@MWC17 - FEBRUARY 27 TO MARCH 1, 2017
MWC17: BRANDS
A SUMMARY OF INNOVATIONS… AND THEIR APPLICATIONS FOR
Over 108,000 attendees, from 208 countries and territories, 3,500 press and media, and more than 2,300 companies attended the Mobile World Congress this year. Visitors explored GSMA Innovation City, NEXTech Hall, not to mention 4YFN down the street! What were the key trends and takeaways for marketers? Havas Group and Mobext, official MWC17 tour sponsors, walk us through their key findings.
Context: Mobile-First Why has MWC become so popular? 2 out of 3 digital minutes is spent on mobile. Almost 60% of the world’s population now has a mobile phone. More than 50% of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones, and more than 50% of all mobile connections around the world are now ‘broadband’. 75% of online content consumption will be mobile. As such, in the US alone, mobile adspend will exceed $40 billion, $65 billion by 2020. Mobile video advertising will grow from $500 million in 2014 to $4.4 billion in 2018, and in-app advertising will hit $17 billion by 2018.
New User Experiences: Trends & Innovations 5G & Wifi: Boundless Connectivity & Intelligent Capabilities Data speeds will increase from 4G’s 1Gbps to 5G’s 10Gbps. Latency, the time it takes to send a packet of data from one device to another, will radically drop from 4G’s 50 milliseconds to 5G’s 1 millisecond. 5G should have around 1,000 times the mobile data volume, and support up to 100 times the number of connected devices. In addition, wifi options in store, in the city, in transportation, will allow for more and more connectivity and data. Wifi and cellular networks will work together. A mobile operator that sells managed guest Wi-Fi services in a shopping mall is in a unique position. While Wi-Fi can only provide information about a user’s movement within the mall, a mobile operator can go beyond that, for instance, to identify women aged 25-30 who have visited not only the current mall, but also a competing mall, and how often! Or look at Telefonica’s Fourth Platform, which gives users full access to their collected data.
AI (Artificial Intelligence): Empowering Intelligent Devices This data and insight will make our devices smart. Bio-metrics and machine learning will actually be applied to smartphones and mobile devices themselves. 300 million smartphones globally (1/5 of all sold) will have AI. Smartphones will be able to perform highly sophisticated functions such as indoor navigation, Augmented Reality, speech recognition, and even learning an individual’s daily tasks and preferences, enabling more proactive digital assistants. For example, a phone could recommend what time to set an alarm based on a user’s first meeting of the day, the weather, and projected traffic patterns.
HAVAS GROUP & MOBEXT @MWC17 - FEBRUARY 27 TO MARCH 1, 2017
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@MWC17 - FEBRUARY 27 TO MARCH 1, 2017
IoT & Wearables: Increasingly Intelligent Objects We won’t only have smart devices, but everything around us will be intelligent. In 2020, the amount of Internetconnected things will reach 50 billion. By 2020, 90% of cars will be connected to the Internet, as compared to 10% in 2012. By equipping street lights with sensors and connecting them, cities can reduce energy costs by 70% to 80%, by only bringing lighting to full capacity when the sensors detect motion. Start-ups are incorporating IoT technology in their platforms: wearable pain relief, pet monitoring, remote temperature control. Crazy, creative smart fabrics (from powerhouses Google and Levis) have their own unique digital identity and programmable cloud software to draw on, using data profiles to connect brands and consumers: how it was made, materials, performance, brand stories about experience of ownership and lifestyle associations, guides to wash, care and recycle. Rochambeau thinking cap and connected jacket has NFC & QR code labels hidden inside that access custom content based on time of day and location: audio led walking tours by locals, podcasts, news, backstage videos, parties. The digitized jacket even served as a VIP ticket to a New York tapas restaurant and under-the-radar nightclub. Mobile Video & AR/VR: More Experiences and More Immersion Mobile video ads now account for 17% of adspend, and will exceed $6 billion by the end of 2017. 57% of consumers watch videos on mobile daily, and 49% of consumers globally are experiencing 360-degree video on mobile. 80% of social media time is spent on mobile, and Snapchat’s success has led to AR and live broadcasts. Video marketing will grow (ads, live vids, explainer, tips, hints, storytelling, live, Periscope, Facebook Live, sport, fans, music, events, Snap Spectacles). Augmented Reality and now Mixed Reality have evolved. Now, not only can producers recreate alternate versions of reality, they can enhance what’s already there. Microsoft has an agreement with Facebook's Oculus VR to provide Xbox One game controllers with each Oculus Rift headset, and to let Rift owners stream their Xbox games to a virtual living room.
Responsible Marketing: Relevancy & Respect How do marketers respond to these new innovations and experiences? They must choose wisely. 92% of consumers annoyed by online ads said they would consider using an adblocker, and 62% said they are annoyed by pre-roll ads. Programmatic advertising dominates digital display advertising, and brands are expected to spend more than $20 billion on mobile programmatic this year. These facts are a reminder of our responsibility as marketers to be relevant. Adblocking is the consumer giving a bad review to an advertiser who does not understand him. Mobile is less affected by adblocking than desktop, but we should still be cautious. Marketers must consider two main dimensions: 1) relevancy of the user experience and 2) relevancy of the targeting. The more an advertiser will try to force TV, print or desktop content on the screen of a mobile phone, the more he’ll miss the opportunity to provide consumers with relevant experiences. The same is true with targeting: if the message we receive as consumers does not correspond to our interests, the more likely we are to feel irritated by it. Most of adblocking happened because brands considered mobile as an afterthought of digital. However, when consumers have become more mobile than desktop, marketers have a duty to become mobile first. If they don’t, they will fail to connect with consumers.
HAVAS GROUP & MOBEXT @MWC17 - FEBRUARY 27 TO MARCH 1, 2017
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@MWC17 - FEBRUARY 27 TO MARCH 1, 2017
Location One main drive to relevancy is location. Location goes beyond the ability to place a message somewhere, but gives marketers the ability to understand and target consumers when they are not sitting behind a desk. Around a third of all mobile ad requests we read come with an opt-in user GPS location. By observing this signal in time, we can build user profiles that are more accurate than ever. For example, if Dimitri travels to another of our offices, he is geolocated in Paris where he lives and then “moves” to the office location of his visit. By comparing the location of these two points and the time that separates them, it is possible to know if he took a plane, a train or a car. By adding some information about the place that matches his location, it is possible to profile him very accurately: he is in a business convention center; therefore, he is a business traveler. This methodology is based on facts, making it more accurate than any other statistical models. UX/UI The common denominator across all of the innovations discussed above (AI, IoT, wearables, VR/AR…) is the ability for the consumer to access value-added experiences with a phenomenal erosion of the friction points created by different interfaces. AI provides an intuitive approach of consumer expectations, connected objects provide the knowledge for that approach, and VR/AR replaces environments designed around analogic concepts with enhanced movements and senses (sound, vision, touch), making the experience more natural and immersive. From consumer service to enhanced entertainment experiences, a newer, deeper and richer form of consumer narrative is rising. At the Telefonica stand at MWC17, we saw a demo of their new Fourth Platform, their digital warehouse that stores user data and allows users to manage access to that data (indicating their appetite for marketing communications). We also saw how HTC Vive and Samsung are changing consumer experience by connecting reality and virtual reality more seamlessly. The potential is obvious for brands willing to develop deeper connections with consumers. It also raises the question of their ability to adopt this new consumer-focused approach, starting with its most accessed, but still underestimated, component: mobile content. Mobile Investment While most of the MWC17 halls focused on B2C approaches, Halls 8.0 and 8.1 were dedicated to brands and marketers. Digital marketing must come from a consumer perspective, and must now be, without a doubt, mobile first. From an advertising perspective, brands tend to be slightly behind consumer usage, as they approach mobile investment as a mere extension of their digital spent. While there is a constant growth in mobile adspend, this growth currently greatly benefits the Facebook/Google duopoly in terms of investment but doesn’t provide a lot of balance within the mobile ecosystem (refer to the Mobext POV http://www.mobext.com/en/resource/how-to-invest-in-mobile-efficiently/). We can deliver a richer, more consumer relevant marketing opportunity revolving around massive audience supplies commodified within SSPs, such as those available through Rubicon Project, and a lot of very accurate targeting data based on highly detailed consumer information coming from both online and offline consumer behavior. Axonix has impressive technology that does just that. Advertisers willing to embrace mobile first strategic thinking can access massive audiences, with engaging formats and powerful targeting, without having to become overly dependent on walled gardens.
HAVAS GROUP & MOBEXT @MWC17 - FEBRUARY 27 TO MARCH 1, 2017
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