Mobile Marketing Moving to the Forefront

The functionality of iPhones and other mobile devices represents a fundamental shift in how we view the act of marketing, further blurring the lines between advertising, research, promotions, CRM and entertainment content.  As new developments continue to make digital technologies a more integral part of our everyday lives, marketers will be forced to rethink mobile marketing's currently limited role within the marketing mix.

Somewhere along the line, "mobile" was half dismissed, pigeonholed to a rung on the ladder below all other media.  After all, "nobody wants ads on their phone." But then our phones morphed with our computers, our TVs, our music collections, our video game consoles, our calendars, our books...to become our lifelines.  Now "there's an app for that," and "that" can be practically anything, including your car keys.

Online and mobile, once treated by many marketing departments as separate tactical disciplines, have merged overnight.  Call it the mobile web or whatever else you'd like, but a digital fabric is starting to overlay virtually all aspects of life for certain consumers - and this fabric is growing rapidly. 

According to Ben Parr, citing a Morgan Stanley analysts' presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit, "AT&T's mobile data traffic has increased by 4,932% over the last three years. There will be over 1 billion 'heavy mobile data users' by 2013."   In 2008, there were 150,000 mobile web URLs (i.e. .mobi), and today they number 1.1 million.

Nielsen reports mobile web video usage is up 70 percent over 2008.  And HuffingtonPost.com's Steve Rosenbaum recently covered augmented reality tools within the popular iPhone apps Yelp and Urbanspoon that point to straightforward, immediate revenue models.

Technologies like augmented reality, RFID transactions, QR codes and location-based advertising once seemed far on the horizon.  But thanks to mobile web, they're starting to find practical applications.  While the numbers of users are still relatively small in comparison to the broader consumer population, it's clear where things are headed.

A recent patent filing from Palm for webOS is a fascinating hint at what's to come.  TheBoyGeniusReport.com cites portions of the patent application indicating Palm intends to not only use your location to funnel you ads or branded content, but also to data mine your calendar and serve up contextual advertising.  Google's Android phone promises similar location-based ad platforms.  As a consumer, I'm horrified.  As a marketer and brand research consultant, I'm practically giddy.

If we don't already live in a post-privacy era, we will shortly.  Gartner estimates that by the end of this year, mobile location-based advertising subscribers and revenue will double 2008 numbers.  Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker predicts we're in a "new computing cycle with mobile web" that will be 10 times larger than the traditional desktop Internet and grow even faster.

The data-mining power of Facebook (Surprise! Those fun little apps are feeding your "private" profile info to marketers) is just the beginning.  Think about it.  Your smart phone probably knows more about you than most of your friends.

Just like noise in more traditional media, people will have limited patience for the types of highly targeted, location-based contextual advertising new technologies promise to provide.  Consumers will actively avoid invasive, heavily promotional messages once their novelty subsides.  A new generation of today's spam filters will inevitably emerge to scramble or block pesky advertisers. 

But not to worry.  The real promise of the mobile web's digital overlay goes far beyond one-way, disruptive, overly promotional messaging.  The mobile web provides a portable platform for delivering tailored, brand-relevant interactive entertainment and useful branded utilities consumers will actually want to incorporate into their daily lives.  

Furthermore, opt-in, incentivized consumer ethnographic research incorporating text, photo, and video diaries will help marketers understand those varying flavors of daily life more deeply and intimately than ever imagined.  This capability is available today, yet few marketers are leveraging it to its full potential.  Given the deluge of data on the horizon, it's not difficult to envision a world of real-time market segmentation and highly customized messaging.

All of this requires a new way of looking at not only mobile, but the very notion of marketing itself.  Marketing will become even more immersive for consumers.  The boundaries between physical and digital spaces; between entertainment, marketing, research and measurement; and between marketers and consumers themselves are quickly eroding.

The sea change underway is certain to make many CMOs uneasy.  It will require IT, analytics, marketing, content producers, CRM and other traditionally separate organizational functions to work together in a lockstep.  The managerial and operational implications are staggering.  But the payoff will be tenfold for those who get it right first.