What, is Buckley getting cold feet about the rise and rise of mobile? No, not at all – they’re under-estimating the rate of change. I’ll explain my reasoning below, but firstly, congrats to the FT for thinking big and being one of the first publishers to appreciate that there’s a major change going on right now. From a management point of view, there’s no difference between assuming 60% in a few years or 100% – you’re still going to make mobile your Number One Priority.

If you’ve been to one of my speeches or read some of my posts recently, you’ll know that I (and many others) believe that we’re living in exponential times for technology. Exponential simply means that something doubles in a given period.

It was recently announced that the mobile web now accounts for just over 10% of all global web browsing. That has doubled since 2010 – actually, it has more than doubled as it was a mere 3.81% back then. There’s another report here, that confirms pretty much the same thing – mobile web usage has doubled every year since 2009.

If you buy into this theory then (and I do, barring a major catastrophic event), the growth will be something like this:

2012 – 10%
2013 – 20%
2014 – 40%
2015 – 80%

You can do the maths yourself if the real rate is eighteen months – or even two years, but you can see that the FT are being too conservative whatever happens. By 2016 or 2018 at the latest the mobile web will be the platform that matters. It’s not going to be “game over” for PC browsing at that point. There will be some quaint and old-fashioned retroistas. But for most people, most of the time, it’s all going to be about mobile.

For the sceptics among you, I’d suggest you might have felt the same way if I’d written that the mobile web would be this big today. It’s hard to understand exponential trends, as they’re counter-intuitive and we’re hard-wired to understand linear growth, not this ridiculously impossible magic stuff.

If there are any publishers out there yet to make the leap into mobile – you’re rapidly running out of time now.

10 years isn’t very long in overall historical terms, but in technology, it’s a very long time indeed. Especially as we move up the exponential curve and change gets faster and faster. If you were to look back at the last 10 years, as an example, most PCs had floppy discs in 2002 – but they had pretty much disappeared by 2007. Ask a 10 year old today what a floppy disc is and they’ll have no idea. Although, interestingly, the dear old floppy is still very much in evidence – it’s still used pretty much as the universal “save” command icon in computers today.

Here’s some predictions for you to think about. Maybe you have some too, or disagree. In which case, please leave a comment and we’ll compare notes in a decade’s time. Please note that my methodology here is gut-feel forecast, having observed tech trends and a generalist knowledge across many industries. I’m not using “inside knowledge” and in most cases, not even using current trends to forecast them.

So, 10 things that 10 year olds won’t know about or will never do in 2022.

1. Typing

By that, I mean using a physical keyboard to input data using the original technique developed back in the 1860′s. By 2022, the vast majority of devices will be touchscreen – at the very least. However, I actually think that new input methodologies will be mainstream by then, which are easy to learn for 10 year olds and will be widely adopted among young people. My money is on a combination of gesture and voice.

OK, there may well be some quaint and old-fashioned people who steadfastly stick to typing in data, so there will be some uses and indeed, some of these people may well still be using the PC. It’s just not going to make a lot of sense to a 10 year old and that’s what we’re talking about here.

2. Getting Lost

This is already becoming increasingly unlikely in 2012, with navigation built into our mobiles and our cars. Actually, I think this is a bad thing generally as there’s something quite poetic about just wondering around a strange place.

A 10 year old will also completely have lost the ability to navigate by knowledge of say, their home city or via a map, unless they consciously learn an old-fashioned skill – a little like taking up archery today.

3. SMS

Controversial this one, I appreciate. But we’re already seeing the rise and rise of free messaging systems – see Tomi’s blog for more info.

Tomi also points out that there’s not much effect on sms yet, but then, the nature of exponential means that there wouldn’t be – yet. In fact, sms usage would only have to decline by a barely noticeable 0.1% now, in order to disappear completely by 2022. If we see a 1.56% decline by 2016, we know that we’re on track.

I would stress again though, that it’s not going to disappear necessarily. Just be irrelevant for those 10 year olds in 2022.

4. Pain

Pain management will be moving into its golden age within 10 years. Better drugs based on the individual DNA is one reason. But constant health monitoring via our mobile device will mean that the medication arrives before the pain kicks in.

5. Communication with New Borns

Every parent gets to learn with a little experience if a baby needs changing, is tired or is hungry. I think there’s a good chance that our mobiles will be able to do that translation for us, providing basic communication between children and adults.

If our 10 year old has a new baby sibling in 2022, that form of parental intuition may no longer be used.

6. Running out of Battery

If the promise of mobile is to be delivered, battery tech has to keep up. In the future, no power means no entering your house, accessing the digital world or being able to pay for anything, as an example.

Maybe it’s going to be as simple as always having two batteries, but it’s likely that there will be a breakthough by then.

7. Digital and Analogue Worlds Combine

Today, we’re pretty definite about when we’re online or in the analogue world, even when in the most immersive online gaming experience.

I think 10 year olds in 2022 will not longer make the same distinction and just regard the whole thing as “living”. Better controls, gear and graphics will partly achieve the result of making digital as realistic as analogue. But the rise of Augmented Reality, accessed by wearable devices such as Google Glasses and later, contact lenses will merge the two realities completely.

8. Cash

Huh? You once carried around bits of paper to pay for stuff?

9. Buying Toys

Most toys and hobbies in 2022 will be downloaded, modified and personalised and then 3D printed from your home printer, or at the very least, your neighbourhood 3D printing shop.

Toys – another industry about to be hugely disrupted. It’s like Blockbuster – 10 years between success and bankruptcy – and they could have been Netflix if they’d understood how fast exponential moves at the end of a cycle.

10. Languages

Our 10 year olds will be able to converse very fluently via their mobile device to anyone in the world, wherever they are. Of course, this doesn’t negate the skill of being fluent in another language, as much of the culture of a society is wrapped up in its language. But for tourism purposes, “please” and “thank you” will be fluent enough, as your phone will do the rest.

There’s lots of other things I could have gone for, such as the ubiquity of cloud computing making “back up” and “upload” redundant – it’ll happen automatically. But I’ve tried to think a little bigger and more outrageously, although I still think that there’s a good chance of all these happening.

When you’re pondering these trends, it’s important to understand the nature of exponential growth. I wrote a little about it here, at Ballpark Ventures new website. But the basic idea is that the majority of the growth comes towards the end and it’s barely noticeable at the beginning. Linear thinking won’t help you much when mulling the medium term future.

It’s too early to get much of an impression – I’m jetlagged and in a hotel in the western suburbs of Shanghai and about half an hour’s drive through mad traffic from the famous Bund and the centre, so will leave that for later in the trip.

However, neither Twitter (nor Facebook nor Google search) work here, so my world is strangely silent. It’s quite incredible how central Twitter has become to my digital life. Maybe I’ll get back into blogging again for a while.

A couple of things I would have tweeted, if I had been able to:

Rkss has launched his first EP Rkss aka my son, Robin Buckley, interning at Berlin based startup Pipe. Have a listen and tell your friends.

I’m enjoying reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It’s a dystopian future, where most people spend their time hooked up to an advanced version of Second Life, escaping reality. A cult develops in this virtual world, focused on searching for clues set by the founder to win his $200 Billion+ fortune. A fun read (especially for gamers and geeks), although not a very hopeful vision of the future, where people live in trailer park stacks (mobile homes stacked in piles of 15 to 20), fuel has run out and lives are bleak.

Apart from the odd mobile phone, the scene may well have taken place at any time in the last 60 years or so.

And yet, things are no longer what they were and every one of those professions are going to be fundamentally disrupted by the time the children will be a few years into their career, after finishing their schooling and studying for more years at University. Those well-meaning parents probably haven’t a clue about what’s about to hit them and as a result, would be totally incapable of describing what it’s going to be like to be Doctor, Soldier or Banker. In fact, those kids couldn’t have been more misled if we’d conspired to systematically lie to them.

Here’s just a few thoughts on how these venerable professions will change as a result of exponentially increasing technology:

Military – Technology takes over. As an example, the Pentagon already has 19,000 drones and Obama has authorised over 3000 strikes, five times as many as Bush. Good article here.

Accounting – realtime reporting and specialist software will reduce most accounting functions to mere oversight, a little like the role of today’s aircraft pilots. Unfortunately, you don’t need that many people to oversee things in case they go wrong.

Medicine – the combination of realtime monitoring via the mobile (or specialist devices) and personalised treatment based on genomics is set to make today’s medicine look like 19th century butchery.

Law – when is some kind soul going to screw up this cartel? Endless duplication of contracts and paperwork and disputes that could be settled instantly based on a dispassionate examination of the facts by software. Like all these examples, there will be some edge cases where real people might be required – certainly in the short term – but a hell of a lot can be eliminated.

Marketing – one of my catch phrases recently has been that marketing has turned from a dark art into a transparent science. Probably the best preparation for marketing these days would be a maths or statistics degree.

Banking – Again, an industry that’s going to be decimated through technology. Already most trading is automated and other jobs are going to follow.

Obviously, I could delve into each of these areas in more detail and the fact that I haven’t doesn’t mean that the case is superficial. I just don’t want to write reams and reams on each argument here. If you disagree, feel free to write a comment after doing some of your own research and thinking about it. Lots of people in these jobs will be in denial, but from my perspective, it’s going to happen unless some other disaster (war, disease, climate change) hits us first.

There’s a few consequences of all this though. Firstly, the middle classes are going to be decimated in the next 20 years. The traditional professions that have maintained such a comfortable way of life for so long are going to largely disappear. Be prepared.

Secondly, what advice should we be giving those kids? I’d say that they should be thinking of a career that can’t be done by a very smart robot. And that’s probably a largely manual job like a waiter or chef on the one hand, or an entrepreneur/wealth creator on the other. These types of jobs will represent the pinnacle of earnings in society and that’s what they should be aiming for.

This might all seem very radical, scary and for many, impossible to believe. But we live in exponential times and the results are going to be change at an increasingly faster rate. The future belongs to the people who understand and embrace that change and that’s the message we should be telling our kids.

Like most of us, my business/social network is way bigger that that. I have around 4,500 Twitter followers, 3,000 or so connections on Linked In and about 5,000 email addresses in my contact book – many of them duplicates, I’m sure. In other words, far more people than I can possibly cope with and many people have far more than this.

I’ve felt a growing dissatisfaction with this state of affairs for a long time. Anyone who knows me well, will confirm that I’m a very active friend, making introductions and sending links that are relevant to them. I enjoy doing this and am not looking for a reward for this, other than the enjoyment itself.

However, like all of us, I’m frequently flummoxed by Dunbar’s Number.

In my case, it goes like this. If I’ve recently had contact with someone, they’re in my 150 – in other words, floating around my brain, so that if I see something relevant, their name will pop up ready for the appropriate action. If they’re the kind of people who send me stuff all the time (presumably, I’m in their Dunbar’s Number) we’ll soon be in a steady stream of mutual benefits. Which is great.

However, there are also people who are important to me (and I’m only talking business relationships here) who I’d like to help, who I just forget about for weeks and months. Maybe that’s the way things should be – if we’re not helping each other, perhaps we’re just not important enough to each other.

But I don’t think that’s quite the case and anyway, I don’t think I have as many as 150 names in my immediate memory. I’d easily recogise them if I bumped into them, remember details of their lives and otherwise display the characteristics of the stable relationship that Dunbar wrote about. But they wouldn’t spring to mind if I saw something that could be relevant to them.

So, I’m going to try a different approach. I’m going to prepare an old sytlee spreadsheet that contains 100 names and 10ish companies that I have close links with. Every week, I’m going to look down the list for 30 minutes and remind myself to keep a look out for my Dunbar Pals.

The list is intended to be dynamic and I expect people to be replaced by new entrants on a regular basis. And of course, I realise that some people who I’d love to be on there won’t make it. But I think that this is better than the alternative, which is to be less effective for everyone.

It’s an experiment at this stage and I’m happy to report back if anyone shows any interest. It could also be a terrible idea and I’m aware that it might be misinterpreted. However, my motivation is actually genuinely relatively selfless, so I hope you’ll be generous in your view.

I’d also add that the list is private and even the people on the list won’t know about it.

Would love to know what you think.

Now, back to my Hot 100….

My session is about mCommerce – no surprises there. But I think we often lose sight of what mCommerce is as it embraces two areas of retail sales, one of which is much more unique to mobile. mCommerce is:

1. Like eCommerce (or PC-based commerce) but on mobile. So you buy stuff from Amazon or ASOS, or from more traditional retailers like Tesco or M&S, both of whom have thriving online businesses, and the stuff gets delivered to you shortly afterwards.

2. Mobile enabled commerce. This is where you use the mobile to enhance shopping in physical stores. So, you might allow people to use their mobiles to compare prices, navigate the store, get more product information or watch video on their mobile. Or in my frame of reference these days, you might give them a coupon that can be digitally redeemed to drive purchases in shops.

The first area is much more easily understood and gets most attention. However, if you are a multi-channel retailer, the second part is much more important. Why? Because 90%+ or more of your sales are going to be via your stores.

This might sound a little surprising as whenever reports are written about this kind of area, the emphasis is on the triumph of online, the double digit growth of eCommerce or mCommerce and how physical stores are on their last legs. The reality is very different. Sure, online is a great big fat success story. But it’s still dwarfed by old fashioned people-going-shopping. Forrester, for example, claims that just 8% of shopping is done online today.

If you’re a retailer, you obviously know this – you’ll have your own stats to refer to. So while it’s clearly important that you look at mobile to sell your goods and services online, the bigger potential leverage point is to use mobile to support the store sales.

We’ll be seeing a whole lot more of these types of mobile-enabled commerce initiatives and perhaps it’s time we had a name for it to distinguish it from classic mCommerce. sCommerce (for store-based commerce) perhaps. If you have an idea for it, leave a comment and I’ll launch it at The Guardian, naturally giving you full credit!

But in the meantime, note that the world is going to change again for retailing, just as everyone thought they were getting the hang of it.

This year, their agency delights in the name Spank.

It’s Christmas, so like a proper agency, they decided to put on a party, as you would. But how to showcase their creativity? Well, if the name of the agency is Spank, you have your theme pretty much there. But how do you invite people?

This is the email I received:

Google yourself from anything BUT a mobile device.

If you cant find what we’ve hidden for you, it means you don’t google yourself enough and you need to start doing it more often.

Naturally enough, I googled “Russell Buckley”. And what did I see at the top of results, in the form of a Google AdWords

Click on the link and you get through to the Spanking Good Party website.

How cool is that?

I’ve been very critical of Bluespamming – the indiscriminate blasting of a marketing message to all mobiles in the vicinity who happen to have their Bluetooth switched on, as if that was consenting to the spam. I’ve also been pretty sceptical that it would make it as a stand-alone marketing channel. And while there may be ways of legitimate opt-in Bluetooth marketing, I’m not sure that they ever provide the scale that makes things work.

Of course, many disagreed and set out to prove me wrong on all counts. I’m not aware that anyone has succeeded yet, but I’m always interested to have an update from anyone who has had an outstanding success with the channel or who has a thriving business model somewhere.

One entrepreneur who had a lot of early success was South Africa’s Petros Kondos. Sadly for him, the star which shone brightly at first eventually waned and he closed the business. However, Petros knows that there’s certainly no shame in failure – in the words of the legendary entrepreneur and investor, Vinod Khosla, “I’ve failed more times than I’ve succeeded”. And my own success in mobile marketing was built on the failure of my first foray into the industry with ZagMe.

Petros has written a warts-and-all account of his years as a Bluetooth Marketer. This includes some great case studies of success, but also specifies all the lessons he learned over the years, including what Bluespam is (and isn’t) and why his venture didn’t make it. If you have any interest in this area at all as a marketer or potential entrepreneur, this is a must-read book.

Great entrepreneurs learn from their own experiences for sure. But I think it’s especially admirable when they make those lessons public and share them with the world in the belief that it will save others repeating the same mistakes.

You can get your free PDF of Petros’s book by mailing him pk AT telkomsa DOT net or tweeting him @petros99.

Petros is moving to Toronto shortly, so look him up if you’re in the area. Or better yet, recruit him for your company or startup.

If you’re not from around these parts, the Carnival collects together the best writing about mobile from the previous month. And jolly good it is too this time.

If you write regularly or occasionally, being included is a great way to get more readers. And if you have a blog, think about hosting a Carnival as everyone who enters, sends you some traffic.

Firstly, let me clarify one brief point. When I wrote about my plans a month ago I suggested that I would be looking at some advisory work, investing and mentoring. This is something I’m still doing and plan to continue, so taking a full time gig is not a u-turn in any way, but very much complementary to the work I’ll be doing at Eagle Eye. You’ll still hopefully see me on the speaking circuit and I’m especially looking forward to the MLOVE Confestival taking place in a castle near Berlin at the end of June. I’ll be expanding on some of my recent talks about the exponential growth of mobile technology, The Singularity and the short and long term implications for businesses. And there’s a bunch of great speakers and plenty of partying to look forward to – check it out and book your place.

Anyway, back to mobile vouchers.

When I were a lad starting out in marketing, we used to bandy around the phrase “Advertising loads the gun and Sales Promotion pulls the trigger”. Like many truisms, it contained a healthy dollop of fact and wisdom, even if it was simplistically expressed. Basically, it suggested that Advertising’s job was to build a brand and create consumer demand for the product. And Sales Promotion created the sale by, for example, driving store traffic, promoting the product in-store or running loyalty programmes.

Today, Sales Promotion has been officially abolished in favour of “Promotional Marketing”, but broadly speaking, the principles are the same.

However, the hybrid “performance marketing” has also grown disproportionately important, where the ad also stimulates a purchase – largely driven by PC-based display and search marketing. This is a very effective technique for advertisers and can often be purchased on a payment-by-results basis – you only pay when the consumer engages with the brand by clicking on the ad (Pay Per Click), or in some cases, actually making a purchase of the product (known as CPA or Cost Per Action).

Digital Direct Response Advertising or Performance Advertising has proved truly revolutionary, but really only for companies who can complete an action or make a sale online. So if you’re say, Amazon, eBay or LastMinute.com, Performance Advertising is marketing nirvana. But if you still rely on a purchase of a physical product in a real-world store, the case is less clear. If online activity simply drives consumers to your website which doesn’t actually stimulate a transaction, does this have real value?

Rather than getting into a debate about the merits of this argument, let’s just look at the facts.

According to eMarketer, online ad spend now accounts for 15.4% of the total. There’s an argument to suggest that this is low anyway in comparison to how much time the average person spends online, as opposed to engaged with other media. Despite this, Nielsen states that

Big FMCG brands in particular might appear to have been rather shy of the online space, with Procter & Gamble investing just 1.3% of its overall media spend in paid-for internet ads, Nestle 2.7%, Unilever 1.9% and Tesco 1.4%.

Now, let’s just remind ourselves, these are 4 of the most sophisticated and innovative marketing brands globally and they’re consistently underspending in digital. And the main rationale for this is lack of measurable of results in terms of sales created. Or as Jerry Lloyd-Williams, head of content at MediaCom Beyond Advertising suggests:

For a lot of FMCG [CPG in the US] brands, one question still prevails, which is: do the dollars and pounds they spend on digital equate to sales? There’s still a lot of research that needs to be done, but the caution with which they are spending online is built on a reasonable research question.’

But let’s look at mobile, as opposed to PC-based advertising. Mobile can actually link advertising to a physical sale in a store. A brand can issue a mobile coupon and provided that the coupon can be digitally redeemed (as opposed to a sight-check by store staff), we can suddenly measure sales precisely and develop appropriate ROI formulations.

This isn’t a new concept, by any means. As an industry, we’ve been talking about “closing the loop” for the 11 years I’ve been in the industry and it’s remained the big promise of mobile marketing – but a promise that hasn’t yet been delivered. Most launches into this area rarely get beyond a trial as every method tried to date – from barcodes to NFC – require a significant upgrade in either the retailer’s EPoS or mobile handsets, or both. Such upgrades are expensive and take time to deploy.

When I was looking for my next role, I was looking for a market that had the ability to become a billion dollar business within 5 years. So it’s perhaps not surprising that mobile coupons would make my list. It’s potentially huge, with over 300 Billion paper coupons issued every year in the US alone. In addition, I know that mobile coupons will be embraced by retailers and FMCG/CPG verticals when a secure abd foolproof redemption methodology is in place.

However, in the last 11 years, I hadn’t seen a technology that would actually deliver the promise today in a scalable way. Until I came across Eagle Eye Solutions, which owns a great piece of patented technology that has the potential to disrupt several industries all at once – retailer marketing, mobile marketing and couponing.

While most players in this market have focused on scanning technology of some form, Eagle Eye have very cleverly thought out-of-the-box. Their idea has been to partner with the companies who supply retailers with their Credit Card Terminals in-store, or what we call in the UK, Chip and PIN Terminals. By integrating with these companies, which are already linked to the retail EPoS, something very neat indeed can be achieved. This is how it works.

1. Consumer Requests a Coupon

The ways in which a consumer might learn about the availability of a coupon are many and varied. But essentially, they’ll be responding to an ad – whether via traditional media, such a radio or press, or perhaps more likely, via mobile advertising itself. If by mobile, they can click on an ad or link and get a coupon sent to their phone, usually via ubiquitous sms.

2. The Coupon

The coupon is actually a simple unique PIN programmed for one-off usage.

3. The Retail Experience

They visit the store, make their purchase and use the Chip and PIN machine to enter the PIN as part or full payment. All the evidence so far points to very positive consumer acceptance of this mechanic, as they’re used to entering numbers in this way.

4. The Marketing

If the promotion is being run by the retailer, they get real-time reporting and analysis on their campaign. Ditto, if it’s a brand running the campaign via the retailer.

5. The Security

One of the dirty little secrets of the coupon industry is fraud.

There are two types of coupon misuse in operation. Malredemption is trade fraud – for example, where a retailer cuts out and collects coupons and claims back the face value and trade handling allowance, without ever involving a consumer. Clearly, this is a problem mainly involved with independent shops, but it is and always will be an issue using paper-based systems and manual fulfilment and reconciliation.

Misredemption is a far wider problem and involves the consumer claiming the value of the coupon without having ever purchased the product. It’s pretty hard to quantify the size of this wasted marketing budgets. Occasionally, a company with a vested interest in minimising the problem commissions a survey which finds that most people claim not to do it. But as you’re asking them to ‘fess up to cheating, maybe that’s not a big surpise.

Anyway, digital redemption is secure as the discount isn’t given by the retail EPoS unless the product is purchased. Brand budget holders can wave goodbye to this perennial headache for good.

6. The Fulfilment

No waiting for fulfilment houses to count coupons and send cheques (checks) around the country. So, the Green implications are pretty impressive too – especially avoiding the printing and distribution of the vouchers themselves.

Of course, the really huge opportunity here is using all the data to the best effect, but I think that’s a post for another day.

The mobile coupon/voucher space is already a crowded one. But that’s great for Eagle Eye as there are loads of companies who need the technology that we can deliver. The Facebooks, Groupons, LivingSocials and any company involved in running mobile advertising campaigns will all benefit from partnering with us to deliver mobile couponing today. So, I hope others will quickly see what the opportunity is here.

When I joined AdMob 5 years ago, many people questioned just what the hell I was doing getting involved in a company that ran banner campaigns on mobile websites. Clearly, I don’t need to explain that any more. In the same way, many people have asked the same thing about mobile couponing – or at least been very underwhelmed at the news.

Believe me, this sector is going to be massive and is worth getting very excited about indeed as the mobile revolution continues. Whether or not Eagle Eye turns out to be a big winner is yet to be seen. But I’ve researched this market very carefully and really believe that it’s got a good shot at winning big.

So, will mobile couponing be a billion dollar business in 5 years? We’ll see. But it’s going to be fun finding out.