Quest for mobile Holy Grail lies in success of search

by Colin Grimshaw Media Week 03-Jun-08, 07:00

For marketing folk, the new search for the Holy Grail is finding a way of tapping into mobile - the ultimate media platform that combines individual, instantaneous addressability with mobility.

Go to any marketing conference and you will see sessions on mobile filled to brimming with nervy evangelists, many having sunk huge sums into content and technology initiatives, but with no idea of how they might recoup their investment - and coming away none the wiser.

The problem is that any attempt at brand marketing on mobile can be viewed as offensively interruptive. Mobiles are, after all, the most personal of communications devices and, compared to other media, we spend precious little time interacting with them, only 30 minutes a day on average, apparently. And that is almost entirely on personal telephone calls or SMS.

The small size of mobile phone screens and the low take-up of mobile internet services act as a further brake on commercial exploitation. Mobile TV, available for years in Japan and Korea, has proved to be unpopular and impossible to monetise. And user experimentation with these services is handicapped by unclear and costly charges.

There have been pointers to a successful way forward, involving the delivery of precisely targeted content containing marketing messages that are valued, or at least viewed without complaint, by the recipient - 3's video clip downloads and Blyk's free mobile service in exchange for agreement to receive ads are examples.

Yet, the audience numbers are tiny, and measurement unsophisticated. Developments such as the ABCe's efforts to measure traffic to publishers' mobile sites will help.

But it is unlikely that marketing on mobiles will ever take off until higher-speed networks and bigger-screen handsets become widely available, encouraging the creation of websites and content created specifically for mobile.

As with the web, search will be the driver, which poses the question of whether Google (or some new search behemoth) or the networks themselves will come to dominate marketing on the mobile platform.

When searches can be geographically directed according to a mobile user's location with responses delivered seamlessly, instantaneously and at no cost to the user, then the Holy Grail for consumers and marketers may be grasped. Until then, even the evangelists should tread warily.