It's a tiny slice of a tiny slice, but mobile RSS users represent a juicy opportunity for marketers; an AvantGo senior manager reports.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is slowly invading the media landscape. Every time you turn around, it seems like another company is releasing an easy-to-use RSS tool or service. Industry giant Google jumped into the fray in October, launching the beta of their Ajax-powered web-based reader. The new open source Flock browser even has RSS feed-reading directly integrated into the design. With RSS, the fast and easy flow of information is getting faster all the time. For marketers, this means there is a growing opportunity to leverage the technology to reach their target audience. As millions of content providers (and their users) embrace RSS, the next progression is, of course, finding a way to take all of these RSS information snippets mobile.
Recently, a bevy of mobile RSS services has appeared, giving mobile phone and PDA users the ability to stay up-to-date on their favorite media sites, blogs and even podcasts, while they are on the go. In fact, there are so many services now -- and the features are so varied -- that it might be difficult to determine which mobile RSS reader is best to use. There are free versions such as AvantGo and Feedburner, as well as fee-based options through Egress and Newsbreak. Some, like Nextblast, only work on mobile phones -- not smartphones or PDAs.
Further complicating things, most services can only receive feeds when you are wirelessly connected, so in most cases the content is truncated or you can't click through to the original article. In fact, Bloglines and Yahoo! don't use mobile applications at all; users of these services must manually put a link into their mobile browsers to access their aggregated RSS content.
Despite the proliferation of new services, I have to wonder, is mobile RSS a viable marketing medium? In my last article, I referred to a July InfoTalk interview on Podtech.net with Forrester's Charlene Li. She mentioned that only five percent of households read blogs, a smaller number read RSS feeds, and even fewer listen to podcasts. Now, if less than five percent are actually reading RSS feeds, what percentage is taking those feeds mobile?
Marketers continue to debate the merits of advertising in RSS feeds. Major media companies still view RSS as a hindrance to their advertising revenues rather than a benefit. Their arguments are the same -- impressions are hard to track and, most importantly, clickthroughs are difficult to measure. If you subscribe to RSS feeds from CNN, New York Times, USA Today and other major outlets, you'll find only the slimmest of information offered up: usually just a headline and a one or two line sentence about the story. Why is that? It's simple really-- it's all about the clickthroughs and the eyeballs. When readers use RSS feeds, they don't have to go to the media site directly. In turn, publishers tend to view content distributed via RSS feeds as a loss of advertising revenue.
But is that a hasty decision? It could be. Marketers may not realize that RSS feeds can be a boon to advertisers for two reasons: they're reaching a highly targeted niche audience and, in the case of mobile RSS, they're also reaching a distinctly captive audience. Plus, there are other ways to track advertising campaigns than through traditional clickthroughs associated with online and email/newsletter advertising. What about coupon codes? What about contests?
Since the technology is still somewhat nascent, the primary mobile RSS users are extra tech-savvy, which tends to correspond to a demographic of mostly male, professional and affluent individuals. This alone is a nice niche audience. But if you look at the more popular feeds, you quickly realize the opportunities to market to an even more specialized group. For example, I subscribe to RSS feeds from 43 Folders, Arts & Letters Daily and Slashfood. From that sampling you might guess that I'm an organization junkie; well-educated and informed; interested in books and literature; and possibly a major foodie. As such, I would probably be amenable to ads in my RSS feeds for companies like Modo&Modo (makers of Moleskines), Barnes & Noble and Open Table.
When it comes to mobile RSS, the advantage to marketers is the fact that mobile Internet users tend to be a captive audience. Users typically view content during their "downtime" -- while waiting in a doctor's office, on a subway or even during a break at work. The lack of competing distractions in these scenarios means this captive, yet active, audience usually interacts with their chosen content at a much higher rate than comparable media formats. In this open, relaxed frame of mind, customers are more receptive to the messages being communicated. Smart marketers know that by contacting prospects when and where they are most open to receiving marketing information, companies can realize unprecedented marketing and sell-through success.
As more mobile users turn to RSS to obtain information on the go, advertising within the feeds will be vital to the success of this new content model and will be a lucrative way to capture this growing, trendsetting audience. Also, publishers should keep in mind that by placing relevant advertisements in their mobile RSS feeds, similar to the content they would find on their website, users are more likely to be interested, and, in turn, more likely to clickthrough -- ultimately driving more traffic to the website directly.
Crystal King is senior product marketing manager at AvantGo, a service of iAnywhere Solutions, a Sybase company. King oversees marketing, branding, communications and public relations for the AvantGo mobile internet service. Today, more than 2,500 major brands, including American Airlines, CNET, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Volkswagen leverage AvantGo to target a highly desirable demographic of more than seven million registered users. Prior to joining iAnywhere, King was marketing director at Taxware, a First Data company. She has worked in high tech marketing for over twelve years at companies such as Nexaweb, Bowne, GE Capital and a handful of dot.com startups. She holds an M.A. in critical and creative thinking from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.