Debunking the myths about mobile advertising

Alright; I’m back in my pavilion. I was just reading some articles on mobile marketing and this one caught my attention. The author has written something about eMarketer’s Mobile Advertising Report. The report focused on the impact of mobile advertising in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) market and its possible implications in the US market.

Now, the article says that by subsidizing mobile data plans by advertising, mobile advertisers are trying to turn mobile phones into TV sets. I wonder how on earth he came up with this correlation. Even I feel bored to say this again, but then…

Mobile advertising has something called ‘opt-in’ facility. You have to opt in for a mobile advertising campaign to get ads in your mobile phone. In other words, you have the choice to keep your phone away from ads. Do you have such options in TV? Advertisements in TV, whether you like them or not, will always be there and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So, please don’t compare TV to mobile phones.

Some of you must have heard about Sugar Mama from Virgin Mobile, which gives you free talk time for watching mobile ads. Now, the author even mocks this by coming up with this gem.

“I’m sure you’re ad creative is impressive, but I’d venture to guess that they went there to get free air cell phone minutes, not view ads.”

Oh yeah? People don’t watch TV to view ads either, you know?. They watch sitcoms and movies, in which they are served with ads, which they cannot escape from. The point is - It doesn’t matter. People are open to mobile ads as long as they gain something from them.

At last, he comes up with something about Americans getting tricked by mobile advertisers.

“You may have tricked us with TV commercials and OLAs, but we typically don’t fall for the same tricks twice (except for George W).”

Really?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Rant.

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Mobile social networking could be the future

Everyone talks about mobile advertising these days and most importantly, everyone, irrespective of their knowledge in this issue, seems to have an opinion on the same. Marketing experts world over say that mobile advertising could be huge and one of the most important reasons is the rising awareness on social networking sites.

Social networking has become hugely popular all over the world. Apart from big markets like the U.S. and Europe, the numbers from countries like India and Brazil are staggering and it only shows people’s growing interest in this phenomenon called social networking. This is why mobile advertising could be huge. Social networking, by definition, is about people that want to keep in touch with their friends and share info among them by the hour. Now, you can’t expect someone to roam around with a laptop all the time and this is where mobile phone comes into the picture. If social networking sites can be made easily accessible on mobile phones, the response would be tremendous. The mobile phone is always with you and it will help you keep in touch with your friends by the minute through these sites. Already, lots of mobile applications support this facility and you also have mobile social networking sites from Facebook and the like.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says that mobile advertising could be twice as profitable as conventional advertising, as the ads are targeted and more personal. However, it all depends on how easy the user finds it to surf the web on his mobile phone. The most important thing is the quality and speed of mobile internet. The speed needs to be improved and the screens need to be widened in order to give the users a rich experience. As of now, surfing Facebook in an ordinary phone is way difficult than doing it in an iPhone. So, the focus should be on making mobile internet access simpler for the users. The more we see phones like the iPhone, the easier it will be for the advertisers to reach out to the end users. One thing’s for sure – the future is gonna be exciting.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Mobile Social Networking.

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