Mobile phones are increasingly becoming the most important
mass medium ever created. They’ve achieved this by being able to
integrate all of the media that humanity has known and created up to
now.
What’s more, mobile phones and it’s integrated media allow
users to become producers and not just viewers.
Mobile phones, like any media, also appeal to advertisers, and
are increasingly becoming a way companies promote products and services
to us.
In Japan for example, there is already a successful mobile
advertising market generating significant revenue streams every year.
But how can this new mobile-based advertising model conquer
the
world? Is there anything that will facilitate the spreading of a
phenomenon which is likely to provoke a radical change in the digital
lifestyle of millions of mobile users?
In the third part of the report originally published by Alan
Moore,
CEO of SMLXL, you will be able to read about the evolution of mobile
phones as mass media, the advertising models that are currently being
generated around them and their future.
Here the details:
Today, Gutenberg would be a mo-blogger: Mobile, 7th of the
Mass Media – Part 3
by Alan Moore
Mobile as advertising platform
Will mobile be an advertising platform? Of course it will, it
already is.
In Japan, 54% of all mobile phone owners have opted to
receive ads on their phones, and the Japanese mobile
advertising industry
has been so creative that today 44% of Japanese mobile phone owners
actively click on ads they have received on their phones.
In various
countries from India to Spain to South Africa to Finland mobile
marketing and mobile advertising innovations are becoming elements of
the advertising mix.
Will mobile be part of redefining what advertising is?
The answer to that is absolutely. The rules have changed.
Before you say “but I would not want
intrusive ads on my phone”
consider this finding from a survey of 1500 under 20 year olds in the
UK by Q Research in 2007. If asked simply would they be willing to
receive ads on the phone, 68% said no.
But if the question is changed
to offer “targeted ads” it
jumps to 71% willing to accept! If
the proposition involves coupons and discounts, 76% say yes.
And if
given the chance to top-up their phone accounts through mobile ads or
mobile marketing, 82% of British youth are willing to accept mobile ads.
Even if some older, well-paid, professional white-collar
adults feel they would “never”
want ads on the phone, a very significant portion of the population is
already willing to do so. And here the economics of mobile come into
play.
If only one in three mobile phone users were in this group,
that
is more than all personal computers connected to the internet in the
world.
But it cannot be spam or interruptive
advertising. Because
mobile is so personal, always carried, and always on, our point is that
any mobile marketing communication has to be permission-based, timely,
relevant and contextual.
Mobile as an advertising platform
Over the last 14 months Admob has sold over 3 billion ads for
mobile phones. TomiAhonen
Consulting has estimated that in Britain alone, Admob UK has
already cannibalised 9.5% of all British interactive
advertising.
In
fact Admobile
is making so much money, revenue generation is not the problem,
it’s
what to do with the cash that gives the Admob guys a headache.
Advertising will always go where the audience is.
If the audience is
leaving television in droves, advertising dollars will eventually
follow.
Whilst in the UK ITV
the
commercial terrestrial broadcaster, who once claimed they had a license
to print money lost over £50m in advertising revenue in
2006.
And so
its no wonder that Nokia who has something approaching 1 billion phones
in the world, has launched an Adservices offering. This clearly is a
sign that Nokia realizes that
1 billion phones is a very serious piece of Media Real Estate,
and
one that they can capitalise on. And the final part of this story is
the launch of the revolutionary mobile phone service Blyk,
which offers free telecoms services to its customers funded by
advertising.
Blyk, expected to launch in 2007 in the UK, is the start
of a journey which will redefine what advertising is and, what
marketing is, in the early 21st Century, because on the mobile platform
advertising can be turned into valuable services, information and
products.
Word of Mouth & Advocacy
As the media platform which is most carried and always on,
mobile is
by far the most potent viral marketing platform. Why is this important?
Jupiter Media
in 2006
reported that 64% of the population will try something that is
recommended by a friend.
And the same survey found that 69% of the
population will forward something they like. Not only to one person, if
they forward, it is typically to between 2 – 6 friends.
Thus any media content for mobile should include forwarding
options,
whether passing on the actual content or a web link, coupon,
etc.
In
fact the CEO of Fjord,
Mike Beeston has advocated a “minimum requirement”
for any mobile content including mobile advertising, that it should be
“sufficiently contagious.”
Sufficiently contagious does not mean “totally
contagious.”
We don’t suggest a service has to be that fantastic that the
recipient
will spam all 200 names on the phone book with it.
Sufficiently
contagious means that for the intended target audience (niche mass
marketing), the recipient feels compelled to forward it to at least one
other person.
That means it is sufficiently contagious. That means also,
that both
the service did have a forwarding option (cannot be contagious if you
cannot forward it) and it must have been “good
enough” to the
initial recipient, so that he/she would want to forward it.
That means
that any mobile marketing that we receive, should be that good, that we
want to receive it. We liked it so much, that we felt compelled to
forward it to friend. That is the standard SMLXL also
advocate.
Any content for the 7th Mass Media needs to be sufficiently
contagious, else it is not worth launching.
The iPhone Era: Bi and Ai
A TV executive once said that Mobile TV was a bit like sex in
the
open air. It always seems like a good idea, but its not always
practical. This was said in a world before the Apple iPhone otherwise known
as “Bi,” but we now are
entering a new Era called “Ai,”
after iPhone.
The iPhone is not technically a breakthrough device,
faster cellular networking technologies already exist, as do larger
mobile phone screens, better resolution cameras etc.
What the iPhone
seems to be, at least judging by the interest around its launch, is a
plausible pocket media device.
We’ve had pocket TV since the 1980s and clumsy heavy
pocket internet
devices since the 1990’s, but suddenly the sleek, elegant,
sexy iPhone
suggests that the “pocket internet”
is totally viable today.
Not only the Internet, but music, movies and videos as well.
We expect
because of the heavy hype around the iPhone in North America, the home
of most media giants, major media moguls will wake up to the
possibilities of mobile in June 2007.
The Creative Challenge
Bill Bailey
is a comedian, and he was once asked how he comes up with his jokes.
Bill replies:
“I start with a laugh and work backwards.
What do I need to do to create that amount of merriment and laughter?“
So creativity is what we need,
putting the user
experience before the technology, something that technologists struggle
with and that is why the Apple iPhone is creating so much interest.
We can of
course try to copy TV programs or web pages or other traditional media
formats onto mobile and yes, some of them will probably succeed simply
because there are three times as many mobile phones as PC’s
and twice
as many phones as TV sets.
But this is severely under-utilising the true power of the 7th
Mass Media channel. SMLXL
hopes to ignite the creative industry minds to think beyond the
obvious.
This White Paper has examined the introduction of the earlier
six mass media explicitly for that purpose, to illustrate that new,
innovative and inventive media format concepts were invented when new
mass media channels appeared.
Reach past the existing, into what now becomes possible with
this,
the newest mass media. And in so doing, create media services, content
and formats for mobile that are truly magical.
Like the first time at
the start of the last century, when our great-great-grandparents went
to their first movie and saw the story of Lawrence
of Arabia in moving pictures in front of their eyes.
Or how magical it was when live baseball games were broadcast
for the first time from another city on radio. Or when Neil
Armstrong
stepped onto the moon, shown on live TV.
Or the first time in a fax and
letters age, when you sent one of your first e-mails, and the other
person sent an immediate response? That seemed like
magic.
Or the first use of a search engine, which gave
your hundreds of pages of content you never knew they even existed.
Today they seem ordinary, commonplace.
But the
first time those were truly magical experiences. That is what mobile as
the 7th mass media can bring to us. That is what we should strive to
invent.
And to show what is already out there, we will showcase a few
concepts of magic, on the 7th mass media.
Its right on the tip of my tongue: Shazam
You’re sitting in the bar with some friends arguing
about who is
that band playing that great track, no-one knows, its on the tip of
everybody’s tongue, its driving everybody round the bend and
up the
wall.
Someone pulls out their mobile phone and dials Shazam,
holding the phone up to the music, in 20 seconds the service identifies
the song and artist, and sends info as SMS to phone. Relief.
It’s such
a simple service, but it answers a human need, at the point of
inspiration. Launched in the UK ,Shazam is already used in 20 countries
and has had more than a million songs “tagged”
in Britain alone.
Can you read English?
Can’t speak a word of English? No problem, because
now there is the
Camera
Dictionary.
In Japan the service has launched offering any Japanese the
chance to
read any printed English text, simply by pointing the cameraphone over
the text, and having the Camera
Dictionary
service perform the translation.
Moments later, the same page is
displayed in Japanese. The camera phone scans English text, then
transmits it via the network to a dictionary database which then sends
the Japanese text back to the phone display, in real-time.
2D Bar codes
Why type? Typing is so last year. Yes, most print ads display
the
www.mycompanyis.com type of web addresses for more information. But
that is an interactive metaphor for the last decade.
Rather than
printing the long web address, we can print a small fuzzy square called
a 2D Barcode or QR
Code (Quick Response Code) What looks like a square thumb
print.
Suddenly we don’t need to do any typing whatsoever.
We don’t even
need to wait to be at our PC. We point our camera phones to the 2D
bar code and suddenly, magically, the intended website is displayed on
our screen.
The immense satisfaction of seeing words appear on screen
automatically, without any typing has proven to be highly successful in
Japan. In 18 months, NTT
DoCoMo reported that 56% of their subscribers already used
the feature.
The applications are wide and far-reaching. Anywhere you might
find
a web address today, you can use a 2D bar code, for example; magazine
advertising, billboards, business cards, etc.
Semapedia
connects Wikipedia knowledge with relevant places in physical space,
Kerrang
the guitar rock music magazine has used 2D Bar codes and even wine
lovers can get valuable information by shooting the 2D bar code on the
side of a bottle.
Knowing me, knowing you
There is no doubt that there is a symbiotic relationship
between
mobile, and the fixed internet. Like radio drove music sales, so the
mobile and internet and then the mobile internet will drive sales in a
far more effective and targeted fashion.
We can see a world where
consumption can be driven via the internet but payment is made to get
the content onto your phone as pioneered by online social
networking service Habbo
Hotel used by 8 million teenagers worldwide on the PC based
internet, which makes most of its revenues from mobile payments.
As we outlined in the earlier part of this paper, human beings
are a “We”
species, programmed to collaborate, network and socialise.
So the
simple challenge for those that what to succeed in a world of Mobile as
the 7th Mass Media, is create something that inspires me, that engages
me, that enables me and that I want to share with my friends.
And undoubtedly this is driven by the passion, of mass niche
communities of interest. Passions around a whole cornucopia of
interests, from bird watching to well, you name it frankly.
Lessons we learned
In this White Paper we have examined lessons from the
introduction
of each of the earlier six mass media. Some of those lessons have great
bearing to mobile as the seventh of the mass media. We briefly return
to those lessons here and highlight selected lessons.
From Print we learn that a new media will
introduce new industry,
new professions, and new business models.
Just like the radio
DJ’s or
TV talk show hosts or web bloggers are the talent in their respective
media, mobile will spawn its own content formats and a demand for
totally new types of media professionals.
Perhaps some of the user-generated content such as camera phone
paparazzi and citizen
journalism
is starting to show the way.
We also learned from Print and advertising
that some content forms evolved to be supported, even fully sustained
by advertising, like free newspapers, while other print formats have
limited advertising, such as books.
The same is likely to happen with
mobile, that both advertising-supported and not advertising supported
formats will co-exist.
From Recordings we learned about cannibalisation.
It is possible that a new media like mobile can cannibalise
totally a
previous media format, but not all of a media channel. What is a more
important lesson from recordings is that totally new content formats
can be invented with any new mass media.
From Cinema we learn that moving images are more
compelling than written words or sounds.
Think
of that when you consider the older current phones as voice devices
(voice calls) and using SMS text messaging. Do not for one moment be
seduced by the thought that video and multimedia won’t play
on mobile.
Of course they will. Cinema (and TV) proved how compelling
moving
images can be, and even on mobile, soon will be.
A very important
lesson from Cinema is that if we can launch a media concept which does
not require an audience to go buy a separate media player, it can be
adopted very rapidly.
As all mobile phones can accept very basic media content via
SMS
text messaging, and over 2.5 billion people today can receive basic web
content in the form of WAP pages, we have a very large installed base
of prospective customers who can consume media content on a phone.
The Chicken And Egg
We don’t need to wait for a “chicken-and-egg”
situation for
basic content services for mobile. From Radio we learn that even a very
compelling free service will not kill previous paid mass media like
radio did not kill of music recordings. Rather older mass media will
adjust to the newer one.
And it is possible to form symbiotic
relationships between two media channels like radio did with
recordings, and mobile is now starting to do with the internet as we
saw with Habbo Hotel
and with TV as we saw with Pop Idol.
From TV we have a very powerful lesson that a media can gain a
dominant position without a unique technical benefit. Bear this lesson
in mind, when you notice that mobile has six unique benefits.
From the
internet we learn that if a mass media is an inherent threat media,
threatening to cannibalise all legacy media, it also will rapidly alter
each of the legacy media.
Bearing in mind that mobile is also an inherent threat media,
able
to cannibalise all six before it, once suitable media formats are
launched, expect mobile to cannibalise previous media at least as fast
as the internet has been doing.
Form the internet we also learn that
interactivity creates digital community and moves media from push to
pull and a hot media ecology is inherently preferred over the
permafrost of a cold media world.
Mobile is the second hot media
and community services and social networking will thrive on mobile.
Mobile as the newest mass media channel is least
understood.
Even the internet is often misunderstood. What we hope this White Paper
helps in doing is to assist readers to see beyond limitations of a tiny
screen and a clumsy keypad. The above lessons can guide into
opportunities.
But the big picture should not be forgotten.
Mobile
today has twice the reach of TV, three times the reach of the internet,
and is the only media carried upon our person every hour of the day
both when we are awake, and even in arm’s reach when we are
asleep.
The
only mass media channel with a payment channel, it also is the only
mass media where audiences are accurately identified.
This is easily the richest mass media opportunity.
Summary posted by Livia Iacolare on Thursday, July 19 2007
If Gutenberg
were alive today, he would be taking pictures and shooting videos with
his mobile, he would be blogging via his mobile and vlogging via his
mobile, paying for his car parking spaces via his mobile, getting his
library books renewed via SMS and dating on Flirtomatic.
We wonder if our universe might be saddle shaped? We no longer
live
in a linear world. And traditional media is struggling to deal with
that. And what we are witnessing is a profound change in the
communication and media consumption habits of younger people.
We see a
divide between Digital Immigrants and Digital
Natives. Our kids are the digital natives.
We the adults, we are merely digital
immigrants.
We may learn to play the game well, but we will never be masters of it.
That’s only for your kids.
In this paper we hope we have
taken you on a
journey to understand how profoundly different our world is from a
media perspective. The mobile as you can see is part of a narrative
that dates back to Gutenberg.
It is the 7th Mass Media.
This white paper has been originally published with the title “Mobile
as the 7th Mass Media: An Evolving Story” by Alan Moore of SMLXL on June
2007. It is available for download
on the same site.
The 3 part series:
- Part 1: Mobile Mass Media | The Grass Roots Of The Mobile Phone Technological Revolution
- Part 2: Delivering Content On Mobile Devices | The Growth Of Mobile Mass Media
- Part 3: Mobile Mass Media Creative & Advertising Models | Mobile Phones Are The Future
Livia Iacolare is a contributing author discussing broadband video tools and software. His work can be found on MasterNewMedia. Some Rights Reserved.
