What does pornography and mass mediums have in common?

Where pornography goes, so goes the masses. 

Newspapers, magazines, radio, television & the VCR were all popularized once the adult industry adopted the channel as their own. 

The same could be said for the interweb.

In the early days of the Internet when Mosiac was the dominant web browser, I was building my first website on a Unix server using a student account allocated to me by Cornell University.  While I was learning basic HTML skills in Textpad,  the adult industry was building sites centered around their content. The joke back then was that every site on the world wide web was only 2 links away from an adult based website.  Although today’s sites require more than two degrees of separation to reach an adult content website, the impact of the adult industry on the interweb is certainly no joke.  

They same will be said for mobile. 

As reported by Reuters today, adult content on your mobile phone is coming to North America this year.  Although popular in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world already, this will be the first time that accessible mobile adult content has made it’s way to North America. 

With the adult content industry moving into the North American mobile space this year, it’s a sure sign that the masses will be shortly behind.  

It’s a silly excercise, but everybody does it.  After a banner year for mobile in Canada, here are 10 outrageous predictions for 2008:  

1. SMS third-party advertising – every SMS you send is 150 characters…most of which is sent as blank space. I predict new services will take advantage of this in 2008 to deliver SMS advertising to off-set mobile costs for the consumer (but only if they opt-in of course)
2. Mobile Web advertising will take a piece of your media buy. We’ve seen it happen with online media…now with more inventory becoming available off-deck, the time is right to test and pilot this channel
3. MMS Common Short Codes will finally arrive and usher us into a new era in Mobile marketing in Canada….or at least catch us up to the rest of the world.
4. Mobile payments (m-Commerce) will start to emerge from text books, blogs, and sales pitches.  Look for pilots from Interac, Visa and at least one of the major banks next year.
5. The iphone will finally arrive in Canada – but it will be the second generation 3G phone that will support higher internet access speeds and cool features like video calling. This will be offered exclusively on the Rogers network – but don’t be surprised if another non-mobile retailer offers them for sale first
6. Fixed or low-cost data plans will be universal across all carriers in Canada. It’s already started with Bell and Rogers now offers an $80 / month plan for 500 megs of data – plenty for most of us. It’s still a long way from other plans around the world that are 4 times cheaper or better, but it’s a start
7. Due to fixed or low-cost data plans, look for the mobile web to catch fire.  Marketing campaigns will start incorporating mobile web strategies as part of their marketing mix
8. A new mobile carrier will be announced. The Canadian government announced the opening of new spectrum and is reserving a piece of it for a new player and with special engagement rules that will make it easier for a new competitor to enter the market.
9. Google will continue its charge towards world mobile domination. Look for their gphone sometime in the 3rd quarter and look for them to either bid on spectrum in the U.S., buy a carrier like Sprint outright to own a piece without having to go through the auction process or leverage their new mobile platform called Android to get direct access to many subscribers across many carriers.
10. Social Networking will make the leap from desktop to Mobile as a primary interface / access point 

Even if only a few of these come to fruition in 2008, it will be a great year for Marketers and a great year for Consumers.

Happy Holidays!

Today the federal government of Canada announced that they are opening up the wireless communications industry in May of 2008 by making spectrum available specifically for newcomers to break up the Oligopoly of Bell, Telus, and Rogers in Canada.

As reported by the Toronto Star today, the move is expected to increase competition in Canada to create better pricing, more options and better service. Canadians are already paying as much as 33% more for similar data plans in the U.S. for average users and up to 56% more for heavy users.  Mobile usage in Canada is among the lowest in the developed world at around 58% – compared to some European countries that are close to 100%. A fourth major carrier is bound to drive down prices and drive up adoption in Canada.

This is great news for consumers. This is also great news for marketers.  Better pricing means marketers can boldly go beyond SMS campaigns and leverage the full potential of the mobile web and mobile applications which rely on the mobile web for data to create a rich experience on mobile devices. Yahoo for example has a great downloadable mobile product called Yahoo! Go which provides a rich mobile internet experience…but can result in an outrageous bill from your carrier if you don’t already have a hefty data plan. Cheap and / or fixed data rates means consumers will be able to enjoy products like Yahoo! Go without fear of having to re-mortgage the house after binging on data.

Since my last post on Bell’s introduction of fixed rates in Canada, Telus has started offering $15 fixed data plans as a retention strategy for existing customers. With both Bell and Telus dropping their data rates as a pre-emptive strike against the pending introduction of the iphone in Canada, we can only expect universal fixed data plans are on their way.  Adding a fourth carrier can only help.

Mobile as a mass medium may no longer be restricted to countries not named Canada.  Pretty cool, eh?  

Marketing Magazine hosted the Mobile Breakfast: Brands in motion recently in Toronto and Montreal featuring John Hardl who is a global advisor to P&G on mobile marketing.

There were over 100 marketers at the Toronto event and over 70 in Montreal from Fortune 500 companies in Auto, Financial, Pharma, and Retail.

John delivered an engaging presentation that covered his definition of mobile marketing and presented several case studies on how he has been leveraging mobile as an essential part of his marketing mix for Proctor & Gamble.

Here are some key takeaways / lessons learned from his presentation:

1) Ad placements on carrier platforms in the U.S. are resulting in great ROI & engagement. In some campaigns, John experiences a higher number of unique visitors on mobile compared to web.

2) Mobile web is part of every campaign – but people would rather SMS for the initial engagement / opt-in process than provide an email address in a mobile web form. Mobile web has worked great in retail when purchase decisions are being made. Consumers are pulling up sites on what colour lipstick to buy for example.

3) Marketers buy audiences – not tools… so be sure to partner with a mobile marketing agency that will partner with you - not just sell you a nifty platform or tool box.  

4) Mobile works best as part of integrated marketing strategy. John has experienced great lift from magazine ads and television that include a call to action to an SMS short code or mobile website.

5) Mobile provides a constant engagement mechanism in a fragmented world.

In Canada, we don’t have access to a lot of inventory from the carriers for mobile banner placements – but this bound to change soon.  Because consumer data plans are not yet fixed or really cheap like they are in the U.S., mobile web in Canada is not as integrated into an overall marketing campaign as it is already in the

U.S. With 98% carrier coverage in Canada for mobile and over 19 million devices in use, it’s only a matter of time before we are able to integrate mobile marketing as part of our overall marketing mix to the same degree as our colleagues in the U.S.

Hot off the presses – check out Marketing Magazine’s current issue which has a focus on brands in motion: how mobile is revolutionizing marketing in Canada.

1) Brand Power

2) I want my PDA

3) Measuring Mobile 

Although Canada still falls behind even the U.S. in mobile penetration and usage, we are at a point where it’s hard to argue that the Mobile channel is not relevant in Canada. How are you incorporating mobile into your marketing plan?

In support of their issue on Mobile, Marketing Magazine is hosting two Executive breakfast meetings this week in Toronto and Montreal featuring special guest speaker John Hadl, Mobile Adviser to Procter & Gamble US, will discuss the role of mobile in a consumer-centric, media-fragmented world.

As part of the two meetings I’ll be presenting a case study on how a leading Automotive company has gone beyond “text to win” to create true customer engagement in the Mobile channel in Canada. President & CEO Michael Carter from MyThumb Interactive will also be presenting a case study on how a leading beer company has created engagement through mobile.