The connected commute

Mobile use is filling in the gaps – or dead time – in our lives says Mindshare UK’s James Chandler – and it means very big things for advertisers. So as commuters connect with the world around them, what will the future bring?

Five years ago, our commutes to and from our places of work consisted largely of reading newspapers and books, listening to music or simply using the time to simply get things done. Today, reading and listening are still core to our journeys – but instead we’re reading from an array of different sized digital screens whilst plugging in headphones and listening to playlists through the same device.

The ‘getting things done’ part has moved on considerably though, from an online experience limited to scanning and replying to emails on a Blackberry Curve – dipping in and out of signal – to train carriages enabled with high speed wi-fi that keep your nine inch tablet connected for the entire journey.

Our commutes also used to feature prolonged moments of ‘dead time’ where, before smart devices lived in our pockets and purses, we would travel between one fixed internet point to another.

The fact that 68% of the UK mobile population now own a smart device means that the concept of ‘dead time’ is dying. My Nokia Lumia or iPad Mini allows me to be connected online wherever I go and fills in those periods where ‘dead time’ used to exist. This ‘new’ time created by smartphones and tablets is a huge opportunity for brands and advertisers – allowing them to communicate to consumers on a one-to-one basis like never before.

Smart devices aside, our commutes are already beset with an array of media touchpoints, from the sides of buses to tube panels and newspaper cover wraps to Taxi TV. By adding a mobile layer to these touchpoints they become 360 degree product galleries, interactive games and digital shopping windows. Of course the ‘layers’ vary, but mobile’s interaction with the physical world by means of swiping, listening, touching, hovering, capturing and scanning turns once passive consumers into active ones.

By their very nature, commutes are all about our journey between locations – which lends itself to another mobile overlay based on where you are, where you’ve travelled from and where you’re commuting to. Our interaction with outdoor formats in particular can be enhanced by intelligent location-based targeting. Escalator panels and six sheets en route to the office will drive awareness, but geo-fencing these formats and pushing an SMS with textlink through to a brand’s m-commerce site could lead a consumer further down the purchase funnel.

Arguably, the biggest opportunity around the connected commute is in being able to interpret the context of the journey. Our thinking at Mindshare is framed around location + context + time – not just using mobile to understand where a commuter is at any given moment, but also their context.

For example, identifying that someone is stood waiting at a bus stop at 7.45am sets up a completely different context to someone sat on a bus travelling home at 6.15pm. Whilst our commutes to and from our places of work essentially take the same path, our mindset going to and coming from work is completely different – using location + context + time is crucial to how advertisers then choose to engage with commuters.

Media touchpoints are only one element of our connected commute – Transport for Greater Manchester and London Buses are just two examples of where commuters can already use contactless debit and credit cards to pay for their travel fares.

As the contents of our physical wallets – credit and loyalty cards, travelcards, ID and entry passes – move across into digital wallets on our smartphones, the mobile data footprint this leaves behind will power highly relevant and targeted opportunities for advertisers.

Imagine being able to pair real-time Oyster data, via a smartphone app, with the mobile interactions a commuter makes with media touchpoints across their route into work – the opportunity is huge and exciting.

In identifying that today’s commute is more connected than ever before, our means of planning across these journeys becomes less focused on planning channels and more around acknowledging the different commuter journeys and mapping out the various touchpoints across them.

In this way, mobile becomes a true connector between channels – rather than simply a tactical extension of desktop.

James Chandler is head of mobile at Mindshare UK.