Evolution of Marketing places
With the invention of printing press, a medium for carrying news to the people was created and so was a marketing place. Creation of Skyscrapers grabbed the eyeballs of people. Marketers booked the outdoor media space through Bill boards. Television ads are still one of the major means of advertising in developing countries because people are still glued to the idiot box. Recent rise of online ads, Google ads is credited to internet in the lives of people. This can be attested to the fact that people in urban areas and in developed countries are spending more and more time in front of laptops than cathode ray tubes. Marketers are in search of just ‘The next right place’. It can be anything to the likes of the empty space on Buses, Out of Home(OOH) Advertising Media, promotion through movies (ala Munni with Zandu Balm) ,pamphlets in newspapers or some space in your inbox ( mobile and email both included. The latest entrant to grab the attention is Android Operating System.Android Operating Systems
The sales of gadgets have seen a shift towards smart phones and tablets. Majority of them operate on Android Operating systems. During these years of slowdown, the smart phone market continues to buzz. A recent study by Gartner Market Research firm on Android reveals that during the third quarter mobile phone sales grew by 5.6% taking market to 440.5 million units. But, the sales of smart phone devices increased by 42% in third quarter of 2011 from the third quarter of 2010 taking 115 million smart phones to end user.
This trend is also getting reflected through the number of apps getting developed based on Android. Android is fast catching up with rival Apple. Apple has 450,000 apps in the Apple App Store while Android has more than 320,000 apps in the Android market. Research firm Ovum predicts that by end of year 2012 Android downloads will reach 8.1 billion downloads from 1.4 billion in 2011. While app downloads for Apple will increase from 2.7 billion in 2011 to 6.1 billion by 2012. There has also been a shift of app developers towards Android based apps from Apple compatible.
A thought of possibilities
Had Martin Luther King been a marketer in this era, he would have said again for the possibilities of Android Marketing “I have a dream”. The whole new age is about to be unlocked with the present set of apps. Just imagine you are trying to locate a place through Google Apps. In this flat world, you are getting directions having references of Brands and showroom. This is implementation of Cross selling and Co-branding in altogether a different world.
In every direction, an advertisement is getting displayed through one such app for the nearest brand/showroom near that lane. An advertisement is lurching to get played from the search results. The advertisement on this platform is not selling the product but also the chain of services. If you like the product to get delivered, the link through advertisement will take you to the payment processing centre linked with Visa, MasterCard or American Express etc. It has unlocked whole new labyrinth of doing business.
If you want to shift i.e. buy or rent a house you just need to download an app from Trulia (see the pic.), it will show you the rates of the places at that place. The city in front of you will be a store where you pick stuff for your kitchen returning from office. If you really hated your boss bashing you, you have another app from Monster.com
Displaying these ads has created a new sector for android ad server. The Companies like Smart Ad Server are popping up in the field of Advertising agencies. With the advent of human imagination, we never know where it leads to but yes we can say that a whole new world for conducting commerce has been created.
Man is a creature of habit. It does not take much time for him to get addicted. Android has hit the sweet spot. It is riding the wave giving consumers new experiences at affordable prices. This complete exercise has given immense freedom and choice to customer. A customer with these facilities would love to be more spoilt. There is no end to human wants. It will be an understatement if I conclude: Android is here to stay!
