Mobile TV Tees Up for Election Day

If you’re not near a TV today, mobile TV services are one alternative to getting your Election Day fix.

Qualcomm’s MediaFLO USA service will be delivering Election Day coverage all day from NBC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN and MTV News. There also promises to be Election Day versions of the Colbert Report and the Daily Show from Comedy Central.

Both Verizon Wireless and AT&T offer MediaFLO services in the United States.

MobiTV also offers programming tomorrow on CNBC, MSNBC, ABC News NOW, C-Span and Fox News. In the United States, MobiTV, which boasts more than 4 million subscribers on more than 350 handsets, is carried by Alltel, AT&T and Sprint.

MobiTV saw some big upticks during the debates leading up to the big day. The first Presidential debate on Sept. 26 saw a 64% increase over the average daily viewing on mobile news channels that carried the debates on MobiTV. The Oct. 2 Vice Presidential debate drew a 102% increase over the average, and the Oct. 7 Presidential debate prompted an 84% increase over the average. The final Presidential debate produced a 111% increase over the average.

Mobile TV service providers say people are not necessary out of their homes when they’re watching mobile TV services. Sometimes they’re tuning in because someone else has commandeered the TV set.

Election Polls Hit Mobile Phones

In yet another sign of tech’s influence on the presidential election, JumpTap and Zogby International are teaming up to poll likely voters – on their cell phones. The surveys have been launched via a mobile ad banner campaign across “premium” mobile sites, the companies announced.

While the poll isn’t intended to be a rigorous, scientific assessment of voters’ likely leanings, the companies are hoping to gain insight into user engagement with polls.
“From an mobile advertising perspective, our goal is to show how relevancy in the mobile marketing channel encourages user engagement and willingness to respond to targeted messaging via their mobile phone,” Paran Johar, CMO of JumpTap, told ADOTAS. “From a polling perspective, we are interested to see if and how, a) users on various publisher sites vote in a distinct way, b) if different handset users have a certain political preference, and c) how mobile polling patterns compare to traditional polls – voter preference based on state, age, race and issues.”

Currently, 43 million U.S. mobile subscribers are using the mobile Internet.
JumpTap reaches more than 170 million mobile subscribers through partnerships with 18 mobile operators and numerous content publishers with its search and advertising solutions.
Zogby International was the most accurate pollster in every one of the last three presidential election cycles, and continues to improve its telephone and interactive methodologies using its own live operator, in-house call center in Upstate New York, and its own secure servers for its online polling projects. In the 2004 presidential election, not only was Zogby’s telephone polling right on the money, its interactive polling also nailed the election as well.