(keitai-l) Reengineering Blyk's Business Model - Ad-funded MVNOs in Japan?

From: Jan Michael Hess <jan_at_mobileeconomy.de>
Date: 01/29/08
Message-Id: <6226EECE-1F00-4D4B-A6A2-D8020F074342@mobileeconomy.de>
Dear keitai-lovers,

I have written a whitepaper reengineering Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO in  
UK.

My question to you: Do you see chances for such a company in Japan?

First page of the whitepaper:

Reengineering Blyk’s Business Model

How to build a profitable ad-funded M(V)NO and maximise Ad ARPU

Many people in our beloved mobile economy are excited about the new  
startup company
called Blyk because it is the first ad-funded MVNO (Mobile Virtual  
Network Operator) in the
world. Blyk launched in the UK on 24 September, 2007, and is targeted  
at 16 to 24 year-old
customers only. Co-founder and CEO of Blyk is Pekka Ala-Pietilä,  
former President of
Nokia Corporation (1999-2005) and Nokia Mobile Phones (1992-1998).  
Pekka’s supposedly
strong contacts with the top management of many MNOs (Mobile Network  
Operator) will help
Blyk close more beneficial Host MNO deals in 2008 and 2009 as Blyk  
plans to go pan-European.

Ad-funded MVNO with high Ad ARPU paid by advertisers

For the MVNO and MNO, the logic behind mobile advertising is simple:  
If you cannot raise
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) charging your customers for new value- 
added services,
you better tap into the media budgets of advertisers that want to  
communicate with your customers.
Thus an ad-funded MVNO is a company that finances a considerable  
share of its ARPU with money
from advertisers. As pointed out below, I assume Blyk’s Ad ARPU to be  
higher than the Premium ARPU
which is paid by users.

When it comes to optimising Ad ARPU, Blyk has set out to leapfrog the  
competition with a
smart strategy: Create the first ad-funded MVNO that offers a big,  
though limited, amount of
free voice minutes and text messages that is attractive enough for  
the target group to churn in.
Secondly, let all Blyk customers opt-in by default into receiving  
advertising messages that are
targeted to personal interests. As targeted ads have a higher value,  
it automatically increases
Blyk’s profit margin.

This whitepaper is ad-funded by Mobile Economy GmbH, the Berlin-based  
management consultancy
for mobile innovation. Since I am an expert in mobile advertising and  
MVNOs, I have decided to
reengineer Blyk’s business model, share my findings and develop a  
number of strategy recommendations
that might be valuable to Blyk as well as future ad-funded MVNOs and  
MNOs.

I believe that it is possible to build a profitable ad-funded MVNO.  
It is also possible for MNOs
themselves to introduce ad-funded voice and data tariffs. You don’t  
necessarily need to build a
new MVNO brand like Blyk to maximise Ad ARPU.

The full article is available here: http://www.mobiliser.org/article? 
id=101

You can request the PDF version including the calculation by email  
from me.

Best regards from Berlin,

Jan.

------------------------
Jan Michael Hess
CEO: www.mobileeconomy.de
Blog: http://blog.mobiliser.org
Xing: www.xing.com/profile/JanMichael_Hess
Skype: mobiliser
Email: jan@mobileeconomy.de
Mobile: +4917621208417
Fixed: +493024728026
Received on Tue Jan 29 12:38:03 2008