Top 10 takeaways: The Future of Monetising Digital Content
Last week we came together with O2 to co-host an event themed around monetising digital content. Broadcasters, media agencies, digital content publishers and brands all descended on Heddon Street Kitchen for breakfast.
The morning presented a great opportunity to learn about top trends and best practice when it comes to mobile billing, as well as highlighting the key trends for the future.
Chaired by David Murphy of Dot Media, the opening presentations included Mobilesquared’s Nick Lane and IAB’s Jon Mew who talked about trends in digital content consumption. Shortly following there were presentations from Nigel Alexander from BuyGameCredit and Michael Tomlins from Infomedia who looked at industry insights for competing for consumers in a digital content market.
By mid-morning a heated panel debate was kicking off, the panelists included Deezer’s Christian Harris, Kevin Judge from tastecard, Gavin Carpenter from Phonovation and Ilicco Elia from DigitasLBI. A debate was built up around whether or not to charge for content and the possible payment models — free with ads, freemium, paid for content, subscriptions models and more.
— Timothea Horwell (@timihorwell) October 4, 2016
The morning came to a close with Danny Barclay from O2 who gave away a whooping £50,000 worth of performance marketing campaigns from Weve. Here’s 10 interesting takeaways dropped during the morning:
#1 Nick Lane, Chief Insight Analyst at Mobilesquared — carrier billing stats
Some solid carrier billing stats — here’s a couple that made us all go “WOW”: 6.4m people in the UK use carrier billing to make a purchase 34.3m is the potential user base for carrier billing in the UK
#2 Jon Mew, COO at IAB — mobile can create strange behaviour
People have become glued to their mobile devices. Whilst this level of engagement is great for brands, check out what happened to this guy in the background of this video — ooooops.
#3 Nigel Alexander, Marketing Manager at Phonovation — carrier billing has impact
BuyGameCredit.com was created by Phonovation for consumers to be able to buy Xbox, Playstation and more game credit using their mobile phone bill. Now, 96% of all sales come through mobile.
#4 Michael Tomlins, CEO at Infomedia — carrier billing is social media friendly
Carrier billing is social media friendly. Rather than having to implement a full payment system, you can easily direct people from a Facebook or Twitter page — and within just a few clicks a payment can be made.
#5 Christian Harris, VP Northern Europe at Deezer — how to find the perfect subscription model
Subscriptions or one-off payments? Long-term business benefits from a subscription model, especially in music and VOD where there is a wide range of content available. The key to this approach is having a range of options depending on the segment eg families vs single user vs HD audio, all targeting different user groups.
#6 Gavin Carpenter, CEO at Phonovation — credit cards vs carrier payments
When it comes to selecting payment methods, the smallest number of clicks is preferable. Where mobile is the medium used, mobile should be the payment mechanism used, unless using a pre-registered “one click payment” credit card payment is offered — like Amazon. Credit card doesn’t work for micropayments. It’s worth thinking about your audience, service and price point — how would your customers like to pay?
#7 Kevin Judge, VP Northern Europe at tastecard — test and learn
The optimum freemium model really depends on the product and purchaser and at tastecard they have seen much higher conversion to full paid subscriptions when people pay £1 for a 90 day trial, compared with people who take out a free trial. People tend to want trials when products are new and they haven’t been recommended by friend or relative already using them. What appeals and makes people purchase will be different based on individual and product. In summary, in order to find the optimum conversion for a product you’ll have to test using different purchase options.
#8 Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile at DigitasLBI — the type of content that should be charged for
Content that has value should be charged for, content that is generic or is found in many places needs to be free. The challenge will be working out which is which. The key takeaway is not to assume your content deserves a price tag — is it unique? Will your customer gain value from it?
#9 Consumer trust
One common theme across the event was how important it is for brands to build consumer trust. Payments boil down to trust — in both the product and the payment method. If you educate, have good content and create transparency around your carrier billing offering, you’re 100% there.
#10 Brekkie 🍌🍓 🍳
And finally, the yummy bacon sarnies and fruit yoghurt pots :).
Big shout-out to all those who attended the Fonix and @O2 brekkie today — ‘The Future of Monetising Digital Content’ 🍳 pic.twitter.com/uPKtYF6VxI
— Fonix (@hellofonix) October 4, 2016