We are excited to announce that MobDis has been used to build a mobile rich media ad for the ChannelNewsAsia iPad App.

Working with MediaCorp, 2359 Media(our parent company) built a series of Rich media mobile advertisments for Jaguar, the Launch Sponsor of Channel NewsAsia iPad App. The mobile advertisments includes rich media features such as videos, galleries and accelerometer-influenced animation. The Jaguar Ad is live in the Channel News Asia iPad App which is downloadable from the Apple iTunes App Store.

Using MobDis, anyone can build great-looking mobile sites with no coding experience. Furthermore, MobDis users can easily add rich media content, like product galleries, store locators and videos, making their mobile sites more attractive and user-friendly.The v4 upgrade comes with a completely upgraded user interface, new business features, like forms and coupons that users can use to build marketing campaigns and new pricing plans for agencies.

“We had been getting a lot of requests from marketing agencies which needed a product that can help their clients get onto mobile and increase revenue. MobDis v4 goes above and beyond delivering amazing mobile websites, by including business features designed to help convert visitors into customers,” said Zhou Wenhan, Co-Founder 2359 Media Pte Ltd.

MobDis was released on the Mac App store (http://bit.ly/MobDisMacApp) since the Mac App store open in Dec 2010. It quickly became one of the popular graphic and design apps and so far has over 40,000 downloads. It is also available online as a Web application.(http://mobdis.com). A free 14 day trial is available. Thereafter pricing is $28 per site per month for DIY consumers. For agencies and resellers, flexible plans are available.

About 2359 Media

2359 Media, a leading mobile marketing provider, aims to jumpstart the mobile web revolution by empowering brands and advertisers with MobDis, an HTML5-based mobile advertisement creation platform. Using an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, users can design, publish and share a mobile advertising microsite within minutes of their first interaction with the platform, without the need to code. With MobDis, our users can extend their reach and enhance user experience by engaging their audiences through interactive rich media content on all mobile platforms. Working with companies that include SingTel Singapore, TechCrunch, MediaCorp and Esplanade Singapore, 2359 Media aims to fuel mobile-based and location-aware content consumption worldwide. 2359 Media is being incubated by NUS Enterprise. For more information, please visit 2359media.com .

Just as small businesses built websites so that they could be found online, business owners are now asking themselves if they should get an app made for themselves.

Here are some questions that you should ask yourself as both a business owner and a customer

Does your app have a reason why people will even download it?

Apps typically provide value to the user and they fall into either a utility or entertainment value proposition. What extra feature does your app provide? Note that if your app is solely about marketing, Apple will reject your apps which is about half of the audience that will download your app.

How am I going to get people to download the app?

Say you decided that you will make an app anyway. How do you actually let your customers know to download the app? Keep in mind that putting it in the store is like publishing a web site these days. Just by being in the store doesn’t mean you will get any traffic.

Most apps that do well either gain attention via the following options:
1.    Viral because it is cool and/or interesting
2.    Buy a lot of advertisements
3.    Gets featured on the Store by luck
4.    Has a well recognized brand that people will download

What is your strategy?

Does your app have sustaining value?

After a user has downloaded an app, is there a reason why they will open it again? If you are providing new content, that is great but is the app the best way to do so? What about Twitter and Facebook which does not require users to download an app and can also drive viral traffic.

What is the budget for your app?

There are DIY app builders which you can buy and self design for just over a hundred dollars. But of course, what you get is un-inspiring because every other user on that platform has the same set of tools. If you are just looking for a simple mobile presence, then it is suitable for you.

However if you are looking for it to dramatically increase your business visibility, the odds are really stacked against you as your app provides no differentiation and no special reason as to why anyone would download your app.

On the other hand, to build something really special would require you to engage a developer and the going rate now is $100/hour. Wow! As a small business, would you want to spend that money for a unsure return?

So Apps are worthless?

Well not really. It depends but it is so rare. Here is an article about how well it worked: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704570704576275132869170342.html. Just be prepared to think really creatively and ensure that you have the proper budget behind your app to execute that vision.

The Alternatives

But mobile is still an interesting channel because many of your customers are touting a smartphone and they expect you to be on their smartphone.

As a small business, worry less about the cool stuff you can do and leverage on the audience that other people have. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare are great ways to get in front of an audience albeit via another app. Not to mention the exploding segment where customers are searching on their mobile phones.
You should also have some idea of how these will lead to direct revenue. Offer discount coupons, Membership/loyalty programs to draw audiences into real customers.

The bottom-line

There are many ways to skin a cat and the mobile channel has many ways in which you can get in front of customers. Apps are probably not the most efficent way to get to your customers. Instead focus on getting in front of customers via other mobile apps with traffic and convert them via mobile marketing mechanisms like coupons and lead generations. For more examples of mobile marketing, check out this showcase here.

Mobile sites are fast becoming a popular and necessary choice for any company brand or agency. It is estimated that by 2014 half of Americans’ web browsing will be done on mobile devices and with smartphone penetration growing year after year, markeeters are making sure they present a good impression for users on their mobile devices.

The mobile smartphone also opens up a whole new array of use cases an internet connection is available on most smartphones and can be used as a communication channel.

How mobile sites are accessed

More often than another, mobile sites are usually accessed by an URL. Because typing is cumbersome on a phone, QR codes have gained plenty of prominence.  It eliminates the need to enter a browsing address as it directly opens up a browser and brings the user to the website when it is scanned.

Redirection from the main website to the mobile is another method of accessing a mobile site. Always, websites have a redirection script that detacts users browsing from a mobile phone and point the way to the mobile site URL instead.

Lastly, mobile site links along with their marketing messages can also be pushed to users via digital channels like SMS or email.

Mobile is in an unique position where it is the only medium that is personal and ubquitous. The mobile device is rarely shared and it usually beside each person for the majority of the waking hours. Therefore it is in a position where it can also be the glue that can connect every marketing channel like outdoor advertising, broadcast, print and digital media together.

How to use Mobile sites as glue for multiple marketing channels

Print (Newspaper, Magazine)

1. Go beyond Print – Allow users to learn more if your Print advertisment perks their interest
2. Analytics for Print– For the first time, you can track interest in your printed advertising campaigns and optimise the creative based on response.
3. Do direct response – Your printed ad campaign can have a call to action for users to find out more information or put in their details for a lucky draw or content.

Outdoor (Posters, Billboards, Flyers, Mobile vehicles)

The most likely scenario for someone who has an interest in your outdoor advertising and wants to find out more is by using their mobile phone.

1. Location Based – Mobile websites can be bundled with outdoor media to provide a content that is location based. Direct each outdoor media to a unique mobile URL , in this way, you will be able to track the effectiveness of individual billboards. A QR code might bring even more site visits as the call to action is much more straightforward.
2. Provide Directions – Given that a user encounters the ad outdoor, you will want to link it to a location feature such as find nearest store location.
3. Capture passerbys – Put up a poster of your mobile site address on your storefront so visitors and passerby can visit your mobile site on the go, this is an effective and cost saving method as you don’t need to purchase any ad space.
4. In Store – Give your customers a channel to give you feedback. This practically can improve and help manage your brand reputation. Make your customers happy, help them directly before they post damaging reviews on sites like Yelp.

Digital (Desktop, Web & Mobile)

1. Desktop website – Smartly redirecting mobile users by adding redirection scripts to detect mobile visitors and send them to a mobile friendly site
2. Let your users know about your mobile site – Show a banner ad indicating that you have a mobile site. Your visitors might want to bring your mobile site with them too even when they are on their desktop.

Mobile (SMS, Apps, QR Codes)

1. Landing site for Ad Banners – Make a good impression with your ad. Direct visitors to a specific landing page for your campaign.
2. SMS Ads – SMS is limited to 160 characters. Include a URL in your SMS ad that users can tap to find out more. Make sure your marketing message acompanied by the link is enticing enough for the customer to click.
3. Survey forms – For branded marketing purposes, you can setup a form on a mobile website and email/SMS the URL to your existing customer base.
4. App or web banners -Mobile inventory is relatively cheap right now. Instead of making a full fledge app, why not use a mobile site to run a focused mobile campaign to distribute coupons or demo a new product
5. SMS Responses – Conventional contests facilitated with SMS only permitted manual input of details to SMS to a designated short code. Additionally, users were restricted by a format to key in user details – separated with spaces between their user information. Not only is it difficult to remember the addressed mobile number, it is tedious to remember the format required for a correct input. With a mobile site, a user can easily enter their information in provided fields and you can even set input validation thus saving you the headache getting the correct information later.
6. Info Pages– Need a quick info page for your app? Simply setup a webview and point the webview to a mobile site. A great boon for developers who can just tell the designer to design the info page using HTML instead of having to code the info page in Objective-C or Java.
7. Apps – Did you know that some iOS/Android Apps in the app store are built using HTML like mobile sites and just wrapped up as a iOS and Android App? This is what the techies call Hybrid Apps which means that the app are partially built in HTML and native code.

Remember to follow us on twitter for more updates.

For one, we created a free version of MobDis for anyone who wants to try us out but was deterred by the monthly plans before, you now can use MobDis, publish your site without any cash & commitments.

New UI

Secondly, our UI/UX has been changing. We gather a lot of feedback from our users and constantly want to improve the usability to accomodate your needs. We understand that our customers prefer to create their mobile site as soon as possible, want to learn how to use Mobdis as fast as possible. When logged into V3, our dashboard would be the most notable change as seen below:

*This version is for pro users only, new users will only be allowed 1 site/account.

Liquid Layouts

The default size for our sites is 320px X 417px (optimized for iphone), but what if the layout is little too small for that 470px android phone? Fret not, cause we have liquid layouts! Width of the page will automatically resized to 100% according to the viewer’s phone. A little advice when putting up images, be sure that they are 3X the density. i.e. create 960px width image for 320px. The reason? Since the system handles resizing, a larger resolution will actually stretch your images, thus diluting the density of your images. (Sounds like a physics lesson huh?). Also, it looks better on most iOS’s retina display.

Here’s an example of the liquid layout (rotates and fits 100% width):

We are constantly polishing our widgets, we recoded MobDis on another framework for this version and really hope you’ll enjoy this version. Remember to follow us on twitter for micro updates (for when we have system maintenance/ deals etc).

–Nicole the Marketing Person

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Asia’s Top 50 Apps is in its second year running. The event aims to highlight the changing trends and maturing of technology, business model, markets and talents in the region over the past year. It was indeed a pristine opportunity for MobDis to be discovered and recognized by the leaders of Asia’s technology leaders. With MobDis version 2.3 released in early October, the app promises to further raise rich media mobile advertising standards.

Please refer to 2011 Asia’s Top 50 Apps’ website for the showcase of the award winners: http://asiatop50apps.com/2011-asias-top-50-app/

MobDis version 2.3 is out and we have 2 features for you.

360°

Use Case: This is my personal favourite for businesses with physical goods that they would like to display. Precisely like its name, the widget allows the viewer to rotate a particular product and view it 360°.  This allows you to showcase your product in true details. According to marketing specialists, 360-degree view for products is considered “one of the most effective method to promote products in online stores”. They allow visitors and potential customers to rotate products, examine them in detail and make informed decisions.

Recommendations: The product is really straight forward, but the caveat is that you should possess your own set of 360°images before you upload it. The recommended number of pictures is 36 or 72, although the widget allows 1-36 images. Any images higher than 72 is not recommended, as it will slow your mobile site significantly. Another thing to note is that the recommended format is jpeg, although png is fine as well.

Sample Site: http://demo3d.mobdis.co

Slideshow 

Use Case: Like gallery, the slideshow widget allows users to view pictures in a timely manner.  In the example website, we showed Vogue UK Magzine Covers throughout the years, from the early 1990s to the current years. Your users would not need to click to browse pictures manually. All pictures will automatically adjust to fix aspect ratio and the slideshow will display it to the speed of your choice.

Sample Site: http://slideshowmag.mobdis.co

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In addition to our 2 interactive widgets, we have also made MobDis ORMMA compliant. From now on, any advertisement made with MobDis will be ORMMA compliant; to know more about ORMMA, please read this post. Also, contact us if you are interested in a quote.

By incorporating ORMMA, short for Open Rich Media Mobile Advertising, rich media mobile advertisements built on MobDis can be served or exported in ORMMA standard and will be compliant to ORMMA’s iOS and Android SDKs. Having a rich media mobile advertising standard benefits agencies and brands by helping to reduce the cost and time required to execute mobile campaigns.

MobDis, a product of venture capital funded Singapore based start-up 2359 Media Pte Ltd, is leading ORMMA support in Asia with new member Mobile by Pixel Media. Mobile Marketing Association recognizes the support and would work closely with MobDis in ORMMA’s industry adoption. With offices in Singapore and Hong Kong, MobDis is well suited to provide its rich media advertisement technology and services to clients based in Asia.

ORMMA is split into 2 levels to simplify understanding and adoption. MobDis is currently on level 2 in the Application Programming Interface (API) which comprises of expand, collapse and access of native features.

An Adobe Systems Inc. report, “Adobe Scene7 2011 Survey: Digital Marketing in the Next Decade,” found that 39% of marketers said rich media advertising was very effective. With the proliferation of rich media ads and at least 5 mobile platforms currently used globally, ORMMA minimizes conflicts and expenses of supporting multiple mobile advertising Software Development Kit (SDK) and reduces the complexity for mobile advertisers who want to scale their advertisements to these various mobile advertising and handset platforms.

Rohit Dadwal from MMA APAC commented, “ORMMA is a great initiative that will help drive rich media advertising on mobile. It is bound to help the overall growth of the industry especially in Asia where fragmentation is an issue. We look forward to working with 2359 Media as our members in the Mobile Marketing Association and are pleased that MobDis will be helping to raise awareness about ORMMA within the Asian community.”

Zhou Wenhan, Co-Founder of MobDis commented that, “We (MobDis) wanted to adopt ORMMA as it is currently the most popular standard in the industry. The standard is supported by respected organizations like Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is using ORMMA as the starting point of its own MRAID standard. We are glad that we have achieved ORMMA compliance and will look forward to support MRAID as well.”

To educate the industry on the importance on mobile rich media advertising standard, MobDis has released an ORMMA info-graphic.

For more infomation please visit http://mobdis.com

Press Contacts

About ORMMA

ORMMA, or the Open Rich Media Mobile Advertising initiative, was founded in November 2010 to simplify the serving of rich media ads into mobile applications by creating an open standard and set of industry best practices.  Founded by leading mobile advertising companies Crisp Media, The Weather Channel, Jumptap, and PointRoll, the open initiative has grown to include over 20 member companies.  Through an open source forum, ORMMA has released three-levels of standards and best practices for adoption by publishers, developers, and vendors. For more information visit http://blog.ormma.org.

About MobDis

MobDis empowers businesses and advertisers to build, launch and share engaging rich media mobile apps, sites and rich media ads. Designers use a visual drag and drop interface to design a highly interactive HTML5 site with no development knowledge and up to five times faster than coding. MobDis is a product of 2359 Media Pte Ltd, a full service mobile marketing agency based in Singapore with clients and offices around Asia.

For more information, please visit http://mobdis.com.

About Mobile by Pixel Media

Mobile by Pixel Media is a division of Pixel Media catered to the growing demand for mobile advertising with a focus on in-app advertising on iPhone, iPad and Android based devices. Pixel Media is a leading Asian digital advertising sales network headquartered in Hong Kong with offices throughout Greater China and South East Asia. Pixel Media specializes in the sale of branded display online and mobile advertising on behalf of premium branded publishers while working closely with advertisers and agencies to deploy effective online and digital marketing campaigns for valuable brands. For more information, visit us at pixelmedia-asia.com

About the Mobile Marketing Association

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain. With more than 700 member companies, the MMA is an action-oriented organization with global focus, regional actions and local relevance. The MMA’s primary focus is to establish mobile as an indispensable part of the marketing mix. The MMA works to promote, educate measure, guide and protect the mobile marketing industry worldwide. The MMA’s global headquarters are located in the United States and it has regional chapters including North America (NA), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC) branches.

For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com.