It has occurred to me that lots of people have said that 2008 was the 'year of the mobile'. Its getting to a certain point of the year where people are starting to realise that its almost 2009 and still... mobile isn't much more than a fart in the wind. WAP is still the only mobile option for the vast majority of mobile phone owners, and I think it is generally accepted that WAP is probably the biggest media fail of the century. Its hard to use, amazingly unattractive and costs quite a lot.
[Any price short of next to nothing is too much to be able to access the web in this day and age]
So why all the talk? Well for one thing, there are 46.5 million mobile subscribers in the UK [figure nicked from some Screen Tonic sales document]. That's about 12 million people more than who have access to the proper t'internet. So if online ad spend is over £2 billion and growing, surely that means there is something wrong with mobile ad spend hovering around the £5 mark.
The problem appears to be the fact that WAP is so painful to use, that it really only ever gets any traffic in the UK on a Sunday, when people are in the pub and are looking for football scores. Even mobile ad-sales people admit as much (or at least have done so to me). These people don't hang around either... they log on, check the scores, and log off ASAP. Basically - the world of WAP isn't somewhere that people want to be. Anyway... I've riled on about how rubbish it is in previous blog posts so I'll stop for now.
Having said all this though - I do believe that this year is the year that one could claim that we've reached a 'Tipping Point' [... sorry for using jargon]. A pivotal period of time where we will safely be able to say that mobile media was transformed. Together, the iPhone and Google's Android OS stack will change the way people think about phones and what they're for and very soon we'll figure out good ways of how they will make our lives substantially better. Both are in early stages, but nevertheless this is the year where the rules will change.
Even in these early stages, some websites are announcing that up to 95% of their mobile traffic is coming from iphones despite the fact that these handsets make up a very small minority of all handsets in the UK [sadly I couldn't find exact figures]. This fact alone should be enough for clever media people to know that the best mobile strategy to have now is... to realise that you can't form a strategy until a few questions have been answered.
- Its clear that the real web is going to do very well on the new generation of smart phones but how do you target mobile users on the real web? Facebook have figured it out as its site automatically redirects its users to their iphone site if they're browsing on the iphone or ipod touch.
- Is there a solution to the problem posed by different screen sizes and resolutions with regards to selling mobile banners on real-web?
- Even when we do figure the above out (I reckon its a really simple solution which won't be hard to crack) - What level of effectiveness will banners have on a tiny screen? Will it be a question of a person having to zoom in enough on the ad for it to be counted as an impression?
Hold on! Its not all about banners! Good shout - so what about ad-funded content? Ok so this has a bit more potential - ad funded apps/games/video content could be big. This is limited to the same constraints of branded stuff on desktop web - most advertisers produce pretty rubbish content that most people don't know about and don't really want when they do find it.
[surprisingly there isn't a handy '10 worst online ad campaigns' list to link to.. feel free to make one for me!]
This post is getting far too long so I'll wrap it up with my very early opinions of what UK's mobile landscape will offer advertisers once Android has changed the landscape for the better.
- Buying agencies will start insisting that their inventory isn't served on mobile browsers as the effectiveness of tiny banners will be negligible.
- Advergames will become a massive business; not just for advertisers, but also for self employed coders.
- Video ad formats will work well in this form factor, expect mobile pre-rolls to be big when the mobile providers can actually get mobile connections fast enough to stream decent video content. They'll be damn expensive though... targeted by program type, time of day, location etc.
I hope this helps - please do tell me if you disagree or see things differently.
-tobeconfirmed-
[Any price short of next to nothing is too much to be able to access the web in this day and age]
So why all the talk? Well for one thing, there are 46.5 million mobile subscribers in the UK [figure nicked from some Screen Tonic sales document]. That's about 12 million people more than who have access to the proper t'internet. So if online ad spend is over £2 billion and growing, surely that means there is something wrong with mobile ad spend hovering around the £5 mark.
The problem appears to be the fact that WAP is so painful to use, that it really only ever gets any traffic in the UK on a Sunday, when people are in the pub and are looking for football scores. Even mobile ad-sales people admit as much (or at least have done so to me). These people don't hang around either... they log on, check the scores, and log off ASAP. Basically - the world of WAP isn't somewhere that people want to be. Anyway... I've riled on about how rubbish it is in previous blog posts so I'll stop for now.
Having said all this though - I do believe that this year is the year that one could claim that we've reached a 'Tipping Point' [... sorry for using jargon]. A pivotal period of time where we will safely be able to say that mobile media was transformed. Together, the iPhone and Google's Android OS stack will change the way people think about phones and what they're for and very soon we'll figure out good ways of how they will make our lives substantially better. Both are in early stages, but nevertheless this is the year where the rules will change.
Even in these early stages, some websites are announcing that up to 95% of their mobile traffic is coming from iphones despite the fact that these handsets make up a very small minority of all handsets in the UK [sadly I couldn't find exact figures]. This fact alone should be enough for clever media people to know that the best mobile strategy to have now is... to realise that you can't form a strategy until a few questions have been answered.
- Its clear that the real web is going to do very well on the new generation of smart phones but how do you target mobile users on the real web? Facebook have figured it out as its site automatically redirects its users to their iphone site if they're browsing on the iphone or ipod touch.
- Is there a solution to the problem posed by different screen sizes and resolutions with regards to selling mobile banners on real-web?
- Even when we do figure the above out (I reckon its a really simple solution which won't be hard to crack) - What level of effectiveness will banners have on a tiny screen? Will it be a question of a person having to zoom in enough on the ad for it to be counted as an impression?
Hold on! Its not all about banners! Good shout - so what about ad-funded content? Ok so this has a bit more potential - ad funded apps/games/video content could be big. This is limited to the same constraints of branded stuff on desktop web - most advertisers produce pretty rubbish content that most people don't know about and don't really want when they do find it.
[surprisingly there isn't a handy '10 worst online ad campaigns' list to link to.. feel free to make one for me!]
This post is getting far too long so I'll wrap it up with my very early opinions of what UK's mobile landscape will offer advertisers once Android has changed the landscape for the better.
- Buying agencies will start insisting that their inventory isn't served on mobile browsers as the effectiveness of tiny banners will be negligible.
- Advergames will become a massive business; not just for advertisers, but also for self employed coders.
- Video ad formats will work well in this form factor, expect mobile pre-rolls to be big when the mobile providers can actually get mobile connections fast enough to stream decent video content. They'll be damn expensive though... targeted by program type, time of day, location etc.
I hope this helps - please do tell me if you disagree or see things differently.
-tobeconfirmed-
1 comments:
I think that Mobile will grow, but not to the point where it will eclipse the internet. My own opinion is that it will end up around the same size as radio.
Most people do listen to radio, but it has a very small share of ad spend. Main reason for this is that the ratio of impact between the editorial and the advertising is very large. This means that radio is used as a frequency medium, not an interruption medium.
The small screens means most people will be focusing on a specific task (what's the score \ when the train). Therefore the ads are going to work as branding, but not as direct response.
I think the cool things that phones will be used for will be around the applications. Lynx's recent mobile site was a really good example of using phones creatively and if QR codes become commonplace we will see more sites and more tools being created.
We'll see what happens, but I think you're right that the biggest factor will be the free surfing tariffs.
Post a Comment