Survival of VAS eco-system

Current recessionary phase gives us a pause, to relax and re-visit VAS strategy? Will all VAS services continue to exist as paid model and continue to grow at same rate? Will 'going rural' motto of cellular company allows VAS to sustain similar % penetration ? Does trend suggest something more conducive required to increase acceptability of VAS services further..

I believe it is required.. future growth of VAS services will be embedded with Ad-revenue support model.. Google and Yahoo! of the world will make VAS as side load/free load/ subsidize.. Or there may be slot for new giant to emerge in the world of mobile search. It may be possible that on the mobile ads may not be rendered based on pure search.. As mobile being highly personal think, with the help of Telco, more relevant ads can be rendered based on the customer profile mapping.. Telcos owning the customer will become more and more profitable for the mobile operators..Welcome to the world of 'Permission Marketing'

Race has just begun...

Search based & content based advertising

Let me clarify in the end everything is content. but for all practical purpose let us segregate SEARCH from CONTENT. SEARCH is something-some action taken when exact location of content is not known to the user. (This statement can be extended to the physical world as well with some refinement). So we can presume in 75% to even 90% times CONTENT requirement is initiated through SEARCH result. Now question comes where to put your brand advertising?
1) On the SEARCH page itself (chances more eye-ball catch)
2) On the page along side content (searched result) (chances lesser eye-ball catch compare to putting with SEARCH result
what is your call on it?

Advertising with Search or Content ? - Funda1

Since long time I didn't get time to write. I had plan for quite some time to write series of blog around Content, search and online Advertise. Small pointer like blogs and then discus with people-friends interested in the same topic. So let us start from today..

Advertising to be done with Search or Content?
A) It is based the Objective of Advertising & Branding.
B) It also needs to consider aspects of life cycle management of the product/services
(like incubation stage, or growth stage, maturity or declining phase of product)
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There are yet many things to add to it as I get time will update it.. Surely before 31st Dec-2008 :-)
Till that time put your comments/pointer/thoughts- for how to enhance this article

Mobile ARPU in India - Right Indicator?

Imagine a country with 25mn population growing at rate lesser than 1% per annum, per capita income $ 10,000 p.a. and having 85% mobile pentration. It is very difficult to even add 50,000 new customers every month. Most of the times customers will come from competition churn. It makes growth purely a function of ARPU. (Revenue Growth) = f (ARPU)

Now Look at condition in India where every month approx. 7mn new customers are added and telecom (cellular) density is just brushing to 25%. Per capita income of is about $800 p.a. Growth will hapeen more rapidly in rural area. Can revenue growth be a function of ARPU only? Can ARPU be the right indication of Indian telecom? For next 4-5 years till the time price hardening happens, dip in ARPU will be continuous... till the time teledensity increases to the level of 75% about.
(Revenue Growth) = {f (Market share, Telecom density, ARPU1)/f(ARPU) }
where ARPU1 is ARPU earned from the customer over long period...

The point I am trying to make is do not look at ARPU as significant indicator of health of Indian telecom company. Look at how innovative telecos are in terms of customer care, reducing churn.
Gross churn number could be one of the good parameter to compare among peer companies.
More the customer stays on the network more benefital it becomes. cost of aquisition of new customer is significant, new cust. typically takes 2-4 months to start billing to its full potential, cost of competition churn is also not insignificant...
Make the customer happy and try to keep them on the netwrok as long as possible which makes it more and more profitable and more and more difficult and costlier for the competition to churn 'Happy customer'... ARPU is bound to dip further as IUC - termination charges reduces, new competition comes in and operator goes 'Rural' for further aquisition..
(Profitability) ~ {f ('Happy & Loyal customer')/f ('Gross churn')} leading to rev. growth
Blog ends here.. But there is much more to this to discuss and share with like minded... Call me/ e-mail me/ add comments here. Let us improve collective understanding of ours to help increase % of "Happy Customers" on the network leading to little more happier India .. ;-)