But as the mobile
industry meets in Barcelona this week, there are many reasons to feel
optimistic about mobile's benefit to advertisers. There are still some
hurdles to overcome and lessons to learn, but it is our belief that
mobile advertising will have a long and healthy life in the future.
Whether mobile will kill
digital advertising is not the most pressing question the industry
faces. True, we live in an era where disruption is the norm. We expect
new businesses to emerge - often seemingly overnight - to usurp standard
practice. But should we fear it? I think not.
If we focus on mobile
phones - then it is our expectation that mobile media will take no more
than 20% of digital revenues by 2016. Yet if we include tablets within
mobile media, we can predict that mobile advertising will surpass
traditional digital spending by 2016.
In many ways digital
advertisers have it easy. Seen through an advertisers' eyes, mobile is
so much more complex than other media formats. Mobile screen sizes are,
on average, 10 times smaller than PC screens. Mobile advertisers are
working with real estate that the advertiser has to carefully plan.
Additionally, the
personal nature of the device means consumers do not like to be
interrupted unnecessarily by untimely messages.
Finally, the plethora of
device and operating system choices, make it supremely challenging for
brands and advertisers to understand how, when and with what to target
their audiences.
Google's Android user experience
The mobile landscape is
fast-paced and will continue to evolve, meaning existing and new
challenges will continue to provoke the industry. Orange's annual
independent study into mobile media habits for advertisers, showed that
in the UK 82% of mobile media users access the internet primarily via
the browser, compared to 61% who accessed internet information from an
app.
Data driven journey through Barcelona
With growing HTML5
penetration, we expect web apps usage to continue to grow beyond where
we are today. This will allow a much more consistent and richer offering
around advertising on mobile.
Sharing the Android experience
So mobile will certainly
challenge digital. It may erode digital budgets. But it should not kill
it. To think that mobile could kill off another media format would
completely miss the benefit of mobile devices.
Our research also
revealed that one in two mobile media users is happy to receive
advertising messages on their mobile phone, as long as those adverts are
relevant and bring benefits to the end user, for example in the form of
coupons, useful alerts, or location challenges.
We see three principle
reasons as to why mobile has tremendous potential: It is often the last
touch-point before a purchase. Secondly it is the "connective tissue"
linking and integrating other media formats. Finally, mobile is more
personal, more social and more local than any other media.
And in real terms we
believe we're still two or three years away from mobile truly coming of
age. But it is a tremendously exciting time, where we will see
experimentation and new forms of engagement emerge, based on mobile
habits.
So back to the question, will mobile kill digital advertising? I don't think so.
But perhaps mobile
advertising's biggest threat at the moment is itself. Unless the
industry works together, addresses complexity and properly understands
mobile behaviours, we risk being held at a standstill and never reaching
the promised tipping point.