The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus–the advertising industry's self-regulatory forum–is recommending that Verizon Wireless discontinue the advertising claims that its 4G LTE Smartphones are "twice as fast as any AT&T smartphone."
The recommendation is the result of a challenge by AT&T before NAD. It argued that consumers viewing Verizon's ads would interpret the claim to mean what it literally states: Verizon's 4G LTE smartphones work twice as fast as any AT&T smartphone in all respects.
Defining "Twice as Fast"
One argument by AT&T is that the ad does not make clear to consumers that the "twice as fast" claim is based on network speed, rather than the speed of the actual smartphones depicted. Even if did, however, consumers still won’t grasp the nuances of the claims.
That is because most US smartphone owners do not understand the current state of 4G (fourth generation) mobile phone technology, according to research by Compete. So far, this state of affairs has been great for carriers—at least as long as their competitors don’t protest–as it gives them leeway to market their services as "faster than" , "twice as fast" and so on.
Tone It Down Please
As mobile marketing becomes ever more prevalent, however, it would be better for carriers to tone down the talk about network speed—at least for their mobile advertisers' sake. As it is consumers already expect mobile sites to download within seconds–and few mobile pages meet this standard right now.
A survey from Compuware found that nearly 60% of web users say they expect a website to load on their mobile phone in three seconds or less, and 74% are only willing to wait five seconds or less for a single web page to load before leaving the site.
Only 50% are willing to wait five seconds or less for an application to load before exiting. In addition, mobile users do not have much patience for retrying a website or application that is not functioning initially–a third will go to a competitor's site instead. The majority of mobile web users are only willing to retry a website (78%) or application (80%) two times or less if it does not work initially.
Examples from the iPhone 4S
The hype carriers build up around their speed was on full display when the iPhone 4S rolled out last year. It is not a 4G device, but that did not stop carriers from trying to suggest that on their networks, consumers would achieve 4G speeds with the device.
