Mobile & Travel 2015

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

The number of travellers - both business and pleasure - who are depending on their mobiles to make travel decisions and purchases is rapidly on the rise, according to findings from BuzzCity's latest survey of mobile users from 25 benchmark countries.

Not only are consumers using their phones to purchase tickets and book accommodation, they're also increasingly relying on their mobile devices for information and entertainment while on the road.

Some astute travel industry brands are already capitalising on this shift, thinking beyond their websites and purchase apps to how they can really engage consumers and improve their travel experiences. If you're in the travel industry and not already doing this, take note or risk losing market share in the year ahead.

Shopping for Essentials Online Becomes Routine

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

A host of new online shopping services - by established and upstart companies alike - are leading consumers to shop more frequently with their phones.

And more than that, consumer shopping routines are changing too, with people going online to shop when they need something, rather than just making regular visits to the store.

Sixty-nine percent of mobile users now shop online - up from 59% a little over a year ago - according to a BuzzCity survey of 4700 consumers from 25 countries across six continents. More than a quarter of these consumers shop online every day.

Movies: Delay Digital Releases At Your Own Peril

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

It's time for the feature film industry and television producers to adapt to a new era of distribution.

For decades -- since the advent of VCRs and home movie viewing, if not the beginning of television itself - major studios have given cinemas an exclusive window to screen films first before releasing them through other channels.

Today, though, these delays foster piracy.

Whiskey and Phones

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

TV Ad Dollars Are Shifting
to Web Videos 

The companies that provide consumer products and services are always on the look out for creative ways to market their goods.

Television ads used to be at the top of the ladder.

Then, viewers started recording programmes and fast-forwarding through commercials.

Enter product placements - a Coca-Cola cup here, an iMac there.

Now, though, a key group of consumers - youth aged 18 - 35 - are watching less television altogether, be it live or taped and are spending increasingly more time with other media devices - phones, tablets, game consoles and computers.

The changing nature of media consumption has led some brands to adapt again, this time becoming the producers and sponsors of their own content. (You'll want to read on: I'm about to share two great videos!)

TV Goes Online

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

If you're a television network and you notice that an increasing percentage of your core audience is spending less time in front of the TV, what do you do?

For MTV India, the answer was obvious.

Start producing content for mobile and the web.

"As a media channel, we can't ignore platforms where the youth (are)," MTV India's digital head Ekalavya Bhattacharya told MediaNama. "When a guy is glued to Facebook all the time, it doesn't make sense to ask him to switch to TV to just watch a show. It won't work."

BuzzCity Research: Mobile Video on the Rise

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

• Do you watch videos on your phone?

• How often?

• What do you like to watch?

These are among the questions that BuzzCity posed to some 5000 mobile users across 25 countries.

While we knew that video consumption is on the rise, the strength of the results surprised even us.

More than three-quarters of respondents told us that they use their phone to watch video. More than half watch at least a few times a week; 27% said they watch mobile videos every day.

Misleading Ads

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Consumers hate them. Regulators are cracking down. Publishers regularly make complaints about them. And BuzzCity will not accept them on our mobile network. 

Misleading ads – banners imitating operating systems, virus threats, chat messages and falsely promise free stuff – have been a bane to consumers since the early days of internet advertising.

Yet some companies – oblivious to consumer and publisher concerns - continue to market in this manner thanks to a mistaken belief that click-throughs are sufficient to generate sales.

What companies actually need to do is to measure quality engagements.

What happens after mobile surfers arrive at your landing page? Do they proceed to find out more about your products and interact with your brand? Do they continue to the checkout counter? Or do they immediately bail and go back to what they were doing before? 

Mobile Banking: Get the Message Right

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

We've all seen the ads. There's no shortage of creative commercials promoting mobile phones and carriers. But too many of these campaigns – particularly when it comes to services like mobile banking – portray these features as premium services for high-end users.

What the industry needs are ads that clearly demonstrate three things:

• Mobile banking is useful and will make our lives easier
• Mobile banking is for everyone
• And here's how to do it

Banks and carriers also need to move beyond screens to engage consumers more directly with below-the-line marketing campaigns that have a personal touch.

Branchless Banking

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

In this week's column, we continue our series on mobile banking with a look at distribution.

When it comes to expanding financial services, distribution is the name of the game, particularly if you'd like to reach new consumers, such as the UnderBanked - people who have trouble accessing financial services or who do not have bank accounts.

To reach these consumers, banks need to look beyond traditional forms of distribution. They need to look beyond building bank branches. They need Branchless Banking.

Mobile Banking - Innovative Companies Make Inroads and Improve Lives

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Mobile is changing the way people bank, particularly in communities where people never banked before.

A BuzzCity survey of consumers in twenty markets across four continents finds that nearly 1 in 3 mobile users find m-banking to be easy and useful.

And there are now at least nine countries where the number of registered mobile money accounts has surpassed traditional bank accounts, according to a report released at the 2014 Mobile World Congress.

Traditional banks have the biggest market share, but young upstarts – non-banks and mobile banks – are catching the attention – and money – of people from Bangladesh to Ghana and Guatemala.

Why aren't more people banking with their mobiles?

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Financial institutions have a long way to go in terms of educating consumers about the availability and advantages of mobile banking.

That's the key conclusion of a BuzzCity survey of mobile users in twenty benchmark countries across four continents.

Contrary to popular belief, concerns about security are not holding back the industry. While that may have been an issue in previous years, the problem today boils down to awareness.

Tips for Retailers

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing) 

Mobile users are constantly connected. Don't forget it. Whether they are in traffic, at home, the office or walking on the street, consumers are online.

What does this mean for retailers?

Here are a few tips . . .

Mobile Hotspots: Latin America 2014

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Rising smartphone penetration and cheaper phones are leading mobile advertisers to take a fresh look at Latin America, where there are now more mobile devices than people.

Brazil and Mexico are attracting the most attention.

But we are also seeing significant advertiser interest in Argentina, Costa Rica, Columbia and Guatemala.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the BuzzCity Network served nearly 3.5 billion ads across the region, up 55% from the previous quarter. We expect more than 4 billion impressions in the first quarter of this year.

Falling Smartphone Prices Means Greater Penetration

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Where can you buy the world's cheapest smartphones?

I'll share that answer in a moment. First, though, it seems that most discussions about smartphones have been about iPhones, Android or Android vs iPhones. A host of new producers, though - some of whom have been building other brands' smartphones for years - are driving down handset prices. And the story set to dominate this week's Mobile World Congress is the advent of inexpensive smartphones.

For many consumers, smartphones are finally becoming affordable!

Consumers Surf Less; How To Reverse The Trend

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Fact #1: Carriers have discontinued unlimited mobile surfing packages in many markets.

Fact #2: Mobile surfers are spending less time online.

Surprised?

Less consumer time online means missed opportunities and potentially lower revenues for all sorts of mobile players, from advertisers to publishers and merchants.

We are seeing creative attempts though - mainly in the form of partnerships between telecoms and Over-The-Top (OTT) players like Facebook and Google - to counteract this trend and encourage more surfing. To really be successful though, carriers need to look beyond a few big-name brands and embrace mobile merchants as well.  At the same time, they should take a fresh look at pricing plans to make them clearer and more predictable.

Let's take a closer look.

Retail Shopping: The Experience of Discovery

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Visit the website of fashion retailer bebe and odds are you'll find cheaper prices than in a local outlet as well as some online exclusives. However price is not the only reason – or even the main reason – why consumers shop online.

What's really key is the overall shopping experience.

Does the mobistore have a great selection? Is it easy and fun to browse? Are the prices clearly marked? If I'm looking for something specific, can I find it quickly?

These same questions should be at the top of the list for brick and mortar retailers as well.

According to the 2013 BuzzCity Retail Survey – a poll of 13,000 mobile users across 20 countries – product variety is the number one factor for shoppers, regardless of whether a store is located online or not.

In addition, contrary to popular perception, online shopping is not taking away from High Street retailers. Instead, we're increasingly seeing a fusion between the two as consumers look for information online before heading to retail stores and some brands that were internet-only have begun setting up a physical presence.

Mobile Payments Come of Age

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

More working adults use mobile payments to buy things and pay their bills than cheques, according to the latest BuzzCity global survey. Mobile payments are also rapidly gaining on debit and credit cards. (Mobile payments are actually already more common when it comes to bill payments, but not yet for commercial transactions.)

Think about this for a moment.

Cheques were likely first used in the Middle East more than 2300 years ago.

Mobile commerce and mobile payments didn't exist until 1997.

It took centuries - well, millennium actually - for cheque usage to really take off. By the time of my parent's generation, billions of cheques were being issued annually and these rectangular pieces of paper were the preferred means of payment for many people, particularly in North America, India, Oceania and parts of Europe.

Mobile payments meanwhile have come a long way over the past sixteen years, when the first two mobile-enabled Coca-Cola machines accepted payment via SMS in Finland.

Let's take a closer look now at the stats and some examples from around the world.

The 'UnderBanked' Are Connected

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

At a time when mobile phones are becoming more and more intricately linked with our lives, across all sectors of society, the mobile industry is driving Financial Inclusion, providing consumers who have been left out of the financial system with new ways to pay bills, buy goods and services, make remittances and even store their savings.

At the same time, these people without bank accounts – the 'UnderBanked' – have become the driving force behind a growing market for mobile payments.

These are two of the key findings of a recent BuzzCity survey of 17,000 consumers across 22 countries.

Is the PC really dead?

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

If you read IDC, Gartner and a variety of mainstream news articles, you might think that PCs have one foot in the grave, thanks to the emergence of smarter phones and tablets.

But to paraphrase Mark Twain, 'reports of my death are greatly exaggerated'.

Yes, PC sales are declining. 

Yes, low-end netbooks are history.

But laptops and desktop computers are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

Here's why . . . 

Mobile Strategies for Small Businesses

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

You run a small business.

You know that your consumers spend a lot of time on the phone, not just talking, but surfing the web, chatting with friends, watching videos, buying movie tickets, checking out travel sites and more. After all, you do the same thing.

You know that it makes sense for your business to engage customers online and on their phones.

You realise that if you don't have a mobile strategy, you're missing out and may actually lose customers to your competitors.

But you don't know where to start.

At BuzzCity, we realise that small businesses need to be on the web, but that they don't have the same resources to work with as big companies.

Here's what you can do . . . .