MarketingBeyond

Michael Boland of Kelsey Group Talks About Mobile Advertising Future

Mobile Advertising Growth Forecast: Michael Boland Podcast

Mobile Advertising Growth Forecast: Michael Boland Podcast

Michael Boland, a senior analyst and program director for The Kelsey Group’s Mobile Local Media Forecast Division, is an expert in mobile advertising market research and the mobile industry.

Since joining The Kelsey Group in 2005, Mike has been instrumental in covering the local online space for Interactive Local Media practice.

Mike is a frequent speaker and organizer at top industry conferences including Kelsey Group events, search engine strategies and others. He has authored in-depth reports on the changing local media landscape including online video, social networking and mobile.

He contributes regularly to highly read online news sources such as Search Engine Watch and Huffington Post. A trusted source for reporters covering the interactive media space, his comments have appeared in major news and trade media, including the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes.

The Kelsey Group is the leading provider of strategic research and analysis, data and competitive metrics on Yellow Pages, electronic directories, local search, SMB advertising and local media.

The Kelsey Group’s Mobile Local Media Forecast for mobile advertising (2008-2013) is highlighted in the report “Going Mobile: The Mobile Local Media Opportunity.

Kelsey’ s projections, quoted in Mobile Marketer, are  $330M in 2009; $720M in 2010; $1.5B 2011;  $2.3B in 2012; $3.1B in 2013, 20X $160M in 08; search: $81M in 09; $242M in 2010, $564M in 2011 & $905M in 2013.

In the podcast, Mike discusses local mobile search advertising trends, including advertising revenues changes from traditional media (radio, television, newspapers) to mobile (SMS, display and search). SMS still dominates, but local search is growing faster, and traditional media area adopting mobile marketing as another channel for revenue growth.

Hear it on MobileBeyond.

Lennart Svanberg Mobile Marketing Podcast: Internet and Mobile Together

Lennart Svanberg, the Producer of the Internet Marketing Conference in New York on June 4th, 2008, speaks with Brian Prows in this podcast about growing interest among Internet marketers in mobile applications.

Lennart also discusses the state of global mobile technology, contrasting Swedish networks delivering up to 7.2Mbps data speeds to slower U.S. wireless networks. He also talks about innovative mobile marketing alliances, mobile book publishing in Japan, China's 500 million mobile users and Ericsson's agreement with China Telecom to build faster cellular networks. One publisher in Sweden even supplies its customers who purchase mobile websites with mobile phones.

Svanberg has insightful thoughts on the status of mobile technology around the globe.

Mobile Growing Rapidly in India: A Model for the World?

India, according to BusinessWeek and other sources, is now the second largest mobile market on Earth. Between 250 to 300 million Indians now own mobile phones in a country with only 30 million personal computers. That's 25% of India's 1.1B citizens. Over 8 million Indians sign up for cellular service each month.

Average monthly carrier revenues (USD) in mobile-intensive countries is staggering: $10 in India, $12 in China and $30 in the U.S., although other research shows an average of $55 per subscriber in the United States. Voice minutes cost 1.3 cents in India, 8.4 cents in Pakistan and 3.5 cents in China. To my knowledge, carriers in these countries have yet to offer "talk all you want" plans recently introduced by U.S. carriers Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. (See my post on Sprint regarding its marketing challenges.)

Although India's mobile users are purchasing over $250 million a year in additional wireless services--text messaging, music, wallpaper, games and Web surfing, with expected growth to $1.7B by 2010--currently 80% of data purchases represent text messaging and ring tones. In fact, Indians send over 25 BILLION text messages a year. Additional data purchases are stymied by low-end handsets, price and lack of mobile services.

As expected, India's younger, tech savvy subscribers are the most likely purchasers of mobile services--from online banking to entertainment. Dozens of players, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, as well as telecom providers--Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices--are developing content: movie schedules, stock quotes and other news services.

Indian mobile carriers, in particular, want to ncrease their current 10% share of information revenues (representing 13% of profits) to 20% of revenues--the "on-deck" information revenues controlled by the carriers and their partners. However, mobile users' desire for content continues its surge, and "off-deck" services, not controlled by the carriers, will proliferate.

Mobile websites, growing rapidly in the global mobisphere, should greatly interest Indian businesses, who seek innovative ways to sell to mobile users, especially considering low PC penetration in the country.

Discovering which mobile services interest India's growing mobile community is the key. In an earlier post on mobile banking, for example, I cited research indicating that younger U.S. cellular users are more interested in ATM and bank location expansion than accessing accounts on their handsets:

An eye-opening study by Javelin Strategy and Research concludes that even Gen-Y consumers (18-29) are not as hot on mobile and online usage as one might assume. "Regardless of Gen Y’s proclivity to initiate online transactions and use mobile phones and technology in general, Javelin data shows that Gen Y is not ready to abandon the brick-and mortar, or other channels, to go completely online or to the handset for all their banking needs. For example, when selecting a new financial services provider, Gen Y consumers ranked access to ATMs and access to branches as more important than online service capabilities, in comparison to those of other age groups."

Marketers seeking to penetrate the mobile space are carefully watching India.