Commentary

Hello, Stranger: Only 13% Of Companies Personalize Mobile Experiences

by Steve Smith , Staff Writer, May 8, 2013

Buttler-A Some things never change, even in the purportedly ever-changing world of digital media. I have been hearing about the promise of personalized experiences from publishers online since I started covering this business in the mid 1990s. I don’t know how many schemes I have reviewed that claimed to make a site visitor “see themselves” in the content and realize the “true promise of digital media” to localize content down to the individual.

Well, things are much better now than they were a decade ago. Now we do have Amazon, eBay, Flipboard, Netflix and countless snap-on recommendation engines at other sites making a good stab at the personalization that was supposed to be de rigeur by now.

Well, it is not. Less than half of companies deliver personalized site experiences on the desktop, according to a new eConsultancy/Monetate study of 1100 professionals. But it gets much worse on devices, where only 14% of tablet experiences and 13% on smartphones are personalized.

And as has been true for as long as I can remember, personalization is a big, big promise. Econsultancy found that 54% of respondents said they expected to implement some form of personalization on their device presence in the next 12 months.

Granted, mobile development is years behind the Web, and many companies are just trying to get some baseline experience on devices up and running. But it is just as true that mobile is the one place where individualized content and responsiveness should have the biggest impact for any company focusing on these features. Do we need to name the companies that have excelled thus far across screens to see that plainly? Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Evernote, InstaPaper, Hulu, Flipboard?

The problem is that most online entities never got personalization right if at all on the Web, so they come to the post-PC age ill-prepared technically, and likely unconvinced that personalization is an imperative. The legacy of the previous century’s mass media mentality remains, and its successor “narrowcasting” was borne of a late-20-century focus on demographics. But isn’t the age of personal devices a new animal altogether? Niche programming gets us part of the way there, but media systems that are designed to be more responsive on a personal level seem to me poised to supersede all of that.

behavioral targeting, data-targeting, mobile

5 comments about "Hello, Stranger: Only 13% Of Companies Personalize Mobile Experiences".

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Norman Rose from Travel Tech Consulting, Inc., May 8, 2013 at 2:36 p.m.
Steve,
I echo your sentiments for the travel industry which has talked about personalization for years but have implemented very little. Airlines are embarking on a CEM effort worldwide but I am doubtful that a majority of passengers will feel its impact anytime soon as most of the focus is on the premium frequent flyer.
Reply

Steve Smith from Mediapost, May 8, 2013 at 2:49 p.m.

Norman, I think that the ever-savvier consumer understands that their data has been recorded already somewhere by that company, and so it is even more frustrating to see that the brand is not using it to make the customer experience better. I think as consumers come to understand what digital technology can and should do they will be more impatient with companies that fail to use it to the customer's benefit.

mike boland from BIA/Kelsey, May 10, 2013 at 9:49 p.m.

Good piece Steve, as always. There's one other major culprit of personalization: Google. No one ever talks about it, but search results are personalized if you're signed in to Google (essentially if you're signed into gmail in the same browser). Page Rank still rules over everything, but results are skewed based on your past behavior... sort of a personalized Page Pank. Though its seldom discussed, that small touch of personalization has a major impact given Google's scale of 100 Billion monthly searches. So in the end, online personalization touches us in a big way we often forget. Interestingly, This could diminish in mobile where you'r less likely to be signed in to gmail within the browser (you might use a third party email client like apple's mail app, or google's standalone gmail app). That brings in the challenge of app fragmentation and lack of connectivity between apps -- a whole different thread!

Steve Smith from Mediapost, May 11, 2013 at 8:20 a.m.

Mike, you are absolutely right. For me however Google is one of the best personalization agents that I use. It is good enough to have moved me away from Apple's Safari browser on my iPad, for instance. And the fact that virtually all of my documents can be available through their account has bolted me even more to that service.

mike boland from BIA/Kelsey, May 11, 2013 at 12:33 p.m.

Good point. I'm a big fan of Chrome on all my iThings for the tab sync and other personalized touches. It's an interesting moat Google is forming within iOS. Perhaps overcompensating for being displaced in Android land by Facebook Home (just kidding, kind of). I just checked and 15 percent of my home screen is Google apps - Maps, Voice, and Search app (my second page has Youtube, Chrome, Gmail). Interesting exercise.