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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