Mobile Fix: QR Codes – Quite easy really
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on QR Codes, Amazon, Android and advertising…
QR Codes – Quite easy really
Our thinking around QR codes last week got people talking and we had a good reaction to our house project QuiteEasyReally. We’re hoping that anyone and everyone using QR codes will add this url by the code so we can start to educate civilians on what these codes are and why they should use them – and of course how they use them.
So we were interested to see that Amazon are pushing QR codes as a way to drive traffic to their new Android Appstore and that some US research showed ads with QR codes get better recall.
But the jury is still out, with some people thinking QR codes will never happen and making the fair point that SMS can be used as an alternative.
We remain bullish and see them as an essential stepping stone to a world where Google Googles and NFC have sufficient penetration – and consumer awareness – to go mass market.
Amazon
The Amazon Android appstore has launched to general praise in the US whilst the UK version hasn’t, causing heated debate on the Amazon site.
Amazon are also busy on other fronts with rumours emerging around their desire to get involved in mobile payments. As we’ve covered before, everyone wants to be in the mobile money space but Amazon has a similar advantage to Apple – lots of people with their credit cards ‘connected’ to Amazon. We’re convinced that mobile payments will only work when they are quick and easy. If Amazon can bring One Click simplicity to this space they could do very well. Although we wonder whether bricks and mortar retailers might worry about the online giant ‘knowing’ what their customers are buying in the real world.
Android
The latest data on device sales show that Android is growing really fast – Business Insider summed it up in their usual sober way;
Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM – iPhone Dead In Water
New Gartner data suggests Android will have half of the smartphone market by the end of next year. With Blackberry enabling Android apps on it’s imminent PlayBook tablet they have all the momentum right now.
Mobile & Online Advertising
The IAB have reported that mobile adspend in the UK grew 116% to £83 million in 2010 compared to total online spend growing 12.8% to just over £4 billion. Which is great – except when you compare it with the time people spend online and on mobile. As Morgan Stanley point out there is a $50 billion opportunity for digital if we can match the proportion of adspend with the proportion of time spent.
Mobile advertising is going to follow a similar trajectory to online – albeit accelerated by the unique abilities of mobile and by the potency of permission based SMS ‘advertising’ – so we need to think through how we avoid or minimise the problems that still hold back online advertising.
One really big problem is the perceived lack of creativity in online advertising and in mobile too – it’s all just banners and buttons isn’t it?
The IAB are helping demolish this myth with an exhibition celebrating great online work. And Google have built a really cool HTML5 site that shows off good work too – along with tools to make development easier. YouTube have a similar gallery – with one from Facebook due soon.
These are well worth spending time with – and hopefully we’ll soon see lots of mobile creative work being celebrated too
Shorts
Facebook now have over 250 million mobile users and are starting to be more open about their plans on mobile. With Deals possibly being made more mobile friendly we see continued growth and Facebook have the power to really move the market – how long before they extend their success in ads to their mobile users?
BMW have announced plans to invest $100 million in app start ups that are focused on mobility developing wireless services that people use to find parking spaces, transportation routes and other information that make it easier to get around sprawling cities like London and Shanghai.
Finally
If you ever doubt the power of social media or the popularity of football… the worlds greatest footballer Lionel Messi joined Facebook on Wednesday and – just 7 hours later – he had nearly 7 million Likes. It now seems that these might have been transferred from other unofficial pages to his official page but still!
It’s obviously not that simple, as another of the worlds best footballers has just 3000…
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