test
Mobile Media: Centre Stage in ICT4D?
Madanmohan Rao
Mobile marketing allows for rich personalisation. It can beimpulse-driven, and with high-reach and high retention. Mobile campaigns can help companies get valuable customer and campaign insights for launching bigger mass media campaigns later
Those ICT4D activists who may have been disheartened with the slow pace of Internet diffusion in emerging economies should take note of the rapid diffusion of mobile media and reinvent themselves!
Mobile phones across the world are surpassing penetration of other media. Worldwide penetration of mobile phones is 4.3 billion, as compared to cars (800 million), TV (1.5 billion), credit cards (1.4 billion), PCs (850 million), Internet (1.1 billion). There are 400 million m-commerce users worldwide. In 2009 there were 850 million m-payment transactions. Navteq mobile maps are used by 100 million users every day.
In India, mobile phones (564 million) have overtaken TV (470 million), newspapers (172 million), radio (168 million) and Internet (60 million). 90% of GSM handsets in Indonesia support GPRS/MMS. Yahoo reports more traffic in Indonesia via mobiles than PCs. The Philippines has 85% mobile penetration, and the average user sends 25 SMS messages per day.
The entry of IT and Internet giants Google, Microsoft and Apple into mobile media has made the mobile industry sit up and realise it must grab the opportunity fast.
Mobile marketing allows for rich personalisation. It can be impulse-driven, and with high-reach and high retention. Mobile campaigns can help companies get valuable customer and campaign insights for launching bigger mass media campaigns later.
Mobile is ‘the’ medium to reach out to the unreached. Well-designed mobile campaigns can deliver a lower cost per conversion than desktop targeted ads. SMS as a CRM tool can be twice better than email. Location can make local search more actionable on mobiles.
But mobile is not yet seen as a must have or integral channel for many big ICT4D agencies. For many Asian languages, mobile communication is also restricted by handset limitations and low user awareness.
Mobile payment is seen by operators as a major avenue of investment and growth. In terms of commercial and social marketing, mobile can be deployed at multiple marketing phases: trigger, inform, consider, choose/buy, experience/advocacy. It can be used in typical marketing activities: acquisition, retention, brand building.
Mobile is a good connector; it extends and enhances other media, with the advantages of portability, location, immediacy and personalisation. Mobile is a good medium to fill the “third space vacuum” when the user is out of the home and out of the office.
Mobile gives activists an increase in response methods and formats. Mobiles can be used to create ongoing dialogues. The increasing diffusion of smartphones and mobile Internet will make mobile media even more complicated and intricate, and the time to learn is now.
A huge array of intermediaries is emerging in mobile marketing space, eg. mobile content aggregators and ad networks. Consolidation is imminent in this space. Better collaboration is called for between tech players for inventory and dashboard services.
Mobile operators should share data more aggressively with advertisers to grow the medium. Frequent comparisons are made with television; TV really took off in countries like the US after industry-sponsored ratings were adopted.
Mobile has worked for some of the big brands, but for true industry growth it must extend to small and medium enterprises as well, who form the bulk of the economy in most countries, and to NGOs and individual independent freelancers.
On the creative side, mobile forces communicators to be brief, concise, to the point. Mobile screens are held inches away from the face, and appear larger than TV screens: thus they are as much of a pull medium as a push medium. With permission marketing, mobiles can be the ideal CRM channel and tool. A new kind of creative class for mobile ad messages is called for.
SMS still has a long shelflife thanks to its ubiquity and brevity. SMS is still a good fit for cost-conscious communicators. SMS is a great channel for permission marketing while traveling overseas – mobile Internet roaming charges are way too expensive!
Social media currency will impact mobile media as well as the Internet. Social media will drive digital content creation and linking, and thereby social discovery and social marketing. The Internet itself is moving from a Web of pages to a Web of streams, and this will be reflected in mobile social media as well.
Emerging economies are “Mobile First” markets, ie. mobile is the first and most important screen for communication. Mobile can be better than radio in terms of penetration in rural Asia. Many new mobile subscribers in countries such as India are not literate, hence audio ads on mobile have a huge potential. The power situation is bad in smaller towns of India; TV is often off, but at least mobile phones are on, and thus more accessible for marketing messages.
The mobile device is becoming an extension of persona. Mobility is not just a technology, it is a behaviour. An interesting range of mobile user categories is emerging, eg. alpha exec, mobile native, mobile hobbyist, mobile a “necessary evil!” Other categories of users include: tech mover,
prgamatic striver, basic introverts, digital extroverts, hypersocials. Consumers are using three screens simultaneously (TV, Internet, mobile). People who use Internet on mobile use social media more on mobiles than on PC. Once people start using mobile Internet, they use it a lot.
People who use Internet on mobile use social media more on mobiles than onPC. Once people start using mobile Internet, they use it a lot
A number of catchy acronym lists for mobile media success are emerging: 3Cs (choice, control, consideration); 3Ps (privacy, permission, preference; or profiles, push, permission). Mobiles are a key part of the “N3 Web” (now, new, near) and marketers should understand the mobile-PC continuum for digital users.
Mobile media must avoid the distaste of spam as in the case of Internet email. Deep profiling can help produce a win-win for the operator, subscriber and advertiser.
To make mobile ICT4D successful, more scale and sustainability are called for. Good local case studies are needed in many markets, especially in instances where development agencies have a wait and see mentality. Local capacity building can be spurred by ICT4D agencies via internal specialist teams or external specialist firms. Mobile media is not just about profits and customers, but concerned citizens and social causes. For instance, MobileGiving raised $41 million for Haiti earthquake relief via SMS in North America.
Interesting trends to watch in the long term which will impact mobile media include: augmented reality; cloud computing; communication speed; realtime analytics; and digital discovery. LTE is just around the corner, and WiMax phones could be a game changer.
Mobile banking and payment has the potential to explode. Interesting trends to watch include flash coupons integrated with NFC-based payment. Mobiles open new ways of multi-monetisation.
In sum, this is the most interesting time in the history of ICT4D, ever! But to go from hype in the sky to success in the hand will require concerted cooperation by mobile and ICT players.
Madanmohan Rao is Mobile Media Consultant and Editor, “Asia Unplugged” http://twitter.com/MadanRao
Related posts
