Sprint OpenWeb, Content Adaptation and the impact on Mobile Advertising
There is a great post on WAP Review about the Sprint OpenWeb browser. This got me thinking about the transcoding ecosystem. I might be wrong, but I am starting to think that with content adaptation or transcoding, user input is necessary for the manipulation of the content from online to mobile to work.
But first, back to basics – What is transcoding?
It’s translating one lot of compressed data (content) into another format, whether it’s video, sound, image or text. In an ideal world, this would be without damaging or downgrading the original’s characteristics, although in fact, that is usually what happens.
In the past year I have spoken to all the major players from Novarra, InfoGin, OpenWave, Mobile Aware, Crisp, Skweezer, Volantis, Mowser and Get Mobile. (Rendered GoMo Site version Skweezer, Mowser, GetMobile)
My conclusion is that without some sort of verbal or user driven input there is a basic room for error with transcoding technology. Transcoding seems to work on algorithms. Where it’s easy to say that we don’t convert .mobi or m. or WAP sites – in reality it depends on the individual site and the way that it has been programmed.
For example, before we moved GoMo News to WP – every single content adaptation engine had difficulty finding and recreating GoMo News. The website looked terrible on mobile and the problem was due to my terrible html programming skills.
I spoke to Mowser about this nearly a year ago. I was impressed when an example of GoMo News site did indeed look hot on the mobile browser and thought – I will use that all the time. But, I tried and failed to put the line of code given to me in the site. Even though, I had followed the instructions – the site wouldn’t allow any code changes in the “head” space.
The same thing happened with GetMobile. The process of creating a mobile site or going mobile is simple. The hiccup came when I was asked to put a specific line of code in the site.
As I had hacked the original typepad page and my HTML skills came out of the HTML for dummies book – I was again left clueless.
Dennis in his review also mentions the minute he highlighted the problem a few days later it was solved. The same thing happened with Vodafone UK.
Does this mean that the issues of transcoding can be solved so it isn’t that important?
No.
The complexity of transcoding has a strong impact on complimentary business models in the mobile space, in particularly mobile advertising.
How?
Basically, when a site is transcoded badly – it has a negative impact and effect on revenue generating models. When advertising is the core business model of an online or WAP site – poorly transcoding sites mean that advertisements are not rendered. This means loss of income from advertising and a waste of creating a made for mobile site.
With transcoding – do we need pure mobile sites? Is anyone talking about new meta data for transcoded sites? How can transcoded sites be found on mobile only search engines?
Or.
On a wider scale – with this ability to manipulate content can operators wield a power over competitors and serve their own and partner sites first before competitors. Could they even choose not to serve adverts from specific ad-networks if they don’t support their own policy?
There are a lot more questions than answers. I am talking to a couple of companies about Meta Tags for transcoded sites and mobile advertisment rendering. More soon.
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