@Mobile 2.0 Bango’s Lee Davis on Identity and WiFi plus drinks in teh bar with CEO Bango Ray Anderson on mobile analytics

Bango gave a presentation at Mobile 2.0 which focused on analytics. The two key themes expressed were Identity and the upsurge of traffic via Wi-Fi.

The identity issue is basic profiling where anyone that comes from an operator is given a unique Bango identity. If someone is not from an operator they are given an identity and then can be converted at a later date. The profile or identity is then used to track each visit in to the site.

Wi-Fi
Lee told everyone not to forget Wi-Fi and showed an interesting chart on Wi-Fi use and growth and how it was being tracked.

I found this interesting as in all honesty I had forgotten Wi-Fi and I wasn’t sure if you could leverage it or who was on it. If you can find out who is roaming on Wi-Fi and connect them back to their original operator or find out what time they use Wi-Fi on a daily basis -……
Yikes the potential for profiling and setting up campaigns and services for locals or roamers or repeat users is endless.

Bango Analytics
I had been asked recently if Bango could now track search results as part of their campaign analytics and I wasn’t sure as I know the version I tested several months ago didn’t.

Lee gave me a huge smile and said, version 4.0 does. He said, I should check it out again as so many changes have been made and it really was very robust.

I will do!

Ray Anderson
Later on at the Women 2.0 party in Barcelona I bumped into the CEO of Bango Ray Anderson and was amazed by the fact that he had a personality! No, I mean really you meet people for a long time and you see them present but you never get to know them. So, this is the first informal chat I ever had with Ray and I thought I would give him a soft grilling.

Bena: Bango is the Lasagna of mobile as you have so many layers and features of services and different offers – I can’t keep up!

Ray: The Lasagna! That’s different. But no. We do the best for our customers. We will go out and get anything they want and this means technology and new services are vital.

Bena: Is that why its easy to say, “I hate Bango”. I have heard that a few times from competitors not users.

Ray: It’s a competitive market but we haven’t got where we are today by only making friends – we have launched services that help the market and help to identify fraud and make payment simple. We now are in the campaign and tracking space…

Bena: I met Anil and he said Bango originally started out in traffic.

Ray: Yes. In the very early stages but then we conquered billing but we see traffic and metrics as vital now and that is our goal.

Not everyone has the identity from the operators and this means our service really offers value and the Wi-Fi we talked about today makes us very competitive.

If the offer is good or people are asking us for something – we have to do it. It is a principle that is simple and it works for us.

What we think?
It was interesting to pose some very to the point and informal questions to Ray. After that we went into a huge discussion on the adult market segment with some great stories from Ray – which I will save for a rainy day!