Steve Madden’s Plan to Enter the Mobile World

Optimistic predictions about mobile advertising are not new at all. You can find a whole bunch of experts claiming that the mobile phone will become the most sought-after advertising platform in the future. However, when something that validates these claims happens, it surely is exciting.

Steve Madden, a San Francisco based retail shoe brand, has been bitten by the mobile bug and is considering shifting its focus on mobile phone advertising. Jared Horowitz, who is in charge of the business development section of Steve Madden, has stated that it has become an integral part of their digital business.

As of now, only 0.5% of Steve Madden’s revenue is generated by mobile users. The company, however, is hopeful that the revenue will increase significantly in the coming years if they develop a mobile optimized site and drive traffic to it by running innovative mobile advertising campaigns. So, to prepare themselves for the mobile juggernaut, they have come up with a long list of plans. They include

• Developing a mobile optimized WAP site which is easy to navigate.

• Adding lots of interactive features to the site like click-to-call functionality (to help people get in touch with sales persons directly) and mobile social networking functionality (to help people share their favorite stuff with their friends via email, Twitter, or Facebook).

• Adding a Store Locator feature to help people find the nearest Steve Madden store.

• Developing an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to make it easier for iPhone users to reach the site.

• Setting up multiple revenue streams with mobile web display ads, mobile search ads, and in-app display ads.

• Introducing SMS offers and mobile coupons to engage potential customers.

• Devising innovative mobile marketing strategies to target potential customers.

According to the numbers revealed by the company, the non-optimized site of Steve Madden got more than 55,000 visitors via mobile devices in the month of February. There were more than 300,000 page views and 450 purchases. If they go ahead with the plan and implement the ideas they have come up with, they will be able to get a lot more visitors in a short span of time. More traffic, needless to add, will result in more revenue, which is always good news for any company. It should be interesting to see where Steve Madden goes from here.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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A Detailed Look at Google’s Acquisition of AdMob

So, Google has acquired AdMob. Is it a big deal? Yes, it is. Will it have a big impact on mobile advertising industry? Yes, it will. Is it surprising? No, it is not. Let me tell you why.

Regular readers of this blog know a thing or two about AdMob. It is one of the few mobile advertising companies that I’ve written a lot about on this blog. Anyone who has seen the growth chart of AdMob will hardly find it surprising that a giant like Google has acquired the company. After all, the company has served billions of mobile ads and its clientele include big names like Yahoo.

AdMob specializes in web display ads and application display ads. When mobile users surf the net or play a mobile video game, they will be served targeted ads. Google, as you know, specializes in search ads. When mobile users search for something on the internet, the results page they get will contain targeted ads. Now, combine these two technologies and you have a killer mobile marketing strategy.

Google has spent an astronomical $750 million on this acquisition. Some people think it has spent a lot of money to acquire what many perceive a small business. I do not think so. Google, as we all know, has been trying to make its presence felt in mobile advertising market for quite some time now. While it is certainly seen as a force to be reckoned with, its success on the mobile market is nowhere near its success on the internet. So, acquiring a company like AdMob can help Google establish itself on the mobile phone advertising market.

Moreover, this acquisition will give Google a chance to understand the dynamics of the mobile advertising market. It now has access to a huge amount of data which includes the usage data of various mobile applications. It now knows what kind of mobile apps are preferred by mobile users and what kind of ads have the best conversion rate. With this knowledge, Google can fine tune its advertising strategies and get even better results. So, in my opinion, this acquisition can only be good for Google in the long run.

If you think about it, what Google has done is not surprising at all. You are a new entrant to the market. You see that a number of players are already going strong. You can grab a big share of the market by either competing with them or by buying them out. When you have enough money to buy half of your competition, the latter sounds like a much better option, don’t you think? Something tells me that we’ll see more such acquisitions in the recent future.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Google.

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Huge Slump in Smartphone Market Share - Can Microsoft Reinvent Itself?

When you take a close look at the smartphone market, you will notice something strange. Experts often talk about what is possibly the most popular smartphone available today – the Apple iPhone. They talk about how Google Android could give Apple a tough competition. They talk about Symbian and they talk about Blackberry. They even talk about recently released smartphones like Motorola Cliq and Droid. One name that is conspicuously missing from this list is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.

It is really surprising. After all, Microsoft entered the smartphone market long back – Pocket PC 2002, the predecessor of Windows Mobile OS, was released in 2002. Soon, Windows Mobile was released in 2003. What has Microsoft managed to achieve in the past six years? The answer is – nothing worthwhile.

Windows Mobile, as of now, is the fourth most used mobile operating system in the world. Nokia with its Symbian OS is the market leader – followed by Blackberry and the iPhone. Experts, however, predict that it might not be able to stay at that spot for long. When you take a good look at the numbers, you get the feeling that what they predict might actually come true.

In the first quarter of 2004, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile had an envious 23% share in the smartphone market. In the first quarter of 2005, there was a steady decline and its market share was somewhere around 18%. In the first quarter of 2006, it further slumped and remained with a market share of 12%. In 2008, its market share dropped to 14%. At the start of 2009, it slumped further and remained at 7.9%. If we go by the recent report from AdMob, Microsoft’s market share, as of now, is only somewhere around 4%.

It is quite a slide – from 23% market share to 4% market share in a span of just five years. In the mean time, Apple, Nokia, RIM, and even Google have made their presence felt in the market big time.

It is really hard to believe. After all, Microsoft has got everything - all the money in the world, some of the brightest minds in the world, and plenty of goodwill. Yet, it has not been able to conquer the mobile market like it conquered the PC market. While late entrants like Apple and Google have been able to generate a big buzz, Microsoft has not been able to do anything that is worth taking notice.

Apple iPhone continues to climb the ladder and even new entrants like Motorola Droid have managed to create a big buzz. With this being the case, Microsoft’s only bet is Windows Mobile 7 OS – which incorporates the elements of Windows Mobile 6.5 and Zune – which is slated for release in 2010.

The mobile phone industry, the smartphone market in particular, is expected to grow bigger by the day. Mobile advertising, as we all know, is set to grow big as well. The time is ripe and the competition is intense. The question is – can Microsoft pull it off?

Categories: All things mobile phones, Microsoft.

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Customer-centric Mobile Advertising in 2020?

A recent report from OgilvyOne and Acision predicts an interesting scenario for mobile advertising in 2020.

The report says that in about a decade from now, in 2020, mobile phone advertising will be a lot more people-centric. Mobile advertisers, instead of spamming the inbox of the end user with random ads, will start delivering personalized ads which will be customized according to the end user’s preferences and tastes. In other words, the end user will determine what comes into his mobile phone. Since the content will be personalized and useful, a lot of people will be glad to opt into mobile advertising campaigns.

The report also says that the proliferation of 3G and 4G networks will fuel mobile advertising’s growth significantly. It will make services like mobile web, mobile social networking, and mobile TV, which are currently used only by a small percentage of mobile users, a lot more accessible for a large number of mobile users.

The report also goes on to add that the market will not be controlled by a handful of mobile operators in 2020. It is likely to become segmented and a lot of operators might consider offering ad-funded services. This could very well lead to a cohesive, symbiotic environment where both mobile operators and service providers complement each other and offer a lot of value for the end user.

Basically, the report pretty much sums up what I have been trying to say for a while now. If you need a little primer, you can check out this post. The future of mobile advertising, despite the objection of privacy champions, looks bright. In fact, it looks so bright that you can’t even look at it directly unless you are wearing shades.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Entertainment Sector Tops Mobile Ad Spending

A recent metrics report from Millennial Media has the details about the recent trends in mobile ad spending. According to the report, entertainment is the sector which tops the list as far as mobile ad spending is concerned.

The report also says that 2/3rd of the money spent on entertainment was spent by movie studios for promoting their movies. Major movie studios in Hollywood have been spending a considerable amount of money on mobile ads of late. If you have a high end cell phone like the iPhone or any other web enabled phone for that matter, you could have seen ads for movies like Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Fast & Furious 4. Since the response for such mobile campaigns is usually good, movie studios these days do not think twice to spend money on mobile advertising.

For the regular readers of this blog, this news might not be surprising, as we have already discussed this issue here, here, and here.

Apart from movies, a considerable amount has been spent on games (16% of the total spending), TV (9% of the total spending), music (4% of the total spending), and other things (7% of the total spending) that people are interested in.

One of the things to be noted here is that there has been a considerable change in the way mobile advertising is perceived by large companies in the entertainment industry lately. Earlier, the amount spent on mobile marketing campaigns was very little and it was usually for ringtones and stuff like that. Now, movie studios and television studios are coming up with mobile marketing campaigns to promote their movies, sitcoms, and reality TV shows. This just goes to show that a lot of people are slowly beginning to understand that mobile ad campaigns, when done the right way, can give very good results.

Apart from this, a lot of brands are turning their attention towards mobile ads to drive traffic to their mobile sites and enhance their presence in the mobile world. In my opinion, this is a good sign of things to come in the future. A lot of companies have developed mobile sites to help their readers access the websites they want right from their mobile phone. Since mobile web is becoming increasingly popular and the number of high end mobile users is growing fast, it is a good idea for big companies and popular brands to have their own mobile sites. This issue, as some of you might remember, has been already discussed in this blog.

The report also says that Apple iPhone and iPod Touch continue to dominate the mobile ad market by getting the lion’s share of ad impressions. However, it should be noted that other mobile phones like Samsung Instinct are giving a tough competition to Apple in terms of ad impressions.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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