I normally talk about website marketing, internet marketing, and search engine marketing. However, it’s time to start thinking about how we’re going to be marketing in the future: and this appears to be the first web-to-mobile marketing offering which, in my opinion, is just “too cool”.
A company called mywaves was funded in January 2006 by Menlo Ventures and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. They pitch themselves as a “global, carrier-agnostic mobile video company that can mobilize all Web entertainment, broadcasting thousands of channels of personalized entertainment to mobile phones worldwide.”
This new offering, called “mywaves SND2MBL”, attempts to connect brands and content owners’ broadcast video from a web site to a mobile phone. This essentially extends the reach and value of your video. If you’re a marketer, this means that you can–fairly easily–make your video accessible not only on your website but on people’s mobile phones.
The best part of all this is that mywaves’ SND2MBL is free.
mywaves’ SND2MBL is available for free at mywaves.com. All you have to do is register to receive the SND2MBL code which you then embed on your site. This will mobilize the video you’re featuring. Not only can you offer video clips on an opt-in basis, there’s a “subscribe” feature. If you frequently update your video clip you can offer your viewers the choice of subscribing to your mobile channel–and mywaves will send a text message to let your viewers know that there’s something new to watch.
The free version of SND2MBL is supported by ads. There’s also a premium version, as well, that takes out the ads; which provides comprehensive audience measurement so you know who is watching, how often a video is forwarded to someone else via a mobile phone, as well as a full comprehensive analysis of audience and reach.
I went through the process of embedding a video onto a page and it was fairly easy. Here’s what you have to do:
First, you need to sign Up. If you’re already a mywaves user, enter your mywaves login information. If you’re a new user, you will need to sign up before you start mobilizing content.
Next, choose the content you want to mobilize. You will have two options to click when you are asked, “What do you want to mobilize?” If you select “Clip”, enter a valid video clip URL. The service can accept clips in these formats: asf, avi, 3g2, 3gp, flv, m1v, m4v, mov, mp4, mpa, mpg, ram, swf, vob, or wmv.
If you select “Video RSS Feed”, enter the feed URL into the entry box. You will also have the option of adding your feed into the mywaves channel guide. If you elect to do so, select the appropriate category from the pull-down menu.
Choose a SND2MBL Button to put on your site. They will check to make sure the link is valid and, if it is, you’ll be prompted to choose a SND2MBL button to put on your site. Click on the button next to your choice and finish up by clicking “Create your SND2MBL button.”
Next, copy and paste the code onto your page. Your embed code will appear in a new page. Copy this code and paste it into your HTML code.
When people visit your site, they will see your selected SND2MBL button next to your video. When they click on the button, they will see a little form where they enter their mobile number and carrier – and we take it from there. We deliver a text message directly to their mobile phones, containing a link to your streaming video.
If you have other clips or multiple video feeds you wish to mobilize on your site, simply repeat this process.
The services supports a lot of formats, including support for: asf, avi, 3g2, 3gp, flv, m1v, m4v, mov, mp4, mpa, mpg, ram, swf, vob, and wmv. In the United States, if your website’s viewers have a video-enabled phone and their carrier offers TV or video streaming services, (like Cingular and Sprint) you’re most likely good to go. We’ve found that even though Verizon has a video offering, they limit the file size and attempting to watch clips over 250 kilobytes in size may cause viewing problems. We don’t yet support Windows Mobile phones but don’t worry – that’s in development. Unfortunately, Blackberry devices don’t stream video.
Check out the site and the service at mywaves.com.