USA vs. Europe on mobile as a channel

I just spent 3 weeks on a round the world trip attending the MPA Digital 24/7 and FIPP Powering Digital Success conferences held by the world’s magazine publishing industry to get a better perspective on where these markets are in their “mobile strategy”. I'll break out each conference and the mobile component in separate posts but for this one in particular I want to comment on the general perceived attitude towards mobile from both the US and UK markets.

During the trip I attended numerous off-shoot meetings and side panel discussions on the magazine industry, where digital content is headed and specifically where does mobile play in all of this? These meetings were busy with attendance from the biggest players such as Hearst and Hachette Filipacchi right down to the niche markets such as the Farmers Almanac. What struck me time and time again is how much mobile was discussed at these events, it’s clear that mobile is “on the radar” and a definite must do. What is not so clear is exactly what this new mobile strategy is and how it can be executed especially when the brands themselves are not yet sure what this holy grail of advertising is.

It seems to me that mobile is currently just another buzz word that agencies can add to their ever increasing digital inventory to remain relevant and up to date unfortunately many are failing to conceptualise on exactly what mobile advertising is. Another thing that struck me is the stark contrast between the European and USA markets and their attitudes towards mobile as another platform.

In general the USA seemed very pessimistic about mobile, with many of the people I spoke to stating they had tried it at one time or another with mixed results. The attitude in the USA seems to be that the carriers are holding the industry back with a number of barriers to entry such as restricted content access, a lack of cross-carrier MMS, uncertainty around data charging, and a disproportionate share of revenue in favour of the carriers, meaning that the current mobile market is a no-go area least the valuable relationship with the brand is put a risk by a poor campaign. As a result anything even loosely related to mobile put into the “too hard basket”, I even had the following email response from a well know VC “Our aversion to the mobile market has to do with the gatekeepers (read: carriers) that clamp down on innovation and require exclusive and explicit permission for any technology more interesting than basic SMS, at least in the US market. “

This to me is a very negative attitude towards an amazing and compelling channel from an otherwise generally positive market towards Internet technologies. I think this in part is due to a successful scare campaign from the carriers, in one instance I heard first hand how a carrier controls the relationship between the publisher and the consumer “unless there is a direct relationship with all tier one carriers in the market we’re not interested” was a quote heard from management at one of the larger publishers. It seems that the carriers have seeded this mindset amongst the content producers that without their help there is going to be a world of hurt for anyone who even considers moving away from a carrier relationship.

I have explained in a previous post why I don’t think carrier relationships are the answer for content producers and even in the emerging USA market I still think these beliefs hold true. The carriers are not the answer and it is up to the content producers to realise that the US mobile market is now in fact mature enough to start experimenting with “off-deck” solutions.

Europe on the other hand is embracing mobile wholeheartedly; again there is a lot of talk about mobile but very little in the way of content publishers trying their hand. All of this seems about to change and if the conference I attended was anyway a benchmark mobile is going to be the targeted delivery channel for branded content in the future. The feeling in Europe is one of optimism and a let’s give it a try attitude, the carriers hold very little weight here and as a result they are introducing tools to make their offers more attractive to the content producers. In particular I saw some great services from T-Mobile offering simple content mobilisation tools for T-Mobile users, where content providers can place a link on their website to mobilise and save the content to the T-Mobile user’s account. When the user logs into their T-mobile "walled garden" they see the mobilised content. This is fantastic initiative and one in which T-Mobile shouldapplauded, unfortunately it still has the effect of watering down the content producers brand and prevents the content producers from moetising this channel through their existing brand relationships.

It will be interesting to see how these markets mature. My feeling is there will come a day in the not to distant future where content producers in the USA will finally realise they are no longer shackled by the constrains of the carriers, then things will really heat up.