Proving yet again that mobile content is king, NBC has released what some are considering impressive data with regard to the growing mainstream appeal of mobile content.
Through the network’s first ten days of 2010 Winter Olympics coverage from Vancouver, mobile page views across NBC’s WAP site and corresponding iPhone application topped 54.3 million. Those are staggering numbers, particularly in contrast to the numbers from the 2008 summer games. Seventeen days of coverage from Beijing resulted in a relatively modest 34.7 million mobile page views.
According to Alan Wurtzel, head of NBC Universal\’s research: \”We knew going into Vancouver that mobile would be ready for primetime. Not only is the growth huge, but it\’s mainstreaming.\”
As a result, many mobile marketers are thinking ahead to the 2012 Olympic games and the stellar advertising opportunities that will result from the widespread acceptance of new platforms providing coverage of the games.
Pointing to the rapid expansion and popularity of mobile content, NBC notes that 7 out of 10 users who viewed mobile Olympic coverage this year didn\’t use their phones to view any mobile content from the Beijing games.
Additionally, NBC reports that viewers have, at present, consumed more than 1.3 mobile video streams. Once again in comparison, viewers checked out a scant 300,000 mobile video streams for the entire length of the ’08 summer games. Putting the growth into perspective, NBC notes that its opening ceremony coverage in Vancouver generated more mobile page views than did the entire 2006 Winter Olympics.
Incredibly, while the term “mobile” is synonymous with “on the go,” home provided the most common location for users to access Olympic coverage and related mobile content.
While television viewership for events like the Olympics remains strong, multi-platform consumption of sports and entertainment content is poised to dominate the future of Olympic coverage.
The most notable thing about NBC mobile's Olympic site is that it comes on all the leading mobile search engines. I'd love to know how they've done this when the Olympics mobile sites of other broadcasters and publishers around the globe are showing up rarely or not at all. Take part in our Olympic Mobile Search Experiment: http://mobithinking.com/blog/mobile-search-engine…