IBM report predicts that mobile traffic will comprise more than 50% of all e-commerce traffic during Black Friday

Many retailers are expected to see a significant increase in mobile shopping during Black Friday this year. IBM has released the latest edition of its Holiday Benchmark Data report, suggesting that mobile traffic will comprise more than 50% of all e-commerce traffic retailers see during the holiday season. Black Friday has been has long been a very important holiday for retailers, but other shopping days have begun to prove more successful, such as Cyber Monday and, more recently, Thanksgiving Day.

Consumers are showing strong interest in mobile commerce

More consumers are beginning to show interest in mobile commerce, believing this to be a convenient and easy way to get their shopping done. According to IBM, many consumers are likely to use their mobile devices to shop around for products that they may be interested in. Retailers may also be able to engage mobile consumers more effectively, as they can shop at any time they want, rather than have to visit a physical store.

Retailers could find more success by engaging mobile consumers

Retailers expecting to see good results during the holiday season may have to ensure that they are prepared to serve mobile consumers. These consumers will be using a range of solutions when participating in mobile commerce, such as new payment and shopping applications. Retailers will also have to ensure that their websites are able to handle a higher degree of mobile traffic. In the past, many consumers have reported problems with completing their purchases using a mobile device. This has lead to these purchases being abandoned and retailers being criticized for their relatively ineffective commerce systems.

Mobile commerce may see some strong growth during the holiday season

Mobile commerce is expected to shine during the holiday season, just as it has done in years past. Consumers are showing interest in mobile commerce because of its convenient nature, but retailers have been relatively slow to adopt new payment systems that cater to the needs of mobile shoppers. If retailers want to see more success, they will have to find ways to effectively engage mobile consumers.

The country is already the fastest growing market for smartphones and is now leading in ad earnings.

India has now become the top APAC (Asia Pacific) market in terms of the speed of growth of smartphone ownership and with that, the country has now risen to the point in which it is also leading in the area of revenues generated through mobile advertising.

This trend is being credited to a considerable change in the country’s online marketplace due to smartphone ownership.

A rapidly growing number of mobile device owners have turned away from their old feature phones and have purchased smartphones in order to be able to take advantage of a whole range of additional features. That said, digital marketing trends in the country are also pushing a rising number of marketers, retailers, entrepreneurs and even filmmaker to look to mobile advertising in order to reach this growing number of consumers who don’t go anywhere without their smartphones.

A new report has shown that in India, the mobile advertising opportunities are rising to an astronomical level.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Opera Media Works have released the results of their Q3 State of Mobile Advertising research in which they discovered that “In India, 75% mobile users have smartphones. Even in markets where the transition from feature phones to smartphones has been slower (Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines), about half of the mobile user base has moved to smartphones.”

Furthermore, among the smartphone based users of the global mobile ad platform from Opera among s6 countries in the APEC region, it was found that the top operating system among smartphone owners is Android, with a massive 67.1 percent market share of mobile ad impressions.

Dr. VIkas Gulati from Opera Mediaworks Asia explained that in terms of mobile advertising, it is video ads that are truly paving the way for monetization throughout the APAC region. That format is drawing attention, engaging people and is “ultimately converting consumers.” Gulati added that “India leads in over all traffic and the top three categories for ad impressions are Mobile stores and career portals, social networking sites and apps, and sports.”