A new study from IPSOS and the IAB indicates showrooming leads to in-store sales. While 42% of consumers using mobile as a shopping tool made their purchase online, 30% made one in the store. For retailers, the key will be enabling product information and customer reviews in a controlled environment via a mobile app like shopkick or through digital signage. Don’t fight the phone guys, embrace it.
Tag: research
Telefonica Presents Global Mobile Research Study
This morning at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Telefonica (the Spanish-based telecom giant) presented an interesting market research study covering mobile in 54 countries consisting of over 50,000 interviews. Among the highlights:
- Atitudes towards the role of mobile in one’s life vary more than you would think around the world. China, Brazil, Africa among the areas with highest optimism. Western Europe has particularly less enthusiasm.
- The countries that are the most open to mobile advertising are Brazil and China. Latin America in general appears particularly less averse to mobile advertising.
- Latin America in fact now has more mobile lines than people. Prices for devices in the region have been falling significantly. Feature phone ownership is plateauing, smartphone penetration ramping up. Argentina and Brazil over-index on daily smartphone usage vs. rest of the world. They also over-index on mobile shopping.
- Europeans tend to be more hesitant to incorporate mobile into all parts of life. They under-index on using mobile for business – they prefer to mostly use mobile for their private lives.
- In response to the survey question: “Can mobile devices improve your potential at work?” the global percentage that agreed was 50%, in Western Europe in was only 22%.
- A hypothesis was presented: demography matters a great deal on attitudes towards mobile. Essentially, mobile has its biggest impact on populations hungriest for upwards mobility. As per capita income rises, the emotional value placed on mobility decreases.
In india, mobile Internet has already passed desktop internet usage. In Asia, brand love mobile advertising is more successful than in Europe. In Europe, users expect more utilitarian ads offering deals. There’s more creative latitude for brands in APAC.
Telefonica also presented their vision for targeted relevant mobile ads. They have launched several opt-in programs for SMS ads, citing that globally feature phones still dominate, thus limiting th potential reach of richer formats at the present time. Their value proposition includes their access to Customer’s names, home addresses, location (via cell tower for feature phones), and interests (past location).
The idea is that targeting based on this valuable data makes their mobile advertising offer particularly compelling. It was acknowledged that in many cultures this could be perceived as invasive, but they stressed that the value proposition of each campaign should be made strong enough to overcome this barrier. While the campaign results presented were impressive (e.g. 10% offer redemption), they did not cite how many customers had opted in to begin with as a percentage of their vast user base.
As an example of a value exchange with consumers, the company mentioned its Netzclub program in Germany, which offers free data usage to consumers who agree to view one targeted video ad per day.
Superbowl Ads From The Eyes Of A Brit
Watching the Superbowl as a Brit it was hard to escape two overriding feelings.
One- The Superbowl doesn’t really seem to be about the sport, instead all those people clattering into each other are rather background to the whole thing, people talk over the action, nobody really supports a side with any vigor and people come and go as the event goes on. The whole thing seems more about sport as an excuse to get together, chat , eat and talk about ads.
The second realization is that for a nation that spends it’s entire year doing everything it can to avoid ads, this seems to be this one curious window where people actually like ads, scrub that, they LOVE the ads, they talk about the ads, they laugh at the ads, they may even listen to them and remember them. For months it’s like ad agencies have rubbed their hands together knowing that for this one time, people will actually be watching and actually may care about what you have to say. That’s rather puzzling to me.
It’s not like this in the UK. While we don’t love ads, we have a curious relationship with them, they are at worst tolerated and at best, beloved. We have TV shows in primetime that celebrate the best ads from around the world. And you can understand why, most TV ads in the UK are rather gentle and sophisticated “films”. They are often creative narratives with pleasant storylines, feature nice plinky plonky music, they cajole and entertain, and smuther you and endear you. It’s not like that in the US, and I understand why most US ad breaks with their shouty patronizing interruption are not welcome.
It did get me thinking, how is it in a world where we now have no attention span, where we do several things at once, where so many people skip ads on DVD’s and if they do view them, they do so in the context of frustration, why on earth do we still have ad “breaks”? What rationale is there behind stopping the thing we want to watch, then taking 7 mins or more with the entire screen removed of the thing we were paying attention to, and either force people to put up with “paid interruption” or more likely, tempt them to put on the cooker or do something else for a bit.
What’s the need for the break? Would people not pay more attention to the screen and therefore the ad like message if they were not on together?
Why have we not more found ways to embed messages within the broadcast simultaneously and maybe as a way to add value and meaning? Sure we have “sponsorships” and logo’s and wardrobes provided (seemingly always by Ralph Lauren), but why not feature more things akin to banner advertisements, or branded utility, and do away with the entire concept of a “ad break” .
I’d love to do some research at the lab and find out if it’s better to get half of someones attentions while they are watching the show, or to take up the full screen when they are not. I’d love also to think of creative ways to get ad content and viewing content blended together in ways far more sophisticated that current techniques like sponsorship and product placement.
Pew Research: Tracking For Health
Pew Research has released a new study on health tracking habits among Americans, reporting that seven in ten adults monitor a health indicator for themselves or a loved one. Additionally 21% say they use some form of technology to track their health data, whether via apps, devices or websites. Fitbit and Nike Fuelband have been some of the devices leading the way, leveraging community, achievements and powerful visualizations to motivate behavior.
Gartner Reports PC Shipments Down 5% In Q4
If you’re wondering why there is a lack of PC news at the Lab, it’s for good reason. Gartner has just released numbers indicating a 4.9% drop in PC shipments from 2011. This appears to be due in large part to the growth of mobile as attention shifts towards mobile. While tablet owners aren’t ditching the PC just yet, they are not upgrading models at nearly the same rate.
PredictGaze Uses Eye Tracking Controls
The Lab has utilized eye tracking to measure attention but startup PredictGaze is taking that a step further by using the technology as way to interface with TVs, iPads and more. Predictgaze’s software leverages everyday webcams to let users control various devices through their eye movements alone. While we haven’t seen the technology in the wild, the findings from the demo look pretty impressive.
Report: Pros & Cons of Mobile Connectivity
The Pew Internet Life Project has a new study focused on the effect of mobile connectivity on today’s lifestyle. Highlights in the report cover interesting cultural discoveries such as reasonings for sleeping next to your phone.
Report: Cell Phone Activities 2012
The Pew Internet & Life Project has released it’s 2012 report on cell phone usage. While the data isn’t necessarily surprising, it’s good to know that 80% of respondents use their phone to stay in touch via text messages, but more interesting to know that 82% of users are taking pictures..
Pew Research Tackles Consumers Privacy Concerns
A new Pew Internet Project and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society report called Parents, Teens and Online Privacy indicates that 46 percent of parents are “very concerned” about how much information advertisers collect about their kids, with another 35 percent saying they’re “somewhat concerned.” These fears rank only slightly behind concerns about reputation management and interactions with strangers online— indicating that a popular push for increased regulation could certainly be in the cards in the years to come.
Mobile Health 2012 | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
Report: Mobile Health 2012
