The Year of the Mobile Will Never Come
Caspar Schlickum
Managing Director, Accenture Song Asia Pacific | Experienced Business Leader | Marketing Professional | Investor | Speaker | Author | Member Marketing Society Singapore Chapter | Singapore PR
Sorry people. But the year of the mobile is never going to come. But not for the reasons you think. Let me explain, and then feel free to disagree.
Ever since I first became interested in these things, the famous and fabulous Mary Meeker has publisher her overview of the world's internet. It's an amazing and thorough piece of work.
In her deck (the 2016 version of which was recently released and can be found in its entire 213 page glory here - which by the way, she presents in less than 25 minutes!), is this slide:
In this slide she points with a big arrow and blue box at the difference in time spent / money spent on mobile. The message is clear: our industry is en-masse under investing in mobile. And it's a $22Bn opportunity (just in the US).
Meanwhile, we go to conferences and wonder jokingly if it might be the year of the mobile because we are defining the year of the mobile as the year when our clients finally spend that $22bn.
Leaving aside the fact that the low cost of mobile inventory means that we are unlikely to ever get those levels of spend on mobile advertising, this argument misses the point.
And its a point that most marketers actually understand very well: mobile is not only (or even in many cases) about advertising. This does not, however, mean that it does not play a key role in marketing.
Allow me to illustrate with an example from Brazil, which won the Mobile Lion in Cannes in 2014:
I think we can all agree that this campaign is all-in on mobile. In fact this campaign idea let alone the execution would not have been possible without mobile technology.
But what was the media spend here? I don't have the exact data on that, and would very much like someone to set the record straight if they were involved in the campaign, but I am reasonably sure that the media plan looked a bit like this:
Print, including magazines and flyers on the beach to distribute bracelets and app download instructions: 100% of budget
Mobile advertising including banners etc: 0% of budget
If we were generous we might include the app-development cost as mobile spend, in which case the above %age might be 95% / 5% if they got someone expensive to build the app.
My point is that the year of the mobile isn't coming, because it's been and gone. And as demonstrated by Mary's chart, it has very little to do with mobile advertising, and everything to do with mobile marketing and engagement.
And as that does not get reflected in advertising spend, I think Mary is measuring it wrong.
Retired Chief Marketing Officer | Chief Communication Officer | Director | Expert Consultant
8 年Damn your click bait headline! I came here spoiling for an argument, only to find that I agree with you ;-)
Client Partner @ dentsu | Marketing Consultant
8 年The entire notion that the Mobile Year is looming is probably a Marketing strategy that never materialized or short-lived with current models we have but then again, it might come one day when a new way of measurement comes into the scene.
Founder & CEO Jivox, Vice-Chair American India Foundation, Author, Top 50 SaaS CEO, Unicorn founder
8 年Well said Caspar, agree 100%. Mobile is a great marketing not advertising opportunity. Smart brands will use content, app and other strategies to get engagement from consumers but the spend in terms of media will be minimal and so that gap will never be filled.
Co-SENCo/Science Teacher
8 年Been, gone and soon to be replaced methinks, evidenced by the millions of us who, with heads bowed, walk down busy streets bumping into each other screaming 'directions to Pret' into glass rectangles. Mobile's current function/form mismatch must have Kickstarter innovators foaming at the mouth. Great article as always Caspar.
Great piece, Caspar. Agree the mobile opportunity is still huge. This is a good example of moving from the "mobile first" era to the "mobile everything" age.