The Future of Cell Phone Advertising?

A lot of people are wondering whether cell phone advertising is actually as big as everyone claims to be. If you are one of those people too, I’ve got something to tell you. It is going to be much bigger than most people can ever imagine. Let me tell you why I think so.

1. The sales of smart phones. Even at the time of a global recession, the sales figures of Apple iPhone and Blackberry have been very good. The number of people who use smart phones has more than doubled in the past few years.

2. Various studies show that smart phone users are most likely to recall ads and other stuff. They spend a lot of time surfing, playing games, watching TV, and shopping on their phones. In other words, they spend a lot of quality time with their phone – which is exactly what marketers want.

Take Pandora for example. It is an online service provider which allows users to design their own radio stations depending on their preferences in music. It is a free service which is backed by ads. Pandora has been in the business for nearly nine years now and it currently has a whopping six million users. Some of its notable clients include Best Buy, Nike, Dockers, Puma, Domino’s, and Target. They all buy ad spots on Pandora regularly.

These big brands have been using Pandora in their own ways. Dockers, for example, offered 20% flat discount to everyone who used the promotional code ‘Pandora’ on their website. Puma, which was one of the sponsors of the movie Fast & Furious 4, allowed Pandora users to buy shoes that were featured in the film. It goes on and on. One thing that the marketing houses of all these big brands have been saying is this – the response to cell phone advertising exceeded their expectations. The average response rate was somewhere around 5%, which is way more than the average response rate for online ads.

The icing on the cake is the statement of Rob Weisberg of Domino’s. He said that marketers these days have no choice but to take cell phone marketing seriously. They need to be where their customer works, lives, and plays.

All I’ve got to say is simple – wait and watch. Like I have always claimed, cell phone advertising will become bigger than any other form of conventional advertising methods.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Mobile Advertising to Go Mainstream?

A recent report from Limbo-GfK on mobile advertising has some encouraging news. It says that mobile advertising, as an advertising medium, is slowly becoming a mainstream phenomenon around the world. Here are some snippets from the report.

1. According to the report, nearly 35% of the mobile users in the U.S. got ads on their mobile phone during the fourth quarter of 2008. The number was particularly high with iPhone users – 42% of iPhone users in the country got mobile ads.

2. One third of mobile users who got ads responded to them in some way. Women, as expected, are more likely to respond than men.

3. 18-24 year-olds are most likely to respond to mobile ads.

4. In the UK, the mobile advertising market is growing bigger by the month. A lot of analysts have predicted a huge growth for the advertising medium which has made business owners, both small and large, take notice. As a result, a lot of marketers have decided to spend more on mobile advertising. The report claims that more than 50% of marketers in the UK have decided to increase their mobile advertising budgets in the coming months.

5. Already, more than 50% of advertising agencies in the UK have tried their hands on mobile advertising campaigns and have had relatively good success. So, it is likely to become an important part of the mainstream marketing plans both in the UK.

The way I see it, there are two important reasons why most marketers have decided to give mobile advertising a try. One is the huge success of companies like Blyk and AdMob. The other one, as we all know, is the global economic crisis which has made companies turn toward mobile advertising. At this credit-crunched time, it is obviously a wise move to spend on mobile advertising campaigns which are likely to give you better results than traditional advertising campaigns. Don’t you think?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Some good news for mobile marketers

Finally, here’s some good news for mobile marketers. Access 360 Media’s latest report says brings up a few points which I think will be very reassuring for mobile marketers.

1. Once people subscribe to text message alerts from marketers, they stick to it. The number of people who unsubscribe after getting alerts for some time is very less. In fact, it is only around 4%.

2. The response for mobile marketing campaigns has been very high. On an average, 2 to 4 percent of mobile users click on the ads they get to know get more information. This is way better than the response rate from online ads, which is somewhere around 0.01%.

In my opinion, these two facts prove a point. The one which I’ve been telling again and again and again in this blog. Get your customer’s permission, send useful, relevant ads, and give them the choice to opt out of it any time they want. Rest assured, your mobile marketing campaign will be a success.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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FTC to keep a close eye on mobile marketing

Trust me, I knew this was coming. I could almost sense it coming.

Mobile marketers will now have to be more careful than ever, because from now on the Feds will be watching them closely. FTC’s event, ‘Beyond Voice: Mapping the Mobile Marketplace’, discussed the concept of mobile marketing and the ways in which it can be made less intrusive, more organized, and so on.

A common complaint among a section of mobile users was that some of the mobile ads are vague in nature and don’t inform the reader the exact price of the service or product being marketed. As a result, the customer doesn’t realize how costly the service/product actually is and ends up responding to it. He comes to know it only when he pays a hefty amount later. This, they say, should be stopped immediately.

Based on this, the FTC has clearly stated that mobile marketers, from now on, should disclose the costs involved very clearly and should not send ads that are misleading in nature. The Feds have also informed that they will be carefully monitoring the mobile marketing industry which is growing very fast at the moment.

I’ve always stated that mobile marketers should be very careful about the way they approach the users. They should not forget that people, a lot of them, pay for text messages and they have every reason to hate a text message ad which is vague/misleading/useless or all of the above. So, it’s the responsibility of the mobile marketer to make sure the customer knows what he is getting into.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

1 comment.

M:Metrics has some encouraging news for mobile marketers

A recent report from M:Metrics states that men in the age group of 18-34 are considered the best target for mobile advertisers in the U.S. and Europe. Men in this age group respond to text message advertisements and more importantly, access mobile web quite frequently. This has made mobile marketers take notice of this potential customer segment.

In Europe, mobile users in this segment are equally inclined to both text message adverts and mobile media. In fact, the numbers are quite encouraging for mobile marketers in Europe. In England, the number of mobile media users is 26.8% while in France and Germany it is 18.4% and 18.5% respectively. In fact, a significant amount of mobile users in England who belong to this age group prefer their mobile phone to TV, as they can get everything they want from mobile web.

The report also says that almost one third of mobile users in UK said that they prefer to respond to mobile ads and would like to buy products that are advertised. This statistics, more than anything else, should be very encouraging for mobile marketers in Europe.

Mobile users in the U.S., unlike their European counterparts, are not that much interested in text message adverts. They are more inclined to access mobile web for news and other information.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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