While initiatives like MMA’s new consolidated consumer best practices
playbook are helping simplify the world for off-deck content providers, the industry
still seems unsure about how to enforce compliance.
Whether dragged away by an opt-in SMS advertising campaign or through mobile search, mobile customers are increasingly seeking content from off-deck sources.
A 2009 report from Frost and Sullivan projects off-deck content revenues of $5 billion by 2014. That’s up from less than $1 billion in off-deck content revenues in 2007. That’s a lot of users going off-portal as smartphones increasingly facilitate easy access to that content.
The term off-deck basically refers to any content that isn’t listed on the carrier’s mobile home page. It’s important to note that carriers aren’t necessarily averse to their customers going elsewhere for their content. In fact, they rather like it for the fact that it drives data and adds to the customer’s perceived value of their network.
But because the end-user inevitably calls the carrier when something goes wrong with an off-deck source – such as when they’re billed too much or weren’t informed about costs associated with a service – carriers are in the tough position of protecting their customers from sources that are otherwise out of their control.
PLAYING BY THE RULES
Enter the Mobile Advertising Association (MMA) and its recent announcement of a consolidated carrier playbook. “In the past, each carrier had their own individual playbooks that outlined what a content provider had to do to be compliant with consumer best practices for its network,” explains MMA President and CEO Michael Wehrs.
He notes how that scenario meant every content provider, or their aggregator, had the difficult job of being compliant with four different playbooks from the major carriers. MMA thought it could do something about that, and in April, the organization announced it had convinced the four major carriers in the United States to open up their tightly guarded playbooks and come to a consensus on a consolidated document. Suddenly, the world of off-deck got just a tad bit easier for everyone.
“In the beginning…carriers looked at it as everything on-deck is approved. Anything that goes wrong is under our control. As soon as you open up off-deck, that’s when these rules become very important and helpful,” Wehrs says.
And while the off-deck content providers, aggregators and carriers will gain in many ways from the reduced fragmentation provided by the MMA playbook, carriers have been slow to realize effective techniques that will ensure content providers are in compliance with the playbook.
 |
| Ghandi: MMA playbook is not legally binding. |
|
Vikrant Ghandi, senior analyst for Frost and Sullivan, says the MMA playbook is a step in the right direction, but stresses that it’s limited in what it can do. “You must realize that it’s not a legally binding agreement. The operators get together, they release the playbook, and they do expect their partners to comply, but again, it’s not legally binding,” Ghandi says.
ENFORCING THE PLAYBOOK
Jim Conti, vice president of carrier relations for PlayPhone, an off-deck mobile content company, says there’s a lot to be desired with the carriers’ current system of using third-party auditing firms to ensure off-deck services are in compliance with consumer best practices like those outlined in the MMA’s playbook.
“I one-hundred percent agree that compliance with consumer best practices is essential in the off-portal space. But what I don’t agree with is that they have an intermediary between us and the carrier,” Conti says.
Conti says the auditing process is costly for both the carrier and the content provider and leaves the content provider with little room for recourse should they be cited for non-compliance. “We’ve actually gone to the extent of having to hire people that manage these audit reports that come in all the time,” Conti explains, adding the audits being conducted now are oftentimes inconsistent and that at the end of the day, it’s the carrier that gets to play judge and jury.
 |
| Emmet: System implementation is still new. |
|
Jay Emmet, general manager for OpenMarket, an off-deck aggregator, says some of the inconsistencies in the auditing process may have to do with the relatively new implementation of the system. “I will freely admit that some of the auditing services are better than others. But at some level, that’s a part of new processes and trial by fire,” Emmet says.
Conti suggests part of the problem lies in the way carriers have traditionally perceived off-portal content providers.
“I think this all comes from the fact that carriers like the revenue from the off-portal content, but never really thought of it as a product … The way it’s being dealt with now, I think you either block off-portal content or you legitimize it,” he says.
Ghandi says that carriers are very aware of how vulnerable they are on the off-deck front. “They have to protect and maintain the consumer experience,” he says.
BEYOND COMPLIANCE
When asked whether “off-deck” is a term that will stick around, Ghandi agrees the term is increasingly blurred by the carriers’ opening up of their networks, the proliferation of content and the varied means with which customers are able to access that content. Ghandi cites application stores as a source that’s blurring that line.
“All these app stores…all that content is technically off-deck. Those apps are not offered by the operator,” he says.
Emmet says that if that line is blurred, that’s actually good news. “It means that the off-deck market continues to grow and a lot of these [carriers] will have to start paying attention.”