Tablets Are Not "Mobile". They're "Portable"

This has been bugging me for a while.

Tablets — be it the iPad, the Kindle, the Galaxy or anything with a capacitive touchscreen larger than a Pop Tart — should not be considered mobile devices, like smartphones.

Consumer behavior proves it

All Mobile is Portable but
Not All Portable is Mobile

Sure, tablets and smartphones both run on the same "mobile" operating systems like iOS or Android, but people use them differently.  For example, people report accessing the Internet in their living rooms on both tablets (72%) and smartphones (67%), but in out of home situations, the numbers are quite different.  On the daily commute, for example, 49% use their smartphones and only 9% use their tablets.  In Stores, 75% use their smartphones and very few use their tablets.  (All of this research comes from a 2013 Forrester study; see a nice summary here.)

Why does this matter?  Follow the Money

Likewise, not all mobile ad spending is created equal.  When you hear things like "Mobile advertising spend will be about $18 Billion globally in 2014" you need to think beyond tiny, unreadable banner ads on a smartphone.  Those big numbers also include banner ads and video pre-roll that are better seen on a tablet.  That $18 Billion also includes a lot of Paid Search, which is a natural ad medium on the tablet, and a lot of Messaging, which is a natural ad medium on the smartphone.

Google Agrees:  Tablets Are Not "Mobile"  

In an SEC filing last January, Google admitted that as tablets became more ubiquitous, "their usage had much more in common with desktops than with handsets".  Going further, they said "the meaning of 'mobile' at Google has shifted dramatically to 'handset' from 'tablet + handset'."  Why tell the SEC?  Because it affects how they report their very considerable ad revenue.  It also affects how they might collect revenue in the future:  This was the same SEC filing that grabbed headlines like "Google Will Advertise on Thermostats".  So the definition of "Mobile" also matters to Google, but it goes way beyond tablets to the so-called Internet of Things, or in Google's case, the Internet of Things That Collect Ad Revenue.

God bless them.  As long as they start referring to tablets as "portable" devices.

TV Keeps Rising from the Dead

Today's business news brings the latest examples of why the death of TV is greatly exaggerated.

Apple, to no one's surprise, has been briefing media companies on the next evolution of its Internet-based TV services. Among the innovations: Wireless streaming of video content from TVs to mobile devices, and using devices like the iPhone as a remote control. Among the questions: Will Apple evolve its current set-top box, or actually manufacture what we now call TV sets? You can read the original reporting in today's Wall Street Journal.

Hulu, meanwhile, saw an audience increase of +23% in November vs. the same month last year. Adweek points out that the data, via comScore, comes on the heels of Hulu's fresh supply of content from The CW, Sony Pictures Television, and Univision. Greg Jarboe lists some other reasons in a good post today over on Search Engine Watch.

Social Television

In a post last week on the HBR Blog, one of David Armano's social media trends to watch in 2012 was Social Television. As predictions go, this one doesn't go very far out on a limb. We've already observed the intense cross-over between Social Media and TV in consumer media multitasking. Armano does point out new services such as Get Glue, which allows audiences to check in to TV shows much like Foursquare lets you check in to actual locations. (Or not.)

No More Zombies Wandering in the Vast Wasteland

Digital delivery of TV by the likes of Apple and Hulu makes TV Social -- and Social Television may make TV more of a connected experience. TV in its infancy was a family activity: one TV set per household meant everyone gathered for Ed Sullivan or Bonanza. Later, TV became more of an individual activity: multiple TV sets per household allowed each person to watch programs tailored to their own tastes. Could it be that Social Television brings back TV as a way to connect?

Not only does TV keep rising from the dead, it may wind up curing some zombies.

Previous posts on this subject:
The Changing Role of TV
TV is Dead – Long Live TV

Who "owns" Mobile?

Smartphones will eclipse feature phones as a percentage of the U.S. mobile device population by the end of 2011. Clients are discovering smartphone apps that offer an opportunity to engage and continue consumer relationships. Agencies each want to be the one to help their clients leverage these apps. All kinds of agencies: traditional, new breed, media and of course digital.

Which agencies own Mobile?

First we ought to properly frame the question. An AdAge.com article this week took the view that "creative agencies" and "media agencies" are fighting over the right to "own" Mobile. Apparently they put digital agencies into the "creative" category, which is fine as far as it goes.

It doesn't go far enough, however. Missing from the discussion is retail. Some promotion and shopper marketing agencies are starting to create mobile apps for their clients, and retailers themselves are developing programs in which their vendors - uh, partners - can buy into - uh, participate. One example described in Tuesday's NYTimes.com is Shopkick, currently backed by Macy's and four other retailers.

The gigantic Venn diagram

The landscape of agencies, clients and retailers is more complicated than just "creative" and "media" agencies. This shouldn't surprise us in an era where all available marketing channels form a gigantic Venn diagram that shifts and overlaps in new ways every week. We've observed this before (here and here) and in a way it's the point of this blog.

Asking who owns mobile is like asking who owns television: the agency who develops a 30" commercial, the agency who plans or buys, the network or station, the program developer or the cable service provider.

It's the same with mobile. Someone has to decide there's an opportunity to engage consumers via a mobile device. Someone has to develop the app or ad. Someone has to figure out the way to engage the consumer, which in some cases will be a display media buy and other cases something resembling word of mouth marketing.

Mobile survival guide

There are two implications here:

Who knows Mobile? Clients won’t ask which agency owns Mobile, they’ll ask who knows Mobile. If you’re an agency person, worry less about whether you should handle Mobile and more about whether you’re prepared to handle it.

Mobile is not a silo. This actually applies to all disciplines, but you can’t treat Mobile or anything else as its own discipline. It has to be considered as a strategic option from the beginning, and made part of the plan if and only if the business solution demands it. Planned that way, it will work well together with advertising, digital and retail.

Bogusky wasn't the only interesting personnel news last week

Alex Bogusky’s resignation from MDC and CP+B last week created quite a stir in the ad industry. To be sure, it’s the end of an era. It wasn't a big surprise, though – Bogusky has increasingly worked on side projects to the point where it seemed his day job became a side project.

It might be an understatement to say his next moves will be closely watched by an industry hungry for heroes, prophets and high priests. There’s no doubt he will go on to pioneer some new ways to engage consumers on behalf of marketers.

Print and Digital at Condé Nast

Meanwhile, Condé Nast just promoted Scott Dadich, the creative director at Wired magazine, to the additional post of “executive director of digital magazine development.” According to some press reports, his mission is to replicate the success of such projects as Wired for the iPad at other Condé Nast titles.

With all due respect to Bogusky, this may turn out to be an even more interesting personnel move. Most of us have realized that Digital has affected Print media much more than it has affected Broadcast. Dadich is in a real position to leverage this shift for a big legacy print publisher.

Apple and Google

Recently I've posted positive things about Apple's marketing and Google's advertising.

You may have read that their mutual relationship is a bit strained at the moment.

You may not have read a pair of amusing and informative posts by Chris Matyszczyk, a creative director and CNET blogger. One criticizes Google's advertising for the Nexus One. The other wonders who called who for a semi-publicized cup of coffee, Steve Jobs or Eric Schmidt.

If you have a moment, both posts are worth a read because both companies will continue to loom large for the advertising industry.

iPad's :30 in Oscars was not its first ad

There's been a lot of industry discussion this week about whether Apple's "first ad" for the new iPad device was a good one.

AdAge.com said it "won't go viral", Brandchannel had a mixed review, the blogosphere weighed in (here and here), etc. The typical statement in all reports was "Apple chose the ceremony to run its first ad for iPad." Not true!

The first ad came on 27 January

For two decades the industry and the academy have been saying "it's all advertising" - the TV spots, the billboards, the sandwich boards, and of course the digital stuff. I agree because this is how consumers see it.

Thus Apple's first iPad advertisement came on 27 January when Steve Jobs went on stage and told us all about it.

Psst... Apple is an Old School marketer!

The AdAge.com article naively called the TV ad "retro" since "it's all about driving viewers to Apple.com, and a potential sale; dissemination of the video itself is secondary." What? Sell actual product rather than attract fame for a bazillion YouTube hits?

Recently a marketing consultant who works for Apple told me that Steve Jobs believes the best advertising medium is...Television. This shouldn't be a surprise given that Apple has consistently won via TV ("1984" comes to mind). I also hear that Jobs is personally involved in the development of each Mac guy/PC guy TV commercial.

Apple's success model

I would add, strictly via observation, that Apple believes in two other things besides TV.

One is the absolute oldest and most reliable form of advertising, bar none: Word Of Mouth. The PR event they staged back on 27 January succeeded because it unleashed a torrent of free publicity. One could surmise that the "leaks" of product information out of China in the weeks-long lead up were planned. By the time we saw the TV ads on Sunday we knew what to expect.

The second thing Apple relies upon is the absolute oldest, most reliable form of sales, bar none: Retail. Have you ever been to an Apple store? Sure it is a monument to the brand that attracts many window shoppers, but it also attracts a lot of actual buyers. Mrs. Ad Majorem bought an iPhone this past year and was treated so well that she also bought a MacBook Pro. They go beyond just bricks-and-mortar retail, too: their digital media presence is kind of light other than a little enterprise called iTunes.

It's all about the sales

Steve Jobs started out sequencing 1s and 0s - and he knows how they sequence on a balance sheet, too.

It doesn't matter whether the iPad succeeds

My inbox this morning was full of marketing missives about the official announcement of Apple's iPad. There was Apple's own e-mail linking to the official propaganda. There was the story in the Self-Proclaimed Newspaper of Record. A couple of marketing news feeds (here and here). There are two important questions: Will it succeed like the iPhone? Why does it matter?

Will it succeed like the iPhone?

The blogosphere's commentary is mixed so far, mainly because this is a completely new kind of device and we can only talk about it in terms of known references. Thus you hear the iPad is "an iPhone on steroids", "a really big iPod Touch", "a Kindle killer", "an imitation Kindle", and even -- I am not making this up -- a feminine hygiene product.

The main thing for us all to keep in mind is that the iPad (snicker) is a mobile device. As my colleague Michael Fassnacht opined recently in a blog post about mobile marketing in 2010, "the definition of the mobile device will change dramatically." Regardless of whether Apple succeeds again, the iPad will definitely change our frame of reference about mobile devices.

The iPad is a big new product launch. One of the laws of Ye Olde Marketing that's likely to stay constant in modern marketing is the 90% failure rate of new product launches. Not even Apple can defy this law; see this list of the Top 10 Apple products which flopped.

One of Apple's secrets is to learn from failure. The road to the iPhone is littered with Newtons and Lisas that flunked with consumers. In the end, though, they changed how and when we communicate with others, receive entertainment, take pictures, shop and many other routines. (Along the way they transformed themselves from a computer hardware company into a consumer electronics company -- another harbinger of convergence.) It doesn't matter if iPad succeeds because they will have set the stage for a future success, either their own or someone else's.

What matters is whether the iPad permits engagement with consumers

What matters to marketers is whether the iPad permits engagement with consumers. There was a bit of a dust-up in the comments of an AdAge.com article this morning over whether the iPad will support typical online advertising technology. It seems the answer at this moment is "no" or "in some ways" but those are merely the answers of the moment. Everything in marketing changes so fast that it's a safe bet we will all find ways to engage consumers on the iPad. (For more on this, read Josh Bernoff's piece on the "Splinternet".)

If the iPad fails, you can count on three things. 1. Apple will learn from failure and invent something better and more successful. 2. We will all gain more experience with mobile marketing. 3. Mobile will continue to be an important place to engage consumers.