Are Mobile Consumers Better Informed than Salespeople?

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

An editor of Harvard Magazine recently wrote about consumers who are taking on (willingly or not) the roles of petrol attendants, check out clerks and sales assistants. Go to a supermarket in the US, and you’re likely to scan your own purchase. Drive into a petrol station, pump your own gasoline and squeegee the windshield yourself.

“The robots have won,” writes Craig Lambert. “Although the automatons were supposedly going to free people by taking on life’s menial, repetitive tasks, frequently, technological innovation actually offloads such jobs onto human beings.”

It’s not all bad news, though. When it comes to purchase decisions, consumers are winning. The average shopper has become adept at product research – checking product information and comparing prices on the spot.  Even in situations where a salesperson is available, consumers have a bigger view that includes options in other stores and online.

The self-service phenomenon may be charmless, but in this case, mobile technology is empowering consumers with information . . . and offering new opportunities to retailers and publishers.

Djuzz Music Catalogue

By Allen Umali, Executive Producer, Djuzz

We launched free music downloads in early September and, since then, have seen more than 250,000 music downloads from Djuzz. If you are already a catalogue partner for Djuzz games, you can now, very easily, get a music catalogue for your site. 

New Mobile Regulations in Indonesia Pave the Way for M-Commerce Growth

By K.F. Lai, BuzzCity CEO

The government of Indonesia has effectively ‘reset’ the mobile subscriptions market. It shut down all mobile subscriptions in mid-October and required content providers who wish to resubscribe their users to do so in compliance with tougher rules.

Consumer agencies have been pushing for this action against a small minority of mobile advertisers whose fraudulent actions tarnished the whole industry, for some time.

The result is good news for the whole industry (well, everyone except those fraudsters) and it took place not a moment too late. Regulators around the world are starting to recognise the importance of their role in protecting the value chain. By re-establishing much-needed trust between businesses and consumers, this paves the way for the emergence of solid m-commerce markets.

Hotspots – Africa Q3 11

In Q3 of 2011 a total of 3.2 billion ads were served across continental Africa. This continues a year of growth across Continental Africa characterized by 135% more traffic compared to 2010. Seven countries drew traffic in excess of 100 million ads served per quarter and three countries (South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya) saw more than half a billion ads served in Q3 2011.

Further depth is seen across the continent this quarter as 26 countries (22 in the last quarter) served more than 10 million ads. 

Please click here for the full report

Ad networks: the scale and insight to beat fragmentation

The past few years have shown remarkable growth of the mobile internet, driven by rapid consumer adoption and major advances in the capabilities of mobile devices. In recent months, mobile ad networks received a great vote of confidence from investors, who bet substantial sums that the space will continue growing, become more valuable, and attract an increasing share of marketing budgets.

In spite of this, though, some naysayers still question the value of ad networks. They believe that marketers are still treating mobile as an afterthought, and they question the quality of network traffic.

BuzzCity Tours – Nov & Dec 2011

We complete this year’s tours with :

1. The BuzzCity Media Roundtable @ Charlotte Street Hotel, 15 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 1RJ. [8 Nov]. The roundtable will provide media with insights into marketer uptake and attitudes to mobile advertising. Discussions will include consumer insights; how they behave with mobiles, what the drivers are for future development of mobile marketing.
2. KF Lai will also be joining a panel of experts @ Access: Mobile, London, [Nov 9th]
3. The Festival of Media Asia, Singapore [13-15 Nov]
4. Mobile Asia Congress, Hong Kong [16-17 Nov] where KF Lai will join a panel of experts to discuss “How  Mobile Advertising Is Evolving and the Metrics Behind It”.
5. MVAS India Summit, Mumbai [23 Nov] (Manish)
6. Mobile Web Africa [22-23] Johannesburg (M de Souza)
7. World Brand Congress [24-26 Nov] Mumbai (Manish)
8. MEF Americas, Miami [29-30 Nov] (Camille)
9. Dubai World Game Expo 2011 [30 Nov – 3 Dec] (Allen U)
10. The BuzzCity Developer Garage [ 4 pm on Dec 2] at our office in Singapore. This event looks at the subject of  “Building Successful Tech companies – Having the End in Mind”. Hear from Darius Cheung, Director of Consumer Mobile Technology at McAfee,  and Eddie Chau,  Founder & CEO of Brandtology and Chairman of Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation. Both will share their experience driving start-ups to successful exits.  Please RSVP by email to baoyi[at]buzzcity.com as seats are limited

As always, we hope to meet with you at these occasions.

The BuzzCity Report ( Volume 1 Issue 4 )

In the third quarter of 2011, our network grew by 11%, and served a total of 33.7 billion ads worldwide. We’ve already exceeded the number of ads served in the whole of 2010, and are well on track to double last year’s performance.


In addition to the regular roundup of stats and analytics, we focus on the practical lessons particularly aimed at smaller businesses. Our feature section is a primer on ‘Mobilizing your Business’ and our Media Insight section shows how you can effectively make use of social networking to promote a local business. Please click here to download the full report.

Best Practices and Tips for BuzzCity Publishers

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

BuzzCity has passed an important milestone: our advertising network now averages over 10 billion impressions every month, thanks in part to a growing number of small individual publishers.

Take Indonesia, for example.  As in all our markets, the average cost per click is a function of advertiser demand and publisher supply. At the moment, the average CPC in Indonesia is about 4 US cents. So if you figure a site gets 5000 clicks — a decent amount for an entrepreneur or hobbyist — that’s US $200.

So, how do YOU cash in? Well, in my last article, I wrote about the mechanics of how to become a publisher. This week, I’d like to share some tips that will help you make money and best practices that will keep your readers and visitors happy.

Djuzz Top 10 – September 2011

There were 8.2 million game downloads from Djuzz by 3.6 million gamers. Among the Top 10 for September are:-

1. Need For Speed Undercover  : New Entry (Try n Buy Version)
2. Outlaw Racing 2011   : Unchanged
3. Need For Speed Shift   : New Entry (Try n Buy Version)
4. Need for Speed Shift : Down 3 places ( This ad supported version was replaced by the Try n Buy version)
5. Crime City  : Up 32 places
6. Airforce 2  : Up 4 places
7. Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince   : New Entry
8. Fight Night Round 4   : New Entry
9. GI Joe  : New Entry
10. Tom and Jerry – Mouse Maze   : Down 3 places

More than 13,000 games were made available in September and many new titles like Wolverine and Monopoly Here and Now The World Edition quickly made it among the top fifty games this month. These are among the 4,000 new games added to our offering in the last 6 months. (We plan to release another 5,000 titles in the next couple of months). These remain much sought after by surfers as evidenced by their rankings at the end of September 2011. See how these rank among the Top 50 games in September.

Earning Money as a BuzzCity Publisher

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

The BuzzCity Ad Network enables mobile website publishers and application developers to monetise their content with advertisements. Partners earn a share of the revenue for each ad clicked while retaining complete control over how and where the ads appear.

So if you’ve created a mobile site – whether it’s to talk about sports, music or share your views on everyday life — and you’d like to make some money, this blog entry is for you.  Today, we’re going to walk you through the basics of becoming a BuzzCity Publisher and answer some commonly asked questions about payments.