Is Mobile Marketing the "Best" Advertising Channel?

There's a very good reason many content providers, marketers, device manufacturers and application developers  are intrigued by the mobile platform as an advertising venue.

Some researchers say it can outperform every other alternative, including "fixed" online channels, by quite some margin.

Some of us would quibble about whether it is so vastly superior on some dimensions. Some of us would argue TV is just as powerful as mobile on the "emotion" scale, and that lumping "print" in the same category as 'TV" makes no sense. Print is a "lower emotion" channel, compared to TV or even radio.

And this matrix is only a look at "potential" effectiveness. Advertising effectiveness depends on the quality of the creative material and many other factors beyond the mere choice of channel. Still, the potential reach and effectiveness of mobile marketing is clear, if perhaps overstated in this analysis.

Social Networking Drives Mobile Web Activities

Without much fanfare, social networking has become a "killer app" for the mobile Web use by smartphone or feature phone users.

Or at least that is what one would surmise based on recent data from GroundTruth, which shows that more than 60 percent of U.S. mobile Web page views are to social networking sites.

A separate study by the GSM Association shows that in December 2009, about half the time they actually were using their mobile Internet access, U.K. mobile users accessing the Internet from their mobiles were going to Facebook.

So far, social networking is developing as the killer app for mobile broadband.

Why Do People Watch Online Video?

Cord cutting, the substitution of online video for cable, satellite or telco TV, is not the reason most people watch online video, a new study by Nielsen suggests.

In fact, online video watching competes most with digital video recorder viewing. People essentially are time shifting their viewing, not replacing linear TV as the "cord cutting" thesis suggests.

We are in Uncharted Territory, But Get Ready for Change

This graph shows U.S. job losses from the start of the recent recession, in percentage terms. As you can see at a glance, the recession has been an outlyer. Click chart for a larger view.

As they say, "we are in uncharted territory." I use the past tense deliberately, meaning only that by most measures, we passed through the bottom as early as March 2009 and are now, in halting fits and starts, in a growth mode.

So it might be time to stop talking about "recession-induced" behavior, even though we are, by the most recent estimate, down about 8.1 million jobs since the recession began. All other things being equal, it makes most sense to look for signs of changing behavior as the recovery takes hold, as slow as that might be.

As Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky once quipped, you don't skate to where the puck is now; you skate to where the puck is going to be. The adage, as it applies to most providers of goods and services, is to anticipate rebuilding, rather than extrapolating from recession behavior permanently into the future.

The main thing now, despite the severity of the downturn, is how behavior will start changing. It is as important to anticipate what people will do, instead of gearing one's business to "how they have been recently behaving."

The reason is simple: by definition, the economic background is changing, meaning people will start to have opportunities to change recent behaviors. As the economy recovers, new discretionary spending is going to build. It will be spent somewhere. So the issue is anticipating how, and skating to the puck.

What Does Text Message Actually Cost a Heavy Teen User?

The frivolous answer to the question "what does text messaging cost a teenager" is "nothing," because a parent is paying. Perhaps a better way to phrase the question is "what does text messaging cost the parental unit paying for the service?"

Nielsen might have an answer. The research firm analyzes more than 40,000 mobile bills every month to determine what consumers actually are spending. The results suggest "staggering" levels of usage.

American teenagers are consuming 3,146 messages a month, which translates into more than 10 messages every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school.

Even the under-12 users aer sending 1,146 messages per month, which is almost four text messages per waking hour that they are not at school.

One thought you already should be having is that there is no way usage at that level is occurring on an "a la carte" basis. And you are right. Only a very small percentage of people who text message are doing so on a pay-as-you-go basis, which typically means a 20-cent per message rate.

Most users have buckets of usage. Because of that, most users are paying about one cent for each message.

From the first quarter of 2008 to the third quarter 2009, the effective price of a text message has decreased by 47 percent, in large part because so many users now are on unlimited or heavy texting plans.

Global Reach of North American Mobile Sites: 80%

About 80 percent of North American mobile Web sites have substantial traffic from around the world, a study by Motally finds.

"If you divide the world into seven regions--North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa , Middle East and Oceania--80 percent of mobile sites get traffic from at least three regions outside their own. About 72 percent of applications are used in four or more regions, Motally says.

“Any investment in the mobile Web hould at least consider a global audience,” Motally says.

About 53 percent of sites and 41 percent of apps in Motally’s study drew significant visitors from all seven regions.

The other important finding is that feature phones, particularly in regions like South America, Asia and even Europe, are important devices for mobile Web traffic.

While feature phones aren’t a major component of U.S. mobile websites, they are responsible for over 20 percent of traffic in Europe and for over 40 percent in Asia and South America.

AT&T Seen Keeping iPhone Exclusivity Until 2012

AT&T will likely keep its exclusive hold on the iPhone for the next 12-18 months, rather than ending its exclusivity in mid-2010, says Jonathan Chaplin of Credit Suisse.""

"We believe there is a 75 percent probability that AT&T keeps exclusivity in 2010," says Chaplin.
"We conclude that there is only a 50 percent probability" that AT&T loses its exclusivity agreement at the end of 2010.

Chaplin also believes AT&T can afford to compensate Apple at a rate high enough that Apple could reasonably conclude it has essentially nothing to gain by allowing Verizon or other carriers to sell the iPhone.

http://gigaom.com/2010/02/04/att-seen-keeping-the-iphone-through-2011-analyst/