New Interactive Mobile Advertising Service from America Movil and MyScreen

America Movil, a well known wireless service provider in Latin America, has joined hands with MyScreen, a Canada based mobile advertising company, to launch an interactive mobile advertising service across Latin American and the Caribbean.

This, as you can imagine, is an opt-in service which is available only to those who subscribe to the service voluntarily. Customers will be delivered interactive full screen ads at the end of every call. Banner ads will be served when customers are browsing the net on their mobile phone. The subscribers who opt in to the service will get special discounts, offers, and free services which are not available to regular subscribers of America Movil.

The ads delivered are highly targeted based on the preferences of each subscriber. The subscribers can get ads from different categories like health, entertainment, lifestyle, and sports. Subscribers can accumulate reward points for every ad they view on their mobile phone. They can redeem these reward points to get free services and other such offers from their operator.

America Movil and MyScreen conducted a trial this year to get an idea of the response from subscribers. Much to everyone’s surprise, the ads from MyScreen generated 20% CTR (click through rate), which is unprecedented to say the least. Just so you know, online ads, which have become ubiquitous these days, generate a CTR of 1%. In other words, the response to mobile ads, at least in this scenario, was 20 times higher than the response to online ads. This encouraged the parties involved tremendously to introduce the service to America Movil customers.

In my opinion, the timing of this alliance could not have been better. A recent report from Juniper Research says that mobile advertising in Latin America is still in its nascent stage and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. In 2012, the amount spent on mobile advertising in the region is expected to be somewhere around $1.3 billion. Considering the fact that America Movil has millions of subscribers from the region, it makes sense for them to join hands with MyScreen to come up with such a service.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

2 comments.

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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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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Indian Mobile Advertising Market on a Roll

We have seen a lot of reports about India being a very dominant player in the mobile advertising market, right? Here is one more report to add to that long list. Limbo, a California based mobile social networking company, and GfK Technology, a Germany based market research company, have come up with a joint report which brings up some important points about mobile advertising in India.

The report says that eight in ten mobile phone users in India get ads on their mobile phone which is unprecedented to say the least. The numbers we are talking are huge – there are 300 million mobile users in India now and, on an average, there are 100 million new mobile connections added every year. In this scenario, mobile ads could have a tremendous reach in both urban and rural areas.

The report also says that text messaging or SMS (short messaging service) is the most sought after format of mobile advertising. Around 75% of the ads delivered in India are text based.

Mobile internet or mobile web is not as popular as one would imagine in India as data plans are quite costly. But the report predicts that the rates will come down significantly due to three reasons.

1. A lot of youngsters are interested in mobile web. Considering the fact that more than 500 million people in India are yet to celebrate their 20th birthday, this is a huge market.

2. The quality of mobile web browsing has increased tremendously thanks to high end phones like Apple iPhone. So, the number of people who use the feature will go up steadily.

3. Most importantly, mobile web, as predicted by experts around the world, is the future of mobile advertising. So, mobile advertisers will find a way to reach their target customers through mobile web. What this means to the end user is that he could get a lot of free, ad sponsored multimedia content.

At the end of the day, all this data leaves us with a question – is the future of mobile phone advertising heading east?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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IBM Survey On Mobile Phone Based Entertainment

IBM’s recent global online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits has unearthed some interesting facts. Let me present to you the ones that caught my attention.

1. According to the survey, a lot of mobile users these days are willing to get ads on their mobile phones in return for free digital content. Well; if you’ve been following this blog, this news should not come as a surprise to you at all. But the interesting thing here is that mobile users from six countries – India, Australia, the U.S., Germany, Japan, and the U.K. – have said the same thing.

2. Quite a few mobile users have stated that they would be willing to share their personal information with mobile advertisers if they were to get targeted incentives through mobile ads. The most preferred incentives include free audio/video tracks, discount coupons to retail stores, and air travel and hotel reward points.

3. A lot of mobile users find the mobile search facility extremely useful. Moreover, with the advent of 3G networks, mobile web could become a lot more popular than what it is right now – something which I have stated again and again in this blog.

4. Mobile social networking is considered the next big thing. It is one of the most sought after services by mobile users around the world.

5. One thing that stands out in the survey is the notable decline of TV as the primary media device. Thanks to the wide range of multimedia content available on the internet and mobile phones, people do not tend to spend as much time on TV as they used to in the past.

6. Most people do not prefer TV type advertising - getting interrupted by ads in the middle of a program. Instead, they prefer to see ads before and after the show. This way, they get to enjoy the digital content without any interruption. Product placement is yet another option for mobile advertisers, but it could, if overdone, turn customers off. So, they should try not to go overboard with product placement in mobile video games and other such digital entertainment content.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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