Lies, damned lies and mundane statistics
Rating: “What hit us on the side of the head” wasn’t heavy enough
By Annie Turner
Click-to-call provider Ingenio and market research firm Harris Interactive has released results of a survey of 4,123 users on their preferences concerning mobile usage and advertising. This looks very much like a game of two halves.
These are the usage highlights, hold on to your hat:
• 63% of respondents claim their mobile is very personal to them – presumably the other 27% are in a coma or work for large corporations, which sometimes amounts to the same thing;
• 49% do more than make phone calls – 36% send and receive SMS and 24% send and receive pictures;
• over the next three years 57% of respondents anticipate doing more than making and receiving phone calls. What here is described as “more advanced phone use” [yep, they do mean including SMS, which is weird as Philippino babies are pretty much born knowing how to do it] will skew heavily in favour of those aged 18 to 34 (75%) vs ages 55 and up (33%).
Then the survey makes this huge leap to talking about their ad preferences on mobile. Surely this is like progressing from the dry slope on a Sunday afternoon to commenting, with insight, on downhill slalom in the Alps?
Apparently, among mobile ad formats, 26% of respondents favoured sponsored text links that appear as a result of searches, kindly explained as ‘ads relevant to a search query’. 21% favour audio ads that play instead of ringing while waiting for a call to answer (think this means that plays while waiting for the recipient to answer their phone), followed by 20% who find text message ads acceptable.
So what does this mean for strategy development, ad placement, and the development of mobile search and advertising in general? Damned if I know.
Apparently the data is in line with previous Ingenio data that show impulse local searches (including restaurants, entertainment, and hotels) represent two-thirds of mobile Pay Per Call ad volume. The remaining third is for more considered purchases such as property (real estate) and debt management (now that is interesting – is it to avoid your other half catching you setting up a loan on the PC at home?).
Another conclusion drawn by Ingenio is that “there is no clear and prevailing ad model that has emerged”. Well, you didn’t have to ask 4,123 people who mostly use their mobiles to make calls to establish that, surely?
Ingenio chief marketing officer Marc Barach comments, “What we didn’t realise was how open the model is from a monetisation perspective. What hit us on the side of the head here was that only 30% of users could recall seeing an ad on their phone”. Maybe American operators don’t bug the hell out of their customers with unsolicited offers.
We have no clue what this paragraphs means:
“Meanwhile, Pay-per-call in particular could have a great deal of relevance for the mobile search environment - even more so than online where, by comparison, there is physical barrier between the PC and the phone. When you’re dealing with mobile technologies, ‘It is, after all, a phone,’ says Mr Barach.”
Do you?
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