Why push mobile marketing just doesn’t work

Rating: is there an echo in here?

By Annie Turner

There are two takes on what the Scott Berg, worldwide media director for HP, has to say about mobile advertising: either he’s a mega fan of GoMo News or he came to the same conclusions as us on his own. Either way we’re happy.

Quoted in an interview with AdAge, HP’s Mr Berg has an annual budget of USD 829m (EUR 605.6m) and likes new media, yet, like us, he doesn’t like marketers who push out mobile ads rather than allowing users to opt in. It gets even better. Mr Berg thinks that annoying users aside – which like us he argues will result in the heavy boot of the regulator being sunk in sharpish – the push approach wastes one of mobile marketing’s greatest attributes – search.

He is quoted in the article saying, “We’ve had experience with advertising on the deck of some phone carriers [it] just didn’t work out for us.” HP also tested off-deck ads and concluded that search, at least for the time being, is the way to tackle the new media. The reason? “I would much rather spend the money on the search terms than the advertising because I can track it, I can understand it, I can tweak it based on consumer needs.”

And, from the article:

The key, he believes, is for marketers to realize people are using their phones for information — and smart advertisers will market around that rather than simply pump out a steady stream of ads. He said HP’s latest mobile strategy, which is set to roll out next year, will be based on the thinking that the mobile phone is a utility for consumers.

However, in the longer term, Mr Berg says that HP’smobile marketing activities won’t be restricted to search, but apposite promotions. He points to the fact that the company’s Yahoo! March Madness HP Courtside ‘07 promotion, which provided scores and information during last spring’s men’s college basketball tournament, drew more than 890,000 unique visitors.

Way to go.

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