Last week we released the first official study of mobile consumer behaviours and attitudes towards phone services and mobile marketing. The research, conducted on our behalf by Lansdowne Market Research, is nationally representative and highlights Irish mobile consumer attitudes and behaviours to SMS, picture messaging and mobile internet.
It was found that over a third would respond using text and that more consumers would prefer to respond using the text number supplied as opposed to visiting the website. Marginally more under – 35s would respond when compared with their older counterparts and there is little difference across social classes.
Our report also found that one in five mobile consumers are regularly using the mobile internet. These consumers represent the adoption of mobile internet as a new technology and are namely the “early adopters”. We expect to see considerable growth in this area through the second half of 2008 and going into 2009. Key mobile web services used by respondents vary by age.
While younger mobile Internet users are interested primarily in downloading ringtones, browsing and music, the over- 35s are more motivated by information services such as news and directions. As would be expected, male-oriented services include sports and news-related content. It is, however, significant, that larger numbers of females are using key services such as downloading ringtones and music.
77% of those asked admitted that they had never used the mobile internet and they cited lack of interest, perceived need and high data costs as reasons for this. Interestingly slow service, connection problems or lack of time were not seen as barriers to usage leading us to believe that there is a clear gap in the market for content owners and producers to engage the mobile audience by creating new needs and interests.
Another area of interest to us was picture messaging and we found that 60% of respondents have at some point sent or received a picture message with 10% doing so daily and a further 10% weekly. This supports statistics released by Comreg this week which claims that MMS usage increased by 6% in the last quarter of 2007.
To receive a full report on the research please click here
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Tags: statistics, mobile marketing, ireland, return2sender, mms, mobile internet, text marketing
This month the Mobile Marketing Association (A global body representing more than 550 member companies) has announced it will partner with the current Irish MMF association to form the MMA Ireland. The new branch will be chaired by Eamon Hession, former chairman of the MMF and CEO of Puca.
The association is made up of member companies who all contirbute to work towards promoting industry guidelines, best practices in mobile marketing and help to build a sustainable ecosystem for the mobile marketing industry in Ireland and globally. The MMA Ireland will become part of the MMA EMEA Regional chapter and will have representationat the global table. Primary member companies include Vodafone, 02, Meteor and 3 as well as Irish technology and service companies such as Return2Sender.
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Tags: mma ireland, mma global, mobile marketing ireland
Mobile operator 3 have been receiving significant publicity throughout the past few weeks with changes to its pricing model and the announcement that the company has grown its subscriber base to 150,000. At present market leaders Vodafone possess 47% share of the market, 02 has just over 32% and Meteor almost 18%. 3 are yet to feature in the rankings as the country's fourth network.
Robert Finnegan was at the 3 store on Grafton St last week announcing that the operator would be cutting its EU roaming rates by 80% to set a new industry standard. In this bold move 3 will offer it's customers rates that are 33% lower that those set by the EU Commission earlier this year. By dramatically slashing their prices 3 hope to udercut all their rivals and gain further market share. The new rates will come into effect on the 31st of August allowing 3 customers to make calls anytime, anyplace in the EU for 39c per min and the operator will charge a meer 19c to receive calls. All other operators in the market currently charge 59c per min to make calls and 29c to receive.
These press grabbing moves by 3 will no doubt.help in their quest to become a larger player in the Irish market Especially now that the revenues of market leaders Vodafone and second player 02 are falling. The Sunday Business Post reported this week that average customer revenues have fallen here by 6% and are plummeting at a much greater speed than elsewhere in the EU. Robert Finnegan, 3's managing director, acknowledged this fact by saying that 02 and Vodafone are under real pressure. Despite the fact that 02 announced healthy 2nd quarter revenues and a 2% increase in its customer base there is no doubt that the market is saturated at 112% penetration. Any new growth for the operators is coming from customer churn and from Data services (mobile internet). These are 3's specialist subjects and it's fair to say that there will be plenty of business for the company too cash in on if they keep lowering rates!
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Tags: 3 ireland, roaming rates
This month 02 announced that they would be pulling their iMode service out of the UK but are fully pleased with itss performance in Ireland so will be capitalising on this. iMode was first introduced in Japan as the first ever fully scalable mobile internet. It was introduced by the operator DoCoMo and is now the standard in Asia for most mobile web platforms. The Japanese markets grew up with iMode and it has evolved together with its’ adoption, as a result its' use has become second nature to japanese mobile consumers.
During the initial development stages of mobile internet over this side of the world, rather than spending valuable time developing their own mobile internet 02 merged with DoCoMo to offer the ready – to – go iMode and achieved success in being the first mover. Since then, many, more sophisticated operator portals (including 02's own 02Active) have developed and passed out iMode in terms of functionality and style.
The issue is that iMode is only available on iMode specific handsets, of which there are only a dozen and are, in general, much less attractive than regular handsets. Compare this to the fact that 02 Active is offered on some 240 different handsets and available to 15.8 million customers. In saying all of this (and the same issues exist in Ireland), 02 remain committed to offering iMode in the republic. 02 have been quiet enough not to reveal how many subscribers they have on their portal but a spokesman did say that currently there are over 120 on-portal content sites on O2 Ireland’s i-mode service including eBay, Ticketmaster, Heat, Ireland.com and Napster – all of which offer the same services to i-mode users as their online versions so there would be little sense in pulling out of the market.
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I attended the MMF's latest event in Dublin this wednesday where mobile advertising and mobile internet were on the agenda. 02's Gavan Drohan, James Hendry from Vodafone and dot.mobi's Ronan Cremin all presented on how they are working in their official capacities to develop the mobile internet. All panelists gave their thoughts on future data pricing models and on how marketers might use consumers' mobile data to make advertising more relevant. It was encouraging to hear these sort of discussions happening in Ireland.
I was particularly impressed with Gavan Drohan's presentation, O2 have completed several mobile advertising trials in the past 6 months and have conducted consumer research on the back of this. Especially insightful was the fact that most consumers hold negative feelings towards advertising and marketing messages coming through their handsets until they experience it. So, according to 02's new research, when consumers actually use mobile internet services and see what all the fuss is about, they are far more open and willing to interact with brands in this space. Thus proving that we have to get more and more consumers up and running on mobile internet, using WAP and mobile search to actually see the benefits and incentives before mobile advertising can take off in any real way. It is fair to say that data charges and operators are the main barrier to adoption of the mobile internet and high costs to the consumer are holding it's growth back, which brings me nicely to the catch 22...
Meteor's representative Eamon Howe quite rightly pointed out in the debate that revenue coming from mobile data consumption is where the money is at for the operators right now and any future growth for these organisations is going to come from here. This is especially true as operators are faced with very real challenges such as new EU regulations on roaming charges, VOIP, Instant Messaging and little or no growth in SMS. Can't help but get the feeling that currently consumers feel uncomfortable using mobile internet services because of the... yep you guessed it - costs. So in conclusion this new internet is the new money maker for operators but they are the ones who are crippling it's growth by charging so much. Nuff said really!
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This isn't essentially a mobile related story but well worth the post anyway as its a bit of banter!
So, initially when we saw the guerilla effort by Tayto to get in on the election action I have to say it all seemed like a contrived viral push but we are taking back those words after seeing Mr. Tayto's party political broadcast this week - hilarious. The first half of the 1 minute spot starts out quite seriously with picturesque footage from the west of Ireland and then moving over the green fields with Mr. Tayto's Manifesto" is brought to the fore - " The whole in the ozone layer? - we'll look into it". The second half moves right into obscurity starting with the cheesiest backing track that I reckon came straight from a Dubliners back catalogue - "Mr. Tayto, Mr. Tayto.. the snack that has the nack for havin the craic!" and shows Mr. Tayto canvassing all around the capital with Frank Kelly (A.k.a Fr Jack Hackett).
I think the best thing about this ad is that it just catches you completely off guard when it starts with the sincere celtic music and then it's just really very funny. What's even funnier is the response and attention this is getting online as people look for some light relief from all the election madness - "Sure he'd probably do a better job then those muppets currently do"!
Further to the ad, Paddy power have given official odds at 5000/1 that Mr. Tayto will win the election (Irishblogs)! I'm only surprised that those behind the drive havent received a fine for littering given the amount of posters they've put up around the place! There is also an official website here featuring a blog, link to download "The Roosters" official song and instructions of how you can "get involved" (queue viral) including an area to print off Mr.Tayto campaign posters for yourself.
Chemistry are the agency behind the creative with Mediagroup handling PR for the campaign. The whole thing really is a no brainer and when you think about it, why hasn't anyone else seized the same opportunity to play on the general election like this? Lucky for Tayto I guess... Well will he get your vote?
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O2 have announced their Irish earnings for the first quarter (up to March 31st) of 2007 and things are looking good! The mobile operator signed up 14,000 new customers (net) in the period, have realised growth of 13.7% in the post pay market and and increase in text messaging to 428 million in 3 months (13.8% increase).
Overall ARPU is down by .80 cent to €44.20. But the big news for me is that growth is most notable within the market for mobile data as it now accounts for 26% of revenue; last year this figure was 21.4%. clearly this proves that more and more people are interacting with the content (user generated and branded) on their phones and (hopefully) using mobile internet to do so!
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At a marketing breakfast hosted by the marketing society today key data from last year's Census was presented. Although an 8.30a.m. start of a Tuesday would seem a bit of a struggle on paper the event was packed all to find marketing relevance in the CSO's most recent statistics.
Aidan Punch, Senior Statistician of the CSO, delivered a comprensive account of what the Irish population have been up to since the last census in 2002 and Kay McCarthy, Head of Planning of McCann Erickson Dublin, had everyone engrossed when she added some of McCann Erickson's own insights. So.. apparently we have been producing more babies despite the fact that we have a declining birth rate?? Who knew?!
But seriously, Kay really did share valuable insights in her presentation. Through research recently carried out by McCann Erickson on the back of the census, Ms. McCarthy was able to break down the Irish market into 6 key segments, which she esteemed as a a newer, cleverer take on the demographics (including "new nationals"). Most interesting was how the behaviours and underlying tensions in each of the 6 segments were described . Overall though, changes are most notable within the younger generations (up to the mid 40s).
Collectively we are defining ourselves much more in terms of our interests than what we consume. At the same time Irish people are becoming more and more tech savvy with added doses of sinicism when it comes to marketing. (We kind of knew this but its good to be reminded).
Chris Anderson's Long Tail of demand has become somewhat of a buzzword of late especially within mobile and digital circles but it really is one of the biggies and seemingly Ms. McCarthy also thinks so. Basically, the Long Tail acknowledges the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult to reach mass audiences and explains the reasons why. And finally, we are increasingly becoming a networked society, where we have many many contacts,communities and friends who we keep in touch with through email, bebo, Instant messenger and our mobiles.
So, this means that as a Irish Consumer I am now finding that I have less and less time on my hands, am stressed out with my standard of living (mostly my commute), don't really trust marketers, am finding it increasingly difficult for products and services to meet my individual needs and have a large network of friends to complain about it all to! So, how does a marketer respond to all this?!!! Post your Comments below....
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It has been reported by brand republic Vodafone's european operations are in talks with Yahoo! in order to create a platform on which the network will be able to serve mobile ads.
The talks come at a time when Vodafone are also planning to introduce mobile ads from an unnamed Soft drinks manufacturer by the end of 2007/ early 2008. For this the network plans to focus on four key markets - UK , Germany, Italy and Spain.
Frank Boulben, director of New business for Vodafone says of the plans for mobile advertising that the they can "already see the appetite of major brands to run international campaigns on mobile." And a spokesperson for Yahoo! predicted that more people will be accessing the internet via their mobile phones than their PCs in 10 years time.
This news is very encouraging for the mobile advertising industry as high data charges and operator business models have made it difficult for advertisers to access this space and have been curtailing any subsequent growth.
Mobile advertising is priced on a per impression basis rather than per click and advertisers can expect to pay €30 - €40 euro per impression. Mobile advertising is becoming an increasingly interesting channel for advertisers as they can expect circa 10% click through on their ads compared to online which typically receives as little as 0.5%. US owned mobile advertising company admob have made great success in the UK and US by serving up simple mobile ads (Not banner ads) on mass scale.
Yahoo!'s interest in this venture with Vodafone is also unsurprising as they are eager to do for mobile what google has done for the internet in terms of search and advertising. In support of this Yahoo! have also made their yahoo! 2.0 available to most mobile networks at this stage.
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*Update 23/05/07: ENN Reports today that an EU wide roaming structure could be in place as early as the summer with the Commissioner ruling on the matter today. Existing mobile customers have a month to choose whether or not to go with the new EU tariff and those who fail to indicate their preference will automatically be moved to the EU rate after two months.
Bad news plenty for mobile phone operators yesterday as the European Parliments Industry Committee proposed a Cap on roaming charges that will see consumers receiving a 70% reduction. The committee members voted 45 to three to draft legislation where charges for incoming calls will be capped at 40c per minute (excluding VAT) and 15 cent for calls received while travelling.
Currently the 3 Network provide free roaming to all of their customers where consumers can also use their free tarriff minutes while travelling in the EU.
This legislation is at the proposal stage and it will take further voting by the other 785 MEPs to become law. This is great news for consumers as charges as high as €4 have been charged for roaming, not so great for the mobile phone operators as it is no secret that falling revenues per user and stagnant growth are making life difficult enough these days.
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