The Dawning Mobile Age

It’s not news that Americans are increasing their use of mobile technologies. That’s after years of being behind the mobile curve when compared to Japan and Western Europe. There are two recent studies that shed a lot of light on what US mobile users and are doing and how marketers might react.

Today’s eMarketer newsletter (October 21, 2008) references a recently released report on household mobile use from the Pew Foundation. (Download the household report from this page; there is also a September report on mobile use by workers that might interest you.)

We should have already killed the early Internet myth that the computer was going to make users into social isolates. The Pew report not only shows that people say that the Internet and cell phone have increased closeness with family and friends (pages 25 – 27) but that there is no observable difference in real-world socialization between heavy and light internet users (pages 18, 19). The chart from eMarketer highlights the importance of the Internet and mobile phones to families with children. These families are heavy owners of all the technologies covered in the study. The study doesn’t ask about motives, although staying in touch with friends and family is obviously important to the study respondents. What I read into other answers is the desire to support the educational activities of their children. They say they use the Internet and cell phones at work as well as at home. The earlier report points out that this is a two-edged sword; more connectivity and more productivity but also more work time and stress. Not much surprising there!

Another recent study, this one by mobile services supplier Azuki, sheds more light on what mobile users do. The chart gives overall time use. There are differences by age group:

• Voice services. The youngest survey respondents talked the most (another big surprise!).
Text messaging. Again, the youngest users text most.
• Email. Here age plays differently; users 35-44 email from their mobile phones most.
• The Internet. Here again, the 34-44s are the heaviest users.
• Rich media. 25% of the respondents access rich media, but no age group spends a great deal of time doing so. It’s still too hard to do.

Given the amount of mobile usage, it’s not surprising that many have or plan to have a smart phone. The move toward smart phones is largest among users in the 45 to 60 age groups. There is also smart phone interest in younger groups; the report expects many 20 and 30-somethings to trade in their iPhone for a smart phone when they enter the corporate world. Planned smart phone adoption is definitely not linear by age group.

Do you see the influences of use for work purposes vs. use for entertainment and communications here? I think the differences are evident in the variations in amount and type of use by age. Food for marketer thought!

There are three recent white papers from Azuki. The market study points out that rich media is still difficult to find, takes too long to download or simply isn’t available on the phones of many users. Their technology, which they describe as a “media mashup” presents a solution, basically a common platform for distribution of various kinds of mobile media. Two white papers give more detail (download all three reports from this page).

After a lot of fits and starts, the age of mobile is coming to the US. It presents one more challenge to the marketer trying to reach people wherever they are, whatever they are doing. These data, taken together, suggest that this is one place where demographics do make a difference—in this case specifically age and household composition. Underlying the demographics is the importance of understanding why/for what purposes various audiences are using mobile technologies.

These resources give some starting points for thinking about and researching your own actual or potential mobile audience!

Creative Strategy for Rich Media

DoubleClick was one of the first ad serving agencies and now offers a broad range of services to marketers. Because of the ad serving activity they have a lot of data and they’ve used it to provide many useful reports. I recently came across their “Creative Insights for Rich Media” report, which can be found on their Research Reports page (under the Insights and Innovations tab).

I was especially interested in the video formats although the report contains data on standard ad formats, with and without video. Here’s a table that summarizes the data related to video.

Video Formats In-Page Expanding Video Expanding Non-Video In-Page Video	Click-Through Rate	Larger creative sizes give higher click-through rates
	Interaction Rate	In-page and larger creative sizes give higher interaction rate
	Interaction Time	Format plays little role in interaction time (content is key)
	Expansion Rate	Video formats produce higher expansion rates than non-video ads
	Video Complete Rate	More videos are completed in expanding formats; even more in the in-page format. Fewer auto-play videos are completed than are user-initiated videos

The report concludes with two recommendations, both of which sound like no-brainers.

1. The marketer must know the definitions and methodology behind the metrics she is using. We all know CTR; the definitions of the interactive metrics are more complex. Those definitions are detailed on page 13 of the report.
2. "Only compare and contrast data that comes from the same system and that adheres to the same methodology." That sounds pretty straightforward also--right? For example, it's all DoubleClick data; isn't it comparable. No. They point out that they've updated some of the computations of some of their metrics recently--and other producers of metrics do the same. The marketer has to be vigilant, even when tracking the same metrics over time.
   

As I read the report, I remembered that MSN.com used to have a really explanation of rich media formats, including video, on their advertising page. So I went there to look for it. On the way I got sidetracked.

I saw the ABC ad on the MSN home page and decided to "Visit ABC.com."

There's lots of media on the ABC.com site; that's no surprise. Actually, I was most interested in the banner at the top showing Bill Gates. It invited me to "rollover" and I did.

That opened a page at Microsoft; apparently a new marketing program, "A PC is not a stereotype," whatever that means. It's some interactive "advertainment"--you can see who's a pc, or in the other tab you can see what you'd look like in various advertising venues--Times Square, for example.

Quite a few people have uploaded pictures to play their game. I expanded Steve Ballmer's picture. I love it when CEOs participate!

By that time I was tired, and the post is getting too long anyway. MSN has improved their rich media formats page since I was last there and they have an excellent creative gallery. Check them out for yourself. And think about the power of these new media!