Adva Mobile Portal Launch Press Release

March 15, 2013

Musicians Gain Fans and Revenue With New Adva Mobile Marketing Portal 

Driven by Feedback from Artists and Labels, the new Mobile Marketing Portal is more efficient, relevant and useful

Adva Mobile, the leading mobile marketing portal for Artists using mobile technology to acquire, engage, and sell to fans, delivered a redesigned website and Artist portal today, aimed at helping Artists connect to fans on mobile devices more efficiently. The new design - over a year in the making, with teams from Argentina, Pakistan, India and the US – includes improvements in how Artists reach fans on mobile phones and integrates mobile commerce into their fan engagement efforts. 

The improvements to the Adva Mobile Portal were largely driven by requests from Artists and Labels, who seek to take advantage of unprecedented new opportunities to create loyalty and drive sales through the mobile channel. In addition to the new design, increased functionality was added, including enhancements to the Artist Mobile Store to help digital sales direct to the fan and new capabilities through HTML5/CSS3 – for example, an embedded music player.

Jack Kelly, Adva Mobile CEO, oversaw the redesign and directed the international teams that designed the new website, Artist portal user interface, and new Artist mobile sites and Hybrid Apps. “This should be a huge advantage for our Artist users who will benefit from a better experience as they manage their mobile outreach efforts. Fans will also appreciate the new, clean designs of Artist mobile sites & Apps and new features that engage them with their favorite bands.”

Regarding the new site design, Kelly said “It has a great look and feel. The portal is more personalized and easier to navigate. For example, the new Dashboard is organized to simplify the Artist’s management of their fans, mobile assets, campaigns and activity analytics.” Artists using the new platform have found it more useful, fun, helpful and relevant.

In addition to simplifying the Artist Portal experience, new mobile web and Hybrid App template designs provide a better experience for the fan. Fans that opt in to the Artist site receive personalized experiences that become more relevant as the fan increases his or her engagement with the band.

“We have been aggressive in acquiring new Artists and helping them use our platform to make money.” Kelly said. “Still, I always want to go faster.”

About Adva Mobile
Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company dedicated to helping Touring Bands, Recording Artists, Labels and music industry professionals reach, market and sell to their fans on mobile devices. More information can be found at www.advamobile.com

Adva Mobile Reviewed in Let's Talk Digital

The on-demand segment for Mr. Shadeeds broadcast introducing the benefits of Adva Mobile on Let’s Talk Digital is now available for your viewing pleasure.


Adva Mobile enables an all-in-one mobile solution that enables direct-to-fan promotions, exclusive content giveaways, mobile pages and more.In this segment of Let's Talk Digital, Shadeed Eleazer discusses new direct-to-fan mobile platform, Adva Mobile, and its impact on the entertainment industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEpPFv1rNg&feature=youtu.be
 
GO DIGITAL OR GO HOME, The Online Home of Shadeed Eleazer, is at http://www.mrshadeed.com/

Your Mobile App Will Let You Down

Brands, including Recording Artists and Touring Bands, who take the time to consider their mobile strategy still struggle over whether a mobile website or a mobile app is the right way to go. If you have limited resources, you may wonder whether you really need to build both, and perhaps you are able to channel scarce resources into only one fully funded mobile project. Mobile Apps have historically been seen by web designers as the only way to provide a rich user experience of mobile. Add to that the countless partisan debates between those who want to sell you a mobile app and those who want to sell you a mobile site and it can be difficult to get to what it actually makes sense for bands to help them reach, engage and monetize their fans.


Here at Adva Mobile, we sell both Mobile Apps and Mobile Sites, so we don't have a position that clouds our passion. (We love mobile, so we love Apps!) However, there are compelling reasons why the strongest mobile strategy starts with a mobile website and uses it to build a fan base. Consider the following problems inherent with betting the farm on a Mobile App:

1. The most successful iPhone App which becomes viral enough to be passed around to every user on the platform, ultimately reaches only 7% of thev mobile market. Mobile websites have the potential to reach 100% of mobile web users.

2. There is a lot of buzz about Apps, and those who are looking to sell Apps have been successful propagating the myth that users prefer a mobile App experience. There's enough research out there that shows that most users in fact prefer a mobile website over Mobile Apps.

3. There are very few Apps that exist today that provide something beyond what a mobile website can do. Mobile browser technology is increasingly powerful, and there are many things a mobile website can do that they couldn't previously. For music artists, however, there's nothing about an App that can be duplicated in a mobile web experience, and with much greater reach and engagement.

Fan Unfriendly

4. The primary detraction of Apps for the Recording Artist or Touring Band is that Apps never let you know who your fans are. The mobile website can have a close relationship with inbound text services, including key words and short codes, and outbound text messaging that drives fans to a mobile website. Apps can't do this. These mobile marketing services allow you to capture information from opted-in fans that you can use to later market proactively to them and drive them to your mobile website. For artists committed to the direct-to-fan movement, this information is critical to building and maintaining your fan base, engaging them, marketing to them and selling them your music, merchandise, and show tickets.

5. The benefits of mobile websites for your mobile commerce strategy also overwhelm Apps. iPhone Apps seamlessly drive purchase interest to the iTunes Store, where - you guessed it - you cannot learn who you fans are and who is making these purchases. Mobile website storefronts deliver all of this information - and ALL of the revenue - to the Artist.

There is a segment of your fan base who prefer Mobile Apps and use them regularly. It is exactly for this reason that Adva Mobile offers inexpensive Apps that follow the brand of your Mobile Web and tie into your mobile marketing campaign strategy. All of the Artists using Adva Mobile services that are building their fan base use the Mobile Web to anchor their mobile strategy, and branch out to Apps from there.

More apps may be coming for feature phones, too

There was a great article in CNN Online International Edition yesterday, which you can read at http://bit.ly/eJOlS5, titled "More apps may be coming for feature phones, too."

We like Apps - we now provide iPhone and Android Apps to complement our Mobile Web and mobile marketing platforms. The article points out that "According to comScore, as of January 2011 only about 28% of all mobile phones in the U.S. were smartphones. This means 72% of U.S. cell phones are feature phones, most of which have a broad array of features, including the ability to run Java-based apps." So we're struck by the hype over Apps for recording artists and bands, since they don't reach 72% of your audience.

Article author Amy Garham poinsts out that "One of the great strengths of smartphones is their fully featured, easy-to-use Web browsers. Increasingly these will support HTML5 functionality, which allows Web pages to work more like apps. Since it's much easier and cheaper to develop for the mobile Web than for several native app platforms, a lot of smartphone services that are delivered mainly via apps today probably will migrate to a mobile browser experience."

One question to ask is if the App needs to take advantage of the smartphone feature set to work. If you need access to the phone book, or camera, for example, then a native App is the way to go go. For bands that want to provide what fans are looking for - music, videos, tour dates, news, social net links, etc., you don't need anything the phone offers except the browser. The Adva Mobile platform leverages this strength, providing a consistent experience for fans, whether on iPhone App, Android App or Mobile Web.