On the heels of the announcement last week that comScore acquired M:Metrics, MediaPost’s Metrics Insider observed that young mobile users will push the industry’s growth. Apparently, the kids love their phones:
“…a colleague of mine who until recently was a college professor tells me that overwhelmingly, the platform of media choice for 18- to 24-year-olds - based on her observation of the university population - is the phone.”
Honestly, you don’t need a professor to learn that, just look around. Everywhere you go, the young and restless are mobile. It is the youth medium, and they own it in a way no previous generation has. The metrics are there too:
According to comScore M:Metrics, the audience of mobile users age 13 and over who access news, information, or entertainment content stands at 14.4%. However, among males 18-24, the figure more than doubles, to 30%.
Chasin also points out that “people are flocking online to watch videos, but they are also beginning to watch video on their phones” (especially their iPhones). Mobixell Networks said that the 18-35 demographic group currently consumes 56% of mobile media content, a group that makes up 29% of TV viewers.
Young people are also driving mobile social networking. The average young person connected to digital technology has 94 phone numbers in his or her mobile phone, 78 people on a messenger buddy list, 86 people in his or her social networking community, according to a Viacom. And a report from In-Stat says that some 230 million mobile subscribers could be using mobile social networking services by 2012.
Why is this all so important? Habit of use. Young people develop digital and mobile rituals to the point where it becomes reflexive. For them, interactivy is a given and technology is a reflex. This reflex will become further and deeper ingrained and later in life they will look to their handsets for news, entertainment, information and socialization. However, their main concern is speed. Ease of use–enabling the reflex–will be key to mobile adoption.
In order for brands to stay relevant with youth, they must become “useful” and enhance their mobile “reflex.” One way to do this is to create mobile programs or applications that enhance young people’s experiences with the things they love, the concept of “branded utility“. Media planning also need to take the reflex into account. Instead of static content, “reflex” media placements focus on “this moment.” So the questions that marketers need to ask themselves when targeting youth are:
- Where are they?
- What are they engaged with right now?
- How can our clients add value to this experience?
- How can we partner with young people in their world?
Mobile is the one product that can credibly enter into real partnerships with youth any time, anywhere to help them activate their individual experiences. As mobile marketing continues to grow, programs that are created with this in mind will prove the most successful.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Fleishman-Hillard Point of View — Staying Relevant in the Mobile Marketplace // Jul 22, 2008 at 12:49 pm
[…] the industry’s growth, the youth-focused specialists at Next Great Thing (NGT) take a look at what brands need to do to stay relevant to these “young and restless” […]
2 NGT News: Obama’s WAP site, QR Patches, Vice Magazine // Jul 31, 2008 at 1:12 pm
[…] the Tech Agenda [Businessweek] An article form BusinessWeek supports our idea that technology is a reflex for youth: the distinction between Generation X and Y is that Generation X uses technology when it […]
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