Entertainment drives the third screen in Asia

While consumer acceptance of the mobile phone as yet another marketing channel is still debatable, the rapid growth of mobile usage and in particular mobile internet is clearly on the rise, as Matt Eaton reports.

Mobile phones represent some of the fastest growing areas of consumer electronic goods in Asia. Innovations in mobile handsets and better access to the 3G technologies are driving mobile internet usage at a healthy rate.

In many markets across Asia, particularly China and India, the number of mobile handsets exceeds the number of personal computers. In China alone, mobile internet penetration sits at an envious 6.8% of the total population, fuelling big investments in marketing and advertising.

Generally, this growth is good news for marketers who are increasingly looking for new ways to engage their customers. But more specifically, it also represents some great challenges.

One significant advantage of the mobile phone is that most people carry them everywhere, something that cannot be said of TV's and computers. But many still view mobile phones as a very personal device and a no-go zone for commercial messages. Understanding the key drivers of this growth is vital.

In July last year The Nielsen Company acquired mobile marketing specialist Telephia, signaling its major push into the mobile measurement and analytics space.

More than one year after the acquisition, Nielsen Mobile has expanded its mobile offering to some 12 markets across Asia, with additional services to roll out in Singapore and Hong Kong in coming months.

Shan Phillips, who heads Nielsen Mobile as vice president of Asia business development, says increasingly eyeballs are moving away from traditional media and towards the mobile phone, otherwise known as the "third screen".

He says across this region there is a big push from corporations to get into the mobile space and creating a measurement currency across TV, online and mobile will help to fuel marketing investments.

"Measuring mobile as well as TV and online was the idea behind the acquisition. In markets like India and China where internet penetration is low, mobile is where the eyeballs are," he says.

"As a company we're focusing on measurement across all screens and we want to link clients investments in these areas back to sales."

While exact measurement tools of mobile might still be some time away, Nielsen Mobile is continuing to monitor user behaviour.

The latest round of Nielsen Mobile research showed that entertainment-themed websites are the most popular with mobile internet users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets.

This is vastly different to the American and European markets, where news and information websites are the driving force behind most mobile internet usage.

While email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile internet users, in the US, entertainment, music, and games place eighth, ninth, and tenth respectively. 

Phillips argues that a shift in demographics of mobile internet usage and the regions lack of decent infrastructure is behind these differing user trends.

"There has been a seismic shift in age groups, the younger set are really driving usage of this medium. It's important to recognise this in all markets."

In the US and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialised devices like iPods, to meet consumer's entertainment needs," said Jeff Herrmann, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen. 

"Users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets haven't had the benefit of broad-based content distribution thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing mobile's transition into a personal entertainment platform."

The research also reveals that mobile internet continues to gain traction worldwide. More than 11% of Russian mobile users have accessed the internet on their mobile device, trailing only the US, UK and Italy.