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My top 10 reads for the week.   This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my weekly media consumption addiction.  If you’d like to be on my email list, please email me and I will add you.

Windows Phone 7 Series: Everything Is Different Now – Gizmodo

Local TV for Devices on the Move - NYTimes article

Facebook directs more online users than Google – SFChronicle

Google CEO Eric Schmidt at MWC Puts Mobile First – eWeek

Professional sports are ahead of the game in social media – SmartBlog

Marketers, Researchers, Lend Me Your Ears – BrandWeek

Will You Pay for Hulu on the iPad? It May Be Your Only Choice - All Things Digital

Fast Company’s Worlds Most Innovative Companies 2010: Intel #14 – FastCompany

Google Launches Powerful Mobile Shopping App for Android - Mashable

Yahoo! and Total Immersion Bring Augmented Reality to the Olympics - ReadWriteWeb

David Veneski Digital Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Weekly News

Yesterday, Morgan Stanley released a comprehensive report on the growth and future of the Mobile Internet.  The chart below is one slide pulled from the summary deck and shows the incredible opportunity ahead of companies that play a role in the Mobile Internet space.  A conservative estimate shows the total available market for devices accessing the Web from a mobile perspective is 10x the available market in the desktop space.  Truly staggering.

Two quotes from slide 22 of the summary deck caught my attention:

“Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet Did and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think – 5 Trends Converging (3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices)”

“Regarding pace of change, we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years”

The 5 trends converging quote is, I think, the most important one – especially ‘Impressive Mobile Devices’.  From my perspective we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg of what the mobile device landscape looks like.  Development of ‘killer devices’ and the speed with which content can be delivered to those devices are currently the gating factors for explosive growth in this segment.  In 2010, that will change – and those that are positioned well to take advantage of that growth will fare very well.  Thankfully, from an infrastructure and semi-conductor perspective my company, Intel, is a leader (slide 19).

David Veneski Mobile Marketing Intel, Mobile Internet, Morgan Stanley

We’re ramping our mobile efforts @ Intel with some interesting programs launching this quarter (stay tuned iPhone users) and a significantly greater presence in 2010.  We’ve planned carefully and are committed to presenting our customers with the best mobile platform experience possible.  Why are we so careful in our approach?  Simple – mobile users are not widely accepting of mobile advertising, per a recent report released by Parks, via MediaPost, as the chart indicates below.  My takeaway?  If you’re going to advertise or market to a mobile user – make it relevant, useful and give them an easy path to make an action.

David Veneski Mobile Marketing Mobile Advertising

GigaOm released an interesting article about 6 weeks back regarding the most important metrics to track in Mobile Advertising efforts.  Considering that Gartner has forecasted that Mobile Advertising will grow a staggering 74% in 2009 – measurement of that activity is paramount.  The industry is moving away from CPC and CPM as the standard measure of media effectiveness - while they are still somewhat relevant, it doesn’t accurately represent how ‘engaged’ a user is on the mobile platform.  The important metrics are:

• Reach
• Targeting
• Engagement
• Viral
• Transactions

For the full explanation on why those are the metrics to focus on, I encourage you to read the full article.  What struck me as a key statement was the following quote:

“We don’t want to just capture the “moment of first sight” but the “duration of sight” and how the user interacts within that duration with both the individual ad and the overall campaign. In order to differentiate and be effective, mobile has to measure and report on how users are engaging with the campaign, from first impression to the last so-called “moment of sight.” It should take into account the time spent during the visit as well as the actions and reactions.“

From my perspective this holds true not just for mobile, but for every advertising effort in your media mix.

David Veneski Advertising, Mobile Marketing measurement, Mobile Advertising

While Web consumption on mobile devices is going up, the satisfaction with the experience is still far from acceptable.  According to a research study by Gomez Inc, the largest shortfall centers around load times of the sites that mobile users are expecting to render quickly.  The wait ‘tolerance’ of those surveyed was 6-10 seconds.  Generous, in my opinion, as I tend to be less patient than the average consumer.  Following a close second to load times in customer dissatisfaction was the actual experience with the site when it did load.  Poor performance on both fronts often prove to be fatal to a site and the consumer’s brand perception of that site, as outlined by this quote from the Gomez study:

“The majority of mobile web users would be less likely to visit a mobile website again if they had a bad experience, and two out of five would visit a competative site instead.  More than half of mobile web users are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing it from their phone, and more than two-thirds are unlikely to recommend the site.”

As consumers continue to lead a more ‘connected’ lifestyle, the reliance on mobile devices for delivering content and performing computing tasks will continue to rise – as will the consumer’s expectations of the experience delivered to them on that device.

David Veneski Mobile Marketing Mobile Web

As I’ve written before, Starbuck’s is a company that is an active evangelist of the Social Web.  Now, they have taken that a bit further and have expanded that to the Mobile Web with the release of two new iPhone apps: myStarbucks and Starbucks Card Mobile.  Targeted at coffee drinkers on the go that are hyper-connected with their iPhone or iPod Touch, these apps offer the convenience of loading a Starbucks card through your mobile device and “a groundbreaking mobile payment component that will allow customers in 16 stores to pay using their iPhone or iPod touch mobile device“. 

The myStarbucks app “will allow users to build and share their favorite beverages, find store locations anywhere in the world, look up detailed nutritional information for Starbucks food and beverage items, build and store favorite Starbucks® espresso drinks, and learn more about Starbucks rich selection of whole bean coffees.” (via Starbucks Newsroom).  Well done Starbucks – identify an opportunity to add convenience to your customer experience and deliver innovation on the mobile front.

David Veneski Mobile Marketing iPhone, Starbucks

Great visual (click image for larger) of the Mobile App landscape this week on the mobile focused site, ismashphone - a daily blog focused on the iPhone covering News, App Reviews, and Tips/Hacks.  Some of the more compelling stats from the visual include:

• 59% of mobile users (iPhone, iPod Touch, Android) download one paid app a month
• Over 50% of iPhone and Android users spend more than 30 minutes a day on apps
• Total monthly paid application market share is over 200 million dollars
• iPod Touch users download the most apps, iPhone users pay for the most apps

What’s the take away here?  There is a market for targeting customers in the mobile space.  As I wrote earlier this week, at some point this may be a consumer’s only connected device.  Those that aren’t interacting with their target audience via this medium are missing a huge opportunity.

David Veneski Advertising, Mobile Marketing iPhone, Mobile

What’s the one personal item most people can’t live without?  I bet if you ask the average person on the street, the majority would answer ‘My mobile phone’.  It’s a connection point to friends and family that is almost always with you.  You use it for voice, email, quick text messages, and in some cases (more often outside of the U.S.) it is your only computing device.

Think about the iPhone and the recurring line you hear on most Apple commercials: ”There’s an app for that“.  It’s true – the iPhone has quickly become many consumers only ‘connected’ device and because of that, Apple has single handedly made the mobile space relevant to marketers and advertisers. If companies aren’t paying attention to the opportunity mobile provides, they are missing a major piece of their marketing mix.  Rachel Pasqua – Director, Mobile Advertising @ iCrossing supports this in her interviewwith eMarketer this week:

“Most major brands, if they take a good, hard look at their site analytics, will see a significant amount of traffic coming from mobile devices—mobile devices that won’t be able to handle their desktop site to the best advantage. I think failing to take those users into account will have serious repercussions.”

Given the fact that mobile advertising is growing at a staggering pace (Magna forecasts the U.S. market for mobile advertising will grow by 36%, rising from $169 million in 2008 to $229 million during 2009) the mobile medium has to be in your marketing mix – not as necessarily as a primary component - rather, as a complementary or ‘companion’ to your more traditional media vehicles (retail, online, television, print, and out of home).  Brands and Marketers that recognize the importance of mobile will create new avenues to intersecting their customers and influence their perception of the brand, regardless of their location.

David Veneski Advertising, Mobile Marketing Apple, iPhone, Mobile