THE CHALLENGE
The Industry
With over 2.2 Billion mobile phone users worldwide today more people have access to a mobile device than to a PC. Mobile subscribers will generate significant mobile search traffic, creating a tremendous revenue opportunity through search marketing models which today are the fastest growing advertising type online.
Media Giant Goes
Schibsted is the leading news group and publisher in
In order to leverage its existing media presence and search marketing revenues Schibsted needed to fully embrace the mobile channel. In early 2006 Schibsted Søk, a subsidiary of Schibsted, took the decision to launch its own mobile search portal in order to provide a better user experience and to have fuller controls over the monetisation of its services.
What Schibsted needed was a partner who could provide them with an easy, quick to integrate, market-proven and flexible ASP solution. The company looked to appoint a mobile search partner that would allow it to easily install a search tool onto its many different mobile properties.
THE SOLUTION
Fast Implementation
In early 2006 Schibsted commissioned mobilePeople with the project. In June 2006 the mobile search portal sesam.no launched. In order to secure a high degree of integration between user experience, search engine and content the project was developed in close cooperation between Schibsted and mobilePeople’s experienced team. The service is now fully managed by mobilePeople.
Multiple Platforms
mobilePeople has developed Sesam for both; browsers on mobile phones, as well as clients for JAVA ME enabled mobile phones – in order to provide users with a variety of ways to access the service.
‘Glocal’ Content Index
Sesam has implemented the world’s first mobile search service across both structured and un-structured content. Structured content includes local content (white pages, yellow pages), news, sports, mobile content (ringtones, games, wallpapers, and videos), Wikipedia, TV programs and weather. Unstructured content includes a mobile Internet index as well as a picture index. For local search (yellow pages, white pages) SVG based maps are included based on mobilePeople’s SVG Map Server including TeleAtlas digital map data. Location-based data is included from Telenor, the incumbent operator in
Integration with Existing Search Marketing
Sesam also includes a module which allows for monetisation of search traffic via search marketing. mobilePeople’s mobile ads are integrated with the existing Schibsted ‘pay per click’ platform in order to offer a volume-driven model to the search marketing advertiser.
Mobile Distribution
Schibsted wanted to further leverage its mobile reach and decided to distribute Sesam on additional mobile channels including Telenor – the incumbent mobile network operator, NRK – the largest TV station and VG – the largest newspaper. mobilePeople’s service plug-in module made it possible to launch the solution within days.
Real-time Analysis
Detailed statistical analysis is provided for both browser based usage patterns and the JAVA ME client. For the browser solution unique user IDs are collected. The unique user ID is used for the charging of premium-based content.
THE SUCCESS
Sesam exceeded traffic expectations by over 50% during its first two months of operation. More than 450,000 searches were performed and over 30,000 unique users recorded one month after launch.
With search traffic growing faster than expected, Schibsted started testing the effect of advertising on Sesam and its users immediately. Within the first couple of weeks new revenue streams had sprung up – based purely on the volume of search traffic that was generated. For instance, approvimately 5% of Sesam users clicked on dating site banners. This translates into each user generating approximately GBP 5 of advertising revenue.