Summary of MEF Europe Launch, 23 November 2006, Paris

Video blog link: http://thomasblard.com/thomasblard/2006/11/mobile_entertai.html

Around a hundred industry professionals turned out on a damp Parisian evening to attend the launch of MEF Europe at the offices of Denton Wilde Sapte (see http://www.m-e-f.org/news112306.html for press release).

Interim Chairman, Gerard Grech of Orange-FT, welcomed attendees and Patrick Parodi, MEF global Chair, set the scene for the evening with a brief summary of the recent MEF survey on Ad-Funded Mobile Entertainment. Thomas Husson of Jupiter then gave an overview of some forthcoming research and highlighted the potential dangers of ‘turning off’ the consumer with intrusive mobile advertising.

Switching to French for the mainly local audience, LCI TV’s seasoned presenter and journalist, Thomas Blard, then chaired a debate on ad-funded mobile entertainment with the following panelists: Eric Daugan (Warner Music), Thomas Husson (Jupiter), Marc Montaldier (Orange-FT), Patrick Parodi (MEF/Amobee) and Jerome Wagner (Maje Media). To view the discussion in full go to the video blog link above.

Much of the discussion surrounded business models and the need for new formats that will personalise and contextualise advertising on the mobile medium. While ad-funded models have great potential to boost content consumption on mobile there are still hurdles to overcome: 3G phone coverage, pricing for mobile internet access, off-deck charges and creating a seamless end-user experience, to name but a few.

The conclusion: a nascent yet promising market but no real consensus on when the current tests between operators, advertisers, media companies and content providers will provide a commercial return.

Attendees, who included telcos, media companies, aggregators, lawyers, VCs as well as a few blog enthusiasts, then had a chance to mingle, enjoy the ‘cocktail’ and swap business cards – none of them seemed in a particular hurry to leave……

The next MEF Europe networking event will be in Amsterdam on 7 December. Entitled “Mobile Payments on the Move”, see http://www.m-e-f.org/amsterdam06/index.html for more details and to sign up.