cjlambert's posthaven

The mobile industry group of AIMIA released findings from its 'Australian mobile phone lifestyle index 2012 (AMPLI)' at a conference in Sydney today. 

Excluding voice and SMS, sending and receiving emails is the next most highly ranked use of the mobile phone followed by visiting websites, and/or browsing or searching the Internet and to get information. 

How many emails do you receive per day that aren't optimised for mobile? How many are data hungry and you would rather send them to the trash then use your data allowance for heavy graphics?

How searchable is your site on mobile? Can people find your offices on Google maps? What are the call to actions for sales conversion on your stripped back mobile sites?

I would imagine that most marketers aren't testing their offers on mobile, let alone across operating systems and devices.  

Try and search for information on your m. site and see where the gaps are. What's annoying you? What other the main things that customers need to know when they're mobile and what can you leave out for the full site? Remember that most customers won't be switching between an email and a mobile app for quick information so your mobile site matters. 

Other key findings for me included:

• Increase in the percentage of respondents with more than 1GB of data (from 11% to 39% over the four years)
• Approximately 40% of respondents use their mobile phone to compare prices online and to look at product or service reviews before making a purchase decision
• 60% of respondents reported that they used some form of social networking (SN) sites or applications on their mobile phones. Facebook was found to be the most popular SN site or application (59%), with Twitter being a distant second (26%)
• Respondents were asked what type of applications they have used on their mobile phones in the last 6 months. The most popular types of applications used by respondents were “Maps and navigation” (74%), Games (74%), News and weather (73%) and social networking (71%).
• Almost 40% of respondents reported that they owned a tablet, which represented a substantial increase from last year.

A full copy of the report is available here. 

 

 

 

The information was released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau today, quoting the Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia's half-yearly report. An executive summary of the member's only report is available below. 

 

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http://gplus.to/courtneylambert 

PWC are predicting a moderate, 5.3 % growth in the global advertising industry today with the release of their 2015 outlook. 

The global advertising market is expected to grow from $434 billion in 2010 to $588 billion in 2015, increasing on average by 6.2 percent per annum (2011-2015). 

The correction is welcome after the hard trading of 2008-09.  

The PWC segment categories are a little confusing with digital and social grouped into the generic category of 'internet' which doesn't provide a lot of insight; focusing on the channel rather than the device. 

The Forbes VSS Industry Forecast 2011-2015 predicts 5.7% growth with consumer internet and mobile fueling spend at 18.1%. PWC predicts around half this at 9.6%. 

The PWC newspaper growth rates between 1.0 and 2.5% seem optimistic considering the revenue drags experienced throughout the US and major restructure announcements in the Australian industry. The Forbes VSS Industry Forecast 2011-2015 predicts a global decline of 3.8% which seems more realistic. 

Static numbers in outdoor and trade media support the theory that digital will continue to extend the media mix rather than cannabalise it-encouraging news for both media companies and agencies. 

The challenge now is for the media companies to redesign their organisations as quickly and painlessly as possible so they can deliver advertising products that work. Traditional revenues are still well behind what's needed to transition to digital and the people managing the heavily siloed structures are not designing products that reflect consumer media consumption. 

How fast newer players such as Google, Facebook and Twitter can design and sell ad products that will compete for significant amounts of spend (10%+) still remains uncertain. 

 

The paywall debate is an important one but let’s go under the hood and look at the real question large media companies such as Fairfax, Facebook and News Ltd need to be asking themselves.

How will content shifting impact on my advertising revenues?

Paywall and display advertising work fine when the audience gathers around the main dot com site to view the stories.

What happens when the content is moved to aggregators such as Storify?

The partnership announced yesterday at Le Web between Google + and Flipboard demonstrates that Google is trying to get out in front of these changes and develop aggregation functionality inside their products for inevitable content shifting.

If readers aggregate RSS feeds for tablet or mobile device, obviously the complexity of the ad products will be lost.

Digital advertising products that command the most money such as pre-rolls, skyscrapers or page buyouts are lost on third party aggregators . So either the aggregator takes over the advertising and you syndicate content to them, or you create a walled garden (paywall) and stop content sharing.

Arguably, the death of the first generation Myspace was its 'walled garden' model. Facebook learned from MySpace’s errors and have taken brave steps to make content on their site shareable. Facebook are still figuring out how to adserve mobile or third party aggregators in a measurable way and so the quest continues.

Paywalls are part of the solution but don’t truly reflect multi-device media consumption.

Australian SMB research released today. 

Highlights of the report include:

-27% of small, 34% of medium and 79% of large businesses have a social media presence

-22% of small businesses update their social media every day, while 28% of them do it once a week

-39% of medium businesses update their social media every day

-83% of small businesses on social media have a Facebook page

-27% of small businesses on social media have a Twitter account

-79% of medium businesses on social media have a Facebook page

-33% of medium businesses on social media have a Twitter account

 

The full report is available for download below. 

I love this first image showing a lone, stone-throwing protester going up against an armored vehicle. 

An anti-government protester throws objects at a riot police vehicle in the port city of Suez, about 134 km (83 miles) east of Cairo, January 27, 2011. Police fired rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators in Suez on a third day of protests calling for an end to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year-old rule. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El-Ghany. 

 

I've gone through and grabbed a couple of screens I saw throughout the night as the overthrow continues. 

Traditional news sources use a live Tweetdeck screen and Trendsmap to show citizen journalists reporting live and to track sentiment from people on the ground. 

The Egyptian government cuts internet and mobile phone access yet Al-Jazeera is determined to keep Tweeting; broadcasting through landline conveyed messages until their satellite is restored. 

Someone offers medical assistance via Skype and users share screens so that locals can see international, non State-controlled media via the web. 

Egyptians organise around Facebook groups and the world supports their profiles with messages of solidarity. 

User mock the Eqyptian regime and work to restore communications and send out information. 

Welcome to the brave new world of social media. 

courtesy Facebook NZ Jan 2011

 

 

Nothing you could ever possibly create inside your company is as important as something your users create. Everrrrr.

 

User generated content is the holy grail of social conversations and I’m always shocked to see page admins dismissing photos, videos, comments and interactions that their users take the time to capture and upload.

 

It’s as rare as unicorn poop so embrace it and thank the social media powers for gifting you with such an amazing blessing from above.

 

Interactions on your pages should have you climbing out over the firewall and pashing your users- with your tongue.

 

Most recently I heard the story of customer Jane Username who experienced a product for the first time (no it’s not me).  Ms Username had a positive service experience, took a photo, edited it in Photoshop, uploaded it to Flickr and shared it with the company on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Page admin (let’s call him Senor Droppedonhead) responded by saying ‘that’s nice but ours are better’ and sending Ms Username a link to commercially shot catalogue imagery on his employer’s website.  What a dumbass. 

 

Ms Username got sniffy, pulled down her images and vented at people like me about how stupid Senor Droppedonhead and his stupid company was. I think we can call that a fail and a massive ‘missing of the point’.

 

Thank your users, encourage them and the unicorns will flourish and spread their germinating dung of awesome on your company lawn.