The month of March is typically associated with March Madness, the term used to describe the NCAA College Basketball tournament. However, this year, March Madness not only applied to sporting events but to mobile as well; the technology wave that continues to explode at astronomic levels.
Turner, who oversaw the live streaming platforms available via NCAA.com, CBSSports.com and bleacherreport.com — as well as Google Play and the App Store, said that with nearly 50 million total live streams, traffic was up 168 percent over a year ago. The live streams, which were ad supported by companies like Capital One, Buick, AT&T and Infiniti, allowed all the games to be free for viewers.
Of the live streaming sources, mobile phones saw a 309 percent increase in minutes viewed this year while tablets saw 194 percent increase. In addition, Turner noted that there were 5.8 million unique broadband users watching live video, up 170 percent from a year ago. I myself was one of them, having had to attend a wedding for a dear friend of mine during Syracuse’s final four appearance, I found myself streaming live at numerous points throughout the game to catch the action. While the video quality was great on my iPhone5, the result of the game was not, Syracuse was defeated by the University of Michigan. Luckily the wedding was a great time!
The NCAA, their affiliated networks and Turner got it right. They not only understand how important that mobile demographic has become, but they found a way to provide them with exactly what they want: the live action! This challenge is not unique to the NCAA and college basketball. Across all industries there is no denying that mobile users represent an important demographic today which will only become larger and more important moving forward.
As a business owner, it is important to first look at your industry and identify what mobile users are looking for and then figure out how best you can provide it to them. One of the many benefits in doing this, according to iAcquire, is that 70 percent of mobile searches lead to action on the website within the hour, if of course the site used is optimized for mobile. Being able to attract and engage mobile users can and will be vital to user business success; are you prepared?
To see how your website looks on a mobile device visit: www.TestMySiteNow.com.
