If you’re lucky enough to be a huge brand marketer with unlimited budgets, what I’m about to say probably doesn’t apply to you. You have the good fortune to focus on providing not only a phenomenal mobile website experience, but a great experience in mobile apps, as well. Not or, but and, as it should be.
For the other 99% of us, the recent announcement by app analytics provider Flurry that users are still spending more time in apps than the mobile web might have made us think twice about where to put our marketing dollars in mobile.
And, that’s a shame. Because a focus on the mobile web is essential for reaching users today and tomorrow, and will be even if the time spent in apps numbers increase. Here’s why:
Games & Facebook Make Up 50% Of The 86% Of Apps That Dominate Time Spent
Anyone who has visited my house understands how much time some people spend in Facebook and games on mobile. My four-year-old recently kicked his Angry Birds addiction and is now on to Jetpack Joyride and Lego Batman.
Smartphone users spend most of their time in games or on Facebook– traffic that most marketers will have a difficult time monetizing.
Like many parents, we have to consciously limit the amount of screen time our toddler has, because if it were up to him he would be playing games on the iPad from the moment he wakes up in the morning to the time we have to pry the device away from him to get him to go to bed.
My son spends a lot of time on his favorite games and even engages with the ads quite a bit. For example, I asked him how he found out about “Get Gilbert,” the Goldfish cracker-themed advergame put out by the Campbell’s Soup Company that he was obsessed with for a good three weeks, and he told me, “Angry Birds told me about it.”
So if you’re a marketer for a game maker or Campbell’s Soup, or someone who markets to children, this is not bad news, exactly. But most marketers thinking about app marketing are going to build app versions of their websites, and those have a tendency to be ignored in favor of gaming and Facebook when it comes to time spent in mobile apps.
Most Facebook Users Aren’t There To Keep Up With Their Favorite Brands
I know this is hard for a lot of us to hear. We’re often obsessed with monthly active users and buying reach when it comes to marketing, but of the 1 billion monthly active mobile users Facebook has, how many of them are there to follow your brand? Likely not many, I’m afraid.
Academic research suggests that people use Facebook for the need to belong and the need for self-presentation; and while some of that may include telling their friends that they like your brand, it may be a much smaller percentage than we as marketers would like to think.
I did an informal poll recently of my Facebook friends, who tend to be either family members or people in the industry using Facebook to market to people, and I asked them if they follow brands on Facebook or hide the brands they follow from their news feed. It was an informal poll from a limited sample, of course, but about half of the people either didn’t follow brands or hid the ones they followed at some point. Here’s a sample of their feedback:
“I tend not to follow brands, and I have been hiding stuff from bands that I’ve previously liked because it’s too much.”
“I’ve only hidden brands that post too much, post about something irrelevant or push me to take an action. The connection needs to be genuine, not forcing me to increase their engagements “Like to vote for a, Comment to vote for b”.”
“I am pretty selective about which brands I’ll “like” on fb. Meaning, I may technically like the brand, in life, but won’t on fb, so as to not annoy everyone and my mom with “nate likes…ads”. I view fb, as more of a place to connect with friends and fam vs. Twitter, where I don’t use to connect with fam, but rather stay connected to news, connect with people I “like” but don’t actually know, and am way more willing to follow brands here.”
“Any brands I’ve followed in the past I’ve hidden. I don’t currently follow brands.”
“I had to double check if I even liked the one brand I could think of because I never see anything from them in my newsfeed.”
This is not to say that Facebook advertising is not effective or that brands that connect with users on the platform intelligently and authentically are not seeing great results. Only that, as Zak Knudson, VP, Product & User Experience at 4C, a company that measures social engagement for brands, says:
Facebook does have a lot of monthly active users on mobile, and many of them spend a lot of time in the platform; but, if you’re trying to understand the value that your media buy brings, you have to look to different KPIs.
Platforms Change, The Web Remains
Most people who have read my columns or heard me speak know that I have very little love for the web design collective known as Future Friendly. For the most part, I think they look ridiculous in their toy space helmets and advocate for responsive web design as a solution to a problem even when dynamic serving or mobile URLs could provide a better user experience. But, one thing I agree with them on is their commitment to the web as a platform that will stand the test of time.
Since 90% of our time is currently divided between multiple screens: computer, tablet, smartphone and TV, a true app strategy would have to develop multiple apps for multiple platforms — not just iPhone or Android, the dominant smartphone platforms.
And, with new platforms emerging every day, like Google Glass and Apple Car Play, developing high quality apps that engage users for every platform can quickly become cost prohibitive even for marketers with the deepest pockets. But, the web works on all platforms, and with theresponsive and adaptive web trends that are so popular right now, will continue to provide a good experience for most users regardless of platform.
Apps Are Nowhere In Terms Of SEO
If none of these things convince you to focus on the web rather than apps, consider that Google is still the dominant traffic driver to websites by far, dwarfing even social visits; and, apps are far less visible in Google search than web sites. Unless a searcher uses navigational or app-specific keywords in mobile search, it’s highly unlikely that your app will appear in Google search, regardless of how much time someone spends in it.
Google is making strides to include more app content, showing it for smartphone searches for which the app is already installed on the phone. But not for the great majority of users that aren’t yet aware of your app.
For marketers trying to decide between mobile web and native mobile apps, this is another reason why the mobile web is still the best investment for marketers, regardless of how much time users are currently spending in mobile apps.
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