Enpocket, the leader in intelligent mobile marketing, and Harris Interactive®, global market research and consulting company, have unveiled the findings from the latest Enpocket Mobile Media Monitor. The analysis helps marketers and the mobile industry understand the changing patterns of mobile phone and content usage.
The latest results point brands toward the mobile services which might be most suitable for supporting advertising and sponsorship. Consumers in the US, UK, and India were asked what content applications they would be interested in using if price were not a barrier.
Top of the list across all three geographies was sharing pictures with family and friends. 52% of mobile users in both the US and UK listed picture messaging as their most favored application and 72% of mobile subscribers in India indicated they would use the service if price were not a barrier. Full track music downloads followed picture sharing as the second most desired service. The younger age groups showed a particular demand for music services with over 50% of all respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 in the US and the UK and 78% in India listing music downloads as their top mobile application.
Respondents 18-34 years of age on all three continents have the greatest appetite for content services, and the same group lists price as the greatest barrier to greater usage of mobile data services.
A recent report by IDC shows that consumers find mobile advertising acceptable as long as ads are targeted, useful and meaningful, and suggests that mobile advertising will open up new significant revenue opportunities for operators. “Mobile operators will have to embrace mobile advertising, which is key in their strategies for the coming years,” said Paolo Pescatore, EMEA Research manager, Consumer European Wireless and Mobile Communications.
“Especially in more mature mobile markets, operators are starting to ask whether there is a saturation point for consumer-paid mobile content,” said Mike Baker, President and CEO of Enpocket. “At the same time, the interactive advertising market is experiencing extremely robust growth and more operators and brand marketers are realizing that, done in the right way, mobile advertising represents a significant business opportunity. The critical success factor for consumer acceptance and marketer ROI in mobile advertising initiatives will be targeting marketing messages so they are continuously relevant.”
Methodology
The Mobile Media Monitor was conducted by Harris Interactive between March 8 – 20, 2006, among 2,702 adults aged 18 and over in the US, UK, and India. Data were weighted to be representative of the mobile phone market with respect to age, sex, income, education, geographic location and propensity to be online.
