Wall Street Journal: Mobile Marketing ‘The Next Internet Gold Rush’
It’s not every day mobile marketing gets front-page treatment at the Wall Street Journal.
Today’s story, with a brow that reads “Banner Year,” is a bit hyperbolic (witness the above mentioned “Gold Rush” quote for just one example).
But the message is clear: Mobile marketing is heating up.
Citing stats from Informa, the Journal reports that spending on mobile advertising reached an estimated $871 million worldwide last year – which jives with the consensus view I report in BRANDING UNBOUND the book – compared to about $24 billion on Internet advertising worldwide, according to ZenithOptimedia.
With 2 billion mobile phones around the world, the Journal states, “upstarts and technology giants alike are scrambling to find ways of making money from cell phone ads.”
To make the point, the Journal points to innovative young companies like San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob, which is finding tremendous success (and major investment backing) by helping Adidas, eBay, Nokia and others deliver banner-style ads on popular mobile Web sites.
One example: The company helped Atlantic Records and Sean “Diddy” Combs deliver mobile banner ads shouting “Get Your Diddy Ringtones Now” 715,000 times on cell phone screens over a single three-hour period – getting 20,000 people around the world to click through to learn more.
The article goes on to look at Third Screen Media, which has helped Ford Motor Co. and Bank of America place ad banners on popular mobile Web sites.
And companies like Google, Sprint, Enpocket and others are exploring “Pay Per Call” models in which advertisers pay only if a consumer clicks on a link to call them – which is one of many models I explore in-depth in the book.
“Everybody’s just trying to dip their toes in the water and figure out what’s going to work,” says AdMob’s 29-year-old founder, Omar Hamoui.
Which, of course is true: While text-message ads accounted for $629 million in spanding last year, and mobile banner ads accounted for $36 million, mobile TV advertising is expected to kick in over the course of the year, building on an estimated $173 million in spending last year.
But all that said, I think it’s worth stating that while I wouldn’t have written BRANDING UNBOUND if I wasn’t bullish on prospects for mobile marketing, I can’t emphasize enough that it’s not the fact that you use mobile as an advertising channel.
It’s HOW you use it.
I remain skeptical that people will stand for wading through ad banners and sitting through TV commercials on their cell phones – even if they get rewarded for it.
In a call out, the Journal even points to a recent Harris study that found that 51% of all survey respondents said they are “not at all willing” to watch advertising on their cell phones, even if in return they received free applications for their phones. (In all fairness, 10% said they’d be “very willing” to do that).
But as the masses go mobile, I expect positive attitudes toward mobile advertising to plummet, not rise.
And, as I point out in the book, mobile marketing today is far more powerful than (just) that, anyway.
Instead, mobile is most powerful as a response mechanism by which consumers can interact with, and transact with, integrated promotions they see in other media – print, broadcast, online, direct, outdoor, etc. – right at the point of impression.
And I show how companies like Pepsi, Yahoo, MasterCard, DaimlerChrysler, Warner Brothers, MTV, McDonald’s, Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and many others are doing it right, today.
Short codes, and increasingly, QR codes are enabling a whole new way for consumers to interact and transact with brand they know and trust.
That’s not to say these other forms of mobile marketing don’t have their place –which I explore with some of the players mentioned in the Journal article, among others.
But the real power of mobile lies elsewhere.
And getting it right means the difference between engagement and intrusion for marketers looking for an edge with today’s increasingly mobile masses.
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
GENERATION WOW
Rick Mathieson .com
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