Mobile Posse specialises in idle-screen mobile advertising. “Idle-screen” push full-screen display ads to your phone when it’s in “stand-by” mode. As soon as you start using your device, the ads dissappear. Mobile Posse announced today that a campaign it ran for the Ace Hardware chain got a CTR of 18% – which is considerably higher than the average on-line CTR, which is under 1%
How does Mobile Posse work?
If you’re with Alltel, Cricket, Revol or Verizon, you can download the Mobile Posse app directly to your phone. After that, it’s all automatic. You’ll get weather, trivia and local gas prices and coupons delivered to your idle screen.
What was the Ace Hardware campaign?
The campaign targeted Memorial Day weekend. It was a seasonal campaign, showing ads for summer products like weedkiller and deck chairs. There were two different display ads that were pushed to phones on the Mobile Posse network. Ace Hardware also took out a 7-day sponsorship of the idle-screen weather forecasts. Mobile Posse released some stats from the campaign, which they gathered from an idle-screen survey they did afterwards (smart!). It claimed that customers who viewed the promotion were 30% more likely to go to Ace. Almost 65% Mobile Posse customers saw at least one component of the Ace promotion during the holiday weekend.
From the release:
Andrew Vitellaro, Sr. Creative Specialist at Ace Hardware: “The Memorial Day holiday weekend is a perfect opportunity to make a dent in the home maintenance to-do list. Everyone has to-do lists for taking care of their homes, including starting or finishing a painting project, especially if extended family is coming to visit.”
“Being able to target consumers checking weather on their mobile device over the Memorial Day weekend is a place that Ace needed to be,” proclaimed Gregory Trani, eCRM account manager of Horizon Media. “Ace continues to see high relevancy between weather and home maintenance.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Ace Hardware as an advertiser and content sponsor across our idle screen advertising network,” said Jon Jackson, CEO of Mobile Posse. “Mobile Posse’s popular daily weather alerts provide an optimal environment for showcasing the Ace brand. It’s a natural fit.” Ads promoted featured seasonal products including RoundUp Weed & Grass Killer and Adirondack-style chairs. Ace Hardware also promoted Ace Royal Paint through its sponsorship of daily weather information.
What we think?
I’m not a big fan of advertising creep, but as I’ve said before idle-screen is probably the least invasive form of that. There are big question marks over the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile, and opt-in idle-screen campaigns go some way towards combating that. Mobile Posse is pretty good for that – but it could be better. What I’m seeing from the above release is “targeting is everything”, especially from the quotes section. This campaign is targeted locally and targeted seasonally. But the opt-in option should also allow new subscribers to pre-target ads by allowing them to select categories they are interested in. Then again, Mobile Posse is more interested in mobile coupons, with campaigns for Dairy Queen and Verizon. Your targeting doesn’t need to be as precise when you’re giving people free stuff.
