#velti

Velti is on very thin ice.

The Nasdaq-listed ad network has had a rough few months. Since last year, its stock performance has been grim, closing at just $1.09 yesterday — a 93 percent drop from its peak in the summer of 2011. Its market capitalization,…

Phone Home

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With the recent firings occurring at Velti, people are beginning to speculate there is going to be a demise in mobile. WRONG!! Mobile marketing is still in its infancy. It's like a baby, it is trying to crawl before it can walk. And, it has certainly fell enough times to figure out how to get a stable foothold. 

That being said like many other new channels mobile media has been over hyped and over sold. I drank the Kool-Aid and you may have too. Its just like social was 5 years ago. Only now are companies actually realizing they NEED to be on social media. How long has that adoption taken place. 5 years or more. I was on facebook in 05. 

There has always been a huge lag time between new market technologies and enterprise adoption. There big clunky incumbents who have a a hard time learning new tricks. They stick there toe in the water to see if its tolerable before diving in. 

Advertising revenue from mobile devices comprised 30 percent of Facebook's total ad revenue in the Q1 2013, up from virtually nil one year ago. Monthly active use on mobile devices climbed to 751 million, marking a 54 percent increase from the year-ago period, as Facebook's total monthly active user base grew to 1.11 billion.

Facebook's ad products delivered $1.25 billion, or 85 percent, of the $1.46 billion it generated in revenue during the quarter while payments carried the remainder, lifting the company's net income to $219 million. Total advertising revenue grew 43 percent year-over-year.

Facebook's CFO David Ebersman says the growth in ad revenue was driven by the strong performance of news feed ads. "Ad impressions were up 39 percent and average price per ad was up 3 percent compared to last year," he adds.

COO Sheryl Sandberg also highlighted the success of Facebook's mobile app install ad product. "During the quarter, 3,800 developers used these ads to drive nearly 25 million downloads. Of the top 100 grossing apps from the iOS and Android in the last week of Q1, about 40 percent of them used our mobile app install ads," she says. "In gaming, travel, e-commerce, and the financial service industry, the early indicators are that our cost per install are highly competitive."

Indeed, mobile has quickly become the growth engine for Facebook as desktop ad revenue remained flat.

"I think we're still in the really early days of what we're doing and that's particularly true in mobile," Ebersman adds. "We have an ad format that works on mobile and we have identity so that we can put the right ads in front of the right people...The big opportunity that's right in front of us is trying to make the mobile advertising products higher quality and more relevant over time."

Facebook's custom audience tool is also gaining traction with more than twice as many marketers using the feature from the previous quarter, including brands such as Hotels.com, Intuit, and Virgin America.

"Facebook is finding some success on mobile because its ad strategy does not focus just on big brands. A focus on big brands is why Apple has failed at mobile advertising," notes Krishna Subramanian, CMO of Velti, a mobile marketing and ad technology provider.

"Mobile installs are absolutely through the roof. These installs have made Facebook one of the biggest mobile ad suppliers in the world and are really what's driving mobile revenue," Subramanian adds. "Cross-platform targeting remains the single biggest prize for Facebook's mobile revenue. Facebook's precise user profiles, combined with targeting users across devices and off Facebook, will be an absolute gold mine when they figure it out."

Facebook's costs are also skyrocketing as it maneuvers to increase the frequency with which users visit the site, the length of those visits, and the overall number of users it reaches on a daily or monthly basis. Overall, the company's costs jumped 60 percent year-over-year to $1.08 billion.

Couple of things wrong here.

1. Way too long intro screen, 90% of people will either take your survey because of the headline or incentive and they will not read the text anyway.

2. Obviously designed for desktop answering (although the survey focuses on mobile) so even a three point matrix question is vertically super stretched and respondent will forget what the columns were.

Subway debuting NFC mobile payments and tying in Velti's Mobile Marketing Platform

We all saw that Subway embraced NFC mobile payments when it became a launch partner for Google Wallet back in May. Since then, Subway hasn't been resting back on its laurels and waiting for NFC technology and mobile payments to become mainstream. In fact, they haven't been waiting to deploy a mobile marketing strategy either. Waiting is something the fast food chain doesn't seem to have on its agenda for its company or its customers and that's a good thing. Last week, Subway selected Velti to be its mobile marketing technology provider. Subway intends to use Velti's mGage mobile marketing platform to consolidate its marketing efforts globally onto one single mobile platform.

“We see enormous potential in our mobile campaigns and look forward to delivering a more robust experience with Velti,” said Joost Zimmerman, Director of Digital Marketing at Subway. “Our goal is to utilize mobile marketing as a highly personal and direct way to reach our customers and give them access to SUBWAY® at any time, wherever they are.” We are not sure if Zimmerman actually verbalized the ®, but that was the quote so we left it in!

How will Subway use Velti mGage for NFC, mobile payments and mobile marketing?

Subway isn't what you would describe as a small going concern. It has stores in 90 countries and 34,000 restaurants globally. Managing the marketing for that size of organization on a local and global basis, for different devices and platforms would be a logistical nightmare. Velti’s mGage platform will be used to launch transactional mobile marketing programs that allow consumers to order meals from their phones for pick up at the nearest Subway restaurant. In addition, through a new mobile app and mobile site, it will enable them to access key information including menu, nutrition and store locations. The company is reported to be working on app for iOS and Android, and if you are in marketing, you probably already know that apps perform better than mobile websites, but Subway appears to be hedging its bets by doing both.