interesting infographic on how mobile is shaping the way social media is consumed.
some highlights: 25% or more than 100 million of all facebook users access it from a mobile phone, and those who do, are twice as active on social networks compared to people accessing from a computer. also, 35-54 year olds are the most active mobile social users.
A recently released study by comScore showed that more than 30 Percent of Smartphone Owners Access Social Networking Sites via a Mobile Browser. That's a lot of people. But, the even bigger statistic is that access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has grown at an almost unbelievable rate: Facebook access via mobile browsers grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter saw a 347% increase. Very interesting is that comScore does not include mobile apps in their statistics. Adding in all the Twitter and Facebook apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry surely push the percentage even higher.
I think Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile says it best: "Social networking remains one of the... fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web... "
| Number of Mobile Subscribers Accessing Social Sites via Mobile Browser(3-month average ending Jan. 2010 vs. Jan. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+) | |||
|
| Total Audience (000) | ||
| Social Network Site | Jan-09 | Jan-10 | % Change |
| Facebook.com | 11,874 | 25,137 | 112 |
| MySpace.com | 12,338 | 11,439 | -7 |
| Twitter.com | 1,051 | 4,700 | 347 |
| Source: comScore MobiLens, March 2010 | |||
Too much mobile market info or data? Not sure of that, but I'd still recommend sitting down and strapping on your seatbelt before taking in this chart of the mobile market.
In Taiwan and Luxembourg the average person has more than one cell phones. Compare that that to less than every other person in the United States and it quickly becomes clear how far catching up the United Stats has to do in the mobile arena.
A new report from the Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reveals that more than 1 in 4 Americans read news on mobile devices including Smartphones.
The report, "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer," studies the impact of digital media on news consumption and interaction behaviors. The part of the study that focused specifically on the growth of mobile devices reveals that more than 80% of adults now own cell phones and 37% use their phones to access the Web. According to Tom Rosenstiel, Director of PEJ, "Those numbers are only going to go up as the penetration of smart phones grows. The computer of the future is held in your hand."These figures mirror a recent report from the Federal Communications Commission, which studied both wired and wireless broadband connectivity in the United States. The FCC is currently pushing to expand the wireless spectrum available to mobile broadband providers in anticipation of strong growth in consumer demand for these services.The PEJ report highlights the importance of that trend to media organizations. "What the data shows is people are increasingly looking for news at their convenience, and nothing is more convenient than the device in your pocket," Rosenstiel said in an interview Friday.Another finding of the PEJ report: 46 percent of "on-the-go" news consumers are also "news participators," meaning they actively contribute to the creation or distribution of information by commenting on articles, tagging content, contributing images, videos and articles, or sharing a link with their social network. PEJ further identifies a highly engaged sub-group of mobile news consumers, about 13 percent of U.S. adult Internet users, who are characterized by daily news readership across multiple platforms including mobile, online, print and television.The study reveals that while those highly engaged consumers are reading a lot of news, they do so from multiple outlets on multiple platforms. Just 7 percent of Americans get their news from a single source, while 46 percent visit four to six sources, in print, Web, TV and mobile on a typical daily basis.Rostenstiel said the notion of foraging for news can be a positive one for news organizations. "People graze but they don't graze very far." He noted the average engaged news reader has a half-dozen sources they return to frequently. "So, while people are hunting for what they are interested in, they are not hunting everywhere. They are hunting among a landscape of sources they know and are familiar with."
A recent study from Ruder Finn shows that U.S. mobile users:
All these statistics support the finding from the Guardian that 50% of all the U. K. mobile usage goes to Facebook. This is another fact pointing us in the direction that real-time search, mobile and social media are all merging into one.
Big in 2010
While writing this blog post, I have the 1984 cult classic "Big in Japan" from Alphaville stuck in my head. So, I encourage you to hum the refrain from "Big in Japan" in your head as you read this blog post.
I have been thinking about this blog post and what will be “Big in 2010” for a while now, but the recent announcement of Google Buzz really validated my thinking. The three big trends I’ve seen growing over the last 6 months or so are: Local, Mobile, and Real-Time. Stick with me and you’ll see why Google Buzz is the manifestation of these three trends into one application and will be “Big in 2010”.
I'll start off by talking about "Local." Towards the end of last year, local really started becoming more and more prominent - from the Google caffeine update that incorporates more and more local results via maps to local social media apps such as foursquare. Now, when you search for "pizza" you not only get the results of Papa John's, Domino's, and Pizza Hut, but also a map with local pizza place results. In addition, when you think about the much talked about and discussed Google algorithm (there are actually three different algorithms): the standard result page algorithm, the Google Maps algorithm, and finally the algorithm for Maps included on the Google Results page. With Google Buzz I can tag my updates with a location so they become searchable via location and by looking at a map. Want to see what people around you are saying? No problem anymore thanks to Google Buzz
Next up is "Mobile." According to some estimates, by 2013 more people will access the Internet via a mobile device than via a desktop. Beyond being portable and always in the pocket of your consumer, this trend is here to stay for good. There are close to 5 billion mobile phones worldwide. There are many different ways to market to mobile – from SMS and display ads to Apps. However, the most important thing is to offer your potential customers a mobile optimized experience, which may be a mobile website or a mobile app via iTunes or the Android Marketplace. Enter Google Buzz on your mobile device and you are catering to the heavy social users. No iPhone app for Google Buzz? No problem! Just like with Google Voice it runs via HTML 5 directly in the iPhone’s built in browser: Safari.
The final of the trends I want to talk about is “Real-Time.” Real-time search is here. It’s not the future anymore. All search engines are pulling in real-time results from all over the place, including press releases and Twitter. Most social media platforms offer real-time search, with Twitter being the most prominent. Just go to search.twitter.com and type in your brand or company and watch the magic happen. Real-time search can be scary. Real-time updates are what Google Buzz is all about, just like Twitter it offers a constant feed of what people are saying and sharing around you. It’s like having a constant conference call going on and listening in on what people are saying.
Below is the dissection of a typical search results page – notice the real-time results in purple.
How big are all of these three trends? Big enough that Google introduced its newest invention, “Google Buzz,” which incorporates and excels at all three of these trends in one application. So: are Local, Mobile and Real-Time here to stay? If Google Buzz catches on, it will defiantly continue to grow and be the “it” thing in 2010 – Or, “Big in 2010”.
In a nutshell, Google Buzz is the newest social network and sharing product built by Google. Buzz offers a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. Real-time updates from Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter can also be automatically imported into a Buzz stream.
Either wishful thinking or evidence of the inevitable, but BusinessWeek is reporting that Verizon is supposedly bolstering its network in preparation for the iPhone.
Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone recently told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that the company is ready for the extra traffic that the iPhone would bring. "We have put things in place already. We are prepared to support that traffic."
We all know how dissatisfied iPhone users, including myself, are with AT&T's performance. Especially, if you came over from Verizon's wireless service like I did. All us iPhone users can do now is cross our fingers and say "Please Apple, please offer your phone on Verizon!"
Reading a great blog post by Brian Solis on "The Future of Interactive Marketing" got me thinking about the "Golden Triangle" that I frist heard about a few weeks ago. By the way the aforementioned blog post is a MUST READ for any marketer.
In a nutshell, in addition to my favorite local search, the three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are: mobile, social, and real-time. It's like a "golden triangle.” It's why the search engines were so keen on being the first to implement real-time search (Google), design mobile apps (bing), and partner with social networks (yahoo with Facebook & Google with Twitter).
As with Brian Solis puts it "the Golden Triangle [...] facilitates a new genre of content production, distribution, and consumption as well as social interaction and collaboration. It’s borderless, untethered, and practically device agnostic.
“You” are at the center of the Golden Triangle and remain connected to your social and professional graph via devices, applications and networks hosted on mobile and Web-based (cloud) platforms."
Looking for local online advertising? Consider mobile advertising. In a short period of time mobile advertising has gone from an experimental media to a proven one. According to comScore, Inc. the number of local searches on a mobile device grew 51% from March 2008 to March 2009, and the preferred method of search is by using a mobile browser.
Due to the increase in browsing patterns, more and more online advertising is moving to wireless devices such as the Blackberry, the iPhone, or the Palm Pre. In 2006, U.S. advertisers spent $4.8 billion, or about 3 percent of total ad spending, on mobile ads. That's expected to increase to 12 percent by 2011, according to eMarketer.
Mobile local search is still in the development stages, but it is catching up quickly in many business categories and it will very soon be an essential channel for companies looking to get business from local searches.
According to CTIA, over 70 percent of the US population has a mobile phone. In general, there are two choices for local searches using a mobile device: SMS or browser based searches. Each is great at serving a different kind of search need.
SMS & Mobile Browsers: Tools Tailored to Search Requirements
SMS ads have hit the mainstream, with about 15 percent of mobile phones receiving at least one SMS ad according to M-Metrics. SMS are great at fulfilling a quick information need, such as a sports scores, weather, or stock quotes.
On the other hand, consumers typically perform mobile browser searches when they want more subjective information. For example, a mobile browser based search can help find a restaurant with reviews at Yahoo or Google.
Local Marketing Choices
Where should you look to make take advantage of this rapidly growing trend of mobile local search? On the one hand, SMS has some advantages over Web-based browser searches. But, users have to opt in to receive sponsored SMS messages. Mobile Search Browsing on the other hand is as simple as putting a PPC ad on a search engine. However, instead of seeing them on a monitor, customers are seeing them on the screen of their mobile device. This has many advantages including the possibility of prompting consumers to call a certain number or map a route to your location.
Pizza is already onboard – Others are catching on (quickly)
A large percentage of mobile searches are for local businesses. A majority of those are for restaurants and pizza places in particular. Next in popularity is a group that includes taxis, banks, and searches for specific brands, such as Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Target, Blockbuster, Costco, etc.
Online directories, with an increase of 73%, have seen the largest increase during the past year among the various local content categories, followed by restaurants (70%), maps (63%), and movies (60%).
Other categories are quickly becoming more widespread as two things start to occur: consumers become more aware of the capability and the companies that compile listings for local merchants expand their databases of dentists, doctors, florists, and other businesses.
Some businesses can generate a return more quickly from mobile local search. If your business is in a category that benefits heavily from impulse buying, you are trying to expand your company’s footprint, or you want to take your brand to where consumers are going, mobile is a great fit.
From a branding perspective mobile advertising can be invaluable. But it’s important to remember that people won't make large purchases based on mobile searches, but it will help with your company’s branding and can help develop a sale down the road. Keep in mind that the majority uses their mobile devices to find the nearest oil-change center, gas station, florist, ATM, or particular restaurant.
What's Next?
Before you can participate in this brave new world it’s important to ask yourself a few questions: Do you have a website that shows up correctly on mobile browsers? Are you tapping into the local searches coming from mobile devices? Is your Google Map Listing Correct? Let Bayshore help you assess our mobile strategy and develop mobile tactics with you.
I've been intrigued by the potential of Mobile Advertising since 1999. Back then grand articles were written on websites, in books, and magazines of how a grand revolution in advertising is upon us and that it will shake the very foundation that makes up marketing. Well, here we are 10 years later and not too much has changed. Do we receive coupons from Dunkin' donuts as we walk by them on our phones? No. Do we get special offers from Target when we enter the store on our cell phones? No.
Then, where are we?
A story that I read today got me thinking. According to this story on AdvertisingAge.com from September 15th, the mobile apps which constitute the majority of the mobile marketing channel are "just an appetizer." As the author puts is: "In grand historical terms, this whole mobile app thing is only now climbing out of the primordial ooze." Well, Mr. Kevin Maney I hate to tell you but we've been in this state of climbing out of the ooze for at least a decade now. When will we finally move on to the next step?
I know some people will say that text message advertising is doing well, but I must point out that it is nowhere near its potential and I'm sure that it never will reach it as far as advertising goes.
While the iPhone, and in particular the app store, have moved us ahead by leaps and bounds in terms of branded communications and marketing on mobile devices, everything is still all over the place. Where would Video tapes be if both VHS and BETA survived until now? Or for that matter next gen DVD if the battle between BluRay and HD-DVD was still going on?
While competition does drive innovation, standardization can create a more focused effort with ultimately greater results. As much as people here in America lament the "big brother" approach of European or Asian economies, being light-years ahead in terms of cell phones, cell phone service, and technology in general does paint a picture.
Now back to the point by the AdAge article that we are clawing our way out of the "primordial ooze" in terms of mobile apps. Are these mobile apps he future of marketing communications to consumers on cell phones? Apple showed a picture at its most recent iPod event that showed the superiority of its iPod touch - essentially a mobile phone without cell service - over current tablets or net books on the market.
So, does the future of mobile, mobile apps, and ergo mobile advertising in essence lie with smaller computer that happen to be phones as well (e.g. the iPhone)? That is something that only time will tell, because as Master Yoda says "The future, always in motion it is." But, if I had to put my money on it right now, I'd say that smart phones will become more and more like small computers. And the billion dollar question will be to find out how to spam people with ads on there, just like advertisers have on any other channel known to man, is the future.
One final thought: Is the reason that mobile advertising is not catching on that a moblie phone is seen as the last "sacred" advertising-free sanctity by people?
