Agora Media Group Innovation Blog

Good news for the travel industry, Kayak developed an open source statistical tool to create a demand benchmark.
Kayak Travel Trends is a travel focused Google Trends like system.

Access the tool here: Kayak Travel Trends
It’s great to have access to a vast amount of granular and indepth travel data like Kayak is showing, think of applications to Search Engine Adverting-, Search Engine Optimization-, Competitive Intelligence efforts and many more purposes.

View here an example of the website:
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An interesting new application and intersection of three technologies/devices which create a new way to use and experience the mobile device, microblogging and using it to real-time reflect and communicate on a TV show.

The application basically creates a chatroom for a TV show where people can comment on it. tvChatter makes it possible for the user to choose between seeing tweets by everyone or just those who you follow. This is a welcome refinement which adds importancy to word-of-mouth (which is the most relevant of those who you know).
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Just in one slide!

Picture taken from AllTop

What do you think of the guru’s explenation? Do you concur?
Share your thoughts.

Whilst the growth in consumer usage is higher than the advertising and marketing spend in this channel, it’s good to read the article on eMarketer about the positive long term trends when it comes to mobile ad spending.
Mobile ad spending is calculated to rapidly increase the coming five years. 

The growing share of smartphone sales, many sorts of applications which increases the usage of the mobile device, like Augmented Reality, Mobile TV and Location Based Services, mobile ticketing, mobile banking and growing mobile ad spend has caused that Mobile Marketing is moving fast towards a centre spot within the marketing strategy.
Mobile ad spending is just another sign that usage is increasing, users are getting confortable with the devices and that it’s becoming a standard extended device in daily life, think of the younger generations as the future target group which have mass adopted the mobile already.

More and more cases are published about the mobile opportunities, how mobile enhances the brand experience and another channel to reach the customers wherever, whenever with the content which is desired. The mobile device is the portable extension of a person which becomes an aggregator of information, at the same time the tool to satisfy the content hungering needs and can serve as a connector between digital and traditional campaigns. Location Based Services/Information Services provide relevant applications for the mobile user and the provided relevancy is in favor of the companies.

Businesses should start (re-)thinking about the place of mobile within the marketing strategy when looking at the future and opportunities and that it might well be the new catalyst that unleashes the marketing funnel, serves brand reinforcement and can act as an awareness mechanism.
Questions that should be answered during the next strategic planning could be:
Are the products mobile ready?
Are the target groups/market mobile ready?
How can mobile usage be incorporated within the purchase process?
Is there the opportunity of conducting mCommerce?
By what goals should the mobile website and other extensions (like widgets) be deployed?
How can mobile advertising be integrated within the other advertising tactics?
Are the other tactics finetuned with the mobile strategy?
…and many more.

Do you share my view on Mobile Marketing and that it’s now the time to act?

One great term I really came to understand at PICNIC 2009 in Amsterdam was ‘disruptive technology’ and I realized that that’s really what really works in terms of building successful startups.

Following the sheep is such a hit and miss proposal. Thinking out of the box… opening up one’s mind to the changing landscape of convergence in media is really the key to being a successful entrepreneur.

My interpretation of Disruptive Technology is… it’s technology that turns an old economic model on it’s head and creates a new revenue model and helps change the behaviour of consumers.

Here’s some talks that really had an impact for me.

Niklas Zennström

Skype founder and now-billionaire Niklas Zennström, stressed in his talk that companies that are willing to embrace and develop disruptive technologies are the ones who can really have an impact and succeed financially. He also talked about being so broke between the time Kazaa failed and Skype started that he was back to working out of his apartment. What a long way he has come in a very short time. Kazaa failed because they were too early and could not develop a viable business model around it. They came up with Skype after they started a platform for developers called Jolt – which was an application building space and someone came up with a early idea of VOIP technology and how it can be used – which led to the development of Skype. And we all know how much impact Skype has had, particularly due to the adoption of the product and service with mainstream US TV such as Oprah and Dr. Phil.

He added that building products and services in Europe is a brilliant place, due to the ability to test in smaller markets (Holland, Denmark etc.) first, then reach out to the rest of the continent.

Now Zennström, worth over a billion euro, has a venture fund at Atomico Ventures, where he helps startups with money and advice.

“Entreprenuership is not a job, it’s a lifestyle.’

– Niklas Zennström

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