By Nathan Kraft
Market penetration beyond early adopters isn’t expected until next year—after at least one price cut, although the 3 to 4 MM units analysts anticipate in 2010 is nothing to sniff at. More importantly, the iPad will legitimize the tablet device and lift sales for the burgeoning category, just as the iPhone and iPod did in the smartphone and MP3 player categories. However, The iPad is in a category slightly different than the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader because of expanded capabilities.
What does all this mean for marketers? Here are a few implications:
- More Apps, New Apps – First the iPhone, then the Android, now iPad. Marketers–who have found applications to be one of the best ways to drive engagement, loyalty and consumer value–will need to re-think their approach to application development taking the iPad’s expanded capabilities and different user needs into account. While most successful smartphone apps serve specific, information-now needs; iPad apps may incorporate more entertainment and social components because of its larger size and different consumer use cases. At the same time, marketers will need to figure efficient ways to deploy applications across a growing number of mobile platforms. As Forrester’s Josh Bernoff recently noted, device fragmentation isn’t going away anytime soon.
- Mobile Gaming Gets Bigger – With its bigger, higher resolution screen, the new iPad is already being touted for its much richer mobile gaming experience than smartphones. Marketers should think of ways to integrate brands into popular games or create games that are an extension of their current brand offering.
- A new channel for traditional media and mobile advertising – This new device was built for media consumption, and will create a new distribution channel for legacy media companies. Though no big media company deals have been inked, large publishers will likely create iPad-specific sites or applications that integrate with new pay walls being introduced on traditional wired sites. Will people pay? It remains to be seen, but as iTunes demonstrates, when the user experience and exclusive content warrants it, consumers are willing to pay by the bite. While most of today’s mobile advertising is limited to text links and tiny banners, mobile advertising on the bigger screen is a new canvas for advertisers. Smart advertisers won’t think of this as another place to plaster irrelevant ads, but will find ways to add value to the consumer’s media consumption experience—taking advantage of social, behavioral and geographic data to deliver relevant messaging yet unavailable in other media, including the internet. This will be a boon to retailers and local businesses, which will be able to efficiently serve richer, relevant offers to small, location-specific audiences. Instead of text links and click-to-call buttons, think of maps, product/service preview videos, etc.
- The social mobile web will expand – Social applications for Facebook and Twitter are already among the most popular smartphone applications. But consumers primarily use these apps to skim through status updates or post a status. The iPad’s larger screen will encourage deeper engagement in social applications and use in coordination with behaviors such as point-of-sale research. This makes consumer reviews and consumer generated product feedback more important than ever, as consumers turn to their social networks for advice on what brands to buy while standing in front of the shelf or showroom.
Nathan Kraft, MSIMC ’09, is a Chicago-based marketing manager at Cars.com, responsible primarily for social and emerging media at the automotive publisher. He can be reached at nathangkraft@gmail.com.
