For who have suffered through the intolerable agony of watching a dotted circle cycle incessantly on their mobile phones while waiting for a YouTube cat video to buffer, the introduction of HTML5 will be welcome news.
When BIV spoke with Jamie Garratt, president of Idea Rebel, to find out what’s new in digital marketing for 2013, he purred about HTML5.
“HTML5 has completely opened the doors to mobile development,” he said. “It has taken the old ways of doing programming online and made them very fast.”
Like most digital marketing agencies, Idea Rebel has traditionally focused on three platforms: web, mobile and social. Historically, marketing campaigns would require development of separate components for each of these verticals. Not so with HTML5.
“Whatever we come up with, it’s a cohesive unit of web, social and mobile,” said Garratt. “Based on how technology has progressed over the last couple of years, we’re not separating them anymore – we’re combining them.”
Mobile is the future, according to Garratt. His voice is only one of a chorus of technophiles and digital soothsayers who say the same thing, and they collectively reveal the rationale behind the shift.
The digital marketing benefits of HTML5 include:
- it runs well across the spectrum of low-powered devices such as smartphones;
- it accomplishes better, faster handling of more exciting and visually appealing multimedia and graphics;
- it offers better integration with multiple social media platforms, resulting in a more Internet-like consumer experience on mobile devices;
- is distributed through the open web, releasing consumers from being forced to use native apps distributed only through markets and stores governed by the platform’s owners; and
- is monetized through advertising because, currently, it lacks the “click-to-buy” functionality built in to native apps.
Last December, the HTML5 markup language reached the final stages of ratification as an approved technical standard as established by the World Wide Web Consortium, a global working group that seeks to standardize web technology.
Add to this the fact that research firm Strategy Analytics, a global organization with analysts based in Europe, Asia and the Americas, predicts at least one billion HTML5-compatible phones will be sold in 2013. They are one of many who forecast similar growth in consumers of mobile technology, heralding what appears to be an imminent HTML5 revolution.
“If you look at the history of development of the Internet, it’s all about communicating faster,” said Garratt. HTML5 accomplishes that. “It’s a technology that really truly works on mobile devices.”
But speed isn’t everything. Integration is also key, and HTML5 better facilitates connectivity with actionable items.
For example, when a mobile user buys something, clicks on a link or watches a video, that action can be seamlessly integrated with the social network, thereby making the marketing structure more effective by broadcasting consumer behaviour more ubiquitously.
Analytics are also enhanced through this process. Because HTML5 offers faster, more personalized information through integration with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, information-based marketing can be more specifically directed to a particular individual.
“Everybody wants a custom experience – everybody wants to feel unique,” said Garratt, speaking of the online consumer experience. “Through tying in to the social network, we can know way more than we ever did in the past about what people are doing and how they’re doing it.”
That knowledge, he said, can arm marketers and their clients with the information they need to develop campaigns that are better able to influence consumer behaviour.
For Matt Raminick, digital brand manager at Quicksilver, videos of surfers riding death waves and snowboarders dropping from helicopters is a cornerstone of his brand’s marketing strategy. In his industry, being able to view them with ease on mobile devices is a big deal.
“With more and more emphasis on video nowadays, and especially with the amount of good content we have, it’s definitely become more of a focus,” he said. “It’s growing faster than anything else we’ve experienced.”
Being able to offer high-quality graphics with seamless integration into social media drives up video views and clickbacks to websites, and that means more purchases for businesses like Quicksilver.
“The thing that’s undeniable is that the way people engage our content on mobile accounts for so much,” he said. Since using HTML5, they’ve seen a 20% increase in traffic being driven to their website.
“It’s definitely something we’re acting on.” •
