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Congratulations! Can you give us a sense of how successfully you've been able to monetize all the users you've gained? What sort of challenges do you face on th

Congratulations! Can you give us a sense of how successfully you've been able to monetize all the users you've gained? What sort of challenges do you face on that front?

gustaf 18y ago
Happy to. We launched our virtual economy this summer and are just integrating premium (the ability to pay for virtual economy coins). We're live in 11 markets with premium and gradually adding more. People use their phone and something called WAP-billing to pay for the coins. $6.99 buys you 200,000 coins for example. Historically monetizing users on mobile have been an order of magnitude easier than on the web. Ringtones is a billion dollar business for example. SMS is a $80 billion dollar business. What web services/categories can generate that kind of revenue? And SMS is a pretty poor protocol. The key is the built-in mobile micropayment system called PSMS or WAP-billing. One of the companies we look at for inspiration is Mobagetown, a mobile web based community in Japan. It's a $250MM company in terms of revenues at just 10MM users. Our main challenge is to make people realize that Alexa doesn't track mobile web ;) Gustaf, Heysan
- axod 18y ago
  Very cool :) Presumably though if you add quantcast tracking code they could look to quantcast which seems to be taking over from alexa these days?
  - gustaf 18y ago
    how does quantcast get their data?
    - axod 18y ago
      From panels/ISPs, -OR- You insert some js in your pages, and it's "quantified". They actually have some pretty cool stats, and exact numbers unlike alexa.
      - gustaf 18y ago
        problem 1: phones don't do js problem 2: phones don't have panels problem 3: phones don't connect to isp's they connect to carrier wap gateways. One attempt to track mobile is from Opera but it's highly skewed to the type of people that have Opera on their phones and the activity that's significant for them: http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/ http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/
        axod 18y ago
        Ah presumably most of the usage is via WAP then?
        gustaf 18y ago
        It's mobile web yes. most of the mobile web browsers renders XHTML and most traffic is XHTML
        gustaf 18y ago
        FYI, our largest devices are Ipod Touch, Samsung Instinct, Blackberry, Nokia N95 and Sony PSP.
        boucher 18y ago
        Old phones. iPhone, Android -- these are the phones of the future. In three years, most people will probably have WebKit or Gecko running on their phone. The iPhone is already the best selling phone in the US.
      - Kurt 18y ago
        So, for quantified sites, audience composition is extrapolated from ISP data based on what? The Quantcast provided explanation (http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4 http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4) is pretty light on concrete details of how it extrapolate demographic data from cookie info. Would love to hear a straight forward answer for this one. My clients love the data available, but give it low validity because not clear how its derived.

Congratulations! Can you give us a sense of how successfully you've been able to monetize all the users you've gained? What sort of challenges do you face on that front?

gustaf 18y ago

Happy to. We launched our virtual economy this summer and are just integrating premium (the ability to pay for virtual economy coins). We're live in 11 markets with premium and gradually adding more. People use their phone and something called WAP-billing to pay for the coins. $6.99 buys you 200,000 coins for example. Historically monetizing users on mobile have been an order of magnitude easier than on the web. Ringtones is a billion dollar business for example. SMS is a $80 billion dollar business. What web services/categories can generate that kind of revenue? And SMS is a pretty poor protocol. The key is the built-in mobile micropayment system called PSMS or WAP-billing. One of the companies we look at for inspiration is Mobagetown, a mobile web based community in Japan. It's a $250MM company in terms of revenues at just 10MM users. Our main challenge is to make people realize that Alexa doesn't track mobile web ;) Gustaf, Heysan

axod 18y ago
Very cool :) Presumably though if you add quantcast tracking code they could look to quantcast which seems to be taking over from alexa these days?
- gustaf 18y ago
  how does quantcast get their data?
  - axod 18y ago
    From panels/ISPs, -OR- You insert some js in your pages, and it's "quantified". They actually have some pretty cool stats, and exact numbers unlike alexa.
    - gustaf 18y ago
      problem 1: phones don't do js problem 2: phones don't have panels problem 3: phones don't connect to isp's they connect to carrier wap gateways. One attempt to track mobile is from Opera but it's highly skewed to the type of people that have Opera on their phones and the activity that's significant for them: http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/ http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/
      - axod 18y ago
        Ah presumably most of the usage is via WAP then?
        gustaf 18y ago
        It's mobile web yes. most of the mobile web browsers renders XHTML and most traffic is XHTML
        gustaf 18y ago
        FYI, our largest devices are Ipod Touch, Samsung Instinct, Blackberry, Nokia N95 and Sony PSP.
      - boucher 18y ago
        Old phones. iPhone, Android -- these are the phones of the future. In three years, most people will probably have WebKit or Gecko running on their phone. The iPhone is already the best selling phone in the US.
    - Kurt 18y ago
      So, for quantified sites, audience composition is extrapolated from ISP data based on what? The Quantcast provided explanation (http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4 http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4) is pretty light on concrete details of how it extrapolate demographic data from cookie info. Would love to hear a straight forward answer for this one. My clients love the data available, but give it low validity because not clear how its derived.