Would free mobile browsing be attractive to Blyk members?

Blyk have just carried out one of their regular Insight discussion groups with members and, not for the first time, participants said they felt time-pressured in their lives and wanted short cuts to information. The Blyk generation (16-24s) gets a pretty negative press but many are packing in studying, jobs, living independently for the first time and, quite reasonably, want some social life too. Maybe it’s not surprising then that they feel too busy, running between tasks, to notice advertising along the way: in an early piece of Blyk research one participant mentioned that she never got to see bands she liked because she was too busy to pay attention to posters and other advertising.

But it may not just be a question of being too busy. In dealing with the range of advertising impinging upon them, consumers make systematic decisions about what to pay attention to and what to ignore, when they can give attention and when not, and whether the risks of giving attention outweigh the benefits. Research (in 2005) by CBS, on the attention London commuters give to advertising in different media, highlighted some of the decisions that people make:
- they welcome and pay attention to advertising on transport (which fills in down-time and gives a focus for their attention on crowded buses and trains), but dislike billboard posters
- many like cinema advertising (they’re relaxed, it’s part of the show) but dislike TV commercials (which get in the way of focused viewing)
- internet advertising fares poorly compared to other media and is far more likely to be avoided (like TV advertising, it interrupts users’ focus but, additionally, users are wary of the outcomes of clicking through to advertisers’ sites).

There is complexity, though. What people attend to may not be what they act on. TV advertising may be disliked, but it is seen as more up-to-date than other media; it’s also more memorable and more likely to be acted on.

The CBS research pre-dates Blyk but it’s interesting to consider how mobile advertising might rate compared to other media. The positive news for Blyk is that the research found that 16-24s are more likely to see advertising as useful, compared to other age groups. Mobile advertising has the advantage of potential for personalisation so it can be focused on 16-24s’ interests. As we know, teens use their mobile phones to fill in down-time, to keep in touch with friends, and (occasionally) to browse the web; it’s something to do, a focus of attention. So mobile advertising shares some of the benefits of transport advertising in its availability in those in-between times. Beyond that, mobile ads have the same benefit of being up-to-date that TV advertising brings. So they should not only get attention, but also prompt action.

SMS and MMS seems to fit the bill for Blyk’s target group, with the potential both to reach them and prompt action. But mobile advertising is still challenged by users’ reluctance to click through to the web to browse content. Any general mistrust of advertiser web sites is amplified by concern about costs (everyone seems to know someone who has racked up astronomical browsing bills) and, often, a poor user experience of the sites themselves. 16-24s often don’t have up-to-date handsets (despite the stereotype of their obsession with gadgets) so any browsing they do may lack the exuberance of users with the latest technology. So while the Blyk model of sponsored links to click through from SMS and MMS seems to work, the expectation of more general browsing may not.

A white paper by Mobile Economy calls on Blyk (and any other ad-funded mobile network) to start innovating tariffs for mobile browsing in order to provide more useful services than currently. But at the moment 16-24s seem to be sending a strong, conservative signal about how much browsing they want to do. A survey by AppTrigger reports that in January 2008 people, generally, were using their phones in a similar way to in 2003. On the up-side for the industry, 62% of 16-24s have downloaded music or games. But it’s quite a step from downloading a game to phone browsing.

Blyk’s Insight group want Blyk to ‘make my life easier’. So would free browsing stack up in attracting members compared, say, to simply providing more free talk time? It could bring useful information to them, at times they are open to accessing it. But, it may hit precisely the ‘Opportunity or Attention Compression’ Alex describes in her post. Without the momentum of users’ experience and trust, offering it would be something of a leap of faith.

Link to AppTrigger data from Usability News

Entry Filed under: Advertising, Understanding users