Mobile Mix From Millennial Media

Millennial Media has launched a new report called Mobile Mix, which covers the latest trends in mobile devices, manufacturers, operating systems, and technology. Some of you might be aware of the fact that Millennial Media already releases a scorecard called SMART (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting) every month, which focuses on mobile advertising. The company says that Mobile Mix and SMART will complement each other.

Millennial Media has released its fist Mobile Mix report for the month of March 2010. Given below are some of the highlights from the report.

• Apple accounted for over 40% of the ad impressions in the month of March. The company has held on to the top slot continuously for six months now.

• Manufacturers supporting Google Android enabled devices dominate the list of Top 15 Mobile Manufacturers. In fact, more than 50% of the manufacturers on the list are associated with Android powered devices.

• Mobile handheld devices like iPod Touch, iPad, and Sony PSP accounted for nearly 21% of the impressions in the month of March. This is the first time the report has mentioned something about handheld devices with mobile web facility. Earlier, it used to focus only on mobile phones.

• Android ad requests increased by a whopping 75%, which is unprecedented. RIM ad requests, on the other hand, increased by 25%.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

0 comments.

India - The Second Largest Consumer of Mobile Internet

A recent report by Google says that India is the second largest consumer of mobile internet in the world today. The report says that more than 14 billion mobile web page views were generated in the month of February 2010. India accounted for 5.9% of these page views. The U.S., being the largest consumer of mobile internet, accounted for more than 50% of page views in February.

India has managed to edge past its closest competitor China in terms of mobile data usage. Its burgeoning mobile user population (currently more than 500 million mobile phone users) is one of the main reasons why it has managed to topple China and rise to the second position. Another reason could be the recent fallout between Google and the Chinese government, which has weakened Google’s presence in China considerably. Given the fact that this report only considers countries where Google has a strong presence, it is not very surprising that India is ahead of China in terms of mobile internet usage.

An important fact to be mentioned here is that though India has more than 500 million mobile users, only about 25 million users use the paid data services offered by network operators. Google India, however, predicts that this number could rise to 100 million by the end of 2010.

An interesting fact that the report has mentioned is that most Indian mobile users use reasonably priced low end handsets like Nokia 5130 Express Music and Nokia 3110c. In stark contrast, mobile users in the U.S. use high end handsets like the iPhone for mobile internet purposes. This situation, however, is expected to change soon thanks to the proliferation of high end devices in the Indian market lately. As more and more people turn their attention toward high end phones, the number of mobile internet users in India is expected to rise steadily in the coming years.

Categories: Mobile Web.

0 comments.

The Need for Mobile Websites - Will Big Brands Wake Up?

Here’s a news item that surprised me to say the least. Interbrand recently released its list of the top 100 brands for 2009 and nearly 1/3rd of the brands in that list do not have their own mobile website.

If your reaction to this news is ‘dude, what’s the big deal?’ – let me tell you something. According to statistics, the number of people who use smart phones (read iPhone, Blackberry, Android, etc) keeps increasing every year. In North America alone, nearly 26% of mobile users use the mobile web facility on their phone regularly. In other words, they use their mobile phone to browse the web. With more and more people buying internet enabled high end phones, it is only logical to assume that this percentage will grow significantly in the near future. So, you’d assume that big brands would have woken up to reality long time back and created their own mobile websites, right? Well; it turns out it is not the case.

Remember – I am not talking about small, lesser known brands here. Big, famous brands like Coca Cola and GE do not have a mobile website. To say that this is surprising is a huge understatement.

I have talked about the importance of big brands having a good mobile presence and how important it is to have a decent mobile website. I firmly believe that a well designed, easy to access mobile website is of paramount importance for any brand, leave alone huge brands like Coca Cola and GE.

Some could argue that iPhone and certain other mobile phones offer a full browser experience and so there is no need for a mobile website. Guess what? Not everyone in the U.S. uses an iPhone. There are other phones whose mobile browsers are not nearly as good as the iPhone mobile browser. What about the people who use these phones? What are they supposed to do?

Contrary to what most people think, browsing the web using a mobile phone is not easy. The screen is small, the keypad is small, and it is certainly not as easy as browsing the web on your PC or laptop. This is why you need to have a customized mobile website which loads quickly and easy to navigate. It is not hard to do. Facebook has a very good mobile site, Toyota has one, MySpace has one, Microsoft has one, and a number of other famous brands have one too. So, the only explanation is that some brands have not yet realized the potential of mobile internet and are reluctant to reach out to their users through their most personal device – the mobile phone.

I hope it does not stay this way. The future is mobile and let us hope – for the sake of all mobile users in the world – these brands realize this sooner than later.

Categories: All things mobile phones, Mobile Web.

2 comments.

Mobile Advertisers Eyeing the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa

A recent report from JBB research, a U.S. based research group, says that the 2010 soccer world cup could give the mobile advertising industry in South Africa a huge boost.

The soccer world cup starts on June 11 and ends on July 11. This month long event is supposed to generate a huge amount of interest among fans all over the country and advertisers are planning to reach out to these fans using the mobile phone as a medium.

The report says that advertisers are planning to come up with a lot of ad funded UGC (user generated content) applications to make fans actively participate in various contests. The soccer world cup is the world’s most watched sporting event and the amount of money spent on advertising will be huge. A significant amount of this money will be spent on mobile advertising since the country has a very active mobile user base.

This news should not come as a surprise for anyone who has been a regular reader of this blog, since we have already discussed the staggering growth of mobile advertising in South Africa here, here, here, and here. If you are an advertiser in a country which has 30 million mobile users, most of whom are into mobile social networking and mobile web, it is only natural that you use the mobile phone as a medium to reach out to your target customer base. In fact, the report says that most South Africans keep in touch with each other through mobile social networking sites like MXit, Meep, MTN’s noknok, and Facebook instead of calling each other or texting each other.

The report also says that the number of high end phone users in the country could increase significantly by the end of this year, when video broadcasting enabled mobile phones are introduced to the market. This could open a plethora of opportunities for advertisers to reach out to their target customer base – video streaming, video based mobile blogging, and more. So, mobile advertisers are very optimistic and are expecting very good response rates for their mobile marketing campaigns.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

0 comments.

Indian Mobile Advertising Market on a Roll

We have seen a lot of reports about India being a very dominant player in the mobile advertising market, right? Here is one more report to add to that long list. Limbo, a California based mobile social networking company, and GfK Technology, a Germany based market research company, have come up with a joint report which brings up some important points about mobile advertising in India.

The report says that eight in ten mobile phone users in India get ads on their mobile phone which is unprecedented to say the least. The numbers we are talking are huge – there are 300 million mobile users in India now and, on an average, there are 100 million new mobile connections added every year. In this scenario, mobile ads could have a tremendous reach in both urban and rural areas.

The report also says that text messaging or SMS (short messaging service) is the most sought after format of mobile advertising. Around 75% of the ads delivered in India are text based.

Mobile internet or mobile web is not as popular as one would imagine in India as data plans are quite costly. But the report predicts that the rates will come down significantly due to three reasons.

1. A lot of youngsters are interested in mobile web. Considering the fact that more than 500 million people in India are yet to celebrate their 20th birthday, this is a huge market.

2. The quality of mobile web browsing has increased tremendously thanks to high end phones like Apple iPhone. So, the number of people who use the feature will go up steadily.

3. Most importantly, mobile web, as predicted by experts around the world, is the future of mobile advertising. So, mobile advertisers will find a way to reach their target customers through mobile web. What this means to the end user is that he could get a lot of free, ad sponsored multimedia content.

At the end of the day, all this data leaves us with a question – is the future of mobile phone advertising heading east?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

0 comments.

Older »