Inside Mobile Marketing

Okay.. with only around 15% (much higher for iPhone and Smartphones users) of total U.S. subscribers regularly accessing the internet from their phone – the “reach” numbers for marketers are fairly low with regards to rushing to build a mobile presence. The obstacles to getting more consumers to use their phone for browsing the internet are well documented. Putting aside for a moment that the U.S. has approximately a 26% 3G handset penetration rate and approximately 14% of subs have unlimited data plans (according to Nielsen Mobile)… and small screen sizes, lack of content, etc.etc.. What about browser usability?

Could the current browsing/data display methods be a significant hindrance to adoption as well?? You bet. So what’s on the browser horizon?? No one other than the representative from the speech recognition company vlingo really talked about future browsing paradigms. He said his company was working hard on using speech to search for information on the mobile, but reiterated that at the moment they struggled to find technical “hooks” into browsers to enable speech-powered browsing.

I’ll dig around to find what might be out there , but in the meantime there is an interesting 3D data visualization project I am watching out of MIT called E15. The gentleman behind this project is starting to tinker a bit with 3D browsing on the iPhone. ALSO – with the advancement of GPS-enabled handsets the ability to get location relevant information while browsing may turn out to be very interesting as well. Stay tuned.

– NOTE: optimization of web content for the small screen was discussed and so was transcoding. While you can argue that this either hurts or helps the mobile web cause, the issue I’m still interested in is the browser and how it displays information and how the mobile user interacts with it – these two “methods” are simply adapting to the current paradigm.

The interesting thing about these findings is not that only about 13% of U.S. wireless subs access their mobile browsers on a regular basis or even that some mobile web categories provide decent lift increases.  For me, the great bit is that Nielsen is striving to combine PC-based internet usage data with the mobile internet data to provide better insight into how the two can complement each other. This is the sort of data that would-be mobile advertisers are clamoring for and data that would-be mobile marketers and publishers alike can use in their arguments to justify their mobile efforts.

Along these same research lines it will be interesting to see the results from studies conducted by io global ltd (which has the support of the  Mobile Marketing Association) entitled the ”Three Screen” study and research from a joint effort between MMetrics and MRI.

The io gobal study will measure consumer usage across TV, PC and Mobile with the goal of deriving an “effective framework for assessing the role of mobile in integrated marketing campaigns. “

“ioglobal’s Three Screen Trial will be conducted in partnership with major media companies and advertisers. Advertising campaigns launched during the trial will integrate several mobile marketing tactics in use today such as banner ads, pre-roll, post-roll and in-stream videos, as well as SMS and pure content sponsorship. This launch will provide the mobile marketing industry with new mechanisms for measuring the role and effectiveness of mobile in integrated campaigns.”

The joint effort between MMetrics and MRI, announced at the end of March this year, attempts to provide greater insight into Mobile’s part in cross-media marketing campaigns.

All of this research means that advertisers (especially Media planners) will start to get the real consumer insight they have long sought from the Mobile Channel.