Being involved in digital marketing means moving fast, but when it comes to mobile internet advertising, many businesses are not moving fast enough. In the US, 60% of American web activity currently happens though mobile, and 1 in 5 millennials are accessing the internet exclusively through their mobile. Yet, American businesses are only allocating about 25% of their total internet advertising spend on mobile ad spend. This mismatch between what consumers want and what businesses are delivering is huge, and it isn’t just some silly mistake that only rookies are making either. More than 40% of the 500 most powerful businesses in the world don't have mobile friendly sites, and Google is punishing them for it.

Customers are fast, smart, and — above all — they are mobile. Google has argued that, for businesses and digital marketers to succeed in the shift to mobile, they need to focus on “micro moments”. Google also stresses businesses need to be quick on this new platform stating that “40% of shoppers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a retail or travel site”. They also claim that mobile internet has reshaped the way consumers approach retail entirely, calling mobiles the new shop assistants. For digital marketing, this is nothing short of a revolution.

And yet it is a revolution that businesses seem reluctant to take part in. Part of the reason for this could be to do with the digital skills gap. In other words, businesses are stuck with non-mobile-friendly websites and a lack of mobile advertising simply because they don’t have the skills to do better. It’s a sobering thought, but it’s a good day for the underdog. The slowness of large businesses during mobile internet revolution means that small to medium businesses are competing on a playing much more even field than before.

However, if history has taught us anything, it’s that it won’t stay this way for long. The birth of the internet lead to the staggering rise of many new and innovative companies, but these companies are no longer the underdogs, far from it. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook are just some of the internet and computing companies whose owners are the richest people in the world.

Whether the rise of mobile internet will be as revolutionary as the rise of the desktop internet is unlikely. However, that is no excuse for businesses’ and digital advertisers’ lukewarm response so far. Advertisers need to be searching for faster and subtler ways of marketing via mobile because if they refuse to change their current models, then they will be shut out from the doorway to the future. That doorway may only be a 5 inch screen, but there’s room for a lot more businesses to walk through it.

 

By Richard Jackson, owner of Watch My Competitor.

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