Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

Recommended Sources

About Media Industry

BNET Media provides daily industry trends and news coverage with insights for managers and executives in publishing, print, broadcast, film, and online media. In addition to media company profiles, we bring you industry analysis on new partnerships, media products, mergers and acquisitions, labor and cost management, media buying, investments and a host of other important business issues.

Cash-strapped media companies, I know you don’t want to hear this: but mobile media consumption data shows it’s time to jump-start your mobile strategy. Everywhere I look lately, consumer usage of mobile phones as media devices rising, almost in defiance of the lousy economy. Importantly, most of the figures show mobile media consumption increasing even in the dark days since the true economic meltdown began in September. In other words, this looks like a phenomenon that will transcend the economic downturn. A few news items, just from the last few weeks:

According to comScore, game downloads to mobile phones increased by 17 per cent between November 2007 and November 2008; game downloads to smartphones (the iPhone and its ilk), increased by 34 percent during the same period.
Nielsen Mobile data shows that people are more interested in watching long-form video on their mobile phones (think NBC’s “Heroes”), as opposed to the short-form vids that many thought would be more popular on mobile.
Users of the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch have downloaded 500 million apps from Apple’s App Store, most of them in gaming and entertainment, in the last six months. That number stood at 300 million in early December, roughly six weeks before it reached the 500 million download mark.

This is causing a gold rush among developers and some media companies to come up with apps that tap into this phenomenon. (Somehow the word “trend” doesn’t do it justice.) The number of apps developed and available at the Apple app store has increased by 50 percent in a month. Meanwhile, media properties as diverse as Conde Nast’s Lucky Magazine and Fox’s “American Idol”, are developing content specifically for mobile devices.

But it’s the number of people upping their mobile media consumption that really matters. All media companies know that they have to be where the eyeballs are, and it looks increasingly, like our eyeballs are becoming glued to our mobile phones.

Tags: Mobile, Mobile Media Consumption, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Catharine P. Taylor

Catharine P. Taylor has been covering digital media and advertising for almost 15 years and is a frequent speaker at conferences about media and advertising. She posts daily to BNET Media, writes the weekly Social Media Insider column for Mediapost and also has her own advertising blog, Adverganza.com. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to the BNET Media Twitter feed.

BNET User Analysis

Voice your 2cents

Web Buzz:

TARP payback may not help consumers

Fortune - 168 days 7 hours 48 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Don't expect TARP-free banks to unleash a torrent of loans to cash-strapped consumers. The Treasury Department told ten big bank holding companies Tuesday that they are healthy enough to repay their federal loans. In turn, the big banks said they would repay $68 billion to Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program. JPMorgan...
Booker cashes in as caterers save money

Financial Times - 180 days 8 hours 26 minutes ago

Rising demand from cash-strapped pubs and hotel chains helped lift profits at Booker by a third as the Aim-listed discount wholesaler prepared to move in to the main market. Pre-tax profit rose 30 per cent from 36.2m to 47.2m in the year to March 27, prompting the group to increase its dividend and allowing it to halve its net debt to...
US property tax liens

Financial Times - 49 days 4 hours 33 minutes ago

Cash-strapped municipalities and rising delinquencies mean the market – estimated at up to $15bn annually – is growing
Singapore swap

BBC - 192 days 2 hours 40 minutes ago

In northern Singapore, among many residential flats, there stands a huge six-storey building called Northlink. It houses more than 500 small to medium sized businesses, or SMEs. They are the backbone of Singapore's economy, and yet they are the hardest hit by the current recession. Since the global credit crunch spread to the city state, banks...
Live entertainment

Financial Times - 315 days 9 hours 39 minutes ago

Fans are said to take their name from "fanatics". Will cash-strapped fans continue to buy show tickets

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

1

invictallc

02/03/09 | Report as spam

RE: Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

Don't forget about the Helio Ocean 2 launch that looks to be one of the best phones out there that would be taking advantage of this huge trend of using the mobile phone for everything other than just making phone calls.

Asif Ahmed
http://www.Ocean2PROMO.com
2

tanmayms

02/03/09 | Report as spam

RE: Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

Mobile is not JUST another media tool. Mobile's nature as media vehicle possesses few distinct features. It has Personal nature - same as a news paper as. Also, It is Persuasive nature because of its multimedia functions. Targeting on mobile is highly effective because of emerging technologies.

These are motivational factors for marketers and content providers to go Mobile. 'Rework your strategy to suit mobile and achieve good RoI by being present on mobile'. This is mantra for next gen marketing!!

Tanmay Shanishchara
http://www.tanmayms.blogspot.com
3

ATVHERO

02/03/09 | Report as spam

RE: Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

I work for T-mobile, this is good news.
4

annihilatrix

02/03/09 | Report as spam

RE: Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

Nice catch, Ms. Taylor, and very observant of you. Hadn't given it much thought until this article, but it's important. So mobile media and apps are doing well, are they? This is me not being surprised.

Interesting remark about how this will "transcend the economic downturn." Ohelyeah it will, no question, but what I was thinking is more that the phenomenon is a *result* of the economic downturn.

Game downloads. Long-format video. Gaming and entertainment apps. And all on mobile format. It all looks like retreat, escape, flight. When you see yourself stuck in a situation that looks hopeless, that's what you'll be strongly inclined to do. And I also think that it's significant that what we're seeing is flight, and not a lot of fight.

Money is supposed to be the last taboo topic of conversation, mostly because Americans feel that financial loss reflects badly on us. I think we feel that way now more than we ever have before. We all feel like retreating, and I don't blame us.

It may seem that the popularity of mobile media looks like the old escapist Hollywood movie and miniature golf crazes of the last big depression, except that, no, it doesn't exactly. This time the general feeling about the mess we're in is different, and I think it's because no matter what the big bad banks and greedy nasty pirates in neckties might have done, they couldn't have done it without our own greed. This time it's our fault too, and we all know it. We're not just angry and demoralized; this time, we're ashamed.

There's nothing light-hearted about the kind of entertainment we're choosing for ourselves - it's mostly grim and angry, and no wonder - and yet there's nothing revolutionary or righteously inflammatory about it either. We're choosing the kinds of diversions that we can pull out of our pockets and do alone on the bus or in the back of a Starbucks. We blog or watch a video or blow something up, in private, and feel a little better for a while. I think it's because right about now, we're angry, but we're also a little bit uncomfortable about facing each other.

(Note also that just from a practical point of view, if you're not sure how much more time you have in your current home or where you're going to go next, it's ***really nice*** to know that at least you can stash your second life in your pocket and take it with you. I've always suspected that disappearing into video games and what one friend of mine calls "the faerie world of the Net" had distinct advantages. If you have to uproot your kids, that's bad, but they'll still be able to watch Ben 10, and that will help a little.)

I should note here that I'm the Grand High Wizard of Solitude and I see nothing wrong with seclusion or introversion, but when everybody else starts doing it too, especially in as extroverted and group-oriented a culture as ours, it really stands out. Still, given what's going on and how we're reacting to it, it doesn't surprise me a bit.

What does kind of intrigue me, and makes me smile a little, is watching the evolution of the telephone into a device that's only incidentally used for communication, partly because communication isn't all that high a priority these days. (We do hate to talk about financial losses, don't we?)

Moral: Go forth and create mobile media and apps. Invest in them too if you're like that; they do seem like a good bet, although these days who knows. And for now at least, use and enjoy them all you like; we all understand. We seem to need that sort of thing right now.

BTW: The reader is assured that if you personally don't bear a shred of responsibility for our meltdown and are chockablock tiptop-full of compassion and loving-kindness and genial feelings of brotherhood with your fellow man, then the stuff you don't like in this talkback isn't leveled at you at all, but is leveled particularly and venomously at the NEXT reader.
5

paul@...

02/04/09 | Report as spam

RE: Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

well i suppose this is true, seeivg as i am reading this on my mobile. i must say, i am a bit disappointend that i cant find a moblile version of the bnet site.
6

rauf.i.azam@...

02/04/09 | Report as spam

RE: Mobile Media Consumption Defies the Lousy Economy

Isn't it just because of that very reason "the lousy economy" that people now have more time to play around??

Your statistics that the ones who own rather expansive cells have downloaded more apps?? Re-enforcing that the execs now have more free time to fancy with those new found tools .....
7

SteveLanning

02/04/09 | Report as spam

Lack of communication ='s language's downslope

Have to agree with "A-Trix" As a baby boomer, I like to watch our own adult kids and their friends raise their kids...sure there's more communicating going on, but less communication to the degree that I fear our very language is being short-changed because of the lack of human exhange and real thought. Just look at this past election for Exhibit A. As a society we have traded personal growth and development for 'feel good' icons.