Mobile Advertising - Agosto 2009

Mobile Marketer THE NEWS LEADER IN MOBILE MARKETING, MEDIA AND COMMERCE

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A CLASSIC GUIDE August 14, 2009 $395

Mobile Advertising Classic Guide to

simple. mobile. advertising.

Mobile Marketer C L A S SI C G U I D E TO M O B I L E A DV E R T I S I N G BASIC

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Editor’s note: Mobile advertising’s appeal grows. So should its budgets

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The New York Times on mobile: All the news that’s fit to pinch by Mickey Alam Khan and Jordan Crook

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12 15 17 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 36

37 39 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Mobile is critical component of Microsoft Advertising’s strategy by Mickey Alam Khan What is mobile advertising? by Michael Becker

How to plan for a mobile marketing program by Ben Gaddis The ABCs of SMS advertising by Philippe Poutonnet SMS is key to advertising mix by Gregory J. Dunn

How brands can structure an SMS campaign by Shira Simmonds

Working with an aggregator on the lifecycle of a short code by Ben Tannenbaum How to make a valuable ad impression by Steven Rosenblatt

Mobile video belongs in the multichannel marketing mix by Frank Barbieri

Mobile will enable brands to align with consumption patterns by Alexandros Moukas The rich in rich media – goals, design and results by Jon Altschuler and Eswar Priyadarshan Role of branded apps in mobile advertising by Ken Willner Mobile delivers moment of truth at retail by David Spear A roadmap to mobile marketing by Jose Villa

Interactive Advertising Bureau – How to buy media on mobile Dairy Queen launches RFID-based mobile loyalty program by Dan Butcher

I N T E R M E D I AT E

CONTENTS

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54 55 56 58 59 60 62 64 66 67 69 71 72 73

Forbes on mobile: the new capitalist tool by Jeff Bauer

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The potential of SMS advertising by Alan Pascoe

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Reaching the fragmented mobile audience by Faraz A. Syed

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MMS advertising as a utility for advertisers by Richard Eicher

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How to ensure that the brand’s iPhone app isn’t deleted by Maya Mikhailov

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Why a mobile ad network matters to publishers by Eric Holmen

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Making a case for mobile video advertising by Thomas N. Ellsworth

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7 ways to make your idle screen campaign delivery by Jon Jackson

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Tips on branded mobile apps beyond the iPhone by Ken Singer

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The appeal of interactive voice response by Charles Edwards Flexibility is key for SMS coupons by Jeff Brown and Ron Vetter

Web analytics and mobile analytics are not similar by Jose Villa

Local TV stations see mobile in the picture for advertisers by Leon Spencer Value best practice in mobile marketing by Chris Brassington

Porsche mobile effort outperforms online display ads by Giselle Tsirulnik

A D VA N C E D

Building a successful mobile business model by Jay Neuman Hear that? Voice is killer app on mobile by Stéphane Attal

ABCs of mobile advertising optimization by Harald Neidhardt

Maximizing mobile advertising potential requires broad collaboration by Guy Yaniv Mobile advertising and the African opportunity by Alexander Gregori AP Mobile: the new wireless service by Jeffrey Litvack and Daniel Hodges

Big brands turn to mobile advertising and marketing by Dan Butcher Mobile Advertising: Smart money on smartphones by Giselle Tsirulnik Look beyond the Apple iPhone by Jeff Hasen

World Wide Where? Getting location-based mobile marketing right by Chris Glodé Why reach is the critical mobile advertising metric By Erin (Mack) McKelvey Blowing campaign budget on pre-canned data? by Andrew Bovingdon Why carrier-based billing makes sense by Jay Emmet

How to track and measure a mobile ad campaign by Bruce Braun Time to flip the script for mobile by Josh Webb

Calling for a trusted third party to manage mobile consumer data by Patrick Seymour The mobile advertising bazaar by Jamie Wells

Overcoming mobile advertising ecosystem hurdles by Scott Cotter

Hachette Filipacchi monetizes magazine titles with mobile ads by Dan Butcher ESPN: Mobile lucrative channel for publishers by Dan Butcher

What are the requirements for a mobile marketing executive? by Heather Baker Mobile advertisers continue to face legal challenges by Gonzalo E. Mon Audience engagement more important than click by Paran Johar

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Mo b ile a dv er tis in g’s ap pe al g ro ws. S o s h ou ld it s bu d ge ts By Mickey Alam Khan

are missing an opportunity to engage with their audiences on mobile and pretty much leaving money on the table for bigger competitors. Or maybe they are not putting up a better fight for mobile ad dollars. Equally, advertisers will also benefit by offering mobile consumers an opportunity to view timely offers on the go, but they need the platform and trusted media brands to make their case. So it is in the vital interest of advertisers, publishers, agencies and mobile marketing firms to get mobile advertising right and not just treat it like a stripped-down version of the wired Web. Luckily for all, there are voices of reason working to get mobile right, if this Classic Guide is any indication. The key players in the mobile advertising and marketing ecosystem – the ad networks, publishers, SMS firms, mobile marketing shops and ad agencies – contributed heavily their time and effort to produce this work. To all executives and their marketing communications specialists who helped make this edition a reality – a big thank-you for your patience and hard work. It is only through collaboration with all the key players in mobile advertising can a work like this become effective in its aims: to inform and educate marketers on the value of mobile advertising and perhaps entice those sitting on the sidelines to jump in – now. Many thanks also to Mobile Marketer’s Giselle Tsirulnik and Dan Butcher for their reporting, Jordan Crook for her help with images and Jodie Solomon for convincing others to invest in this Classic Guide and others before it. Chris Harnick is new here, but he will participate in future efforts. And then there’s Rob DiGioia, art director on this effort. As many will notice, this is Mobile Marketer’s largest Classic Guide to date – 88 pages at 16 megabytes – so try sending a link before emailing the entire PDF to friends, colleagues, prospects or clients. Rob worked many hours on getting the pages and images right, no easy task with a finicky yours truly. Thank-you to him as well, although his mutter in the newsroom was within earshot: “It passed being a guide at 40 pages. You mean the Old Testament.” I

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elcome to the second edition of Mobile Marketer’s Classic Guide to Mobile Advertising. A one-stop source for everything related to the workings of mobile advertising, this Classic Guide targets executives from brands, ad agencies, media planning and buying shops, publishers, mobile marketing firms and other marketers interested in reaching out to busy consumers on the go. While the nation is weathering this downturn, the mobile advertising and marketing sector has proved the one bright spot for marketing growth, albeit on a smaller base than most channels. Fueling that positive trend is a reality: more consumers are taking their daily lives with them on the road, including talking, texting, exchanging email, accessing work documents, searching, shopping, checking weather, playing games and consuming news and content. What fertile ground then for marketers to interact with mobile consumers. This guide comprises 56 articles authored by some of the top executives in mobile advertising and marketing. The topics graduate from basic level to intermediate and then advanced, following Mobile Marketer’s established pattern with its Classic Guide series. While the mix may seem eclectic, the guide is chock-full with advice, best practice and how-to tips on everything, from a lay of the land and an Interactive Advertising Bureau primer on how to buy media on mobile to structuring and deploying mobile advertising campaigns and programs as well as their issues, analysis and measurement. Must-read articles include viewpoints on mobile advertising and publishing from key executives at Microsoft Mobile Advertising, The New York Times, Forbes and The Associated Press.

Banner year This guide will have succeeded in its mission if it convinces readers to begin a dialogue on mobile advertising or extends the commitment of those already in the field. A lot is at stake here. Mass media are rapidly fragmenting, making the task of advertising to consumers more difficult. This is an issue not just for advertisers. Publishers also recognize that they need to be where the consumers are – on mobile devices and on the wired Web. However, as SmartReply president Eric Holmen points out in his article, “only the top 50 [publishers] account for 91 percent of all mobile advertising revenue.” What Mr. Holmen’s observation implies is that smaller publishers

Mickey Alam Khan [email protected]

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Mickey Alam Khan Editor in Chief mickey@ mobilemarketer.com

Chris Harnick Editorial Assistant chris@ mobilemarketer.com

Jordan Crook Editorial Assistant jordan@ mobilemarketer.com

Giselle Abramovich Associate Editor giselle@ mobilemarketer.com

Dan Butcher Staff Reporter dan@ mobilemarketer.com

Jodie Solomon Director, Ad Sales ads@ mobilemarketer.com

Mobile Marketer covers news and analysis of mobile marketing, media and commerce. The franchise comprises Mobile Marketer, MobileMarketer.com, the Mobile Marketer Daily newsletter and MobileMarketingDaily.com 2009 Napean LLC. All rights reserved.

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Mobile is critic al component of Microsoft Adve rtising’s strategy

icrosoft Corp. has stepped up its commitment to mobile with an aggressive push to promote new mobile services and encourage clients to run campaigns across online, gaming and mobile channels. Charles Johnson, general manager of Microsoft Mobile Advertising and a former brand executive at Procter & Gamble Co. and CocaCola Co., is charged with ensuring his company’s place on the mobile advertising map. In this interview with Mobile Marketer’s Mickey Alam Khan, the Redmond, WA-based Mr. Johnson explains Microsoft’s take on mobile and its strategy going forward. Excerpts:

What does mobile advertising mean to Microsoft? Mobile is a critical component of Microsoft Advertising’s strategy and vision to offer smarter, simpler and more cost-effective digital advertising solutions that span multiple screens, platforms and devices. We have made, and will continue to make, significant investments and partnerships to develop an agnostic platform that works on any device, so advertisers and publishers can provide their target audiences with empowering, engaging and entertaining mobile experiences on-the-go. Microsoft has a multi-screen strategy – computer, gaming and mobile, excluding its MSNBC cable channel with NBC. How does that play out for an advertiser? The ability to bridge multiple screens, platforms and devices is critical if you are going to follow your audience throughout their digital day. At Microsoft, our goal is to drive greater reach and impact with tailored ad experiences that are empowering, engaging and entertaining, optimized for the three accepted media channels – TV, PC and mobile.

What strides has the industry made this year that makes mobile advertising more acceptable to brands and agencies? The industry has made significant strides in improving the value of mobile effectiveness for advertisers and consumers. That said, I believe we still have a long way to go. While the technology is in place to drive digital to the phone, the mobile industry now needs to turn its focus on the end-to-end experience to help audiences become aware of and consider the purchase cycle throughout the day. Advertising, mobile apps and search must focus on the consumer. For example, the Microsoft Mobile Advertising platform supports location-based advertising of Bing with our exclusive YellowPages.com partnership. Together with YellowPages.com we’re able to improve a consumer’s search experience, i.e., finding a store, restaurant or place of interest nearby. Location-based advertising is a strong component of mobile search and we are already generating strong ecosystem interest in that space. Marketers who advertise on Bing can target a high-quality, searchMOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

savvy audience which is in “decision mode” from anywhere on the Microsoft network. The goal is meaningful experiences that keep the consumer empowered, engaged and entertained.

You’re in a room with a brand marketer. What would you say to him or her about mobile advertising? As a former brand marketer for Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Yum Brands, I have a unique perspective when it comes to developing and launching convenience and on-the-go consumer products for advertisers. With mobile adoption increasing around the world and mobile devices becoming more sophisticated, there is a prime opportunity for advertisers to connect with consumers who no longer use their mobile to simply place calls. Mobile advertising allows companies to connect their brands with audiences when they’re on the move and away from the computer, and do so in a way that is empowering, engaging, entertaining and meaningful. Incorporating a mobile element into a digital campaign complements other avenues for engaging today’s increasingly fragmented audiences. In fact, we recently completed a research study with Toyota in France in preparation for the launch of its IQ car that found a synergy between mobile and online campaigns. Our findings indicated that incorporating mobile advertising into the online display campaign provided a 200 percent incremental lift in ad recall and a 40 percent lift in brand recall of Toyota’s online presence.

Have you seen any mobile advertising campaigns recently that you really liked? What was the standout quality? I am really proud of the mobile portion of the “Deadliest Catch” campaign we ran for the Discovery Channel. Not only did we execute a homepage takeover of the MSN mobile site, but also with the help of Microsoft subsidiary ScreenTonic, we created a dedicated WAP site where viewers could interact by entering their cell phone numbers to receive tune-in reminders for the show via text message. The Deadliest Catch campaign was the first time Microsoft Advertising had led a simultaneous launch that utilized our full breadth of Microsoft assets including the PC, mobile and TV gaming via Xbox and Massive, and featured the first ever MSN homepage and MSN mobile homepage conjunction takeover.

So what’s the mandate that Microsoft has given you for this year and next? We’re committed to partnering with the carriers, like Verizon, and the OEMs to provide these experiences we all want our customers to have today, and continue to evolve our platform and services in the coming years. I WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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T h e N e w Yo r k Ti m es o n m o b i l e

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A l l t h e n ew s t h a t ’s f i t t o pi nc h

By Mickey Alam Khan and Jordan Crook

hile The New York Times is not immune from the advertising and circulation woes afflicting newspapers nationwide, there is no doubt that the brand has a finger on the pulse of news consumption trends. In addition to its status as one of the top-circulating broadsheets, the Times is also admired for its comprehensive wired Web site at http://www.nytimes.com – one of the most trafficked English-language news sites online. Now, the publisher is intent on planting a stake in mobile ground with its iPhone site and application as well as a site optimized for other mobile devices. Aware that consumption of news is rapidly moving to Web-enabled phones, the Times has developed a mobile presence that is evolving into the richness offered on its wired Web site but adapted to on-the-go, content consumption behavior. Such attention to detail is paying off: The Times’iPhone application has been downloaded 2 million times and the iPhone site approached nearly 1 million unique visitors in June 2009. Overall, the publication’s mobile Web presence is around 40 million page views per month. Not surprisingly, the mobile New York Times has attracted advertisements from noted brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Starwood, Land Rover, Hewlett-Packard, Continental Airlines and Cartier. However, mobile publishing requires special attention given the limitations of screen size, mobile device and data plans, as well as advertiser attitudes and consumer expectations. In this interview, Robert Z. Samuels, director of mobile product

mobile Web. The [New York Times] iPhone app and mobile Web site have grown tremendously over the past year. There have been a number of great campaigns, and we have future campaigns booked. The real value of it is the great demographic they are reaching. Our team is really delivering on the mobile ads. I think nobody underestimates Robert Z. Samuels, director of mobile the future of the mobile Web. The product development, NY Times challenge is that up until now content publishers haven’t provided a robust mobile experience. They relegated the mobile Web experience to partial feeds to third-party WAP site providers – they don’t have the same robust experience as we do on the Times. The mobile Web isn’t known for a robust experience. As content publishers update their content publishing systems, regular site content publishing systems work on more capabilities so they have the database that allows a dynamic CMS. Hopefully they are thinking about mobile so they can ensure they have the capability of producing a great mobile site internally. As you go to site XYZ it will automatically create a single-column, mobile-friendly view that has navigation scaled to produce videos or slideshows so users won’t have to pinch or scan or scroll or download an app for everything. The Internet should work like it does on PC screens.

“Nobody underestimates the future of the mobile Web. The challenge is that up until now content publishers haven’t provided a robust mobile experience. They relegated the mobile Web experience to partial feeds to third-party WAP site providers.”

development for the New York Times, offers his take on the state of mobile publishing and advertising, as well as insights into his publication’s mobile strategy and tactics. Here is what Mr. Samuels had to say.

Where do you see mobile publishing today, especially given print’s predicament? I think print has a long life ahead of it and mobile can make it more useful in the long run to tie print and mobile together. I’m not concerned with print going anywhere but mobile is a big part of the future. A lot of people have spoken about the year of mobile and I think it’s a little artificial to say what the year of mobile is because for the past five years mobile has been on a tear. I’ve been a firm believer even when people weren’t believers of the MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Do you see news consumption migrating to mobile like it is from print to online? In large part, the snacking behavior is growing but news is news. The same rankings that appear on nytimes.com and within the app is all a common CMS, common ranking. Features like real estate, showtimes, Timeswire – they’re all available on the mobile Web site. News is news. I get feedback asking to see science to tech to sports to obituaries. It is largely snacking-oriented, but there are some users that do want to read the full article on a better device, BlackBerry or LG Voyager, Palm Pre or iPhone. Many people want to read full articles. But for those who are waiting for the bus or in a café, there is a large amount of the snacking behavior. But there is the utility aspect of it as well. People can log in on the WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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mobile site the way they log in on nytimes.com, check stocks, check My Alerts, check weather by ZIP code, check movie times through ZIP code. They can search through the same real estate listings as on the [wired] Web site. Getting back to paper, it is a valuable experience. People like sitting and reading it. But maybe they want to see the large, glossy pictures of real estate, they can bring up the article on their iPhone and see video in addition to reading the business blog. They can see images associated with the real estate listing. They can send links in SMS to whoever is looking.

Is this established behavior or is this hoped-for behavior? It is absolutely established behavior. Our page views are growing. This is established behavior. Much of it is really an extension. A natural extension of what occurs on the Web. People love our content and now [that] it’s much more available if they have downtime, they can click on the news or read an interesting story without being tethered to their desk at home or the office. Not every second of a kid’s soccer game is compelling, so maybe they’re scanning articles at a soccer game. Some of it is otherwise. Maybe they’d be off reading a novel, and now they can be reading the Times content more than they otherwise would be because not everyone is able to carry around a newspaper everywhere. But with their must-have BlackBerry, maybe it’s because they’re always checking in at work or personal email, they also have the ability to consume our content all around the world.

Do advertisers get mobile? It’s been a little bit of a labor of love over the past couple years. We have a few key members on the team who are educating the folks. I go on some of these meetings, whether external or internal. People are taking notice. They are getting to understand the value of the click to call offer in an ad, being able to click right to a destination site and purchase goods like it’s on the regular Web. It’s a unique demographic that are likely to click on ads and transact. With a new campaign launch of new books and from the ad we’ve helped facilitate the creation of a destination site when advertisers didn’t have a formatted destination site. We’ve helped for a modest cost to create the destination site, helping the ad buy, read about author, read an excerpt from the book, and you could click off to a mobile version of Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com and it would be a link right in to buy that book on either of those commerce sites. We have a lot of campaigns that are booked. Some of our recent advertisers on mobile include Starwood, Polo Ralph Lauren, Land Rover, Hewlett Packard, Continental Airlines and Cartier.

So right now your mobile presence is the iPhone app and site mobile.nytimes.com. But on the BlackBerry all you have to type is nytimes.com. Right now we aren’t redirecting Android, Palm Pre and the iPhone, but that may occur in the future. How do you make the decision on which to redirect? Not redirecting the other phones has been held off until I’m happy with the experience we have for the higher-end phones, robustness that those browsers can support. We’ll be doing a redirect for those devices as well. We also do have a Palm Pre app. We are one of two news apps to be there at the launch of the Palm Pre. We worked with them prior to launch to develop our app for the Pre. We’ve been very pleased working with Palm.

How do you make the case to advertisers and, specific to the New York Times itself, how do you make the case for mobile? Are you selling it as a single channel buy or a buy across all properties, as you typically do with online? Some of the media planners look and suggest it as part of a larger cross-platform sell. Many times it is sold that way with larger advertisers. Sometimes it’s only the app or the mobile Web. Really it’s sold in multiple ways. Obviously we think there is great value in reaching our audience across different channels. But if there’s somebody who is really interested in only being on the iPhone app, we’re content working with that. What about the ad rates for mobile? CPMs for mobile are still very high. People are happy with the click-through rate. We have fairly elevated CPMs. The pricing of it hasn’t been a point of discussion lately.

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What do publishers need to do to get more acceptance from media planners, agencies and advertisers? Need to ensure they have a good product. Forgetting about content is not good. We are very happy we have the Times’ content. By a good product I mean if you have a good iPhone app or mobile Web site, you have to have a good product. From there, do you have the team that can provide the packaging of the Web site, if that’s relevant to the advertiser? Is it portrayed in such a way that it’s a compelling platform reaching a great demographic, and not an afterthought of some other site? WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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It’s a premium product, just like our print product has been a premium product for over 100 years. We are creating the same premium experiences in mobile. They need to treat mobile as a serious platform, create good ad units and portray it as such. Explain to advertisers that many of their great customers are consuming content in this new manner. It’s here to stay and it enables great consumer behavior like buying immediately or click to call. We can tell advertisers that “x” percent are coming from this phone or that phone and it’s a great story all around about the move to consume content in the mobile environment. Keep portraying it as the future and as a premium experience. In terms of an ad buy it’s a great way to reach our readers.

It’s unfair to compare the BlackBerry and the iPhone because there is only one iPhone and many BlackBerry models. All of our Palm views are holding strong. A lot of the higher-end Verizon phones consume quite a bit of page views. What is the average time spent on the Times’ mobile properties? No, we don’t have that data [across the board]. It’s pretty hard from a browser and we don’t have reporting from a browser on a mobile device. We aren’t ready to give out our iPhone app reporting. We do have time spent there.

What’s your most popular content across all devices? Latest news, most emailed, business, tech – really people read everything. I mean it, I get feedback. If somebody doesn’t understand mobile navigation and can’t find dining and wine or obituaries, I hear it from the readers. Everything is read on mobile. Opinion obviously is huge for the Times.

Your site is optimized for every device. We have a database with hundreds of phones. We had an issue with the weather icon displaying for touch phones. We use numbered bullets that accelerate things on the phone. For touch phones we remove the number bullets on the first eight articles so we just have regular dot bullets instead of the number bullets, because the number bullets are largely allowing the user to rank. We don’t do that on the regular Web – the numbers imply some numeric ranking. The benefit of that is many phones have accelerator keys. When there is a 2 there and it jumps and opens the link, rather than scrolling to the track ball. With a touch device there is no need to scroll to it – you can just click it on the screen. It looks cleaner and follows form on the regular site.

Is the audience the same as online and in print? It’s a lot of crossover, fair amount of international – people who have never had a free press where they are and people from South America, Africa, all over Asia. Feedback comes back on the mobile Web site on how they’re so happy they have something formatted for their phone and clearly didn’t have home delivery [of the New York Times print edition] or a PC, but now they’re able to consume our award-winning journalism. We’re happy to be able to bring it to these people.

What kind of traffic are you seeing on your mobile properties? Our app has been downloaded coming up on 2 million times. Our mobile Web site is approaching 1 million unique on the iPhone in June. Our mobile Web presence is right around 40 million page views a month. That’s bigger than most wired Web sites. Yes, it’s bigger than most wired Web sites. [But] you have to monetize your mobile channel. This is what I’ve been losing my hair over the past couple of years.

Which device sends you the most traffic? We’re dominated by usage in smartphones. If you combine the BlackBerry, iPhone and Palm Pre, the iPhone and BlackBerrys consume the most amount [of New York Times content].

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How does the Times position its print product versus its online product versus its mobile product? There’s two angles. Positioning towards the readers and then there is our place in the advertising agency ecosystem. From the advertising side, we keep on with the theme of “We’re a multichannel, multiplatform company,” whether it’s video podcast, mobile Times reader, [Amazon] Kindle, we want to provide content to our readers however they want to read it. We work with carriers and manufacturers directly to make sure we’re on their roadmap and give the best experience on mobile. It’s about creating more value for print by being able to read the article in print but maybe then see the video [and] you want to email the story. Then from the advertising side, really we have a single sales team that is well-versed in all our content. We are thinking to the next generation of products, whether it be netbooks, whether the Crunchpad comes to market. There is no place that we don’t want to be and it creates more value for both our readers and our advertisers. I Reach Robert Z. Samuels at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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W hat is m obile a dve r t is ing ?

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By Michael Becker

e live in a mobile world. We live in a world where the majority of the global population carries with them a mobile phone or wirelessly enabled mobile terminal. It is estimated that nearly 60 percent of the world population – around 4 billion people – now have a mobile phone. In the United States, mobile phone penetration has reached roughly 75 percent of the country’s population, or 232 million individual mobile subscribers. The mobile phone is considered by many to be the most effective channel for direct and indirect marketing and advertising. Advertising is a critical activity within the practice of marketing. As marketers it is our job to communicate, deliver and exchange value with our audience and advertising. Including mobile advertising is a key tool that marketers can leverage to fulfill this mandate. Many marketers, however, consider mobile marketing and mobile advertising as being the same thing. They are not. This article provides a definition for mobile advertising and emphasizes the need to create a persistent and lasting mobile strategy alongside mobile advertising experiences to enhance the possibility of long-term, sustainable, value exchange between marketers and their audience. Mobile marketing is practice of communicating, delivering and exchanging value through and with the mobile channel. It encompasses all marketing to mobile subscriber engagement activities, including direct, proactive, permission-based voice and messaging engagements, mobile enhancement of tradition and new media, as well as mobile advertising. Mobile advertising, simply stated, refers to the practice of placing a marketing message or a callto-action within any of the many media paths of the mobile channel.

Calling out benefits Marketers benefit from mobile advertising through the generation of brand awareness, prospecting for new customers and leads, generation of new sales and the stimulation of community. Publishers – the owners of mobile media properties such as SMS groups and mobile Web sites – and content owners employ mobile advertising as a means of revenue generation or cost abatement. Finally, consumers benefit from mobile advertising by being able to access content for free simply by being willing to receive the ad, rather than having to pay for the content. Advertising may also provide consumers with the benefit of being exposed to valued products and services of which they otherwise may not have had the opportunity to become aware. The two most common methods of mobile advertising for most people when they think about it includes the insertion of an ad within an MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

SMS message and banner placement within mobile Web sites and applications. However, there are many other paths that can be leverage for advertising within the mobile channel, including: • Voice and messaging paths, short message service, multi-messaging service, automated interactive voice response channels Michael Becker, VP of mobile • Local frequency proximity strategies, iLoop Mobile paths, specifically Bluetooth and Wi-Fi • Data paths, carrier portals, mobile Web sites, content (for example. radio, mobile television and games), downloaded and device-resident applications, and the idle screen of the phone • Organic and paid search as integrated within mobile Web, application and related services Each of the above paths is illustrated in the mobile advertising ecosystem figure below:

The figure also highlights a number of key industry players and channels that are worthy of note. Marketers and their agencies leverage and partner with these players, since without them mobile advertising would not be possible. These players include: • Wireless carriers, the providers of wireless infrastructure and services, such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint, as well as mobile virtual network operators such as Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile • Mobile ad networks such as Jumptap, Millennial Media, AdMob, WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Third Screen Media, Yahoo and Google, to name a few, which enable the mobile ad marketplace and bring publishers – The Weather Channel being one of the most successful in the market – and marketers together in order to support the buying, selling and serving of ads to the mobile phone. This process is limited not just through the carrier networks, but also over Wi-Fi. Many new Wi-Fi-enabled phones, such as the iPhone or Palm Pre, and dedicated devices including the Sony PlayStation and the Apple iPod touch generate a significant amount of mobile advertising traffic and consumer engagements via Wi-Fi connections • Mobile ad aggregators play the important role of aggregating mobile ad inventory from multiple ad networks in order to amass ad inventory to fulfill demand. Aggregators provide the message traffic connections between the other players and the carriers • Mobile search providers. These players enable organic and paid search • Application service providers. These players provide all the application services such as text messaging, mobile Internet site development and management, content delivery, voice and related services

Experience the mobile Web Mobile advertising is a powerful consumer engagement tool. However, marketers are often missing out on a tremendous opportunity. The majority of leading brands and marketers have not considered or executed on the development and maintenance of a persistent mobile presence, or they may think that enough consumers have phones that can visit a regular wired Web site. This is evidenced by the fact that most company Web sites, for example, are not ready for the mobile Internet. Yet few consumers – less than 10 percent – have phones that have any chance of providing a reasonable experience with an untailored site. Company Web sites that are not tailored to provide a compelling and lasting consumer experience when visited by a mobile phone leave consumers with a bad experience. Consumers see garbled pages, nonfunctioning menus and poor navigation. They are left wanting. These companies are missing a huge opportunity by not having a persistent mobile presence as a foundation for any and all mobile advertising campaigns they may run. For example, when marketers run mobile Web banner advertising campaigns they will drive traffic to a landing page that provides the details surrounding a specific promotion or program such as a brand awareness generating sweepstakes program. In this context, marketers will often run the program for a limited period of time. Once the campaign is over, they will turn off the site and shutdown the campaign. What these marketers may neglect to consider, however, is that if the campaign was successful, consumers will want to come back and engage the brand via mobile. For instance, the consumer may try going to the brand’s Web site on its mobile phone. But if the brand’s Web site is not mobile-ready, the consumer will be left wanting and with a poor experience. This poor experience may drive the consumer away. At best it may minimize the effect that the campaign may have made and at worst have a negative and lasting impression on the consumer’s take on the brand. To this end, successful mobile marketing and long-term consumer engagements through mobile require more than simply running mobile advertising programs. They require a long-term strategy and approach, an organized commitment to customer-relationship-building and a focused approach toward the communication, delivery and exchange of lasting value with one’s audience. I Michael Becker is vice president of mobile strategies at iLoop Mobile, San Jose, CA. Reach him at [email protected]

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H o w to p la n f o r a m o b il e m ar ke ti n g p r o g ra m

By Ben Gaddis

obile is much like the Wild West right now, plagued with many of the same issues that we faced in the early days of the Internet: little to no standardization of operating systems, browsers, ad unit sizes and formats, and CPMs. Add to that the fact that in most organizations there is no “mobile lead,” and mobile initiatives end up in a virtual no man’s land. Marketers have more questions than answers. In this article, we will navigate the mobile badlands and tackle the three most common questions we hear from our clients: When do we plan? How do we plan? How much does mobile cost? Start thinking about mobile as early as possible. The biggest issue that we see marketers encounter in the mobile space is a lack of planning. So if you are asking that question, you are ahead of the pack. The more important question is “How do we plan?”

Commit to a lasting dialogue As you begin to plan, look at mobile the same way you look at all your marketing communications: as part of a long-range plan. Then realize that it is more than a series of campaigns – it is an ongoing dialogue with your consumer. The cost of acquiring a mobile contact is high and so are customer expectations once you have acquired them, so it is critical that you deliver – for the life of the relationship. Many marketers fall short by missing that long-term view and instead look at mobile in terms of campaigns or flights. Much the way a goldfish continually rediscovers the castle in its bowl, marketers tend to lack object permanence when it comes to mobile. Marketers start fresh with every new campaign (“Oh, look, a chance to talk to customers via mobile!”), yet the customer has been there since the moment they opted in, expecting valuable communication from the brand. Show your customers you remember them by picking up where you left off. Find a way to create a conversation that delivers value and moves the consumer farther down the funnel with every interaction. This means planning for what happens before, during and after big campaigns. If a customer texts in to get more information or a reminder about a product, what happens when that product is released? Do they get another text message with a link containing directions to the stores where they can buy that product? Great. But then what? If you set up your campaign correctly and can track purchases, you now have the mobile number of a loyal customer. Engage them. Ask them what they think about the product. Can it be improved? Do they need an accessory? And by the way, here is a coupon for that accessory. This kind of long-term planning turns mobile into a powerful CRM tool that can drive repeat purchase. We know that yearly planning can be daunting, especially when marketers do not have a clear picture of how they will be using mobile throughout the year. The goal is to approach mobile with the same long-term commitment as any other channel – we do not know exactly how we are going MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

to use it yet, but we have planned for it. We cannot tell you how many marketers we have talked to recently who have run a “mobile test” and cannot answer the question, “How did it perform?” That is because more often than not, success metrics and analytics are not defined upfront. First of all, what is the goal? Is it brand lift? Engagement? Conversion? All of those things can be measured, as long as you plan for them Ben Gaddis, director of mobile and emerging media strategy, T3 upfront. The frequent failure to get measurable results often comes from poor planning. Set the goals, and make sure that what you are benchmarking against yields a clear, actionable view of success or failure.

Budget for ongoing conversations, not just campaigns The No. 1 question we get is how much to spend on mobile. It is kind of like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” or “What’s Twitter’s monetization strategy?” There is no good answer. A simple SMS campaign may cost $20,000 whereas a yearlong mobile initiative may cost $500,000. During the planning phase the best question to ask is, “With the available budget, how do we make the greatest impact on our customers?” Before you start looking at mobile campaigns, analyze your current consumer touch points. Is your Web site optimized for mobile devices? If not, that cost may need to be included in your mobile budget. Buying a banner ad on weather.com’s mobile site is not going to be very successful if the click-through takes you to a site that is not optimized for mobile. Next, look at individual campaigns. How do you thread campaigns together to create an ongoing conversation with your consumer instead of a series of one-offs? Allocate resources during the down times to keep your consumer engaged. Now look at how you are going to drive traffic and interaction with those campaigns. Use mobile advertising, traditional media, your Web site, retail signage and other vehicles. Any first mobile effort will need to do some heavy lifting to acquire customers, so frontload your budget accordingly. Once you have consumers who have opted into your mobile list, the cost of subsequent campaign efforts goes down. Determine where the budget comes from. Some organizations pull all mobile costs from a media budget, regardless of whether it is truly a media expense or not. Others budget specifically for mobile. Some look at mobile as a part of the “digital” budget. None of these options is wrong, as long as mobile has a strategic and early seat at the planning table. I Ben Gaddis is director of mobile and emerging media strategy at T3, Austin, TX. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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The ABCs of SMS advert ising

I

By Philippe Poutonnet

n August 2008, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign made either history or political spectacle when it attempted to announce Joe Biden as the vice presidential candidate over SMS text message. SinglePoint and Distributive Networks handled this campaign. Before the campaign could send the text message announcement to supporters, mass media scooped the news and broke the story, but the magnitude of the campaign’s mobile efforts is noteworthy. Nielsen estimates that the Biden text was received by 2.9 million mobile phone users nationwide over the course of that weekend last August, making it one of the biggest, broadest mobile marketing stunts to date. Why make such an important announcement over a text message, though? It is no new insight that the media landscape exploded in the past decade to yield dozens of new marketing channels. Why tap text messaging as the outlet for one of the campaign’s most important messages? Surely not for buzz alone? This is why: SMS is currently the most widely used medium for mobile advertising largely due to: 1. Its popularity: 80 percent adoption among mobile users, according to comScore 2. Attractive pricing options: Bucket plans pricing models 3. Simple device requirements: 160character message SMS-based messaging campaigns remain the most popular form of mobile advertising today, with considerable interest levels How do consumers feel about talking to among brands and brands in the same way they talk to advertisers. their friends and family?

How does SMS work? The process of executing a common short code marketing campaign is actually very easy thanks to a number of firms that have emerged as valued partners and simplified the process. This leaves a marketer to focus on the best way to engage their customers 40, 60 or 160 characters at a time, which is the current length limitation on each text message. Multiple ad mechanisms have been created by SMS advertising firms such as: • Click to WAP: One SMS with content and a WAP Web address at the bottom • Click to call: One SMS with content and a phone number at the bottom

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

• Click to video: One SMS with a link pointing to a video at the bottom • Click to listen to a personal message: One SMS with an IVR at the bottom pointing to either a call center or voicemail • Click to capture personal information: One SMS with either a WAP Web address at the bottom pointing to a WAP site or an IVR number or a SMS response, where the user will be asked to enter personal information.

Philippe Poutonnet, director of marketing, SinglePoint

Benefits of SMS advertising

Short code SMS Short codes have played a central role in messaging-based mobile advertising campaigns. They are four-to six-digit-long numbers assigned by the wireless carriers to a mobile marketing application. Short codes, issued by short code registry NeuStar on behalf of the carriers, allow mobile subscribers to send SMS to a short and easy-toremember number rather than the full ten-digit number used in personto-person messaging. This increases the probability of users responding to the campaign and interacting with the mobile marketing application. Short codes can also relate well with the brand being marketed. For example, a brand such as Apple could have a short code of 27753 (which translates into APPLE on the mobile phone keypad) for its particular application. This introduces a fun element also and makes it easy for the mobile subscribers to remember the numbers, provided they know the brand being marketed. The initial SMS-based campaigns were restricted to subscribers of the carrier launching the mobile marketing application. For example, AT&T Wireless’ short-code SMS-based “American Idol” campaign was previously restricted to its own subscribers. WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

PAGE 17

Moreover, an application provider had to negotiate separately with each carrier to persuade them to launch the campaign on its network, which led to assignment of different short codes for the same mobile marketing application across carriers. This created issues for brand marketers that could not advertise a single short code in their “call-to-action” advertisements. To address these issues, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) reserved a set of five-and six-digit numbers that can be assigned as short codes in a mobile advertising campaign. Referred to also as common short codes, they range from 20000 to 99999 and 222222 to 899999 for five-and six-digit codes, respectively. Content providers or application providers can reserve a short code for a particular campaign and then interact with each individual carrier to reserve that number on the network. Reserving a common number ensures consistent brand representation. While content providers include brands or advertisers that sponsor programming or interactive short-code SMS promotions, application providers develop the actual software application. Connection aggregators have authorized links to carriers and connect the messaging application to the carriers. In some cases, an application provider may also choose to establish the connection with the carrier itself, especially when more than one campaign is being handled. Carriers can launch campaigns on their networks.

Is SMS advertising effective? For all this texting, it is fair to wonder what effect SMS advertising could have on consumers. For that matter, how do consumers feel about talking to brands in the same way they talk to their friends and family? According to Nielsen’s second-quarter 2008 Mobile Advertising Report, 16 percent of text messagers nationwide see some form of text message advertising every month. Teens, in their endless texting, are the most likely to engage with some form of SMS advertising —35 percent of teen texters say they see some form of text message advertising every month. African-American and Hispanic mobile subscribers are also more likely than the typical texter to engage with some form of text message advertising in a month – 24 percent and 23 percent, respectively. Of those text messagers who recall seeing some form of advertising while using text messaging, 45 percent say they have responded. Furthermore, the most popular response action to any type of mobile advertising – text, mobile Web or video – in the second quarter of 2008 was actually to send a text message. Among mobile subscribers who saw any form of mobile advertising in the quarter, 25 percent say they responded at least once by sending another text message – emphasizing the interactivity and engagement this medium presents. I Philippe Poutonnet is director of marketing at SinglePoint, Bellevue, WA. Reach him at [email protected]

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SMS is key to advertising mix

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By Gregory J. Dunn

The operator takes the appliance serial number and asks the customer to send the item to a specific address for repair. The customer o matter which country you call home, your favorite television sends it, then calls to see if it was received. Then the customer calls show to watch, or which Internet news site greets you in the again to see if it is being fixed, then morning, the story hits us all the same: The economy is in pain. calls again to ask when it will be How does this current state of affairs affect our daily way of comshipped back to the firm. municating? Do you still call your business customers? Still check the By using SMS, the customer status of your recent bank transactions? And most importantly, do you sends a text message to the repair still send that text message asking: “R U ready to do business?” group with the appliance serial I would say the answer is a resounding yes. number. The customer gets a return According to a Portio Research report entitled “Mobile Messaging SMS message that gives the the adFutures 2009-2013,” SMS traffic is expected to increase to levels of dress to which the item must 5.471 billion by 2013, and worldwide revenues to$124.2 billion. be sent. Closer to the reality of times and looking into the rear view mirror When the item is received, the at 2008, Sybase 365 has seen another banner year in the number of repair center confirms via an SMS Gregory J. Dunn, VP of product management, Sybase SMS and MMS traffic processed through our platform. alert to the customer. And when the For the year, approximately 210 billion messages traversed the initem is repaired, the customer receives an SMS alert with the tracking frastructure, which is 135 percent more than 2007 numbers. number for the return shipment. In the U.S. marketplace during fourth-quarter 2008, greater than What is the difference? 160 million users reportedly used text messaging. This was a 16 percent A minimum of five phone calls at the cost of $6 per minute versus increase over 2007. five SMS messages with a total cost of about 25 cents – a differential that cannot be ignored. Other benefits to the firm and the customer include reduction in call wait times and increase in customer satisfaction. SMS is new to the advertising mix as a means to get the message across. Advertisers like the flexibility More marketers are embracing SMS as a new and effective medium to reach their customers that mobile offers and are set to capEnterprises turn to SMS italize on the broad base of users that may not be sitting in front of the The unrivalled global usage of mobile messaging is becoming intelevision when their ads run. creasingly attractive to enterprises as a generator for new revenue SMS provides a targeted and secure means of delivering informastreams as well as providing value-added services for end-users. More tion to users who can take action to call a number, click-through to a marketers are embracing SMS as a new and effective medium to reach Web site or even make purchases. their customers. Indeed, SMS provides all of that in one solution. It allows subHere’s an example of how SMS can lead to cost-reduction and inscribers to not only view a piece of information, but to be totally intercreased customer satisfaction: An electronics manufacturer uses SMS active with it, as we see with location-based services, mobile to lessen the burden on their call center for returned and warranty goods. advertising and mobile banking. I This company has a single return center and a single phone number that customers can call. When an appliance breaks down, the customer Gregory J. Dunn is vice president of product management at Sybase, calls the 800 number. Reston, VA. Reach him at [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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H o w br an ds can st ru ctu re an S M S c am pa i gn

By Shira Simmonds

ow do brands best structure an SMS campaign from beginning to end? Our clients are constantly voicing concerns on how to put all the pieces of the mobile puzzle together. Here is what I typically advise. First and foremost, make sure mobile is integrated into the planning phase and not after the advertising and media campaigns have already been structured. The mobile component is highly dependent on the various factors of the ad campaign. What media channels will advertise the mobile call to action? How many impressions are anticipated? What markets will

Make sure mobile is integrated into the planning phase and not after the advertising and media campaigns have already been structured.

the campaign launch in? These and other critical issues must be visited during the planning stage. Second, understand the client’s challenges just as much as you understand the client’s goals. If this is a mobile coupon campaign, what are the limitations at the point-of-sale? Does the client have scanners that can read mobile bar codes? Can they easily upload codes into their cash register system? MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Do all stores have the same pointof-sales system? Third is the call to action. Put yourself in the shoes of the brands’ target audience. What would incentivize you to pick up the phone and text in? Use this opportunity to research the brand’s successful and unsuccessful campaigns, as well as any mobile campaigns that have perShira Simmins, president, formed well in the same vertical. Ping Mobile Here is where the benefits of a mobile campaign transcend traditional campaigns. Figure out the best way to take advantage of the trackability and viral aspect of the mobile campaign. For example, if the brand is selling a product, use the mobile channel as a way to incentivize clients to make a purchase and create mass exposure – for example, “Send this to four friends and enter the UPC code of the product for 4 additional entries into the mobile sweep”. Fourth, make sure the legal components are all in place and the campaign is fully compliant with the carriers and Mobile Marketing Association’s rules, regulations and policies. If your common short code is not provisioned, make sure you give yourself a good four months before the launch date to complete the provisioning process. For campaigns that require a quicker launch date, partner with a mobile company that has provisioned and pre-approved short codes. Fifth, build a database. Make sure to ask consumers to double-opt-in to receive future messages from the brand. What makes mobile marketing unique and powerful is segmenting and profiling this database. Sixth is content. Ensure that the content is written so that the call-to-action is easy to understand. For example, I strongly recommend against the keyword being a number. This will lead to many errors on the consumer’s end. Make it easy and make it clear. Take out your phone and text this WORD to this SHORT CODE. Moreover, make sure that the mobile call-to-action is clearly outlined in the ad and is present for the duration of the ad, not quickly flashing on and off a banner or television spot. Seventh, define success metrics prior to the start of the campaign and make sure your client is looking at the same metrics you are. This will be critical when discussions of renewals take place. I

Shira Simmonds is cofounder and president of Ping Mobile, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Reach her at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Wo r k i n g w i t h a n a g g r e g a t o r o n t h e l i f e c y c l e o f a s h o r t c o d e

By Ben Tannenbaum

elcome to the world of mobile marketing. So you have decided to run an SMS marketing campaign, which is the most ubiquitous form of mobile media. Smart move. Your goals and objectives have been defined and you have come up with a creative concept. Now what? Allow me to introduce you to the aggregator, also known as the connectivity provider – the company with the connections you need. As defined by the Common Short Code Administration, mobile aggregators have authorized connections to multiple wireless networks. They maintain the security-, technical- and service-level requirements of each wireless network. Aggregators act as a bridge enabling content providers who wish to use short codes to connect to wireless carriers and, ultimately, consumers. They also function as your guide to the mobile ecosystem. Because of their location directly in the center of the mobile value chain, aggregators have unique insight into mobile marketing issues from a carrier, application provider and content provider perspective. The aggregator is an essential partner for anyone wanting to run an SMS-based marketing campaign. Now that you understand an aggregator’s place in the mobile value chain, let us concentrate on the lifecycle of a short code, otherwise known as the process of taking your SMS campaign from concept to a implementation. Timing is everything when launching an integrated marketing initiative. Prepare for the ride of your life as we embark on the six-step process comprising the lifecycle of a short code. To be fair, this is not exactly thrilling, but the knowlDevote sufficient lead time to SMS edge of how to launch a short programs, as this process may take upwards of six to eight weeks. The last code is a prerequisite for sucthing you want is promotional material cess in this industry. going to print before the service is live. While it may seem tedious now, you will be thankful that you took the time to learn it as you outmaneuver your competitors in the mobile space. 1. Carrier application: Once you have chosen an aggregation partner, it is time to get down to business. You will need to work with your aggregator to complete an application for the carriers. All carriers have campaign guidelines, generally emulating the Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices. But it is important to be aware of additional carrier-specific guidelines to which you must adhere. While these applications are usually simple, it really depends on MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

how ambitious and complex you plan to make the user experience. Your aggregator will help you adapt your proposed campaign to fit within the confines of what carriers allow. Once that is accomplished, your service will be submitted to each carrier, individually, for review. 2. Commercial approval: The carrier will acknowledge that the program meets all Mobile Marketing Association and wireless-carrierspecific guidelines. 3. Technical provisioning: A connection, enabled on the carrier network, will be formed between the carrier and aggregator for your specific short code. 4. Testing: Once those steps are completed, it is time to test the campaign. You will want to test all aspects of your service, ensuring the best possible user experience. Next, your aggregator will confirm that your service is functioning correctly and is operating within the confines of carrier guidelines. Some carriers will also conduct their own tests to validate your service. If everything behaves as expected, you will receive official notification that your service has been certified. 5. Certification: The final approval required before a program can accept live traffic. Your camBen Tannenbaum, business develpaign is ready to launch. opment associate, MX Telecom 6. Post-production: Maintaining a live campaign is reasonably simple. Carriers revise their guidelines from time to time, so you will want to make sure your program reflects any changes in policy. Carriers may potentially audit your service for carrier compliance. As long as you are running the campaign you submitted, there is nothing to worry about. While the terminology discussed above may sound somewhat foreign, do not let this process overwhelm you. Your aggregator will guide you through each stage in the lifecycle of a short code. Your ultimate takeaway should be a clear understanding of the process such that you can effectively integrate it into your project timeline during the planning stages of a marketing campaign. As mentioned earlier, timing is everything when launching a mobile marketing campaign. By understanding the stages and timing associated with the lifecycle of a short code, you will easily be able to integrate SMS into your campaign instead of adding it as a disconnected afterthought. Be sure to devote sufficient lead time to SMS programs, as this process may take upwards of six to eight weeks. The last thing you want is promotional material going to print before the service is live. Navigating the mobile ecosystem should not be complicated. As long as you know the players and processes, you are well on your way towards launching an SMS campaign. I Ben Tannenbaum is business development associate at MX Telecom, New York. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Ho w to make a va lu ab le ad i mp ressi o n

By Steven Rosenblatt

obile is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “capable of moving or being moved.” By advertising on the mobile Web or in a mobile application, you are not only making your brand message “capable of moving” with the consumer, but you are also providing them the opportunity to “be moved” by the experience. This opportunity is often measured by an advertising currency known as an “impression.” According to the Mobile Marketing Association, an ad impression “transpires each time a consumer is exposed to an advertisement.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau notes that an ad impression is “measured as a load in a Web user’s browser.” What these definitions do not include is a method for determining the value that each impression brings to the brand. Many advertisers are asking today how they can determine where best to invest their budget to make that impression count the most, particularly across the Internet and mobile. In questioning, many advertisers are finding that a mobile impression “moves” consumers more than those in other media, and also works as a great activator for cross-media campaigns. So why is that the case? A mobile advertising impression appears in a different environment and engages the consumer in a different manner. Let us dive into these two key differences by comparing two digital media, mobile and the wired Internet.

CPM each for a total of $60 for the “advertising attention” on the page. Thus, your one ad on the page gets you 17 percent of that attention for your $10 CPM. On the other hand, the average mobile publisher sells one display banner ad on a page. If that ad is also at a $10 CPM, you now have 100 percent of the “advertising attention” for one-sixth of what that Steven Rosenblatt, SVP of ad would cost you online. sales, Quattro Wireless This, of course, does not account for the effect of the ad on the consumer. Research has demonstrated that mobile ads actually drive higher engagement.

Engagement There are many ways to measure engagement, but the most common and universal one in digital media is the “click” on an ad unit. The unique properties of the mobile experience drive more consumers to click on ads than do on the wired Internet. What does this mean in regards to the value of the impression? Let us take a look at a little more media math: For a $10,000 media buy at a $10 CPM, you are buying 1 million impressions. Based on the average clickthrough rate (CTR) for online ads (as Environment reported by comScore), 0.01 percent of The mobile Web page or application consumers will click on your ad for a is, due to the nature of mobile screens – total of 1,000 engaged consumers. whether a smartphone, basic mobile For the same 1 million impressions Many advertisers are finding that a mobile impression phone, gaming device or netbook – a in mobile, accounting for a CTR of .05 “moves” consumers more than those in other media, and smaller piece of real estate than an percent – actually on the low end of what also works as a great activator for cross-media campaigns Internet page. our clients experience – you have now enOne consequence of this is the limited room for advertisements. gaged 4,000 more consumers. Most pages and applications have one or two ads on each screen. However, mobile engagement does not stop there. Not only do you Compare this to the typical wired Web page, which has six ads, alhave more engagement with your brand, but the quality of engagement though many have much more, particularly in the highly-coveted niche is also higher. areas such as automotive and women’s interests. One illustration is the results seen in one client’s integrated crossThis disparity in ad clutter affects not only engagement but also the media campaign, where sample requests from mobile consumers exabsolute dollar value of the impression. posed to an offer were double that of those exposed to print. On the Internet, the true cost of an impression, when bought on a Smart marketers are including mobile advertising – on the mobile cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, is actually higher than what advertisers Web and in applications – in their media plans to make a “valuable imsee on their bill due to the dilution of the value of that impression bepression” and engage consumers. I cause of the clutter on the page. To illustrate this in a very simplified example, looking at the averSteven Rosenblatt is New York-based senior vice president of ad sales age wired Web page, a publisher sells six display banner ads for a $10 at Quattro Wireless. Reach him at [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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Mo b i le v i de o b e lo n g s in t h e multi channel ma rketi ng mi x

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By Frank Barbieri

here is no arguing the evidence: Audiences are changing the way they consume media. The proliferation of video-capable mobile devices and the availability of Apple’s iPhone and other sophisticated smartphones mean consumers are doing more while on the go, including watching video. Nielsen’s recent A2/M2 Three Screen Report reports that mobilevideo-viewing has grown a significant 52 percent in the first quarter of 2009 from the previous year, up to 13.4 million U.S. consumers who watch an average of 3 ½ hours of mobile video each month. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the number of mobile video subscribers grew overall as well to 18.6 million, a jump of 13 percent from the previous quarter, according to Nielsen Mobile in February 2009. Mobile users expect an experience similar to what they can do online, and are getting it. Those spoiled media-sponges. We love them. We are them. In answer to consumer-demand, mobile video ad inventory is growing at unprecedented rates and offers brand advertisers new, innovative options beyond just the banner. The addressable market is large enough to move the needle and the quality of the content now mobile is safe for Fortune 200 advertising. The time to act and get involved is now. Here’s why.

Mobile video advertising works In our recent campaign effectiveness studies, mobile video ads beat online video ads in every measure. We have seen as much as eight times higher increase in purchase intent than what is seen from typical online video campaigns, three times higher increase in unaided awareness, and nineteen times higher increase in aided awareness, Frank Barbieri, CEO of Transpera compared to online video norms. The audience for mobile video may be smaller than online right now, but the engagement and efficiency of the medium is hands-down the best of any digital media. That coupled with the fact that the mobile video viewer demographic is a highly attractive one for marketers makes it a must-have in the digital toolkit today.

Switch Campaigns combining mobile video and banners together outperformed more traditional mobile display campaign norms as well. We have seen mobile ad awareness increases. For example, mobile video outperforms mobile display norms by almost 8 percentage points – that’s 46 percent higher than the mobile norm. Further, mobile video viewers have the highest recall rate of any mobile data users, at 55 percent. Cisco Systems is forecasting mobile traffic will grow 66 times during 2008-2013 to 2.5 million terabytes per month. The primary driver of that growth is video, which it believes will account for 64 percent of mobile traffic in 2013, more than triple data’s 19 percent share. Cisco believes that most of the mobile video consumed will be on demand, not streamed live. Apple, to offer even more astounding figures, has more than 45 million iPhone and iPod devices in market worldwide and has recorded more than 1 billion downloads of the 65,000-plus applications in a year since the Apple App Store opened. There is no denying the sizeable addressable market that is now capable of consuming elegantly delivered, on-demand video content. And it is a great place for marketers to be today and in the future. I

The audience for mobile video may be smaller than online right now, but the engagement and efficiency of the medium is hands-down the best of any digital media MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Frank Barbieri is chairman/CEO of Transpera, San Francisco. Reach him at [email protected]

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Mobile will enable brands to align with consumption patterns

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By Alexandros Moukas

he idea of sitting down in the evening to watch an hour of scheduled television is quickly becoming archaic with consumers now deciding how and when they want to consume media. Everything is on the consumer’s terms. With services such as TiVo and Sky+ in Britain and Web sites including BBC iPlayer, Joost, Veoh and Hulu globally, audiences are now in control of their media consumption schedules. According to a recent report by The Future Laboratory, roughly half of consumers ages 16-35 now watch TV online. We now have so many time-saving devices that society goes through tasks in 24 hours that would have taken 31 hours a decade ago, according to U.S. think tank OTX. To address today’s always-connected consumer, content providers are now offering short-form entertainment and lifestyle programming on mobile devices. Brand marketers need to take notice. Nokia recently announced the launch of its new mobile TV channel, Capsule 96, where each program on the channel is 96 seconds long. Previously, brands and marketers considered 7 minutes to be an ideal “content snack” in media terms, but now 7 minutes is considered too long if it is viewed online or on a mobile device. There is an increased demand for shorter programming to the point where we see TV companies asking, “Do programs need to be half-an-hour long?” To this end, broadcast TV network CBS has begun offering mini versions of shows, including The ability to create content that instantly appears on the Internet via users’ mobile “CSI” and “Survivor,” devices means people increasingly see themperfectly formatted for selves as editors, directors and creators of mobile devices to cater to media, rather than simply consumers. this audience. As more people use their mobile devices and other channels to watch their favorite shows, we will see a shift from scheduled programming to on-demand services that fit in with consumers’ on-the-go lifestyles. People want to be switched on and have everything in one place. Creating, editing, consuming and sharing media will all happen simultaneously – and the demand is for devices that allow this. As the digital natives – generations of consumers who have never MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

lived without the Internet – see their mobile phones as devices for consuming all their media, the mobile phone will look to incorporate all forms of their fragmented media consumption from music, TV and video, right through to social media applications. The capabilities for media creation are also increasingly apparent, as the wealth of user-generated content – from citizen journalism to mini documentaries – means the mobile device is being used as a platform for self-expression through outlets such as Twitter and various applications to send video and images. Many recognize the need for mobile companies to develop into a social media network. Predicting that in five years phone users will create 25 percent of the entertainment they consume on their mobile devices, Nokia aims to provide a platform on which its users can create and share music, photos and other media in much the same way MySpace does now. Therefore, the ability to create content that instantly appears on the Internet via users’ mobile devices means people increasingly see them- Alexandros Moukas, CEO 0f Velti selves as editors, directors and creators of media, rather than simply consumers. Globally, citizen journalism sites such as OhmyNews (South Korea), Avisen (Denmark) and Spot.Us (United States) present news content from the public. In fact, five of the top 10 books sold in Japan in 2007 began as mobile phone novels, or keitai shosetsu. These novels are incredibly popular, with Japan’s largest keitai shosetsu site, Maho i-Land, containing more than 1 million titles and achieving more than 3.5 billion hits per month. Today, the amount of time spent consuming media is not actually increasing, but new technology means people are smarter about how they consume. Audiences are now able to watch TV or other video content when they want, on any device they want. With the growth of user-generated content, people will increasingly expect to provide input on the creation and development of their media as well. Creating, editing and integrating advertising into shows tailored to consumers’ personal tastes means we will see the growth of more targeted micro-media production companies. These niche companies and the highly personalized content that consumers create will open opportunities for brands and marketers to align their offerings more closely with the media that consumers actually want and to better reach them when they tune in. I Alexandros Moukas is CEO of Velti, London. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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The ric h i n ri ch medi a – g oals, de sign and resu lts

By Jon Altschuler and Eswar Priyadarshan

he introduction of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and the T-Mobile G1 in 2008 has fostered an explosion of creativity in the mobile advertising space. The full browser capabilities of these devices, combined with the touch-screen user experience, have moved mobile display advertising to the forefront of ad innovation. For increased effectiveness, mobile advertising units combine significantly higher share-of-voice on smaller screen real estate with demonstrably higher user engagement due to an optimal user experience. We will explore the “rich” in rich media by exploring the creative options and designs of innovative new rich media ad unit types as well as valuable insights into their performance.

Mobile rich media ad units break down the classic barrier between the display banner ad and the landing page.

What is a rich media ad unit? Mobile rich media ad units break down the classic barrier between the display banner ad and the landing page, whereby a banner click causes the browser to switch to a new advertiser page. In contrast, rich media includes the advertiser destination within the static banner. With a single banner tap, the ad units expands or collapses to reveal or close an entire destination site within it, including interactive images and video content. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

How do the various mobile platforms and developers support rich media ad units? The iPhone, Android, BlackBerry Storm and Palm Pre devices use a Web kit or equivalent browser which has advanced CSS and JavaScript support. What all this technical language means is that software developers can create dynamic ad units that leverage video, audio, 2D animation and location-based services (LBS). The actual device hardware enables the interactive capability such as tapping into the accelerometer (shake) and 3D animation. Also, you also need to work with a partner which provides sophisticated development and ad serving solutions to ensure proper ad performance, optimization and conversion tracking.

Jon Altschuler, chief creative architect, Quattro Wireless

Eswar Priyadarshan, chief technical officer, Quattro Wireless

How effective is the rich media ad unit? As with any mobile ad unit, usability, performance and engagement are crucial to an ad’s success. The rich media ad unit redefines these metrics and criteria by creating an integrated ad viewing experience in an optimized, expandable environment without leaving the current browser. Mobile rich media ad campaigns have yielded significantly better results than their corresponding wired Web equivalents. Not only does the unit generate 10 percent to 20 percent more traffic on a fraction of the overall Internet media spend, they command 25 percent to 35 percent better click-through rates compared to their wired Web equivalents. The impressive metrics showcase the effectiveness and high engagement of rich media in an overall campaign. The advent of innovative user experience capabilities and full browser functionality on modern mobile devices provides fertile ground for advertiser creativity and the creation of unique experiences. Advertisers looking to engage more consumers with their brand should integrate rich media executions into their mobile campaigns. I Jon Altschuler is chief creative architect and Eswar Priyadarshan is chief technical officer at Quattro Wireless, Waltham, MA. Reach them at [email protected] and [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Role of branded apps in mobile advertis ing

By Ken Willner

orward-thinking advertisers are turning to mobile applications as a viable marketing tool to reach targeted audiences with brandbuilding content, offer special promotions and drive customerloyalty programs. Mobile applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Google Android and Palm Pre devices enable the delivery of content and experiences to their customers, providing a unique opportunity for consumer connection, brand awareness and access to information. Significantly more compelling than banner advertising, branded mobile applications can offer a deeper level of sustained engagement with customers. A year after it opened in July 2008, the Apple App Store contained more than 65,000 mobile applications, and that number is growing every day. While some applications are more of a novelty, many others offer useful or entertaining features and provide iPhone and iPod touch users with genuine value-add interaction as part of everyday life. As a result, brands are recognizing the effect that mobile applications deliver. They are beginning to integrate them into their comprehensive marketing campaigns. For example, several television shows, including “American Idol” and “The Today Show,” have developed their own applications to give their viewers both a more interactive show experience and highlight the show’s brand messaging.

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

This experience meets the Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for enabling a user to opt-in to the show’s application, and gives these broadcast shows a way to stay connected to their current users as well as attract new online and offline viewers. The dynamic flexibility of the application also offers a significant opportunity for brands to work with other advertising partners to advertise to a pre-screened audience that aligns with the brand’s content. In the Zumobi application for Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi Sporting News Baseball, the popular sports site SportingNews.com has provided trusted professional baseball content combined with a utility application to track fantasy leagues, scores and top news. This new application presented consumer brand footwear and apparel brand adidas with a unique opportunity to directly connect with sportsloving enthusiasts. By becoming an in-application advertiser and partnering with SportingNews, adidas created an ad featuring video content, a contest, and other ways to engage end-users, creating what brands have been seeking since the dawn of advertising – a way to reach only the audience they want. This co-branding opportunity is a perfect example of how in-application advertising can go beyond the standard banner ad, fit into a broader integrated marketing campaign, engage a targeted audience and offer it an experience that is interesting to them. As more feature-rich and interactive applications come to market, brands will want to capitalize on the online communities that they are developing through their mobile applications and generate new revenue streams through consumer purchases, co-branding relationships and sponsorships, and advertising and promotional activities. To this end, mobile advertising and, more specifically, in-application advertising, will be one of the biggest opportunities for generating revenue as the mobile marketing industry continues to develop. I Ken Willner is CEO of Zumobi, Seattle. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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M o bil e d eli ver s m om e nt o f t ru t h at r et ai l

By David Spear

n a past life while working in marketing at Coca-Cola Co., we deployed an extremely effective strategy based on the company’s vision to put a Coke “within an arm’s reach of desire” for everyone in the world. This strategy proved to be highly successful in expanding distribution to the far reaches of the world and providing special moments of refreshment. Today, mobile is a wonderful medium that also creates a special “moment,” one that puts interactive value right in the palm of a consumer’s hand. And now that consumers can interact with content anywhere, anytime, mobile delivers the ultimate “moment of truth” in milliseconds well before anyone walks into a retail location. No doubt, there will always be that MOT at the retail shelf and point of trial. But mobile now jumpstarts the process by delivering the initial brand message to a consumer well ahead of the point of retail interaction. Importantly, for those mobile campaigns that add highly relevant and compelling content, mobile becomes a medium of influential proportion. The good news is that mobile is so pervasively entrenched in all our lives that retail is just one major vertical where mobile creates intrinsic value.

Think about other vertical markets where mobile is successful – foodservice (particularly pizza), real estate, electronics, healthcare, automotive and broadcast television content. In all of these industries, companies are using mobile to deliver unique points of access, engagement and relevancy in true best practice form.

No question about it If you are still skeptical of mobile, you are not alone. But let me pose a few rhetorical questions that may change your current perspective. 1. How is it that a simple mobile SMS texting game draws 10,000 to 20,000 opt-in users per day? 2. How is it that a mobile pollen counter can provide a health-conscious consumer with detailed pollen counts down to the ZIP code, instantly, anytime, anywhere? 3. How is it that an interested home buyer can now view and virally send all content for a listed home to a friend or spouse across town or 2,000 miles away? 4. How is it that select TV broadcast stations’ mobile pageviews dwarf their online page views? 5. How is that Hispanic clickthrough rates average three to 10 David Spear, EVP, sales and times higher than English-language marketing, LSN Mobile campaigns on most mobile advertising networks? The answer is simple. Mobile is the forward access point delivering these unique moments of truth and doing so in fun, engaging, and high payoff ways.

Mobile’s the real thing Fact is, the power of these mobile moments is incredible. By its very nature, mobile is personal, intimate and quickly initiates a one-toone, trusting relationship with the user. I ask you, which other device gives an advertiser these sets of human dynamics – ready to be leveraged for the advertiser’s benefit – all in the palm of a consumer’s hand? I think you know the answer – zip, nada, nothing else. And this is why we see the momentum with mobile marketing campaigns across the land. Look around and take note of the many organizations that have the brands, properties and audiences to develop unique moments upon which mobile marketing can deliver. I submit to you that the landscape is full of opportunities right in front of our eyes. All it takes is the fusion of creativity and the unique properties of the technology behind mobile advertising and marketing to deliver the right moment. I Now that consumers can interact with content anywhere, anytime, mobile delivers the ultimate “moment of truth” in milliseconds well before anyone walks into a retail location. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

David Spear is executive vice president of sales and marketing at LSN Mobile, Atlanta. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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A ro a dm ap t o m ob il e ma rk e ti n g

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By Jose Villa

Also, if you look carefully, you can usually determine if consumers are already trying to access your Web site via mobile devices. here are numerous paths on the road to a mobile marketing stratArmed with this information egy – SMS, MMS, LBS, email, mobile Internet, mobile adveryou can determine what to prioritisements, mobile games and applications. tize in your mobile strategy. If you There are also multiple devices to deliver your strategy directly into use personas, think about modeling the hands of your target consumers. With so many paths and means for your personas’ mobile behavior and delivery, you need a roadmap before getting started to reach your ultiadd that texture to their descriptions. mate marketing destination. For example, if most of your According to comScore, the number of people using their mobile product catalog is your most popudevice to access news and information on the Internet more than doular page, and some of that traffic is bled from January 2008 to January 2009. coming from mobile devices, do Among the 63.2 million people who accessed news and information not create a mobile application that on their mobile devices in January 2009, 22.4 million (35 percent) did sends users to your entire site. OpJose Villa, CEO of Sensis so daily. timize your online catalog for the The good news is that your target customers are probably already appropriate devices and make it easy to browse and purchase. out there and reachable via mobile marketing. Develop new programs such as SMS campaigns and mobile ads The bad news is that marketers may be tempted to make the mistake once you are further down the road. of implementing the latest buzz tactic – such as creating an iPhone apThe next step is to truly understand your digital marketing objecplication or simply porting over a Web application to fit a 3G device tives –Web or mobile – vis-à-vis your audience’s goals. Are you lookbrowser – and calling it a day. But a ing to increase sales? Is your goal to lack of strategy comes at a high price increase online traffic? and can lead nowhere. Knowing your businesses’ digital direction will help determine what The three-year roadmap route to take and where and how to inDo not think of mobile marketing corporate mobile in your plan. as a standalone world of marketing After figuring out your goals, put and communications. yourself in your consumers’ shoes: Mobile is effective when it is part What do they want, what are they of your integrated marketing commulooking for, what type of experience nications and you must plan and take or relationship do they want to have the time to ensure all parts work with you? well together. If your research reveals that your You also need to look ahead to consumers’ needs and goals differ where evolving mobile technology is from your own, meet them in the midheading and be ready for it. Three dle. Use the roadmap to help find years is a good timeframe to accompoints of intersection where mobile plish this. Any less time would not can facilitate the connection between allow you to plan, implement, monitor, your current strategy and what your measure, revise or make predictions customers want. about the quick-changing technology Mobile makes it possible to make to which mobile is subject. your brand truly on-demand and acMake sure you do not just hop on a bandwagon or The first leg of the trip is to undercessible at all times, but such an ophitchhike your way to mobile space. stand everything you can about memportunity must be handled with care bers of your target audience. How old are they? Where are they from? and a clear sense of direction. How do they purchase? Are they Web- and tech-savvy? Which social Make sure you do not just hop on a bandwagon or hitchhike your networks do they belong to? What do they want from you? How do way to mobile space. It is easier to get lost than to make plans for travel, they get to you? but the time you invest in the latter can make a big difference in imIf you do not have access to reams of customer data, looking at Web proving the overall experience for you and those traveling with you. I analytics information from your Web site is a great place to start. Web analytics will reveal a great deal of about the people who visit your Jose Villa is CEO of Sensis, Los Angeles. Reach him at site, what content they view and which browsers and devices they use. [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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H ow t o buy m edi a on mobil e AN INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU PRESENTATION

hile mobile appears to be a complex ecosystem with its own vernacular, the buying process itself is very similar to other familiar platforms including the Internet. This article will guide you through the process in plain English, and get you started as a first time mobile advertiser. The key to tackling your first mobile assignment is to remember that mobile advertising is much like advertising on any other medium. It is about finding the right places to connect your client with the right audience to deliver the right message. In fact, mobile is an execution point on your current advertising strategy. Simply put, mobile is another medium to add to your arsenal to target the right consumer. We will provide a few straightforward steps to get you started. Before you begin reaching for solutions, answer a few questions to understand the marketer’s advertising goals to determine what role mobile will play in their media mix. The most important of these questions being, is the objective to increase brand favorability, launch a new product, direct response or a customer retention initiative? Once your core media objectives have been answered, the route to take with mobile becomes much clearer. When creating a mobile campaign it is important to remember that there are multiple channels for reaching mobile eyeballs. They include mobile Web sites, downloadable applications, mobile messaging and mobile video, all of which can be used individually or as a unified campaign across not just these mobile channels but across your more traditional channels to create a complete 360-degree campaign.

Recommended planning process As a general rule of thumb, the less budget and less time you have the more you should focus on the mobile Web-display ads. As budgets increase and your time allocation to put towards mobile grows you can expand into messaging, traditional media integration and out-of-home mobile campaigns. Figure 1: Mobile ecosystem advertising opportunities

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

But for simplicity we will cover mobile Web and messaging in detail, spending less time on mobile activation and less common mobile channels. In the beginning of the planning process, it is important to gather basic information that is vital to any successful advertising campaign. Since mobile is a newer platform, this step can be overlooked due to the misconception that the basic rules of advertising do not apply. Ask yourself the following questions before launching any campaign: Key questions

This article will give you the background information to help answer these questions, as well as provide an overview of the marketplace, definitions, and practical examples to gain a greater understanding of mobile as an advertising platform. The best campaigns keep the user experience in mind. For consumers, mobile offers convenient information, entertainment, and exclusivity. Tailoring campaigns that deliver marketing messages that are also convenient, entertaining and offer exclusive content or discounts is the key to success.

Overview of the U.S. mobile marketplace Audience composition Because of the interest in mobile, many reports have been issued around the demographics and profiles of users. Although the absolute numbers will change, there are certain key themes and trends that will continue.1 • Mobile phone penetration is upwards of four out of five people in the United States and more people now have a mobile phone than have PC-based Internet access. This is especially true for older adults and lower-income individuals. • Mobile Internet usage continues to grow. Over the last three years usage has grown approximately 25 percent per year. With smartphones becoming more affordable, advanced and widely adopted, we will likely see a greater increase in 2009. Currently, 40-45 million mobile subscribers use the mobile Internet regularly. • Minorities are significant mobile data users across all features and applications. • Mobile is not just youth-focused – texting behavior may skew a bit younger, but the bulk of the mobile Internet usage comes from 2544-year-olds.

Data from: InsightExpress Mobile Research (Waves 1 - 5, October 2007 - March 2009); Pew Internet & American Life Project; Nielsen Mobile; comScore

1

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Magna, a unit of Mediabrands, projects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow from $169 million in 2008 to $409 million in 2011. Other industry forecasts indicate that the average campaign budget will triple over a similar time period. There are currently three main categories of buys: • Test buys: $15,000 - $50,000 • Expanded buys: $50,000 - $150,000 • Scaled buys: $150,000-plus Buys in the expanded and scaled ranges have recently grown in popularity, but the process of determining the buy size is very similar to the way advertisers decide on budgets for the Internet campaigns. It is simply a matter of first identifying the goals and success metrics for the campaign and setting spend relative to expected returns. Mobile advertising options

Mobile advertising actually comprises a number of different specific inventory types and creative options. Brief descriptions of these follow. However, a main point to take away is that different mobile advertising venues work best for different campaign goals, whether brand building, or driving some kind of direct response. The chart above offers some insights as to which kinds of mobile placement work best to deliver a given campaign goal.

Inventory types

Mobile Web/display – Just like PC-based Web ad inventory, there are banners that display on a mobile Web page. Typically, a brand or agency buys mobile display ads for increased exposure of a product or service. Banner inventory is purchased based on impressions (e.g., CPM) or direct response (e.g., cost per click). Typical formats include graphic banners, graphic banners with text link, text-based banners. Some important differences to keep in mind are: Typically, a mobile page has one banner at the top and may also have one banner at the MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

bottom. This leads to less clutter and potentially higher response rates. However, if you are paying on an impression basis, be sure to understand how many of your impressions may appear “below the fold” on mobile screens. Remember that a mobile user is less likely to see a banner ad at the bottom of the page. Note: You can measure impressions accurately below the fold on smartphones, specifically with some applications that run on the BlackBerry and iPhone. Low-end phones will have smaller screens on which to display a mobile Web page, so corresponding size limits exist for the banner ads. This means the media buy may require different creative for different sizes of ad, because content that works well on a larger banner may not work when compressed into a smaller space. But companies now offer technology that allows for all the images to be sized (transcoded) on the fly to the specific handset. Rich media is currently more limited on mobile than on the PCbased Web, with generally only the higher end phones capable of displaying rich media. Also, there are limitations on creative complexity. Nonetheless, there have been key developments over the past twelve months. Several leaders from the online rich media space and mobile ad networks have rolled out rich media ad units, especially focusing on the iPhone. Additionally, some solutions allow advertisers to execute rich media experiences across any device (iPhone or otherwise), requiring advertisers to submit only a single set of creative assets. As more advanced phones come into the market, this ad format will become more widely accepted. Messaging – Some publishers offer a brief text ad inserted at the end of a text message. Users can reply to text messages to take action on the ad and (when possible) click on links to a mobile Web page. These ads are limited to 40 characters but they have the advantage of reaching a large base of handsets. Just about any mobile phone can receive text messages. Paid search – Similar to the PC-based Web, buyers can bid on keywords for paid search ads that appear as sponsored links above natural search results. These same ads can also appear when the keyword bid matches the content of a mobile Web page. Today, the mobile Web has more browsing pages than search results pages, so this matching of keywords to mobile Web page content gives advertisers additional reach for their performance-based keyword bidding. Keep in mind that a number of factors affect mobile paid search: • Shorter ad titles – typically, 15, 20, or 25 words at most. • Mobile relevancy of landing page – your landing page should render a mobile-appropriate page on as many devices as possible. • Search buys may differ due to differences in search-term popularity: mobile content, local search, news/sports/entertainment and social networking. • Queries are seeking actionable results and less likely to be looking for reference information: if it is a travel-related query, it is more likely that the user is on the go, rather than researching a trip. Video – Mobile video ad opportunities are still developing as

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mobile devices increasingly have the ability to display video clips. While mobile video today has more limitations than PC-based video formats, it continues to mature. Voice – Audio ads can play before or after a voice-based conversation, voicemail, or voice-enabled information (e.g., 411.) Aside from highly specific applications, mobile audio or voice ads remain rare in the U.S. today. In-app – Ad inventory that can exist inside of applications and games in various formats. Application and game developers increasingly offer this format since they can leverage ad revenue to offset the consumer’s purchase price and increase the application/game’s adoption. Location-based advertising within non-connected devices – This type of advertising is primarily seen on devices that use radio data systems (RDS) and GPS technology to serve advertising based on a consumer’s location or intended location. Portable navigation devices that are advertising-enabled are a unique medium to reach consumers when they are on the go and making purchase decisions. The advertisements are text-based and some are audio-enabled. Several calls to action exist to engage the consumer with your brand: click to route to the nearest retail location, click to coupon, and click to call (if the device is enabled). Location-based advertising within connected devices – This type of advertising is primarily seen on wireless devices that use GPS technology to serve advertising based on a consumer’s exact location in relation to a merchant’s retail location. The ads are served within applications, include robust campaign reporting metrics, and support full graphic capabilities. Several calls to action exist to engage the consumer with your brand: Click to route to the nearest retail location, click to coupon, click to call and click to mobile site. Point of interest placement services – Ensure that your retail locations are accurately included within navigation and mapping applications so that your customer can easily find you. The advertiser will provide a list of locations. The service provider will verify the accuracy of the locations and include them within the core mapping product that is distributed for the use of mapping and navigation devices and applications.

Cross-platform digital buys including mobile Today there are two parallel interactive inventory buys: online and mobile. When buying online and mobile inventory the key is not to simply try and implement the same creative execution into online and mobile media types but extend the idea to the mobile space with mobile specific execution of the idea. Three things to consider: • Try and tailor the idea to the platform, not just the creative execution • The size of the mobile site, Web site and TV audience matters if you want to track campaign success across platforms • Make sure the campaign is long enough to recruit a healthy sample of unduplicated users (three months or more) and strong enough (3 to MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

5 million impressions) to generate statistically sound sample sizes At this nascent point in the market, CPM rates online and mobile from the same publisher vary and some publishers are bundling mobile into the online buy. Measurement across online and mobile is not seamless. The IAB is presently working with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to extend online ad measurement standards to mobile recognizing many of the similarities but also the unique challenges and advantages of mobile inventory. As the consumer’s starting point and end point are often different in the mobile world, cross-platform parallels and insights are trickier to obtain. Some of the largest publishers are just now beginning to figure out how to accomplish this with statistically reliable datasets. Mobile messaging services such as SMS and MMS allow “interactive buy” associated with traditional media like digital out-of-home, TV and retail. Now the buyer can see the mobile phone as a “mobile mouse” to “click” on the push media whether this is in Times Square, at a baseball game or over coffee at the local diner. This opens up a world of interactive convergence and creative buying opportunities. Expanding the definition the interactive buy allows the buyer to move the consumer out of the silos of digital-out-of-home, TV and print more effectively.

Advertising on the mobile Web Getting started Buying advertising on the mobile Web is similar to buying display advertising on the Internet. Graphical, interactive display ads are the predominant ad unit. Although, in most cases, mobile Web banner ad impressions can be purchased on a cost per thousand (CPM) or a costper-click (CPC) basis, mobile offers the potential for targeting capabilities beyond that of traditional media. As this develops further, we would expect to see a range of targeting options made available covering context, demographic, and behavioral attributes, as well as location. Any targeting options made available will comply with existing national level, legal and regulatory frameworks governing privacy and personal data. Some operators and publishers that have mobile Web sites sell mobile ads directly, while others allow their inventory to be sold by a third party, either as premium inventory or as part of a mobile ad network. As with the PC-based Internet, planning a buy depends on setting goals around audience size and desired demographics. Measurement firms such as Nielsen Online and comScore offer audience data for mobile Web sites. The biggest difference between buying mobile Web display ads and Internet display ads is that mobile Web ads are not sold by unit size. Because the sizes and resolutions of mobile phone screens vary, the way the ad creative looks on those mobile phones will also vary. The sizes of mobile Web banners as defined in the MMA Mobile Advertising Guidelines ( http://www.mmaglobal.com/ mobileadvertising.pdf ) are optimized to best fit the mobile phone on which the ad is being viewed. This improves the user experience, ad readability, creative flexibility and effectiveness. This is why many publishers and ad networks may ask you to provide multiple versions

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of your banner creative with your mobile Web campaign.

Mobile landing pages So what happens after the user clicks on the mobile display ad you have developed? Where do they go? This is an important part of your mobile campaign and needs the same degree of attention that you applied in developing the earlier creative. These landing pages (i.e., the page that appears when a user clicks on an advertisement) need to be customized and formatted specifically for the mobile environment. The page should be designed to reduce the amount of scrolling needed and should be formatted to the specific phone experience – which may mean developing multiple versions of the landing page for the different phone types (smartphones such as the iPhone) versus feature phones (Razr phone). By way of example, experiences customized to the iPhone can be either portrait or landscape in orientation. It is not recommended that you direct users to the Web page you use for PC-based interactive campaigns. Rather, direct users to a mobilespecific landing page to further engage them. The landing page is your chance to convert users into customers or leads. A good mobile landing page will not only be formatted for the mobile screen and browser but will also have the following qualities: • Clear call to action • Not too wordy • Visually appealing with images, where possible • Load quickly

FOUR KEYS TO CREATIVE EXECUTION Mobile display campaign metrics The success of a mobile advertising campaign can be measured in a variety of ways but generally fall into two buckets: direct response metrics and ad effectiveness metrics. Direct response metrics – Direct response metrics are commonly tracked in other forms of digital media. The simplest measurements are ad impressions rendered and click-through rates obtained. Additional measurements include any number of conversion rates, such as clickto-call, data opt-in, and other forms of interactive measurement. These performance results will vary by campaign type, messaging and calls to action. However, most mobile campaigns today generate significantly higher click-through rates than computer-based Internet campaigns. Ad effectiveness metrics (branding) – Ad effectiveness metrics provided by companies such as Dynamic Logic or InsightExpress measure how advertising exposure affects key metrics distributed across the purchase funnel of a product or service. They deliver metrics that can be compared and benchmarked against similar studies conducted with traditional and other digital media. Upper funnel metrics such as brand recall and message association measure overall awareness of your ad message. Lower funnel metrics such as brand favorability and purchase intent measure to what degree the audience was persuaded by your message. In short, such metrics allow you gauge the degree that your ad and brand have been recalled and will increase consumer action. Below is an example of metrics you can expect from these studies, along with normative data comparing mobile to online performance.

Advertising via mobile messaging The key plus to text messaging alert campaigns is reach. Nearly every mobile handset in the U.S. can receive text messages, and media companies offering opt-in messaging are in some cases delivering upwards of 20 million or more messages in the U.S. per month.

How to buy mobile messaging campaigns

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Various publishers, particularly those offering time-sensitive information (e.g., news, sports, weather) offer their customers alerts via text messaging. These text alerts reserve the available space in the alert (approximately 40 characters) for a brief message, link to a mobile landing page, or short code-based call to action. Because many publishers offering mobile messaging campaigns request or require registration, it may be possible to sponsor messages based on target demographics or at the very least location (based on

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the handset’s area code). More common today is simply to buy a certain number of messages, and target contextually based on the content.

Mobile messaging campaign metrics Absent messages with a call to action, it can be difficult to track metrics related to SMS campaigns – there is no automated upstream path. Most U.S. carriers can offer a “reject receipt” (blacklisted, handset cannot accept SMS, etc.) and “delivery receipt” to confirm that the message got to the network and in most cases to the user phone. As the phone is a very personal device and short code message subscriptions should follow a requirement of an opt-in by the consumer, it can be inferred that consumers want, and generally read, the sponsored messages they receive. However the only 100 percent confirmation of the message being opened is: • The user replied to the text call to action • The user clicked on an embedded mobile link When a text message ad includes a call to action, the success of a mobile advertising campaign can be measured in the same way as display advertising: via direct response metrics and advertising effectiveness metrics. Direct response metrics – Direct response metrics are commonly tracked in other forms of digital media. The simplest measurements are ad impressions delivered and response rates obtained, such as click-tocall, click-to-WAP, keyword response, data opt-in, and other forms of interactive measurement. These performance results will vary by campaign type, messaging and calls to action. Ad effectiveness metrics (branding) – Ad effectiveness metrics provided by companies such as Dynamic Logic or InsightExpress measure how advertising exposure affects key metrics distributed across the purchase funnel of a product or service. They deliver metrics that can be compared and benchmarked against similar studies conducted with traditional and other digital media. Upper funnel metrics such as brand recall and message association measure overall awareness of your ad message. Lower funnel metrics such as brand favorability and purchase intent measure to what degree the audience was persuaded by your message. In short, to what degree your ad and brand have been recalled and to what degree will they increase consumer action.

Creative recommendation for mobile messaging campaigns The overarching advice for sponsored-by messages in text messaging (or multimedia messaging) is not surprising: keep it short. Advertisers must weigh the tradeoff between using an interesting, but perhaps vague message, which triggers a “curiosity” response, and opportunity for further communication, and a more targeted call to action or branding message. The text message portion of a campaign is like a haiku. Advertisers

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with well known or ubiquitous slogans can leverage them to great effect in a text ad. However, it is clearly a challenging venue for a complex message.

Activating mobile from traditional media One of the great opportunities that mobile messaging provides is that it can act as a digital gateway that can be entered from traditional media. Print, outdoor and even packaging will always deliver the reach that is needed for a strong media plan. However, it can often lack in its ability to be engaging and encourage immediate action from the target audience. Mobile activation permits you to: • Leverage traditional media that you are already using • Drive incremental traffic to your mobile content • Promote immediate and targeted action The following two methods can be activated today and do not require incremental capital spending. Both methods drive traffic to your digital content and should be considered when doing anything in mobile.

Common short codes Common short codes (CSCs) are a string of five or six digits (depending on the country) that a mobile user can send a text message to and receive information or content in return. Remember that 53 percent of mobile subscribers use SMS to communicate every day (Nielsen Mobile) and for many it is a function that has become second only to making a phone call. CSCs offer brands and organizations an efficient and easy way to take advantage of text messaging as a way to connect and communicate with consumers. SMS keywords can be used to trigger service updates, enter sweepstakes and even receive coupons or discounts. Today, CSCs are the most widely available and carrier-accepted way of activating cross media to mobile campaigns. Shortcode services need to be approved by each participating carrier network. Once the service is provisioned on a short code the carriers may allow for the owner of the short code to run “keyword” differentiated services off this code. However these services need to be compliant with MMA guidelines and not diverge from the original application. The owner of the code needs to manage the Terms & Conditions, help screen, info screen, customer service, and any opt-in and opt-out (STOP message) centrally.

Activating short codes There are two different methods that can be used when activating short codes, each with their own benefits: Shared short code – This method allows a marketer to activate a code very quickly (1-2 days) while maintaining ownership via the key word (text “brand name” to xxxx). This might be a better option for one-off or short term projects. Dedicated short code – This method takes significantly longer (412 weeks) and is typically more expensive, but it is the only way to guarantee ownership and performance for those that plan to use SMS for multiple projects. A dedicated code can be purchased through the Common Short Code Administration ( http://www.usshortcodes.com/ ). Once the code is purchased, you can use any number of approved aggregators to help you through the carrier approval process. WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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2D bar codes A newer way of allowing for WAP and mobile Web discovery on the horizon uses another nearly universal mobile phone function – the camera. 2D (or twodimensional) bar codes are a more advanced version of the traditional UPC bar code designed to work with common camera phones (representing 80 percent of new phones sold in the United States). With a 2D bar code application on the phone, a user can “scan” a bar code and automatically link to a specific mobile Web site, save an event to the phone’s calendar, dial customer service and more. This removes the need to type in WAP URLs, search for content by keywords or send a message via short code. While this is still very new technology, some U.S. carriers are now offering it to their subscribers as a free download and handsets will be soon be pre-loaded with bar code readers around the world.

Activating 2D bar codes A bar code can be created, downloaded, and placed into any media in a matter of minutes. The best 2D bar code technologies provide a complete and integrated solution that offers both a barcode reader (mobile application) and a platform to create and manage 2D codes. • The client application should be available to the greatest number of handsets possible – either through download or pre-load. • Some platforms can collect analytic data like number of scans, unique users, date/time of scan and even user demographics.

Choosing placements for short codes and 2D codes A great benefit of both SMS and 2D bar codes is that they can be placed on virtually any printed or digital surface. So, it’s key to think about the context of the environment and the mobile user within that environment. • Users are more likely to interact with this call to action when they have a specific need, and/or the time to consume mobile information. For example, placing a code in a newspaper or at an event may provemore user-friendly than a billboard on the freeway. • It is recommended to use these methods across media touch points so they become more visible to your audience. This also provides a way to understand what media generates the best response so you can refine your campaign. Choosing the end-mobile experience Mobile technologies are extremely flexible in what they can deliver. A mobile ad can send the user to product information, provide a promotional code or coupon, dial customer service and more. It is critical to evaluate your campaign goals, consider the target audience and explore some of these key factors: • Convenience: Information is power – especially for someone who is on the go and needs a helping hand. Whether it is an e-ticket with real-time flight updates or a can of soup with recipe ideas at the supermarket - if it is relevant, it has value. • Entertainment: Being on the go sometimes means standing still. Easy access to news, photos or a quick game of trivia can be a real lifesaver. • Exclusivity: Everyone wants to feel special. A unique feature of these methods is that the consumer has to do something to get something. Discounts, access to events or insider information – it is all worth something. Especially if your customer cannot get it any other way. I MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

This article was reproduced with permission from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, New York. It has been edited for style and clarity.

The IAB Mobile Buyer’s Guide was developed by the IAB Mobile Advertising Committee with significant contributions from the following member companies: The Associated Press, comScore, CPX Interactive, Impact Mobile, InsightExpress, Jumptap, Polar Mobile, Quattro Wireless, Scanbuy, Third Screen Media, Verve Wireless, Weather Channel Interactive and Whitepages.com. This document can be found on the IAB Web site at http://www.iab.net/mobile_buyers_guide

Custom party. The Mobile Marketer team can help you craft your very own white paper, co-branded with Mobile Marketer. Mail it out to Mobile Marketer’s entire e-letter subscriber base. Please contact [email protected] for details.

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D a ir y Q u e en la u n c h e s R F I D - b as e d m o b il e lo y a lty p r o g ra m

By Dan Butcher

Mass adoption of mobile marketing using bar code coupons has not happened because it is too complicated, with a plethora of technical and user issues at the point of redemption, according to Tetherball. Tetherball does not use mobile coupons with bar codes or require any type of mobile screen visuals to redeem offers. The RFID-based platform, which works on any mobile phone, eliminates fraud and lets retail clients measure the performance of their campaigns via real time validation and reporting, according to Tetherball. Tetherball’s approach helps clients—including Dairy Queen—"tether" their brand to target audiences by identifying what their customers want and delivering mobile campaigns that interact with the call-to-action through permission-based mobile coupons, mobile rewards, mobile sweepstakes and mobile notifications. Integrating traditional marketing methods such as in-store advertising, customers are encouraged to sign up for mobile loyalty rewards programs offering promotional discounts.

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airy Queen is running a mobile rewards loyalty program using radio-frequency identification—RFID tags—to send coupons and offers to consumers’ handsets. The quick-serve restaurant giant tapped NFC specialist Vivotech Inc. and Tetherball's new RFID-based mobile marketing platform to deliver targeted offers to mobile consumers. The RFID service is optin at the point of sale and Dairy Queen markets the program with instore signage encouraging consumers to join the DQ mobile rewards program. “We have a national agreement with Dairy Queen International, which sees this mobile loyalty program as a competitive advantage,” said Jay Highley, president and chief operating officer of Tetherball, Indianapolis. “We have been working with Dairy Queen for 20 months and we found that you lose 90 percent of the U.S. market when you tell them to download an app, and MMS is not consistently applied and it is expensive,” he said. Vivotech specializes in Near Field Communications, mobile payments and promotions. Its Queen’s leash platform lets consumers make contactless payDairy Queen’s in-store signage at the point ments with RF-enabled and NFC-enabled of sale urges consumers to opt in to its mobile mobile phones. loyalty club to receive a free Blizzard then reSweet deals are made of this Mobile marketing applications service ceive more-or-less weekly coupons thereafter. provider Tetherball specializes in mobile loyalty and rewards services. Upon joining, customers are given a Tetherball Tag, a tiny RFID Tetherball’s programs are designed to drive customer loyalty chip that is affixed to their mobile phones, which uniquely identifies through mobile coupons, mobile rewards programs, mobile sweepthem through Tetherball’s technology platform. stakes and mobile notifications. Dairy Queen is then able to send offers to their customers via standard text messaging. Talk is chip Offers are redeemed electronically using existing in-store RFID Mr. Highley expects to see this service soon expand across the point-of-sale terminals or stand-alone RFID kiosks provided by Tetherball. Dairy Queen system and to other national retailers. “Our RFID mobile loyalty platform is easy to use on any phone and Dairy Queen is a quick-service restaurant chain with 5,600 stores in there are no downloadable apps required,” Mr. Highley said. “Everythe United States, Canada and foreign countries. It offers dairy desserts, body’s got their phone with them all the time, so it’s convenient soluhamburgers, hot dogs and beverages. tion for the member, and it resonates well with a younger The chain will start promoting the mobile rewards program on its demographic—there’s a high cool factor. Web site, and there will also be some direct email and Web advertising “It also helps retailers eliminate fraud, because you can’t create fake support to make customers aware of the mobile initiative. codes, and it eliminates employee theft, plus we offer real-time validaDairy Queen’s call-to-action at the point of sale offers consumers a tion and reporting,” he said. coupon for a free Blizzard if they join the mobile rewards program. Dave Reasoner, an International Dairy Queen franchisee, has been The consumer is asked to go to the counter and get a Tetherball working with Tetherball for nearly two years to refine the mobile loyRFID tag to place on their handset. alty program for his stores. His stores now average more than 900 Information on the card instructs consumers to text in a unique code members per store and continue to see growth in membership and reon the tag to activate their membership. Once they join, Dairy Queen demption rates, which is making a measurable difference in his yeartypically sends out a new offer on a weekly basis. over-year traffic and revenue. “Once you’ve done that, you’re tethered, and that same user can go “This is a significant opportunity for retailers to start mobile loyalty to other retail clients as this continues to expand,” Mr. Highley said. and mobile couponing initiatives, as well as mobile advertising,” Mr. “That one Tetherball tag can be their loyalty card for a number of difHighley said. “We see an appetite from the consumer side to engage in ferent retailers, as we can tether the RFID tags to a different short code mobile couponing and loyalty programs, especially in the for each client.” current economy.” I PAGE 36

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F or be s o n mo bi l e : t he ne w ca pi t al i st to ol

By Jeff Bauer

obile today is about where the Web was in 1998. Bandwidth levels are low, the browsers are limited, and animation formats are primitive. Flash support is far from ubiquitous. Before the iPhone, mobile meant getting your email wherever you were, but post the success of the iPhone, audiences are looking at mobile as a venue for media consumption. BlackBerry Web browsers were slow to mature, but they are now quite good and we are seeing increased engagement from the business decision makers on mobile devices. The Palm Pre is also an excellent platform for news and applications, and with the HTML/CSS-based WebOS there are a lot of Web developers who have the applicable skills to develop for the Palm. Mobile will bring a boost to news consumption as users will consume more news now that they can have access more frequently. There

will naturally be some reduction in frequency of Web visits but overall the mobile Web and applications will help to increase news and media consumption. The availability of an increased frequency of high-quality content will fuel higher rates of consumption. The bigger shift will be as users continue to migrate from television to the Web and to Jeff Bauer, product and creative mobile devices. director, Forbes Media However, advertisers are being cautious with spending overall, and so investments in emerging media are not where they should be based on audience. The other factor is that many advertisers do not yet have sites optimized for mobile, so that advertising in the mobile space gives a bad user experience.

Home screen for business leaders Mobile is one of the great values in marketing right now because you can reach a highly desirable target while they are responsive to media and highly engaged, and share of voice is very high. Mobile is a natural extension of the Forbes brand. As business decision makers and affluent individuals have moved into new mediums, Forbes has made it a priority to serve them wherever, whenever and however they wish to be reached. Now that a significant audience is consuming media on mobile, we are providing a comprehensive – while still keeping it lightweight – content browsing experience on the mobile Web. We have also launched two mobile applications. One is the Forbes.com Mobile Reader for BlackBerry that helps users to get fast access to all of our news, stock quotes, features and opinions as soon as it is available on the Web, and it stores the full stories locally so that you can read them whether you have a connection or not. The Intelligent Investing application for iPhone features personal interviews between [Forbes chairman] Steve Forbes and investing luminaries, as well as investing panels and quick tips for how to navigate today’s tumultuous investing landscape. What do publishers need to do to get mobile right, both in terms of audience and revenue? That is really the billion-dollar question, is it not? Truth be told, most publishers are experimenting and struggling with this one, and it will be some time before the true leaders emerge. We know that we need to be where the audience is, and we need to provide content and applications that they value and come back to. Start by learning more about your audience and carefully crafting the mobile experience to their needs, and then serving more relevant ads in more engaging formats. And, of course, the advertisers have to see the efficacy of mobile campaigns. I

Advertisers are being cautious with spending overall, and so investments in emerging media are not where they should be based on audience. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Jeff Bauer is product and creative director at Forbes Media, New York. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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W hy a m obi le a d n et wo r k m at t er s t o pu bli s her s

By Eric Holmen

s the mobile ecosystem continues to grow and thrive, even in adverse economic conditions, more attention is being paid to the growing phenomenon of mobile advertising networks. Mobile ad networks are crucial to the continued growth of the mobile economy, and are contingent to the sustainability of the existing mobile revenue structure. These networks are evolving and expanding as rapidly as the mobile industry itself, and they are serving an ever-widening range of channel partners – advertisers, marketers, publishers and content providers. Oh, and do not forget about the other benefactors – consumers. Mobile ad networks function as a critical intermediary between businesses looking to reach consumers and publishers seeking revenues for their mobile content. They provide an often full-service means for advertisers to enter the mobile market without dedicating outsized resources to developing contact lists, messaging and outreach tactics. The networks are vital in assisting publishers by placing their content inventory, from premium sales to remnant distribution, and can provide a visible platform for smaller and newer content providers. The determined and continuing rise in mobile usage, combined with an increase in content developers and publishers, has pushed the rev-

similar strategies that take advantage of the iPhone and BlackBerry’s browsing capabilities. Other networks go further, bridging not only the content-viewing gap between smartphones and traditional handsets but also the gap between consumer touch points by offering partnerships with other media channels, including broadcast channels such as radio, print and television. These comprehensive networks represent the future of mobile adEric Holmen, president, vertising. By being highly accessiSmartReply ble by both advertisers and publishers and highly visible to consumers, these networks can deliver as many as 200 million unique impressions per week.

Channeling energies Perhaps the most important reason mobile networks seem to be gaining prominence at such a rapid rate is the way in which they reduce the barriers to entry into the mobile advertising market for companies new to the channel. Put simply, mobile networks allow advertisers without direct contact lists to take advantage of SMS and other mobile marketing initiatives without undue pre-campaign buildup. Networks, particularly those with comprehensive distribution models, with their marketing capabilities and cross-channel partnerships, offer advertisers a one-stop shop for mobile advertising solutions, reducing or eliminating the need for Ad networks link advertisers and publishers in ways that a market free of intermediaries could never achieve. costly infrastructural enue generation potential of mobile advertising through the roof. This investment on the part of the advertiser. is undeniable. Why would a company invest scarce capital into an in-house mobile initiative when a mobile ad network can provide unique touches, penThe proliferation of smartphones has also expanded the emerging etration and a sizable return at a fraction of the cost? channel’s prospects. Conversely, mobile ad networks are also expanding to include mulWhere once mobile advertising networks had to be tailored speciftiple channels, including broadcast channels, and can often be an ically to WAP and SMS, next-generation networks are employing WebMOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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avenue for an advertiser with a strictly mobile strategy to take advantage of a multichannel campaign. Though there are few but an increasing number of advertisers that engage solely in mobile campaigns, participation in an ad network can allow them to reap the benefits of an initiative that reaches across media channels. This trend is illustrative of the power of mobile when combined with other mediums. Advertisers and publishers alike are realizing that mobile advertising, while effective on its own, is truly resonant when used in conjunction with other, more traditional mediums or as part of a comprehensive, cross-media marketing strategy. Cases in point: In-store point of sale advertisement coupled with mobile couponing or mobile ads reinforced by radio spots. These kinetic couplings represent the way forward for advertisers seeking to reach their constituencies in relevant, actionable ways, and the path to these is being forged by leading mobile ad networks. On the other end of the mobile advertising equation are the publisher, the content provider and the ultimate platform by which mobile advertisements reach the consumer. For them, these ad networks are a vital method by which to sell their remnant inventory – that content not purchased at a premium. It should be noted, however, that an increasing number of ad networks offer a full range of solutions from premium content sales to lower-CPM remnant dispersal. Remnant inventory sales are an important part of the mobile ad network business model, and are particularly crucial to top publishers seeking to distribute the bottom third of their content inventory. But, ultimately, these are only part of the story.

Middleman, not middling man There is also the nobler publishing aspect: Networks provide a valuable platform for smaller and newer publishers. There is a long tail of independent content providers. While the open source revolution has essentially enabled an unlimited number of publishers, only the top 50 account for 91 percent of all mobile advertising revenue. The rest – and for the mobile channel, the rest signifies hundreds of thousands of publishers – fight for visibility and the remaining 9 percent of advertising revenue. An incoming publisher, new to the market, inherits a support structure and a distribution capability by engaging a mobile ad network that it would be hard-pressed to achieve trying to sell content on its own. Ad networks, in situations such as this, serve to expand the availability of content throughout the mobile sphere, and help raise the level of publishing quality by fostering competition. Indeed, ad networks link advertisers and publishers in ways that a market free of intermediaries could never achieve. Networks also provide crucial services to advertisers both new to the market and unwilling to assume the burden of in-house mobile marketing implementation. On the other side, mobile ad networks are key to distributing and selling all tiers of content inventory, and can help showcase emerging publishers. As the number of mobile subscribers continues to increase, and consumer comfort level with mobile capabilities continues to grow, mobile advertising can only become more important to the industry. And as advertising becomes more central, these ad networks become ever more relevant. Relevant and vital to the growth of our industry, the mobile ad network is here to stay. I Eric Holmen is president of SmartReply, Irvine, CA. Reach him at [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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The potential of SMS advertising

S

By Alan Pascoe

hort message service (SMS) dominates the mobile message space and presents an untapped opportunity for the next generation of mobile advertising. According to Juniper Research’s “Mobile Messaging & IP Evolution: Players, Strategies & Forecasts 2009-2014” report, person-toperson (P2P) SMS is forecasted to generate global revenues of nearly $70 billion in 2009. P2P mobile email, mobile instant messaging (MIM) and multimedia messaging service (MMS), in comparison, are estimated to generate about $22 billion combined. While newer forms of messaging are capturing consumer attention, subscribers by and large are communicating with the simple text message. The wireless carriers’ problem is that this revenue growth overshadows profitability predictions. A 2008 Frost & Sullivan report projects that the number of text messages – including P2P, application-to-person (A2P) and person-toapplication (P2A) – will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6 percent from 2007 to 2011, while SMS revenues are only on pace to grow at a CAGR of 5.9 percent over that same period. In turn, carriers need new ways to bolster the bottom line.

Opportunities of in-message SMS ads In-message SMS advertising provides the widest reach of any mobile messaging channel. This approach allows carriers to insert advertising content such as sponsored commercial text or voicemail enrichment into the unused portion of text messages. The typical text message comprises about 80 characters of the 160character allotment, leaving sufficient space for additional material. To illustrate, this sentence, including spaces, comprises exactly 80 characters. As Juniper said in its mobile messaging report, “The ubiquity of SMS in terms of being supported by almost every mobile phone model creates a large addressable market for SMS-based advertising campaigns.” Carriers’ benefits from in-message SMS include:

• Increased revenue. Carriers provide advertisers with real-time demographic and behavioral data, coupled with presence and location awareness. This in turn enables personalized and relevant communication that advertisers covet and subAlan Pascoe, senior product scribers notice. The outcomes are marketing manager, Teletek higher open rates and granular success metrics, providing measurable means to create pricing models and improve future programs’ success.

• Increased customer loyalty. Ad-funded SMS business models enable subscribers to opt in to receive commercial content in exchange for reduced rates. The result: all sides win. Advertisers expand their audiences. Consumers receive content of their choosing. Carriers better serve and retain their subscribers. • Lower subscriber costs. Carriers can offer reduced-priced text messaging plans in exchange for SMS advertisements. This incents subscribers to opt in to receive messages and lowers their monthly bills – without decreasing overall revenues.

SMS hit Mobile advertising offers an unprecedented ability for brands to build highly targeted, personal relationships with consumers. The sheer number of devices, matched with the carriers’ control over their networks and knowledge of subscribers, is fertile ground for brand advertisers and marketers. The characteristics that make SMS a great tool for personal communication – pervasiveness, immediacy and relevance – make it an ideal tool for advertisers and a great potential revenue source for carriers. I

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Alan Pascoe is senior manager for product marketing at Tekelec, Morrisville, NC. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Making a cas e for mobile video adve rtising

By Thomas N. Ellsworth

obile video programming that goes beyond live television broadcast has been developing for a while. As this content continues to mature into a mainstream medium, video advertising forms and business models are coming into focus as well. To be clear, I am not referencing the ads and pods of ads present in popular live TV programming that can be viewed on video-capable phones available from select wireless carriers. Those ads were placed by media or channel owners and distributed to homes via broadcast, cable and satellite. That stream was, in turn, merely converted and distributed to mobile devices. In this case, the ads on cable are now the same ads on mobile. Beyond live TV, there is a growing and diverse world of programming available to mobile phone users. This made-for-mobile content includes episodical series, special events and custom programs that augment movies and live TV shows. With this programming comes the obvious need to monetize it through various business models, including mobile video advertising.

Content type and implied demographics remain the main targeting elements used for mobile video ads

Rolling with business models Today, monetizing methods include micropayments for individual viewing, monthly subscriptions and broader monthly rate plans that grant access to bundled programming. Mobile video advertising allows consumers to access content without incurring any of the aforementioned costs and, therefore, greater viewership. It remains the most attractive business model. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Video ad forms currently include pre-roll, post-roll and interstitials designed to appear within the mobile content. The number and length of ads typically is monitored by wireless carriers so as not to interfere with the consumer’s access to, and enjoyment of, the content. Today, a number of mobile advertising companies – not established agencies or advertising conglomerates – have built the systems and relationships that comprise much of the mobile advertising ecosystem. This ecosystem includes banner advertising, aggregation of mobile content inventory, ad scheduling and insertion, mediation processes and reporting systems. While banner advertising is well established, only a few of the mobile advertising companies have built the systems required to manage and deliver video ads. These early players pitch mobile inventory to agencies and advertisers through the established advertising sales process. Agencies and their clients typically incorporate mobile video advertising into wider campaigns and garner additional reach into select consumer segments.

Spots will call shots Mobile video ads are mainly targeted based on programming Thomas N. Ellsworth, CEO, genre. User information is difficult GoTV Networks to obtain and today there is a dearth of it. Thus, content type and implied demographics remain the main targeting elements used for mobile video ads. As carriers open information flows, while not breaching consumer privacy requirements, targeting methods and associated algorithms will improve accordingly. Mobile advertising offers a benefit that is particularly appealing to wireless carriers: increased average revenue per user. The carrier networks are key members of the ecosystem and increasing the revenue and margin per subscriber is a key business metric. As mobile rate plans increasingly offer bundles to consumers, carriers are hard-pressed to find incremental revenue and profit per user. Furthers, consumers who spend $70 to $100 per month on a bundled rate plan have very little propensity, and even less disposable income, to buy additional products – including video programming. By collecting a percentage of mobile advertising revenues, carriers can increase the revenue per user. Mobile video services will become mainstream over the course of the next few years. Bundles rate plans, additional video-capable phones and exciting content will expand the audience from the early adopters of today to crowds of core consumers. Mobile advertising will be a key enabler. I Thomas N. Ellsworth is CEO of GoTV Networks, Sherman Oaks, CA. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Reaching the f ragmented mobile audience

By Faraz A. Syed

he extent of the world’s love affair with their mobile phones was recently revealed in a United Nations report which showed that more than half of the global population now pays to use one. The survey, by the International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the U.N., also found that nearly one-quarter of the world’s 6.7 billion people now surf the Internet using their handsets. It is therefore no surprise that mobile marketers are keen to leverage the mobile opportunity and engage with their target audiences via the fourth screen. The explosive growth of smartphone handsets in the marketplace and the increased use of data services such as mobile search and content downloads have both acted as catalysts for this new advertising opportunity. However, despite the attractive offering of the current mobile climate, consumers are now demanding that mobile marketing campaigns deliver a quality of experience that matches the technology available or risk minimal uptake.

with a Web page completely different to that of a BlackBerry user. However, both may be inclusive of your target market. As a result, developers are forced to create a myriad of versions to ensure the optimal enduser experience, or risk minimal engagement – an expensive and time-consuming process. This diversity is also found in the software running on these mobile phones, with an abundance of mobile operating system platforms such as Java, Android, Symbian and BREW, all requiring considerFaraz A. Syed, CEO, ation when developing campaigns. DeviceAnywhere

Billions and billions served The issue of fragmentation is likely to become increasingly apparent in the year ahead as mobile advertisers look to take advantage and monetize the explosion in mobile applications. With Apple recently announcing more than 1 billion application downloads and rival stores from almost all the leading carriers and handset manufacturers being announced, the opportunity for reaching the mobile audience is clearly apparent. Some brands have already made the decision to launch branded applications, such as Carling with “Fill & Drink.” However, this was exclusively available on the The issue of fragmentation is likely to become increasingly apparent in the year ahead as mobile iPhone and given that reach advertisers look to take advantage and monetize the explosion in mobile applications. is almost always a key obE pluribus and numb jective for marketing and advertising, this illustrates the challenge facThe aim for today’s marketer is therefore to move away from reing the industry. liance on SMS and MMS campaigns and fully exploit the mobile opWith an abundance of application stores on the horizon and the draportunity. Yet this is not as easy as it sounds. matic growth in the use of the mobile Internet, the opportunity for moThe diversity of the ecosystem, in terms of both the hardware and bile advertising is finally coming of age. software currently in the mobile wilderness, represents a significant Marketers have an opportunity to reach audiences in new and exstumbling block to any mobile marketing campaign for the mass marciting ways. But key to the success of such campaigns will be deliverket, be it using the idle screen, social networking sites or even mobile ing a compelling end-user experience. banner ads on a mobile-friendly Web site. This element will rely not just on the content created, but ensuring From a hardware perspective, mobile marketers are faced with a that it delivers the same experience across a variety of handsets. I plethora of screen sizes, resolutions and processing power for which to take into consideration. Faraz A. Syed is CEO of DeviceAnywhere, San Mateo, CA. Reach him For example, the owner of an Apple iPhone would view and interact at [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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7 w a ys to m ak e y ou r i d l e sc re en c a mp ai gn d e l i v er

By Jon Jackson

obile Web. SMS. In-application. Mobile video. Mobile search. Active idle. Marketers have more ways than ever before to reach consumers on the mobile device. Yet, with more options available come more questions from advertisers who want to avoid missteps and make their mobile advertising campaigns successful from the start: “Where do I begin with mobile advertising?” “What about my existing advertising plans?” “How do I do this, exactly?” Each marketing medium has its own set of rules – no two are alike. Marketers can improve their chances of success by taking the time to learn the best practice associated with each. While there’s no substitute for first-hand experience, here are a few tips and tricks to help make your next idle screen mobile advertising campaign really shine. 1. Be creative. Creative for the small screen does not need to be boring. Give them something to remember with an eye-catching advertisement. Full-color, multi-screen creative helps to capture the user’s attention and ensure a great response. You have invested tremendous resources in your brand, so be sure that your mobile creative showcases it in the best light. 2. Make a point. Mobile phone displays are still pretty small, and half of the U.S. population has less-than-perfect vision. Virtually every-

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

one owns a mobile phone nationwide, so make sure that your message works whether your audience is 17 or 70. Pithy, to-the-point copy keeps your message large and legible on any device. One more benefit: concise copy makes your message that much easier to remember. 3. Bring value. The mobile Jon Jackson, founder/CEO, phone is a personal device, so perMobile Posse sonalize your offer and target, target, target. Deliver one ad to women, another to men. Serve one offer at noon on Tuesdays, and a second at 3 p.m. on Saturdays. Send one message to users in Los Angeles, and another to New Yorkers. Targeting keeps your offer relevant to the recipient, and helps to optimize user response. The idle screen brings you an engaged audience. Make the most of it with an offer that is the perfect fit. 4. Interact. Mobile is an interactive medium, so take that opportunity to build a relationship with your customers. Ask a question, deliver a poll or promote a contest. You will find that consumer response to interactive messages often exceeds that for traditional standalone ads. Consumers love to give their opinions, so get your message across by giving them a reason to respond. You may even learn a few things about your customers in the process. 5. Take action. Now that you have got their attention, do not miss your chance to seal the deal. The call to action is an essential element of any mobile idle screen campaign. Encourage users to take immediate action on your advertising message with a phone call, mobile Web visit or SMS. The easier that you make it for mobile consumers to take advantage of your offer, the more likely they are to do so. 6. Keep it fresh. After a few weeks of great initial response, you do not want to run the risk of compromising that great engagement. The prominence of the mobile idle screen warrants keeping the experience fresh. Get your money’s worth by mixing it up with refreshed creative, a new offer or revised messaging. Small changes, released every few weeks, will keep your campaign working for you. 7. Be complementary. Consumers still interact with television, radio, Web and outdoor – do not be afraid to extend your traditional advertising campaigns to the mobile device. If you already have a mobile Web site or SMS promotion in the works, that is great, too. Make the most of your current campaign by adding a mobile idle screen component to your plans. Mobile really is at its best when used as just one element of a comprehensive multimedia advertising strategy. I Jon Jackson is founder/CEO of Mobile Posse, McLean, VA. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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MMS adver tising as a utilit y for advertis ers

By Richard Eicher

MS marketing has a pretty obvious and well known use case – to deliver a rich media communication to an end user that is engaging, personal, timely and relevant to the user. MMS advertising for delivering ads within MMS content and communications is well known. But what is only recently coming to light is how MMS advertising can also be used as a utility for advertisers.

MMS advertising: The basic form MMS advertising inserted within third-party MMS communications or content can be in the form of images, pre/post-roll video, text and background audio. Since most MMS-enabled handsets support the ability to “clickthrough” – just like an SMS does – this means that both cost-perthousand (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC) business models can apply to MMS advertising. It can either be inserted in people’s personal communication (P2P) or within their content messages A2P (for example, messaging from their social networks). Inserting MMS ad content can be done rather easily without modifying any of the original content within the existing message. In fact, manipulating the original content would be a mistake. Also, inserting MMS advertising should be done simply by modifying the SMIL presentation file of the MMS during the delivery process. SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) is a presentation format similar to HTML and is used for MMS slideshow presentation.

MMS advertising as a utility: The Holy Grail The capability for online advertising to be tracked and linked directly to online transactions is a significant contributor to the success of Web advertising and commerce. The enabling technology is a unique identifier called a “cookie” which is automatically and seamlessly provided by the advertisement, stays with you while you browse and is redeemed automatically at the online point of purchase. Unfortunately, most other advertising mediums do not have a Richard Eicher, founder/CEO “cookie” alternative to track an of Skycore exact ROI from the advertisement. Until now. An identifier or “cookie” can be encoded into a 2D MMS bar code image which we can call a “mobile coupon.” This image can be requested from any advertisement through an SMS MO (message originated) and delivered by an MMS MT (message terminated). That mobile coupon remains in the recipient’s inbox or saved on her handset wherever she goes and it can be scanned and redeemed at the point of sale. With mobile bar code couponing, you can even offer a unique user identifier – similar to Web cookies – for each individual phone number. The same technology to insert a unique and relevant MMS advertisement can be used to insert a unique and relevant 2D bar code image. Suddenly the Web is no longer the only landscape with precise ROI measurement capabilities. The mobile device and multimedia objects such as bar codes and eventually Near Field Communication (NFC) will become the “tracking cookie” of the offline world, telling advertisers which real world ad influenced the real-world purchase. This type of metrics, once only available through online analytics, will now be available for print, radio, television and out-of-home media. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) advertising models in the offline world would also become possible. MMS is the ideal way to deliver a mobile 2D bar code since it is delivered to a consumer’s inbox in the same, familiar way as SMS. Importantly, MMS does not require any software to be installed on the consumer’s mobile phone. And it is immediately available without having to access the Internet during the redemption process. I

MMS is the ideal way to deliver a mobile 2D bar code since it is delivered to a consumer’s inbox in the same, familiar way as SMS. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Richard Eicher is founder/CEO of Skycore, Boston. Reach him at [email protected]

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Tips on brand ed mobi le ap ps bey ond the iPh one

By Ken Singer

If you are aiming toward a younger, more urban demographic, less featureany said it could not be done, but Apple’s iPhone proved that rich handsets such as Motorola’s RAZRconsumers will download and engage with a wide variety of sand KRZRs, and lower-end branded mobile applications. smartphones are more appropriate. The Zippo Lighter mobile application is a good example – it is the Once you know what handsets your 13th most downloaded free iPhone application, with more than 2.5 miltarget demographic is using, you can lion downloads, per Apple data. begin the key task of selecting a suitable Other applications offered for everything from ski condition reports distribution channel. to recipe finders to myriad branded mobile services for consumers have The OEM app store for the devices generated substantial brand utility, Web site visits and even direct revenue. you are targeting is obvious, but you Ken Singer, CEO, Ondeego However, fewer consumers use iPhones compared to the more than should add in the independent app 50 million BlackBerry users. There are also millions more smartphones stores such as Handmark, Handango on Windows Mobile and other proprietary operating systems. and GetJar, and a Web-to-SMS portal from a microsite. In the United There are also States alone, there carrier application are more than 75 stores, but many of million smartphone these require particusers. The vast maularly arduous apjority are not Apple provals and testing. iPhone users. Approval times With the recent should be aclaunch of Blackcounted since many Berry App World, app stores have Windows Mobile non-transparent apSkymarket, the Anproval processes – droid Market and they can range from countless other apdays to months. plication stores, an Marketing your easy-to-use distriapplication is also bution channel now very important. exists for these To be effective, mobile phones. your mobile appliThese app stores cation should be represent the future part of a holistic of mobile marketing strategy across muland provide an extiple channels – not traordinary opportujust an application. nity for consumer You are launching a brands to make an branded mobile early mark in this service, and conemerging medium. sumers have to find it to download it. Appt advice Advertising on Before you other mobile applibegin developing cations or Web sites App stores represent the future of mobile marketing and provide an extraordinary opportunity for consumer brands to make an early mark in this emerging medium. your killer marketcan be effective, but ing app for the blogger outreach smartphones of the world, ask yourself who you are trying to reach. and social media is the most cost-effective way to market your Your target demographic will determine your target handsets. mobile application. I Also, if you are aiming at a wealthy, educated, professional demographic, then targeting BlackBerry and Windows Mobile smartphones Ken Singer is CEO of Ondeego, Berkeley, CA. Reach him at make sense. [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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Ho w to ens ur e t hat the b ra nd’s i Phone a pp is n’t de le te d

By Maya Mikhailov

uilding an iPhone application may be considered relatively easy when compared to the effort in acquiring and retaining the attention of the iPhone user. As the iPhone App Store grows – 65,000 applications and counting – iPhone users have become increasingly discerning. Larger brands may leverage consumer familiarity for initial downloads, but now all brands are finding that consumers are as fleeting as they were eager to download the application to begin with. No doubt industry insiders are familiar with the Pinch Media report showing a steep drop in user application engagement after only 10 days. So what is a brand marketer to do? They must decide if they are building a one-off application or if they wish to establish a true brand presence. The former is fine for some brands, but consumers demand more of others. This is doubly true for retailers looking to establish a lasting dialogue with their shoppers, which will ultimately lead to increased loyalty and in-store conversion. The guidelines below are aimed at brands that wish to remain on a consumer’s iPhone longer than a carton of milk remains drinkable in the fridge.

If your application does not work, it is deleted This begs the question, “Why would Apple pass an application that doesn’t work?” Well, it did not. Apple approved an application that worked in a predictable and normal way for a couple of testers. But real users come in volumes. And they are not always using your application in a predictable way. That means test, test, test. And not just on emulators but on actual devices – iPhones and iPod touch. Do not assume it works on all versions of the operating system. Also, if there are promotions being organized around the application, be prepared for traffic in waves, rather than a steady growth curve. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Without depth, there is only “Delete” Nothing gets old faster than a one-trick application. Unless the point of your application is one time use, such as a limited viral campaign, without depth of content a user heads straight for the delete button. In fall 2008, several major retailers launched Gift Finder applications in time for the holiday season. Although the idea was certainly an inspired one, those applications lacked depth. Many contained a couple of dozen gifts grouped in very pre-defined categories. After a couple of shakes, the consumers moved on. Simple features such as “Product Search” or “Store Finder” would have increased the usefulness and shelf-life of these applications.

Stale content is tossed The Gift Finder applications were not updated to reflect post-holiday promotions or changes in merchandise. So what happens to the thousands of users who downloaded those applications? They were left with the equivalent of a Christmas tree in February. If a brand has decided to commit the time and resources to iPhone application development, planning content and application Maya Mikhailov, VP, Slifter maintenance is vital. What would happen if a brand never updated its Web site? It would lose favor with their consumers. The same rule applies on the iPhone. Sections such as “Events” (from in-store to sporting event sponsorships), “Weekly Offers” or “What’s New” will offer consumers a reason to keep accessing your application and keeping your brand on their iPhone.

Consumers are mobile, your brand cannot be static IPhone users are not sitting at a PC accessing a Web site. They are out-and-about. So, when deciding what functionality to include in your iPhone application, keep in mind what features are important when a consumer is moving or away from their home or office. Examples of that include a store or product locator feature which uses the iPhone’s GPS system. Or tie into users’ Twitter account to let users share their interactions with your brand on the fly. Features such as the built-in camera and accelerometer can also be leveraged by brands to create compelling and lasting experiences. As the iPhone celebrates its second anniversary, users are demanding better applications for their device. As a brand marketer, making a lasting impression on this group is no longer as simple as just being present in the App Store at the right time. They must take into account some basic strategies. Looking at the iPhone with considered planning will be the litmus test between brands and their applications that have a lasting presence and those that are thrown away. I Maya Mikhailov is vice president of Slifter, New York. Reach her at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Th e a pp eal of in t er ac t iv e vo ic e r e s po n s e

By Charles Edwards

t is not sexy, it is not the latest technology, it is far from the bleeding edge (or even the edge), nor does it conjure up thoughts of unbridled marketing success at its mere mention, but IVR – interactive voice response – is still the reigning king of mobile marketing. It is, to say the least, the longest running mobile marketing technology and can boast full market penetration. What other technology can make that claim and not invoke eye rolls? It was mobile marketing before mobile phones were around. IVR’s bad rap has come from the customer service phone trees that seem to be everywhere. Weaving your way through the labyrinth of questions and choices, you finally end up talking to a live person, but it has taken so long to get to them, it is after-hours and you get their voice mail.

IVR is familiar. You do not have to change a person’s behavior to use it. Everyone knows how to dial a number.

Not to make light of the importance of these phone tree forests. They have their place, but at the same time, they have done nothing to lend a “techno-sheikh” moniker to IVR’s reputation in marketing. Don’t just think outside the box – there are too many important things in that box that should not be ignored, things that work and have worked in the past. Expand the box. Think integration. There are those brands and agencies that will want the wow factor, the splashy headlines that say they have done something no one else has. With new technology you can expect that people will read about the campaign, but that opt-ins and ROI will be low. For the most part brands are going to be about users, opt-ins, ROI and the continued oneon-one dialogue that they can have with their customers. The use of a keyword and a common short code can produce some good numbers when integrated correctly with other advertising and when targeting the more savvy groups of users. But a greater adoption rate can be achieved by using IVR in conjunction with the short code. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

IVR, not Ivy League In my five-plus years of implementing mobile marketing campaigns for major brands and agencies, I have seen glorious successes and tragic failures. What needs to be realized is that the new technology and the old can complement each other in ways that are still fun, informative, useful and engaging. What also needs to be remembered is that IVR has the ability to extend the reach of a campaign. It can offer things no other technology can offer and it can act as a seamless bridge to other technologies. IVR does have its new technology pieces such as voice recognition. We are increasingly seeing iPhone, Android and even Microsoft applications using IVR and voice recognition. An IVR with voice recognition makes it easier to get content without having to use the short code and keyword to initiate the program. Once users get their first text Charles Edwards is a mobile message reply through IVR, it bemarketing consultant comes easier for them to interact with a campaign – they just need to reply to the message. IVR is familiar. You do not have to change a person’s behavior to use it. Everyone knows how to dial a number. And by using the added attraction of a celebrity’s voice to convey the message, it becomes very personal and exciting. Your brand’s message now reaches people on a level that speaks directly to them. It has the ability to create such excitement that the consumer will tell others about the program and even send it to someone via IVR. Beyond that it acts to bridge the technology gap to reach those otherwise not inclined to participate in a text campaign. I Charles Edwards is a mobile marketing consultant in San Francisco. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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F le xib ili ty is ke y fo r S MS co u p on s

O

By Jeff Brown and Ron Vetter

ne of the most common mobile marketing applications is an SMS mobile coupon service. Consumers simply text a keyword for a business to a common short code, and a text message coupon is returned for that particular business. Consumers can request coupons one at a time, or may register to have them sent automatically each week. Ideally, the system should support two types of SMS-based coupons: subscription and interactive.

Subscription coupons – automatically sent each week Customers can text a keyword to a common short code or sign up online to register to receive weekly subscription coupons from a particular business. These customers automatically get sent one subscription coupon per week based on one of the following three tiers: high value, medium value or low value. The highest value coupons are sent first to a specific number of registered users. After the high-value coupons have been sent, the medium- and low-value coupons are sent out to the remaining registered users based on percentages. Example: Pat’s Pizza has 410 total subscribers to its keyword. The following table shows how many of each types of coupons would be sent for Pat’s. Each business can choose its coupon offers (column 2), the number of high-value coupons and the percentages for mediumand low-value coupons (column 3). This example is to illustrate how the coupon system works:

Interactive – on demand with waiting period The interactive coupon is a way for customers to get an on-demand coupon from a business. Once registered, customers simply text a company’s keyword to a short code and they receive a coupon in a reply. A waiting period can be placed on interactive coupons. This is the time period the customer must wait between requesting additional interactive or on-demand coupons. This period can be any length of time desired, although most businesses will most likely use three, seven or 30 days as the waiting period. Many businesses are willing to give away a limited number of items or prizes each week. The flexibility in the mobile coupons system MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Jeff Brown, co-founder, Mobile Education LLC

Ron Vetter, co-founder, Mobile Education LLC

described earlier is that businesses cannot control the number of coupons that are sent offering free items or prizes. Customers prefer this kind of system because their coupons vary every week and they periodically receive better offers – for example, high- and medium-value coupons.

In our experience, we have found that consumers are more likely to stay registered to receive weekly mobile coupons even if they do not plan to use every coupon because they are waiting to receive high-value mobile coupons. For example, a local hair salon might send weekly coupons even though most people get their hair cut only once a month. By sending a weekly text message, the hair salon can increase its branding opportunities, thus ensuring eventual growth at a steady clip. I

Jeff Brown and Ron Vetter are founders of Mobile Education LLC, Wilmington, NC. Reach Mr. Brown at [email protected] and Mr. Vetter at [email protected]

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Web a naly t ics and mob ile ana lyt ic s a re not sim ilar

By Jose Villa

s you prepare to take your marketing campaign into the mobile space you should know that the analytics you are familiar with to measure the effectiveness, reach and overall success and performance of your Web site cannot simply be reapplied to measure the success of your mobile marketing strategy. Mobile analytics is a whole new ball game. Here are some of the differences in the rules.

Web is to mobile as apples are to oranges If Web analytics measure visits, impressions, page views, clickthrough rate, conversion, referrals, bounce rates, browser type, time on site, number of unique and first-time visitors and tracks users’ footsteps as they navigate in, through and out of your site, what more information could mobile analytics reveal? The answer is a lot more. Think of mobile devices as the keepers of your users’ DNA. In addition to traditional information, mobile analytics collects user-specific data such as device, carrier, geographic location, language and unique visitor identification. This data can help you focus in on your user demographics to develop an effective mobile strategy that shoots straight for your marketing goals.

However, these services do not cut it when it comes to mobile analytics. Data resulting from Web analytics tracking methods is incomplete or inaccurate on mobile devices because mobile search optimizers do not pick up on keywords, search engines and conversions. Why? Because JavaScript, HTTP cookies, HTTP referrer and IP address information are either not supported by mobile browsers or are misleading due to the location of the wireless carrier’s Internet gateway. Jose Villa, CEO, Sensis

Approaches to mobile analytics The right mobile analytics methods include image tags, link redirection in place of HTTP referrer information, HTTP header analysis to collect data about the user’s device and browser, and IP address analysis that can distinguish between the mobile device’s geographic location and that of the network’s Internet gateway. Web analytics expert Bryson Meunier assesses vendors such as Bango and Mobilytics, which can collect this data, but the best approach is a combination of in-house agency and third-party services to ensure that analytics are translated and stated in terms of your business and marketing objectives. Ultimately, you will be able to identify your site’s key performance indicators (KPI) which may differ from those of your traditional Web site and to know exactly who your most important visitors are and what content they access with their devices. This information can help refine your campaign goals, identify and implement the right solutions to reach your market, improve ROI and establish processes for continuous improvement.

Why you cannot ignore mobile analytics Web analytics guru Jim Sterne states that “no matter how much data is collected and no matter what collection method is used, all of this is useless unless it’s actionable.” An ABI Research study estimates that the mobile browser market will grow from 76 million in 2007 to almost 700 million in 2013. Hence, it is imperative for marketers to not only develop mobile strategies that can be incorporated Data resulting from Web analytics tracking methods is incomplete or inaccurate on mobile devices into existing campaigns via a mobile roadmap but to because mobile search optimizers do not pick up on keywords, search engines and conversions. know the difference Web and mobile analytics in Web analytics methods do not work on mobile analytics order to glean the right insights that can lead to actionable results and Traditional Web analytics use JavaScript page tagging, cookies or therefore more effective mobile marketing. I log files to track users. Services such as Google Analytics aggregate this data and provide snapshots that can help you see how well your Jose Villa is CEO of Sensis, Los Angeles. Reach him at Web site content, design and marketing strategy resonates with users. [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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Local TV stations see mobile in the picture for advertisers By Leon Spencer

he world’s first television advertisement was broadcast on July 1, 1941. The watchmaker Bulova paid $4 for a placement on New York station WNBT before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The 10-second spot displayed a picture of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States, accompanied by the voiceover “America runs on Bulova time.” S i n c e then, TV stations have grown significant revenue through ad sales and continue to do so. The question now is, how to continue the growth while assisting our advertisers in reaching consumers. One most recent success for TV stations is mobile marketing. TV stations have built mobile platforms that are an extension of their main Web sites wherein consumers As mobile TV and the acceptance of mobile video continue can get their to grow, TV stations will be right there with a multitude of sports scores, video files available for their site visitors. weather updates and news headlines but in a more personal manner – from their mobile devices. Branding with banner ads on a TV station’s mobile site is a popular way to keep a brand in the forefront of the consumers’ minds. A good example is that while consumers are searching their favorite sports team’s scores they are confronted with a pizza chain logo. This logo is clickable to all of the chain’s local restaurant locations as well as their telephone numbers. The consumer can then click-to-call the location where they would like to order a pizza. The advantage to the pizza chain of using TV for this type of camMOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

paign is the reach that TV has to go out and grab the consumer to tell them that they can use their mobile device when ordering a pizza. Another good example of how TV stations are using mobile is while consumers are checking out the weather forecast they see their local bank’s clickable logo. They can click on the logo, be taken to their bank’s mobile Web site and conduct a banking transaction. Again, the advertiser, in this case a bank, has the power of TV behind its mobile marketing efforts.

TV will make news Although the marketplace has not yet arrived at mass mobile video usage, TV stations can offer an incredible amount of video to mobile users. As mobile TV and the acceptance of mobile video continue to grow, TV stations will be right there with a multitude of video files available for their site visitors. Advertisers, too, can take advantage of the video with pre-roll commercial spots that air in front of video content. SMS has been working well for TV station advertisers as well as banner campaigns. The reason, once again, is the strength of TV’s reach. Texting programs wherein TV viewers are encouraged to text a Leon Spencer, interactive sales specific word to a specific common director, WVLT-TV/VolunteerTV.com short code have been going on for a while, including shows such as “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars.” Local advertisers can run similar commercial announcements to build their marketing databases, introduce new products or offer mobile coupons. With all of the mobile options available to advertisers, the decision is not whether to have a mobile campaign but which of the mobile options will work best for their specific needs. Consumers have made the shift to mobile, and now successful advertisers will go where the customers are. TV viewers are opting to receive more information from the stations and their partners. Advertisers should take notice, build their own databases and design their campaigns around SMS and applications that will assist them in this process. TV stations can definitely help with this effort. If an advertiser does not have a mobile element in its advertising mix, then the competition is probably going to take some of its market share. It is a long way from that first TV commercial, but TV stations are on the cutting edge of new media. TV stations are helping to design the future of interactive advertising and mobile fits right into that picture. I Leon Spencer is interactive sales director at WVLTTV/Volunteertv.com, Knoxville, TN. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Va lu e b es t p ra ct ice i n m o bi le m a rk et in g

By Chris Brassington

ersonalized mobile interaction including text and picture messages has become one of the most popular ways on the planet for people to communicate. Its growth is staggering. According to a report from Tomi Ahonen Consulting, the number of global mobile messaging users has climbed to more than 3 billion. Seventy-six percent of all mobile phone subscribers actively send and receive SMS text messages. Three billion messaging consumers translates to twice the number of television sets in homes, two-and-a-half times the number of people using email and three times the number of computers on the Internet. This phenomenal growth represents an amazing opportunity for marketers. But what are some of the most important practices to keep in mind when developing mobile messaging campaigns? Gaining access to a consumer’s mobile device is an intimate invitation. Individuals store their contacts, check their email and visit favorite mobile sites directly from their phones. Having a consumer opt in to receive updates or learn more about a brand via mobile messaging is only the beginning of the marketer/consumer relationship. Treat it like gold and understand that each opt in is a privilege and not a right. Get to know the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Advertising Guidelines. Follow them to the letter or risk being banned. Mobile interaction is the gateway to your brand. Let us face it: There is very little that a brand can communicate in 160 characters, so marketers should use mobile messaging as a gateway that facilitates access to the brand and to more information. Include brief deSend too many messages, and your opt-in friend will soon be your opt-out enemy tail on the reason for the message – great offer, sports scores or the latest weather – and then leave room for a direct link to your mobile site. This is the best way to further engage on-the-go consumers with your brand while providing instant analytics on response rates to plan future campaigns. Relevancy is key and fatigue is ever-present. When consumers MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

opt in to a brand’s mobile messaging program, relevancy is absolutely critical. If they choose to receive messages about weather, be sure to send them local forecasts. If sports scores are what you are offering, make sure the consumer’s favorite teams are included in the message. This does not mean a marketer cannot add on sponsor messages and other promotions, but relevant and timely content should always take the lead. The same thing goes for subscriber fatigue. Send too many messages, and your opt-in friend will soon be your opt-out enemy. Breaking news 15 times a day can be overwhelming, so consider one or two messages a day instead. Leverage tie-ins to other media channels. To further add value for the consumer and promote your other marketing channels, prompt the user to tune in to your television show or go online for more information. 2ergo recently launched a program with National Geographic Channel for its Dog Whisperer television series that sent mobile messages with a dog-training tip and reminder to watch the show two hours before each week’s episode. The program received kudos from Chris Brassington, group its subscribers, and National Geomanaging director, 2ergo graphic continues to renew this program. Learn from your subscriber base – immediately. O2, a leading British wireless carrier with 18.4 million customers, implemented a wide-reaching mobile messaging strategy with 2ergo that enabled the company to send regular SMS, MMS and email updates on special offers, new products and other relevant campaigns to its subscriber base. Thanks to the immediate responses typical with mobile and other detailed tracking metrics, O2 now understands that certain demographics respond best to SMS and MMS between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., after finishing their work day. By leveraging this deep insight into customer behavior, O2 has seen response rates between 30 percent and 65 percent. Executives with the company believe that mobile messaging has led to lowered costs and more informed customers, which ultimately is reducing churn. Mobile marketing offers great value. The current economic climate is driving smarter business, fueling the growth in mobile marketing and mobile customer relationship marketing. Business is responding to market conditions by spending less on TV, outdoor and print in favor of the mobile as it is a less expensive, highly targeted and more measurable marketing channel. Smart marketers will keep these best practices in mind with each and every program they choose to deploy in this mobile world. I Chris Brassington is group managing director of 2ergo, Manchester, England. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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P o r s c h e m o b i l e e ff o r t o u t p e r f o r m s o n l i n e d i s p l a y a d s

By Giselle Tsirulnik

armaker Porsche used mobile as part of a bigger, multichannelcampaign to promote its luxury vehicles as affordable. Porsche's “I Can” campaign targeted mobile consumers on Weather.com and Yahoo and encouraged consumers to click on banner ads that said, “You can own one, click to see how” and “Can you afford a Porsche? Just say “I can.” The four-month-long mobile initiative outperformed Porsche's broader campaign. “The overall strategy was to emphasize the affordability of Porsche products to people who didn't think this car brand was in their reach,” said David Katz, vice president of mobile advertising and publisher

Brian Mandelbaum, vice president and interactive group media director at Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago. “Not only are Porsche customers generally tech savvy and connected, but from a lifestyle perspective, mobile is an ideal way to engage them,” he said. “Porsche is all about front-of-foot engagement. “The Porsche consumer is not someone who just plops on the couch and watches TV or curls up with a magazine everyday. They are far more active and demand more immediate access to information.” Mobile generated three times the volume to Porsche’s call center than online and twice as many dealer look-ups. The mobile site’s number of visitors was 40 percent higher than those to the online site.

services at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. “Porsche was trying to touch buyers on the go.” When consumers clicked through, they arrived at campaign’s WAP site at http://m.porscheusa.com . There they could view Porsche models and prices and click-to-call a dealer. Porsche found that consumers clicked most over the weekend, while out shopping or test-driving vehicles. The carmaker thought mobile would be a good fit because its buyers can be classified as tech-savvy. The campaign was inspired by company research that shows thatmajority of consumers believe that the car’s price tag and ownership costs were higher than they really were. The mobile initiative delivered 22 of the campaign’s overall digital traffic and the click-through rate was six times better than Porsche’s online display advertising. Cramer-Krasselt is Porsche’s ad agency. “We developed an engagement strategy from the perspective of the active consumer, facilitating one-on-one dialogue through mobile,” said

Porsche used Yahoo behavioral targeting tools to serve ads to smartphone users whose Web-surfing behaviors implied they were looking for coupes, SUVs or luxury cars. The carmaker plans to relaunch the mobile campaign in the spring to promote the March debut of the new Cayman and Boxster models. Porsche is not the only big brand that has seen good results running ads on Yahoo’s mobile properties. Visa wanted a multi-screen approach to promote its tie-in with the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Visa ran banner ads on Yahoo’s Mobile Olympic site. Ultimately, the goal of the campaign was to drive traffic to Visa’s mobile site at http://visa.mobi/goworld and engage users with a rich mobile experience through background stories on featured athletes. “What I liked about this campaign is that Porsche came in with a clear objective and was really pushing affordability,” Mr. Katz said. “We thought they had simple, yet relevant mobile experiences. “Porsche really took advantage of mobile in good ways and they made use of our Yahoo behavioral targeting tools,” he said. I

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Bu i ld i ng a su c c e ss fu l m ob il e bu si ne ss mo de l

By Jay Neuman

e regularly hear from our clients and their media agencies that the key missing link for mobile's growth is the absence of uniform metrics and barometers for success. This lack of core business dynamics and modeling needs to be addressed quickly across the industry in order for mobile’s share of advertising revenues to grow and meet its future potential. Even without access to the subscriber data that carriers possess – and rightly protect – the mobile channel offers a wealth of data which can act as a bedrock for developing ROI models, especially in facilitating direct response campaigns. The good news is that these mobile business models are within easy reach for marketers. The trick is in identifying metrics that best measure success in terms of the client’s larger marketing goals. This can be done by identifying which of the following dimensions are key to meeting the clients’ larger marketing goals.

The mobile channel offers a wealth of data which can act as a bedrock for developing ROI models, especially in facilitating direct response campaigns.

Business development Mobile marketing is, at its heart, a direct response medium. It is addressable and contains a builtin response capability. People could opt-in to mobile promotions that lead to future follow-up sales. A mobile outreach could direct people to a WAP page or Web site where they fill in a survey. The business development dimension is basically throwing out a mobile fishing net to catch permission-based opt-ins for future sales promotions. The key metrics of success are responses and opt-ins.

Lead generation Lead generation is one of the most important business models on the Internet. We all engage with it every time we click on a sponsored search engine link. However, applying it to the mobile space is proving a challenge. A mobile alerts club could include an opt-in or clickthrough to a sponsor or advertiser. With its ability to personalize and localize, lead generation through mobile will emerge as a crucial way of engaging marketers. The key metrics of success are number of leads and revenue generated.

Brand development Brand development could be downright fun when it really goes mobile. Of course, there are mobile media buys, but currently it is a bit like those far-off days when the Internet experience was based on 386 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

PCs, version 3 browsers and a dial-up connection. But the iPhone is pointing the way to a more sophisticated browsing experience and stronger branding through applications. There is a long long way to go, but giving consumers the ability to have fun and engage with your brand directly through their phone is a pre-requisite for mobile’s growth as a key channel in the marketing mix. The key metric of success is impressions.

Customer relations One word sums up this dimension to the mobile business model – loyalty. Just as people now expect to interact with businesses directly through wired Internet usage, they are also beginning to expect the same service through their mobile phones. The key metrics of success are service usage and customer retention.

Cost saving Customers can use automated services through their phone that would otherwise require a more costly method of delivery. In particular, the ability for mobile to develop into a retailer’s dream via text alerts and mobile Jay Neuman, director of database coupons will further augment the marketing & CRM, Telescope Inc. decline in paper and postage direct marketing and provide a killer app which champions mobile’s qualities above any other device. The key metric of success is cost reduction.

Mobile commerce This dimension is perhaps the most straightforward. People are buying something through their mobile phone or mobile device. They could be downloading ringtones, wallpapers or music. They could be performing stock trades on their smartphone. Whatever it is, the business objective is to sell more of it. However, mobile commerce is still in its infancy. It is an important, but not the most prevalent, aspect of mobile marketing. The key metrics of success are impressions and sales conversions. Especially in the current economy, advertisers are looking to performance-based media and this is an opportunity for mobile to take a step out of the shadows and show that it can live alongside other more established media. These six dimensions of mobile business models can be used to create a roadmap for your mobile campaigns and overall strategy. They will help focus your mobile outreaches on those things most aligned with your business objectives and provide a set of metrics to continually improve as you achieve your goals. I Jay Neuman is director of database marketing and CRM at Telescope Inc., Los Angeles. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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carriers and advertisers to build on voice as the key application. It represents the most ubiquitous, rich and accessible communication channel and provides an unrivalled opportunity for companies to communicate with users.

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He a r t ha t? Voi c e is k il le r a pp on mo bil e

By Stéphane Attal

ur mobile phones are audio devices first and foremost, but you will be hard-pressed to believe that these days. Advertising by wireless carriers and handset manufacturers would have you believe that everyone is busy searching and surfing the Internet on our mobile phones as we receive relevant advertisements on them. In fact, there is no need to talk anymore now that Twitter, Facebook, email and text messaging have replaced the art of conversation. The reality is a bit different. Not everyone owns fancy phones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry Storm, Palm Pre or Google Android G1, all of which only represent 15 percent of the total mobile phone installed base. Furthermore, recent surveys show the complexity of many handsets leaves many users frustrated and angry. This then begs the question as

Voicing appreciation A voice-activated user interface offers commonality across most handsets, delivering a consistent Stéphane Attal, CEO, AskKinjo user experience, which results in the opportunity to deliver value-added services that can be easily adopted. In addition, two social factors are also stimulating the need for easyto-use voice-activated services. The first is the wider adoption of legislation mandating the use of hands-free wireless technology while driving. The second is the increasing use of hosted personal contacts. Since carriers have failed to build new voice services to enhance average revenue per user, third parties have jumped in. One company offers a voiceactivated audio service using the mobile phone to deliver free location-based content, supported by paid contextual ads. These audio advertisements cannot be skipped and can reach 100 percent of the mobile subscribers market. In a recent study, participants initially predicted voice search would be the most difficult to use. But in final usability tests, it perOnly 20 percent of mobile phone users like to use their handsets as an all-in-one multimedia device, formed better than expected, with leaving the 80 percent “minority” to concentrate on what they think really matters – voice. participants enjoying voice search to who is left surfing the Web? much more than searching via their handsets keypad. From the research that has been done, only 20 percent of mobile This finding may well have a bearing on the future success or failphone users like to use their handsets as an all-in-one multimedia deure of voice-in, display-out search applications released by some of the vice, leaving the 80 percent “minority” to concentrate on what they best-known Internet search companies. think really matters – voice. In the end, the majority of North American mobile users are still When questioned about possible additional services, this huge “mireliant on traditional voice features, despite their perceived willingness nority” states time and time again that they prefer voice as their main to adopt newer, advanced applications. communication channel. Carriers, content providers and advertisers just need to recognize With the current economic downturn, this is having a disruptive efthat voice is still the killer application with mobile users. I fect as data services usage falls and consumers limit their monthly spending to traditional voice and text services. Stéphane Attal is CEO of AskKinjo, Toronto, Ontario. Reach him at This reliance on traditional voice presents a golden opportunity for [email protected] PAGE 55

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AB Cs o f m ob ile ad ver t is in g op t im izat io n

By Harald Neidhardt

obile advertising is getting traction and is becoming an integral part of today’s marketing mix. But it is still a very tough job for mobile publishers and mobile developers to monetize their inventory, especially when it comes to non-direct-sold inventory. The usual approach to overcome this crucial problem is to work with several ad networks specializing in mobile advertising. Unfortunately, most mobile ad networks are not capable of monetizing each single page impression or tend to serve low eCPM run-ofnetwork advertisements. To react to this challenge, some publishers chain several ad networks together and form so-called daisy chains, which cause higher ad server latencies and might lower the overall user experience. Furthermore, the number of mobile ad networks is growing but their performances differ significantly. It is a time-consuming and expensive task to find out which mobile ad networks deliver the highest eCPMs and fill rates for a specific inventory, especially when there are limited resources for a professional ad-ops team. This article describes essential challenges for mobile publishers and mobile developers to monetize their whole inventory.

Steep increase of unsold inventory To monetize their whole mobile inventory, most mobile publishers and developers sell their unsold remnant This trend towards lower eCPMs is even inventory via mobile ad networse when the supply of mobile inventory works. Mobile ad networks grows faster than the demand, as is the are intermediaries which agcase at the moment gregate advertisers (buy side) and publishers (sell side) on a shared revenue basis (about 40 percent for buy side). Especially in these economic times with decreasing marketing budgets, mobile ad networks tend to optimize on behalf of their advertisers goals (buy side), which results in decreasing eCPMs. This trend towards lower eCPMs is even worse when the supply of mobile inventory grows faster than the demand, as is the case at the moment. The percentage of served ads versus requested ads is the fill rate of an ad network. The fill rates are dependent on the targeting criteria and number of advertisers of an ad network. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Even on basic targeting criteria such as the geographical origin of an impression on a country level, some mobile ad networks are not capable of delivering a fill rate above 25 percent. A new category of mobile ad optimizers has emerged. They fill and optimize mobile advertising inventory by aggregating ad networks across different global regions and different pricing models.

Three-tier pricing model Similar to the online advertising market, different tiers of monetization can be identified, which are dependent on the characteristics of the inventory: 1. Premium display inventory is mainly sold direct and guarantees advertisers a specific placement and time frame for their media (high eCPMs greater $10). These tier 1 ad budgets usually have a low fill rate and tend to be CPM-based. 2. Secondary premium inventory is sold automated via premium ad networks with the same guarantees as premium. Second-tier inventory creates medium eCPMs Harald Neidhardt, co-founder between $1 and $10 and the volume and CMO of Smaato remains also limited. 3. Non-premium inventory is sold automated over ad networks (low eCPMs of $1) and is mostly based on cost per click. Premium inventory represents only a small amount of the overall inventory – best ad spaces on the site. Therefore, premium publishers such as well-known, branded Web sites connect to a premium ad network to monetize their secondary inventory. The inventory that is not filled by one of these channels is monetized by non-premium ad networks. Advent of ad network chains Different ad networks generally offer publishers a trade-off between a high eCPM and a good fill rate. Therefore, medium and large mobile publishers are usually connected to several mobile ad networks. A combination of premium ad networks monetizing their best ad spaces, specific regional-focused and horizontal ad networks connected to many advertisers is typical. To manage this set of mobile ad networks, publishers configure their ad-server to send ad requests to different ad networks by guessing their future eCPMs and fill rates. So normally the first ad request goes out to a high eCPM network. When the ad network defaults, the next highest-paying network is asked for an advertisement and so forth until an ad is served. This static sequence of ad request is called a daisy chain of ad networks. How good a daisy-chain actually performs can only be judged after the ad networks provide performance data – sometimes with a time delay of several days. As a matter of fact, this static approach increases server latencies WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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and is not capable of reacting to the dynamic pricing of the market and may finally cause significant revenue losses.

Global monetization challenge The management of ad networks gets even more complex for publishers with international traffic which needs to be connected to several country-focused ad networks to monetize the whole inventory. These publishers need to create static daisy chains for different countries and keep them updated, especially as ad networks perform variably in different regions or on a country-by-country level. Because of budgets restraints a lot of publishers cannot afford ad ops specialists. As a result, they lose a significant amount of their potential ad revenues.

Advantages of dynamic ad optimization To solve the issues of static daisy chains and maximize advertising yields, a dynamic ad network management technology is needed to observe the eCPM and fill rate of various ad networks or even the whole market in real-time. Such a solution is capable of aggregating and optimizing inventory performance by reordering the chain of mobile ad networks upon specific inventory characteristics dynamically. This process of dynamically optimizing ad revenues in real-time can be referred to as dynamic ad network optimization.

Value added by mobile ad optimization Dynamic ad network optimization features these advantages for mobile publishers:
Higher advertising yields by monetizing every single impression on the best price
Saving money and resources by dynamically reordering the chain based on performance data, inventory and user characteristics
Lower server latencies by allocating the ad impressions to the right network in real-time

Mobile ad optimization for publishers Since ad network optimization is cumbersome and complex, companies have emerged that give mobile publishers the opportunity to outsource this process and make dynamic ad network optimization available for every publisher. Ad optimizers take an important role in aggregating different ad networks and collect data on their performance based on different inventory characteristics provided by the publisher. This data is used to build dynamic daisy chains, which automatically adapt to the changing performance of ad networks, securing the highest ad revenues possible from tier 1 to tier 3 advertisers. The expertise of an ad optimizer in allocating the impression to the right ad networks in real time helps publishers to improve their ad revenues without losing money by finding the best performing ad networks. Publishers also benefit from a scalable technology and the experience of optimizing billions of ad impressions each month. Integrating with an ad optimizer is an easy way to maximize the revenues without employing expensive ad ops, enabling publishers to focus on direct sales efforts. I This article was adapted with permission from a white paper published by Smaato.

Harald Neidhardt is cofounder and chief marketing officer of Smaato, Redwood Shores, CA, and Hamburg, Germany. Reach him at [email protected]

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Maximizing mobile advertising potential requires broad collaboration

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By Guy Yaniv

obile advertising presents intriguing opportunities for wireless carriers and other players in the value chain. However, mobile advertising success requires cooperation from a wide range of parties, including: • Advertisers: Major brands and smaller enterprises realize the high potential return on investment of reaching users on the mobile • Ad agencies and media buyers: Aware of demand from advertisers, ad agencies and media buyers are investigating the mobile platform for delivery of campaigns • Aggregators and ad networks: Aggregators and ad networks enable mass audience, less targeted mobile advertising such as push SMS, and Web banners, playing an important role in testing the water in the industry’s initial phases • Content providers: Increasing on-the-go content consumption is a major driver for mobile advertising, both for display and contentbased campaigns • Carriers: Carriers can reach end-users through multiple channels: voice, SMS, MMS, Web banners and interstitials. Additional unique assets such as presence, impulse response capabilities, vast amounts of end-user information that can be used for targeting, metrics and the trusted billing relationship position carriers to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time • Technology vendors: Technology vendors enable profiling, targeting, reach and campaign management capabilities — the backbone of effective and efficient mobile advertising activity • End-users: To convince endusers to opt in to receive adverTo convince end-users to opt in to receive advertisements, tisements, the exthe experience must be centrally managed, with users perience must be controlling the amounts of ads, context of ads and times centrally manof day the ads are received. aged, with users controlling the amounts of ads, context of ads and times of day the ads are received. Opt-in can be encouraged by incentives • Standards bodies and associations: Standards organizations such as the Mobile Marketing Association and the GSM Association can facilitate the creation of the value chain by promoting industry guidelines, standards and common language MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Preferring unity to division, key parties are pulling together to ensure wide-ranging mobile advertising success. Two examples come from Britain, a market well positioned to become a huge mobile advertising success story. British carriers decided to put head-to-head competition aside for now and are cooperating to increase the inventory, reach and appeal of mobile advertising.

GSMA mobile media metrics initiative On the forefront of creating standards for mobile advertising, GSMA recently launched a mobile media metrics program. The association for carriers assumes that measurements will drive the overall growth of mobile as an effective advertising platform by enabling media and advertising agencies, brands and publishers to evaluate and deliver better mobile advertising campaigns. All five top British carriers are engaged in this initiative and will submit mobile browsing data for auditing and development of standard measurements, which they intend to comply with in the future. Groups such as the Interactive Guy Yaniv, VP and GM of messaging Advertising Bureau and the Mobile and mobile advertising, Comverse Marketing Association are also involved and plan to leverage the British experience in other markets.

Mobile Advertising UK research project Mobile Advertising UK is a research project commissioned by EverySingleOneOfUs, a collaborative communications movement and ÆNEAS Strategy Consulting & Management. The project documents the mobile advertising industry in Britain, identifying growth opportunities to benefit the value-chain worldwide. The research is endorsed by the IAB Europe, IAB UK and the Mobile Marketing Association, and is supported by all five top British carriers, a variety of mobile companies and big-name brands. It will be expanded later to the rest of the world. Cooperative effort creates beneficial synergies. Pooling and leveraging the expertise of the various value-chain players is a key success factor for a prosperous mobile advertising industry. Industry players should focus on collaboration and market education. They should open discussions on business models and relevant industry issues. Bridging gaps and working together will result in identifying the best ways to implement mobile advertising. Success will bring greater opportunities in a win-for-all environment. I Guy Yaniv is vice president and general manager of messaging and mobile advertising at Comverse, Tel Aviv, Israel. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Mobile advertising and the African opportunity By Alexander Gregori

hen it comes to opportunities in African markets the general official attitude persistent among governments, corporations and investors is one of doom and gloom. Unstable political and economic situations, military coups, corruption and poverty, paired with vast country spaces and small populations – compared to, for example, India or China – are often used as arguments against taking Africa seriously. However, the reality is that while many of the criticisms are based on real challenges facing Africa, its markets do offer exciting opportunities. This is especially true for an emerging industry such as mobile. The presence of a few “traditional” companies such as Vodafone, MTN and Zain, either as direct players or as majority shareholders in various mobile ventures across Africa, as well as the push of new players including Obopay and AdMob, into the market attests to this claim.

Cashing in Africa offers a number of attributes that are particularly conducive to its attractiveness for the mobile industry. Firstly, and maybe most importantly, African countries suffer from a general lack in the number of fixed telecommunication lines, often controlled by monopolies. This not only manifests itself in a very small number of people who actually own a fixed telephone connection, it also results in high fixed-line telecommunication costs, bad service and slow connection speeds. This affects business opportunities negatively. Moreover, the growth in the number of computer Internet users is slow and ecommerce has not taken off as it did in other continents, especially in North America and Europe. Secondly, a large number of Africans are “unbankable” in terms of internationally accepted banking standards. This is coupled with wide open spaces inhabited by rural communities who do not even have access to a bank because there are no branches or ATMs. Consequently, business in Africa is done largely on a cash basis. On the other hand, the mobile phone penetration among the African populace is extremely high – in some countries more than 100 percent of the actual population. This also translates into real numbers. For example, in South Africa more than 40 million people own a mobile phone. In Nigeria it is more than 60 million and even in Zimbabwe, a country suffering from devastating socio-political and economic conditions, every citizen owns at least one mobile phone. Countries with “below par” mobile phone penetration such as Kenya – 40 percent – are catching up fast and report exponential growth in mobile phone ownership. What’s more, more than 90 percent of these mobile phones are MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

WAP-enabled, and while this technical feature has not yet been widely exploited commercially, most African countries stand ready with GPRS and 3G technologies. As so often is the case, it is not the forward thinking planning of executives that defines market developments, but rather the markets themselves in this day and age. According to studies from Vodafone and Nielsen that were released toward the end of 2008, twice as many South Africans access the Internet via their mobile phone (10 million) than via their computer (5 million), which is indicative of mobile’s growing clout.

It adds up South African networks and mobile phone manufacturers have responded to this growing number of mobile Internet users with advertising that focuses on offering easy-to-use, cheap data plans for both prepaid and contract mobile customers. It is significant to note that the antiquated billing of Internet connections by the time spent online from the early days of analog modem dialups has never even entered the African mobile Internet market. Rather, users pay for the actual data transfer only. And with only Alexander Gregori, owner, about 2 U.S. cents for 1MB of data Thinking Mobile and Rich Mobile traffic, the rates are much cheaper compared to the United States. Furthermore, wireless carriers are making their money mostly upfront – one of the positive spinoffs of the cash-based business model. Given the above scenario, it is not surprising to note that Africa is not only ready for mobile, but ideally positioned to benefit from the mobile technology explosion. Mobile is simply the best available one-on-one communication tool to reach African audiences on the widest possible scale. This is true for companies who wish to enter the market to generate profits as well as the African population, which can improve its lifestyle by leapfrogging many developed countries with the use of mobile applications for work and personal use. The stage is set. It now remains up to the entrepreneurial spirit to create and offer the right services and applications. Forward-thinking companies would be well advised to keep in mind Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ advice that “you cannot always wait for the customer to tell you what he wants.” Interestingly, it is often smaller, agile service providers instead of the slow-moving, established advertising agencies, who can help companies to develop a sustainable, long-term mobile strategy that fits in seamlessly with their existing marketing efforts. I Alexander Gregori is owner of Dawn Anna Investments (Pty) Ltd.’s myMobWorld, Rich Mobile, Mobile Marketing Winner$ and Thinking Mobile in Gaborone, Botswana. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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A P M ob i le : t he ne w wi r e le s s s e r vi c e

By Jeffrey Litvack and Daniel Hodges

o you see news consumption migrating to mobile like it is from print to online? This question, albeit substituting for the new technology of the day, has been asked for the last hundred years. History provides a clear answer. When radio became a mass medium in the 1930s, television in the 1950s, cable TV in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s, they all remained viable and increased the overall consumption of media. Each medium has taken initial share from the previous medium and each medium has responded to that shift with innovation. Mobile is another consumer touch point. It fills that gap in the day where news consumption was not before viable – on the elevator, waiting for a meeting to start, at the end of the day on the subway. Generation Y, X and boomers have all embraced mobile and smart phones. If you go on iTunes today [August 2009], there are more than 1,300 iPhone applications available in the news section of the Apple App Store. With this new technology, the mobile device is becoming the first source for news and information – ahead of TV, radio and online.

Mobile for the wired The Associated Press’ ability to send push notifications of breaking news to the iPhone – and soon other devices – is also changing people’s consumption habits. On the day of singer Michael Jackson’s death, we saw a 350-percent-plus increase in traffic moments after we sent a push notification to AP Mobile users. By way of example, we heard from AP Mobile users who were on planes at the time of Mr. Jackson’s death and who received the push notification as soon as they landed and turned on their phones. The competition and innovation in the mobile marketplace is accelerating the rapid adoption of mobile. Women have emerged as a fast-growing segment for the smartphone market, which is significant for marketers because women make 80 percent of the household purchases. Mobile is another consumer touch point. The new mobile GUI, the It fills that gap in the day where news incorporation of email, phoconsumption was not before viable – on the elevator, waiting for a meeting to start, tos, the rise of the applicaat the end of the day on the subway. tions, SMS and video have MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

transformed mobile from a device to a consumer information hub. AP today receives regular reports from our mobile users on breaking news in their localities via our “Send to AP” feature on all of our applications and on our mobile Web site. These firsthand accounts have generated a number of stories that are then fed across the nation and worldwide via AP’s wire service. Advertisers have already begun Jeffrey Litvack, GM of mobile and emerging products, AP Mobile to understand and monitor consumer behavior on mobile. As in any new market, the innovators innovate and this is no different. Sprint was the first U.S. wireless carrier to innovate with advertisers and, when the book on mobile advertising is written, Sprint will be in Chapter One. Procter & Gamble Co., under the leadership of A.G. Lafley, now chairman, encouraged the packaged-goods marketer to innovate, Daniel Hodges, head of global sales, mobile and emerging products, AP with mobile as an important part of that strategy. Advertising and the media planning of advertising dollars is a rational data-driven art form. When explosive game-changing innovation such as radio, TV, Internet and mobile emerges, it takes the industry several years to understand, model and allocate dollars in a rational, data-driven and scalable manner. Most advertisers and brands understand this gap and have deployed various mobile tests and campaign. The history of innovation also shows that the adaption period from innovation to massive scale becomes shorter with each innovation.

AP style To understand AP’s view of mobile, it is important to know the AP. Indeed, AP has embraced innovation since the early days of journalism. We used the Pony Express to deliver news in the 1840s, the telegraph, satellites in the 1970s, computers in the 1980s, and digital photography in the 1990s – with each instance, years before the general market. We embrace change, as do our member news organizations. Our goal is to create the best product for each of the consumer platforms. With AP Mobile, consumer adoption of our applications has far exceeded our estimates and continues to rise at an increasing rate. Users are not only downloading our application but regularly using it, with as much as 75 percent of our registered user base turning to AP Mobile to get their news monthly. Our success is measured in two ways – comprehensiveness and personalization. Today, we have more than 1,000 newspapers and broadWWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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casters participating, creating the only hyper-local news application in market. Our national footprint to local news provides consumers with the news they need and want, and advertisers with a highly targeted audience. Equally important are the personalization features we continue to add. Mobile is a personal device, and our mission is to deliver tools “to choose your news.” We have added customized front pages to all of our applications and are building more customization and personalization into the applications. On a yearly basis, we are making a multimillion investment in mobile and into becoming the news button for next-generation devices. By the end of the year, we will have applications in market for every major operating system and handset including Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Java-based phones such as LG, Nokia and Samsung. To be successful, publishers need to get mobile right, both in terms of audience and revenue. Many more of our AP member news publishers are interested in having their own mobile news applications. AP is an early adopter of mobile, and we aim to create content for each platform form factor. As one of the world’s largest content creators, our content includes sports, entertainment, business, news, health, travel and lifestyle. We launched a Spanish-language Latino mobile portal in spring 2009.

Mobile is a medium for snacking versus a long, deep immersive experience. We organize our information based on consumer feedback and allow users to customize the AP content based on what is important to them. Customer feedback is key to our success. We received very good feedback from a customer in Mexico City in Mexico. He was in his hotel room when he experienced a sudden shift in the room. After receiving a mobile alert from AP reporting that there was a moderate size earthquake and that damage was minimal, he wrote us a thank-you note because the AP alert put him at ease. Our goal is to provide the best content and consumer experience. We get customer feedback every day and are using that feedback to improve the customer experience. AP mobile consumers are spending significantly more time with AP Mobile and they are checking in multiple times throughout the day versus this time last year. Our advertisers are returning after their first experience with AP and increasing budgets on their repeat buys, which we view as a very positive sign. I

Jeffrey Litvack is general manager of mobile and emerging products at AP Mobile and Daniel Hodges is head of global sales, mobile and emerging products at The Associated Press, both in New York. Reach Mr. Litvack at [email protected] and Mr. Hodges at [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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B i g b r a n d s tu rn to m o b i l e a d v e r t i s in g a n d m a rk e t i n g

By Dan Butcher

ne of the most important factors that has helped the mobile channel build its credibility is that large, well-known brands are using the marketing medium to extend their reach and for branding purposes. If it were not for brands such as McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Subaru and Jaguar, it would probably be tough to make a case for mobile as a marketing vehicle that works and delivers results – at least on a large scale. It is thanks to the big brands that smaller marketers are realizing the potential of mobile. The following is a round-up of what some big brands across various industries are doing in mobile. This is the proof for the mobile pudding.

Fast-food chains digest mobile Fast-food chains may be the industry sector investing the most in mobile advertising. The launch of the McDonald’s M Burger in France stood out for its innovative use of mobile advertising. The burger giant ran banner ads on the Microsoft Advertising Mobile Media network. The brand used animated banner formats instead of traditional mobile banners. Also, a recent Dairy Queen mobile ad campaign saw a clickthrough-rate of more than 22 percent, proving once again the effectiveness of the mobile channel to engage consumers. Mobile Posse Inc., a provider of idle-screen content and advertising for mobile, helped Dairy Queen reach consumers on-the-go through their mobile phones. Dairy Queen and digital agency space150 piloted Mobile Posse’s idle-screen advertising platform to promote its new Sweet Deals value menu. Dairy Queen’s “Sweet Deals” campaign is a brand campaign that was designed to promote consumer awareness of its new Sweet Deals value menu. Mobile advertising was added as a component of the traditional media mix, so the mobile ads complemented creative and messaging used across other media.

Targeting via location A hot topic in the world of advertising is adding consumers’ location data to make mobile advertising more targeted. Burger King and Subaru recently ran trial campaigns in cooperation with a tier-one U.S. carrier to let consumers find the nearest quick-serve restaurant or car dealership by clicking on a mobile banner ad. The fast-food chain and automaker tapped the AdWhere platform from Useful Networks, which published the results of the two largescale trials as demonstration of the effectiveness of location-based advertising over standard mobile advertising. According to Useful Networks, location-based advertising increases the value of mobile advertising by improving targeting and facilitating deeper levels of consumer engagement. The strategy of the Burger King and Subaru trials was simple: Get MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

customers into their stores. The beauty of location-based advertising and, more specifically, the Store Finder solution Useful Networks created in the trials, is that it reduces the number of clicks a customer has to make to complete the intended user experience. Users no longer have to enter in the postal codes to find stores. They can simply click a call-to-action banner ad and get the address, phone number and map pinpointing the closest store location. Also, proximity-based rewards, such as mobile couponing, will also help brands drive traffic into their stores.

Automakers drive results with mobile If fast-food chains are leading the pack in mobile spend, then automakers are not far behind, if at all. Luxury automaker Jaguar Cars ran a multichannel marketing campaign to drive traffic to its mobile sites and get consumers to opt in to its SMS database. Jaguar’s strategy was to integrate mobile into other media channels by deploying short codes in several different media channels, including print, television and outdoor. Each channel uses unique keywords, and the communication flow is focused towards driving foot traffic to dealerships by helping consumers find their nearest dealer. Jaguar’s mobile marketing strategy included individual WAP and iPhone sites for various nameplates, as well as WAP and iPhone-based advertising media –including rich media – driving traffic to the specific sites.

Media loves mobile Big traditional media companies, including television networks, are benefitting from mobile, both as advertisers and publishers. The Discovery Channel and Microsoft Advertising launched a three-screen campaign spanning mobile, the Internet and gaming to capture “The Deadliest Catch” fan base. On April 14, the Discovery Channel executed an MSN Mobile home page takeover in conjunction with the MSN home page takeover to promote the season premiere of “The Deadliest Catch” television series. In addition, Microsoft subsidiary ScreenTonic created a WAP site that uses the Microsoft Advertising mobile platform. The Discovery Channel’s strategy for this campaign was to create a presence that surrounds its viewer throughout the day by owning multiple touch points within the Microsoft network. The campaign included a breadth of Microsoft ad products running across the Microsoft network of assets, all designed to reach viewers throughout the day no matter which platform they are using. Meanwhile, NBC Universal and MTV Networks are using mobile interactivity and advertising provider SinglePoint’s SingleBrand Ad Marketplace to monetize their mobile messaging inventory. Campaigns for NBC Universal’s properties include NBC, USA Network, Sci Fi Channel, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, NBC News and NBC Sports, as well as Universal Studios and Universal Studios Theme Parks. MTV Networks’ channels include CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV Tr3s and VH1. WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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SinglePoint is empowering broadcasters and advertisers with interaction via mobile devices. Even the beleaguered print media industry is reaping the rewards of mobile, with giants such as The New York Times and Time Inc. launching ad-supported mobile Web sites and smartphone applications. Free commuter daily newspaper brand Metro U.S. also implemented an SMS program to get news readers interacting with its print properties. Metro readers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia can participate in the daily Metro TXT Poll. Each day Metro will place a question on the front page and encourage readers to text in an answer for the opportunity to win a $250 Visa gift card. Results are shown the following day in the Voices section. Similarly, magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. is using the mobile channel to monetize seven of its magazine titles. HFM is selling ad space on the mobile versions of CarAndDriver.com, Elle.com, Ellegirl.com, Premiere.com, RoadAnd Track.com, WomansDay.com and Ellegirl Latina. Quattro Wireless is handling ad sales and serving for the titles.

Software and technology giants Computer maker Dell turned to mobile to promote its Vostro models, targeting the entry-level laptop market in India to generate qualified sales leads. Dell tapped BuzzCity for the campaign, using WAP as a channel to generate sales leads as a complement to print and outdoor media which promoted brand awareness. The three-week WAP-interaction-based text banner campaign is claimed to have achieved daily exposure to an average of 71,308 consumers, while the average click-through-rate was 0.55 percent. Emboldened, Dell quadrupled its initial mobile spend. Dell’s print and outdoor campaign was running parallel to this WAP campaign throughout India. The print and outdoor was not restricted to the largest cities as such but was also taken to smaller cities—a key target for the company in India. While the print and outdoor part of the campaign performed the branding and top-of-mind recall function with the “Best Price Offer” for Dell, the WAP campaign supplemented it to capture leads. The WAP component supported the print and outdoor campaign by allowing them to close the campaign loop by converting the awareness generated into sales. In-game mobile ads play well Another hot topic in the advertising world is in-game and in-application advertising, which has taken off due to the popularity of smartphone platforms such as the iPhone. Advertising within mobile games is an especially popular niche. Aside from the Apple App Store, some of the biggest players in mobile gaming distribution include Greystripe, Didmo, Mpowerplayer’s Mplayit, Handango and GetJar. Cellufun combines mobile gaming with social networking. In-game and in-application advertising has to be working for topnotch brands such as Paramount’s Star Trek, Nestle’s Lean Pockets, the U.S. Navy, Nikon, Kia, Sprint and Yahoo to rely on it. These brands all turned to EA Mobile’s free Lemonade Tycoon iPhone game to deploy ads. In addition to Lemonade Tycoon, EA Mobile launched five other new gaming titles for the iPhone and iPod touch, including Star Trek, American Idol, Trivial Pursuit, Pandemonium and Anytime Pool, although those were pay-per-download. EA is looking at both traditional business models to sell games through the Apple App Store, as well as new ad-supported methods to

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

ensure that it offers consumers choices in how they wish to consume its gaming content.

Promoting a product Sunglasses giant Oakley ran an “AFA Snow” mobile advertising campaign within the Ridertech Snow Reports iPhone application to promote its ski/snowboard goggles. Oakley tapped appssavvy for the campaign, which targeted male snow sports enthusiasts ages 15-28. The objectives were to generate awareness of Oakley AFA snowboard/ski gear and brand equity associated with Oakley and the action sports lifestyle, send qualified traffic to the AFA Snow landing page on Oakley.com and drive Oakley AFA product sales.

Retail sees detail Preppy retailer Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. launched an iPhone-optimized site for Rugby.com, the site for its sporty line of Ralph Lauren Rugby apparel. Like the existing WAP site that is optimized for all other mobile devices, the iPhone site lets consumers browse and buy all products that are available on Rugby.com. For its part, A|X Armani Exchange launched its first mobile advertising campaign to promote its A|X Armani Exchange Spring 2009 collection. Armani teamed up with The Media Kitchen and mobile ad network AdMob to raise awareness of the new A|X spring line, drive opt-ins to the brand’s text messaging program and to continue building the brand’s relationship with its customers. Not to be left behind, Amazon.com launched its latest mobile offering, the Amazon App for BlackBerry, which is now available as a free download directly from its Web site. Designed specifically for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, the application offers customers who use a BlackBerry device with a track ball a way to find, discover and buy products from Amazon.com and thousands of other retailers on its network. This release followed the launch of Amazon’s iPhone shopping application in the month of December 2008.

Coca-Cola finds mobile the real thing Coca-Cola, which invested in the mobile channel early and often, ran a mobile campaign to accompany the launch of Coca-Cola Zero in Thailand. The soft drink giant tapped Celltick to power the mobile initiative at Coca-Cola's exclusive music festival, Coke Zaah. The campaign targeted young adults and was meant to engage this audience in a fun way to build hype and excitement around the launch event in Central World, Bangkok. The Coke Zero brand used a unique form of mobile marketing to reinforce its position as a leading low-calorie soft drink. Coca-Cola worked with Nokia to create a Coke Zero-branded Nokia 5310 device, putting the brand right into the hands of consumers. Music content was bundled on Nokia 5310 devices and acted as an incentive for consumers to buy the handset that was designed by Nokia with music in mind. Church's Chicken and Coca-Cola have also launched interactive promotional initiatives that target mature, multicultural, urban youngadults with food, video games and mobile technology. The fast-food brand is in collaboration with Coca-Cola on a promotion called “Be Heard” that uses mobile technology to engage and interact with a younger segment of the brand’s target audience. Church’s Chicken and Coca-Cola set their sights on a mobile campaign that leverages the power of text messaging. I WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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M o b i le a d v e r t i s i n g : S ma r t m o n e y o n s ma r t p h o n e s

By Giselle Tsirulnik

he mobile advertising story is currently dominated by new smartphones, new applications and app stores and new attitudes to content and advertising consumption on handsets feeding into evolving marketer attitudes toward advertising on the most ubiquitous electronics device worldwide. The launch of Apple’s trendsetting iPhone in 2007 followed by the Apple App Store in 2008 sent ripples throughout the industry, especially among manufacturers and carriers. Pretty soon, the iPhone led to similar touchscreen, Web-friendly rival handsets and the Apple App Store set a storm of copycat moves as evidenced by Nokia’s Ovi, the Android Market and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry App World. “The application business is really not that new,” said Chris Baughman, assistant vice president of creative strategy at PointRoll. “As early as the Palm, people have been creating and selling applications. But the technology and centralization of the iTunes store for app distribution have made them such a hit “Amazon.com wasn’t the first to sell books online,” he said. “They were simply the ones that did it right.” Indeed, the iPhone was the first smartphone to have a Web browser similar to the experience on the PC, but it was beaten to the Web by the BlackBerry. However, the Web-friendly nature of new phones has made mobile advertising a new line item in brands’ advertising budgets. “Yet, the success of the iPhone is not entirely what the phone offers, but also who the phone has attracted as its end-users,” Mr. Baughman said. “You can always find research that supports that iPhones are the most effective channel in the mobile landscape. “Although what research doesn’t point out is the main cause of this phenomenon: Is it the device or the tech-savvy early adopters who all were attracted to buy iPhones?” he said. Marketing has changed recently with the integration of mobile elements into ad campaigns via SMS and MMS, as well as an increased number of banner-ad campaigns running directly on mobile Web sites. Advertising within mobile Web experiences has been helped along MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

by the explosion of smartphones this past year, most featuring true Web-browsing capabilities, as opposed to basic phones of the past few years with limited rendering capabilities. “This has, of course, seen many major portals and destination sites creating more robust mobile versions of their sites,” Mr. Baughman said. “Although there has been a slew of standard static display ads on these platforms, we have also seen a great trend of advertisers and creative agencies willing to push the boundaries and explore within the smartphones’ browser limitations, being that most don’t support Adobe’s Flash player at the moment,” he said. “The one thing holding back creativity in mobile advertising is the Kweight limitation of 3-4 K, which makes for really poor image quality and poor user experience.” When it comes to trends around consolidation in mobile advertising, over the last two years a large number of second-generation mobile advertising service providers—mobile ad networks and ad platforms—have launched to join the initial five or six first-generation companies.

Economy stretches payout time However, the mobile advertising market has not grown large enough to support the number of companies in the market, particularly given the unprecedented economic environment that has affected all media spending, according to Brian Cowley, general manager of Velti North America. “This has resulted in longer timeframes being required for business models to prove out and for companies to become profitable, therefore requiring more cash or for CEOs to seek a merger,” Mr. Cowley said. “There is very little, if any, venture capital being invested in new mobile advertising companies. “Investments made have primarily consisted of inside rounds in the last nine months,” he said. “The financial strains on this segment are more a function of the economic environment right now, and less a function of the potential of mobile advertising. “Mobile advertising will be a large market—it is a question of when, not if.” As a result, Mr. Cowley expects to see more companies WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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consolidating. An example is not far: Velti, a mobile marketing services firm, recently acquired AdInfuse for its mobile personalization, ad routing and serving technology. Paul Cheng, vice president of business development and strategy at Velti, believes that many companies that were funded in the last few years, particularly in the U.S. market, pursued strategies that viewed mobile as a similar platform to wired Internet advertising and as a display medium in and of itself. While there is a market for display advertising in mobile, it is not nearly as big or useful as many thought, he said. “This has contributed to flameouts, as companies have run out of money pursuing a market that is smaller and more immature than they thought and is a driving force behind the consolidation, as players who have been more in engagement marketing and have stronger, longerterm business models succeed,” Mr. Cheng said.

Masters 2009 and Cartier 2009. The user interaction rates for these types of units have improved as this form of rich-media advertising becomes more familiar and present. McDonald’s also ran an admirable campaign for the launch of its McCafe coffee, using both print and display ads to encourage users to either text to a SMS short code or enter their mobile number into a display ad, and then get a coupon for their new McCafe right on their phone.

Consistency required for future growth In the future expect mobile to be more aligned to social networks where individuals start connections simply via mobile devices. There are billions of people who will only experience the Web only on mobile devices. The industry needs to make sure that it lays the foundation to facilitate these discussions early on in the process so that brands do not get left out of the conversations.

“Amazon.com wasn’t the first to sell books online. They were simply the ones that did it right.” – Chris Baughman, PointRoll

Apple to Apple The mobile advertising glass is either half-empty or half-full, depending on what a marketer’s expectations are from previous aggressive analyst projections, according toVelti’s Mr. Cowley. To be able to measure and compare growth, the best way is to overlay some key metrics from the first three to four years of Internet advertising and compare that to a comparable period in mobile advertising and marketing: • The number of top 200 brands participating • The frequency and volume of participation • Campaign performance numbers (click-through rates, conversion rates) • Where the market is with adoption of high-speed devices compared to Web broadband (and the effect that has on advertising) • Where the market is with education and awareness of the medium • Where the market is with the development of advertising standards “In all cases you are seeing a medium that is preparing for prime time within the next year,” Mr. Cowley said. “As the economy begins to strengthen you will see a dramatic acceleration in mobile advertising. “For those that believed earlier forecasts of $5 billion in 2010, they will feel this growth has been too slow, but for those that had more reasonable expectations around timing, the comparison of where mobile advertising is today to Web advertising in the same time frame is very encouraging,” he said. Significant shareholder returns will be generated for those companies that are well positioned with customers, success stories, proven platforms and services. Brands such as PepsiCo, MasterCard, Heineken, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Wrigley’s, Nestle, Ford, Kellogg and Victoria’s Secret have run mobile advertising in 2009. If the big players are turning to mobile, that is evidence of the channel’s opportunities. According to Velti’s Mr. Cheng, only big brands to date have been able to afford true integrated campaigns across media. However, there is a small and growing self-service market in the mobile space among mobile application developers that is leveraging long-tail publishers. The problem with the long tail is that there is not enough quality inventory and money being spent to sustain companies, per Mr. Cheng. Meanwhile, within the mobile browsing experience, PointRoll has seen great success for clients such as moviemaker Focus Features with its “Burn After Reading” movie campaign, as well as for ESPN The MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

“Overall, the mobile advertising industry is waiting for the eventual adoption of the Adobe Flash player and the explosion of creativity that it will allow,” Mr. Baughman said. “Even with tighter specs, of course, having Flash capabilities opens up many doors for creative and engaging advertisements.” Clearly, the mobile advertising market, which is currently on a large growth curve, is different than that of online advertising and will not be driven as much by solely display advertising as a combination of advertising across all media. “I believe that from a technology and creative perspective, that mobile will fundamentally alter the traditional call-to-action and that mobile CTAs will be the key to unlocking social network monetization and that we will see new and very innovative forms of advertising and marketing emerge over the next few years,” Mr. Cheng said. “Watch this area more closely in the future.” One major challenge today with mobile is that the creativity of the campaigns is reaching past the technology available. However, this is not so much a problem as an opportunity for new innovation, PointRoll’s Mr. Baughman said. “Today there is no unified platform per se other than the mobilebased Web browsers, which are not as compliant as desktop-based browsers,” he said. So, not all Web browsers will render the exact same site the same way, he pointed out. “From the overall creative strategy standpoint, this causes sites to be designed in various versions to accommodate various mobile browsers, making layout and display ad formats varied as a result,” Mr. Baughman said. “In order to be efficient, we need to have consistent size specifications across devices. “It’s always great to be sitting in a meeting brainstorming creative ideas before you look at the technology available, that’s just what inspires innovation in our industry,” he said. “If there weren’t challenges like that in a market, everyone would be using the same cookie-cutter approach to deliver their message and brands wouldn’t be able to differentiate from their competitors.” With mobile comes the opportunity for a much higher degree of technology growth. Many marketers, including mobile marketing firms, seem to be taking advantage of that in the market. “Mobile companies that will be able to weather the economic conditions will be companies that are profitable today, don’t require a lot of investment capital and, of course, companies that have proven solutions in mobile marketing and advertising,” Mr. Cowley said. I WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Loo k beyo nd t he Ap ple iP ho ne

I

By Jeff Hasen

t is pretty safe to say that the iPhone has changed the face of mobile marketing. In May 2009, Brightkite and Gfk NOP stated that iPhone users are more likely to recall mobile ads than non-iPhone users. That is great news for the entire marketing community. After all, it is our job to find the best ways to market our companies in a way that sticks. But is the iPhone truly the best way to reach our core audiences? Well, to quote Reverend Lovejoy, the minister from “The Simpsons” television show, in explaining a much more complex mystery: “Short answer, yes with an if; long answer, no with a but.” The catch is that while marketers are falling over each other to embrace the iPhone, many of us fail to realize that there are around 20 million iPhones in use and it is hardly a representative sample of America. Those cool iPhone applications that have people buzzing are accessible to a very small segment of the consumer audience. And they may be the audience you want in your target demographic, or they may not.

MyPhone? IPhone applications are no doubt cool and memorable, but they are only a single element of mobile marketing. Let us think of a pyramid. The iPhone is at the apex – if we were thinking about Dick Clark’s “$10,000 Pyramid,” the iPhone is the $300 answer. As marketers, we are often most impressed But as mobile marby the latest and greatest and, in this case, the iPhone application is just that. Cool, buzzketers, we need to guide worthy. But is it selling more widgets? our clients through a strategic process that covers the entire spectrum of mobile marketing to make certain that their marketing reach hits all of their prospects, not just the ones with the coolest phones. SMS is at the base of the mobile marketing pyramid. It sits at the bottom foundational layer – it gives brands and agencies the greatest reach and taps into the behavior and interests of hundreds of millions. To extend the TV analogy, it would be a $100 answer. But without the $100 answer, you could not move to a $200 or $300 question. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

However, as you do embrace SMS, marketers can move up the pyramid, adding layers on such as mobile Web/WAP, mobile advertising, richer custom applications, and, yes, even an iPhone application. These provide less and less reach but often drive a viral component that adds to the overall program—and may also hit a specific demographic in your target audience. And let us face it: as marketers, we are often most impressed by the latest and greatest and, in this case, the iPhone application is just that. Cool, buzz-worthy. But is it selling more widgets?

Wily marketing Consider the case of Wiley Publishing, publisher of the wildlypopular “For Dummies” book series. The publisher came to us with a goal of reaching the masses and delivering a rich brand experience via mobile. Together, we devised and executed an integrated campaign that included the following: • Text: A text-to-win sweepJeff Hasen, CMO, HipCricket stakes gave consumers a chance to win high-end consumer electronics prizes via SMS, using the keyword “DUMMIES” to reinforce the brand. All who entered received a rebate for $5 off any Wiley “For Dummies” title. Consumers even had the opportunity to opt-in for future offers and information. This was the point-of-entry for the campaign and the best way to set a baseline. • Mobile banner ads: Through optimization via our platform, we delivered more than 1.3 million impressions with a call to action and branding familiar to consumers. More importantly, click-through rates were four times as high as those produced by the companion online campaign. • Mobile WAP site: The “richest” brand execution delivered the “For Dummies” logo, look and feel and gave those interested an easy way to opt-in to receive offers and rebates. The site even featured a store locator to find the closest store, as well as a list of the most popular “For Dummies” titles. How did the campaign do? It moved product as well as the loyalty scale. There was a 34 percent conversion rate for consumers joining the TXT4Dummies Club. The campaign received the prestigious Cross-Media Integration award from the Mobile Marketing Association. In this case, Wiley never made it to the top of the pyramid – and did not need to. The base provided more than enough reach to meet or exceed each of Wiley’s goals while only getting part way up the mobile marketing pyramid. I

Jeff Hasen is chief marketing officer of HipCricket, Kirkland, WA. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Worl d w id e w here? Ge tting lo cati on- base d mob ile marketi ng rig ht

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Better targeting = bigger demand Let us say you run a local pizza joint with three locations in a large metro area. he new generation of mobile Web browsers provides the missing Current advertising through mobile and online channels has not ingredient for marketers: location. Ever heard this story? A cusshown a good return for you. After all, without quality geo-targeting, tomer walks past a Starbucks, receives a timely SMS alert with more than 90 percent of your ad impressions are wasted on customers a coupon, and a full-on latté-sipping-fest ensues. This, we have been who are outside of your delivery area or live too far to drive to told, is the Promised Land of location-based mobile marketing. your shop. Setting aside whether customers would embrace this type of expeWith the innovation of geo-aware browsers, you will be able to tarrience, mobile technology limitations and platform fragmentation have get your mobile and online advertisements based on ZIP code, neighcurrently constrained reach (read: how many customers are accessible). borhood or even street intersection. Historically, the promise of location-based mobile marketing has You can advertise with confidence that 100 percent of customers far surpassed its true capabilities. As a result, such campaigns remain who view your ad are within range fodder for futuristic movies –“Minority Report” – rather than practical to actually purchase a pizza at your marketing solutions. shop. That is the power of locationHowever, technology is catching up. The new wave of smartphone based mobile advertising. browsers such as Safari on the iPhone 3.0 and Android on the G1 allows Further, geolocation signifimarketers to obtain device-location data during a customer’s Web cantly enhances the ability of marbrowsing session, providing a whole new set of tools to keters to extract more value from engage consumers. performance-based campaigns, Better yet, these geo-browsers are another example of the converparticularly for brands with a gence of mobile and traditional Web browsing. strong bricks-and-mortar presence. Firefox 3.5 includes geolocation support as well, further extending In other words, when physical the reach of this technology to an audience that will finally equate to the store locations are important for a critical mass that advertisers crave. Chris Glodé, senior director of product management, brand, the value of knowing a Now, Web content can now be served to Web-surfers with an awareUseful Networks prospective customer’s location inness of where they are. creases, as the customer can be directed to the store, and conversion is Imagine checking your favorite news site, blog or discussion board easy to measure via coupon redemption. and having hyper-local stories appear instantly – for example, hours For example, a nationwide quick-serve restaurant could blend a traago, the police arrested a prowler one block from your home – or reditional mobile brand awareness campaign with a performance-based ceiving local special offers from businesses that you walk by daily. call-to-action campaign. Users located more than a few blocks from the nearest restaurant could be served a brand/product awareness ad. Meanwhile, users within a small radius of a nearby restaurant could be presented with a time-sensitive coupon which is only valid locally, along with a map showing the store location and contact details. Campaign performance tracking is another discipline which will benefit from geo-targeting. Marketers can now track campaign engagement and performance – for example, click-through-rate or cost per acquisition – at a hyper-local level. Using map visualization tools, a campaign manager can analyze the success of a marketing campaign. Think of a heat-map-style report which reveals that a jet-ski campaign is over-performing in neighborhoods within 3 miles of a body of water. The marketer then makes the adjustment to increase spend in this area or specify additional new targets with a similar With the wider support for browser geolocation offered with iPhone 3.0 and geographic profile. Firefox 3.5, demand for location-based advertising is already heating up. By Chris Glodé

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The ball is now squarely in the court of the advertising networks and agencies. Indeed, it is their task to develop the tools and campaigns to leverage the underlying browser technology and allow marketers to understand, embrace, create, manage and report on geo-targeted advertising campaigns.

How does it work? The enabling technology behind Web geo-targeting has been in development for years, combining advances from a variety of ecosystem partners and components. On mobile devices such as most smartphones which have multiple sources of location – GPS, cell tower, Wi-Fi – the developer or publisher implementing the campaign has the ability to tap into each of these unique sources depending on what source best meets the needs of the campaign. For example, to target a regional advertisement at customers in a certain geographic market, a Wi-Fi or cell tower location is just the ticket: quick fix, low accuracy requirement and almost always available. By contrast, a mobile advertising campaign which ultimately provides walking or driving directions to the nearest retailer could benefit from the pinpoint accuracy of GPS, provided the potential customer is outdoors and has the device GPS turned on. Meanwhile, for traditional Web browsers, Wi-Fi location is the answer. After all, we are just now starting to see laptops that have GPS capabilities.

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What about privacy? Clearly, users want to know when and with whom their location information is being shared. How this experience is handled has been left to the individual browsers. It generally involves a simple popup asking the user for consent to share her location with the Web site being viewed. This opt-in-based process ensures that consumers have total control over whether to give permission for their device to share location with the content publisher and advertiser. While there is potential for abuse, advertisers and publishers are well-incented to promote customer understanding and trust in this technology, and how it is being used. After all, any type of privacy incident will be the responsibility of the marketer or publisher, since the user must consent to each individual Web site – by domain – when sharing location. At least, this method is how early-adopting mobile browsers have implemented the Javascript Geolocation API which enables this location technology. What’s next? With the wider support for browser geolocation offered with iPhone 3.0 and Firefox 3.5, demand for location-based advertising is already heating up. Several highly successful nationwide trials nationwide were recently completed, and we will see many more this year. With the converging trends of increasing smartphone penetration and browser-based geolocation ubiquity, expect to see more engaging, interactive and lucrative location-based advertising campaigns from the forward-thinking brands and agencies savvy enough to capitalize on these emerging opportunities. I Chris Glodé is senior director of product management at Useful Networks, a location-based advertising service provider in Denver, CO. Reach him at [email protected]

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W hy r ea ch i s t he c r i ti c al m obi l e a dv er ti s i ng m et r i c

By Erin (Mack) McKelvey

he ongoing debate over the “right” metric for measuring online advertising’s value as a medium continues. Despite the wired Web’s growth and maturity, few signs point to a consensus. There is an opportunity here for the mobile advertising ecosystem to focus on what is important for advertisers. Similar to online, there are conflicting views on the most effective metrics to gauge the scale, growth and value of the mobile advertising market. This is not surprising. Some believe that total ad impressions is the barometer by which to best measure the market. Total ad impressions is a legacy metric that has not accurately measured online effectiveness and is not relevant for mobile. The mobile consumer’s Web experience is unique and in some cases, complex. In all cases, it is a substantially shorter session time than the wired Web. It is 1.06 ad requests viewed per page and, therefore, brings a world of opportunity for targeting and engagement. But first, you must have reach. Reach is the enabler of delivering sizable segmented audiences. Advertisers choose a mobile ad delivery partner based on who can most efficiently reach their consumers. Therefore, a customercentric approach would indicate that key metric definition must start with reach. The mobile advertising industry needs to move beyond a simple accounting of ad impressions and look to reach as the essential measurement—a true indicator of More people access news via the mobile maturity and evolution— Web than the top 100 largest newspapers in the United States combined. for several reasons. Here they are.

1. Reach is the established metric that advertising agencies and brands value Reach is the measurement that the media world understands. Media buyers buy newspapers based on total circulation. They buy television based on viewership, and radio according to the number of listeners. So if reach is the metric that advertisers and media buyers know and value, then clearly we need to speak a common language and focus on reach. For media buyers to spend millions of budget dollars in mobile as MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

they do in other media, they must know they are reaching a real, measurable audience of sufficient scale. Demonstrating this common metric, alongside the lift that campaigns have seen as benchmarked against online-only campaigns, will ensure that mobile becomes a channel of choice, and the spend will be allocated accordingly for the broader market of brands and agencies.

2. Reach shows the true scope and power of the mobile advertising marketplace Simply defined, reach is the size of the audience exposed to an ad message through a particular medium. According to the Nielsen Mobile Report for April 2009, the mobile Internet reaches more than 59 million users, a number that steadily continues to grow month over month. In fact, The Kelsey Group forecasts that by the year 2012, the U.S. mobile Web will reach more than 91.7 million users. This represents a 55 percent increase of an addressable mobile audience in just three years. In contrast, online will remain relatively flat, with a 6 percent increase in audience over the same time period, according to Kelsey projections. Erin (Mack) McKelvey, VP of marketing, Millennial Media When you look at these user numbers set against the backdrop of the attrition and market erosion occurring across other types of media, these are extremely compelling numbers for mobile. As evidence of the mobile’s increasing reach and influence, we can look to recent comparative data for newspapers. According to March 2008 data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, approximately 27 million people read newspapers nationwide every day. By comparison, 22.2 million people access news and current events via their mobile phones, according to April 2009 data from Nielsen Mobile. An even more telling statistic—more people access news via the mobile Web than the top 100 largest newspapers in the United States combined. The message could not be any clearer. If you are buying traditional media channels, you also need to look to mobile as a powerful way to reach a large audience base with accountability and efficiency.

3. Reach determines how many consumers you can engage and impact On a basic level, there is a direct correlation between the number of people that you are able to reach and the number of people you can potentially impact, influence and engage. There is simply no getting around this fact. If your audience reach is 1 million, then 1 million consumers is the most that you can possibly influence with your message. This is why maximizing reach is much more critical for mobile ad WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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networks than simply churning an existing user base for more impressions with diminishing returns. While the value of a single impression can vary greatly, the value of reaching a new consumer remains a constant.

4. Reach will be the truest indication of value to advertisers as the mobile Web grows More people are using the mobile device as their primary access to digital information. Weather, food and dining, entertainment and other Internet categories are showing impressive mobile lift numbers. According to Nielsen Mobile, the weather and real estate categories are seeing a 38 percent mobile lift. Food/dining is showing a 35 percent increase, and email and games are showing 20 percent and 19 percent mobile lifts, respectively. With more users migrating from online to the mobile Web, they are generating more page views—and accordingly, more ad impressions. So as the mobile medium becomes more mainstream, reach will emerge as the defining indicator of value. Page views and impressions become far less significant. One effective way that advertisers can limit excess impressions while maximizing reach is through the use of frequency capping. By limiting the number of ad impressions for a placement over a set time-period, frequency capping enables the highest effect per user, and the maximum number of users per campaign. As advertisers become more educated about buying mobile, the use of tools such as frequency capping to drive campaign efficiency and delivery will continue to increase.

5. A critical mass of reach is necessary to effectively segment and target audiences Mobile is a medium that is perfectly suited for audience segmentation. Along with capturing all the typical data associated with the wired Internet—user registration information, content affinity and observed behaviors—mobile has the unique ability to deliver carrier, handset and location data. This makes it ideal for reaching and engaging highly segmented groups of consumers. Using behavioral tendencies and keywords, we can aggregate special audiences who have demonstrated a particular category interest. By delivering relevant, targeted messages to an engaged and receptive group of users, we consistently generate higher click-through rates, more interaction and better campaign results. Creating and delivering these advanced segmentation and targeting campaigns requires a critical mass of consumers in sufficient scale. Mobile’s ability to deliver brand messages to engage millions of consumers is significant. However, taking this broad user base, segmenting, delivering and optimizing effective ads that are relevant and meaningful to specific audiences—this creates tremendous value for both the advertiser and the consumer. Ultimately, mobile advertising will succeed on the broadest scale for all the reasons that it is successful today: higher click-through rates, better targeting and an overall lower cost of delivering an engaged user. Bottom line, mobile advertising is a more efficient spend of media budget dollars and will continue to be so. The sooner we use reach as the metric to communicate the unique value and true power of this medium, the faster more brands and agencies will ensure mobile takes its rightful place as a key component of major advertising buys, alongside the traditional mass media channels of television, print, online and radio. I Erin (Mack) McKelvey is vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD. Reach her at [email protected]

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Bl ow ing cam paig n b udg et on pr e-c anned dat a?

By Andrew Bovingdon

n medicine, doctors use thermometers to gauge a patient’s temperature. The “real-time” data enables the physician to make a more accurate diagnosis and adjust treatment before additional complications appear. Like that thermometer, Web analytics data should provide an immediate read on the health of your business or vigour of your marketing campaign. Yet more often than not, today’s Web analytics products do not deliver “real-time” data. Advanced analysis tools promise plenty, but the complex metrics require vast amounts of data storage and processing to deliver – tricky to achieve even for premium analytics products. As a result, we are seeing a very different analytics market emerge – one where most products deliver pre-canned data that is at least 24 hours out of date.

Not having real-time results simply gives other people a window of opportunity to adapt and steal your market.

It works like this: Each night your recorded campaign and site data is turned into a wide range of fixed reports. Then the raw data is thrown away to save storage space and expense. This approach is vastly different from the good old days when rudimentary analytics solutions simply examined your Webserver logs and told you which pages were being read. Although measuring those early Web campaigns was basic compared to today’s bounce rates and funnels, it provided real-time answers. You could start a campaign, review the first few people to reach your landing page and adjust the campaign accordingly. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Today, new campaigns literally run blind for at least a day before you can determine if it was a success. That means a large percent of your budget most likely is spent before you spot any problems. It is sort of like throwing money over a high wall hoping that your target market is ready and waiting on the other side.

Andy Bovington, VP of product Get real marketing, Bango This 24-hour-delayed model is so outdated compared to other current industry trends. Take information publishing, for example. Not long ago information was simply published on Web sites every so often. This eventually turned into a stream of shorter, more frequently updated blogs and RSS feeds. Today we have constant flows of real time tweets coming at us from all directions. The realtime information allows us to react and adapt faster than ever. By contrast, delays exist in both mobile and traditional desktop analytics products. Few solutions can give you the foundation on which to react and quickly build successful campaigns in real-time. There are signs of change, however. It will not be long before real-time reports from live data reach the forefront of quality analytics. Accurate hour-by-hour or minute-byminute results can give marketers the flexibility to quickly evolve mobile Web sites and marketing campaigns. The real-time information is beginning to take shape in the wired Web analytics market, too. For example, the new Yahoo Web analytics, currently in beta, is going after Google with the same sort of detailed real time results about wired Web sites and campaigns. Occasionally we run across customers that say they are not worried about having their information in real time. Thing is, not having real-time results simply gives other people a window of opportunity to adapt and steal your market. Having the facts as they happen allows you to react to market changes and stay a step ahead, before your entire budget has been spent. Let us be real – real-time data is a necessity when it comes to the fast-paced mobile world. I

Andy Bovingdon is vice president of product marketing at Bango, Cambridge, England. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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W h y c a r r i e r- b a s e d b i l l i n g m a k e s s e n s e

By Jay Emmet

he growth of the Apple App Store is without a doubt one of the biggest bright spots in the mobile world with nearly $1 billion of revenue derived from more than 1 billion application downloads – an astounding feat. A combination of an innovative mobile device, a progressive business model and the brand cachet of Apple has produced one of the most successful mobile innovations in recent times. Following the Apple App Store success, Google, Research In Motion and Nokia have launched a second wave of off-deck app stores that are fundamentally different from Apple’s store. As these app stores are not associated commercially to a single wireless carrier’s subscriber base and tend to be specific to a device manufacturer or proprietary operating system, they have a very loyal customer base. While these companies are very sophisticated in terms of marketing their app stores, a fundamental issue remains problematic. That issue is enabling a billing mechanism to support the desired mobile purchase experience.

Billing me softly The absence of simple payment alternatives poses a significant commercial risk. Credit cards are a possibility, but market experience has suggested that consumers balk at the need to enter credit card information, especially for impulse buys. Industry research from Deutsche Bank has revealed that credit cards are too insecure and time-consuming for consumers. Requiring a consumer to type in a billing address, credit card number and other personal information is simply not the type of experience a mobile purchase is trying to provide. Alternate payment schemes such as PayPal and Google CheckOut are also a possibility, but they require a payment account to be opened and funded with a credit card prior to a purchase being made. This is the same model that Apple has used for its app store. A consumer must have an iTunes account before any download or purchase can occur. There is only one iTunes store, however, and most of its market penetration has been driven by Apple’s iPod product. Other third-party mechanisms are generally unproven in mobile or limited by their subscriber base penetration. The reality is that to achieve a successful mobile purchase experience, an app store must offer an easy, safe, ubiquitous payment methodology. Mobile consumers are unwilling to make purchases unless the payment scheme takes only a few seconds. Carrier billing for these app stores is the only payment scheme that will support growth and scale to position them for commercial success. Carrier billing allows consumers to make purchases on their mobile phones or a Web site and have the charges billed on their monthly MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

mobile invoices. The growth of premium SMS nationwide has shown the commercial appetite for carrier billing. But premium SMS has limitations. The need for an offline SMS session to initiate the billing event obviously degrades the app store experience. No doubt there. In addition, if there is a customer issue regarding a premium Jay Emmet, general manager, purchase, the customer service OpenMarket costs are assumed by the carriers. This fact obliges the carriers to keep 30 percent to 40 percent of the retail price. Lastly, the carriers often have divergent proprietary requirements and commercial models which pose tactical issues for companies trying to offer a consistent product experience.

BOBO should click True carrier-based billing, often referred to as BOBO (billing on behalf of), eliminates many of these issues. BOBO allows the purchase to be made with one or two key clicks entirely within the storefront. No SMS session is required. In addition, customer service inquiries can be directed right to the app store call center, as is done for the Apple App Store. The carrier no longer has to bear the costs or own the customer care issue. Consumers understand they bought an app from Apple, and that Apple is responsible for resolving their issue. Moreover, the purchase experience from a consumer perspective takes only a single click or two. This simplicity eliminates many of the inconsistencies that typically occur from the need to support multiple carriers. Offering BOBO functionality also provides a tremendous untapped opportunity for carriers. A fundamental competitive advantage for the carriers is having an established billing relationship and high brand credibility with their subscribers. Offering BOBO functionality to trusted partners allows wireless carriers to leverage and monetize this unique advantage, to establish a strong position in the value chain, and to avoid the dreaded dumb-pipe syndrome. The BOBO model offers many advantages. BOBO offers a simple payment methodology to off-deck app store companies, leverages the carrier’s competitive advantage and offers subscribers a seamless and quick, purchase experience. As mobile devices continue to grow in functionality and occupy greater mindshare with the average consumer, BOBO billing is a fundamental step in the next wave of mobile success. I Jay Emmet is general manager of OpenMarket, Seattle. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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H o w to t r ac k a n d m e as u re a m o b i l e a d ca m p ai g n

By Bruce Braun

t is doubtful that you will find a mobile advertiser – make that any advertiser –who is not highly focused on the ROI for any of its media spends. Not that accountability is anything new. It has been with us for decades. As John Wanamaker, one of the early department store magnates, is famous for saying, “I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.” Fortunately, Wanamaker’s problem is not one we have to worry about today. Unless, of course, the advertiser is ignoring campaign performance analytics. The answers to Wanamaker’s lament are available and, best of all, actionable. But not so fast. We now have the 21st-century evolution of the Wanamaker lament presenting itself in the form of a computer, dashboards, endless pages of Excel spreadsheets and pivot tables. Talk about data overkill. Consider, click-through rate, impressions, total visits, unique visits, page views, cost per click, cost per visitor, program CPM dollars, program CTR dollars, cost per acquisition, total conversions, total versus unique visits, cost per click versus total clicks, landing page entries, total downloads. And this is just for starters. Add to these the latest forms of engagement and search metrics, all presented in a dashboard or spreadsheet, and it becomes apparent we have created a forest of data that is divisible into thousands of different types of reports by virtue of database software capabilities. And let us not forget things that are unique to mobile such as geolocation, handset type and carrier. We also want to know things such as click paths to the advertiser and what actions take place by the consumer on the advertiser’s site. We are interested in the design and layout of a mobile site as it pertains to content and ad placements. Why? Because we want to make sure the mobile site is optimized for peak response levels. We call this part site analytics, apart from campaign performance analytics. Does your head hurt yet? Do not feel alone. We are legion. Whatever you choose to call these measurements, be it metrics or analytics, they do not need to be off-putting. The funny thing is, today’s John Wanamakers are still asking the same question: What part of my advertising is working? More specifically, is every dollar of my media spend returning two, three or more dollars in return? Call it ROI or return on investment, in MBA parlance. Where to begin “If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra, New York Yankees catcher

Clicking on the mobile ad transports the consumer to the advertiser’s mobile Web site. But then what? Think of your mobile Web site like as a bricks-and-mortar store. The ad you saw has only persuaded you to visit the store. What happens when you arrive at the store? What you experience the moment you walk in has a huge effect on your ultimate decision to buy or to walk out.

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Retailers have made a science of where merchandise is located and how it is displayed. Your mobile site is no different than a retail store. Does your mobile site deliver the promise of your mobile ad? I would suggest to those new to mobile advertising and wondering how to use analytics to measure campaign success or effectiveness Bruce Braun, CEO, Agent M begin by considering some excellent suggestions from Eric Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified in his recent white paper, “The Truth About Mobile Analytics.” Keeping in mind campaign effectiveness is heavily dependent upon the consumer experience on the advertiser’s mobile site, Eric has compiled 10 questions to ask or to include in any mobile analytics RFP. Here are five: 1. Make a list of metrics that are most important to you from an accuracy standpoint. Are you trying to drive adoption? If so, visitor counts are important. Trying to drive application use? Visits and page views may be appropriate. Are you actively marketing your online site? Campaign metrics will be critical. 2. Assess the technology you are using to deploy your mobile site. Are you primarily focused on a particular platform or carrier? Or are you trying to design an experience that transcends the device? Are you using HTML or XHTML exclusively, or do you have a WML- or PMLbased site? 3. Be prepared to ask measurement vendors for specifics about their technology. Ask how the solution counts visitors, visits and page views in the absence of images, cookies and JavaScript. 4. Make a list of “known issues” with whatever strategy you deploy and socialize that list. Don’t hide behind a lack of knowledge regarding sources of inaccuracy. Make sure you fully understand what might be causing the numbers to fluctuate so that you can incorporate those insights into your analysis. 5. Remember: It is not the data, it is what you do with it. No matter how much time, money and effort you put into making the data you collect accurate and precise, if you are not using that data to improve the user experience you may as well make up the numbers as you go. Tracking your campaigns with analytics Now the fun begins. You have your creative and your media plan and the buy has been made. What are the most important things you want your campaign to do? In my experience, the CEOs and chief marketing officers are held accountable for primarily two things: increasing sales and profitability. Brand advertising is sometimes viewed as non-selling advertising. Ask a CEO if he or she is OK with the brand’s advertising not generating revenue. All advertising is expected to deliver sales, especially in today’s economy. Tracking impressions, clicks and page views tell you about activity. WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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But you want results, and results in most marketing campaigns are defined as engagements. Engagement is, without a doubt, the most critical element in measuring campaign success. How many people asked for a brochure, bought that handbag, asked to be contacted for a test drive, or bought or downloaded a product of some kind? These sorts of actions by the consumer will tell you in detail if your ad creatives and mobile Web site are producing finite results. With that in mind, the ultimate success of your mobile ad campaign will depend on how you set your primary campaign goals for maximum ROI. To achieve your goals, analytics will be your tool for accomplishing them. For your mobile advertising campaigns to be truly effective, you need to know exactly how well they are performing. Not just at the top level, but with deeper insight. You need powerful metrics to follow each publisher and creative for everything from the first click through the final action. Key to achieving your goals is campaign tracking that provides for the following: • A mobile campaign tracking tool that is not a bastardized version of someone’s online tool. Mobile is very different from online, as we all know. • Ease of use that does not require attending three days of classroom instruction with a four-inch thick user manual for mastery. • Actionable analytical insights that can optimize campaign ROI by allowing the comparison of any combination of key performance indicators you select. • Intuitive campaign recommendations and optimization capability based on your defined goals. • Consolidation of all mobile campaign publisher and creative activity into a user-centric and customizable dashboard. This functionality is crucial to saving you time and money aggregating multiple publisher reports into Excel spreadsheets and then into pivot tables. • The ability to see all campaign data on a daily basis without having to wait for monthly publisher reports. This is vital if you are to optimize performance. Analytical information is only as good as its timeliness and accuracy. What good is after-the-fact data? • Media-to-activity tracking on the campaign, publisher and creative unit levels. You will want to see how each one of your creatives are performing across each publisher and placement. • Client-customizable engagement metrics. As mentioned above, you will want to see how people are responding to your calls to action. Perhaps most importantly, there must be independent and objective third-party verification of publisher and creative mobile advertising campaign performance. Why is this important? It all gets down to transparency and objectivity. You owe it to yourself and your clients. Publisher performance data that is not independently verified should be viewed skeptically. Last February, Jamie Wells, then U.S. mobile director of media planning and buying agency OMD and now at Microsoft, informed mobile publishers of the following in a story that the Mobile Marketer publication broke: “Omnicom Media Group’s OMD media agency will no longer accept site-served publisher data for mobile delivery and click performance related to mobile display advertising.” With all of the above considerations in place, you will be able to move forward with confidence that the media spends you make in mobile will return the results you and your client want. I Bruce Braun is CEO of Agent M, San Francisco. Reach him at [email protected]

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Ti m e t o f li p the s cr i pt f or m obil e

N

By Josh Webb

ow is the time for purpose-built, rich mobile media. Until recently, mobile has almost invariably played second fiddle to other media, commonly a third or fourth option in a wider cross-media campaign, and an idea that is dreamed up that will “mobilize” the concept. Consequently, a lot of mobile marketing has been designed for people who are already sitting in front of the television, reading a magazine or otherwise engaging in another form of media consumption. But things are changing, and thanks to recent developments in devices and networks, consumer uptake of progressively richer mobile media is on a fast rise. In other words, brands are changing tack to meet this new critical mass of demand. Mobile has become an ambitious upstart aiming to usurp the rest of the media family. The path now is paved for a new scenario: truly rich, standalone mobile media that is built from the ground-up to take advantage of the unique aspects of mobile. People might look back at 2009 as the time when mobile started to flip the script on traditional advertising. Creatives are thinking about the mobile aspects of a campaign first, with other media playing support in some cases. We are not talking about mobile Web sites with pretty graphics in the likeness of the latest print campaign – that is getting old and stale in a social-networkobsessed 2009. What we are talking about is ground-up mobile application experiences that can incorporate multiple sub-sets of mobile technology, such as image recognition, location-based services and augmented reality. By combining these kinds of technologies, and making some creative leaps, we are now able to take the inherent mobility of mobile and use it to its true potential. In the mobile 2.0 generation, we are connected with other real people around us, their collective intelligence using the medium as a tool to discuss the world and filter through the options available. This behavior is even more useful in the mobile context because it can be employed in field rather than just theoretically from your desk. The social networks we access can inform us of our present surroundings, helping us navigate, discover and filter the world we live in to more closely suit our preferences. So, while cyberspace imitates real life in a virtual world, mobile now brings us a new realm: hybrid-space, where real-life is made better, in geo-code and right in front of our eyes. Let's take a look at some of the possibilities that go beyond the basic mobile media offerings. Image recognition and augmented reality A recent and popular development in high-tech mobile marketing is augmented reality. Still very much in infancy stages but already having a huge impact, this is a technique that can place virtual content over the top of real-life scenes that you view through your mobile phone cam. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

The technology uses image recognition to superimpose 3D graphics onto special marker graphics, which are placed in realworld locations – magazines, subway advertisements and buildings. If that is hard to imagine, consider pointing your phone at a friend sitting next to you, and seeing what they would look like with a multi-tentacled, alien face-sucker Josh Webb is a New York-based for a head. Now you get the idea? mobile strategy consultant You may have seen some examples of this recently. The Nike T90 product launch in augmented outdoor ads around Hong Kong with 3D virtual football boots and hidden codes tied in with a competition. The Fanta virtual tennis game, allowed you to view a virtual ball and court through your phone cam, which you and a friend could use to play a game together – a shared augmented reality. Even more interesting, though, is that future iterations of this technology will be able to do away with the marker image and start to do real-world environment recognition in tandem with GPS. Think along the lines of “Virtual Earth” or “Photosynth,” but where you can point your phone at anything you like, and it will give you information about it. Alternatively, we can forget the information and get creative. What if I were to point my phone at the Empire State Building, and King Kong appeared, climbing and swatting at airplanes flying past? What if the airplanes also happened to be pulling Taco Bell banners or writing the Coca-Cola logo in smoke trails? This is where the fun really begins, and the marketing potential starts to explode. Social beacons and location-based services One of the definitive aspects of Web 2.0 is social-networking, and as this spreads onto mobile, there are two branches emerging: traditional social networks such as Facebook and Twitter creating mobile versions, and ground-up, mobile-only social networks. Despite a common misconception, the mobilized versions of social networks are not an alternative to mobile – they are just another thing to do on a mobile phone that may be accessed through a phone or a PC, depending on location. While vastly popular, however, the mobile versions of the big-players, in most cases, offer little enhancement to their Web counterparts. It is beside the point – they are made for a reason and that is to connect with other people that you know, one way or another. But by thinking ground-up, several mobile-specific networks are pushing in different directions, particularly in the area of people-locating. Users are now finding romantic interests, getting ratings and reviews on places in their vicinity, or tracking friends as beacons on realtime maps, although the moral and practical implications of this are yet WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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to be fully tested and debated. As a basketball player, my favorite mobile social application lately is the Nike “Ballers Network” – also a Facebook tool, but with a mobile version – allowing me to find or organize games in my neighborhood. Anyone can join in and play, then navigate my way there if I choose to play. The “Nokia Vine” is another great example which allows users to track their movements on a GPS-generated map, and record their experiences along the way using image, audio, video, text and bookmarks on the map. They can then go back and re-live it at a later time. It is like a tiny personal blog that you create in the process of living your life. You can share it with others to show what you are doing, or go back to it yourself when you forget the location of a great coffee shop, piece of street-art or hidden clearing in the park. Perhaps the best example of mobile social networking recently is “Aka-Aki,” which tells me if a friend is in proximity to me and helps us find each other. It is a pure social-beacon tool, meaning that one need never get lost in a crowd again, or fail to bump into a friend who was in the same place as you, but looking in the other direction at the time. This stuff is very real, available right now, and ready to make consumers’ lives much better.

Mobile applications To achieve most of the next-level functionality I am talking about here it is almost mandatory to build discrete mobile applications. It is the only way to achieve the type of user-experience that people want on their handset right now, period. In the PC world, downloading and running an application has started to become an undesirable option, taking you away from the happy place of your browser environment. There is also little point these days, since your browser houses a powerful runtime environment of Java, Flash, Silverlight and Ajax. Making most standalone applications redundant, these are effectively little encapsulated applications that run in your browser. Mobile, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. The mobile browsers are still unable to accommodate most thirdparty runtime environments. And even if they could, the processors in the devices are still too slow to compile code on-the-fly as PC can do for Web applications. Therefore, on mobile it is still necessary to use native applications to achieve strong user-interfaces, fast execution and tap into handsetspecific features that are often crucial to the applications functionality. These will often exist in tandem with a good mobile Web or SMS campaign, but the user’s experience only becomes compelling and sticky with a native application as the interface. Unfortunately, there is little standardization in mobile applications and developing for one handset is often very different from another. So how does a marketer deal with the need to work across multiple platforms in this case? Well, at present it has been a matter of picking the platform – or multiple platforms, in some cases – which will appeal to the demographic. The natural assumption of many marketers seems to be that the iPhone is the only option. This is a fairly safe bet as a starting point, as that one device is now generating almost half of the mobile data traffic with what is still reported to be a single-figure market share. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

In other words, people who own iPhones are really using them a lot more, and for more data-intensive purposes – think more media of a richer nature and with more browsing and application usage. However, this is far from a standard yet, and we cannot forget there are a lot of other devices out there. Research In Motion recently launched its own BlackBerry App World store, Nokia has a new offering called Ovi, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has a mish-mash of third-party Java application stores floating around the Internet, as well as a Windows marketplace in the making. Google’s Android Market is even taking shape, with many of the usual suspects starting to appear on it. When more devices pop up it is going to be a serious contender indeed. Also consider the markets you want to hit. There’s a classic BlackBerry bias from corporations, a Windows Mobile bias in a lot of Asian countries, a Nokia bias in Europe, and the true geek community already seems to be rallying behind Google’s Android for its cool openness factor. Targeting multiple platforms will obviously cost more to do, but does offer economies of scale because once a specification is created for one platform, porting it can dramatically reduce the effort and cost required to get a second or third version to market on other platforms as well. It also makes sense, in the same way that it makes sense to advertise on more than one television channel – in fact more so, because mobile users do not get to push a button whenever they want to own a new handset. The bottom line is to cover the most platforms that can be afforded, and in the markets that make sense. The economy of scale, as well as the extra novelty on some of the lesser-hyped platforms will make up for the smaller possible audience.

Pulling it together To engage increasingly savvy consumers in 2009 and beyond, we need to provide a great user interface and compelling applications that improve quality of living. We need to start to leverage the true advantages of mobile – people, legs and the real world – and find ways to add value in hybrid-space. If we are going to do mobile properly, we need to start to think about mobile as a first point of contact, and about how to rally other media behind it to take true advantage of the medium. By all means we need to cover the basics, get a common short code and SMS campaign running, and create a mobile Web presence. But then we need to think creatively and take true steps to use the full range of mobile technology in a way that people can interact with intuitively and easily. I would urge any brand, product manager, content producer or other kind of marketer to build a good mobile strategy with a specialist mobile consultant or agency with experience across the range of mobile offerings. Work to figure out how your goals, as well as your customers wants and needs, will be met by using mobile. Then implement a compelling campaign that will truly make real-life better. I Josh Webb was previously director of operations for The Hyperfactory, and is now an independent mobile strategy consultant in New York. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Ca lli ng fo r a tr us te d t hir d p ar ty to m an age m ob ile co ns um er da ta

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By Patrick Seymour

obility for millions in the United States and billions of individuals globally means never leaving home without our mobile phones. Beyond making calls, the capabilities of our mobile devices help us maintain connections with family, friends and colleagues. Smartphones allow us to search for information, to educate and entertain ourselves, and give us the ability to make transactions – all elements that will continue and will compel increased usage. These sophisticated mobile capabilities and services, combined with mobile subscriber behavior, will not be ignored by marketers. Advertisers and marketers are increasingly looking for ways to develop and use consumer information. An ecosystem made up of wireless carriers, aggregators, applications, content providers, search engines, location-based services, payment services, ad networks, agencies and marketers have been collecting information about consumers. Each of these companies has developed ways to collect, use and potentially abuse this information to contact consumers. Consumer groups, federal state and international agencies, mobile technology and marketing associations and others within the industry have made efforts to establish best practices and standards for contacting mobile consumers.

All mouth, no teeth An agreement was recently announced with the four largest U.S. carriers to align their mobile marketing practices with the guidelines and best practices of the Mobile Marketing Association. I applaud the efforts of partnership between the U.S. carriers, Mobile Marketing Association and others in the mobile marketing ecosystem. And while I agree with the standards and best practice published by the Mobile Marketing Association, they are, at best, guidelines with few clear enforceable standards. Since the beginning of 2009 consumer groups such as the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to investigate mobile marketing practices. The Federal Trade Commission released guidelines regarding the self-regulatory principles for behavioral advertising on the Web. However, its recommendations fell short of meaningful protections of consumer privacy and relevance to organizations within the overall mobile ecosystem. A recent study by comScore M:Metrics revealed a surge in mobile spam across five European Union markets – Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. The study reported the number of people receiving SMS messages from companies without permission is increasing by 61.3 percent in France and 21.3 percent in the EU5 year on year. Also in recent weeks, social networking sites such as Facebook MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

have changed user agreements around privacy. Google has recently announced a behavioral targeting program. Voluntary guidelines, behavioral targeting and opt-in/opt-out agreements are all evolving elements in an effort to deliver responsible communications. But they will not stop spam, nor do they deliver the full potential of mobile’s Patrick Seymour, president, value to their own organizations or Seymour Consulting Services meaningful, relevant interactions to consumers. Permission-based and relationship marketing have been gaining momentum for some time, reflecting a widespread trend among consumers to avoid unwanted advertisements, and a willingness to receive content, promotions or special offers from companies. However, these permission-based communication models alone are not the answer. How many data collection screens, permission-based or opt-in email messages have you received this week? A recent report from Merkle, “View from the Inbox,” 2009 found: • The percentage of total permission email viewed on a mobile device increased 5 points since last year • More than half of respondents were less willing to sign-up for permission email compared to a few years ago • The main reasons subscribers choose to opt out of email programs – perceived irrelevance and sending too frequently (cited by 75 percent and 73 percent, respectively) • Thirty percent of permission email recipients have stopped doing business with at least one company due to their poor email marketing practices.

Reconciling trust with data Clearly, mobile subscribers are concerned and frustrated with how information is being collected and used to contact them. Consumers want relevance, privacy options and interactive experiences that add convenience to their mobile lives. Conversely, organizations who wish to attract and retain customers want relevant, actionable consumer information. Companies want better methods of data collection, consumer profiling and measurement. Most companies currently collect elements of consumer information. Even without permissions companies may share consumer data, but typically the shared detail is an aggregate – without individual specifics. Marketers want more than just aggregate information, such as mobile browsing histories, demographic, device, geographic details or purchase behavior to target, tailor and deliver relevant communications at every point of the relationship. Certainly it is in everyone’s interest to work together to produce a WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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solution that will meet the needs of consumers and marketers. The following model is an attempt towards this solution and can provide relevant, responsible communications for every organization within the mobile ecosystem. I believe what is necessary to achieve this common ground is a trusted third party which collects consumer information, applies the desired consumer preferences and distributes the information to companies within the mobile ecosystem. Customer involvement and trust are essential to this model. Consumers generate profiles of all of the brands with which they wish to interact. Consumers would then manage their profiles which include privacy options, permissions to share information, as well as preferences for the types of desired communications on a regular basis, with options to update the profiles at any time. I believe this model provides consumers with the relevance, control and convenience they desire. Also, I believe those in the mobile ecosystem would find this model compelling, allowing greater capabilities to profile, deliver and measure relevant communications to their intended audiences.

Serious – give it to the do-no-evil guys Who is capable of developing a trusted environment that will balance consumer demands for privacy and relevant communications with the desires of brands and marketers? In Japan and South Korea, wireless carriers have formed joint ventures with advertising agencies for new companies exclusively focused on mobile marketing. This arrangement allows each company to focus on their core competencies. However, it does not necessarily provide a full picture of the consumer profile. More important, consumer preferences for privacy and communication are not fully realized. While effective in Asian markets, in my opinion, carriers and marketers – or a union of the two – are not the most trusted entities to deliver this model in the United States. I believe consumer organizations, government regulators or industry self-regulators could position themselves to become this trusted third party. However, their history of influencing consumer data collection, privacy and communication practices has not engendered significant trust or enforcement. A search engine marketing company such as Google is perhaps the most knowledgeable, capable and trusted entity that could execute such a model. It has the clout, infrastructure and trust to develop and champion this model. My instincts suggest the only way such a model could be implemented is through alliances and effective partnerships among members of the mobile ecosystem. Mobile devices have become a necessity in our daily lives. In the effort to reach consumers, mobile technologies will be the vehicle of choice used by marketers and advertisers in the future. Consumers need a trusted system to receive communications from the horde of companies wishing to contact them and must take an active role in this evolving process. A model that allows consumers to develop and manage their own information and communication preferences that are adopted by companies and marketers is compelling to both consumers and the entire mobile ecosystem. This model is not only possible, it is imperative to provide the greatest value for consumers, as well as every company within the mobile ecosystem. I Patrick Seymour is president of Seymour Consulting Service, Park City, UT. Reach him at [email protected]

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Th e m o b il e ad v e rt i s in g ba z aa r

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A me dia a ge nc y blue pr int fo r m one ti zin g mo bil it y

By Jamie Wells

hile there is widespread agreement that the rapid prominence of the mobile device around the globe represents a tremendous long-term revenue growth opportunity for digital advertising agencies, to date the vast potential of the channel has gone relatively untapped. As excuses and marketplace misperceptions abound, the inability of our industry to aptly monetize the mobile channel can be best traced to a fundamental failure of organizational philosophy. This is not to say that agency monetization of the mobile channel is not fraught with significant barriers to success –far from it. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the channel can point to any number of seemingly insurmountable challenges in the mobile advertising and marketing sectors: marketplace fragmentation, lack of standardization, poor infrastructure and limited reach are among the most prominent. Yet it is these challenges that necessitate a vastly different approach to mobile than the flawed models employed by our competitors. This column provides just such an approach. It is a recommendation set that isolates and circumvents the trappings of previous systems by drawing upon the successes and learnings of industries faced with similar challenges, the sum of which form an agency model for the successful monetization of the mobile channel that scales on a national, regional and global level.

Key challenges While the barriers for the media agency wishing to successfully monetize the mobile channel are too numerous to quantify in the limited confines of this work, chief among them are the following key challenges – all of which must be overcome if the agency is to activate the channel on behalf of its clients. Marketplace fragmentation The mobile advertising and marketing landscape is besieged by an expanding variety of tactical channels with few dominant players and frequent new entrants. The sheer volume of mobile advertising publishers, networks, infrastructure providers and other entities wishing to capitalize on the everevolving sphere of mobile opportunities bog down planning cycles and overwhelm the creative process. Lack of standardization An intimidating array of violently competing technical and advertising formats fueled by powerful marketplace gatekeepers and evolving business models confound the strategic planning process and hamper the swift planning and execution of mobile advertising initiatives. Poor infrastructure The mobile channel is further distressed by comparatively limited research sources and rudimentary planning, ad serving, tracking, optimization tools as well as an inherent inoperability between mobile pubMOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

lishers, networks, carriers and key channels. All of these often necessitate redundant or manual operating procedures, ultimately adding incremental labor stresses to the entire system. Limited effective reach or low perceived value While varying significantly by tactic and geographic region, overall there is a general marketplace Jamie Wells, director of trade consensus that the reach potential and creative options of mobile mar- marketing for mobile advertising solutions, Microsoft Advertising keting and advertising channels lag considerably behind most forms of established offline and digital media. Certainly many of the aforementioned issues are inherent in any emerging medium. However, one could make a compelling argument that, with respect to mobile, the intensity of these challenges has escalated to a scale that dwarfs previous “like” emerging media scenarios. Whether driven by the sheer technical complexity of the channel, global ubiquity or simply soaring investor interest, the frenzy surrounding the emergence of mobile as a marketing medium has inflated these barriers by orders of magnitude beyond what has been previously experienced by most other forms of new media.

The cathedral and the bazaar In searching for a model that would satisfy these vast hurdles, inspiration has been drawn from a seemingly dissimilar industry that has faced a very similar set of challenges: the software industry. As with the mobile marketing and advertising system, the software development process has been similarly stymied by a confluence of like phenomena: competing technical standards, dizzying market fragmentation and inadequate toolsets. Like the marketer, the software engineer also struggles with a complex problem-solving process straddling both creativity and analytics, rooted in real-time business objectives, aggressive deadlines and overarching cost constraints – all driven by multiple objectives and taskmasters. While challenging on any level, these issues become increasingly prominent when attempting to scale the software development process to meet the accelerating complexity of global software needs. This challenge was most notably documented by Fredrick Brooks in his 1975 breakthrough book, “The Mythical Man Month,” where the author famously identifies the core paradox that has become known as “Brooks’ Law.” Put simply, it follows that in software development, like most “tasks with complex interrelationships … adding more men [to a project] … lengthens, not shortens, the schedule.” This apparent contradiction is due to escalating internal communiWWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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cation needs and the inability to fully partition the labor demands, as related to the many complex and interrelated tasks that form the process of developing software. Mr. Brooks becomes a fierce advocate for what he calls “conceptual identity,” a necessary precondition for successful software development that can only come about by the work of a single mind or a small team of likeminded individuals. Railing against systems designed and developed by large teams or committees, he likens poorly managed software projects resulting “from the separation of design into many tasks done by many men” to “tragically” disjointed European cathedral designs spawned from construction schedules spanning several generations, where “later builders attempted to ‘improve’ upon the designs of earlier ones.” Mr. Brooks’ approach – that the best way to manage the software development process is to severely restrict the number of persons involved in its design – became the industry’s standard, and was more or less left unchallenged in the software community until the emergence of the open source model in the early 1990s. In a 1997 landmark essay exploring the open source movement, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” Eric Raymond challenged the notion that complex software systems “needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation,” and instead promotes a model “resembl[ing] a great bazaar of differing agendas and approaches.” However, it should be noted that Mr. Raymond’s concept of the “great bazaar” should not to be confused with the contemporary notion of “crowd sourcing” or other simplistic “free-for-all” distributed labor models. In his analysis, Mr. Raymond identifies several specific preconditions necessary for successful implementation of the open source model: 1. A leader that recognizes good design ideas from others, and possesses the charisma to attract people and keep them interested and engaged with the project’s success. 2. The presence of a “plausible promise” that the project will eventually “evolve into something really neat in the foreseeable future.” 3. Access to a (cheap and easy) medium to exchange and archive knowledge. 4. “Openness to the point of promiscuity.” Additionally, Mr. Raymond identifies several specific “truths” or “lessons” that further inform the success of the open source model: 1. Contributors for any given project are self-selected. 2. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch. 3. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse). 4. Given a large enough co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone (or put another way, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”). 5. While one can test, debug and improve [a project] in bazaar style, one should not attempt to originate a project in bazaar mode. 6. If you treat your beta-testers as if they are your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource . 7. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected. As demonstrated below, Mr. Raymond’s “necessary preconditions” and “truths” to the successful open source model can be similarly leveraged to great effect by the agency attempting to activate the mobile channel on behalf of its clients. Pros and cons of the agency “cathedral building” Before delving into the proposed “Agency Mobile Bazaar” model

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

for the monetization of the channel, one must first examine the current system used by media agencies to activate the channel in order to identify why the model is failing to meet industry-wide expectations. As defined by the previous section, it is apparent that “cathedral building” remains the near universal agency model for the monetization of the mobile channel. The process basically works as follows: A “mobile expert” (or in very rare cases, a small group of two or three members) is responsible for keeping up to date with the latest movements of the mobile landscape; distributing a highly condensed version of such information (usually in the form of periodic emails or a series of “mobile 101” presentations); and consulting with brand teams for the purposes of creating, selling in, and executing mobile advertising and marketing campaigns. The model has gained widespread acceptance due to the fact that – at least on the surface – it appears to be an efficient use of agency resources. Information related to mobility and mobile advertising and marketing is highly specialized, lending credibility to the application of an “information silo” in the form of the “mobile expert.” Additionally, to date agency revenues related to mobile advertising planning and buying have been nominal at best, significantly restricting the resources available to the agency to put against mobility. Primarily, it is these key concerns have given rise to the current system: the emergence of the agency “mobile expert” and the resultant “cathedral building” model. Unfortunately this model clearly fails to meet the core objective of leveraging an expertise in the mobile channel for the benefit agency clients. To begin with, the sheer volume of knowledge needed to consistently and competently “stay abreast” of the mobile space, inclusive of the latest research, leading players, usage cases and toolsets, is beyond the capabilities of a single individual to follow, much less communicate to a larger group. To this add the Sisyphean process of providing “spot” mobile consulting services to a large group of brand teams – all representing a wide range of clients from dissimilar business categories. The process is dubbed “spot consulting” as, unlike the formal consulting process, the consultant must settle for an intermittent, irregular and, at best, tangential connection to the core goals, brand objectives and strategies as crafted by the client and agency brand team, with little prospects for a more meaningful bond. The spot consulting process typically begins with a brief period whereby the brand team briefs the mobile expert on the particular goals of the campaign or plan, followed by a condensed working period where the mobile expert crafts a set of mobile recommendations. It should come as no surprise then that the spot consultancy model ultimately yields a consistently low quality of work, as the consultant WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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is operating with severely limited knowledge of the account while working under appreciable time constraints. Beyond this, the process is an overwhelmingly inefficient use of agency resources. Brand teams are forced into woefully incomplete yet wastefully redundant internal briefing cycles with the mobile expert, while the mobile expert spends an inordinate time attempting to “flashlearn” account histories, permanently distracted from his or her core goal of information-gathering and sharing. This effect is, of course, compounded when attempting to scale the model, which ultimately results in even lower quality work, lost revenue opportunities, staff burnout and turnover.

The mobile bazaar model for media agencies Clearly then a need arises for a scalable agency model for organizational expertise in mobility. The following “agency mobile bazaar” model draws upon the lessons learned from the open source software development movement by tapping into the primary resource common to all digital media agencies: a large pool of ambitious, digitally-savvy, young marketing professionals. At its core, the agency mobile bazaar model uses open source software techniques to “de-silo” mobile expertise and executional competency to arrive at the following desired state: 1. Like other forms of digital media, mobile media planning, buying and execution occurs at the account team level, by individuals with an intimate understanding of the account, and its needs, goals and personality. 2. The mobile media planning and execution process achieves efficiency and effectiveness through a shared organizational intelligence, populated by an accessible, relevant knowledge base and a talented pool of internal mobile media enthusiasts. 3. High-level mobile strategies, alliances and other corporate-level directives will be driven by an individual or core group of mobile specialists focused on the channel. To summarize from previous sections, the successful agency model for the monetization of mobility must effectively meet the following core product-specific challenges such as marketplace fragmentation, lack of standardization, poor infrastructure and limited channel reach or low perceived value, and labor-specific challenges including maintaining a level of high quality work and output, preserving a marketleading expertise within the mobile channel, limited resource availability, and scalability across multiple geographic regions, brand teams and client business categories. Recommendations for the implementation of the mobile bazaar model are summarized on the table in the next column. Planting stage. The first stage of implementation may appear to the casual observer as “cathedral building” in that the mobile expert is occupied by many of the same tasks, such as meeting with account teams to educate them on mobile advertising, and making ad hoc recommendations to their account teams as requested. The key difference is that while certainly all of these activities are important, the primary objective of the planting stage is to build interest in/recruit participants for the “agency mobile bazaar.” Recruitment can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but in general will leverage the following benefits to the target, who will likely be a junior to mid-level member of the digital account team: 1. Ambition. Mobile is the future of interactive media. Become an early leader in the medium and your career will rise with the prominence of the channel. 2. Exhilaration. Simply put, mobile is cool. IPhones are cool. GPS targeting is cool. QR codes are cool. Pattern recognition is cool. Mixed reality gaming is cool. IVR, SMS and even Bluetooth can be cool. This MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

is the reason you are in digital media in the first place, and not outdoor or print, right? The recruitment process will begin in person, with the individual digital client teams, at the “Mobile 101/State of Mobile” presentation where the mobile advertising space will be positioned in the most hopeful and exciting of lenses. This is not to say that client teams will be fed “marketplace hype” – quite to the contrary. Client teams will be presented with a realistic outlook of the channel, the potential which will nearly speak for itself. A knowledgeable and charismatic presenter is also a requirement. Near the end of the “Mobile 101/State of Mobile” presentation, the mobile expert will solicit members for this new group of “agency mobilists” (working title), the sole “membership” requirement of which will be a genuine interest in mobile marketing – and nothing more. Group directors may be consulted in advance of the meeting for recommendations on possible “best fits” within their team, as well as for any additional help in recruitment process. The primary goal for the planting stage is to recruit one agency mobilist per digital account team. During this phase the mobile bazaar community will begin to take shape by a variety of tactics, all of which will rely on decidedly low tech or Web 1.0 tactics: Biweekly emails of “cool” mobile marketing news, interesting case studies (nothing boring); and access to key resources such as mobile network reach, targeting and contact information and presentations shared via access to a shared network partition. Community feedback for this early phase will be passively solicited in the form of manual techniques such as email. From its earliest possible point, any “official” community correspondence or language will be inclusive, supportive and decidedly casual. Additionally, “spot mobile consultancy sessions” will still be used during this phase to support the client teams, but executed quite differently than previous models, and with two added goals: The passing of mobile expertise, and the forming of community bonds. Whereas in the past the mobile expert would, in perfect “cathedral building” style, work up a set of recommendations more or less in isolation from the client team, in the bazaar model the mobile expert would work directly with the client team’s resident mobilist, providing WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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insight, support, resources and recommendations, but will refrain from actually building the proposal proper. By encouraging, reviewing, supervising and supporting – but not actually authoring – the mobile recommendation set, the mobile expert will in effect transfer ownership of the work to the mobilist, instilling all the pride and satisfaction that comes with possession. If no mobilist is yet present in the client team in question the consultancy session itself becomes another recruitment opportunity. Ultimately this process – that of planning, selling-in and executing of mobile strategies and campaigns – will be shared with the group via the aforementioned communication channels. Community feedback will be encouraged but never expected, observing Mr. Raymond’s rule of self-selected participation. Cultivation stage. The intermediate phase of the implementation plan is most prominently staked by a marked upgrade in smart collaboration tools. Shared network drives and other manual communications channels such as PowerPoint and Excel will be de-emphasized in favor of more effective tools. While the email list will continue to be important, more often than not it will be used to point traffic to a relevant internal blog posting or internal wiki article. Information from the legacy formats, such as an Excel database housing data on mobile ad networks, will be transferred to the new, more accessible and malleable mediums. The internal blog, published primarily by the mobile expert, will assume the ideological center of the mobilist community, providing an essential axis for the group and the expression of its personality. Postings will reference and drive traffic to relevant internal wiki articles; highlight any prominent forum chains, internal case studies or ongoing projects; praise good works; and humbly revel in the satisfaction and exclusivity of expertise. That said, the blog is by definition a “one- or few-to-many” medium, and – even with the ability for users to post comments on existing posts – as such is not a true “community channel.” Hence the need for the more robust communication channels such as the wiki, list serve and forum. While early participation in these channels will likely be limited to the mobile expert and a small group of like-minded emerging media specialists inside the agency, it is eventually through these channels that the greater mobilist community will begin to share information about working projects, learnings, vendors and other points of interest – soliciting others for help on a particular challenge or simply bragging about the results from a recent campaign. The legacy spot consulting process will gradually give more ground to the “spot collaboration” method, where the mobile expert’s advice is supplemented by that of the community. As with the previous stage, the mobilist – not the community and certainly not the mobile expert – will assume an ownership position of any and all mobile campaigns, as the client teams become the driver of mobile activity within the agency. It is expected that the mobile expert will be consulting on key clients, but the actual need for his or her services will vary considerably from account to account. The mobile expert can now begin to focus more effort on identifying corporate partnerships and alliances advantageous to the agency, and researching new mobile planning and execution tools as they emerge in the marketplace. To this the leader’s role is to keep the base engaged by continuing to introduce exciting and entertaining innovations from both the corporate level and from the field, promoting any local “mixers” or industry events of interest, and maintaining an inclusive environment where MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

ideas and new thinking are valued. Recruitment efforts will continue but will not be given the same emphasis as in the planting stage, as it is expected that organic growth will offset any natural turnover in the system. Harvest stage. It is the final stage of the implementation plan where the agency will be able to fully reap the benefits of the bazaar. At this point the mobile expert’s relative contribution to the community will appreciably diminish, as the cooperative spirit of the group increasingly asserts its dominance. The leader will continue to participate in community-building efforts via blogging and other means, but will by no means overshadow the conversation. The mobilist bazaar itself, via shared knowledge and experience, will eventually become “the mobile expert” in and of itself, collectively superseding the limited resources that the mobile expert can bring to bear on any single project or campaign. As mobilists begin to plan and execute mobile advertising campaigns independent of the mobile expert, the latter can focus more fully on high-level corporate initiatives. Spot collaboration activities by the mobile expert will no doubt continue on key accounts, but in a greatly reduced volume and at a much higher level, significantly increasing the quality and effectiveness of such recommendations. With this process, mobile expertise is continually distributed to the client teams as the model reaches its desired state.

And so… If effectively applied, the open source model can provide a solution to the vexing chicken-and-egg scenario agencies face when attempting monetization of the mobile channel. In the software industry the model has already produced brilliant and wildly successful software applications such as Apache Web Server, mySQL, Firefox and WordPress – applications built by a community of volunteers that have come to dominate, outperform or outinnovate competing products produced by many teams of full-time programmers from the likes of Oracle, Sun and a host of other industry giants. Likewise, industries such as pharmaceutical, legal and finance which face a similar set of challenges – high-complexity of tasks, communication failure, poor distribution of labor and severe time and cost constraints – are also translating the open source model as a scalable solution to meet their seemingly unique needs. As with most successes, the key to ours will ultimately lie in its execution. Beyond the few rudimentary software needs detailed above – the best of which are, ironically, all open-source or free products – the most crucial component that ultimately drives the success of any open source project is the leader’s ability to fully embody and express the ideals of successful open source community: an egoless enthusiasm for the space, a full-throated transparency of thought and of action, and willingness to value and reward the thinking of others. It is through the positive expression of these ideals that the community takes shape, grows and, in the end, achieves far more than any individual or formally organized group in terms of the quality and quantity of thought, insight, knowledge and productive work. I Reproduced with permission, this article was edited and adapted for style from Jamie Wells’ blog at http://www.mobilestance.com Jamie Wells is director of trade marketing for mobile advertising solutions at Microsoft Advertising, New York. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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Ove r co mi ng m o bi le a dv er t i s in g eco s ys t e m hu r dl es

By Scott Cotter

he mobile advertising ecosystem is still evolving. In 2008, the Kelsey Group reported just $160 million in U.S. mobile advertising revenue. By comparison, Internet advertising was $28 billion (Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates), newspaper was $35 billion (Newspaper Association of America estimates) and television was $47 billion (Television Bureau data). Contrast the amount of time we spend with our mobile phones compared to a personal computer, TV or newspaper and it is easy to see the potential upside. A number of hurdles holding back successful off-portal mobile marketing campaigns must be addressed for consumers to partake and advertisers to increase spend on mobile as an effective advertising and marketing medium.

Lackluster media Many consumers are still waiting for a better mobile Web experience. If the media is not satisfying consumers, why advertise on that platform? As an industry, would we use billboards on abandoned roads or place ads in magazines with no readers? When trying to access their favorite URL, consumers often find the site can freeze a phone browser or important features such as login, completing a transaction or accessing video content. A full, rich experience is now possible for any Web site a consumer should choose. Content transformation solutions being deployed by carrier networks automatically adapt content to the specific capabilities of the device. Hence, consumers enjoy a better mobile experience and usage increases, which in turn means more eyeballs for much longer durations.

Ineffective targeting and tracking Targeting is typically limited to carrier network, phone type and perhaps basic site categorization such as sports and finance. So much more valuable information is available including user account profile data, location and mobile clickstream behavior. Central tracking of consumer behavior and campaign metrics across mobile’s broad array of devices and networks is critically important for success. For example, the popularity of social networking sites has created a wealth of information around consumer behavior and media sharing. Contextual advertising created by mining this data enables personally relevant ads to be delivered in the right place and time. The result? Click-through rates that are typically five to 10 times higher than online. MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

Constrained creative Mobile ad formats are limited relative to other media. Rich interaction is often not possible and the offer/payoff is difficult to deliver consistently across the myriad of different devices. Advertisers are forced to pursue a “least common denominator” approach. By building upon platforms that enable creatives to use Flash and Scott Cotter, senior director multimedia, develop interesting forof marketing, Novarra mats including pop-ups, interstitials, load time messages and even sponsored widgets across any handset, advertising becomes more appealing. This, in turn, creates better recall and or click-through rates. Further, rich landing pages, click-to-call, mobile coupons and secure transactions are possible, enabling more compelling direct response tactics and tracking components. Simple yet effective, the Zippo virtual lighter application has become a viral advertisement that people use at concerts to signify the appreciation of a performance. More importantly, the immersive experience is highly nostalgic and personally relevant for a new generation of Zippo consumers.

Immature business model The mobile advertising ecosystem is still evolving. Wireless carriers’ models for monetizing both on- and especially off-portal are not yet clear. Also, tracking and analytics expectations and capabilities between site publishers, advertisers and ad networks often vary. And everyone is trying to capture their piece of the pie. Just as mobility has changed social paradigms, mobile as a media channel must tap into these new usage models while leveraging the best of existing advertising media channels. Minutes for ads, viral word of mouth and always-on access to sponsored information present interesting opportunities. The industry will develop new campaign strategies that take advantage of mobile Internet services being deployed today that enable quality service, effective targeting and tracking and rich media to realize the channel’s full potential. The mobile channel presents low production costs, higher-thanaverage click-through rates, targeted demographics and an always-on, always-with-you medium – a marketer’s dream. I Scott Cotter is senior director of marketing at Novarra, Itasca, IL. Reach him at [email protected] WWW.MOBILEMARKETER.COM

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H ac h et t e F ili pa cc h i m o ne t iz es m a ga z in e t it les wit h m ob ile ad s

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By Dan Butcher

“Along these lines, we have a number of smartphone applications, beginning with the iPhone ... that we believe will provide compelling rench-owned magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. solutions to both mobile users and advertisers looking to reach mobile is using the mobile channel to monetize seven of its audiences,” he said. magazine titles. There is an Elle Astrology mobile application currently available HFM is selling ad space on the mobile versions of magazine to all Verizon, BlackBerry and iPhone users. brands such as m.Elle.com, Car and Driver slideshows m.CarAndDriver.com, and wallpapers are currently m.Ellegirl.com, available to all Verizon, m.Premiere.com, AT&T and Apple iPhone users. m.RoadAndTrack.com, In addition, various HFM m.WomansDay.com and titles offer SMS alerts, which m.Ellegirl Latina. Quattro are powered by 4Info. Wireless handles ad sales and Elle’s SMS alerts include serving for the titles. fashion tips, beauty tips and “On the premium side, we runway news. have a few branded applicaEllegirl’s text-message tions we sell that are available alerts have celebrity gossip, on a number of carriers and fashion tips and beauty tips. handsets,” said Yaron Oren, Car and Driver’s SMS director of mobile strategy alerts have automotive news and operations for Hachette and reviews. Filipacchi Media U.S., New Premiere’s text-message York. “On the mobile adveralerts have movie news tising front, we have a netand events. work of seven mobile Web Finally, there are different sites, reaching a total of apSMS-alert services from proximately 2 million Woman’s Day: WD Now! – monthly unique users, and six which offers home decorating text alert services. and organization advice, “Through these services, recipe ideas and health tips – we offer our advertisers a and WD Eats, which provides wide variety of mobile disrecipe ideas. play, SMS and integrated pro“As far as our mobile augrams,” he said. “Going diences, we target both our exWill mobile be a page-turner for Hachette? forward, we will continue to isting readers and users on build our mobile business through advertising and subscription/ other platforms, such as print and online, as well as new audiences alpremium services. ready active in mobile that we believe will value our services. “From a monetization standpoint, we are placing a heavier empha“The target demographics by brand are similar to print and online sis on mobile advertising as we believe there is ultimately more revenue with a tendency to skew a bit younger,” Mr. Oren said. potential there.” “Hachette primarily views mobile as a profit center,” he said. HFM tapped Quattro Wireless for its WAP sites and deployment of “However, our mobile efforts certainly provide the additional benefit of mobile display ads. helping our brands reach new audiences and strengthen relationships Brands that have advertised on one of HFM's mobile sites include with existing ones.” Procter & Gamble’s CoverGirl, Toyota's Scion and Unilever's Knorr. The strategy is to maximize brand quality and consistency on all All URLs for HFM’s wired Web sites redirect to the mobile sites platforms and to promote brand extensions, said Anne Janas, senior when accessed from a mobile phone. vice president of corporate communications for Hachette Filipacchi “From a product development standpoint, we are focused on creatMedia U.S. “This will support and accelerate the mobile development when it ing new tools and utilities around our brands that specifically cater towards a mobile user,” Mr. Oren said. fits into overall brand strategy,” she said. I MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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ES P N : M o b i le l u c r at iv e c h a n ne l f o r p u b li s he r s

By Dan Butcher

bert said. “Mobile is a connection hub for all of our media platforms, and cross-platform is not a zero-sum game—mobile wraps in elements ith the new ScoreCenter iPhone app to complement existing of all of our mediums together and connects all media. mobile offerings including SMS polls and ad-supported “If you consume TV you’re going to read the magazine, and if alerts, a much-trafficked mobile Web site, games, live video you’re visiting ESPN.com regularly you’ll visit ESPN Mobile reguand video on demand, ESPN is staying at the forefront of larly,” he said. “For guys being dragged to Bed, Bath and Beyond every mobile publishing. weekend like me, this is the only way to stay connected with According to the sports your teams.” publishing giant, the iPhone ESPN has a dedicated phenomenon has helped to staff working exclusively on change clients’ perception of mobile, including a separate mobile, and applications have mobile news team, and the provided publishers and adcompany offers content crevertisers a way to provide utilated and optimized specifiity and entertainment. The cally for the mobile platform. publisher discussed these top“Our mobile offerings are ics and went into its mobile programmed by fan behavstrategy in-depth at IAB ior,” Mr. Colbert said. “What Marketplace-Mobile event in we do in mobile is informed July 2009, in New York. by our fans and how they “The tide is shifting, and want to consume the content. mobile finally has a seat at the “Having multiple media table—as overall usage of touchpoints helps us form a mobile Web and mobile video deeper connection to fans, are up and mobile publishers with TV to mobile with fan reach scale, it has increased opinion voting, polling and advertisers’ interest,” said video; digital to mobile with Brian Colbert, director of moapps, SMS and mobile only bile ad sales for ESPN, New editorial; print to mobile with York. “Mobile is now part of interactive ads, SnapTell 2D the discussion from a media bar codes and SMS short standpoint, and mobile is defcode marketing; and radio to initely something clients want mobile urging consumers to to hear more about. call in or text in and “Significant budgets being talent chats.” dedicated to mobile and While the presentation foESPN's Baseball Tonight is available via MobiTV and MediaFlo clients are thinking more cused on ESPN’s various mostrategically to make a big splash with their mobile initiatives, and it’s bile initiatives, the session was not without its controversial statements. become a watershed product for us and all publishers,” he said. “Mobile Specifically, ESPN subscribes to the notion that mobile publishers used to be a cool, bright, shiny, new toy, but there wasn’t enough scale are competing with ad networks and thus should sell their own mobile for advertisers. ad inventory. “However, we now have enough scale to make this a great adver“Ad networks were an easy way to buy mobile, and ad networks tising vehicle for brands, and brands are thinking about mobile in ways do work for some clients in some instances, they do have a place, bethey weren’t thinking about the channel before.” cause they helped create more buzz about mobile and increased the edESPN ScoreCenter for iPhone and iPod touch is a free application ucation process, which has helped all of us, but we’ve heard from available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. clients that content does matter,” Mr. Colbert said. The ScoreCenter application features real-time scores, live game “Ad networks only exist because we let them exist,” he said. “A lot updates, game summaries and statistics for nine major sports. of other premium publishers we talk to agree. If you think about longThe application includes real-time scores for 500 leagues, including term strategy, we’re not competing with other publishers necessarily – MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, NCAA, NASCAR, PGA and tennis. our biggest competition is the ad networks. “Mobile enables fans to be better fans and always stay connected, “Ask yourself, ‘Is letting the ad networks have your inventory the and we’re giving fans the content they want on their phones,” Mr. Colbest way to move the industry – and your business – forward?’” I MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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W h a t a r e th e r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r a m o b i l e m a r k e ti n g e xe cu t i v e ?

By Heather Baker

Hire versus assign The first question as it relates to mobile advertising and marketing is whether you need to hire someone for this task or instead assign mobile to an existing department. I would argue the case that to be successful you will need a dedicated staff member. Indeed, I would recommend a dedicated employee for mobile and you should be paying them the same you would an interactive marketer with comparable skills. A well-compensated position with a respectable title also signals the respect with which the organization regards mobile advertising and marketing in the multichannel mix. That said, even if the mobile job is assigned to one individual, it should be integrated with other advertising and marketing channels within the company. For mobile advertising to be taken more seriously within an organization, the person in charge must ensure that the channel is not to be treated simply as a campaign or one-off program. Now let us say if you did not have the budget, but did need to assign the mobile responsibility to someone – which department gets the task? An easy answer would be the interactive department already working on online advertising and marketing efforts. However, marketers need to be careful that mobile should not be treated as pure technology but a marketing strategy. To be successful the marketer needs to direct the strategy, and not simply the technology. Online companies fell into this trap and the mobile executive may similarly be bedazzled. Witness the latest craze with mobile applications. So, does your candidate understand the marketing first and then the technology to back up the marketing premise? I see this as a problem in the online marketing world as well. It is rare to find both skills in the same person, but still possible. However, be clear about what you are looking for.

the power of copywriting. Take consumer behavior strategy. Timing is everything as it relates to delivery and acquisition of the consumer. You need to understand how and when they want products, which is something direct marketers are all too familiar with. Mobile is a direct marketer’s dream. They know how to use consumer behavior data and tie it back to their database to create relevant messages to their consumer. Heather Baker, managing partner, BennettBaker Add to that a strong understanding of audience segmentation, measurement and analytics, as well as database marketing – one of the major strengths of SMS programs – and how to build a permissionbased database. Privacy is another issue that requires special attention – again, a skill that a mobile marketer will have to share with a direct marketer. Knowledge of the double-opt-in and opt-out processes is required. Mobile advertising typically involves mobile banner ads, SMS, MMS, mobile video ads, in-game ads and rich-media on the mobile device that promote a product or service. Take SMS, the most commonly-used mobile tactic along with mobile banner ads. Since SMS is much-used within mobile and there are a fair amount of similarities with online marketing, the candidate will have to be knowledgeable about double-opt-in requirements, database/CRM and privacy laws. SMS is like search and Twitter, only with 160 characters to get across your message. Twitter is 140 characters and a typical paid search ad is about 100 characters or so. The pitch has to be perfect with SMS. Indeed, SMS harkens back to the days of telegraph and the telegram – brief and to the point, but highlighting the sense of urgency. It is very different from email. Yes, you do not want to confuse SMS for email because of the different protocols and laws involved. Working on banner ads and rich media requires an understanding of branding, landing pages, calls to action and measurement of actions sought. The candidate should have marketing- and technology-savvy with the Web, even if the initial experience is on the wired Web. Another quality required in the candidate is flexibility. The mobile executive’s role in understanding and interpreting the technology, ecosystem and attitude to behavioral and geo-location marketing should grow with the industry’s evolution. It is best to either nurture talent from internal resources, network within the industry or tap outside help to find the right candidate for handling mobile advertising and marketing responsibilities within your organization. Your company’s mobile advertising will be only as good as the person running it. I

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obile advertising and marketing maybe on your company’s wish list but how do you qualify the talent, which department takes on the responsibility and whether you have the budget

for it? Before answering these questions, let me first start out by saying this channel is still relatively new in the scheme of things. Thus, there has not been enough time to develop a significant pool of knowledgeable top talent. Therefore, if you are not among the lucky few to find those hidden experienced mobile marketers, you must consider some cross-function skills that would apply well for mobile advertising and marketing. Just like the dotcom startup era, the qualifications have not been set in place to determine what constitutes great talent because the medium is still evolving.

Skill set Chief among the skill requirements are knowledge of brand marketing, database and measurement, privacy issues, consumer behavior and

Heather Baker is managing partner at BennettBaker, a Chicago-based recruiting service for response marketers in direct, interactive and mobile marketing. Reach her at [email protected] PAGE 86

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Mob ile ad ver ti ser s con tin ue to fac e lega l chal le nges

By Gonzalo E. Mon

nyone who reads Mobile Marketer knows that a growing number of companies are engaging in mobile advertising. Fortunately for companies that are new to mobile, there is no shortage of examples of successful campaigns that can be used for inspiration. However, the list of success stories can sometimes be marred by examples of companies that have had to pay high prices for failing to comply with various legal requirements. The biggest problems have had to do with failure to disclose offer terms or get consent. Advertising laws require advertisers to disclose important offer terms in a “clear and conspicuous” manner. In most cases, though, laws do not specify exactly what constitutes “clear and conspicuous.”

P’s and cues The Federal Trade Commission encourages advertisers to consider the Four Ps: (1) proximity; (2) placement; (3) prominence; and (4) presentation.

The companies challenged by the Florida attorney general have each had to pay at least $1 million to settle the investigations. Mr. McCollum is currently developing a “zone system” which will dictate where and how disclosures must be made. For example, price disclosures will have to appear within a certain number of pixels of the submit field, in a specific font size, and in Gonzalo E. Mon, an attorney with Kelley Drye & Warren a color that contrasts with the background. While the zone system is pending, advertisers would be well-advised to review the Florida attorney general’s settlements with other companies to see what has gotten them in trouble and check with their legal counsel to ensure their ads comply with the law.

Yes to consent Many companies have also gotten in trouble for failing to get consent from consumers. You need to get specific consent before you can send SMS messages to a consumer, even if the consumer has agreed to receive messages in another medium such as email. Again, the costs of getting this wrong can be high. For example, footwear maker Timberland last year agreed to pay $7 million to settle a case involving unsolicited text messages. Please review the Mobile Marketing Association guidelines for requirements for getting consent. Many mobile advertising campaigns involve the efforts of multiple parties. It is tempting to focus on your company’s part and just hope that your partners comply with the law. It is tempting to focus on your company’s part and just hope that your partners comply with the law. Unfortunately, in some cases, you may be held liable for your partner’s faults. Unfortunately, in some cases, you Although the absence of a specific standard provides advertisers may be held liable for your partner’s faults. with some flexibility, it also creates some uncertainty over whether a Make sure your agreements with partners contain representations, disclosure will comply with relevant laws. warranties and adequate indemnifications to protect you in case things In recent years, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has chalgo wrong. lenged a number of companies for failing to make disclosures suffiEven then, it pays to monitor partners so that you can identify any ciently clear and conspicuous. problems and address them before regulators do. I For example, the attorney general has challenged companies that advertised “free” services, but buried costs in the fine print. Gonzalo E. Mon is an attorney in Kelley Drye & Warren’s advertising Disclosing costs in the fine print is unlikely to satisfy laws in any and marketing law practice in Washington. Reach him at state. Instead, costs have to be presented in the main body of the offer. [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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A u di enc e e ng ag em en t m or e i mp or t a nt t h an cl ic ks

By Paran Johar

planning mobile media as they are hyper-intensified on the mobile o you convinced your client about the power of 4 billion mobile phone due to the lack of clutter and phones around the world – almost three for every five people on the personal nature of the medium. the planet. You even showed them all the case studies from the Below I have listed some things Mobile Marketing Association about brand recall and how the average to remember when evaluating mobile click-through rates are ten-fold than those on the wired Internet. media opportunities. Even though your client spends most of its ad budget on branding, First, quality content is king. after all these years of advertising on the wired Web, your client really There is a reason that advertising wants to see those people click. within quality content commands a Like a true media star, you develop your RFP which includes all premium. Advertisers pay a preParan Johar, chief marketing the target audience information such as demographics, psychographics, mium for the right to associate their officer, Jumptap even a hint of the creative strategy. brand and message within the conNow all you have to do is wait for the proposals from the publishers text of premium content. and ad networks and then present your recommendation to your client Second, relevancy is even better. Ideally all messaging will be a as the newest mobile expert at the agency. value exchange between brands and consumers. Everything seems to be going well until something odd happens. In an ideal world, users only see ads that they are actually interested To get on the media plan, one of the ad networks comes up with an in. Since the advertising is actually relevant to the user, the message idea to guarantee a click-through rate. Guarantee a CTR? Sounds great, actually holds value to them and their time engagement is a trade for you think to yourself. providing valuable messaging. If your client’s ad does not achieve an agreed-upon click-through Third, post-click is the true test of engagement. Anyone can drive rate, the ad network will deliver bonus impressions until a certain avclicks. The wired Internet proved that all it takes is a simple “free” offer erage has been achieved for the campaign. and your click-through rate will spike. The issue is what percentage of Before you sign that insertion order, you might want to think twice those users actually has an effect on your client’s business. and remember a click is not always a click. Measuring how many pages your consumer engages with post-click At first glance you may think that you have hit the jackpot, but I am is a good start at evaluating ROI and comparing performance of ad nethere to tell you not all clicks are created equal and you should be wary works and optimizing your client’s WAP site experience. Finally, transparency will make everything clear. The first thing I would ask your ad networks is whether your mobile ad buy will be transparent. Transparency is critical in knowing not only which category of media your ads will appear in, but also the actual sites and placements. That is why when evaluating media opportunities, one must understand where the clicks are coming from and how they got there. As part of guaranteeing a click-through rate, some ad networks will run impressions in places you would rather not see your brand, thus lowering the value of those clicks. This is not to say that cost-per-click advertising is flawed. It is quite the opposite in fact. If done with the proper levels of targeting technology and parameters, it can work quite effectively. Not all clicks are created equal and you should be wary of ad networks The key is to ensure relevancy as part of the buy, or publishers that try and seduce you with this. whether the pricing is cost per click, or cost-perof ad networks or publishers that try and seduce you with this. thousand impressions. By focusing on content and context, you ensure If there is one thing we should remember – though the almighty your client’s brand the true test of ROI: user engagement. Remember, it is not the number of impressions or the clicks you click is important – audience engagement is even more critical. Buying audience to focus on user engagement is certainly not new buy, but the impression you make. I fodder for the wired Internet. Agencies have been doing relevant targeting and optimizing post-click for years. Paran Johar is New York-based chief marketing officer of Jumptap. One must remember these principles of user engagement when Reach him at [email protected] MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING

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