Big plans for the small screen by Michael Stone

[Amethon]

Mobile marketing and advertising has really started to gain some traction in the broader media over the past few months. In 2006, Yankee Group forecast the mobile ad market to more than quadruple to US$275m in 2007 and eventually increase to US$2.2bn in 2010, up from an estimated US$60m in 2006. A more recent forecast from Strategy Analytics is even more bullish suggesting that advertisers will spend US$1.4 billion on mobile media this year, rising to US$14.4 billion by 2011. They predict that mobile media advertising will account for a fifth of global spending on Internet advertising by 2011. Abi Group has also forecast some impressive numbers with their 2011 figure topping US$19b including mobile search and video advertising.

As a key application and driver for both Content Fingerprinting and Portal Analytics, this has definitely been music to our ears but it is worth taking a step back to try and put some of the hype into perspective.

We are seeing a number of general themes emerging in terms of how to leverage mobile phones as channel for advertising and marketing.

1. SMS to win/SMS to register interest: Allows brands to solicit interest from potential customers and typically complemented by print media, packaging, etc. This is now very common and has a well established business model

2. Mobile Portal banner ads: Very similar to the banner ad model on the internet today but constrained by device capability and consumer use of mobile devices for browsing the internet. Both of these are improving which will speed industry growth. Check out the Toyota ad on wap.drive.com.au as an example. The traditional media players are leading they way by simply adding a mobile channel to their existing print, TV or internet rate cards. This has also led to the birth of intermediaries such as Admob which is positioning as the Google Adwords of the mobile domain linking mobile site publishers with advertisers.

3. Mobile Search: Similar to the internet model and will increase rapidly as consumers use mobile search engines from Google and Yahoo to navigate off-net content. It will be typical pay to get to the top of the list stuff and even more important when there is only a small screen.

4. Branded Content: Most operators are offering mobile services such as news alerts, video streaming, etc. These are now being sponsored by brands so you will increasingly see pre- and post-roll adverts. For the 2007 Superbowl, Pepsi partnered with Sprint Mobile in the US on a range of mobile marketing initiatives including sponsorship of the live highlights mobile videos.

5. Viral Marketing: This is our speciality as we provide technology to operators that allows them to track mobile content as it is shared/forwarded P2P. The key application is to allow branded content (viral video or animated gif) to be seeded to a small target group and then leverage their social network to distribute it further.

Of course, we see these mixed and matched, for example, allowing consumers to use an SMS shortcode to request rich media content delivered via MMS which is also viral. Location based information is also being used to improve the relevance of the message to the end user.

It is also heartening to see a number of organisations trying to develop guidelines for agencies and brands on mobile advertising to ensure that the end user experience is as compelling as possible. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) in the US is leading the way others such as the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group in Australia are not far behind. Everyone in the industry is keen to ensure that many of the mistakes made on the internet are not repeated on mobile!

Ultimately the most successful mobile advertising strategies will be those that try to hold a conversation with the consumer. As with any conversation, it needs to be informative, relevant and two-way, and the mobile is the ideal vehicle.

To finish off, something funny but incredibly relevant to this topic. Enjoy!






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