Tele' cross the Mersey: How T360 Liverpool really hit the spot

Like that other famous Scouse pairing of Lennon and McCartney, the coming together of the telmedia and media industries in Liverpool at Telemedia360 on 21 October proved not only harmonious, but also long lasting and lucrative.

The need for print media - and other mainstream media channels - to generate new revenue streams, especially in the digital environment, is well documented and the timing of T360 in Liverpool could not have been better. Rupert Murdoch wants to monetise the huge investment that has been made by his organisation in digital media. Others are all looking to follow suit. T360 provided the ideal opportunity to do this, bringing together media players with the service providers and billers who have the solutions to these cross-platform monetisation woes.

So what did we find out from the show? Well the key outcome was that mobile web is where people are at right now. The telemedia industry shows little discrimination between mobile channels, rating monetising media content through WAP, mobile web and apps as key industry drivers, according to our own poll conducted at the show and powered by Bemoko.

Mobile apps came a surprise third - beating online content, UGC and tubes - showing that, while many see them as a fad, they are still attracting a lot of interest from service providers, telcos and media companies.

While 47% of delegates are keen to monetise WAP, a staggering 57% of respondants to the survey are looking more at how to monetise the mobile web, while 42% are looking at the potential for apps as a revenue.

"It makes a lot of sense," Mark Challinor, European Director of the International News Media Association (INMA) told delegates at Telemedia360 in Liverpool. "Newspapers and media companies are desperate to get a return on the millions they have spent in getting content online. Mobile, and especially mobile web, offers the opportunity to do this."

Similarly, our study found that the billing landscape is also in a state of flux and that this new surge in interest from the media in what telemedia can offer is seeing the maintenance of PRS as a billing tool, while the use of credit and debit card is gaining huge momentum.

Fifty eight per cent of respondents to the survey at the show still see PRS as their preferred billing tool, but 52% now consider credit and debit card to be prominent.

Amazon One Click was surprisingly high in the survey, with 17% of the audience saying it was a primary billing tool. This brings it in higher than the much more established PayPal, which only gained 11%.

Payforit attracted a healthy 35%. Overall, the billing statistics from the Telemedia 360 survey show that there is now a healthy diversity in billing tools and that most are being embraced to some degree by mainstream companies. And it wil continue to develop as media companies look for more and more micropayment tools to monetise their content.

"Micropayments will be critical to making media companies money through cross platform services, as the model is now to make the user pay more the deeper they go into the content" explained Oli Roxburgh, Managing Direcetor of Bluestar Mobile.

Between them we can see that billing is a growing market right now - more good news to come out of the event.

Elsewhere, the debate at T360 focused in in how to use telemedia staples such as chat and dating, psychic, horoscopes and gambling services to develop new revenue streams for media companies looking to plug the gap that is emerging in their ad revenues.

Charity begins at T360

The event also offered a six monthly update on key telemedia offerings and, as usual, gave the industry a chance to get together and networking, do business - and raise money for charity.

At the end of a long trading day, delegates were asked to bid for various items of footballing memorabilia to raise money for breast cancer charity Her Breast Friend. We are delighted to report that Ian Vaughan from Videochat bid £1000 for the signed arsenal shirt and Gary Corbett from Oxygen8 got the match ball signed by Everton for £150. Telemedia360's own Jarvis Todd scooped the Chelsea shirt for £355.

Delegates then decamped for a glorious dinner sponsored by MIG at Pan Am, before being treated to a show stopping performance by the Beatles… well, The Cheatles, at least the second best Beatles tribute band on the Wirral.