A year from break out: Avenue A/Razorfish on mobile advertising
March 5, 2008
Yelp help
A breakout year for mobile -- but not for mobile advertising. That's how the country's largest interactive agency put it in its recently released 2008 Digital Outlook Report.
Avenue A/Razorfish, now part of Microsoft Corp., acknowledged that the mobile industry was poised for tremendous growth. Mobile search and location-based services were cited for their growth, as was Apple's opening of the iPhone to third-party developers and carriers possibly becoming more flexible.
"With all of these developments, mobile advertising is sure to gain momentum in 2008, but we are still a year away from seeing it break out and become a staple for marketers," said Avenue A/Razorfish vice president - media Sarah Baehr and director -- media Alyson Hyder in the report.
The consumer experience of WAP sites and mobile Web has disappointed for many reasons, the agency said. It poured blame on poor, non-intuitive user interfaces, slow network speeds and a lack of understanding about how to access digital content from mobile devices.
"And yet, 2007 witnessed a striking growth in the availability and use of WAP content for mobile devices," said Patrick Moorhead, the agency's Chicago-based director of emerging media, in the report.
Patrick J. Moorhead
Context of consumption
Part of the challenge of building WAP experiences that will succeed is in understanding the role of the device and how the consumer uses it, he said. Early executions in WAP tended to take the approach of replicating online experiences -- a critical misstep.
Also, early WAP design approaches failed to accurately assess and respond to how, when, where and why people would engage with data and content via a mobile device, Mr. Moorhead said.
"This results in an unwieldy, cluttered user experience that does not offer the end user value, given the context of their consumption behavior," Mr. Moorhead said. "If we start by identifying these problems, we can define better strategies for envisioning content and functionality that will serve consumers' -- and the brands' -- objectives.
"In most cases, the mobile consumer is using data and communications services while doing other things: waiting, walking, running late, while lost, while on the town with friends," he said. "They may be searching for directions, trying to locate information critical to an immediate task, delving into that info that can be had quickly, or even killing time."
Half of these "other things" behavior classify as "tool" functions and the rest "passive" moments when the consumer is waiting to do something else and is whiling away time by checking a sports score or learning about a place or activity.
In all cases, it is important to note two critical factors, the report said. One, the mobile content and functionality the consumer is engaged with is not the primary focus of his or her attention at that moment. Two, no matter what the consumer is doing with mobile, his or her attention span will have a defined limit.
"You could have the most compelling content or function possible, but the consumer will still, eventually, get on with the 'other thing' they were planning to be engaged in," Mr. Moorhead said in the report.
"This second point is especially critical in thinking about the types of experiences a brand may offer the consumer in the mobile environment," he said. "It is unrealistic to attempt to capture a consumer's attention for any amount of time in mobile. Rather, designing content that is bite-sized and intentionally disposable is the road towards higher consumption and higher perceived value for that content."
Simplicity is common thread
So who's getting WAP right?
Major League Baseball, according to Avenue A/Razorfish. The site at wap.mlb.com limits branding graphics to the top of the pages and the main page navigation is always in the same format. Users hit "1" for news, "6" for scoreboard, for instance. This standardization avoids the need for repeat users to scroll through all the main screen content. Even then, the links are simple, easy to read and highly descriptive, the agency said.
"One of the best features of this site is the scoreboard and play-by-play," Mr. Moorhead said. "By taking full advantage of the card/deck architecture, it's very fast and easy to get real-time or near-real-time scores from several games at once, because all of the games from, say, the National League, come down together, allowing one refresh to update all the games in the conference.
"In a specific game page, the super-light interface allows for scoring to be instantly updated in text form, giving the experience of "watching" a play-by-play version of a game the user is not attending, he said. "Easily keeping track of other MLB games is exactly the kind of activity a user who is at the ballpark would love to engage in on a Sunday afternoon."
Social networking site Facebook's mobile version at m.facebook.com is another Avenue A/Razorfish favorite. For its mobile site the brand has scaled back or eliminated features from the online version that clutters or complicates its mobile experience.
So, the mobile Facebook includes friends' current status and recent activities and basic profile information about the user and others. It also offers the ability to view others' photo collections. And that's about it -- no power- and processor-intensive applications and communications features, as the agency puts it.
Then there's Yelp.com, an online service that finds local businesses and organizes them by quality and quantity of consumer-generated reviews. Yelp Mobile at mobile.yelp.com serves up static screen grabs of the map interface compared with a live GoogleMaps window on its Web site.
But Yelp Mobile retains the core functionality, letting mobile users search locally by keyword and view data in different ways. The trimmed-down interface and no-nonsense page design makes it lightning fast, the agency said.
There are a number of critical success factors for brands and publishers seeking to enter the mobile Web arena this year, Mr. Moorhead said.
First, understand that WAP/WML is different than the Web, and with good reason, he said. By understanding how and why WAP is what it is, and using that to their full advantage, brands and publishers can avoid the common pitfall of trying to make the mobile experience replicate what's happening online.
Second, understanding that the mindset and need state of the mobile consumer is fundamentally different than that of a PC-based Web surfer will allow brands and publishers to begin to focus on only that which is relevant to the mobile consumer, he said. In essence, providing fast, easy-to-use tools to accomplish things on the run, or providing bite-sized, disposable content experiences.
"Realizing that mobile consumers are in a fundamentally different state than those accessing the Web via PCs will help advertisers and publishers design a better WAP experience, which will drive consumer adoption and positive experiences with mobile Web products," Mr. Moorhead said.