Cell phone marketing is the future.  More Canadians are using cellphone service alone for their telephone needs. 7.7% of households below Stats Canada’s low income cutoff relied solely on cellular phones.   At the end of the first quarter of 2006 there were 16.8 million wireless subscribers in Canada, with a growth rate of 11.9%. (Statistics Canada 2006).

Wireless trends towards increased mobile usage has cut across all income levels.

According to analysts in the U.S., cellphone-based Internet use will only increase, as technologies such as voice activation support the expansion of Internet-search marketing (Cueo 2006).

M-Commerce

Canadians have yet to experience mobile commerce such as countries like Japan, where phones can be used to purchase various items, including: tickets to concerts, books and goods through vending machines.

• Mobile presents a dynamic medium for marketers to connect with consumers for whom mobile devices provide not just communication but also information and entertainment.
• As smartphone usage grows, media consumption will rise exponentially and along with it, the opportunity for consumers to be exposed to ads within all forms of mobile content.
• Rich media ads (animated and expandables) are currently smaller in volume than static ads but growing; marketers should prepare now for Flash creative which will be available in 2010.
• Mobile targeting comes with a premium, but often yields higher direct response rates.
• Content and ads optimized for mobile yield higher response.
• Marketers need to take advantage of the unique aspects of the mobile medium: devices travel with the consumer, are taken into retail locations and used to research purchase decisions and locations on the go.

CellPhoneMarketing.ca is a side project of Top Search Result.