The abundance of features on smartphones, including geo-location and maps,
social connectivity, calendars, apps that
solve all sorts of everyday problems, photo
and video sharing, games and music on
the go have augmented the way that people connect with each other and with the
world around them, and commerce is no
exception.
Shopping with a smartphone enables
consumers to purchase a product directly
online, or to compare products and prices
at various retail locations. They can carry
electronic coupons in their back pockets
and opt-in to receive specials offers and
promotions when entering their favorite
stores.
As marketers have learned, however,
new opportunities to connect directly
with mobile shoppers have come with
some backlash over privacy protection.
Although consumers will post photos and
updates about where they are, they don’t
necessarily want to be contacted with unsolicited promotions.
And while mobile offers have proven
to be good incen- tives to shop,
tracking conver- sion
is not quite
as simple. If
someone searches for a shoe store, sees a
mobile ad for a nearby retail location and
then buys shoes, there’s no way to directly
link that purchase. It’s the unpredict-
ability and the lack of definitive results,
which are vital to the ROI-driven direct
response industry. With mobile coupons,
the user experience has to be just right.
Marketers are still trying to figure out
what works best, which is constantly
evolving with the rapid development of
new mobile devices.
Currently, 30 percent of mobile ad
spending is on tablets and 60 percent on
phones. By 2016, those numbers will be
nearly even.
The Big Screen
Meeker’s “Internet Trends” re-
port calls for the “re-imagination
of nearly everything.” Keyboard
and mouse are the graphical
interfaces of the past. Touch,
voice and gesture are the
natural user interfaces of the
future. Her research illustrates
that Apple iPad purchases
grew three times faster than
the iPhone, and 29 percent
of adults now own a tablet or
eReader, up from only 2 per-
cent three years ago.
“For the mobile device, the
Is the Samsung Galaxy S
III a large smartphone or a
little tablet? One thing is
for certain: it brings those
different types of devices
closer together.
content has to be easily digestible, fast
loading and quick because when you’re
on the go ... for example, [searching]
‘How to Fix a Flat Tire,’ or ‘How to Get
Gum Out of Your Hair’ is very different
than ‘Baking Cookies for Christmas.’
There are very different modes that the
consumer is in, so what we found is that
the largest growth area is quick, easy-to-use content that renders quickly on the
go,” says Bradford.
The use cases for tablets are very different.
“On the tablet side, they’re more
visual and in-depth, so we think about
that as a little bit of the magazine replace-
ment,” says Bradford. “You sit on your
couch, you have your tablet. You have
more patience, more time, and a little bit
more curiosity. In the PC, desktop-based
world, we think that you’re really digging
in on something and looking at much
more active produced transactional solu-
tions as far as content goes. There are
different rules that apply to E-commerce,
but when consuming content, we think
those are the principles that you have to
adhere to.”
Since the larger screens on tablets are
more conducive to rich media displays
and longer periods of engagement, mar-
keters can be more creative in finding
