a simpler layout with content that’s relevant for a mobile user in the top slot on the home page.

Bango Analytics for PCs is available as part of an Early Access Program at www.bango.com/eap. The webmaster puts a line of code into the home page of the PC website and Bango starts measures unique visitors to the website from mobile devices with specific details on the users’ country, network and device. All the data is viewable from the Bango Management tools console in real-time.

* Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC websites as published by Nielsen Online, July 2008. Tests were carried out on the Motorola V3 Razr and Nokia 6300 on AT&T in the US and Vodafone in the UK. The full results are published at blog.bango.com.

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