The use of the Internet is now starting to eat away at TV, radio and press. Here are the consequences for announcers

300 billion dollars already invested in third-generation mobiles but m-commerce still remains a failure according to…consumers

We were expecting it but no serious survey had yet measured the phenomenon: online users who now represent about 50 percent of the whole population in the United-States have already started to modify their daily use of the different trades, to the profit of the Internet.

The Scarborough National Internet study that surveyed nearly 2.000 adults aged 18 or older indicates that 23 percent of American users watch television less often since they began surfing the Internet. Supposing 100 percent of American people watch television, it would mean that nearly 10 percent of the public watching the different TV channels are presently modifying their habits to the detriment of these channels.

When traditional announcers are aware of these new habits, there is no doubt that they will distribute their advertising expenses differently, to the benefit of the Internet.

The survey indicates that 91 percent of the people with a television in the same room as their computer watch TV while surfing. As a result, 27 percent of adults aged 18 to 34 indicate that they surf the web while watching TV.

This last remark seems very promising to me, as far as Web sites are concerned.

For the last few years, more and more announcers have been trying to set up an original form of teasing, inviting TV watchers and Internet users to watch the end of an ad on their web site. This is the basis of the business model used by loftstory.fr, as it takes over from TV programs and hopes to get a high spontaneous traffic but this is also the business model used by radios that invite auditors to keep on conversing on forums or chats.

These new forms of communications used to be seen as short-lived "experiences".

But what the Scarborough National Internet study indicates is that announcers should try and take advantage of the complementary supports "TV and Internet" or "radio and Internet" in order to try and maximise the investments they make in communication.

On the one side, we have mass-market broadcasted messages and, on the other side, we have the opportunity to establish direct links with customers. Such approach originated many interactive TV programs, but these proved to be a failure as they lacked interactivity and did not correspond to the passive attitude of TV viewers.

But the Internet should take advantage of the fact that it is complementary with television, as TV is an active media with which Internet users often interact.

With such logic, advertising investments on the Internet might well pick up again quickly and become an integral part of traditional investments for the biggest brands that represent the essential part of the market.

This is exactly what AOL/Time Warner is presently demonstrating in the United-States, as its advertising revenues kept on increasing in the first quarter of 2001, when its main competitor Yahoo! saw its own revenues decrease, as it did not benefit from any traditional support.
Such reasoning also applies to other supports, even though to a smaller extent: 20 percent of American Internet users report they read less magazines, 15 percent indicate they do not read as many newspapers and 9 percent say they listen to the radio less often.

Source : Scarborough

According to the Mobinet 2 survey conducted by AT Kearney, 300 billion dollars have already been invested in the building of third-generation mobile hardware technology and the purchase of its corresponding operating licences.

These investments, which already happen to be considerable, still need to be completed so that the corresponding networks can be developed. What this means is that consumers will have to prove fully supportive for the turnover to become profitable in the third-generation mobile phone sector.

And yet, according to AT Kearney, m-commerce has proved to be a great disappointment for most consumers up till now.

AT Kearney already conducted a Mobinet 1 survey in July 2000, and when we compare it to the Mobinet 2 survey that was conducted in July 2001, we notice that over a seven-month period, consumers have become very reserved as far as m-commerce is concerned.

This in how, when 32 percent wished to make an online purchase in July 2000 on a worldwide level, only 12 percent are still willing to use their phone to make an online purchase in January 2001.

But these figures vary according to the countries involved. In Japan, the intention to use phones for web purchasing went down from 42% to 17% during the seven-month period.

In Europe, the decrease does not appear quite as bad as figures went down from 29 percent in July 2000 to 14 percent in January 20001, which represents a bit more than half.

On the contrary, results prove very bad in the United-States: only 3% of respondents intended to use their mobile phones for web purchasing in January 2001, when it used to be as much as 34 percent seven months earlier.

We must admit that the United-States are badly equipped on a technical point of view, as they lack wireless standards. And yet, they are among the most advanced countries in the classical m-commerce sector (computers) and this 3 percent probably put a damper on all those who believe m-commerce does have a future in the United-States.

According to AT Kearney, the reasons why consumers dismiss m- commerce are the following:

• Lack of interest/ perceived need: 26 percent of respondents.
• Ease of use/ comfort: 19 percent.
• Fears concerning the security of data: 16 percent.
• Lack of time: 16 percent.

And finally, despite the fact that 16 percent of the respondents did own a mobile phone that allowed them to access the Internet (wap) when the survey was conducted, less than 1 percent actually used it to make an online purchase and those "mobile" Internet users were to be found only among the Japanese, Finish and British respondents.

Source : AT Kearney study (PDF)