Black Friday, Retail Shopping and the Tablet Revolution

In the U.S., Black Friday (the day following Thanksgiving) marks the opening of the year-end holiday shopping season. Since 2005 it has also represented the busiest shopping day of the year, a concentrated point in time during which consumers flood retail stores and contend for highly sought after items and splurge on special sales, resulting in scenes of chaos and frenzy I imagine to be similar to the contention for network bandwidth during congestion periods. As the picture below indicates, this year was no different at the retail store level.

But what was different this year was evidence of the growing impact the tablet revolution is having in our lives - and specifically our shopping lives. We've discussed tablet trends in previous posts, but recent data from Compuware APM adds yet a new dimension to the picture, underlining the significant influence these new media devices are having on the retail environment despite relatively low penetration rates (11% in the U.S. according to Pew Research).

The fact that we are still in the very early stages of the tablet revolution was confirmed by comScore data released last month: traffic from tablets still represents a small percentage of overall traffic in the U.S., yet its rate of growth (from little more than 20% to nearly 30% in the last four months alone) is convincing evidence of a steep trajectory.

These trends are clearly not lost on advertisers, who are already beginning to see (according to a September 2011 Rhythm NewMedia report) increased effectiveness across multiple segments from in-stream mobile video advertising vs. traditional online video ads, with an 87% completion rate on average for mobile in-stream ads compared to 59-81% completion rates for online ads. As tablets drive increased consumption of premium video content (and especially long- versus short-form video), advertisers are also reaping the benefits of shifts in consumer behavior that include a greater willingness to sit through video ads in exchange for free content.

Retail shopping is only one of many segments in our society and culture undergoing dramatic change as a result of the adoption of increasingly sophisticated mobile devices and tablets in both consumer markets and the enterprise space. This is encouraging news for mobile operators looking for any and all ways to drive more data traffic over their networks. But along with this opportunity comes the obligation to continually deliver an optimal user experience - even in the depths of a U.S. mall on Black Friday.