A report released by M:Metrics this week (just in time for the Mobile Marketing Forum in London) finds that ‘young males are a rich target for mobile advertisers, as among mobile phone users 36 percent of 18 to 34-year-old men accessed mobile media in February. Men in this age group are also highly receptive to SMS advertising, with 9 percent responding to an SMS advert they received, versus a 4 percent market average.’

The figures speak for themselves and show that young consumers are redirecting their attentions to their mobile phones. According to M:Metrics 18 to 34 year olds comprise 56% of mobile media users, compared to only 29% of TV viewers.

I’m not surprised, in the not too distant future it won’t be obese children that parents need to worry about, or how to get them away from the TV… but I have a vision of rehab camps where teenagers are separated from their mobile phones, hospitals full of thumb injuries from over-zealous texting, Jeremy Kyle counseling young couples who pay more attention to their mobiles than their partners – yes the UK is breeding a generation of nomophobes! But hey, it could be worse, right?

Among Europeans the UK has the second highest mobile messaging audience at 86.9% of the total UK mobile audience, only just falling behind the Italians with 87.4% (and way ahead of the US with 48.6% – with an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry reporting that excessive text messaging may be a sign or mental illness with a high rate of relapse and in some cases requiring hospitalization!).

The M:Metrics figures are amazing, and as an ex-advertising gal I found them quite an eye opener. But I also found it quietly reassuring for our proposal that the mobile trend is growing and in particular mobile messaging as opposed to mobile media is an incredibly effective way of reaching your audience.

Ironic too that these results come in a week that is reporting that the mobile web is dead following the decline of mowser.com (a start-up that ‘translates’ websites into mobile-friendly versions) due to lack of demand.

I’m not so sure, I wouldn’t say the mobile web bubble has burst, but is merely waiting for the next ‘blow’ and thanks to the birth of the iPhone and Android I think the next year will see some incredible developments in the world of mobile phone technology, I’ll just wait for the text message telling me that it’s started…

*** Claire

Even so, given that we’ll need to excite the BBC commissioners on that fateful last Friday of the labs, and having read the blog posts describing the evolution of others’ ideas during the labs, we’re keen to extend the scope of our basic premise.

We’re comfortable sticking with the ‘regional’ aspect of the idea (after all, we’ll be pitching to the ‘Nations and Regions’ commissioner), and with the ‘mobile’ means of delivery. But we still feel there are at least three different routes we could take to expand the reach of the project, and deliver greater benefit to the user.

1. Delivery Channels

You’d think that by choosing ‘mobile’ as a platform, there’s not much that we could do to expand the scope through delivery channels. As we’ve seen in the last 12-18 months, though, the mobile platform has quickly evolved into a rich environment, offering a huge number of possibilities.

SMS will still be our core focus, as we’re still keen to produce a service which offers valuable, timely information using a ‘push’ format. After all this time, SMS still feels like an under-utilised communications channel (by services, not consumers), and we believe that we can not only offer a highly-desirable SMS service, but that we can develop it as a ‘best practice’ example.

Voice is our second opportunity. Asterisk, a massively under-rated open PBX system, offers us a huge number of features to take advantage of. To start with, we’ll be looking at features like text-to-speech and speech-to-text, as a more ‘on-demand’ means of defining your route and receiving relevant information in return.

The mobile web is our third opportunity. With the latest Opera Mobile and iPhone Safari browsers now becoming commonplace, a far richer, more user-focussed experience can be delievered through mobile handsets.

And, fourth on our list, but possibly the most exciting, mobile operating systems Android and iPhone OS offer us a means for delivering tightly-integrated services, that can take advantage of geo-location, text, voice, the mobile web, and advanced means of user input (such as the iPhone multi-touch interface).

2. My Journeys

We could consider widening the breadth of our idea, so that it doesn’t just cover ‘changes to my journey’, but is a generic application for managing all aspects of the journeys you make; this could include the integration of some user-generated content, finding the cheapest en-route petrol prices, automatically arranging car-pooling, and much more.

3. Expect the Unexpected

Similarly, we could broaden the topic of the service in a different direction; rather than just ‘changes to my journey’, it could cover generic ‘changes to my routine(s)’, which could also include unexpected changes in weather, cancelled local events, and more.

Well, that’s it for now. Claire will be writing our next entry (we’re taking it in turns), so keep an eye out for her next post, where she’ll probably use an even more obscure word than ‘nomophobia’.

*** Dan