MOBILE ADVERTISING WRAP: New Mobile Ad Series; Key Drivers; MoPhap Partnership; Irritating Ads; Laughing All The Way?
Seems there’s no end to the news developments in this space. All the excitement about mobile advertising is a perfect fit with our own special podcast series on the topic. Starting Monday we have a stellar lineup of senior execs from AdMob (CEO Omar Hamoui), Amobee (CMO Patrick Parodi), Hyperfactory (CEO Geoffrey Handley), Millennial Media (Senior VP Eric Eller), and ScreenTonic (European MD Jana Eisenstein), so check back regularly. My thanks again to all the helpful and patient public relations professionals (Cristina Whittington @ Nelson Bostock, Keith Pillow @ Abelson Group, Peter Rennison @ PRPR, Simon Jones @ OnPR) for reaching out to me and setting up interviews.
In the meantime, here’s a recap of the news and analysis you may have missed last week…
–This insightful blog recounts a recent Dealmaker event (hosted by Nokia Labs) that asked the question: “What’s driving mobile advertising?” Speakers included: Peter Barry, Head of Venture Capital and Start-ups, Vodafone Group; Gene Keenan, VP of Mobile Services, Carat Fusion; Ian Foley, Director, Rhythm NewMedia; Jason Tsai, Group Communications Director, Universal McCann; and Ramin Vatanparast, Principal Researcher, Nokia Research Center.
A few eye-opening highlights:
Are users are open to receiving ads on their mobiles? No clear answers here but Vodafone’s Barry argues users are fed up with mobile ads. His take: If we want to make it work, must use opt-in and have to be relevant. This jives with the views of Carat Fusion’s Keenan. He believes users will eventually flock to plug-ins to block out all mobile ads anyway – so the industry has to be clever in its approach. Interruption-based ads are a failing model, so forget it. To be effective advertising has to add value. His warning: Banner ads are not effective on the Internet (a 2-10 percent click-through rate) and won’t be a feature on mobile for long.
Will the operators control the channel? No consensus on this one either. But there is technology online that will challenge the operator on this one. The blog reports one startup that attended the event is working on a product to cut carriers out of the value chain. [I'm intrigued – please (!) contact me if you know more…] Meanwhile, Vodafone’s Barry pointed out operators own the data that would power the delivery of personalized ads. (But we shouldn’t forget that on-portal providers also gather some interesting insights into customer click behavior – data they can also leverage to deliver a personalized ad push…)
No matter who wields the analytics, metrics are clearly key. As Barry put it: “At the end of the day, we buy audiences. If you can’t deliver audiences, we won’t buy.” In his view AdMob’s pricing is best.
And here’s a surprising observation: Jason Tsai from Universal McCann has his doubts about the value of mobile ads for brands like Microsoft. Mobile might work for Zune, but a product like Office requires an ad message with more information. The mobile phone has limited real estate and can’t “deliver enough information to get people to change their emotions about a product like Office.” So there we have it: Mobile is good for short bursts of information, not for longer marketing messages. Cross fingers that the brands and agencies figure this one out – otherwise, mobile advertising campaigns will be dominated by the usual suspects and lifestyle brands – and never break through to the mainstream…
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– Cross-over and consolidation are the next mobile advertising mega-trends. Mobile advertising network MoPhap has partnered with RealTech Network, a major online advertising network based in the U.S. (More detail in this release.) RealTechNetwork has relationships with more than 7,200 publisher sites and serves over 22.8 billion ad impressions each month.
Under terms of the agreement, RealTechNetwork will harness MoPhap’s ad serving platform and tap into MoPhap’s mobile publisher network. This tie-up will effectively bridge the online and mobile worlds, enabling advertisers to reach users and deliver all the advantages of online advertising to the mobile environment.
The partnership could push the envelope – depending on your take of MoPhap’s behavioral targeting abilities, made possible by the industry’s first-ever “server-side cookie.” According to the company, the technology “allows advertisers to get a comprehensive profile based upon a user’s browsing history over time. Then, it derives contextual meaning from each page that the user visits. This combines to create a psychographic user profile. Advertisers can then target the most relevant advertising based upon distinctive attributes of the user’s profile.” Sounds cool – and I’ve just today requested a briefing. This company has earned a place in the mobile advertising podcast series for sure!
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–Another day, another set of mobile advertising stats. The Guardian reports an ambitious survey of 9,500 people across 21 countries – conducted by media agency Universal McCann – found a whopping 61 percent of people were “irritated” by mobile adverts on their mobile phones.
The survey suggests branded content and opt-in Bluetooth downloads are much better ways to reach the consumers, with 71 percent of those polled accepting these formats. Tom Smith, Universal McCann’s research manager for EMEA was quoted as saying: “People like something that provides a benefit such as access to content, things like sponsorship, branded content, giving stuff away like Coca-Cola gave away songs on iTunes.”
Among other findings:
• Consumers were most likely to pay for music, movies and games, and least likely to pay for user-generated content and podcasts.
• Consumers in the developing world were the most receptive to advertising, particularly Mexico, China and Thailand, while the US, France and the UK were the least receptive markets.
• Sponsored search results, vouchers and other opt-in downloads were popular with almost three quarters of respondents.
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–The New York Times explores an idea gaining some serious traction thanks to broadband internet connections: Advertising as entertainment. High-speed Internet meets pop culture, “enabling media companies, agencies and advertisers to create Web sites devoted to commercials and other forms of advertising for amusement, rather than hard-core huckstering.” It’s quite a departure from the doom and gloom reports that claim users are eager to avoid advertising.
Maybe users like funny ads, but – like all content in the age of the empowered consumer – demand to watch them on their terms. Put simply, people don’t want interruptions, which is why they spend billions on TiVo and ignore banner Web ads.
David Droga, creative chairman at the Droga5 agency in New York, described the concept in the article as “MTV meets QVC.” The idea is to offer people in the 18 to 30-year old demographic product information in the form of entertaining video clips rather than traditional commercials.
Is there a lesson here for mobile advertising? I think so. Perhaps humorous ads would be a perfect fit with our mobile entertainment snacking habits. The NYT article lists a couple of Web sites proving the use case in Internet as we speak. Take veryfunnyads.com, a broadband Web site operated by the TBS cable network. It has delivered more than 63 million video clip views since its introduction last August. I know from living in Germany (I’m originally from Pittsburgh) that this is a hot item; TV shows here showcase funny ads from around the globe. (And let’s not forget the popularity of the Cannes Lions Winners Reel – a full-length film of the year’s best commercials.) Advertising has become an art form – and it may also be a killer content category on mobile phones.
