Mobile Search: Phoning the Future
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 16, 2008 | Share This
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There was a great headline on the satirical news site The Onion once: “Earthquake Sets Japan back to 2147.” I always think of that when I read about the cool gadgets and toys that electronics makers flood the Japanese market with. I thought of it again this morning while I elite-ly read this week’s copy of the New Yorker like the Eastern elitist I am. It’s not easy to navigate New Jersey transit with my nosre in the air but somehow I manage.
Anyhow, tucked amongst the clever one-panel cartoons and erudite fiction is a fascinating article by Dana Goodyear called “I Heart Novels”. In typical elitist fashion you must subscribe to see the article online (free is so gauche). Goodyear writes about the growing prevalence in Japan of cell phone novels. By the end of 2007, according to Goodyear, 4 of the top 5 bestselling novels were written for cell phone consumption.
I find that truly astounding. It goes along with the huge growth in mobile social media properties in Japan. Many cell phones there even come with antennas so users can watch TV and are even being built with enough memory to serve as portable TiVo-like devices. People in Japan are totally used to the cell phone as an all purpose media device.
This is the future ladies and gentleman: the growing usage of HTML ready phones, led by Apple’s iPhone, are leading the way to phones as mini computers.
To be fair, the average 2-hour commute for workers in Japan - usually by some form of public transport, provides for a particularly ripe market for phone-sized distraction. Yet voice recognition and Bluetooth capability may mean that America’s car culture will also be able to search the net while driving and balancing a Big Gulp and curly fries.
For marketers this means a slew of opportunities. For one thing GPS opens up a whole world of location defined targeted search advertising. There are already mobile specific versions of social media sites with their own targeted advertising – twitterforiphone.com even has ads at the top of their Twitter stream.
The next year will be a time for marketers to explore new ways of maximizing their dollars online and off - while the mobile space is still relatively cheap it makes sense to explore and get used to it. After all, it is the future.
Questions or comments? Follow me on Twitter at @nmallin
Topics: Advertising: Online, Media Convergence, Mobile |