German survey looks at attitudes to mobile advertising and marketing

Rating: no **** Sherlock

By Annie Turner

The German Internet Economy Organisation (ECO) has published third part of its results of a survey of German consumers’ attitudes towards mobile marketing and advertising. There are no surprises.

The survey asked specialists in the telecoms, Internet and TV industries what they felt about the acceptance of German consumers of mobile advertising. Some 63% believe that in 2007 and 2008 there will be change in attitude and that consumers will be more willing to accept advertising on their hand sets. Only 31 % think that this will definitely not be the case. Hard to say what they do in their spare time.

The participants were also asked which areas of mobile advertisement they thought would be most successful. The answers were surprisingly old-fashioned: at the top of the list came banners and sponsored links came out top with 28%. Video and music downloads came a poor second with 13% while in-game advertising got the vote of just 7% and product placement in video clips were seen by only 6% as having a role to play anytime soon.

This could be for any one of three reasons. The participants are more realistic than those of us who are up to our necks in the mobile advertising and marketing, and who have a tendency to look forward rather than at where we are now. Secondly, which I favour, the experts (that is someone who knows a lot about very little) totally underestimate the savvy of mobile consumers. Or thirdly, the survey would have been more convincing if they’d asked the consumers.

Dr Bettina Horster of ECO reckons it takes two to three years for consumers to become accustomed to new forms of marketing and expects much to change over that time. In particular, she says that better responses results are being achieved already through cross-marketing methods, which consumers tend to view as interesting offers, not advertising. For example, a mobile user downloads a piece of music to their phone and when the download is completed, they are offered tickets for the next concert.

Holy smoke, joined up marketing. What will they think of next?

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