At this time of year everyone is in the business of making predictions for the next 12 months. In spite of the economic doom and gloom, mobile and mobile marketing in particular, is expended to grow in 2009. Making predictions can leave you open to ridicule later on, but I’m going to stick my neck out here and give my thoughts on the coming year:
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SMS will grow continue to grow.
Maybe this seems like stating the bleedin’ obvious, but I feel it is worth pointing out that even in the current climate SMS will grow. There will be a move away from the mobile internet to focus on the more direct marketing provided by SMS. In 2008 some advertising agencies were declaring that SMS was the driver for mobile campaigns. I expect there will be more functional campaigns, such as Swift Cover’s vehicle insurance quotes by SMS.
Bluetooth marketing will grow.
In the UK, 2008 saw a change in the Ofcom regulations, where Bluetooth was not a personal medium such as SMS or email, but a broadcast one. A number of companies started to offer Bluetooth as a proximity marketing solution. With the growth in these companies and the potential from Bluetooth we will see many more campaigns in 2009.
More QR (Quick Recognition).
My scepticism to QR, or 2D Bar Codes has changed this year. Whilst they have been around for some time, I felt that they were useful only in Japan/Korea and were too niche for the European market. In the last year, however, QR codes have become more widespread in the UK and Europe. For example, the newspaper City AM has a QR code on the front page in every issue. Pepsi also ran a QR campaign this year._QR’s benefit is that it provides the user with very fast access to information – anything from an SMS to a mobile link, to an application download. This offers an ideal way to use mobile to enhance a print campaign.
What is required is for the QR readers to be installed on all handsets. Top end Nokia’s now have then as standard, and Google intend to include one in their next release of Android. Although this will represent a tiny percentage of the mobile market, it is likely that other handset manufacturers and mobile networks will follow suit.
MMS will grow
… but it will continue to remain niche_MMS has a place in mobile, although it is much less important than SMS. On a peer to peer level, most people use it very occasionally. However in the advertising and marketing area there is real potential. It offers a neat way of delivering pictures and video to handsets. This is particularly the case with couponing and ticketing (see below), so expect to see a growth in this area in 2009.
Mobile Couponing and Ticketing will increase_
The potential in coupons and tickets sent to mobile is only just starting to be realised. The current economic climate will drive a need to reduce cost. Add to that the need to reduce carbon emissions, and it becomes clear that mobile tickets are an obvious choice. One example of a form of ticketing is the mobile airline check in being offered by British Airways. This delivers the 2d barcode that is on web tickets and boarding passes, but offers the advantage of not requiring a print out. If it’s safe enough for airports then it is easily safe enough for any type of event. The barcodes will have to be delivered by MMS of course.
Location Based Services (LBS) will NOT take off.
Whilst I have always liked the idea of services that are linked to, or based on the user’s location, I have never been convinced that they will take off for one simple reason. Cost. In the UK the two issues are the charges made by the networks for location hits and the cost of converting postcode to Lat and Long data. Unlike most other countries in the world, in the UK the postcode to Lat/Long data must be bought on a yearly basis. For both companies and individual users the cost of LBS versus the benefit is not significant enough. If you add to this the fact that Google, for example offer good mobile mapping and location services for free, it hardly seems worth developing your own.
Mobile internet overtakes PC based internet use.
This may not entirely be the case in the UK , but a combination of flat rate tariffs, better handsets and mobile USB ‘broadband’ will see a significant increase in the number of mobile internet users. Worldwide there will be more people connecting through their mobile network than a land-based ISP._Why is this significant for mobile marketing? With more internet users, advertising content for the mobile market becomes much more relevant. Whilst things like ‘mobile search’ will remain limited, applications that use the mobile internet will increase, along with the opportunities for ad funded content.
Mobile security will become an important issue.
With more mobile applications such as banking and payment, along with an increase in mobile internet and marketing, expect to see more debate about security on handsets. An independent survey showed that 5.6 million people in the EU already access financial information from their mobile phones, which is a 23.6 per cent jump from 2007. And with this increase expect to see an increase in scams such as phishing.
If fraud attempts reach significant volumes, there will be a knock on effect on the marketing side with the introduction of spam filtering for SMS.
Targeted and Niche Advertising will grow
… just as untargeted mobile advertising will fail materialise. Sticking a banner on a mobile portal is not the way forward for mobile advertising. Neither will PPC (Pay Per Click) models such as Google’s Adwords work on mobile. The fact remains that the mobile internet experience is not one of search and browse in the same way as a PC. Targeted advertising, such as Blyk’s service will be the way forward. Blyk have around 200,000 UK subscribers under 24 years old who receive free calls and SMS in return for receiving advertising content. It’s a clear, simple relationship that both advertisers and the Blyk users know and understand.
The Iphone will be ‘just another phone’.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been an Apple fan for years … Macs, Ipods etc. They have great products and superb design. The iphone is great too (I own one!). Well, great for what it is. The fact remains that the iphone is just one product in a smartphone market that represents little more than 20% of users. And in that market there is stiff competition from Blackberry, Nokia and now the Google Phone. Underlying this, is the fact that most people want a phone to make calls and send SMS. They don’t want to listen to music or watch videos. That, after all, is what you do at home! Many people do not want to be connected to their email all the time. They actually want to get a way from it. I predict that the iphone will be like the Apple Mac – a great product for a niche of highly enthusiastic users. In mobile marketing terms the high profile campaigns, such as the Guiness game, will fail to light the imagination of many people.
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BY Mark Brill
Source：ZDNet.co.uk
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