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.

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Verizon brings live TV to mobile phones

If you are a San Diegan, you can watch live TV right on your mobile phone from now on. How does that sound?

Verizon Wireless has come up with this service which helps you watch TV shows in real time in your mobile phone. Verizon uses Qualcomm’s MediaFlo technology to bring this service to your mobile phone. Incidentally, San Diego happens to be the 58th market to get Verizon’s V Cast Mobile TV service.

Verizon thinks it can attract a lot of subscribers to its live TV service as it offers a variety of networks like NBC, CBS, MTV, FOX, ESPN, and Nickelodeon for users to choose from. The service will cost you anywhere from $13 to $25 and it gives you the choice to watch live TV shows from all the aforementioned networks.

In my opinion, Verizon’s mobile TV service is good enough to attract some subscribers. I think it is way better than watching downloaded video clips on your mobile phone. It’s live TV and people can watch their favorite news channels, sports channels, finance news channels, and other channels on the move which could be really convenient. However, only four of Verizon’s phone models support this live TV service, which I think is a definite downside. You can’t expect everyone to own an LG Voyager, can you? On a side note, I think this move could actually revive the stock price of Qualcomm which has remained stagnant for quite some time now!

Most importantly, if you happen to live in San Diego, check out this service and let me know your thoughts.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile TV.

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ESPN mobile site gets more page views than its PC site

Guys; check out this newsflash. I really think this signifies the enormous growth of mobile internet in the world. This football season, ESPN got more page views on its mobile website than its PC site. Can you freaking believe it?

Though everyone predicts mobile internet and mobile advertising to have a huge growth, no one expected this kind of news to come out from ESPN. That ESPN.com’s NFL pages explode with traffic by the hour during the football season is not surprising news at all. But users preferred ESPN’s mobile website to its PC website – this is big news by any standards. According to the stats, on a particular day, mobile ESPN had 4.9 million visitors while its PC counterpart only managed to get 4.5 million visitors. Also, ESPN boasts of an enormous growth of over 200% every year for the past four years for its mobile website.

This news, more than anything else, has enthused mobile advertisers like anything. It has once again confirmed that mobile advertising is here to stay, whether everyone likes it or not.

I think the accessibility of the mobile phone is the main reason behind mobile ESPN’s phenomenal success. You can’t expect to take your laptop wherever you go and you most certainly can’t expect to find a Wi-Fi zone. So, the mobile phone is the perfect solution as it’s always with you and it takes just about a couple of minutes to check out the score on your mobile phone. Also, mobile ESPN is one of the most mobile-friendly sites in the world today and it makes for a great viewing experience. Experts also predict that with the advent of high speed mobile browsing in future, a lot of users will be able to watch live games right in their mobile phone. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I’m looking forward to.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Mobile Web.

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