	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

COSIDA MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 12, 2011

DR. BILL SMITH: Let me up front give everybody a quick synopsis of how we're going to do things today. I have a few notes for the group as a whole, and then I'm going to introduce Tim to speak for a few minutes, then Tony to speak for a few minutes.
They represent two very distinctive groups that you may choose to interact with when you're looking at your mobile app. I'll close with a few notes. We're going to leave a lot of time at the end for folks to ask questions.
Certainly interject them as we go along the way, but also know that we're going to save plenty of time for you at the end.
We all started in media relations to disseminate information and get it out to our various constituent publics. That's our number one job. The tools that are available and the ways in which our consumers wish to receive their information are changing, and they're changing drastically.
Going back in time, Web 1.0 was all about our website, throwing information out to the masses and the media. There wasn't a lot of response. Got into Web 2.0, which really became the conversational Internet in which there was no longer an audience. The audience could participate on the same level as the sources, and the sources became on par with the media. It was more of an egalitarian look to things. That was a challenge as we had to begin to adopt more social techniques, interaction, more question and answer with our publics and our fan bases.
We're now firmly in Web 3.0. I would describe that best to you as the mobile web or the semantic web, which is where information goes to the individual, goes to their mobile device, and then marketing, communication, interaction becomes very related to where the person is and what they want. There's a lot of geo-location in that and we'll talk about that in a minute.
The bottom line is, before our primary tools to send out information might have been through the browser or the open Internet, the Google searchable Internet, more and more we're beginning to see a closed structure, a closed Internet, in which you get behind certain walls and programs. One of those key programs is your mobile app. As you consider from a sports information department perspective your role in the mobile app, keep in mind this is one of your primary strategic tools. If you set up your mobile app, you need to think about it in terms of how it's going to play into your overall strategic communication strategy.
Some of the things that I will urge you to do as you get ready to get into the mobile app world, and notice that I didn't really say 'when', this truly is an 'if', and I believe this is from NAIA to BCS, everybody is going to eventually be in the app world, you're going to have to be ready for it. The more you're prepared, the lower your costs will be. I think Tony and Tim will relay that to you. It's also going to impact you daily because, as well all know, it's yet another task devolving to media relations.
If you've built your app well, you're really not going to have a lot of interaction with it on many of the automatic features because what you're doing in a mobile space is repurposing information and data strains that you already have and adding to it some interactivity, then those little special tweaks that make it unique to you.
Our fans can get this information now. They can get it from your website in a browser on their phone, they can get it from an ESPN or regional sports network, they can get it from your local station. But your fans in the desire to become part of the program like to have that little icon on their smart phone that signifies they're a fan at a different level and they want to interact with you through your app.
Most of you have smart phones and use apps. You know the key to creating an effective app is making sure that it's bulletproof. Out in the field, there is nothing more frustrating than your app not working, your app not loading, and the enduser having to scratch their head and say, Gee, is it my phone? Is it the connection? Is it the app?
In the engineering of your apps, there's a reason why, particularly in the IOS space, when we talk about IOS, we're meaning iPad, iPod, iTouch, iPhone, they are extremely particular about making sure that programs have been vetted and approved. I'm sure Tim and Tony will talk about that approval process you have to plan into your timeline of launching an app because that's the number one thing that Apple wants. They want flawless apps that will not break their phone, their universe.
Now, an Android is a lot more open and there isn't that vetting process. That vetting process belongs to you and your provider, whomever they may be. Keep that in mind as you're deploying. Apple's ecosystem is going to force you to make sure you have a very solid app that's very good code. Android is going to allow you to be a little more sloppy. Believe me, even within families, you're going to have dad chose an Android device, mom may have something different. They're going to compare.
As you roll out various different platforms, be sure they're consistent, be sure they have similar navigation, be sure they have consistent look and feel because if you come out with let's just say your IOS app, six months later you have some cool new features that could have been in your Apple app, fans are going to notice that. They'll feel like second-class citizens. Don't hurt your brand accidentally by that.
Let me talk for a minute about graphics and your user interface. These are essential. Again, you've got to think mobile. You cannot have overall elaborate graphics because you only have so much resolution. And, yes, new Apple devices have those retinal displays, some Android devices have similarly gorgeous resolution. It's still roughly two inches wide by three-and-a-half-inches tall. There's only so much information that an enduser can consume in that format.
On a pad device, obviously a different architecture. As you're thinking forward, you will reach a fork in the road in which there will be certain things that fit a pad presentation and you will adapt accordingly. There will be certain things that fit a mobile phone adaptation. You will not necessarily have the two being exactly the same. You have to think in your second tier strategy of those two layers.
What goes into your app? Well, obviously your news. That's an easy repurposing, RSS feeds, that are coming into your website. Statistics are important. But, again, think about your end consumer. Those are all things that live on your website and are easy to be repurposed. What about end gain information? CoveritLive is a fantastic tool to integrate. Facebook, Twitter, other interactives that allow an individual to be at the event through their mobile device.
Also think about your fans that are at the event using their mobile device. This is an excellent tool if properly managed to assist your event management personnel in gathering information about problems within a facility.
Also a critical tool in relaying life safety information in the event of weather or other incidents within your facilities. As you're planning, make sure you keep that thought in the back of your mind.
Interaction is a huge part of successful mobile apps. Think of your Twitter feeds, Facebook within your app, CoveritLive, game day interactions. You'll say to yourself as I roll those off, Hey, great, there's a Facebook app, there are Twitter readers, CoveritLive has an app. Why would I want to build those individual pieces inside my app? Because most of your endusers want one-stop shopping.
This has been one of the things that has been a great revelation to me throughout the changes that we've done through iHog back at the University of Arkansas, was learning that while initially my thought was that very one. Okay, we'll add Twitter and Facebook because that would be easy to drop into the app. We'll add CoveritLive because that's easy to drop into the app. People aren't leaving your app, and that's a good thing, because for your advertisers, that latency within the app is crucial. Build in things that you think obviously might be outside.
Other things to keep in mind are, remember, most of the smart phones have GPS. Parking lot maps can be interactive, drop a pin at my tailgate, at my seat. Fans can know how to find other fans. You're helping to foster the community by building those types of items in, stadium diagrams, help numbers, customer service through your Twitter feed all can live inside the apps, are all reasons within your athletic department to reach out to other areas and bring them into your app so they know they're benefitting in a customer service sense.
A couple of last items before we bring in our developers. Don't overlook your cool factor. Being different is important to your fans. If it wasn't, we'd all be black and gold, we'd all be Tigers. Everybody has a different mascot, colors, fight song, a different, unique thing about their school. Make sure that you've got impressive splash screens, graphics that reflect that.
Here is where one of the great pitfalls of apps comes in. It doesn't take long for fans to communicate among themselves and figure out that you've (indiscernible) somebody else's code. For somebody not familiar, you're basically taking a template, changing colors, mascot, just a few items, and rolling it out again. This is obviously very economical for the end user. It is extremely profitable to producers. But keep in mind that, just like you would want certain customizations in a media guide, website or a video presentation, you want to make sure there are unique items within your app that reflect your school.
One of the great ways to do this is an Easter Egg. I'll tell you the Easter Egg we built into iHog and it became hugely successful.
The idea behind and Easter Egg, it's a little feature you don't tell anybody about, users have leaked to them. Our Easter Egg was with the accelerometer going into the iPhone 3 level, you shake, and you shake it three times and it starts to play the fight song for the University of Arkansas. This is simple, easy, but it was something that fans could share among themselves.
Little hidden things that you can build in, traditions you can reflect through your phone, then making sure within your phone you have a section with wallpapers that can be loaded out of that app for all of your sports. Another little customization, doesn't take time, cost a lot of money, but will have a great long-term impact.
With those basics about some things to think about within the media relations office, I want to bring in our two folks that are with us today to talk to you about building apps.
There are basically three ways you're going to achieve your app. The first is that you're going to have your current digital provider, be it your website company, as part of their contract are going to require or you're locked into them providing your app. I think the information you're going to learn today is going to be good to take back to them if they are your default provider.
If you do not have that option or if you want to go a different route, I've asked the two gentlemen to join us today that represent the two broad areas of the ways you would build your app if it's not simply provided to you by your website company.
First being Tim Lee. He's with Revolution Tech. Revolution Tech is a custom app company. They are the company that built iHog. They've built apps for other public and private institutions.
The idea when you go with a custom app developer is that's exactly what you're getting: 100% custom app development. It is the most expensive way to go. It is also, obviously, the most customizable way to go.
When we move on from Tim, Tony is going to talk to you about you can get that customization within sort of an ecosystem that can generate levels of interactivity and levels of customization.
I'm going to ask them to each go for about five minutes here and sort of provide for you, the media relations professionals, some checklists if you're going to go with a custom developer, if you're going to go with a system that allows you to develop an app, here are the things that you need to prepare to make yourself more efficient and to save money and to have a best outcome.
So we'll first start. Tim, if you could give us about five minutes and talk to those items that the SIDs need to think about.
TIM LEE: Thank you very much. I really like what you're talking about with the Easter Egg, just to touch on that for one second. That was such an impact. It created a buzz. People talked about it. It was a simple way to draw attention to the app. It caused that word-of-mouth.
One of the things you have to know about iPhone apps, the average user has 75 apps on their iPhone. Word-of-mouth is the way a lot of apps get downloaded. Any buzz you create is important.
I want to talk about a couple things. Really starting with what to look for in a developer. Make sure the developer is established, they have good references, and they're very passionate in the technology about which they're doing. That helps create forward thinking, pushing innovation, constantly being involved with the daily changes of the smart phone app environment.
Just like you referred to with the Internet, in the '90s, websites were pretty bad. They just weren't good. About 2000, websites were singing and dancing. Today you can spread your wings and make your website fly. Well, with iPhone apps, we're seeing that pace happen faster.
The original iPhones come out, when Apple first came out, they had to tap bars across the bottom. Then we started using more branding of that unique college logo, which is very important.
Make sure your developer has a good understanding of app development, the planing that goes into it. I like to use the analogy of building a home. You have to design a blueprint before you ever start building that house. The last thing in the world is, after moving into the house, thinking I should have put a window right there. You want to have good planning. You want your design to be done with forward thinking so it's as scaleable as possible. It's a constantly changing, living product.
So those are very important to kind of really have your planning in place, knowing what you want your app to achieve, and how you want to basically structure your content to go into that app.
Make sure your developer is proven, someone who is established, it's not their first rodeo, they have the ability of understanding the app store, Apple, the regulations, the rings of fire you have to jump through, understanding the Android, different items that go into there.
Make sure you establish good communication between a liaison on your side and the project manager. It saves so much time and in return saves so much savings of money when you have good communications established.
Questions asked before beginning your app. You need to first identify if your app is going to be free or for sale. How do you want to monetize the app. Does your university have any previous agreements that would prevent you from collecting revenue from that app, anything like that. Does your developer understand college sports, everything from a way the fan reacts to information, information they want to receive, it's very important.
Some of the key features when you get into custom design are not only the basics of push notification, analytics, the Easter Eggs, your bells and whistles we consider low hanging fruit things. Can grandma download this app and understand it? Can she find what she's looking for? Real common sense in the way the information is laid out.
Then you want to get it to how are you going to do your radio broadcast. Do you want more dynamic video by sport, by highlights, by press conferences to be able to have a control panel that you can log on to from a website securely without any additional costs, you can control that content. Having real-time play-by-play, having a gridiron on the app that shows a bar that tells me how this particular drive is going. What's the play-by-play for the sport. What are the shot selections made on the basketball court. What are the goals made in soccer, things like that.
You have social interaction. That is obviously old. Definitely not ending anytime soon. Let's say I'm at the College World Series, I want to put out a shot to the Hog fans that we're tailgating in Section D. There are business travelers that want to get together to watch a basketball game at a bar in downtown Atlanta for the USC game or whatever it may be. To be able to do that interaction is a very vital thing. It's apps like that and features like that that cause your user activity to be high, the time on the app to be high, that in turn helps you to generate revenue for that.
Very important questions that people aren't thinking about, I think Bill touched on this, what is your cellular and wi-fi access in your stadium. Will people be able to use your app during a football game. You get that much cell access, you can't even download an app or know of a play-by-play. You need to know the situation, where they're going to use it, how they're going to use that.
DR. BILL SMITH: Thanks, Tim. Let's move on and have Tony come in and talk about Mobile Roadie and their system.
TONY PEDRO: We play in the space of online, do-it-yourself mobile app creators, with most of your solutions you should be able to jump online and create your iPhone, Android and BlackBerry app in just a matter of hours.
I would say when you first get into this sort of app idea, you decide maybe you want to go it alone, maybe you want to create your own app, not go the custom route, obviously you would create a short list of different vendors, hopefully us being one of them.
I would say one of the first things you should do is do an apples-to-apples comparison. Obviously with that is going to be a price-to-price comparison. Sometimes you'll find there are some app builders out there, they don't give the app away for free, they're giving it away for 50 or 100 dollars. Look at the features and functionality that come with that. You kind of get what you pay for.
Once you have gone through that process and done your comparison, you have decided on a short list of two or three vendors, online app creators to move forward with, I'd say really focus on four things:
One is the increase in ticket sales, increasing sponsorship and ad sales, the third is increasing merchandise sales, and the fourth is obviously increasing your fan base. Those are four key indicators that we try to promote. Focus on those four and increasing those across the board.
To really help add value to those and help increase those, we have four other items that we like to really kind of promote within our apps, within our user base. Those are really based on interactivity.
Dr. Smith, our colleague here Tim, has been focusing on the interactivity of the apps. I think everybody has been talking about that. Interactivity is absolutely key. So you need to make sure in that original list of features and functionality, there's a robust list of possibilities for interactivity.
The four points, interaction points, I'd like to highlight:
One is the ability to run contests. For example, maybe have a top users board. Men love to compete with each other. Having a competition between the fans on who's using the app the most, having that very apparent, having that as an entire section by itself so you can see the top users of the app by week, day, or overall. Run a weekly contest. Whoever is in the top five get free season tickets for the next year. Running context is key.
Another point would be I'd say achievement badges. I don't know if everybody knows how achievement badges work, but basically you can award badges, like a gold or platinum badge for using the app. For example, you can set thresholds, change thresholds, as well. For example, if you make a hundred comments you get the gold badge, if you make 500 comments you get the platinum badge. They can show them off in the app to other fans.
They will work better if there's some sort of incentive behind them. Put a coupon behind the badge for a free drink or a link to another website that's only accessible by earning that badge. You'll find user engagement goes up and people are striving to earn that badge.
The third point is sharing. Make sure that your apps have sharing facilities all throughout the apps. Say, for example, you're looking at the bio of one of the players. Being able to share that is key. Looking at the schedule, maybe looking at the detail of an upcoming game, just as you're looking through the app detail, you see what time the game is. Being able to share that information easily and quickly is key.
One other point, the fourth, related to interactivity, is being able to hide and lock things within the app, to promote people to go seek out that content and unlock it. A very good example of that is, let's say for example you hide and lock a video. It's a one-on-one interview with the team captain. You hide and lock that video, send out a TR code around the stadium on a poster, or email. You have a call to action. Download our app and scan the code to unlock the hidden video.
These sort of different features and functionalities promote interactivity. When you see interactivity go up, you see increase in ticket sales, merchandise sales, sponsorship, and your fan base.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is all of that is interconnected there. One key point is interactivity of it all.
DR. BILL SMITH: Tony, thanks.
As we get ready to open up for questions, there's something I want to bring home for everybody that you heard both Tim and Tony say over and over. They kept saying 'monetize.' Here are some of the keys in that.
Your conference may own a lot of your video rights. You probably still own your audio. Emphasize getting audio in there as an interactivity and now you have a premium that can be locked or tied to your website membership, okay? Apple reached 10 billion downloads last year through the life of IOS. It got to 15. The next 5 billion came in the last six months. This is ramping up exponentially. Injections from ad agencies as they look forward, 80% of the future new ad revenue will shift to mobile in the next three years.
So building these apps where you can have advertising in there that will be of value to your athletic department and your rights-holder, if you have one, is going to be key. The reason I mention audio, and these guys have talked a lot about interaction, is about time on app.
You will hear from folks that video doesn't need to stream, audio doesn't need to stream, because people are your mobile. Well, I would offer the counterpoint. I can see that our fans at the University of Arkansas in the last two years were spending an average of 41 minutes on page participating with a CoveritLive blog, participating with just text. Some of these fans were also listening while they were doing the text.
But if you go to any marketing person and say, I've got a product that can deliver you over five-minute latency, not 41-minute average, just over five, a lot of them over one-minute latency, the interactivity, the toys, the games, the unlocks, the Easter Eggs, the entertainment value that, again, you want to see that being managed out of the media relations office because that brings value to this product and to your office as the strategic communicator are super important.
One last thing, I want to talk about cost. This is the sticker shock. You're provided a free app. It may likely be exactly what it was worth. If you're going to go in systems that allow you to build your own, you're going to have to pay a fee, you're going to have to spend some money and more importantly some time. You're looking at four figures to do it right. If you're doing custom work, to be honest, you're starting at five and you're really getting into the mid five figures to do it with a lot of the bells and whistles.
That's a shocking amount of money. That immediately leaves a lot of our participants on our call to say, That's just a BCS thing.
I want you to think back five and ten years ago. Many of you didn't blink an eye at spending 40, 50, 60, 100 thousand dollars on your lead sport's media guide that may or may not have had a distribution of three, four, five, maybe ten thousand if you were fortunate.
If you could spend that kind of money and know that you're going to bring in an interactive amount of fans in the neighborhood of 50, 60, 70 thousand, the cost per user is dramatically lower.
Many of you are not printing like you used to. Those are funds that can be shifted to digital projects like your apps. The difference is the app, we spent in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 over a year and a half to develop iHog. But we knew we could have monetized that back easily. And certainly with the participation, because we had download numbers well north of 60 thousand users, that's justification for the expenditure.
The Internet is all about metrics. Understand those metrics and that will allow you to maybe have a little bit more in a budget and build a little bit bigger and more ambitious app than you initially thought you could.
We've sort of reached that point at which we wanted to stop and hold out about 20 minutes for folks to ask questions.

Q. Where you were talking about the price point, what is an average cost that the schools are charging their fans per app? What are some price points on that end?
DR. BILL SMITH: I think that you go from free to 99 cents to 4.95 and up. The important thing to remember about pricing is it will be a barrier to people joining in. You see a lot of folks going with a light version. By the way, I think Tony and Tim would agree with me, one of the worst things you can do is put 'light' on your free version. If you're going to have two versions, you're going to want to have premium and non-premium. If you put 'light' on your free one, you're telling your fans what it's worth.
The app universe has become so accustomed to 'light' equals 'crippled', they won't do it. You may have a great level of information and interaction, you don't have streaming audio or video, specialty items, they won't participate in that and you'll lose the chance to have that big number of downloads and participants that can be turned around to an advertiser.
Basically you're either going to try to make your money up front. Here is a thing to keep in mind. Apple is going to take 30% of every dollar. Whatever you make, it's not a 99 cent app to you, it's maybe 61 cents.

Q. Do you see the use of fundraising via the mobile apps, texting for a campaign at a home event or something like that, as a coming thing? And what would be the convenience factor in setting that up?
DR. BILL SMITH: That's a great question. I'll toss it to Tony in a moment. But here is the way I would say it. The Obama campaign showed everyone how you can really garner large amounts of money raised socially. Through your app is a great way to start planning and doing it. Again, that's involving another corner of your athletic department, bringing them into the app, finding how your development people want to interact with that, make sure it's a philosophy they're comfortable with.
A lot of times you'll have folks that don't feel like they want to have essentially retail fundraising. The political parties used to think that way until they saw what happened in the last cycle.
Something, though, I want to throw in here that Tim reminded me of, I just want to reemphasize this, because this is personal experience. You brought 78,000 people to Razorback Stadium at the beginning of cell phones becoming ubiquitious because there wasn't the infrastructure there. We made conscious decisions to not build things into iHog revisions until we got out of football season because we knew if we had six thousand, ten thousand iPhone users hit the system at once, it wasn't going to be ready for it and we were going to have the frustration level jump in.
Once we got to baseball season, we always rolled out our new interactions there to test the ability of our cell towers around the facility to handle the load. When it succeeded, we knew we could implement something next year.
If you're going to have end game, make sure you have robust cell service in your venues.
Tony, can you talk a little bit about that idea of fundraising through the app.
TONY PEDRO: I think it's a great idea. We've seen it with some of our apps. One way to provide that is on the home screen with the app. We can have the home screen directly I guess market or promote fundraising and just hyperlink the homepage. If you want to donate, click here. You click, it opens an in-app browser where you can go donate. It's a quick and easy way to provide that facility to an app. We're seeing more and more organizations that are interested in doing that. I think it's a relevant question because it's something that's up-and-coming.
DR. BILL SMITH: I'll share this one other idea that you may take back to your development folks. There is a website called Causes.com. You need to get your organization registered there. It is a quick and dirty way to begin some social media fundraising. I've helped a couple of organizations that are non-profits that I work with, am a board member of, to get this going.
Basically through Facebook you can decide that on your birthday instead of presents through causes you want all your friends to give money to the Ozark Museum of History in Northwest Arkansas is one of the ones we did. You've got to get your development people to get registered in Causes.com first.

Q. What if you are not at a school, perhaps you're in a conference or national office, what type of things should or could your app do since you don't have multiple events during the week?
DR. BILL SMITH: Good question. A lot of that will be determined upon what rights the conference owns. Looking at say the Southeastern Conference, where I was most recently at, they owned copyright to all of the video and copyright to all essentially live action of sports.
There's a vast amount of things that can then be brought back out during the play of the week, those types of things. If your conference doesn't have those things accessible to you, you'll have a challenge because getting traffic through is difficult, again, because most fans are not interested in the conference or the national organization, they are interested in an individual school.
But there are things that your conference does during the week that give you that opportunity. And I go right back to what I just said. Whatever your schedule might be now for, say, your player of honors, perhaps they need to be formatted and staggered so every day of the week it's a different sport getting highlighted on the front of the app. Here are today's players of the week from the conference. That's a pretty easy one to get going.

Q. What type of applications do y'all see for the use of mobile GPS apps, where can those fit into athletics?
DR. BILL SMITH: Well, I think that those are huge for athletics, particularly SCVNGR. I had it as a note to get in later if you're not familiar with it. It's SCNVGR. It allows you to have games and the interactivity that Tony mentioned and Tim had mentioned as well. Basically it's things like this. Check in at the facility is so many points. Check in in the first half is so many more points. Check in at halftime. Check in after the game. Check in with a picture of your favorite player. Check in with a comment from the game. You can make these points structured weighted. Let's say it's one point to check in at the football game but it's 10 points to check in at volleyball or soccer and it's 20 points to be checking in at the end.
Well, somebody could cheat. Not with the GPS function. And with SCVNGR in particular, and also if you're going to do it as custom development, making sure that within Four Square there are some holes in that that people can game your system.
You're basically trying to create a reward system that motivates people to go to your other events. Just like your frequent flyer miles can be X discount at the student book score, Y discount for an upcoming event, one I was championing before leaving, you would trade in your points for a spot in the line at football games, which might be one of the most precious commodities on any campus with whatever your lead sport is.

Q. For mobile applications that go beyond strictly texts, do you feel it's more worthwhile for departments to spend money on video streaming that doesn't have play-by-play or just audio streaming, if you had to make a choice?
DR. BILL SMITH: Well, I can tell you what the choice was at the University of Arkansas. I'll let Tim chime in a little bit about how you have to do that repurposing.
We knew we didn't own the rights anymore. That was a conference thing. You weren't going to stream video from a live sense in events. We owned the audio. We knew if we spent our money developing a really solid way to hear play-by-play, hear the Razorback Sports Network through the app, we wouldn't have spent money that eventually might be shifted to a conference app or some other area. That was a sort of rights-based decision.
That said, I believe that streaming video is very important for your pad because a lot of times that's on wi-fi and not truly mobile. Think about your fans again. If I'm walking through the airport, I'm going to have a hard time watching video, but I desperately want to keep up with what's going on 'fill-in-the-blank' women's basketball today. I can hold that phone up or more important put your earbuds on and walk through the airport and listen to the play-by-play just like it was a transistor radio.
Tim, you want to maybe comment quickly about compressing the audio so it comes through the cell towers.
TIM LEE: First off radio, by far, is the first way you go. Just because like you said. Radio you can access driving down the road, walking through an airport, whatever. Video being number two on the list if you had to prioritize them.
Make sure that the video you have that you're broadcasting out is capable. A lot of colleges we ran into are using MP3 over RTMP protocol, which is Flash Media. Flash Media doesn't play on the iPhone. We had to go through a lot of re-encoding, translating to get that broadcast. That was a big challenge at the time. There are some new solutions for that.
But you just got to really kind of look into what it takes to broadcast, having that program correct so when you're off air you have filler content so you don't have dead space, how you're going to go back to monetizing, are you going to charge them to have access to that broadcast, is it going to be included? Having live broadcasts of the game is a beautiful aspect of the everything iPhone app, smart phone development.
DR. BILL SMITH: And speaking of the monetization, this is going back to the original question of how much to charge. IHog is free. If you want to listen to the streaming audio, you have to be a Razor Vision member. Do the math. I could sell the app for 4.95 or 9.95 and I get that money once, and I have to share it with Apple first, then I have to split it with rights providers. Or I can give you a free app and make you buy a month-to-month subscription. It actually saw our Razor Vision membership go up because people were wanting to activate their iHog app. For whatever reason they weren't doing the math and realizing instead of paying 4.95 or 9.95, they were playing 11.95 a month, four and five months. Split that money, we're talking about real cash. You're going after dimes and nickels by charging people up front. Get them to subscribe premium and you're getting real dollars.
TIM LEE: Bill, one more thing on that. Apple doesn't take a cut of that 11.95 either.
Everyone likes to focus on whether or not they sell the app for 99 cents or 4.99. Selling the apps is probably the least way you can make money from an app. Giving it free and having other ads, broadcast subscriptions, in-app purchases for merchandise sales is really where you hit your jackpot.
Apple created something June last year. Steve Jobs took the stage, said the average iPhone user looks at 30 minutes of content a day in their phone. He stated if I put a banner in front of every iPhone app user and I rotated that banner every three minutes, I'd display one billion banner views a day. Five weeks later Apple sold $600 million worth of ads and created the iAd network which enables publishers to publish very cool, sexy apps and offer them for free, enabling the developer of the app to make money from it, the school in this case.
If you think about radio broadcasts. Let's say a game is three minutes. If I put a banner to the iAd and that banner rotated every three minutes, Apple gives us 60% of the iAd revenue. You would get $720 a game through three hours. If you have five thousand subscribers, you would make $36,000 a game. When you start talking about the money that can be made from an app if you do it right is pretty incredible.
There are apps out there that sell iAds make up to $50,000 a quarter. You have the subscribers and users of the app. With college sports, the amount of information you have to broadcast and display in your apps, you have the users. If you do it right, it's not hard to monetize and be very profitable from your app in a very fast manner. Those are just some real important things to know.

Q. Can you talk to a comparison of a mobile app versus a mobile version of your website? Do you need both?
DR. BILL SMITH: There is no comparison. I'm going to be blunt about this. That's not acceptable anymore to the end user. The end user, again, if you're asking somebody to use Safari in the IOS universe, you have got an inferior app product. If your app launches Safari more than specialty things, like just to show news, that's not really an app, that's a redirection of an RSS feed.
The enduser wants the experience that comes from being inside the app. Wired had their big covered magazine article a few months ago about 'The Internet is Dead'. What they were talking about was the open Internet that is browser-based is losing share to closed pieces of the Internet, Facebook being kind of a closed part of the Internet to Google. And apps even more so.
Fans want an immersive experience. Frankly, if your provider isn't giving you an M dot right now, you need to be thinking about a different provider because that's as basic as providing streaming and video these days. That's not a special add-on and should not be a special thing.
The mobile version of your website is not the same thing as an app. You have to play in the app space with true applications. I mean, I'm really going to be really blunt with something on an answer, but I feel strong to that one.
TIM LEE: It goes back to what I was saying with the speed. The Internet came out in the '90s. It took till the late 2000s to really start taking off. The speed with the growth of the creativity and movement to apps is so much faster, exponentially grown, so much faster than the web did. When mobile started first becoming relevant, websites thought we need to shift to mobile websites. Basically the gap for that was so small, it got skipped. That technology got skipped and got replaced by the apps so we're beyond that now.

Q. Tony, you want to chime in on that?
TONY PEDRO: There's actually five reasons why I usually recommend an app over a mobile website. The first one is usually enhanced access, having the advantages of running offline and having advantages of the GPS locator, the gyroscope, the accelerometer, things like that. You just can't make use of those features with a mobile website.
The second is push notifications. One of the great things about mobile apps is having the ability to send out a geo-targeted push notification to app users who can geo-target an push notification down to one mile around the stadium and tell them go to Exit No. 1 to get your free T-shirt. Can't do that with a mobile website.
Another point is the user experience, cover scroll, animations, transitions, things like that aren't really possible. The fourth is the home screen icon. With the home screen icon you can really bookmark your own app and have that to click on whenever you want, don't have to go to a website or browser to search for your website. They're very apparent on your phone there.
The last point is your own world, having everything about you with the mobile app, the content, users, brand, everything is right there in the mobile app. So starting off with everything in your own world, you get stuck in your own world and can do everything within the app.
Those are the five points we like to promote when we have the discussion of why go for an app versus a mobile website.
DR. BILL SMITH: Tony, that's a perfect set of points.
To close that question up, one last thing. Keep in mind your app is not a static thing. We published websites. We published media guides. We published notes. It's like one-and-done. There may be streaming data, life stats and things. But really the website just kind of was content. Your app truly is, I think Tim was the one that used the line, it's 'living software', it is programmed, it is designed, as Tony said, it's that world that you're sort of making. It's like a game environment. You have to script that. That's what sets it apart from just the information that's out there.
You're vacuuming up all your information and data and repurpose it into this app. You're not going to have to generate new things beyond the interactives. But it really is, you know, University of X world, and you want to make it as cool and slick and singularly environmentally independent so that it is that true app and give the enduser that experience.

Q. For those designing a mobile app, some app designers have found dealing with the Apple folks frustrating. Is there an opportunity to provide an app through a third-party store?
DR. BILL SMITH: Well, the answer in the IOS universe is no unless you wish to just have the first really successful app for phones that have been jail broken. Once you get to IOS-4 and as we go forward, Apple is really closing the door on jailbreaking. Tim mentioned it earlier. You have to find an application provider that understands that process because that's where Apple will break you. That's why you need to liaison to guide you through that. That's the expertise you're getting when you reach out to those type of folks.
I'd just like to close and say thanks to Tim and Tony. Both of them represent the two great classes outside of your Internet provider that may give you your app. Again, I think they have now given you, the media relations professionals, good information if you are simply going to have that decided for you. If not, those are your two great options: total custom or a system that allows you to build your own custom.
The one thing that I've got to stress to you, it's not a matter of 'if', it truly is a matter of 'when' your university is going to get its app out into that universe.
TIM LEE: We've covered a lot of food for thought. As we get into this, you start to scratch the surface of all the things you need to ask. Because you haven't built an app before, because you haven't built a custom house before, the first time you do it, you'll think about things in the middle of the night. Write them down, brainstorm those ideas, really work through the process. It goes back to planning it first.
As you start digging deep into this, you'll start being more aware of things and it will all start to digest and make more sense.
TONY PEDRO: I agree. Obviously download some apps, find two or three that you would say are your favorites, then start building your list of features and functionality out of those, see what you can build into the apps. Listen to some colleagues or friends. Word-of-mouth. Start playing around with them. Dig into the apps, look at all the possibilities with sharing and interactivity. Make sure your app is as interactive as possible because you'll see increases across the board on all the points I touched on earlier. That's it in a nutshell from my side.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297

COSIDA MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 12, 2011

Tim Lee

Tony Pedro

Bill Smith