There's a longstanding joke among analysts who cover the wireless industry that every year is the "year of mobile." And every year, when December rolls around, mobile has advanced a little (or even a lot, like it did in 2008), and yet it hasn't quite managed to achieve the breakout predictions.
As someone guilty of his share of "this year is the year of mobile" prognostications, I've often thought of mobile as the plane perpetually taxiing down the runway but never achieving enough speed to really take off.
We all know from numerous consumer studies, as well as our personal experience, that our phone is the one device that is with us at all times. So marketers' frustration and impatience with mobile's relatively languorous growth as a marketing channel is easy to understand, especially now that mobile phone penetration in the U.S. alone stands at well over 80 percent of the population. (By comparison, it has already exceeded 100 percent across most of Europe, with mobile-fanatic countries like Italy edging closer to an average of two phones per person.)
However, as some of the key chicken-and-egg problems finally get addressed -- most notably, network speeds (the widely reported iPhone mobile internet capacity issues at the recent SXSW festival notwithstanding), data plan costs, and the mobile browsing experience -- the barriers impeding the channel's growth are beginning to fall away.
In fact, recent figures released by comScore attest to the degree to which mobile internet access is becoming more of a daily feature in consumers' lives -- perhaps more of a daily presence than marketers themselves. According to the measurement firm, 22.4 million users now access the mobile web to retrieve news and information, more than double the number from a year ago. Monthly users grew 71 percent from 36.9 million to 63.2 million, or roughly one-third of the wired internet user population.
More significant is the fact that mobile activity is expanding beyond the bounds of basic tasks and into the realm of entertainment, commerce, and social networking. As impressive as 100+ percent growth in news and information usage is, the number of users accessing social networking sites and blogs on their mobile devices shot up 427 percent in the past year, with more than 9 million accessing social sites on a daily basis, and 3.3 million now trading stocks or accessing their personal financial accounts. This is all due to the increasing availability of downloadable, resident applications that facilitate these types of transactions.
For the record, Nielsen Mobile reports similar figures for mobile media consumption, with 127 million consumers now using SMS, and 70 million downloading a range of content. Teens and 'tweens appear to be the force driving the shift from information retrieval to broader media and entertainment consumption -- what might be likened to an evolution from mobile browsing to mobile engagement.
The audience data suggests we've arrived at a new chicken-and-egg problem. Consumer adoption of the mobile internet is no longer the impediment it once was. Rather, as a growing number of voices around the industry have intimated, the problem lies with the fact that there are more consumers than marketers using the channel, meaning it's the marketers who now must play catch-up.
At a recent conference I attended, Maria Mandel, senior partner and executive director of digital innovation at Ogilvy, pointed to two primary challenges: one is the complexity (or perceived complexity) of running a mobile media campaign, and the other is the fact that marketers still compare mobile to other channels, and in so doing, ignore the qualities that make it unique (such as personalization, geographic, location- and interest-based targeting and round-the-clock access to consumers).
Of course, there is another issue, one that often goes unmentioned: Most marketers and their agency and carrier partners haven't figured out how to parse the data and use the channel creatively or effectively. Many simply haven't thought broadly enough about what mobile means, extending beyond the phone to a growing range of portable devices from netbooks to in-car interfaces, to gaming devices that, like the PSP, allow for internet access, to in-store and outdoor digital signage.
Much of the future of mobile marketing rests on understanding and mining the shifting consumer usage of mobile devices. Data from comScore and Nielsen help bring that future into sharper focus, demonstrating how, in many ways, the iPhone has pointed the way toward greater mobile engagement. But that data also reminds us that despite its halo effect, the iPhone still represents a relatively small portion of the overall market.
The mobile device and browser ecosystem will continue to be complex, so marketers should bear in mind that while an iPhone application can generate buzz and result in high rates of adoption among iPhone users, reaching them accomplishes only part of the goal. Smartphones in all their myriad iterations (and imitations of the iPhone) have their role to play, too.
Just as technological challenges impeded marketers' initial use of the wired internet and then gave rise to platforms, standards, and innovations that have largely removed those impediments, a similar process is taking place with the mobile channel. The essential challenge of understanding audiences, consumer behavior, and crafting messages that will resonate still remain, and that's where marketers need to put their efforts or risk falling behind their customers.
Noah Elkin is managing partner at international search-inspired digital agency Steak.
