LEARN YOUR OPTIONS
Mobile is not like TV, where you have basically three options: :30s, :15s, and product integration. The breadth of data services is remarkable and growing almost daily. Here are the biggies, and a few example ways you can use them.
Mobile Search
Mobile search works much the same way as web search, placing prominent paid search results in results. Mobile search is an ideal option for retailers because mobile searchers are more likely to be ready to buy than someone using a PC. They are out and ready to walk in your door.
[1]
One key consideration before you do this is that you need a mobile friendly site to send people to. It will likely be a “dumbed down” version of your regular site. Less graphics. More succinct text. Here’s a side by side comparison of Yahoo and Yahoo Mobile for example:
Another key consideration is that unlike in web search, there are vastly fewer sponsored search positions in Mobile. You’re either a top bidder or you are invisible.
Mobile search is purchased on a pay per click basis just like web search. Pay for performance.
SMS
Texting is by far the most popular non-voice usage of cell phones, and for this reason many companies have started their mobile efforts there. The first “S” in the acronym SMS stands for short, and that’s because a text message must be 160 characters or less in length. To give you an idea of what 160 characters means, see below:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,…
That is 160 characters. So succinctness is critical in SMS.
You can use SMS in a variety of ways:
1. Develop a text CRM program that stays in touch with consumers in short SMS bursts.
2. Sponsor text messages delivered by publishers, for example Wall Street daily recaps.
3. Offer a promotional message stream through SMS.
4. SMS summary of new headlines available on your site.
5. Offer SMS as a way of capturing email addresses and phone numbers for later marketing.
6. Use SMS as a way of gathering feedback, votes, or other perspective from users and prospects.
The possibilities are tremendous, and you will be amazed at what you can fit in those 160 characters.
But you have to be sensible about it. An SMS is very intrusive. If your messages are incessant, you’ll tick people off quickly. Think of it as analogous to a city putting a stop sign next to every driveway, so you have to stop your car 10 times per block. The nuisance of unwanted SMS messages could be like that.
Premium SMS
SMS can also be a revenue stream for certain types of businesses. “Premium SMS” charges consumers an extra fee in addition to “normal” monthly SMS charges for certain services. Dating services, horoscopes, psychic readings, stock tips, and other banal or profound bits of information are delivered via premium SMS. The money can be staggering. Premium SMS dating, for example, charges 50 cents per SMS text as you meet another cell user. My suspicion is this is more relevant to those looking for horizontal dates, given that exchanging 5 messages with someone would cost you $2.50. 10, $5.00, 20, $10. My understanding is that there are millions of people paying for premium SMS services. Even a daily horoscope is going to set you back $15 a month, so the money to be made can be very impressive.
If you are getting into the dating game, note that you options to advertise your service on TV are limited. Most networks and stations will only run your ads in overnight dayparts. This is because of the connection between premium SMS and sex-oriented properties.
Ringtones, Wallpaper, and Other Bling
Ringtones and wallpapers and games are also enormous businesses. Perhaps not relevant to most marketers, though offering free ringtones and wallpapers might be a very compelling promotion. The financial math in these businesses is nothing short of fantastic. Assuming you negotiate rights well, a short clip of a popular song will sell for $1-$3, for what is ultimately a bunch of electrons. Not surprisingly, the major media companies are all over it. Murdoch’s News Corp owns 51% of industry leader Jamster, and other media giants like Lagardare are also active in this space.
Ringtone companies generally have a bad reputation. Part of this is due to marketing practices that entice young (<18) title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2190879717530944208#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]
Now, to be fair, the site offers thousands of tones and screens and videos, but these are often the ones that hit the news whenever politicians wish to assure us of their moral concerns. Which seems to occur around election time every two years.
Games can also be very profitable, though a key challenge here is developing a game that works on a broad swath of handsets. Companies like Thumbplay and Flycell are leaders here. One senses however, that the nav buttons on this kind of content are pressed so often that the text is about to wear off, so it can be said that they’re just giving people what they want.
Mobile Banners
Mobile banners are graphical ads, just like web banners. They are usually purchased by CPM. One difference, though, is that banners are not sold by size – instead, the size of banners is optimized to the screen of the recipient’s phone. And that’s only logical. If I have a tiny screen on a tiny phone, it makes sense that the banner deployed would be smaller than on a phone with a big screen. Graphical reproduction is going to vary by device, so simpler graphics make sense for the immediate future. It is the ad server’s responsibility to identify and deploy the right banner size. This may mean that you will need to develop multiple banner sizes, just like you do for web banners.
According to the MMA’s North American Advertising Guidelines, the predominant ad sizes are:
[3]
There is naturally less ad clutter on a mobile page. You can’t fit six ads and the content that the customer requested on a small screen. But there is often less graphical flexibility, meaning that gif ads dominate.
A variety of different types of firms sell ad banners. Major sellers include:
1. Carriers, like Verizon, that sell banners on their “decks”
2. Portals, like Yahoo or MSN
3. Publishers with Mobile Pages, like ESPN or CNET
4. Mobile Content Distributors like Vindigo or Enpocket
5. Mobile Ad Networks, like AdMob
Targeting options are broadening rapidly. All of the major types of targeting are available including:
1. Contextual, meaning the matching of an ad to related content.
2. Demographic, enabling you to target by gender, age, income, and the like
3. Behavioral, indicating that you focus ads on people who have demonstrated certain browsing behaviors on their phones. So, for example, a car company might buy ads on phones of people who have visited car research sites.
4. Geographic, meaning internationally, nationally, by region, state, DMA, or even cell tower area.
Another thing to think about when you consider banners is what action are you trying to drive. Marketers can make mobile banners drive very different kinds of actions. The key options in the US, according to the MMA, are:
1. Click through to a mobile site
2. Click to call, meaning that when the user clicks on the banner, they automatically initiate a voice call from their device to the number. This will likely improve DR response rates versus communicating a telephone number that the user will have to enter into their phone.
3. Email capture
4. Ability to send an SMS (text) message or (less common) an MMS graphical message.[4]
Measurement metrics are impressions delivered, click throughs (CTRs), click to call rates, Email capture rates, and the like.
Mobile companies are generally pretty careful not to annoy users too much with banner ads. No one wants to see billboards everywhere when they’re driving on the Interstate. Evaluate any graphical ad option within the context of what you might find acceptable. Remember, people are PAYING directly for the content on their phones, so getting in the way of utility is not something you want to do.
Full Screen Graphical Ads
Phones now offer the user the option to download applications like games, tools, or other utilities. As part of a download, advertisers can be sponsors.
Sponsoring some applications like, for example, a game or a mapping function, may entitle an advertiser to a full screen ad. This will run as a pre- or post-application welcome screen or bumper. These within applications can drive users to other sponsored pages in the application, click to email capture, click to call, or click to send MMS or SMS. Here are some full screen ads:
[5]
Because phone sets have different screen sizes, such full page sponsorships will likely require you to make more than one creative size for your message.
Consumer receptivity to ads in downloadable applications is going to vary depending upon the cost of the app, the level of intrusiveness of the marketing message, and the relevance of an ad to the application. Several studies have shown that consumers are willing to look at ads if it results in an app being free or available at a much reduced cost. For example, if an advertiser offered consumers a good game for free instead of say $9.99 without ads, a large proportion of mobile users will prefer the sponsored game version.
Intrusiveness within mobile is the classic teeter totter marketing dilemma. YOU may want users to look at an ad for 30 seconds; the user doesn’t want to look at it at all. So you need to find an appropriate balance. In determining that balance, people my age (43) or thereabouts need to recognize that the attention spans of the younger set are much shorter than ours, and that 30 seconds, while tolerable in TV, will feel like an eternity on a phone.
No one wants to pay good money for an app and see a bunch of ads every time they try to use it. But if you make the app free or discounted, people will generally be OK with it. An analogy is to the EU car rental company Sixti, that charges far less than other car rental outfits, but the tradeoff is that you are driving a billboard:
[6]
Anyone who has seen the rental car charges for a compact in Germany will understand why Sixti is growing like a weed. It’s not a ride that impresses, but it’ll get you there.
Own Applications
A variety of developers will help you create an applications specifically for your brand. Consumer receptivity to such an app will depend upon its utility. In many cases this is going to be more relevant to a publisher (like ESPN) rather than a brand. But there are surely brands that can benefit from mobile apps.
An example would be Zagat to Go:
[7]
Mobile Widgets
Widgets have grown tremendously in popularity, and a subgroup of mobile widgets is growing strongly as well. While widgets are applications, they deserve a separate discussion because they tend to be easier to develop and because new standards are making it still easier to create compelling mobile widget experiences. Yahoo, which is the leader of widgets, offers mobile widgets in the following categories, many of which take existing Yahoo PC
functions and port them to phones:
1. Local Search
2. Email
3. Photos
4. News
5. Sports
6. Finance
7. Entertainment
8. Weather
Among the most popular mobile widgets are:
1. An eBay unit that makes managing auctions on the go easier
2. A MySpace widget that lets you stay in touch with MySpace friends even when you are away from a PC.
3. An MTV news widget that provides highlights of MTV content on the go.
You can advertise in many of these widgets or sponsor them for a period of time.
Cell Phone Coupons
Think of it as a handheld FSI – a way of getting coupons texted to you. A company called Cellfire is the leader in this segment, in which consumers opt in to receive geotargeted coupons. These coupons are for brick and mortar businesses like supermarkets, drug stores or pizza joints.
In brick and mortar, the customer simply shows their cell screen to the retailer to get the discount.
Cellfire currently works on some handset of the following carriers:
1. Alltel
2. Boost
3. Cellular South
4. Cincinnati Bell
5. Metro PCS
6. Verizon
Based upon the Cellfire Web Site, the company appears to be targeting four verticals:
1. CPG
2. Grocery Retailers
3. Chain Retail
4. Local Retail
Their pitch appears to be working. Ad Age reported (reprint available at the Cellfire Web Site) that P&G, Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, Del Monte, and general Mills are teaming with Kroger on Cellfire coupons as an effort to reach younger shoppers.[8]
[1] From the Yahoo Mobile Search Demo
[2] The count on Sunday, March 30, 2008
[3] Mobile Advertising Standards (North America) by The Mobile Marketing Association, 12/2007
[4] IBID
[5] Taken from the Hellocompany.com Web Site.
[6][6] From the Sixti.com Web Site.
[7] From the Zagat.com web site.
[8] “Package-Goods Giants Roll Out Mobile Coupons” from Advertising Age March 10, 2008
Mobile is not like TV, where you have basically three options: :30s, :15s, and product integration. The breadth of data services is remarkable and growing almost daily. Here are the biggies, and a few example ways you can use them.
Mobile Search
Mobile search works much the same way as web search, placing prominent paid search results in results. Mobile search is an ideal option for retailers because mobile searchers are more likely to be ready to buy than someone using a PC. They are out and ready to walk in your door.
[1]
One key consideration before you do this is that you need a mobile friendly site to send people to. It will likely be a “dumbed down” version of your regular site. Less graphics. More succinct text. Here’s a side by side comparison of Yahoo and Yahoo Mobile for example:
Another key consideration is that unlike in web search, there are vastly fewer sponsored search positions in Mobile. You’re either a top bidder or you are invisible.
Mobile search is purchased on a pay per click basis just like web search. Pay for performance.
SMS
Texting is by far the most popular non-voice usage of cell phones, and for this reason many companies have started their mobile efforts there. The first “S” in the acronym SMS stands for short, and that’s because a text message must be 160 characters or less in length. To give you an idea of what 160 characters means, see below:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,…
That is 160 characters. So succinctness is critical in SMS.
You can use SMS in a variety of ways:
1. Develop a text CRM program that stays in touch with consumers in short SMS bursts.
2. Sponsor text messages delivered by publishers, for example Wall Street daily recaps.
3. Offer a promotional message stream through SMS.
4. SMS summary of new headlines available on your site.
5. Offer SMS as a way of capturing email addresses and phone numbers for later marketing.
6. Use SMS as a way of gathering feedback, votes, or other perspective from users and prospects.
The possibilities are tremendous, and you will be amazed at what you can fit in those 160 characters.
But you have to be sensible about it. An SMS is very intrusive. If your messages are incessant, you’ll tick people off quickly. Think of it as analogous to a city putting a stop sign next to every driveway, so you have to stop your car 10 times per block. The nuisance of unwanted SMS messages could be like that.
Premium SMS
SMS can also be a revenue stream for certain types of businesses. “Premium SMS” charges consumers an extra fee in addition to “normal” monthly SMS charges for certain services. Dating services, horoscopes, psychic readings, stock tips, and other banal or profound bits of information are delivered via premium SMS. The money can be staggering. Premium SMS dating, for example, charges 50 cents per SMS text as you meet another cell user. My suspicion is this is more relevant to those looking for horizontal dates, given that exchanging 5 messages with someone would cost you $2.50. 10, $5.00, 20, $10. My understanding is that there are millions of people paying for premium SMS services. Even a daily horoscope is going to set you back $15 a month, so the money to be made can be very impressive.
If you are getting into the dating game, note that you options to advertise your service on TV are limited. Most networks and stations will only run your ads in overnight dayparts. This is because of the connection between premium SMS and sex-oriented properties.
Ringtones, Wallpaper, and Other Bling
Ringtones and wallpapers and games are also enormous businesses. Perhaps not relevant to most marketers, though offering free ringtones and wallpapers might be a very compelling promotion. The financial math in these businesses is nothing short of fantastic. Assuming you negotiate rights well, a short clip of a popular song will sell for $1-$3, for what is ultimately a bunch of electrons. Not surprisingly, the major media companies are all over it. Murdoch’s News Corp owns 51% of industry leader Jamster, and other media giants like Lagardare are also active in this space.
Ringtone companies generally have a bad reputation. Part of this is due to marketing practices that entice young (<18) title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2190879717530944208#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]
Now, to be fair, the site offers thousands of tones and screens and videos, but these are often the ones that hit the news whenever politicians wish to assure us of their moral concerns. Which seems to occur around election time every two years.
Games can also be very profitable, though a key challenge here is developing a game that works on a broad swath of handsets. Companies like Thumbplay and Flycell are leaders here. One senses however, that the nav buttons on this kind of content are pressed so often that the text is about to wear off, so it can be said that they’re just giving people what they want.
Mobile Banners
Mobile banners are graphical ads, just like web banners. They are usually purchased by CPM. One difference, though, is that banners are not sold by size – instead, the size of banners is optimized to the screen of the recipient’s phone. And that’s only logical. If I have a tiny screen on a tiny phone, it makes sense that the banner deployed would be smaller than on a phone with a big screen. Graphical reproduction is going to vary by device, so simpler graphics make sense for the immediate future. It is the ad server’s responsibility to identify and deploy the right banner size. This may mean that you will need to develop multiple banner sizes, just like you do for web banners.
According to the MMA’s North American Advertising Guidelines, the predominant ad sizes are:
[3]
There is naturally less ad clutter on a mobile page. You can’t fit six ads and the content that the customer requested on a small screen. But there is often less graphical flexibility, meaning that gif ads dominate.
A variety of different types of firms sell ad banners. Major sellers include:
1. Carriers, like Verizon, that sell banners on their “decks”
2. Portals, like Yahoo or MSN
3. Publishers with Mobile Pages, like ESPN or CNET
4. Mobile Content Distributors like Vindigo or Enpocket
5. Mobile Ad Networks, like AdMob
Targeting options are broadening rapidly. All of the major types of targeting are available including:
1. Contextual, meaning the matching of an ad to related content.
2. Demographic, enabling you to target by gender, age, income, and the like
3. Behavioral, indicating that you focus ads on people who have demonstrated certain browsing behaviors on their phones. So, for example, a car company might buy ads on phones of people who have visited car research sites.
4. Geographic, meaning internationally, nationally, by region, state, DMA, or even cell tower area.
Another thing to think about when you consider banners is what action are you trying to drive. Marketers can make mobile banners drive very different kinds of actions. The key options in the US, according to the MMA, are:
1. Click through to a mobile site
2. Click to call, meaning that when the user clicks on the banner, they automatically initiate a voice call from their device to the number. This will likely improve DR response rates versus communicating a telephone number that the user will have to enter into their phone.
3. Email capture
4. Ability to send an SMS (text) message or (less common) an MMS graphical message.[4]
Measurement metrics are impressions delivered, click throughs (CTRs), click to call rates, Email capture rates, and the like.
Mobile companies are generally pretty careful not to annoy users too much with banner ads. No one wants to see billboards everywhere when they’re driving on the Interstate. Evaluate any graphical ad option within the context of what you might find acceptable. Remember, people are PAYING directly for the content on their phones, so getting in the way of utility is not something you want to do.
Full Screen Graphical Ads
Phones now offer the user the option to download applications like games, tools, or other utilities. As part of a download, advertisers can be sponsors.
Sponsoring some applications like, for example, a game or a mapping function, may entitle an advertiser to a full screen ad. This will run as a pre- or post-application welcome screen or bumper. These within applications can drive users to other sponsored pages in the application, click to email capture, click to call, or click to send MMS or SMS. Here are some full screen ads:
[5]
Because phone sets have different screen sizes, such full page sponsorships will likely require you to make more than one creative size for your message.
Consumer receptivity to ads in downloadable applications is going to vary depending upon the cost of the app, the level of intrusiveness of the marketing message, and the relevance of an ad to the application. Several studies have shown that consumers are willing to look at ads if it results in an app being free or available at a much reduced cost. For example, if an advertiser offered consumers a good game for free instead of say $9.99 without ads, a large proportion of mobile users will prefer the sponsored game version.
Intrusiveness within mobile is the classic teeter totter marketing dilemma. YOU may want users to look at an ad for 30 seconds; the user doesn’t want to look at it at all. So you need to find an appropriate balance. In determining that balance, people my age (43) or thereabouts need to recognize that the attention spans of the younger set are much shorter than ours, and that 30 seconds, while tolerable in TV, will feel like an eternity on a phone.
No one wants to pay good money for an app and see a bunch of ads every time they try to use it. But if you make the app free or discounted, people will generally be OK with it. An analogy is to the EU car rental company Sixti, that charges far less than other car rental outfits, but the tradeoff is that you are driving a billboard:
[6]
Anyone who has seen the rental car charges for a compact in Germany will understand why Sixti is growing like a weed. It’s not a ride that impresses, but it’ll get you there.
Own Applications
A variety of developers will help you create an applications specifically for your brand. Consumer receptivity to such an app will depend upon its utility. In many cases this is going to be more relevant to a publisher (like ESPN) rather than a brand. But there are surely brands that can benefit from mobile apps.
An example would be Zagat to Go:
[7]
Mobile Widgets
Widgets have grown tremendously in popularity, and a subgroup of mobile widgets is growing strongly as well. While widgets are applications, they deserve a separate discussion because they tend to be easier to develop and because new standards are making it still easier to create compelling mobile widget experiences. Yahoo, which is the leader of widgets, offers mobile widgets in the following categories, many of which take existing Yahoo PC
functions and port them to phones:
1. Local Search
2. Email
3. Photos
4. News
5. Sports
6. Finance
7. Entertainment
8. Weather
Among the most popular mobile widgets are:
1. An eBay unit that makes managing auctions on the go easier
2. A MySpace widget that lets you stay in touch with MySpace friends even when you are away from a PC.
3. An MTV news widget that provides highlights of MTV content on the go.
You can advertise in many of these widgets or sponsor them for a period of time.
Cell Phone Coupons
Think of it as a handheld FSI – a way of getting coupons texted to you. A company called Cellfire is the leader in this segment, in which consumers opt in to receive geotargeted coupons. These coupons are for brick and mortar businesses like supermarkets, drug stores or pizza joints.
In brick and mortar, the customer simply shows their cell screen to the retailer to get the discount.
Cellfire currently works on some handset of the following carriers:
1. Alltel
2. Boost
3. Cellular South
4. Cincinnati Bell
5. Metro PCS
6. Verizon
Based upon the Cellfire Web Site, the company appears to be targeting four verticals:
1. CPG
2. Grocery Retailers
3. Chain Retail
4. Local Retail
Their pitch appears to be working. Ad Age reported (reprint available at the Cellfire Web Site) that P&G, Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, Del Monte, and general Mills are teaming with Kroger on Cellfire coupons as an effort to reach younger shoppers.[8]
[1] From the Yahoo Mobile Search Demo
[2] The count on Sunday, March 30, 2008
[3] Mobile Advertising Standards (North America) by The Mobile Marketing Association, 12/2007
[4] IBID
[5] Taken from the Hellocompany.com Web Site.
[6][6] From the Sixti.com Web Site.
[7] From the Zagat.com web site.
[8] “Package-Goods Giants Roll Out Mobile Coupons” from Advertising Age March 10, 2008
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