Mobile Advertising & Marketing: World Telemedia
Rating: Switched On
Despite being (and I quote) hung-over – very few weren’t – at Friday’s World Telemedia conference, speaker Mark Slade MD at 4th Screen, did a great job of assessing the mobile advertising market. Mark claimed that the inhibitors of advertising included off-net browsing charges, frequency capping, mobile operator dominance of traffic, and exclusion from certain “conflicting” ad-sites. He proclaimed that statistics on the growth of mobile advertising, from companies such as Strategy Analytics, were bullish – but didn’t deny that mobile advertising could, and would, fuel the growth of mobile.
The presentation identified the cost and affordability of advertising on mobile due to lack of overall adoption. For example the cost of acquisition for mobile advertisers is on average between £2.50 and £0.83, depending on initial strategy (CPM or CPC).
eBuddy’s Jan-Joost Kraal also discussed the ad-funded mobile model where mobile content is free. Personally, I have been skeptical of ad-only funding – but Jan did have a strong argument. Basically, by using a mixture of web and mobile, the vendor is able to offer a free IM service based on adverts. The company already boasts 1 million logins per day and 4 million users have used the IM service. This is impressive. But, and it’s a big but – is it sustainable? The thought of the day has to be personalization. If eBuddy is able to add contextual personalization to its services it will have a better understanding of the customer, and the IM experience could then be tailored with adverts. Instead of only banners or pay-per-click, IM users’ behavioural patterns need to be analysed and manipulated in a concise way to drive uptake of advertisers and deliver a stronger user experience.
Ruben Troostwijk, from Hot SMS, further argued that the free content model was sustainable – but identified a huge and important problem. Advertising takes the customer away from the original WAP site, and finding the way back can be an issue. Despite this, Hot SMS does have a clever Internet and Mobile service offer that promotes free SMS for the chance to select an advertising channel.
Basically, advertisers pay for SMS and consumers choose which advertisers pay by clicking through to the website. Now – how simple is that? Finally, straightforward services that enhance mobile advertising immediately. But then, it’s once again based on SMS – the real driver of the mobile data experience.
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