In the incentive space, the perceived value spread is crucial. Marketers strive to provide an incentive with a much higher perceived value (than what a consumer has to do to earn the incentive). The higher the spread, the more effective the incentive becomes.
For the last 3-4 years, marketers have dipped into the mobile content space to leverage incentives in their programs. Incentives such as ringtones wallpapers and to degree basic mobile coupons have been used, with varying degrees of success. I like to classify these as Mobile content 1.0. According to research firm SNL Kagan, US ringtone sales peaked in 2007 at $714 million, followed by a 28% decrease in 2008. According to them, advances in technology have made it easier to bypass the traditional download-to-handset method. Extending this pattern out, it is not hard to conclude that mobile content 1.0 is not dead, but it is certainly on the backside of the “perceived value” curve. Point is, this type of mobile content has held some value to a consumer, but as technology moves forward, this perceived value (and related effectiveness as an incentive) is diminishing.
On the flipside though, I think that mobile content as an incentive is just starting to ramp up. As the mobile “phone” phases out, it is replaced by the “phone/media player/internet appliance/computing device”. With this shift, technology advancement makes the term mobile content take on a much broader definition. I call this next generation content mobile content 2.0. Need an example? Consider the explosion of the iPhone “app” market. According to Gartner’s 2009 Mobile device report , iPhone has a 13% market share globally. Impressive share, but based upon the hype surrounding the iPhone application, or “app” market, you would think that considerably more than 1 in 6 consumers have one. The great thing about these “apps” is that they are so diverse and so broad. In addition, the cost to develop is relatively low, especially when compared to the perceived value. Other examples are the wide array of social media applications, streaming content (music and video), casual games, and QR codes (plus a whole lot of GPS-related/geo-coding things that are near mind-blowing).
Over the last few years, consumer mobile phone behavior has had a dramatic impact on marketing (and possibly vice versa). According to my favorite futurist (Gerd Leonhard) and others, in the (near) future, mobile’s influence will dramatically impact everything we do as marketers. My question is, as a marketer, will you continue using mobile incentives to take consumers someplace they have already been? Or are you ready to step into the future and leverage the type of incentives that take consumers where they want to go? I’ve made my value assessment; yours is coming (sooner than you think).