There’s nothing like the smell of civic responsibility. I didn’t realize that civic responsibility had a “smell” until I was stuck in a stuffy and, indeed, smelly room with several hundred of my new prospective juror friends at the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts building this week. Think OJ’s trial of the century—same place.
Imagine my surprise, nee, sheer joy when I popped-open my laptop to discover (cue choir of angels here)… WiFi access! Was it really possible to have a pleasant day at Jury Duty? Of course not—everyone knows that’s a stretch! At least the day could be mildly productive—I sent a few work emails, Facebooked the presumed guilt of my prospective defendants in an effort to eliminate my possible selection, and searched for the best restaurant for lunch nearby.
An unusual observation struck me as I scanned the Juror Room—more than half of the folks in the jury room were engrossed in some activity with their cell phones or PDAs. There was the man madly texting and laughing across the way, a woman looking bored watching a movie on her iPhone, and countless others, buds plugged firmly in ears, happily browsing the Internet. God love the mobile web. But, my observation shouldn’t have been surprising: nearly 60% of online consumers in the US own an internet-enabled phone.
Many industry experts tout targeted mobile advertising as the “next big advertising trend.” While mobile advertising has been slower to penetrate in the US, mobile ad-spend in Europe will approach $3 Billion by 2012. Still, even in the US, mobile advertising budgets are increasing 25% to 30% year-over-year.
To date, much of the mobile advertising strategy in both the US and abroad has been scatter-shot. Few mobile providers have truly leveraged the wealth of data available across their enterprise. Mobile providers have unparalleled access to massive detail about their consumers’ profiles and behaviors. From call detail records to WAP data to mobile portals, wireless companies have the ability to create rich and time-sensitive profiles to target a user’s immediate location, need and interest — and do so in combination with a rich history of detailed prior customer behavior.
What’s the benefit of capturing, analyzing and delivering against such rich audience intelligence? More than just happy consumers—mobile providers can command premium rates for advertising inventory, increasing revenues and ROI.
Also, as mobile providers evaluate hybrid content distribution models, with free content a loss leader to drive paid-content and increased data usage, rich audience intelligence enables the comprehensive ability to understand engagement of consumers with content. This allows for improved targeting of content based on that data.
So, while I ultimately did find the ideal lunch spot — Kendall’s Brasserie and Bar, with its juror discount and decent wine list—a successful mobile advertising strategy would have done so for me: analyze my location, time-of-day, past interests and current search pattern to deliver a targeted offer for a restaurant happy to cater to an olfactory-overloaded juror.
Colleen Quinn
