Medio Systems Chief Advertising Officer Omar Tawakol Speaks Out For Relevancy in Mobile Search & Advertising; Reveals Click-Through & Conversion Rates
An interesting post from George H. Simpson, a veteran PR practitioner sold on the lure of digital media and advertising. He has circulated some comments from Omar Tawakol, Medio Systems Chief Advertising Officer, speaking out on a controversial new survey conducted by Harris Interactive (also covered in this earlier MSG post). Omar has picked up on the favorable response of consumers to text ads that users got as part of their search results (Harris reported more than 25 percent of those polled said this kind of advertising was acceptable) and attempts to answer the all-important “why” question.
As Omar pus it: “No surprise here. Look at the online world. Ads tied to search queries are considered part of content and generate click-through rates as high as +20 percent because an ad that returns highly relevant ads as part of an answer to a question, is perceived by consumers as a service.” In his view relevancy is the key ingredient in any mobile advertising pitch. “Based on Medio data, we’ve seen click-through rates on mobile search ads between 2 to 6 percent, and, of the people who clicked, conversion rates of up to 26.5 percent. This proves that relevant search results become a service to the end user. This trend is a good indicator that relevant advertising in the same search context will bring equal value to mobile users and targeted reach and positive results for advertisers.”
The figures Omar revealed are significantly higher than the ones I’ve seen reported in other polls and interviews. I caught up with Omar to dig a little deeper. He told me Medio ensures ad relevancy by giving the advertiser the choice to determine their target audience based on search queries. “This enables advertisers to distribute intelligence rather than the ad network centralizing it. And, if they do not have a preset list of keywords, we target categories based on behaviors.” (He also detailed how the company applies its algorithm to clusters of customers (“clustomers”) and groups of keywords.
But does the requirement for relevancy potentially clash with operator business rules and their obligation to promote their own portal content first – followed by ad-supported and rest of (transcoded) mobile Web?
You bet it does. There is a trade-off at first, but, Omar add, “operators become more comfortable with the fact that giving consumers what they want will make them more money over time.” He also feels that operators will soon allow more off-deck content to appear within on-deck searches.
Finally, I asked Omar about the barriers or obstacles to delivering relevant advertising. The number one concern for us both: the user experience. Is there a way to ensure advertisers don’t abuse their access to users (who provide some data by filling out forms etc…) to deliver spam? No quick fixes or easy answers, but the nature of mobile will provide for a positive user experience in the end. Irrelevant advertising will simply be filtered out of the system over time based on lack of clicks. “If an advertiser does not respect the intended use of consumers contact information, they will eventually be prevented from doing business in the marketplace. This is another instance where business rules of operator become beneficial to the consumer experience. This is in contrast to the Internet, because the mobile operator receives customer complaints that will clue them into problems that can be stopped at a much quicker pace.” [Of course, this quality control doesn't come cheap. Mobile operators tell me the cost of processing customer complaints that come through the call center is quite considerable. In fact, it was between $12 and $20 last time I checked - and has likely increased since...]
