Today Yahoo! is the preferred or exclusive mobile search engine for more than 70 mobile carriers around the world. Mobile display advertising is available in 23 territories, while mobile search marketing [i.e. paid-for-results on Yahoo!’s mobile search-engine] is live in US, UK and Japan. Michael Bayle played a key role in the world’s first trial of mobile-sponsored search in Japan in 2004 and in the US in 2005.
Q1. What is your favorite (excepting Yahoo!) and least favorite mobile website?
ESPN.mobi is continually a top-10 mobile destination – in early 2008, ESPN indicated it had more mobile traffic than PC traffic. If one really thinks about the content that is important to consumers while on the go, Sports, News, Finance and Weather are all up there. But ESPN is definitely my favourite, as I keep track of my various teams throughout the year.
I think it’s too early to have a least favorite mobile site, but I’d argue that one-page based mobile sites, while a great starting point, really need to graduate to fuller, interactive, and engaging mobile sites to keep users interested in their brand.
Q2. What can the rest of us learn from these sites?
As with the web, content and user experience are key. Mobile sites need to do much more than just repurpose PC content. Voting, trivia and other engagement keep the consumer continuously returning to ‘snack’ on mobile content. While it will always have a small form factor, mobile still addresses the need all humans have to follow their passions. As such, any content vertical should be able to establish itself in mobile. Our mobile search engine Yahoo! oneSearch receives increasingly diverse search queries for everything from ant farming to zoo keeping.
Q3. Who is the new kid on the block – the mobile site to watch for the future?
Wapreview.mobi Wapreview.mobi chronicles and rates the development of new mobile sites as they come online. As such, it is at this b2b site where I monitor up-and-coming sites, whether they are publisher, blogs or new brands. So rather than just one site to watch for the future, I watch the one site that is watching all sites for the future.
Q4. What sector would you say is furthest ahead in mobile marketing?
Outside of the “consumables” category, automotive is certainly No.1. We have run successful campaigns, globally, with Jaguar, Porsche, Nissan, Toyota, Citroen, Ford and Chevrolet. I’d say travel is the next leading category.
Q5. What can the rest of us learn from the automotive sector?
Automotive illustrates the mobile medium is much more than just “reaching youth”. These mainstream firms, especially in tough economic times, would not be repeating their investments in mobile if it wasn’t enabling them to reach affluent mobile users for the potential purchase of a high-ticket item, usually the most expensive purchase a consumer will make other than a home. We hear continuously from automotive marketers that mobile is the most efficient means for them to reach new consumers. With a global recession and more requirements for successful ROI, we should only expect to see a growing investment in mobile marketing in 2009.
Q6. What’s the most exciting / inspirational place in the world for mobile marketing?
While an anomaly, I believe the most exciting place is Japan. In that market, mobility is de facto. It’s the way most consumers first get on “the Internet”. Users can pay their bills, buy a Coke from a vending machine and even author a book – all on their mobile phone. Last year, the top three best-selling novels in bookstores were all originally authored on a mobile phone!
Q7. What can the rest of us learn from Japan?
Marketers will follow consumers. Yahoo! was the first in the world to launch mobile-sponsored search – in Japan – in 2004. Why? Our advertisers noticed that, even then, a third of their traffic to their PC Internet site was via a mobile phone, and they wanted a way to reach those mobile consumers – on mobile. It is a myth that mobile is “too small” to reach consumers. In most markets around the world, the audiences are far greater than what can be found on the PC.
Q8. What’s the most exciting area of mobile marketing?
Engagement: this is a catch-all for all experiences on the mobile phone which are unique to the phone. It can certainly include location, but often location is only available via applications as most mobile web browsers don’t – yet – pass along location as part of the browsing experience. Communication, however, definitely plays a key role in mobile marketing. The ability to leverage the inherent communication aspects of mobility with a brand is the perfect way to catalyze the most coveted arenas of all marketing: word-of-mouth.
Q9. What site uses this to maximum effect?
We love the site from one of our US advertisers, breakfast cereal Chex Mix, which really capitalizes on mobile. Chex is running a campaign on our Yahoo! Fantasy Football site (m.yahoo.com/fantasy). Once at the Chex site, fantasy football users can capitalize on their competitive tendencies and send a Smack Talk to their friends in the form of a phone call that comes from a celebrity football player, all sponsored by Chex. It’s important to note that Chex developed the advertising campaign specifically for the mobile user and this complements the content of the site.
Q10. Which mobile-marketing guru would you like to see do our five-minute interview next?
I think you should speak with Alexandre Mars, CEO of PhoneValley (the mobile arm of Publicis). Alexandre and his team are doing great things globally that are getting brands excited about mobile.
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