Sunday, July 23, 2006

Shift in Trends ??!!

The Following is an excerpt from a rather lengthy article I read over the weekend and puts across very clearly the shift in some key global trends and therefore the increasing needs for our products and services. Get ahead of the trend now grow your Video mail business as deep as possible now before the big BOOM in INDIA. India is already strongly gearing up for 3G and Wimax (wireless broadband) networks by early next year the market size of your target audience is going to triple.

regards
jj

The new generation is in love with screen culture - but not television.

CALL them gen Y, the millenium generation or echo boomers, they are the generation that has grown up with access to technology every day of their lives. Born between 1982 and 1995, the offspring (or echo) of baby boomers number more than 250 million worldwide.
Their parents grew up in homes with a limited number of TV channels, no remote control and usually a single phone. If they wanted to play video games they had to go to the local arcade or milk bar. Echo boomers, the "always-on" generation, have grown up with mobile phones that take pictures and play video, portable media players, the internet, instant messaging, Voice over IP, cable TV, online games. With access to all this technology they're the new wave of consumers marketers are desperate to reach.
Thanks to the raft of personal technology available to them, echo boomers are watching less television and are not great consumers of print media, the traditional marketing channels.
Significant changes have occurred in television usage among young consumers, who typically are more avid adopters of new distribution platforms. "Between 1994 and 2004 there appears to have been a reduction in average daily television usage of between 17 per cent and 21 per cent among all viewers under the age of 24," he says. This is the impact of pay television, online services, DVDs, computer games and mobile phones, which have been around for about a decade, has been small but incremental and it is only now that their effect is being realised
The advent of digital television and personal video recorders (PVRs) makes the situation more complex. This generation want their entertainment on the device of their choice when they want it and this is a big challenge for advertisers.

Nearly half of US households are expected to own PVRs in 2010. Also, internet protocol television (IPTV), which integrates the web with television, video, music, and general computer content, has the potential to allow viewers to control and customise what they watch. IPTV has been tested and is already in homes in the US and Britain. There are significant shifts in their social behaviour because of the technology they have access to, the fundamental difference being in the way they communicate. Take today's 12-year-old. When she is 27 her interaction with technology is going to be greater than with any other generation. "Companies are going to have to change everything because of what she and her generation will demand - the services they offer, how they market products, their employment policies." Portable media players and podcasting are also eating into the time echo boomers spend in front of the television.

Increasingly, advertisers are turning to media such as SMS, video, email, blogs and viral marketing online to try to reach this elusive youth market.
Mobile phone marketing is now considered mainstream, with the Mobile Marketing and Advertising Awards recognising excellence in integrated advertising and marketing campaigns, content and applications for mobile phones.
Internet advertising has also seen exponential growth as advertisers go online.
According to a report by research group Frost & Sullivan "the online industry's growth to the rapid migration of eyeballs from traditional media to the internet and the increase in online media consumption across all demographics; strong uptake of broadband by Australian households; the evolution of wireless technologies such as 3G, which allows for digital advertising across both online (large screen) and mobile (small screen); and an increase in online spend by major advertisers and agencies".
Interactive games are also being used by marketers hoping to get their products in front of echo boomers. Young men are the hardest market to reach as they watch less television than young women. Online gaming sites are enormously popular with this group; for example IGN Entertainment, which has sites such as ign.com, and gamespy.com, says it averages 15 to 20 million unique users a month, 91 per cent of them male, with an average age of 22.

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