Despite a wide variety of new avenues of monetization device manufacturers, wireless carriers, and advertising agencies started pursuing in recent years, smartphones are still largely underutilized in terms of potential after-sales monetization which lives and dies by app engagement metrics, according to the latest report authored by Verto Analytics,
Titled “The Mobile Unlock Journey,” the Wednesday paper is meant to illustrate the importance of the first several seconds of a user’s mobile experience, particularly in regards to how those relate to the massive monetization opportunity the industry has yet to seize from any angle.
The vast majority of users simply don’t care what’s behind their phone lock screen when they pick up their handsets – literally. According to the report, what happens in over 50-percent of scenarios is that a user will unlock their phone, encounter an app launched beforehand, regardless of whether it’s an attempt at after-sales monetization or not, and close it within ten seconds, usually in order to proceed with what they were meaning to do when they first reached out for their pocket companions.
That isn’t to say no one in the industry is doing it right – Metro by T-mobile’s MetroZONE has an average post-unlock interaction last for 86 seconds, whereas SmartNews and Facebook’s WhatsApp are managing 65 and 54, respectively, as per the same U.S. report. They’re followed by Snapchat’s 48 seconds and Facebook’s 46 seconds of post-unlock engagement, with that order signaling news still have an enormous appeal factor despite the fact infotainment has been taking root inside the global media industry’s backyard for many years now. Alright, let’s be real – it’s probably because of that fact, not in spite of it.
Better OS logic is an unavoidable part of the solution to lackluster app engagement that appears to stem from a fundamentally wrong approach to software development; the handful of apps listed above are more or less exceptions instead of rules.
Verto is, quite unsurprisingly, that its in-house industry insight service and robust mobile tracking solutions are the key to unlocking new revenue streams from the standpoint of after-sales monetization in the handset segment. It’s hardly the first to do so, though efforts aimed at post-sale mobile monetization remain rather inconsistent.
Naturally, that isn’t to say Verto or any one of its rivals are wrong when they claim manufacturers are missing a major revenue train by not making enough meaningful moves after they actually manage to get their devices in consumers’ hands, yet the kind of precedent a strategy change on that front would set is also something only a few would take lightly – while there’s no doubt more aggressive post-sale monetization of contemporary handsets would boost profits in the near term, any missteps in its implementations could have dire consequences for brands and their relationships with their customers.
In other words, the current state of affairs isn’t necessarily a result of a lack of awareness or business acumen but simply corporate reluctance, especially seeing how much criticism Facebook recently faced on the basis of accusations its services have been designed to be aggressively addictive.