Mobile is the new land of opportunity for search
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The most overused phrase in digital, other than the words ‘Google killer’, is ‘This is the year of mobile’.
new media age has long-triumphed mobile as a potential marketing goldmine, and finally statistics are showing that marketers are embracing the platform; this week the IAB’s first mobile ad spend study reported the mobile ad market was worth £28.6m in 2008.
What was interesting was that almost 50% of spend, approximately £14m, was on search. While the bulk of search spend on mobile is around mobile content — ringtones, downloads and so on — there’s definitely a shift in perception from advertisers and agencies towards mobile as a brand marketing platform.
There’s no question the arrival of handsets providing good-quality mobile internet experiences has been a catalyst for the growth; the IAB said, based on 2007 estimates, the market grew by 100% year on year.
So should agencies now be investing more effort and resources in understanding the opportunities of the UK mobile search market? I think they should. We’re a mobile population that, despite being broke, is using the web on the move to find things, be it the nearest pub or branch of John Lewis.
People are spending more time on the mobile internet than ever, as shown in this week’s Orange Digital Media Index, which says the Orange World Portal attracted 3.25m visitors between December and February, up 26% from last summer.
Clearly this is no longer a niche platform, so it’ll be interesting to see if search specialists’ attitude towards it changes this next year.
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Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | Fri, 15 May 2009 2:39 pm
did you see the gadget show on Monday and a cool new mobile search app Point & Find from Nokia.
Check it out, takes mobile search to a whole new level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1wM6nlcALA
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Marc Barach, CMO, Marin Software | Fri, 22 May 2009 6:18 pm
The key to mobile advertising success comes down to relevance. The online advertising industry needs to learn from the mistakes made during the roll-out of the web on desktops and ensure they do not happen again.
Initially, the primary ad format was the banner; untargeted and interruptive. As banner volume grew, consumers became more and more frustrated. Click through rates plummeted by as much as 90% and consumers abandoned sites that "abused" them with too many meaningless commercial messages. This gave rise to the targeted ad business which took the form of paid search. Today less than 5% of web pages served account for more than 50% of the revenue generated. The lesson for mobile is that if it is to take advantage of the potential gold mine from a revenue perspective and establish the basis for ongoing consumer satisfaction, it has to make sure its paid search strategy is right.
However, search in mobile is not the same as desktop search - it requires advertisers, publishers and technology providers to introduce features and processes that are suited to the mobile consumer. But, what a consumer! Anyone doing commercial searches on a mobile device is in the buying phase, not the research phase of a commercial action. Does anyone hear the dulcet tones of a cash register ringing?
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