Big Opportunities in Mobile
Cisco forecasts mobile data traffic globally will double every year through 2013, increasing 66 times between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131% between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013.
In the 7 years from 2005 to 2012, mobile data traffic will have increased a thousand-fold. Almost 64 percent of the world’s mobile traffic will be video by 2013.
Coda Research Consultancy forecasts mobile broadband search and display ad revenues in the US to grow to $4.2 billion in 2015, up from $1 billion in 2010 (70%: search advertising). eMarketer’s conclusions estimates that mobile ad spending, including messaging-based formats, will reach $416 million in 2009 and $1.56 billion by 2013.
Mobile User Behaviors
According to Flurry, consumers are more loyal to mobile applications that provide news or reference services over the longest periods of time and they are most suited for subscription-based and ad-supported models.
Categories such as Books and Games are the two largest categories in both the Apple App Store and Android Market. Social Networking apps remain on a consumer’s handset for a long period of time, but get used only occasionally. Applications in the news, weather, reference and books categories have the highest frequency of use per week, the study found.
Yankee Group’s report early this year evaluated 27 mobile sites and reveals:
- For news, Google and Yahoo show how it’s done. Both companies earn passing grades of 73, striking an impressive balance in delivering enough information to mobile users without overwhelming them. Other news sites, however, still struggle with leveraging mobile context and site discoverability.
- For sports, MLB.com hits it out of the park. Major League Baseball’s site scores an impressive 71 for its device detection and ability to tailor content to fit mobile screens. Competitors Rivals.com (58) and ESPN.com (57) score a close second and third.
- For search, Google is tops, but Yahoo’s a close second. Google’s mobile search site, with its minimalist interface, format-specific device detection and location- awareness, earns an 81, the highest mark given to any mobile Web site so far. Yahoo also earns a passing grade of 76, hindered only by small factors like extraneous content and HTML validation errors.
- For mobile carriers, all need improvement.
And, comScore finding shows that light PC Internet users are 30% more likely than heavy PC Internet users to use their mobile devices to access Internet content.
Publishers Pushing Mobile
Audit Bureau of Circulations recently surveyed its U.S. and Canadian newspaper, magazine and business membership to learn more about publishers’ current mobile initiatives:
- 42% of consumer magazines are being formatted for mobile
- 44% of business publications are mobile-formatted
- 57% of newspapers are being formatted for mobile readers
- 44% of those already in the mobile marketplace report a 10% increase in website traffic
iPhone, BlackBerry, Android
A key finding of the “Smartphone Satisfaction Study 2009” is that the most satisfying smartphones are the ones that offer the best consumer functionality.
The iPhone continues to top all other smartphones in measures of consumer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and content usage (source: Crowd Science).
The Android was closest to the iPhone in several measures of satisfaction, but trailed when it came to hardware issues. 77% of Android users downloaded apps at least weekly, compared with 71% of iPhone owners.
Surprisingly, BlackBerry is leading the mobile market ahead of Apple’s iPhone in Indonesia, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile consumer markets, according to InMobi’s released data last month.
Mobile Marketing Opportunities
The rise of mobile marketing impacts almost all online marketers.
Mobile display advertising needs its own formats; several fit all situation on the Internet is no longer the case. Different formats are required for different devices.
Search marketers need to better understand mobile searchers’ behavior, which won’t be the same on the Internet.
1 in 10 consumers access their primary personal email accounts on mobile devices, according to Forrester Research. For that reason, optimizing emails for cross-platform performance is the challenge email marketers have to face.
When it comes to integrated digital marketing strategies, mobile is definitely one of the most important channels you should consider.
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