| CTIA: Mobile advertising tackles metrics in 2009 |
| Written by Sarah Reedy - telephonyonline.com |
| Monday, 30 March 2009 11:47 |
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The MMA, mobile ad companies look to overcome the issue of metrics to see the market achieve its full potential. Quattro Wireless has had an undeniably successful past year – it saw its impressions grow 30% and added 1,000 mobile advertising campaigns – but not everyone in the industry shares CEO Andy Miller’s enthusiasm for the market in 2009. The Mobile Marketing Association is focused on the issue of metrics for 2009 in order to make 2010 the year that mobile advertising really takes off. The industry consortium is angling to figure out what all needs to be measured on mobile and how exactly to do that, according to president and CEO Mike Wehrs. “There’s a lot more that matters on mobile than just impressions,” Wehrs said. “It doesn’t deal with the idea of improved conversion rate. We want a response and call-to-action component to what is measured. What are the key components you need to report out on? How can we get there? Are the efforts of the GSMA sufficient or is there more to be done? There is clearly more to be done.” Wehrs said the industry needs a global approach so advertisers understand how to measure ads or marketing campaigns – and even a flawed system is better than none. Right now, most advertisers don’t know what they’re getting from mobile. This fact alone is holding back advertisers from doing a significant spend on the mobile channel, if they are even launching at all. CPM (cost per thousand) is not the ultimate measure of a successful campaign, Wehrs said. “A service that provides mapping information so the end user can get a GPS like experience on their phone – there is no destination page, no CPM associated, but also no question of the value,” he said. “In mobile it becomes such a fundamental component of the services possible that have location or personalized awareness, we need to figure out how to account for that. The CPM model doesn’t account for enough of that stuff.” The economy has undoubtedly delayed the mobile marketing push. Advertisers aren’t reducing their spend, Wehrs said, but the rate of increase is not as high as some might have thought. Go2 Media is one company that works with all the major operators to provide a mobile-centric view of local advertising and marketing. The company’s publishing platform aggregates feed-driven content with original local recommendations, generated from a nationwide writer network. For example, its latest initiative, go2 Colleges, is a mobile local entertainment guide with contextual advertising for 473 colleges across the US. CEO Dan Smith said that while metrics are a key challenge for mobile – as they are for any new platform, it is getting better. There was very little visibility into mobile at all a few years ago, but that has clearly started to change. Advertisers, too, are getting savvier in what they use to evaluate their mobile campaigns. “I think it’s an interesting year and no question, it’s going to be a difficult climate, but it’s one in which we will see more growth in mobile ads and more appreciation of mobile,” Smith said. “One thing that won’t be limited by the economy is growth in mobile data and traffic and a continued awareness of mobile as an important marketing platform. We may still see some trepidation in mobile ad budgets, and we may not be breaking new records in mobile campaigns, but there will be continued appreciation and attention around mobile ads.” Sonali Shah, director of corporate development and strategy for VeriSign’s messaging and mobile media division, added that there are still issues to be worked out around privacy and security. But, when mobile ads do come in mass, it will be driven by the power of incorporating location-based services with ads as in the classic Starbuck’s example of a consumer receiving a coupon when they passed by the coffee shop. From an SMS aggregator’s perspective, there is a big and necessary opportunity to be found in SMS advertisements as well. Consumers generally don’t use all 160 of their allocated characters, making the remaining space optimal for a targeted text ad. “Carriers are concerned because SMS volume keeps growing,” Shah said. “It never slows and they are wondering how people are monetizing it. It’s a cost to send out these updates even thought it does increase consumer loyalty. If we can get ad model right, it could be very powerful.” The general consensus amongst most was that 2009 will be a good year to continue to build out the required infrastructure for mobile advertising, and then when the economy does rebound and companies reallocate their budgets, they will be poised to capitalize on the mobile ad opportunity. All the industry bodies have agreed to solve the metrics problem in 2009, so friction removal is underway, Wehrs said. “Step one will be to slash [budgets], step two is to reallocate budgets,” Smith added. “It’s real easy to build the budget back up and put more in mobile and less in other aspects. 2010 will be great year for revenue. 2009 will be a good year from the infrastructure perspective.” |
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