Yahoo uses mobile advertising to educate mobile consumer base

Rating: Consumer unfamiliarity with smartphones is holding mobile internet back

Despite the prevalence of new, easy to use smartphones, the mobile internet just hasn’t taken off the way it had been hoped. People still find it to awkward to really take advantage of internet access on mobile devices. Yahoo’s mobile arm, Connected Life, believes that consumer education is the key to attracting more users, and that this can be accomplished through advertising campaigns. Connected Life has already run one such campaign, with Honk Kong mobile operator CSL, where they used in-store promotions to teach shoppers how to better use Yahoo’s OneSearch.

From the release:

Executive in charge of Yahoo’s Connected Life in Asia, Matthias Kunze says “When we do focused interviews with customers they usually say it’s too difficult to use, which of course will go away with more and more smartphones. We also tell carriers they should invest more in consumer education. We help carriers with this.”

Kunze also revealed that Yahoo feel their Asian branch now has enough unique users every month to make launching their own advertising service worthwhile. They obviously won’t just be focussing on educational campaigns. “We now have quite a strong user base, with millions of impressions every month. We believe mobile advertising has become a sustainable business now, and brands are interested in using our platform to reach out to mobile consumers.”

What we think:

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone say that the biggest challenge faced by mobile internet is the level of consumer ignorance. Yahoo has decided to tackle this problem straight on, by training the public how to use the mobile web through their own product. Whether or not the resulting take-up will make the cost of the campaigns worthwhile will be interesting to see. However, Kunze makes it perfectly clear that Yahoo is being patient, and are content to wait until smartphones have reached greater market saturation before

Interestingly, he poo-pooed location based mobile advertising. He claims that it won’t take off until more GPS handsets are on the market, and companies don’t have to rely on imprecise cell-tower information.

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