Buried Mobile and the Double Dip
A few weeks ago, embarrassed by my 98-pound weakling of a mobile phone, I gave in to techno-lust and stopped by my wireless carrier’s local outlet to price an upgrade. Specifically, I was interested in what it would take to get into a sexy Samsung BlackJack smart phone with a big screen, a QWERTY keyboard and serious Internet-access horsepower.
The answer: With the requisite data plan, about twice what I’m paying now for mobile service. Thanks, but no — even with a $20 rebate on the $200 price of the phone itself.
That turndown puts me with the majority of the American mobile-user public. According to a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 25% of us have the capability to access the Web on our handsets, as I do now. But of that subset, half of us have never used that access or don’t use it currently — as I don’t now.
The buried-mobile Web audience is, I think, the largest factor holding back mobile marketing. Right now, selling on cell phones is confined largely to text messaging, downloading ring tones and wallpapers via short codes, voting on “American Idol” and redeeming mobile coupons.
Frankly, none of that stuff is compelling enough to get me to use my handset for anything more than talk. I find even paying for coffee with coins too slow, so I’m not jazzed about flashing some barista a screen coupon for 50 cents off a venti. And, as far as I’m concerned, text messaging is just a watered-down medium with neither the human engagement of voicemail nor the convenience of e-mail. So mobile advertisers aren’t going to reach me that way.
What would lure me out of my vocal-centric cocoon and put me squarely in the sights of mobile marketers? Two things: quality full-motion video and solid Web search capabilities, especially for local results. I want to be informed or entertained. If I can do those things over my phone, conveniently and at an acceptable cost, then I will.
Developers are pretty quickly laying the groundwork to make the mobile features I’d value available and easy. Video content providers are striking deals with carriers and portals to bring TV and short movies to phones, and both the big search brand names and smaller directories are moving closer to making both general Web and local information available via handset.
But that still leaves cost of ownership as a factor. Like most users whose parents are no longer paying the freight, I’m conscious of what I’m spending on wireless data charges. My rare mobile Web sessions all end with a statement of how much data I’ve consumed, but no notice of what that’s added to my monthly bill. It’s a concrete reminder that I’m paying not only for whatever content I download to my phone but also for the network I access to get it.
And that feels like a double-dip by the mobile carriers. After all, my cable provider doesn’t make me pay for both the service and the individual shows I watch.
This system might have made sense in the ’90s but it’s out of step today, when I have other excellent options for getting that content. With a little forethought, I can download TV shows onto my iPod and save the mobile access charge. For local movie times or directions, I can head to a coffee shop, fire up my laptop and get the information I want for the price of a nice Ethiopian dark roast. There’s nothing inherently special to me about getting that stuff over a phone, and mobile carriers need to build that realization into their pricing.
Luckily for would-be mobile marketers, the pricing problem may contain the seeds of its own cure. Carriers are finding it hard to sell high-end mobile data services beyond the early adopter crowd, and that resistance is leading them to consider reducing user costs with ad support. Mobile TV platforms such as MobiTV and Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile broadcast service are building in ad opportunities, and other ad-supported services are in beta.
Even with ads, consumers will wind up paying more for data plans to support services like mobile TV or video. But if ad support can morph those costs from per-use to a flat fee or a bucket of megabytes, enough users may loosen their wallets to constitute a real audience for mobile marketing.
Of course, there’s a whole other contingent of users out there who say they’re opposed to ads on their phones. But give those folks a good price on last week’s “Heroes” for the train ride home, and you’d be surprised how acceptable a few banners or text ads can become.
NL
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