Making a mobile play
Despite Google, Yahoo and AOL's headlong rush into the mobile market, many interactive marketers have been slow to follow. eMarketer reports that as of last December, only 13 percent of interactive marketers made use of text messaging and only 11 percent advertised via WAP sites.
This disparity in mobile investments between the web leaders and advertisers highlights the discomfort of many interactive marketers to try out this relatively new space.
Of course, there is danger in entering a new market unprepared -- a lack of familiarity with various mobile technologies and platforms can feel overwhelming for marketers who might otherwise be game to try new approaches. But jumping into the market too late holds its own risks.
The fact remains that key demographic groups are moving heavily into mobile and cutting down on their desktop web time. For marketers, that means it's time to move with them.
One relatively painless point of entry for marketers is to make sure each client develops a mobile-compatible version of its traditional website, and when the client is ready to embark on a mobile campaign, the supporting infrastructure will already be in place.
Only then should you decide where you want to target your mobile marketing efforts. With its online track record and seemingly holistic approach to the mobile space, Google seems a logical choice. Its standard AdSense platform has more than proven itself online, so taking up the company's mobile offerings seems to offer maximum gain with minimum risk.
But that doesn't mean it's time to overlook Yahoo and AOL. Though AOL's mobile play seems almost haphazard, along the lines of an afterthought even, numbers from Hitwise suggest AOL is having some of the market's most significant mobile success. Hitwise reports that AOL's mobile web traffic is currently higher than Google's and double that of MSN Mobile.
In other words, at least for now, AOL's mobile tools are drawing more users for longer periods of time than Google.
The new question for interactive marketers then is: for how long?
