Are you receptive to mobile advertising? A Nielsen surveys says that only 10 percent responded yes. And that really should come as no surprise. No one wants to see advertising. But we accept it as a means to free content. Just as we saw Internet advertising explode over the past few years, so we are going to see more and more advertising on our mobile phones. The obstacle standing in the way, really, is the penetration of mobile data usage in the U.S. Once that number begins to rise, we’ll certainly see an uptick in monetized content.
At the CTIA Wireless convention earlier this month, there was plenty said on this topic. When are we going to see more ads on our phones? How are advertisers and carriers going to handle the serving of ads? How will customers respond to receiving them?
Clearly, there are many questions so far unanswered. But one theme that runs through the current mobile ad discourse is the intimacy people have with their cellphones. A phone is not like an Internet connection. People identify themselves with their phones, and so intruding on that space must be done with caution.
We’ve seen plenty of developments in this field over the first part of 2008. Things have changed even since we talked about mobile advertising earlier this year.
Cutting the crap
Many people equate advertising with spam. It’s likely, then, that these people are simply bombarded with poor advertising. And because advertising is so new to the wireless world, it’s tough to determine what works and what doesn’t…at least without a trial and error period.
But clearly, in order for mobile advertising to be effective, it has to grab attention without being obnoxious. AT&T understands this. At CTIA, Matthew Hull, director of advertising services at AT&T Mobility, relayed these thoughts to the audience. He said that AT&T sets the bar high with advertising, because the potential business lost because of a poor ad offsets the possible revenues from same ad.
I can relate to this. When I see poorly constructed ads, I think spam. I’m sure many others think the same way. Because we see so much of it — on the web, in our email inboxes, and even in our SMS inboxes — our collective filter is rather stringent. And so if something looks like spam, well, it doesn’t have to be anything else for us to classify it as spam.
Brandon Lucas, senior director of mobile business development for MySpace, noted that hasn’t heard any complaints or negative feedback regarding their ads. Then again, the premise of accessing MySpace for free via your mobile phone is that it’s ad-supported. When ads are the means of delivering free content, there’s less room to complain.
Targeted advertisements
The advantage mobile phone advertising has over the rest of the industry is that it’s done on a personal device. This means ads can be better targeted towards the specific user. This stands in stark contrast to other forms of advertising, like television, where the only real targeting method is the context of the program. Beyond that, though, it’s tough to determine exactly whose eyes are viewing the ads.
This is perhaps why MySpace is a perfect outlet for ad-supported content. From the very information you enter into the service, advertisers can figure out which ads will cause the best response. It further allows MySpace to analyze the response rates for certain ads, and fine-tune their delivery.
Targeting advertising is going even further, though. Earlier this year, CBS announced a geo-targeting ad system, which includes a partnership with geo-social network Loopt. At the time, Loopt was only available on Sprint and its subsidiary Boost, but now we’re seeing their reach spread to more carriers, including Verizon.
So not only will ad servers be able to determine what you like (because of the information you enter into the social networking part of Loopt), but they’ll be able to determine where you are. The desired result is a perfectly targeted ad that will generate wildly increased response rates.
Fresh ad content
Jamie Tiplitsky, senior manager of finance and strategy at ESPN Digital Media, brought up a further point about mobile advertising: It can be used to extend the reach of current ad campaigns in other media. I found this proclamation to be quite odd, especially coming from someone at ESPN.
If mobile advertising is going to succeed on a wide level, it needs to separate itself from the flashing banners of the early web, and especially from commercials in traditional media. If you’re going to be repeating commercials, then what’s the point? Once again, this goes doubly for ESPN.
Anyone who watches live sporting events knows that commercials are repeated ad infinitum throughout the program. Most games last between two and three hours, and there are only so many spots to run. A classic example is the Chevy ad featuring John Mellencamp’s “Our Country”. That commercial was played during nearly every commercial break of every football game during the 2006 season. It got to the point where no one I knew could stand the song any more.
So why bring that repetitiveness to another medium? While that’s just one example, it’s a widespread phenomenon. TV ads are repeated so much that for the most part, people do not want to see them ever again. I can’t imagine seeing positive feedback from displaying another “Our Country” ad on mobile phones.
Up, up and away!
Like most mobile technology, we’re still in the very early stages of mobile advertising. It’s not like the Internet, where various forms of advertising could be tested before the best one was determined. Mobile phones are far more intimate, and therefore it becomes easier to offend someone when advertising through that medium.
In order for mobile advertising to realize its lofty projections, we need a higher rate of data service adoption in the U.S. I’m not sure what it will take to spur growth in that region, but if analysts are predicting $7.6 billion in mobile advertising spending by 2013, adoption is of the utmost necessity. Then again, they’re predicting a 100 percent penetration rate by then. This is only a positive for the future of mobile advertising.
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