Message From Michael 
February 23, 2011
A CASE OF MOBILE CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
FOR ALL YOU HOCKEY PUCKS OUT THERE
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR VIDEOS
A CASE OF MOBILE CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. The U.S. has overtaken Europe in mobile media use, but neither is close to Japan and other Asian countries in terms of usage. That's the headline from comScore's Mobile Year in Review… at least from my perspective. The Europeans used to lead the U.S., in large part because they adopted the technology of text messaging and Smartphone's much earlier. But now, say the report authors, nearly half (47%) of the American mobile media audience use connected media compared to a third (34%) of the European audience. It should be noted here that the comScore report focuses on the five leading European economies (U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy). And the major reason for the American surge? Possibly this factoid: More than one in four (29%) users in America have unlimited data plans compared to less than one in ten (9%) of the European users. The report notes different demographic groups use Mobile at different levels in Europe and the U.S. – a fact that only heightens a key point about Japanese use of Mobile. It is demographically agnostic (my made-up term). Or as the authors put it, Mobile usage in Japan is more "balanced" across all age groups. In large part because Mobile is a "mature" technology in Japan. Three quarters of Mobile users in Japan (75%) use connected media, compared to the half in the U.S. and the third in Europe. Here's the other key factoid, which may presage the future for the U.S. and Europe in terms of Mobile use. In Japan, ten percent of the Mobile subscribers are using their devices like debit or credit cards – so-called "Mobile Wallets", to pay for their purchases. Interestingly, a recent report on The World produced by Public Radio International says aid organizations in Haiti are encouraging people there to use their cell phones in a similar way. In America? Well, Starbucks is experimenting with the idea.
It is not all sunshine and light though in the mythical mobile Garden of Eden. All of you smart Message readers already know about the growing traffic congestion problem on the mobile spectrum highway. In fact, humorously, if you like dark humor, many attendees at the recent Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain, had problems using their mobile devices because of data overload, according to an article in The New York Times. And it's only going to get worse. Network equipment makers Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent expect Mobile data traffic to increase 30-fold in five years time by 2015. Chinese equipment maker Huawei expects it to increase an astounding 500 times over, in ten years time by 2020. As challenging as that may be, the comScore report also cited another challenge which, frankly, I had not heard of. And that is the greater technology fragmentation in the Mobile world as compared to the PC world. Here is the factoid to back this up – there are more than 60 Mobile browser versions from more than a dozen vendors for the Mobile world.
An underlying them of the report is that, for mobile usage to 'succeed', it has to be advertiser friendly. Being advertiser friendly translates in being measurable – and that, say the authors, has been "extremely challenging" because of Mobile's "complex eco-system." That is why, the authors say that although mobile use will probably result in greater on-line spending, all media planning will have to be cross-platform (Mobile, TV, Internet) to be successful.
FOR ALL YOU HOCKEY PUCKS OUT THERE. A surprise factoid. The Super Bowl is NOT the top sporting event, according to Nielsen's State of the Media: Sports Year in Review. At least it's not in the $100K and over crowd. That honor goes to The Stanley Cup, which over-indexed other sporting events by nearly double (a score of 190) in that income bracket. In simplistic terms, over-indexing translates to out-performing the average. The Super Bowl didn't even come in second. That honor went to the NCAA Basketball Championship (168). The Super Bowl came in seventh (128), behind The Masters (163), The BCS National Championship (153), The World Cup Final (146), and The World Series (136); But ahead of the NBA Finals (126), The Kentucky Derby (124) and the U.S. Open Men's Final (113).
Okay, that's interesting enough, but the sales pitch behind the Nielsen report is that it can tell you who are the 'best' celebrity endorsers, using what it calls its patented 'N-Score" system which evaluates awareness, appeal and "46 specific personal attributes" to find out who is the best fit for your product. In women, it's Venus Williams with an N-Score of 169; In men, it's Shaun White with a rating of 536; And in commentators, Terry Bradshaw with a score of 378. Now, at this point, some of you avid Message readers are saying, "Hey, Michael, what about the study cited in a previous Message that you headlined celebrity-schlebrity article which pooh-poohed celebrity endorsements." Oh, right you are. Point noted. On the flip side, a factoid that may validate, to a limited extent, the N-Score concept is that the study says Tiger Woods' N-Score went from a whopping 815 in 2009 to a measly 93 in 2010 after the scandal about his personal life.
But back to the more interesting factoids: For example, four out of five users have downloaded an iPhone Sports App. Or, how about this. There were 40,500 hours of live sporting events aired on either broadcast or cable operations in 2010. The report examines the various sports and finds little gems in each one of them. For example, viewer engagement levels are 76% higher for MLB sports programming than the average levels during all other sports programming. The 2010 NBA Finals Game 7 broadcast drew 28.2 Million viewers – the highest rated game since 1998 when Michael Jordan played his final game. Most of the fast facts about the NFL you already know from previous Messages – the Super Bowl beating out MASH as the most watched telecast of all time, in large part because of a jump in ethnic viewing. And here's one you'll love -- NASCAR fans spent an average of 30% more for beer than fans of any other sport, but before you go into stereotypes, they also spent 25% more on non-alcoholic beverages as well.
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR VIDEOS. Because the race is on – between newspapers, broadcasters, and online media as to who will win the NASCAR of online video victory. Depending on which metric you use, either Broadcasters or Newspapers hold the pole position, according to a study released by partners TubeMogul and BrightCove. Broadcast can claim the top spot, based on total minutes streamed in 2010 (1.7 Billion) and in terms of average minutes spent viewing videos (3:20). That's a minute and a half more than newspapers. Newspaper can make a similar claim, based on total titles uploaded in 2010 (1.4 Million) and on what is called player loads (8 Billion). Newspaper title uploads is nearly three times its nearest competitors, online media and broadcast; and newspaper player loads is nearly four times the rate for broadcasters. A player load, by the way, represents the graphics, data and other components rendered on a web page including in-page and in-player ads. And online media usually represents pure-play Web only properties. It should also be noted here that the report is on global online media use, not just the U.S.
A review of the differences between broadcast and online media online strategies, and the strategy employed by newspapers and magazines, along with the resultant data differences, only further emphasizes the differences in which metric is the best metric. As a general rule though, "engagement" will be defined by time spent with particular media content. But regardless, two things stand out. Each month last year saw an increase in the amount of time spent viewing videos online. Secondly, for the first time, the Nielsen authors say, more than half the videos in two categories (Online Media and Broadcast) were watched from start to finish. It is what Nielsen calls Completion Rates.
A sub-theme that one could tease out of the report is the relationship between engagement and content. For example, the report notes that "brands" saw a "massive" jump in engagement with the time spent viewing online nearly doubling year to year, from just over a minute in 2009 to over two minutes in 2010. The authors say this may indicate brands are improving the quality of their content. In a similar vein, the report notes that referrals by Yahoo appear to be more effective in terms of 'video engagement' because, the authors speculate, of its syndicated content efforts. As readers will recall, Yahoo owns the Associated Content. No doubt, the smart ones among you see where I am headed with this. It is the question, yet again, of the role that so-called "content farms" are playing and will play in the future of online information. As a footnote, it should be noted that although the report makes a big issue of the increasing power of Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter as referral sources impacting engagement, Google remains far and away the major referral source, with more than 80% of all search referrals.
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