Mobile Fix: Cannes, newTV and Prism
In his latest Mobile Fix, addictive! founder Simon Andrews talks mobile spend, his favourite winners from Cannes, the development of newTV and online privacy.
For a while now we have had a schtick about mobile being both mass market and a machine for making money. (Ad people adore alliteration)
New data from Deloitte really hammers this home; 72% of UK consumers between 16 and 64 have a smartphone – up 24% in the last 10 months. This kind of exponential growth has been predicted for a while but it’s now happening. If we add in those over 64 we probably get to over 30 million people with a smartphone in the UK.
And the report goes into detail about what people are doing with these phones; half have bought something, half are using mobile banking and 30% have scanned a barcode to get price or information.
New data from emarketer predicts that mobile spend could reach £1billion this year. Given that’s a straight line extrapolation we suspect it could be more – much more – if we can get some creative talent involved in the space rather than the clumsy repurposing of desktop banners that is so prevalent.
Cannes
In Cannes last week we saw some great creative work on mobile but very little could be classified as mobile advertising, and not much would be captured in the adspend data mentioned above.
It’s worth spending time looking at the mobile entries – even the shortlist has some good stuff that didn’t win. We loved the missing children idea from China, but with only 20,000 app downloads it didn’t get the scale that mobile can deliver.
Like a lot of Cannes winners, the basic construct seems to be: have a smart idea, make it happen and then make a video that gets shared.
This Heineken idea of beer bottles that glow in time to the music is a good example. Shouldn’t we use innovation to get real scale rather than create a neat video? Which approach is most likely to drive sales?
We really liked the Scrabble idea that gave you free WIFI in Paris, but reading the entry we found that just 6,000 words were created. So less than 6,000 people played? Couldn’t that idea be scaled, given there are millions of people with smartphones? And shouldn’t there be a link to buy the Scrabble app, or wasn’t that the point?
We were also delighted to see that a Toothbrushing app won; this mobile cliché is the modern equivalent of a mobile coupon being delivered as you walk past Starbucks. Oddly, no mention of how many downloads it got.
There was some really good work that won prizes, but for mobile to grow, we need to see work that achieves scale and drives sales. Mobile is at its best when it is a tool, rather than a toy.
Our favourite Cannes winner though was in the content space where The Beauty Inside for Intel and Toshiba won, getting 70 million YouTube views along the way. A great idea that achieved real scale – and drove a 360% lift in sales.
newTV
Getting 70 million views on YouTube underlines the opportunity of digital video and this week there is yet more buzz around how traditional broadcasters could/should use digital.
An ex Viacom exec makes an interesting argument that broadcasters should move all their content online in real time. We can’t see that happening just yet but as connected TVs move towards mass market it will make sense sometime soon.
With the Intel Black Box nearing launch, it may be sooner than we think. The healthy state of traditional TV means it is hugely lucrative, so getting the attention of all the tech players. We should remember that the Intel project is run by the man who made the iPlayer mass market, so they have real talent.
And new research from one of the most successful examples of branded content, BabyCentre, shows the challenge;
Such is the pressure on her time, it’s normal for her to watch TV whilst checking Facebook (two out of three mums said they do this frequently).
Along with good data on mums’ usage of social and mobile, it shows that the time for these new media is being shared with old media. Few people are stopping watching TV because they have a smartphone and tablet, but their attention is now being split between screens. That can be a problem for brands – and it can be an opportunity too.
Prism
Martin Sorrel makes the fair point that people are now likely to be more conscious of their privacy online and the moves Microsoft are making with their Do Not Track browser also muddy this water.
As cookies look vulnerable, the ad tech arms race continues with fingerprinting – a technology that tries to identify you through the way your browser is configured. Other players like Drawbridge are looking to innovate in tracking and for advertisers, this is a big deal. As all the agencies move to Exchanges the ability to use data from various sources to target messaging is becoming hygiene.
But if the consumers don’t want this, it won’t happen. VC Fred Wilson made an interesting point a couple of weeks ago; what if people had tools that gave false data to adtech firms?
Of course, if the industry use these tools to provide value there shouldn’t be a problem – better targeted ads are good for everyone. But every time someone sees a retargeted ad for that flight they searched for, or loads of John Lewis ads after visiting the site, are they are going to now think of Prism?
Do we need to get smarter with the tech we have or risk losing it as consumers look for the digital equivalent of the don’t call initiative.