Mario Mansour Blog

A year ago, there was only 10% of the advertising firms that have used and tried mobile advertising, today there are more than 50%. Mobile advertising can either be used as the main vehicule in a campaign or it can also be used as part of a media mix.

There are 3 drivers in mobile advertising: Consumers, Operators and Advertising companies.

Looking at the consumers side, there are 4 billions subscribers and this number is expected to reach 6 billions in 2013. Additionally in some countries like China and India, the mobile phone is the main device for internet access.
There’s a obviously limit in the consumer wallet. Ericsson has performed a study together with the consumer lab, an interview that targeted about 1 billion mobile subscribers. It was remarquable that there are a lot of thing that people can bare without if they get less money, while other things are more vital and food is one of them. It was amazing to see that connectivity (either fixed or mobile) is also at the same level as food. This means a big opportunity for the advertising industry even if consumers get less money.

Looking at the operators side, we can see that they are moving more and more into flat rates and data bundling. When it comes to the launch of new innovative services and content applications, there must be new way of funding for those and advertising is one of these ways. A proven and successful business model is the Google model which relies on delivering applications for free, and when they have taken off and reached a high level of usage, the applications are monetized via advertising.

Looking at the advertising companies, they are always trying to find new ways to reach the consumer. They consider the telecom operators as key assets in advertising because of the customer information that is possible to use for targeting users, real time campaign adjustment. Operators strong brands also play a major role in reaching out for an enormous number of subscribers.

Advantages based on industry opinions

“The potential of mobile advertising is bigger than anything we have seen before. The mobile phone is a personalized device, you always carry it with you and you have emotional attachment to it” Russell Marsh, Group Digital Strategy Director at RAPP.

“It’s personal and I think that’s one of the biggest advantages when it comes to revenue streamfor us as operators, we can actually target your personal wallet!” Hans Wahlberg, Head of applications and M2M at Telia Sonera.

“You can really pick out the customers you want to interact with or make them interact with you” Leif Janderhof, Head of Mobile Communications at MEC International.

Some of the advertising applications that are ongoing right now:

• Picture Messaging advertising with coupons
• Dynamic display on lower-end handsets particularly interesting in emerging markets
• In-game advertising
• In-application advertising, there’s a lot of space there where brands can connect with the consumer
• Mobile TV – Great opportunity to reach consumer in the palm of their hand with a new emerging and exciting media channel
• Not to forget the channels like IPTV, web, mobile broadband and even voice with possibilities like sponsored calls and ringback tones

The Hurdles in Mobile Advertising

Here are some point of vues from the industry.

• It’s very difficult to execute advertisment on mobile phones. You have to cook deals either with the telcos and accross multiple telcos or you have to cook deals with specific sites
• To make a huge campaign, different partners are used, which result in different figures. This makes it impossible to optimize the campaign in real time
• There’s a lack of measurements in the mobile world, there’s no central system to see how the campaign performed

The video below shows how Ericsson sees the advertising ecosystem