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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?
Tags: aig, banner ads, citi, CNN, ESPN, hbo, ikea, interactive advertising bureau, location based advertising, marketing campaigns, Microsoft, mindshare, mobile advertising campaigns, mobile coupons, mobile marketers, mobile marketing campaigns, mobile phones, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, pandora, verizon wireless
Technorati Tags: aig, banner ads, citi, CNN, ESPN, hbo, ikea, interactive advertising bureau, location based advertising, marketing campaigns, Microsoft, mindshare, mobile advertising campaigns, mobile coupons, mobile marketers, mobile marketing campaigns, mobile phones, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, pandora, verizon wireless
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.
A recent report says that SMS (short message service) usage in India, particularly in the urban areas, has grown significantly in the past few years. Given below are some of the interesting points made in the report.
• According to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), an average Indian sends 29 text messages a month.
• Text messages in India are not just used for personal communication. People check their bank balances, book tickets for movies, check air ticket and train ticket status, pay their bills, and do lots more.
• The response rate for text message marketing in India is very impressive. One in every three urban Indians has responded to such marketing campaigns either by forwarding the messages to his friends or by calling the sender to get more details.
• A large number of people opt for SMS based value added services. The most popular value added services include business/finance news, stock market tips, astrological advice, spiritual quotes, news alerts, job alerts, and sports updates.
• More than 40% of urban Indians have received promotional offers via SMS. Nearly 12% of people who got such text messages have made a purchase based on the information given in the message.
• 30 to 45 year olds – people with a significant disposable income – are more likely to respond to text message marketing and make a purchase.
• Nearly 30% of urban Indians have participated in some kind of SMS based contests. As you can guess, males are more likely to take part in such contests than females.
While this report does not have any groundbreaking information, it does confirm the fact that mobile advertising, as an advertising medium, has a bright future in India. There are a few important reasons why I think so.
1. Data plans in India are quite cheap. Most operators charge only a very small amount for text messages. Incoming messages are never charged. So, it allows people to respond to promotional offers and other such stuff without worrying about a huge mobile bill at the end of the month.
2. In the past ten years or so, Indian economy has improved considerably and the purchasing power of the middle class – comprising nearly 300 million Indians - has increased as well. Hundreds of millions of people with disposable income – now that’s a dream for any marketer.
3. A number of mobile operators in India are beginning to focus on not just the urban areas, but the rural areas as well. This will increase the number of mobile users in India by an unbelievably huge extent. In other words, in a few years from now, there will be close to 700 million mobile users in India. It is going to be the dreamland of every mobile marketer in the world.
What do you think? I’m interested to hear your viewpoints.
For further reading, check out these posts.
Indian Mobile Advertising Market on a Roll
Is India the Fastest Growing Market for Mobile Advertising?
Mobile Advertising in India - A Closer Look
Tags: marketing campaigns, mobile advertising, SMS, stock market tips, telecom regulatory authority, telecom regulatory authority of india, text message marketing, text messages, urban indians, value added services
Technorati Tags: marketing campaigns, mobile advertising, SMS, stock market tips, telecom regulatory authority, telecom regulatory authority of india, text message marketing, text messages, urban indians, value added services
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.
I’ve time and again mentioned about India and how it is probably the biggest market for mobile marketers in South Asia and stuff like that. But then, I constantly need to remind the skeptics out there that I don’t talk in air. I do have facts to back up my claims. So, here goes.
The country has a strong mobile subscriber base of over 300 million and has over a 100 million new additions every year. So, needless to say, all eyes are on India as far as mobile marketing is concerned.
ICICI Bank, one of the leading banks in the subcontinent, is enjoying great success with its mobile banking initiative. Ever since the bank started offering mobile banking services, there has been a steady growth in the number of mobile banking subscribers. Similarly, many other banks have introduced mobile banking facility and the number of mobile banking subscribers is getting increased by the day.
Surprisingly, Netcore Solutions, a Mumbai based mobile marketing company, has enjoyed an even bigger success than ICICI. The company specializes in creating permission based mobile marketing campaigns and has had a great success rate so far. Netcore offers a service called MyToday, which offers a variety of mobile phone services like headlines of the day, stock market tips and updates, sports updates, health, astrology, and other things which will be sent to the subscribers as text messages. All these text messages will have a text ad at the bottom. So far, the response has been double positive and the company has enjoyed great success.
The company was launched only in 2006 and within just a span of two years, it has more than four million subscribers now. It gets a whopping 300,000 new additions every month. That’s a mind boggling 10,000 additions every single day.
Read it again. 10,000 new additions every day. And that’s for a single mobile marketing company. India will probably have hundreds of such companies in the next few years. Just imagine the kind of business they can do with targeted mobile marketing.
Are you still wondering why India is considered the next big thing in mobile marketing?Tags: marketing campaigns, mobile marketing company, mobile banking, mobile marketing, mobile phone services, mobile subscriber, text messages
Technorati Tags: marketing campaigns, mobile marketing company, mobile banking, mobile marketing, mobile phone services, mobile subscriber, text messages
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.
Nokia is planning to open a series of training labs called ‘Ad Labs’ which will teach traditional advertising agencies the art of mobile marketing. Nokia revealed its plans at the Cannes International Advertising Festival 2008. Mike Baker, the VP and the head of mobile advertising in Nokia, said that Nokia’s traditional advertising staff will benefit tremendously from this training and the long time goal is to make them competent enough to create highly targeted mobile marketing campaigns for their clients. To begin with, Nokia will start Ad Labs in Boston and London.
This is a very important move as far as Nokia is concerned. Of late, Nokia has been trying hard for an image makeover – from just a mobile manufacturer to a mobile marketing conglomerate. If you take a look at Nokia’s actions in the recent past, there is a definite pattern. It acquired Enpocket, developed its own mobile internet platform Ovi, it joined hands with France Telecom, and now it’s planning to open Ad Labs for mobile marketing training. Could it get any more obvious? Surprisingly, yours truly predicted a Nokia vs. Google scenario some time back and it seems it might come true after all. What do you say?
Tags: ad labs, advertising agencies, cannes international advertising festival, Enpocket, france telecom, Google, image makeover, international advertising festival, marketing campaigns, mike baker, mobile advertising, mobile internet platform, mobile marketing, Nokia, Ovi, traditional advertising, training labs
Technorati Tags: ad labs, advertising agencies, cannes international advertising festival, Enpocket, france telecom, Google, image makeover, international advertising festival, marketing campaigns, mike baker, mobile advertising, mobile internet platform, mobile marketing, Nokia, Ovi, traditional advertising, training labs
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Nokia.
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.
Tags: blog, marketers, marketing campaign, marketing campaigns, mobile marketers, mobile marketing campaign, mobile marketing campaigns, mobile marketing, mobile users, online ads, relevant ads, response rate, text message alert, text message alerts, text message
Technorati Tags: blog, marketers, marketing campaign, marketing campaigns, mobile marketers, mobile marketing campaign, mobile marketing campaigns, mobile marketing, mobile users, online ads, relevant ads, response rate, text message alert, text message alerts, text message
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.
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