Mobile Entertainment

Advertising is the great hope of the mobile business, subsidising content purchases and compensating for falling voice and text revenues. So why does it feel like brands still don’t get it?

And for a sector said to suffer from a lack of metrics, mobile advertising doesn’t half have a lot of metrics.

Confused? Well, the lack of data refers to the relative inability of the networks to let advertisers specify which consumers they want to target.

The corresponding surplus relates to the dizzying number of statistical predictions made about how much cash the market could generate. It seems as if every research company on the planet has made a projection.

We shouldn’t be surprised. If ads are about anything, they’re about hype. Yet mobile market watchers will know to be wary of these numbers. Nobody really knows, do they? And anyway far more interesting is the complexion of mobile ads themselves. It’s probably the case that most observers think of WAP banners when they think of mobile advertising, but this plays into the perception that mobile is the internet on a small screen.

It’s not. Broadly speaking the options can be grouped into five basic types – WAP banners, messaging tags (SMS and MMS), embedded ads in content products, sponsored search listings and idle screen/tickers. Without doubt the most democratic and widely understood medium is text – which is why the ad-funded MVNO Blyk has so far eschewed richer media to focus on delivering ads that everyone can read.

But whatever the form, the wider issue is targeting. What agencies want to know is this: how can mobile help me specify the consumers I want to hit? They’re entitled to ask as mobile is usually promoted as the most personal of all channels.

The received wisdom, thus far, is that many operators have been unwilling or unable to mine their systems for targeted ad campaigns.

This issue is being addressed by companies like Bango, whose Bango Analytics platform can identify, track and build a profile of each unique visitor to a mobile site, rather than simply measure the number of visits. Its unique user ID creates an accurate picture of visitors, enabling mobile advertisers to create a clear picture of buying patterns and trends.

Meanwhile off-portal ad broker Admob regularly delivers stats that illuminate its network traffic. And what a network it is. In March alone its total impressions were up 10 per cent to 2,553,018,899.

Working with operators on metrics is Openwave. It currently offers a ‘contextual advertising module’ that can establish when and where a user is browsing and add rules to define it even further.

Meanwhile its ‘personalisation module’ collects and manipulates data to create segments and match offers to those customers.

Mayur Pitamber, product management strategist for Openwave, says some operators are enthusiastic but admits others are still unsure. He says: “Operators do have this data but it’s in silos – with browsing history in WAP gateways for example, and demographic info somewhere else. Sometimes we can identify the data in a day or two, other times in many weeks. It really depends. Generally, the tier one carriers are still investigating the space whereas some tier twos have rate cards and whole teams dedicated to the sector.”

A case in point might be the MVNO Tesco Mobile, which published a media pack for brands through its agency partner 4th Screen Advertising following successful ad trials. These trials showed that the average consumer was aged 36, with 60 per cent female and 60 per cent visiting the portal at least once a month.

Of course one of the reasons for residual nervousness about ads among operators is the dilemma of letting perceived competitors advertise on their portals. In these early days for the sector, most advertisers are content vendors. Indeed companies such as France’s abphone have emerged to specialise solely in directing users to content products. It’s now working with Ad Infuse and 4th Screen to drive advertising to its off portal site.

But for a network selling its own content the question is: do we take the cheque? As ME observed in its front page last month, this is a highly pressing issue. The arrival of the search box on the deck presents a similar dilemma, offering consumers another route away from the goodies hoarded by the carrier.

Geraldine Wilson, VP of Connected Life at Yahoo! Europe, says: “Mobile search is evolving much in the same way as it did on the PC, with display advertising creating bigger revenues than search. This is because consumers who are just beginning to discover the mobile internet stick to the operator portal. But as they go outside the walled garden, mobile search will become increasingly important.”

Of course, many would argue that this should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. It’s no accident that operator-friendly search specialists like Jumptap and Medio are now recognised as much for their ability to serve relevant ads as provide answers.

Openwave goes one further, offering a ‘broker module’ that gives the operator a chance to present ads based on agreements with numerous search networks. This way, the user gets the best results and the carrier gets a rev share. This is also the basis of the ‘federated search’ offering developed by MCN.

Another mobile advertising option attracting lots of interest is the idle screen ticker. Why? Because it is non-intrusive and provides good targeting opportunities. Tickers roll along the bottom of the mobile screen showing info and ad links. They can be left to scroll until the user sees something worth clicking on.

Vishwanath Alluri, CEO of IMIMobile, whose Ad Ring platform is launched in India, says: “You can only have one banner on a mobile page. However, with a scroller you can have multiple sponsored ads.”

Arguably, the leader in this space is Celltick, which offers the LiveScreen service. It claims an addressable user base of 226m across 15 operators mostly in the Far East. It says 80 per cent of users keep their tickers on and 35 per cent regularly click through.

Stephen Dunford, CEO of Celltick, says advertisers like the system because they get access to the management system from where they can choose to send ads out based on handset type, location and so on. He says: “The ticker is like a broadcast medium that gives advertisers the chance to build pyscographic profiles. It’s really effective. In one case we worked with Honda and generated 110,000 leads in two days.”

NOTE: To read Part Two of our mobile advertising special feature, click here.