iKids, a one-day conference “that will help you bridge the gap between your kids entertainment properties and app revenue through better planning, better partners and better execution”.
Building your App-titude, Sarah Berliner, vp of content, ScrollMotion
- iPad changing everything, but content is still king
- content companies going back to the vault, bringing new life from existing content
- ScrollMotion: in 2010 moved away from objective c to HTML5, build once and reuse, wrap your content bundle for each platform
- App store is scalable and global
- iPad apps command higher prices than iPhone apps; trend is to build universal apps, iPhone users will spend the extra $1
- Analytics is growing in importance, tracking page views but also duration of actions
- Aim to enable sync between devices and platforms
- Apps as destinations, update with new content, invest in updating, and enable in-app purchasing
- this year may bring UI best practices
Where It’s At: The Current Landscape
Scott Chambers, svp of worldwide media distribution, Sesame Workshop:
Of all the paid assets [Sesame Workshop] has on iTunes 7% are apps that make up 45% of the revenue.
- 15K to 150K per app to build, no correlation necessarily between success and cost to build; never entirely sure if success is because we spent more money or because Apple decided to promote the app
- “juice-proof” devices, that can withstand a child spilling their orange juice on it
Josh Koppel, founder and chief creative officer, ScrollMotion:
- iPad is complete game-changer
- best way to sell an app is with an app, example is Sesame Store inside their app
Shai Samet, founder and president, kidSAFE Seal Program:
- if you use data to up-sell or cross-sell than you need to properly inform parents and kids ahead of time
The Connected Consumer, Jerry Rocha, vp of mobile media, The Nielson Company
- Length of sessions / engagement on iPad is 2.7x greater than on iPhone
- 13-17 year olds are the demographic with the greatest percentage of tablet usage
- year over year SMS usage is down and twitter and instant message usage are up with kids
- 40% of kids below the age of 10 have a phone
- magazine usage by platform: 25% iPad, 20% Kindle, 20% Nook
Case Study: Dr. Suess eBook Apps, Michel Kripalani, president, Oceanhouse Media
- building a single app is dangerous, by building more apps you have a better chance of being found on the App store
- building an app or a brand strategy?
- simplify; are you spending your time and money on the right features?; identify your directive (i.e., help kids learn how to read) and stick to it
- monitor file size of your apps to encourage faster downloads and easier installs
- app cannot crash
- build for 5 stars or don’t ship
- how much will you lose by limiting your platform options? iPad, iPhone, Android….
- Oceanhouse Media: license model, we publish the apps under our name; turn down all work for hire
- book recommendations: “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” by Chris Andersen
- other companies doing interesting work: Loud Crow, Ideal Binary, Random House with “How Rocket Learned to Read”
Case Study: Angry Birds, Claes Kalborg, svp of brand and licensing strategies, Rovio Mobile
- the free Android version of Angry Birds which is ad-supported makes one million per month; better than iOS paid version
- PSP version coming in a couple of weeks
- when they venture into TV, they will not go the traditional route of 52 half hours
- Angry Birds was a $100K initial investment, didn’t dream it would be this big
In the B2B space that means creating apps that embed themselves into the entire content chain of their readership.
Not entirely sure what the author means by “embed” or “content chain”, though certainly business readers want to get at relevant content quickly and conveniently. To do that they probably want to stay within their familiar contexts (email, browser, maybe for some an rss reader) which is probably a case against “appifying” old media. So far iPad apps of magazines have been a big failure.
