Don't miss your calling - mobile web is here and now and waiting to be exploited

Russell Buckley gives a fascinating insight to the real uptake of the mobile web - it's huge and burgeoning.

The Gartner Hype Cycle shows where we might be in the scheme of things. I would say that most in the public sector and education sector in particular have totally underestimated the spread not only of mobile technology but also how it is being used.

On and off portals are both growing sectors with 14 million UK unique users per month and 24% of mobile users having access (comScore).

Compare that with 19% of US adults who had internet connectivity in 1996. A fad? A far-off dream?

1.6 billion pages per month are served on the mobile web (M:Metrics).

Like the Web in 1995 the mobile web is currently filled with unknown brands and providers.

“Anyone in their right mind who tried to do anything on the internet on a screen that size must be nuts.” 3 UK, (2005)

“Customers will only pay a flat access fee on top of their basic subscription and then what’s free to use on te internet should be free to use on mobile broadband.” 3 UK (2006)

Primary use is from under 24s, with a slight male bias, but the transition from slight user to heavy user is quick. We need to be providing content to keep people using our services wherever they are.

Why? We want to maintain their attention on our web services. For example, a World Cup sponsor gave 0.4% of their ad budget to Admob, a company run by Russell which provides contextual advertising on mobile services - clever company, take a look before Google does ;-). 40% of the company's end website traffic came from Admob's mobile contextual ads. In LTS we might not need an ROI (Return on Income) but we do want a ROA (Return on Attention). This seems an ideal and necessary means of doing that.