In a business and consumer context there has been a considerable shift in mobile from short-form to long-form viewing on mobile devices. This represents an opportunity to create a more compelling consumption experience which will drive customer loyalty and provide opportunities to monetise services through greater levels of personalisation, more targeted advertising etc.
These sentiments are highlighted by research from mobile advertising company, InMobi which found that 75% of mobile users have been introduced to something new via mobile ads and 46% have made mobile purchases. Furthermore, around 50% of mobile web users now use mobile as the primary means of getting online, which demonstrates how brands can benefit from mobile marketing and advertising.
However, as organisations attempt to offer a higher number of increasingly engaging services to users, how do they manage this process without affecting performance?
A single mobile interaction could involve the integration and co-operation of any number of partners including network operator, payment gateway, developer, content owner, broadcaster, advertising solutions provider… the list goes on.
Network performance underpins each element of a single mobile interaction. This is especially relevant to mobile advertising as the speed of banner ads, and their ability to take the customer to the buying stage, is essential to whether or not the sale is converted. With speed as a key consideration, leading players are already looking to differentiate partners based on their technical ability to deliver the wholes sales cycle.
From the end-user’s perspective the increasing complexity of the mobile ecosystem is potentially liable to affect the user experience. The capacity for creating delays and disconnects due to inherent variability in arrival times of data is clear. A negative user experience will demonstrably impact on a wireless service enabler’s ability to monetise its services devaluing its business and compromising its chances of survival.
This chance is countered by an increasing demand for capacity on the broadband network; the challenge for mobile developers is to meet this capacity growth whilst maintaining a sustainable cost base. Digital media is driving changes in the market from the content producer through the network to the end subscriber at an insatiable speed.
The opportunity to leverage these changes presents the mobile industry with a means to reduce churn and increase ARPU (average revenue per user) associated with their service offerings. By embracing the new trends in this market and adopting a collaborative approach in the data centre, mobile developers can mitigate the impact on the core bandwidth of these new services.
