A recent study in Nature Journal has shed light on human movement patterns by tracking signals from over 100,000 mobile phone users’ calls and text messages. The majority of the results were unspectacular, with the key finding that people are essentially creatures of habit, making the same regular trips each day from home and work. This is certainly no revelation. However the ability to now track human behaviour via mobile phones opens the door to a wealth of possibilities for audience research, while at the same time raising some concern over privacy issues even when those tracked remain anonymous.
For communicators, the ability to see the location and duration of a user’s media consumption will strengthen the ability to target and refine messages in a world addicted to fast mobile media technology.
The study was conducted by a team from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. It found that humans follow basic mathematical patterns for their complex social behaviours. On any given day getting from home to work may involve several start-stop sequences whether driving in heavy traffic, or catching the bus or train. Mobile phone tracking can highlight high traffic and bottleneck areas of pedestrian and public transport, and project these visually. Areas of high human traffic of any sort have always been vital to the marketing mix. While this data has been available in the past for automobile traffic, the scope, accuracy and quality of data available now is astounding.
In Auckland, billboards outside Les Mills Central and above Spaghetti Junction are positioned in obvious high traffic areas, and guaranteed to get exposure for any message. Much like the way we can see a high volume of cars rushing past these locations, mobile phone tracking is able to show high volume pedestrian traffic and the amount of time people spend in each location. This allows tailoring of messages to an individual’s traffic pattern. For example, a university student may spend x amount of time on campus during the day, followed by x amount of time at a gym in the evening. In much the same way Google uses search terms to tailor advertisements for your browser, in the not too distant future using mobile location and duration data, relevant messages and advertisements will be shaped for an individual and sent directly to their mobile media devices or social network presence. The mechanics of this would be automatic and the sphere of advertisements would be adjusted accordingly as the person moves from location to location.
Nature Journal
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