I was a guest speaker at the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) Mobile Marketing Boot Camp held on June 24 at the Renaissance Waverly hotel here in Atlanta. Over 250 marketing executives from major companies like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Turner Broadcasting and The Weather Channel attended to learn what they could do to integrate mobile into their marketing campaigns and programs.
I participated on the Emerging Trends panel along with Doug Busk of Whoop and Jorge Fuenzalida of inCode. The panel was moderated by Mack McKelvey, VP of Marketing at Millennial Media (see photo). She did an excellent job posing questions to the panel.
The panel spent a good bit of time giving the marketing professionals in attendance an update on what’s happening in SmartPhones which is where most of the mobile marketing and advertising is taking place.
SmartPhones – with major operating systems and providing app stores – are overtaking feature phones. It was interesting that just close to 100% of the attendees said they were using a SmartPhone. There are 270 million cell phone subscribers in the US. This will grow to over 310 million by 2015. SmartPhones make up 55 million today but will grow to over half of the subscribers within five years. Thus, I expect to see sales in excess of 160 million SmartPhones sold annually by 2015. This includes new (young) subscribers entering the market as well as current subscribers who ‘upgrade’ from a feature phone to a SmartPhone.
AiMA Mobile Marketing Boot Camp Emerging Trends panel, Thursday, June 24, 2010, Renaissance Waverly Hotel, Atlanta. Pictured from left to right are: Alia Lamborghini, Conference Program Chair (Director of Sales at Millennial Media), J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., Principal Analyst, MobileTrax, Jorge Fuenzalida, VP & GM, Strategy & Technology, inCode Telcom Group, Mack McKelvey, Sr. VP of Marketing at Millennial Media (Panel Moderator) and Doug Busk, Exec. VP, Mobile & Business Strategy, Whoop. Not pictured: Susan Wilhelm, Conference Chair (The Weather Channel) and Vivek Singhal, Track Chair (Retail Systems, AT&T Mobility).
I provided four major recommendations regarding mobile marketing that the marketing professionals in attendance should consider in their future marketing programs:
1. Market Across Platforms
Today, there are eight major software platforms active in mobile today: 1) Apple iOS, 2) BlackBerry, 3) Android, 4) Symbian, 5) Palm Web OS, 6) Microsoft Windows Mobile (changing to Windows Phone in October), 7) LiMo (mostly in Asia) and 8) MeeGo (Linux-based OS created from the merger of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Mobilin platforms). These will continue to be successful for a number of years because the market is expanding. When markets expand, they segment. More players keep entering the market until the market stops expanding or slows down. Then, consolidation will take hold, and we’ll see the number of viable mobile platforms reduce to just a 3-4 that will dominate the market.
2. Leverage the Fact that More Time is Being Spent Watching Mobile Screens
There are four digital screens: TV, PC, tablet and phone. The major trend is that (particularly younger) people are spending more time watching mobile screens which is predominantly the phone today but will include tablet devices like the iPad going forward. People carry around their phone and tablets with them during the day. They look at these devices in small ‘snippets’ of free time all day and into the evening. Marketing professionals need to extend their marketing programs and advertising more into the digital screens that people are watching to capture their attention and get them to take action.
3. Market in Mobile Apps as Well as the Mobile Web
Today, the focus of mobile advertising is on the mobile Web. Most major ad networks such as AdMob and Millennia Media manage ad inventory that is placed on mobile web, i.e. when a subscriber uses the mobile web, the ads are inserted there by the major mobile ad networks as these ads are different from the ads placed on pages viewed using a PC or Mac. The display layout is different, the ad inventory is different and the sales of these ads is managed separate from the PC desktop.
Going forward, marketing professionals will need to integrate other forms of mobile marketing into the different applications that subscribers use as well as continue to use SMS (via short codes) for promotions.
4. Use Ad Exchanges and Networks
A number of firms (e.g. AdMarval, Smaato, Mobclix, etc.) have recently created mobile ad exchanges which allow the purchase of mobile ads across the different SmartPhone ad networks. This enables agencies and brand managers to use one supplier to manage a complex set of devices, networks and services.
5. Mobile will Become the Largest Media Market of All Time
While this sounds rather unbelievable right now, just think about the time that people spend carrying around looking at their mobile devices throughout the day. It the one screen that gets more ‘face time’ than any others, although the time span is relatively short, i.e. we tend to look at TV in 30-60 min spans whereas we look at phones in 5-30 seconds (or less if just checking email). When you add up all the individual short snippets of time, there’s more time spent with more intensity on mobile devices than others. Hence, there’s clearly an opportunity for mobile to become the place where more advertising will be placed in order to build brands and influence purchasing behavior.
To end, I have included below a diagram that should help understand the entire mobile advertising ecosystem. It is not meant to be exhaustive but, rather, a good indication of how the different players work in the creation and placement of ads in mobile phones.
Written By:
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.
Principal Analyst
Mobile & Wireless
MobileTrax LLC
gerry.purdy@mobiletrax.com
404-406-5309
Disclosure Statement: From time to time, I may have a direct or indirect equity position in a company that is mentioned in this column. If that situation happens, then I’ll disclose it at that time.