Mobile Advertising: Still Waiting for a Medium

via CRM Daily on 5/6/08

Seen that great new ad on your mobile phone? No? Neither have we.

Maybe, if you are the texting type, you have responded to a promotion that asked you to send an SMS in order to enter a contest or receive information about a product.

Despite several years of escalating hype about the prospects for mobile advertising, the business remains in its infancy. Analysts say current spending totals around $1 billion annually, or around two-tenths of 1 percent of global outlays on advertising.

And it's debatable whether the activity that accounts for the bulk of that spending, text message campaigns, even qualifies as mobile advertising. That is because these campaigns typically employ advertising in other media, like billboards or newspapers, to encourage consumers to respond, rather than beaming ads directly to their phones.

Now that mobile television and other video services are being rolled out widely, advocates of mobile advertising are renewing their pitch -- that cell phones could be a highly effective medium, allowing marketers to reach consumers anytime, anywhere, on a device they love. Analysts, meanwhile, have been busy updating forecasts for the growth of mobile advertising.

EMarketer says overall mobile ad spending will rise to more than $19 billion by 2012. The Mobile Marketing Association, a trade group, says it should account for about 5 percent of ad spending worldwide by 2013. Given that the global ad market totals about $500 billion, that means about $25 billion would be allocated to cell phones.

Other forecasters are skeptical that mobile advertising will grow this quickly. Juniper Research said last month that spending would rise to $7.6 billion in 2013 from $1.3 billion this year.

Comments

[Jeff]

Traditional advertising (print, radio, billboards, etc), are good mediums for brand maintenance/awareness. Successful mobile advertising needs to have an immediate and personalized "call to action" resulting in instant gratification. Check out Dizgo (discounts on-the-go), a location-based mobile ad platform being tested in Boulder, CO. It allows the retailer to create self-service campaigns that create real-time demand for their products and services. Consumers use the instant discounts to influence near-term purchasing decisions.