THE SESSIONS - A CLOSER LOOK

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

The State Of Mobile Local Search: Market Outlook And Opportunities - 2008 looks to be a defining year for Mobile Local Search.  Yet as with any transformation, MoLo will experience its share of growing pains and struggle with user acceptance.  The PELORUS Group will present its perspective of the MoLo implementations and opportunities that are redefining our industry.  How should organizations prepare for the new services that comprise Mobile Local Search?  What is the market size and growth opportunities?  Who are the new partners and competitors?  What is the value chain and opportunities in the emerging Mobile Local Search sector?

     Al Fross, President, The PELORUS Group

9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Keynote: The Shape Of Things To Come - Although still a young industry, the nascent Mobile Local Search market by all accounts should be a multi-billon dollar juggernaut within the next five years.  All the talk and hype that has swirled about the potential associated with MoLo is about to come to fruition.  Search engines, handset manufacturers, content providers, ad agencies, carriers - all are coming together in a perfect storm of opportunity.  An industry pioneer, entrepreneur, and visionary will lay out how she sees the future unfolding in this exclusive keynote presentation.

10:30 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.

Monetizing MoLo - Worldwide mobile advertising spending is forecast to be a multi-billion juggernaut within five years.  Consumer demand for MoLo clearly permeates the market, providing latent and potentially lucrative revenue sources.  Attend this session to discover the best methods for profiting off of MoLo, as well as the forecast for future mobile advertising markets.  Leading industry specialists and CEOs will address various successful mobile ad models, the power of mobile radio, and how cost-per-action models like pay per call advertising fit into a mobile environment.  Learn key strategies for capturing significant market share from pioneers of the field, and use the forum to answer your questions about the market.

11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.

Mobile Local Search Content - Increased mobile content will propel MoLo.  But what precisely are the needs and requirements for content?  The need for accurate listing data and the need for deep, structured content to enable relevant local search on a mobile phone are driving forces.  Unfortunately, there are more and more disruptive telephony services that make it more challenging to aggregate listing data.  The inherent size limitations of mobile devices force content needs to be well structured and organized to provide a positive and relevant user experience.  What role will content play in the Mobile Local Search landscape, and what companies are leading the way?

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.

GPS & Location Based Services: Profit vs. Privacy - GPS empowered mobile devices are finally breathing life into the long ballyhooed location-based services.  Map-based services, friend finders, navigation and point-of-interest identification, and coupons, are all becoming available to mobile users.  What's happening at the application level, and what about sensitivity to privacy issues?  The "receipt" end of LBS almost certainly will have to be opt-in, and any proactive LBS must be carefully target marketed.  This special session examines these and other issues arising from the LBS factor.

2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.

Voice-Enabled MoLo: Sweet Talking The Locals - Mobile voice search is set for monstrous growth.  With literally billons of mobile devices, the embedded opportunity base is huge.  And with powerhouse brand names like Google entering the fray, and successful young ventures such as Jingle emerging, vast potential waits to be realized.  Major voice local search initiatives targeting mobile devices are gaining in number.  The role of voice-based Mobile Local Search continues to evolve as options proliferate.  How are voice recognition providers answering the call?  What new capabilities, and which key competitors are leading the way as voice MoLo bridges the gap between excitement and the user experience?

4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

The MoLo Advertising Ecosystem:  Alliances, Competition, And Coopetition - The Mobile Local Search advertising environment, although young, is developing at light-speed rate.  New players, new capabilities, new horizons, emerge on an almost daily basis.  This session will provide a strategic overview of the players populating the mobile search advertising landscape - sellers of SMS mobile advertising, sellers of WAP mobile advertising, and much more.

5:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Anatomy Of A Successful MoLo Site - What characterizes a successful, thriving Mobile Local Search site in contrast to one that flounders and ultimately fails?  What do MoLo sites need to do to attract eyeballs?  Are sites dedicated to Mobile Local Search a necessity or even an advisable investment?  This special session will explore these and other factors that play a role in helping businesses capitalize on the substantial base of cell phones, and the growing acceptance of mobile local Search.

9:30 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.

Search Engines And MoLo - This market is wide open and as such, not surprisingly characterized by questions.  Lots of them.  What is the potential for mobile search to be integrated with online and offline marketing efforts in order to enable marketers to reach truly targeted audiences?  How will the rules of search optimization evolve in a mobile environment?  What is the impact of the different search engines' mobile strategies on the rest of the search community?  What are the challenges to the growth of Mobile Local Search, including the need for marketers, services, software, and hardware providers to develop a common mobile framework?  If you want to know how search engines will help move forward Mobile Local Search, don't miss this session!

10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Handsets: Upgrading The Mobile Experience - Smartphones are going mainstream.  Affordability is playing a role.  So too is the user experience, as the iPhone has proven.  And with companies like Nokia introducing mobile search software solutions that promote easy and quick access to search engines for handsets, the timeframe of the swim to the mainstream seems to shorten daily.  And with Android looming… well, it is no longer a stretch to imagine the user experience to be vastly better than even 15 months ago.  What impact are these newer handsets having on both the user experience, and user acceptance of Mobile Local Search?  What can we expect over the next critical 24 months?

11:00 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.

MoLo Impact On Traditional 411 Services - Carriers are studying Mobile Local Search intently, not just in terms of the potential erosion it represents to their traditional lucrative 411 services, but also the emerging opportunities these MoLo offers bring to the table.  To that end, broad alliances such as that announced earlier in the year between Sprint and Microsoft, or, of course, AT&T and Apple, will allow carriers to offer more robust portfolios of applications such as ring tones, video and games, and business/friend search, and in a more engaging format.  But what ultimately does Mobile Local Search mean to carriers?

11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.

MoLo Applications: Has Their Time Finally Come? - The user experience is paramount to widespread adoption of MoLo applications.  And while that experience has by most estimations a ways to go, it has made leaps and bounds over the past 18 months or so.  Today's handsets deliver an impressive package of features that enable users to stream high-bandwidth applications including music, video, games, and shopping.  Meanwhile, voice-enabled local search is helping ease constraints defined by limited user interfaces and 12 tiny keys.  So the stage has been set to see consumers tap into mainstream MoLo applications.  But questions linger.  How quickly will the different apps march into everyday life?  Which demographics will embrace them first?  Which applications will be hottest?

Refreshments & Exhibits

1:00 p.m.- 1:30 p.m.

Social Networks as Platforms: Facebook, OpenSocial, What’s Next? - Over the past few months, Facebook, Google and other social networking players have introduced a new breed of revenue models—from external applications to word of mouth advertising—that illustrate the growing role of social networks as platforms for monetization. The social networking economy, however, is still young, leaving a number of questions that have yet to be answered: What is the key for translating user adoption into revenue? Have any revenue models seen early success? How will Social Ads and OpenSocial affect this monetization landscape? What are the risks involved in basing a business on a social network? And where is this social networking economy heading? 

1:30 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.

The Future Of Mobile Local Search: Stakeholders' Panel - A growing consensus across industry sectors is that market conditions are ripe for Mobile Local Search to come into its own.  But hype has haunted the market in the past.  A panel comprised of industry pioneers, visionaries and evangelists will dissect the previous two day's discussions, and share their respective perspectives on where MoLo stands today, and share also their visions as to where it ultimately will be heading.