Data Matters: Mobile Advertising Requires Better Targeting; Anything Else Is A Game Of Chance » mobilegroove

Over-eager mobile marketers like to think the industry is on the cusp of perfect behavioural targeting, capable of delivering the right advertising pitches to the right users. But this scenario is a long way off and will likely require changes in the relationship between mobile companies and mobile operators as well as the introduction of mobile cookies – or their equivalent. This is the industry insider view from Brian Stoller, VP of Marketing at Third Screen Media (via Mediapost). In a worthwhile Q&A he identifies the challenges, puts some concrete numbers on the pay-offs and generally discusses the big plays in mobile advertising. Here are some of the highlights:

BEHAVIOURAL TARGETING: Demographic and behavioural targeting are hugely important but progress is slow due to privacy issues. In the meantime, Brian has some ideas for how the industry can achieve better demographic targeting. “I believe the conclusion of the marketplace at this point is that data will be accessible in aggregate as long as it doesn’t identify unique users.” Behavioural targeting is further off and depends on the evolution of Web-cookies for mobile. “We do not see cross-site targeting until there’s a major upgrade in handset browsers widely available.”

ADVERTISING SCALE: Big acquisitions, like Time Warner AOL’s purchase of Third Screen, have certainly given mobile advertising scalability and brought mobile into the total media mix. “Advertisers are significantly scaling up. Two years ago, the average six-week campaign went from $10,000 to $20,000. Last year it was up over $30 thousand. This year it’s at about a $100 thousand average. We’ve also more than tripled the number of total impressions from 200 million to 780 million.”

LOCATION: Location can add value to mobile advertising, but Brian is not sold on the idea that location is a must-have feature in campaigns going forward. “You may know I’m on the corner of 40th St. and 7th Avenue right now, but how important is that exactly to an advertiser?”

MOBILE SEARCH: Consolidation is the name of the game here as too many different operator solutions are causing fragmentation and hindering expansion –”it leads to unnecessary fragmentation.” Brian points out that most users are looking for Google and with the number of off-deck mobile Internet users in the U.S. topping 32 million, the opportunity for tapping into advertising dollars is now.

OFF-DECK: The operator portal is old news; off-deck mobile Web is the only way to build ad-inventory and increase exposure for brands. Brian notes that content publishers are now demanding greater exposure and more ad-revenue share than they are getting on the operator portal, and operators must change if they are to stay in the game. “In order for carriers to increase the amount of their customer’s spending on mobile data, they are going to need to give publishers more space off-deck to build out their mobile Web presence and expand ad inventory.”

INCREASED TARGETING: Early mobile Web users are a diverse bunch, Brian says. “In the mobile space already it’s really a catchall of many different groups, mobile Moms, teens, business professionals, and a wider ethnic mix. It’s a very fragmented audience.” This only highlights the importance of targeting for the success of mobile advertising. “I see the DMA targeting as moving to top priority in the next few months. Freeing up the data to target that is the next big push.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Location-Based Services, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.