Celebrating Christmas with my family this year gave me great insight into where the advertising market is really headed. We've all heard about how big mobile, tablet and online video is going to be, and this year my family showed me first hand where we will be in 2012.
My father is a late adopter, which is totally fine (Hi Dad). He still believes in carrying cash and calls me back after I email him. He does what works best for him. But as I sat down with him with my new iPad 2 and showed him the Epicurious App, this avid chef quickly saw how intuitive, simplistic and convenient a mobile device truly is.
"So I can choose which recipe I want, and it gives me a shopping list, and I can take it to the grocery with me?" Yup, and you can even check things off your list. And save recipes if you like them so that you can go back to it again. No tear outs from magazines or recipe cards. No cookbooks.
And hey dad, look at that pasta ad that shows up when you are scrolling a recipe. Guess who places ads like that? He points at me while saying "And that's how they make the apps free! Advertisers pay for advertising so that they can place ads in the app." Yup…it clicked! It's like a light bulb went off. He wants one.
According to a recent Mobile Marketer Article, in the past 2 years the percentage of mobile users who own smartphones has almost hit 50%. Additionally, adults spent 65 minutes a day on their mobile device as opposed to 44 minutes with newspapers, and 26 minutes with magazines. I can back this up by saying that we bought my 93-year-old grandfather, who is a daily newspaper and magazine reader, a Kindle Fire (per his request) for Christmas. Bam.
My father also received a Smart TV for Christmas, and is now looking into options besides cable to watch his favorite shows. (And browse the Harris Teeter weekly specials, of course.) A NYTimes article reports that:
Cable providers will try to keep people from downloading the products of insurgent Web “broadcasters,” but they can’t stop what’s coming. They will have to win by providing value that trumps the now-infinite channel universe of the Web.
An eMarketer expert reports that US online video viewers will reach 170 million by the end of 2012. This makes up 70% of those that use the internet (which is basically everyone, right?) What does this mean for advertisers? eMarketer explains:
From movies and full-length TV shows to sports streams and made-for-web programming, video is finding receptive audiences on all types of connected devices...Most of this content carries advertising, even when it lives behind a paywall, as is the case with live sports and TV subscription packages such as Hulu Plus. This gives marketers many options to participate in this ecosystem, ranging from standard video ads to branded content.
This Christmas experience with my father has justified what I already knew was coming. As a digital media planner, my display media plans have included mobile and video worked into the site plans and budget. Moving in to 2012, it's apparent that these mediums now deserve their own budget line items as they have obviously made their way into the mainstream media mix (clearly competing with traditional print and broadcast media). It's undeniable in my mind.
Thanks Dad.
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