Category: Mobile App

Our Mobile Apps Are Here… So What’s Next?

It has been 9 months since we purchased a local radio mobile application developer and launched our Mersoft Media division. We have devoted countless hours to developing a unique application that has capabilities that no other radio mobile application in the market can do. (Call us to learn how this is so)

 

With our iPhone platform only having been complete for about 6 weeks, we have signed many clients, including a major network radio client (details coming soon). But now that we are beginning to gain some traction in the market, many are asking us what is next to come, and how can we improve our product or service.

 

We have a long list of capabilities on our technology roadmap, but for the next 90 days, here is what our clients can expect:

 

Advertising Capabilities: Many developers make the mistake of ASSUMING they know what works, and what is in the best interests of their clients without doing their homework first. Your radio station is in the business of growing audience and ultimately selling to that loyal audience. But diluting your product with tacky ads from the onset isn’t in your best interest.
 
We are tackling this issue from a different perspective; by launching many applications, and studying the user’s behavior inside of those applications. Looking at behaviors such as: what pages do they visit? how long do they land on a page? what features do they select? how often do they press play? how often do they come back to the app? how long is the app in the foreground? etc.

 

Knowing this information will give us the insight necessary into creating the most effective ad capabilities, while using the premium real estate on the application. We have some crazy cool ideas for sponsorship capabilities that will blow your audiences’ minds, and have them asking, “How did they do that?”

 

Types of ads can include: start up screen ad, sponsorships, audio/video pre rolls, pop ups, background ads, rotating banners, ads that flip, jump, scroll, and who knows… maybe an ad that may just put dollars in your pocket! 🙂

 

App Cross Promotion: Very few groups that we work with represent a single station, but rather many stations. We have created a way to launch any application that is in the app store from the existing radio station app, so that you can have each station’s app include one-touch access to launch your other station’s apps. Studies show that with cross promotion, usage can increase across all digital streams by up to 30%… more usage means more dollars.

 

Take a look at Yahoo’s app properties for example. Every single one of them has one-touch access to other properties that Yahoo owns. And we give you the same capabilities.

 

We are excited to show you what we have in store. To learn more about how we can help you grow your brand and bottom line, give us a ring at 913-871-6200. And be sure to go into your app store and search for “Mersoft Media Talk Radio” to download a demo application.

MEDIA COMPANIES TAKE NOTICE: HOW ARE YOU IMPROVING YOUR MOBILE STRATEGY?

This morning I read a great piece by Inland Press editor, Adolfo Mendez. He interviewed Kerry Oslund, VP of Digital Media at Schurz Communications. Kerry provided great insight and transparency into his groups’ mobile application experiences.

 

We think that every media company – Radio, Television, and Publishers – should read this and take it to heart. Let me highlight a few quotes and points from Kerry Oslund here from the article:

  • “We knew we had to get into the mobile space in a bigger way, and part of the subsector of the mobile space is apps.”
  • Once apps are developed, media companies need to be ready to maintain, repair and upgrade them, he said. “Now we’re in the support business as well because we developed an app,” he said. “If it breaks in the middle of the night, we fix it in the middle of the night.”
  • For Schurz, potential business (app developer) partners are evaluated on the basis of what kind of technical support they can provide, he said. “There is a reason many of us chose vendors sometimes not for the complexity of the technology but for the support that we need,” he said. “When we’re looking at vendors, we try to minimize the technology expense and pay fair value for support.”
  • “The early numbers [of mobile app use] compared to other numbers was small, but the ramp was steep so you couldn’t turn your eyes away from a ramp like that,” he said. “The more you looked at that ramp, the more you realized that this was a trend that didn’t seem to be showing any signs of stopping at all.”
  • For the Herald Times in Bloomington, Ind., the company used its own internal resources to build a mobile presence. “We wouldn’t want to repeat that again and again,” Oslund said. “It would be very expensive to do that.”

Kerry mentioned that last year, 5 percent of their online traffic was mobile traffic, and that he would expect that number has already doubled. From our point of view as a developer of such applications. It is key that our clients be informed of the experiences of their industry colleagues and be able to learn from those experiences to make informed decisions with strategic moves.

 

My call to all media groups is this: Be a fantastic feed-provisioner. Have a great tech team that knows how to format feeds.

 

To read the full article, click here.