Traditional marketers, including advertising agencies have largely been in denial about the new digital media. It’s common to be in denial when one is comfortable with the status quo. Someone moved our cheese and it’s much easier to deny than to adjust. Who wants to learn new stuff and figure out a different compensation model. It’s much easier to pretend it’s not there or worse, malign it.
According to the DigitalBuzzBlog.com over 70% of the world’s population now have a mobile phone. That’s over 5 billion mobile subscribers, and in places like the US, it’s 9 in 10 people. With children now more likely to own a mobile phone than a book, with 85% of kids owning a phone as to 73% having books! Now that’s a pretty crazy statistic.
In T&T, we’ve gone one better than the US as it’s estimated that there are 1.4 million mobile phones, or more cell phones than people.
Sybase, a SAP mobile intelligence company reports that Apple has sold almost 60 million iPhones worldwide, while Google’s Android OS is growing at 886% year on year and now activating over 160,000 devices a day, across 60 devices in over 40 countries.
“I always hear about the cell phone as being the third screen, but I think about it as the first one,” said Bob Greenberg, chief executive of R/GA, an agency based in New York that specializes in digital advertising, speaking at a conference sponsored by the publishers’ association. “It’s with me all the time.”
Facebook got us marketers to take the Internet seriously (or at least some of us). What will it take to get us to take a look at the third screen for opportunity? So far texting is the tool that marketers are gravitating to as it facilitates payment and contests. The first screen is dying as an option for us marketers trying to reach the masses. The TV screen used to be where we found our customers in their numbers. It still makes sense that we go where our customers go. And as the man said, the mobile goes with them.
You don’t get any more connected than that.
