Convergence, synergy, strategic partnership, win-win alliance, symbiotic relationship … all those once shiny “new saws” beloved of Enterprise flacks and media commentators seeking jargonesque substitutes for the terribly dated phrase “perfect fit.”
Today, covered in dust and enveloped in cobwebs, they stand piteously at the Cliché Hall of Fame gates hoping against hope for eventual enshrinement by a soft-hearted Old Timer’s Committee. Relics of a not-so-long-ago era when concepts (conceits may be a better word) like AOL-Time Warner, Daimler-Chrysler and Sprint-Nextel seemed inevitably destined to make both sense and billions.
But wait! Maybe it’s not time to print that particular Hall of Fame ballot yet. Maybe like some linguistic alter egos of Brett Farve, convergence, synergy and all the rest are stirring their bruised and battered syllables and lumbering out of retirement to reclaim their place on the Field of Buzzword 50-yard line.
If they are, the “team” they’re playing for is called new — and even newer — media advertising and the odds are very good that this time they’ll actually win a championship (or at least cover the point spread.) Because what could be more synergistic, etc. than umbrella advertising campaigns covering PCs, phones, tablets, game consoles and Wi-Fi-enabled personal media players such Apple’s iPod and Microsoft’s Zune?
Not much, implies Microsoft in its official description of Microsoft Advertising as a “global media network of Microsoft properties such as MSN, Windows Live, Xbox LIVE, and partner properties such as Facebook, WSJ.com and Verizon” that “makes buying and selling media simple, smart and cost-effective across media and devices spanning 42 markets and 21 languages.”
Roughly 750 miles south of Microsoft’s Redmond (WA) campus, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (aka Googarilla in deference to its domination of both the PC and mobile search markets), recently validated the “power of mobile, social and local” as an integrated market and announced (for the benefit of the 67 people on earth who didn’t already know) that “Google will play in that market in a lot of ways.”
Not to be outdone by its larger peers, Yahoo, which many commentators believe still has the richest, deepest pool of unique social and local content of any search engine, is also working hard and spending generously to converge its PC and mobile offerings through relationships with wireless handset and service providers, movie studios and mobile application developers.
“We are looking at emerging experiences being defined because of connected devices,” Yahoo VP of Mobile and Local Product Development Irv Henderson said in July. “Our vision is to take basically any connected device and empower anyone with a connected device to get the most out of their world by getting the most out of their services, the core experiences that define Yahoo.”
Though various new media advertising markets have been trotting towards a point of convergence since roughly 2005, the pace – in 2010 – has become more like a gallop for one very significant, valid, and unignorable reason: Mobile media growth rates in virtually all important indices are leaving those of traditional Internet portals in the dust.
Consider the recessionary year 2009. Broadcasting, print, web display and even internet search advertising numbers were either down or stagnant. Mobile advertising revenues, according to virtually all the major reporting services, were up somewhere between 70 and 120 percent.
This increase in mobile ad revenue dovetails nicely with a 2009 Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project study which found that 32 percent of American consumers use a mobile device (cell phone, gaming device or personal music player) to access the Internet. The study also found that 19 percent of Americans accessing the ‘net on a “typical day” do so via a mobile device.
“Mobile access strengthens the three pillars of online engagement: connecting with others, satisfying information queries, and sharing content with others,” said John B. Horrigan, principal author of the Pew report. “With access in their pockets, many Americans are ‘on the fly’ consumers and producers of digital information.”
Globally, the migration from PC to mobile Internet access is even more dramatic, with IDC forecasting that over one billion people, up from 450 million in Q4 2009, will be using the mobile Web for search, shopping, messaging, media downloads, social networking and even blogging by 2013.
“With a wealth of information and services available from almost anywhere, Internet-connected mobile devices are reshaping the way we go about our personal and professional lives,” IDC Chief Research Officer John Gantz said. “With an explosion in applications for mobile devices underway, the next several years will witness another sea change in the way users interact with the Internet.”
Looking not very much farther down the road, studies like Morgan Stanley’s massive December 2009 “Mobile Internet Report” are pumping more heat into the convergence melting pot by predicting that the mobile Web market (which, in the MS report, includes book readers, GPS devices and tablets as well as phones, portable gaming devices and music players) will overtake and outdistance the desktop Internet market by 2015.
While acknowledging that “people will still turn to their PCs for serious productivity work, managing their digital libraries, and the like,” Morgan Stanley makes no bones about its belief that “mobile devices are on their way to becoming the world’s dominant computing platform” and “are likely to disrupt business models in many industries” by “applying GPS and location-based services” to data acquisition.
Quoting a Wired magazine article by Matthew Honan, the Morgan Stanley report says ” ‘Simply put, location changes everything … Where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go – they all change once we merge location and the Web.’ ”
So. How about that? “Location, location, location” remains a towering determinant in business success or failure and will continue to remain one, according to Morgan Stanley, until at least 2016.
Just goes to show you. Some clichés never quit.
