Driving engagement and payment with value added services online and on mobile – and increasingly in TV, voice devices and who knows where else in the years ahead – have always been the hot topics of World Telemedia and 2019 finds the show more crucial than ever.
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The only event in Europe to bring together alternative billing, messaging, social media marketing and affiliate marketing and publishing together, the show is the ideal place for anyone involved in content marketing and distribution.
For anyone involved in affiliate marketing, social media, push messaging, OTT messaging and SMS, billing and payments, content creation, publishing and distribution, the show aims to close the virtuous circle of services that can make content sticky, ‘buy-able’ and offer the payment tools to complete that transaction in one go.
With the world becoming ever-more mobile-centric – and with mobile payments growing in tandem with mobile media and content consumption – World Telemedia is the place to talk to all players across the value chain – from network operators to aggregators to content owners to payment companies to marketing and affiliate advertising networks – to turn what you have into a multi-national thriving business that reaches consumers wherever they may roam.
So what are the hot topics that this diverse, value-chain led business will be looking at in Marbella in the October sunshine?
Understanding the industry
The first of the hot topics at the show on Monday afternoon is a look at Telemedia’s own research into the state of the telemedia industry.
Having undertaken the most comprehensive Telemedia research project ever, Nick Lane, Mobile Insight Analyst, Mobilesquared, a leading telecoms market analyst, last year delved into the market to see what was happening across carrier billing and VAS. Over the past 12 months Lane – who will be presenting at the show – has continued the quest and will be at the show to reveal the key findings on the size and scope of the global Telemedia market and how it has changed over the past year.
Lane will be revealing what percentage of m-commerce uses DCB and how that may shape up over the next couple of years, growth potential for DCB after PSD2 and the expansion of the unbanked. He will also be outlining how these markets have evolved over the past year and debating these changes with Nick Daley, Director of Commercial Solutions, mGage.
While the results are strictly under wraps right now, a place at the show will give you access to the top line research, as well as the opportunity to buy the full report. Together, these give an excellent taster of what is to come across the whole show and pull in all the areas that are driving telemedia.
VAS – top of the hot topics
If there is a single theme out of this year’s hot topics at World Telemedia it has to be the rise of value-added services (VAS) and how they are starting to pull together the strands of customer acquisition, affiliate marketing, content, services and carrier billing. And these things are all being brought together at the show.
And what constitutes VAS is also shifting. While dating is still a key part of the VAS landscape for telemedia players, it has changed dramatically. The world of dating is driven by apps and some big names. It is also starting to incorporate social media players and more.
For the telemedia sector, this is both threat and opportunity. The dating content market is thriving, but it is fiercely competitive. Here we will show you how to play to win – not least how to use intelligent mobile billing to increase revenues of online dating sites, with Ross Williams, CEO, Venntro Media Group and Simon Corbett, Founder, GlobalDatingInsights.
Outside of dating, the VAS market is evolving in new directions and offering new opportunities, thanks to the new ways consumers look for entertainment.
This year’s show will take a detailed look at a range of new VAS markets and market environments, including the entertainment viewing habits of the iGeneration, where broadcast and telecoms meet transactional digital media and, of course, OTT content snacking and DCB. Here we will hear from Mark Challinor, Board Member / CEO, Mediafutures, Elson Sutanto, Principal Analyst, Juniper Research, Joanna Cox, GM, Association for Interactive Media & Micropayments (Former) Head of Client Services, Channel 5 and Julia Dimambro, Founder & CEO, Seriously Fresh Media.
Here we will see what new markets look like, how they are developing and, most importantly, how to engage them – and monetise them through carrier billing.
Carrier billing
Of course, one of the key pillars of any telemedia research and World Telemedia show is direct carrier billing (DCB), which has seen something of a resurgence. As we have seen, VAS is growing again in importance and, with a more liberated attitude towards carrier billing – thanks to PSD2 (thank you Europe!) – we are seeing more people paying for these services using DCB on their phones.
This is part of a wider trend in the hot topics of telemedia, with the growing interest in OTT services, such as sports clips, media content, videos, games and highlights, all looking at new ways of being monetised.
While many content providers want to get subscribers, there is a growing interest in how to sell one off access to clips and parts of content on the fly. This is where DCB services are going to see some mega-growth globally this year – with many OTT content suppliers looking to snare those occasional users and generate some extra revenues, as well as, perhaps, driving some to subscribe.
Similarly, globally the FAANG brands – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google are also looking at how to use carrier billing to charge for services, on-board new subs and drive growth in established and, in particular, emerging markets. This is going to be a really exciting area – and Elson Sutanto, Principal Analyst, Juniper Research, Julia Dimambro, Founder & CEO, Seriously Fresh Media, Mark Challinor, Board Member / CEO , INMA / Mediafutures and Joanna Cox, GM, Association for Interactive Media & Micropayments (Former) Head of Client Services, Channel 5 all taking part in sessions aimed at uncovering the opportunities here for carrier billing.
On the other side of the coin, the conference is also looking at what MNOs want from carrier billing providers to make this work for them. Featuring a look at the Direct Carrier Billing Vendor Performance Report 2019 and featuring the ROCCO Awards Presentation to the Number 1 DCB Vendor 2019, this session will bring together Caroline Press, Project Management (Payment Services), Three and Jason Bryan, CEO, ROCCO Research / Strategy to cover this vital part of the DCB paradigm.
Marketing, messaging and engagement
Around VAS and billing lie all those other telemedia staples that drive engagement in the first place. As ever, affiliate marketing will play a central role in many of the talks at the show, outlining how it can be used to drive traffic, as well as how the content and services produced by the telemedia value chain can be used by publishers and affiliate networks.
Many have written affiliate marketing off, but don’t be too sure.
Similarly, the show is also going to be awash with messaging and engagement technologies – from SMS to RCS – all of which can drive engagement and increase sales. Adding carrier billing to messaging is going to be big in 2019/20 as telemedia becomes a bigger part of the wider ecommerce world, and how to make that work is going to be a central part of how you operate.
At World Telemedia you can hear from Nick Millward, VP Europe, mGage and Nick Lane, Mobile Insight Analyst, Mobilesquared, about how RCS and messaging are colliding with DCB to produce new ways to engage consumers and to monetise them.
While much of the attention is focussed on RCS and its future potential, don’t write of SMS yet. It still have a massive hold over the market and, thanks to new technology such as voice devices and other applications that need messaging, SMS has a bright future in A2P as well as the consumer market.
At the show Jason Bryan, CEO, ROCCO Research / Strategy and Nick Lane, Mobile Insight Analyst, Mobilesquared will be looking at A2P messaging and where it leads in terms of alternative micropayments for unbanked markets.
Best of the rest of the hot topics
Aside from these key themes, World Telemedia is set to also take on all the other usual areas that go hand in hand with connecting consumers with content and monetising them. Geoffrey Cleaves ~ General Manager, Opticks will be on hand to talk through how to save guard platforms and traffic from fraud, while David Lotfi, CEO, EVINA and Claire McLaughlin, COO, The Cyber Authority will be looking at DCB fraud prevention and general cyber security protection.
There will also be sessions on Blockchain in telemedia, cryptocurrencies – not least taking a look at what Facebook Libra may well mean for the industry – as well as where telemedia monetisation fits into the wider fintech world.
And, if that wasn’t enough, the show will wrap up with beers and a live chat with show organiser Jarvis Todd and Telemedia magazine editor, Paul Skeldon, unpicking what we have learned this year and what we are going to be looking at as hot topics at World Telemedia 2020.
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While those are the hot topics that the show will be focussing on on 14-16 October 2019, there is much, much more to take in at the show. As ever there will be a series of presentations about 30+ key telemedia markets, there will be break-out sessions on ICOs, investment opportunities and regulations, as well as looking at the finer points of all the above.
There will be content and marketing specialists, there will be billing and payment experts and there will be everyone from Google right through to Telemedia magazine on hand to network with in the autumn sunshine.
So, join a network of more than 500 industry leaders from 60+ countries for 3 days of VIP networking, C-level meetings, spotlight presentations, international market updates, workshops, private lunches and sponsored breakout sessions.
