By Kamal Kaur, VP Mobile & Display
After more than a decade in online advertising, I can’t help but notice the tectonic shifts in our fast evolving industry into a new ‘species’. Interestingly, not many among my professional peers (in the world of online display) have reacted to this change. The online display industry has matured and become a lot more complex than the simple days of publishers, buyers and sellers. Having worked within large organizations in my past, it’s certainly easy to become consumed with a defined role and miss many of the larger market landscape shifts that add up to evolutionary changes happening under our noses.
The media landscape has always seen continual evolutions and disruption – since the days before Gutenberg and his printing press. In recent times it was radio evolving to a masses, TV was the next big market to evolve, only to see the evolution of cable and hundreds of channels to choose from. The Internet was the next big media evolution and its growth to a mass media outpaced all previous media – combined! Now mobile is the evolution that is disrupting and becoming a mass media. Ask yourself, when is the last time you used your phone just to make a phone call? And ask yourself, what is the only device you can’t live without and which is always no more than 10 feet from you, nearly 24 hours a day? And as always, advertisers follow the audience and they are certainly following them to all sorts of mobile phones and tablets. All of these evolution cycles in the media and device landscape have pushed all of us in the media business to evolve as well. Those that are not comfortable with the pace of change and eager to morph will go the way of the Tiktaalik, unless we pull ourselves out of the water and adapt to the changing landscape.
Still not convinced? Take a moment to reflect on your daily interactions with your mobile device. Just like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, it’s a very trusty companion. It’s next to you nearly 24/7, knows who your friends are in your contacts list, knows what you’re searching for with mobile search and with Siri, it has a voice. All it needs now is heart and there is probably an app for that!
Over the past several months, as I’ve surveyed the market both as a consumer and as a digital media professional, I’ve noticed many companies reporting a major shift in their user traffic from desktop to mobile. For example, comScore reported that over 42% of Pandora listening traffic is coming for mobile devices. And in the world of CPG, look at the disruption that mobile coupons are having on the circulation rates of the massive free standing insert (FSI) and coupon distribution business. Why clip coupons when you can load to your mobile phone – right in the store! No, I am not saying the display world is the Tikaalik or a dinosaur and mobile the new evolved animal, however, I am saying that many in our industry need to look up every once in a while and adapt to rapidly changing environment. .
I am excited 2012 and the future of mobile – especially mobile display! And I think 2012 is going to be a tipping point for a lot of marketers waking up to the mass audience available in the mobile world vs. mobile being an afterthought as a place to reach highly engaged audiences.
