Enough of the holiday cheeriness. Last week I called out some of my favorite things about mobile, from the renewal of the gaming sector on handsets to the emergence of real localized utility.
Bah! Humbug! This is what I get from watching too many holiday specials. I find myself sidetracked from my usual grumpiness. Look at the calendar. Only two weeks left in December for gratuitous
editorial list-making. So much to whine about -- so little time.
To wit: my wish list for things that still need fixing in mobile.
Clear up the markets:
We love to complain about the sorry state of the BlackBerry and Android application markets, but to tell you the truth, Apple's is a bit of a mess as well. We need Amazon-style recommendation
engines that work in order to surface new and noteworthy content that is relevant to us.
But we also need third-party media companies to leverage more of their own marketing. For years,
major media companies told me they couldn't wait for the closed garden walls to come down on mobile content so they could let loose their own marketing machines. Content providers complained about
what terrible merchandisers the carriers were. Yeah, where are the publishers and their marketing acumen now? I see very little evidence of content providers leveraging their other assets and reach
effectively in pushing the mobile product.
Make mobile search mobile search: Perhaps I am alone in this campaign, because I rarely hear others complain that the search
results on mobile queries need to highlight mobile-friendly sites. Unpredictable results is one of the biggest problems vexing the mobile experience overall right now. When you click on an ad, on a
search result, on just about anything, you never know what to expect. This is true on the Web as well, but a bad click-through is remedied easily by closing a window. On the mobile Web, every click
hijacks your screen, and hitting the back button means another page load. When a search result leads you to a full Web page and a tortuous site download, how willing will you be to search again? We
need to add seamlessness to mobile search.
Stop kicking me out of the app: I will keep whining about this perennial peeve until it gets fixed for good. Speaking
of seamlessness, there is no excuse for mobile apps not having an embedded browser that will let you click through on an ad without leaving the app.
This may be the greatest source of
frustration I have with free apps. The problem is twofold. First, it damages the publishing brand and the advertiser. Users are less likely to click through on an ad, and they mistrust the experience
the publisher is creating for them. There is a difference between advertising that is interruptive and ads that are disruptive. When I am kicked out of an app to go to an ad's landing page, I have
to reload the app. That is unacceptable. And the apps themselves are not smart enough generally to pick up where I left off.
Hoop-jumping exercises: Some of the most
popular columns I wrote all year involved ridiculously intricate mobile marketing schemes that forced users to scan, text, enter, and repeat. These multi-part marketing extravaganzas presumed that
mobile users were eager to go through five minute hoop-jumping routines in order to get a pathetic payoff. I won't put the relevant agencies through the pain again, but I will point you back to
the ridiculous
Nestle candy wrapper episode.
And the weird encounter with a Speed Stik scan
code.
And another disappointing scan code adventure involving the animated movie 9.
Will someone at the mobile agencies please assign an intern to test these tortured
attempts at mobile coolness before they fly? Just do a gut check on their actual usability?
Where is the value exchange? So I sign up for SMS alerts from a major film
studio and all I get in return are regularly scheduled ads when a key DVD is about to drop in stores. Or, an SMS prompt in a print ad gets me a link to a movie trailer I have seen already on TV ten
times. I got 3G for this? From landing pages that offer no entertainment or informational value to SMS "clubs" that are one-way relationships that only serve the brand's interest, mobile
marketing generally fails to give consumers a fair-value exchange for their attention and for letting the advertiser onto their phone.
Brands have got to get over themselves. We really are
not waiting to hear from them. Every time I click on an ad or follow an SMS link I am lending a brand the platform I also use to make sure my daughter is safe, my partner is picking up the hummus on
her way home, my editor got the article in time to make deadline. Respect the personal nature of the mobile phone -- almost all other activities on the device involve an important exchange of value
with people we trust. Again, you can interrupt, but don't disrupt.
Privacy is going to bite geo-location on the ass: This year I spoke to way too many youthful mobile
start-up CEOs in the local directory and mobile dating space who elide the entire privacy problem. They eagerly anticipate a day when you will be able to see hot dating prospects in your four-block
vicinity. They expect to leverage dense behavioral profiles based on your physical activities as well as your mobile browsing activity. A number of these fellows seem to think that younger users are
less concerned with the issue or that government would never intrude on their fun. From data security, to data sharing to geo-location, mobile is going to be a flash point for privacy discussions.
Whatever kerfuffle you are seeing now over privacy on the Web is only going to be multiplied when it comes to phones
Where's my damned MMS? And finally, whatever
happened to a mobile platform that has been almost-there since I started covering the space five or six years ago? There is so much potential here for publishers and marketers to deliver on the
missing value exchange in mobile marketing. If all of the pieces in the MMS chain finally came together, then a simple SMS prompt on marketing assets could deliver back to the user an amazing range of
multimedia experiences. This is a platform waiting to happen.
But don't let me enjoy being my Grinchy self all alone. Feel free to add your own list of mobile "naughties"
below.