A Comscore study on the state of the US mobile market was just released and shows that the iPhone’s popularity still continues to grow. The iPhone has increased its market share from 24.1% in September 2009 to 25.3% in December 2009. The Blackberry which has always held a dominant position has declined from 42.6% to 41.6% of the market between September and December. The fact that both Apple and Android were able to increase their share of the market while all other smart phones decreased gives us good reason to believe that in the next few years these platforms will be the two dominant players. Mix the high market share numbers of Apple with their strong click through rates for advertising and you have a very attractive medium to engage consumers on. These are all signs that having a mobile strategy whether you are a publisher or an advertisers is a must in 2009, even if it is just part of your trial budget.
Happy Monday morning everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend. I know everyone is busy getting ready for the week ahead, so instead of giving you a few long posts I have decided to share some of my weekend reading with you.
“Far from being a one-trick pony, mobile is effective in rich environments like mobile video, minimal environments like SMS and the area in between covered by mobile display,” she said. “Add to this the findings that all verticals are seeing mobile impacts greater than online campaigns and the arguments for not adding mobile to a media plan fall away.”
Through partnerships with several carrier networks and brands such as Coca-Cola, NBC Universal is bringing its 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games to the mobile medium.
NBC has launched several new mobile initiatives and rebranded its other wireless properties to promote the sporting event. The entertainment giant’s coverage of the Olympic Games spans its various television networks and content channels to bring as much programming and interaction to consumers.
It is quite clear from recent market activity – Google buying AdMob and Apple absorbing Quattro Wireless, Apple iPad and Google Nexus One launches, eBay’s record $500 million in mobile commerce last year – that mobile is no longer considered a niche medium.
Buoyed by results of mobile campaigns initiated last year, many brands are expected to ramp up their spending from six figures to seven. Richard Ting, mobile chief at No. 1 interactive agency R/GA, projects that mobile budgets will grow this year between 100 percent and 150 percent.
An interesting post came up on Mobile Marketing Watch yesterday about the resurgence of application sponsorships. The post cites an article written by Steve Smith of MediaPost. I will let Steve do the heavy lifting, but in summary the article states that not every brand translates well into a mobile application. If you do not have an idea for a mobile app that adds value to your brand, don’t just build something for the hell of it! You will spend big money on an app that hardly ever gets downloaded and even if it does the retention rates will probably be so low that it does not justify the costs. Instead, find an existing mobile media application - i.e. a newspaper app – whose retention rates are usually through the roof (74% after 30 days) and pay for a run of app sponsorship. You will be able to, at a fraction of the time and cost, leverage the eye balls that someone else has been able to retain and still embed actionable functionality that will give you all the benefits of having your own app. If you have any questions on what I mean about embedding actionable functionality please contact me. A number of the ad units that Spreed is helping to build can be considered apps within apps (actionable functionality) and when grouped together with the sponsorship costs are much less expensive and will provide much more bang for your buck! Here is the article from MediaPost:
Now that a bit of the fervor over branded apps has died down, it has become clearer to a lot of marketers that not every brand translates easily into the kind of utility consumers really want on their phone. Some publishers tell me that they are getting a lot of interest from marketers who want to be sole sponsor of new branded media apps. Instead of buying up a new audience for their branded app, they prefer to align with a tool and a media source brand that has already built an audience.
Mobile advertising has been a long time coming and advocates of its power have always been touting its ability to drive high level click through rates (CTRs) for advertisers. We saw a few of examples of these high CTRs in 2009, but Mobile Posse a mobile advertising firm based out of Virginia just posted some interested statistics that cannot be ignored. Mobile Posse has partnered with 5 of the major carriers in the United States to create opt-in (users have to agree to see the advertising) idle-screen advertisements. This means that when users phones are idle they are displayed an advertisement on their screen that they can then click on. If the user choses to click on the ad they are pushed to a mobile website with more information from the relevant advertiser. Over 1 million mobile users have opted into Mobile Posse’s service which allows them to view these ads.
In January Mobile Posse launched an ad campaign with Ford Motors, promoting the new Ford Taurus. The campaign displayed information about the new car on user’s idle screens and when they clicked on the advertisement they were taken to Ford’s mobile website which let them locate their closest dealer. This campaign saw a staggering 20% CTR. This means that 20% of people who saw this ad actually clicked on it and interacted with Ford’s mobile website. Typical web based ad campaigns see an average CTR of just under 1%, so a 20% campaign is not something to ignore. It is important to note that the numbers are slightly skewed because all of these users had initially opted in to see advertising on their phones, however these stats suggest that the power of mobile advertising is very real.
In an earlier post (here) we spoke about the future of mobile advertising and suggested where Apple and Spreed want to take the industry. If we can match motivated users with the type of actionable advertising capabilities that Spreed is building into our platform, it is not insane to think that by the end of 2010 we will see CTRs going well above this 20% benchmark. This is very exciting news and I would like to congratulate Mobile Posse on what appears to be a fantastic service. I know that we will be keeping an eye on them.
So the iPad was just officially announced by Steve Jobs and overall sentiment online has been mixed. I am going to reserve my judgement until I have actually placed my eyes and hands on the device myself. However, I do want to point out that this device or one similar to it is going to completely revolutionize the PC industry.
A few posts back I talked about the impending mobile OS wars and the future of the PC industry. The launch of the iPad proves that this movement is very real and that we are going to see more of these in the near future.
What does this all mean for newspapers and media companies? Well, we saw two media demo’s today. The first was from MLB who always do a spectacular job with their interactive technology innovations. If anyone is on the cusp of making ipTV attractive for the masses it is the MLB. more importantly though was the demo from the New York Times.
Here at Spreed we are very focused on the newspaper industry and as such the iPad is a very interesting platform for us. The NYTimes demo showed off a great looking app that really took advantage of the entire form factor to replicate and enhance the traditional newspaper experience. I love how they have integrated videos and galleries seamlessly into articles and how users can get a snapshot of every article in todays newspaper through one view.
In addition this is a much smarter platform for newspapers and magazine publishers in comparison to the Kindle. For a good year now I have been saying that the Kindle is okay, but it doesn’t satisfy the needs of readers and advertisers. The Kindle is black and white and not interactive from a media stand point. The iPad completely satisfies these holes left by the Kindle. It can do everything a Kindle can, but displays everything in color and lets people really interact with the content (a must for online advertisers these days).
Mobile platforms are exciting and there is loads of potential for innovation. Spreed is definitely going to be playing around with the iPad and helping our clients embrace this new platform. However, we suggest everyone be cautious and make sure that they understand each platform before they move onto the next one. Make sure you can sell at least some of your existing mobile inventory on your iPhone, Blackberry and Android apps before you start sinking big money into an iTab edition of your paper.
I look forward to getting my iTab and sharing my first hand findings with you all. Please feel free to call or email me with any questions about this new platform and what it means for your organization.
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