A single scene in the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie “Minority Report”, a sci-fi action thriller, stands out in the minds of many online newspaper professionals. The scene shows the Holy Grail of location-based, personalized and mobile advertising. John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, walks through a futuristic world crowded with digital advertising that calls out to his character by name, enticing him with everything from new cars to soft drinks, all available just down the street.
Today’s technology does not allow for such geographically and personally precise targeting of commercial messages just yet, and the watchdogs who guard our privacy rights remain wary of the possibility. But the mobile Web does enable newspapers’ advertisers to reach potential customers where they work and play, and local search is a major factor.
Serving All Mobile Webs
Significant advances in mobile technology, combined with people’s increasingly hectic schedules and other lifestyle changes, have spurred people to jump online via their cell phones and other mobile Web devices.
There are 219 million mobile phone users in America, according to Q4 2007 average monthly subscriber statistics from an M:Metrics Inc. report (www.mmetrics.com). Of those, 59 million, or nearly 30 percent, browsed or downloaded content using the Web browser on their phones. With that number of people surfing the Web while on the go, combined with the medium’s ability to deliver information to consumers precisely when they are geographically in a position to make a purchase, local mobile search is a space that no newspaper today can afford to ignore.
Of course, “It’s been the year of the mobile Web for two or three years now,” says Patrick Flanagan, director of product management – smart products, for ShopLocal, a local-product search site created by Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and The McClatchy Co.-owned CrossMedia Services, and recently acquired fully by Gannett. “Next year it’ll be the same thing.”
Flanagan and others in the mobile Web industry say that the use of the mobile Web to locate and promote local bargains has not yet reached the tipping point with users or advertisers, in part because there are actually two mobile Webs.
Because most Web-enabled cell phones and PDAs are nowhere near as technologically robust as desktop and laptop computers, and because mobile screens are so much smaller than those of PCs, mobile devices patch users into “junior” versions of Web sites that exist on the traditional World Wide Web. These Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) sites only feature some of the information found on their full-fledged parent sites, frequently minus video and other memory- and bandwidth-intensive features.
Advertisers who have spent the last few years gradually embracing the slick video presentations and banner ads possible on a newspaper’s World Wide Web page may find it difficult to see the value in having their messages reduced to the clunky mobile interface necessary to fit within the limitations of a WAP page. And reaching less than 15 percent of cell phone users can make a mobile upsell a tough sell.
When Apple Inc. rolled out its iPhone in June 2007, it brought attention to the next generation of mobile devices. Unlike WAP-based mobile devices, the iPhone can display traditional Web pages more like they appear on a desktop or laptop computer. Many believe the iPhone to be the first step toward bringing the true World Wide Web and its robust search capabilities to all mobile devices. In June 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed overall iPhone sales of 6.7 million in its first year.
A company can hardly offer a one-stop destination for users’ needs if they’re not even seeing the same content, Flanagan says. “You don’t want two Webs, with one supplying limited answers and the other the complete content.”
In the meantime, several newspapers are making the most of WAP, promoting it both to advertisers and consumers.
GPS Ads
What the "Minority Report" scene illustrates beautifully is the best case scenario for mobile local search and a relevant mobile ad experience: Delivery of an advertiser’s targeted message to consumers who are in the best physical location to take advantage of it.
And, the location-based advertising experience in "Minority Report" is not entirely unrealistic. Many cell phones have a Global Positioning System component that enables emergency services personnel to find callers who are lost or incapacitated. Similar technology could be used to alert shoppers to their close proximity to your advertiser’s bargain items.
The June introduction of a second-generation Apple iPhone that allows for the creation of GPS-based applications further fueled speculation about and increased interest in the potential for this type of ultra-targeted advertising.
“The iPhone is sort of a game-changer,” says Peter Krasilovsky, principal at new media consultancy Krasilovsky Consulting, but adds that the newspapers he’s spoken with so far have yet to devote the resources or significant planning involved in taking advantage of the technology, “beyond their abilities to have a commodity and hope they get some traffic.”
He points out that most newspaper sites still sell online ads “on a metrowide basis, not on a hyperlocal basis.”
Technologically, GPS-based mobile search is feasible, says David Sawyer, executive vice president of sales and business development for Advanced Mobile Solutions. Yet privacy rights groups and even cell phone users themselves are unlikely to carry the equivalent of a homing beacon in their pockets. “It’s certainly the Holy Grail,” Sawyer adds. “But like much of Nirvana, it’s unobtainable.”
ShopLocal Mobile features a GPS function that is essentially a substitute for keying in a ZIP code, Flanagan says, but it does not duplicate the hyperlocality seen in the Spielberg film. “That would be a little scary for some people, but we’re working towards that.” The limitation is in the backend technology, he explains. But, he also adds, “I don’t want to give my home address away, or where I work.”
Not Just What, But Where
In the technology world, there are three groups, says ShopLocal’s Flanagan: Leaders, fast followers and lemmings. When it comes to mobile Web search solutions, the mobile Web hasn’t yet filtered past the first category, he says. “Few retailers are choosing to use mobile technology, but it’s catching on.”
In August 2007, the company launched ShopLocal Mobile, which enables subscribers to use their mobile Web devices to locate the product they’re looking for at the best price and closest location based on their ZIP code or their phone’s GPS system.
“If you’re looking for a CD player in Chicago, it will tell you who’s got one,” he says. “Maybe there’s a Best Buy down the road with one, but there’s also one at the Kmart a little farther away but at a better price.”
The information about sale prices is derived from newspaper inserts provided by the retailers themselves weeks in advance, Flanagan says. The inserts are then converted into print information and dropped into a relational database. He emphasizes that every version of an ad for every retailer is included. “Lowe's, for example, has 100 versions of the ads they drop,” he adds.
Subscribers pay $4.99 a month for ShopLocal Mobile, which shows up on their wireless bill; retailers pay nothing to show up in its search results. Flanagan declined to say how many subscribers the service has.
“It’s a difficult proposition in a day when people expect anything online to be free,” Flanagan admits. “To pay for a monthly subscription has been a difficult pill for a lot of consumers to swallow.”
That said, the experience has helped the company better understand mobile search, he adds. “We absolutely know we can’t keep this answer for the next 10 years, but it’s helped us to gather some intelligence.”
Mobile Web shopping remains an enticing proposition but only about 41 percent of U.S. consumers access the Web from a mobile device, according to the March 2007 “Going Mobile” report from the Online Publishers Association. Compare that to the nearly 55 percent of US consumers who use text-messaging, according to “Consumer Text Messaging Habits,” a May survey of 5,000 people published by Vlingo Corp., the maker of a speech-to-text application for mobile phones.
With more than half the public texting away, companies that allow people to get more information about their services and even digital coupons by texting a keyword to a third-party “short code” can reach consumers right when they’re ready to buy.
Rental-property listings company Apartments.com in Chicago, which maintains relationships with hundreds of U.S. newspapers, provides property management companies with their own “vanity” keyword as part of its “Text For Info” program. Those companies can include their keyword – the name of a new property development, for example – on billboards, in print and online ads, and even a 6-by-3-foot vinyl outdoor banner that Apartments.com provides for use outside of the property itself.
Newspapers that have a relationship with Apartments.com can sell the service to their own advertising clients. The power of the keyword, explains Senior Product Manager Tim Grace, lies in the dependence the management company places on its keyword once it begins using it in all of its advertising and brochures.
When an apartment hunter texts that keyword to Apartments.com’s short code, they receive a couple of text-message replies, Grace says . The first relays basic property information such as price, square footage and number of rooms. The second is a Web link for the property’s page on Apartments.com’s Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP site, featuring photos, floor plans, and further details formatted for display on a cell phone screen. The Text For Info program was tested from March until May 2008 with 30 properties, Grace says; it’s expected to be rolled out officially in June.
And just as newspapers gained some profitable ground in classifieds when they enabled readers to place ads in their print editions 24/7 by using self-service Web site tools, they soon will have the ability to do the same with the creation of their own text-message keywords.
A program being developed by Advanced Mobile Solutions will allow a lawn care business, for example, to log on to a newspaper’s Web site and reserve relevant keywords such as “green lawn.” That business can then include “green lawn” in all of its advertising and on the side of its truck, for example. When potential clients text those keywords to the newspaper’s short code, they can automatically receive information about the service, daily specials, even coupons, via text message, Sawyer says. “I think once they see it work, it will come together pretty quickly.”
Houston’s Mobile Local Classifieds
The Houston Chronicle’s mobile Web site is bringing a form of mobile local search to its readers where it most makes sense, in classified advertising.
In addition to breaking news headlines, weather and traffic reports, The Houston Chronicle’s mobile Web site provides users with fully-searchable listings for local classifieds merchandise, vehicles and real estate. The mobile Web experience is powered by Advanced Mobile Solutions.
Real estate buyers and apartment hunters can log on to the Chronicle’s mobile site and search its nearly 60,000 real estate listings for homes anywhere in Houston and the surrounding area. Options include searching by price or keywords such as “pool” and “garage.” Search results contain a property’s address, price, key features and photos. Want to know more or to schedule a walk through? Click on the “Call agent” link. To share your find with a friend, just click on “E-mail this listing” and type in the e-mail address.
Such calls to action “allow people to respond while they’re actually thinking about it before they get absorbed by something else,” Sawyer says. The mobile listings are an upsell to the Chronicle’s print and online classifieds.
People who are looking for furniture or other merchandise for their new home can also search through the mobile classifieds merchandise listings. The merchandise portion of the mobile site includes a drop-down menu that includes categories such as furniture and pets, and users can search by keyword from there. Some listings include photos.
Traffic for the mobile site itself, which launched in May 2007, has climbed from about 2,500 page views its first month to nearly 500,000 (including content and classifieds) in May 2008, says Online Operations Manager David Herrold. What has truly surprised him is the success experienced by the mobile site’s lone sponsor, Gallery Furniture, since a small ad for it was placed at the top of each screen in May.
“The click-through rate for mobile banners seems to be 10 times better than on the regular Web site,” he says. “That was shocking to me. We’re all trying to figure that out.” If he had to hazard a guess as to the reason for this, he says, he’d attribute it to the fact that the store’s ad is the only one on the mobile site right now.
But part of the reason for the furniture store ad’s popularity is an electronic coupon users can receive for free shipping on orders of $1,000 or more via a text message sent to their cell phones. t message can be shown to the store cashier at the time of purchase. The only problems Galaxy Furniture has encountered with the digital coupon are the unforeseen losses incurred by not charging for delivery, Sawyer says.
Fortunately for the store, it pays a flat rate for its sponsorship rather than following the CPM model typical of traditional online advertising.
A former technology writer and associate editor for NAA’s Presstime magazine, A.S. Berman also served as technology writer for USA TODAY. More…