New Interactive Mobile Advertising Service from America Movil and MyScreen

America Movil, a well known wireless service provider in Latin America, has joined hands with MyScreen, a Canada based mobile advertising company, to launch an interactive mobile advertising service across Latin American and the Caribbean.

This, as you can imagine, is an opt-in service which is available only to those who subscribe to the service voluntarily. Customers will be delivered interactive full screen ads at the end of every call. Banner ads will be served when customers are browsing the net on their mobile phone. The subscribers who opt in to the service will get special discounts, offers, and free services which are not available to regular subscribers of America Movil.

The ads delivered are highly targeted based on the preferences of each subscriber. The subscribers can get ads from different categories like health, entertainment, lifestyle, and sports. Subscribers can accumulate reward points for every ad they view on their mobile phone. They can redeem these reward points to get free services and other such offers from their operator.

America Movil and MyScreen conducted a trial this year to get an idea of the response from subscribers. Much to everyone’s surprise, the ads from MyScreen generated 20% CTR (click through rate), which is unprecedented to say the least. Just so you know, online ads, which have become ubiquitous these days, generate a CTR of 1%. In other words, the response to mobile ads, at least in this scenario, was 20 times higher than the response to online ads. This encouraged the parties involved tremendously to introduce the service to America Movil customers.

In my opinion, the timing of this alliance could not have been better. A recent report from Juniper Research says that mobile advertising in Latin America is still in its nascent stage and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. In 2012, the amount spent on mobile advertising in the region is expected to be somewhere around $1.3 billion. Considering the fact that America Movil has millions of subscribers from the region, it makes sense for them to join hands with MyScreen to come up with such a service.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

2 comments.

IAB Releases Mobile Buyer’s Guide at Mobile Conference

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) released a first-of-its-kind Mobile Buyer’s Guide for mobile marketing agencies at the IAB Marketplace: Mobile Conference on Monday.

The guide explains the medium of mobile advertising in detail and offers valuable information for mobile marketers to help them create and run mobile marketing campaigns successfully. The guide contains everything you need to know about mobile advertising – key terms and definitions, an overview of the U.S. market, a look at the key demographics, tips to create and run mobile marketing campaigns, and a number of examples to illustrate the intricacies involved in such campaigns.

You can take a look at the guide here.

Personally, I think this is a great initiative by the IAB. Though a lot of experts predict a big future for mobile advertising, it is still in its nascent stage and an unbelievably huge number of people are completely unaware of its potential. This kind of a detailed guide will definitely help people understand the value of advertising on mobile phones.

Mobile Marketer, AdMob, Mindshare, ESPN, HBO, NBC Universal, Nestle, AIG, Deutsch, IKEA, CNN Digital, Verizon Wireless, Microsoft, Pandora, Citi, and Nokia Interactive Advertising were some of the names involved in the conference. The future of mobile marketing was discussed in detail and the general feeling among both business owners and marketers was that mobile marketing as a medium is poised for huge growth.

Some of the important points raised at the conference include

• The click through rates of mobile display ads are five to ten times more than the click through rates of banner ads on websites.

• Online advertising has reached a point where almost every other website is filled with ads and people have started ignoring a majority of those ads. Advertising on mobile phones, on the other hand, is still in its nascent stage and a lot of consumers show interest in it.

• Microsoft, which has been trying really hard to dominate both the online and the mobile space, has had very good success with mobile ads so far. Compared to their online ads, mobile ads have performed exceptionally well so far. As a result, Microsoft is planning to invest a lot of money in mobile advertising.

• At the time of recession, mobile phone advertising can help businesses irrespective of their size. Mobile advertising campaigns are easy to create, easy to manage, and give excellent results. The response rates of these campaigns are usually way higher than the response rates of traditional advertising methods.

• A lot of companies have yet to try mobile coupons, location based advertising, and other types of mobile marketing which give very good results. However, experts believe that the situation will change slowly as more and more people are becoming aware of the potential of advertising on mobile phones.

Based on what I have seen and heard so far, I am of the opinion that mobile advertising, as a medium, will break through to the mainstream in a few years from now. What do you guys think?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

0 comments.

Mobile TV to become a $15 billion market in 2012

It seems mobile TV has caught the attention of market analysts big time. A lot of experts are touting mobile TV as the next big thing and here’s yet another report which has come up with quite an optimistic prediction, I should say.

A new research report from Multimedia Intelligence predicts that mobile TV market will be worth a whopping $15 billion in 2012. The report says that customers now demand personalized entertainment from their mobile phones more than ever before, as there is a huge influx of high-end mobile phones in the market these days. This has led to the belief that mobile TV will play a huge role in the future of mobile entertainment.

Also, mobile TV is considered the perfect medium for advertising by many as it has a huge advantage over other forms of mobile ads such as text message ads, banner ads, and WAP links. Ads in TV are something we’ve all got used to. So, when you’re watching your favorite show on mobile TV, an ad break won’t look too strange to you. On the other hand, a mobile banner ad can easily be considered intrusive by many. Also, the recall rates for mobile TV ads will be extremely high, as the ads are highly engaging. This is something I’ve already discussed in detail here.

However, there is one missing link here. While mobile TV could provide some good on-the-go entertainment for users and some good ad revenue for advertisers and operators, it will happen only if it’s offered free of cost. A paid mobile TV service, no matter how good it is, will not find a lot of takers in this era of freebies. We already have an example for this in the form of AT&T and Verizon’s mobile TV service - both got a lukewarm response from users. So, like I already said, ad-funded mobile TV could be the future. What do you think folks?

Categories: Mobile TV.

0 comments.

Indian company to introduce audio ads in mobile phones

How many times have you called your friend on his mobile phone and heard a song instead of the usual ringback tone? It’s quite common these days, right? Well; we’re about to get to the next stage of it. How about getting some audio ads instead of ringback tones?

OnMobile, an interactive advertising company in India, has come up with this idea. Suitably named AdRBT (Ad Ringback Tones), the program allows mobile users to opt in to the program which will replace the usual ringback tone with a variety of audio ads. In exchange, the user will get special discounts and offers.

OnMobile is confident that these audio ads will have high response rates and excellent recall rates and the impact might be huge. However, I think it’s only a 50/50 chance. Not many will be excited at the prospect of replacing their ringback tones with arbitrary ads and it might not be a smooth sail for the company initially. The way I see it, even people who are fine with text message ads and banner ads might find these audio ads a tad intrusive. But then, it’s just my opinion. And the Indians in general are not as finicky about mobile ads as their US counter parts. So, I might as well be proved wrong. Either way, it will be interesting to see the progress this company makes.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

0 comments.

Ford’s innovative mobile marketing campaign in India

Okay folks, let me ask you a question.

You’re a billion dollar automobile company, you’ve just released a new, peppy edition of your car which appeals mostly to youngsters, and you want to grab the attention of young car enthusiasts all over the country. What do you do?

Simple. You do mobile marketing.

Ford did the exact same thing in India when it released its new Ford Ikon Music Edition car called the iKool. Ford used the services of MindShare, a mobile marketing company, to come up with a creative mobile marketing campaign for iKool. MindShare contacted Nokia and made an agreement to advertise on Airtel Live!, the WAP site of India’s leading mobile operator, Airtel. Airtel is part of Nokia Media Network and it readily agreed to this arrangement.

MindShare created an innovative, content rich WAP site for Ford iKool. Mobile users around the country were served with banner ads through Airtel Live!. Those who clicked on the banner ads were taken to the iKool WAP site where they had the chance to download mobile games, wallpapers, ringtones, and many more.

The response rate for this mobile marketing campaign was a terrific 8.58%. Especially, two content pages – “Services For You” and “News & Sports” – saw a phenomenal click through rate of 14%, which is unseen before.

Ford has actually set an important precedent, as far as I’m concerned. I still remember, when Ford came up with its new model called Fiesta in India about a year and a half back, it mostly relied on TV ads and newspaper and magazine coverage. Now, just within a couple of years, things have changed so much that it went straight to a mobile marketing company to get the job done. And the result was there for everyone to see, right?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

0 comments.

Older »