Navigating the choppy waters of mobile marketing and content

Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from RCR Wireless News’ March Special Edition, “The Perfect Storm – A Focus on Mobile Messaging, Marketing, Content and Apps.” The 80-page special edition is available here.
While most ecosystems represent a cohesive unit, the mobile marketing and content space remains fragmented. Outsiders looking to hedge their bets in mobile for the first time may find it tough to navigate, but while they’ve been waiting on the sidelines plenty of new pathways have opened, making the road ahead more likely to be traveled.
The long road to solidification — what Michael Becker, the Mobile Marketing Association’s managing director of North America calls “the great Pangaea” — began in full earnest back in 2003.
Four spheres of interdependence
To make the ecosystem easier to understand, MMA and others break it down to four interconnecting spheres. Products and services are carried by brands, content owners and marketing agencies. Applications come from a host of developers and service providers (both over the cloud and on device). Connection is provided by third-party aggregators and wireless carriers. And finally, media and retail is where the media properties (both brick and mortar and virtual retail stores) come into play.
While none of the spheres are controlled by one single company or group, Becker tells RCR Wireless News that many companies were forced to play the role of aggregator, provider and creator until only recently.
But if not already expired, the days of the one-stop shop for mobile marketing and content are surely numbered.
“In the early days of the ecosystem we were simply getting the piping ready,” but now things are starting to gel, he said.
In some cases through trial and error and, other times, sheer innovation, the lines within each of these spheres have gathered interest from a variety of parties as solidification continues to take hold.
“There are pathways through the forest now. We have the ability to look at the maturity of each of those pathways and show that … people are starting to specialize in each of these fields,” Becker added.
In yet another sign of the ever-changing landscape, many of those pathways can generate the same service and end result, thereby offering more choice and maintaining healthy competition all around.
Striking at the right moment
Take mobile ad networks for example. Each is no doubt just scratching the surface of an incredibly rich opportunity, and yet not a single one would have even made it through the front door until things fell into place and laid out their path for their success. Now, just a few short years after carriers began considering a wireless world without walled gardens, we’ve seen AdMob, perhaps the most prominent mobile ad network of the day, get acquired by Google for a high nine-figure sum.
The ad enablement that’s happening in that sphere has many advertising and marketing executives excited about finally delivering on long-promised opportunities like mobile couponing.
The point though is that no single sphere can prosper alone. Various enablers make up the foundation for each sphere and each has standout players that work diligently to deliver greater user experiences to consumers.
“It’s become somewhat disenfranchised as we move into more Internet-connected devices,” Becker said.
The biggest shift now is coming from the explosion of devices equipped with Wi-Fi or devices like e-readers that have a carrier connection embedded within them. By either bypassing the carrier network altogether or letting the consumption of content subsidize the cost for wireless data, entire new channels are bubbling to the surface almost overnight.
Collaboration is key
If consumer demand isn’t driven for content, services and events through the media and retail sphere, the product and services sphere would find it difficult to reach and interact with any potential customer or fan. And yet still, connection wouldn’t occur at all between consumers and business without willing participation from the wireless network operators. It seems just as logical now as it did when mobile media services began hitting the scene, but it took years and the efforts of many for these paths to finally open.
“From the earlier days of the ecosystem we saw a lot of discrete activity within the channel itself,” Becker explains, but now we’re seeing more interaction between different channels.
Seemingly simple, yet long-delayed capabilities like having voice trigger another function or allowing a mobile application to trigger something outside its domain are now commonplace.
“We’re seeing this wonderful world of interdependence,” Becker said.
“What’s unique about the mobile phone is that all of these technologies have converged on the mobile phone and those technologies are in varying levels of maturity and adoption,” he added.
Moving from voice to SMS to mobile web and onward to niche markets like applications, the mobile marketing and content ecosystem has increased its reach without ignoring the most mature and heavily used services. Sometimes the greatest financial gain comes from reaching the most selective, targeted audience possible and other times it’s all about getting in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
For example, smartphones may still only account for 17% of the wireless phone market, but a variety of retail shops and restaurants have generated sizable streams of additional revenue by reaching a highly targeted set of most-likely customers.
“In the marketer’s sphere you’re seeing this wonderful rich choice for relevant engagement because that’s really where the power of mobility comes into play. If you think about it, mobile really is the one direct marketing channel,” Becker said.
The nuts and bolts
It explains why there are so many unique business models, regulations, technologies, relationships and practices at play throughout each sphere of the ecosystem. Many businesses have revised strategies, cut and added new products or services, and even completely shut down operations along the way. Indeed, if the history of the ecosystem tells us anything it’s that there’s no right or wrong way to find success in mobile marketing and content. Some companies are sitting in incredibly powerful positions today because of their early-on risk taking and innovative ideas while others are still licking their wounds.
Taking a break from the spheres, some might find it useful to view the ecosystem from a business type perspective. Each of these businesses provides the nuts and bolts that keep everything together.
Starting with the fun stuff, there are countless companies that create the content consumers can watch, listen to or interact with on their mobile device. That content creator could be a major Hollywood studio, a brand wanting to reach customers, a heavily funded media startup or a group of teenagers that take YouTube or a social media platform by storm.
The companies that provide that content can range from the creator itself to an aggregator that manages a catalog from hundreds or perhaps thousands of content makers. Mobile marketing and advertising firms are often involved in a variety of stages depending on their objective. One campaign might call for an SMS campaign while the next could see them getting involved at the content creation level or in making partnerships that increase reach and interaction with consumers.
Rounding out the remainder of players, there are the device manufacturers, the carriers that make request and del
ivery possible, and companies that provide a stripped-down version of co
ntent or information such as news and weather through SMS alerts. Finally, working behind the scenes, there are the businesses that provide the technologies and/or platforms that distribute the message or content to the consumer’s mobile device.
Still, there are no hard and fast rules for how to navigate the ecosystem. While nearly everyone contends that other businesses could suffer if and when a company bites off more than it can chew, many are equally hesitant to do anything that could stand in the way of potential innovation.