Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Notes from the BIA/Kelsey Interactive Local Media Conference

We recently attended BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media Conference.  By many definitions, mobile is inherently local and BIA/Kelsey has done a great deal to educate its constituency about the its impact, strategies, and best practices.  The following are some of our notes taken during the conference.

Some basic statistics

• There are now 63 million Mobile Internet users
• Verizon and T-mobile report that 40% of new devices sold are smart phones
• Nielsen predicts 50% smart phone penetration by mid 2011
• Google reports that 1/3 of searches conducted from mobile devices have local intent whereas only 10-11% of Google searches initiated from a PC have local intent
• Ad units will evolve with mobile.  Ad units that track conversion:  Cost-per-action, promos, coupon redemption

Google – Convergence of local and mobile

• Mobile will create the ability to individually target more people than any other channel and that the opportunity is bigger than TV and computers
• Mobile search usage has grown 5 times in the last 2 years
• Apple’s iPhone sees 50 times the number of search queries as the average “feature phone”
• Customers turn to their mobile device when they are CLOSE TO POINT OF SALE with intent to ACT NOW
• Shopping activities that consumers perform from their smart phones:

  Price comparisons	36%
  Product availability	40%
  Find Coupons	43%
  Look up third-party or consumer reviews	45%
  Look up a product description	52%
  Look up store address or hours	68%

• The top 3 categories in local mobile search queries are:
  1. Restaurants
  2. Travel
  3. Retail
• Google reports that the number of mobile searches spikes on the weekends and on holidays
• Google now enables local advertisers to target their campaigns to mobile devices
• While search results are important for local advertisers, the landing page is key to ensuring a quality user-experience.  In fact, user-experience is among the top three mobile consumer concerns in addition to privacy and trust.

Apps, Web and SMS: What’s the Right Mobile Strategy?

• An iPhone app is often a “shiny object” to many advertisers and doesn’t tie into revenue strategy. (Note:  We believe that iPhone applications should be part of an integrated mobile strategy that includes SMS and the Mobile Web)
• Prediction:  There will be only 2 or 3 mobile operating systems in a couple of years.  
• There is a big opportunity for newspapers to white label “yellow page” directories in the mobile space.
• Mobile Web is continually getting more robust with better mobile OS integration. Apps are often overkill, especially for news and directory searches.
• For many purposes, the industry will be moving toward a Mobile Web strategy.  Mobile applications are a transitional strategy except for processor intensive applications like games.  Will follow a similar cycle seen in the PC world where we saw a move from installed applications to Web and cloud computing.
  

Making Money With/For SMBs

• Local merchants are becoming more open to buying interactive multimedia advertising, however, they are very ROI-focused.  In other words, local SMB’s need to track their advertising into phone calls, map print-outs, leads, reservations, etc.
• The ability to control the landing page for an SMB is very important to helping that business manage its reputation (i.e., Yelp)  and the various social networking components like Twitter and Facebook.  These are two big value propositions that a newspaper can offer local advertisers, especially in the mobile space.
• Local sales representatives need to be retrained to provide ongoing customer service and account management.
• One method for attracting SMB’s is for newspapers to conduct local, vertical-oriented seminars that include a full-court press to invite advertisers.

Mapping Out Local Revenue and Services

With regard to maps and map-based searches, the main takeaway from this session was that consumers think in terms of neighborhoods.  Put another way, most consumers don’t know the physical boundaries of a particular zip code, and a geographic radius from a certain point may yield undesirable results.  For instance, a local mobile search that strictly looks at radius might deliver results that also happen to be in a bad neighborhood.  Conversely, a consumer might be willing to travel further to a particular neighborhood that they favor, but she will not necessarily know the distance radius or the zip code.


Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH): Expanding the Interactive Experience for the Consumer

The main point of convergence between DOOH and mobile is that SMS can help prove that people are watching and engaging with DOOH advertising. Proof is a big deal in this new space and advertisers often require it in order to justify the ad expenditure.  While an ROI data point will increase in importance to advertisers, simple impressions also matter.

• There are over 2,100 outdoor advertising operations in the U.S.
• 3 firms earn 85% of the revenue
• Remaining 15% is highly fragmented
• Billboards account for 66% of revenue in the space
• Newer digital OOH segment has more companies and is less concentrated
• 73% of OOH advertising is locally-oriented
• OOH measurement has traditionally been difficult
• DOOH is more effective when combined with mobile and can motivate text message responses.  A study found that 53% of adult texters say they are likely to responds to a mobile call-to-action in DOOH.*
• There is an excellent CRM opportunity when mobile is combined with DOOH, especially for immediate opt-in for delivery of coupons, offers, and messages from advertisers that are physically near the DOOH location.  In essence mobile adds an INTERACTIVE LAYER
• Mobile phone: remote control for life, umbilical cord to the web
• Vision of Minority Report is the opposite of DOOH.  ‘Push’ is not the way, it’s annoying and sometimes illegal (CAN SPAM)
• ALL screens are connected and not necessarily discreet
• Fun, Fame, Fortune are the 3 motivators to get consumers to engage with outdoor and mobile campaigns.