Rating: Turn your existing RSS feed into a mobile money generator
A way for any existing web based publisher to earn revenue from mobile ads has been created by BuzzCity. Called Mobilizer, it takes an RSS or ATOM feed and turns that into an instant ‘mobile friendly’ web site. On which Buzzcity is able to serve mobile ads, of course.
The introduction of Mobilizer (which is apparently still Beta), is nicely timed to co-incide with the desire amongst publishers to monetise their existing content on the mobile web.
As a recent member survey by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) found that 75 per cent of member companies are planning to boost their skills in the mobile sector and just over half (51 per cent) see mobile development as their greatest challenge.
The knee-jerk reaction to joining the mobile web bandwagon has, of course, been to develop an iPhone app.
As Buzzcity CEO, KF Lai, says,”Many have invested in apps for the iPhone but this will only serve a small section of the market. It is vital that publishers make their content readily available on the mobile.”
With Mobilizer, publishers who sign can turn the content they are already creating as an RSS feed into a mobile friendly format with virtually no work. All they need to do is add a few tiny lines of HTML to the Home page.
The inventive is that publishers will immediately start earning mobile display advertising revenues with a payout of up to 65 per cent of total ad revenues. Mobilizer is a free service, with no hosting fees, and free publisher support.
Publishers are also able to choose the type of adverts that will appear on their mobile website as well as the number of ads and their position.
Obviously Buzzcity needs to help publishers drive traffic to their new mobile web site which is hosted on Buzzcity’s own servers. Obviously publishers can simply print the URL provided to them through Mobilizer.
In a clever twist, however, during the process of signing up, Buzzcity creates a unique QR code that relates to the URL it is providing. Anyone with a cameraphone and a barcode scanning client can read the code and the handset’s browser will take them to the newly created mobile site.
The only trick to Mobilzer, it seems, is to have your existing RSS feed prominently displayed on your existing web site so this tool – part of WAPMaster – can actually find it.
