Mobile Advertising not so great - MoCo News

Vast Majority Of Americans Annoyed By Mobile Advertising, Report Reveals

• Posted by Peggy Anne Salz
• Tue 02 Jan 2007 04:45 PM

A new report from Forrester Research puts a damper on the excitement around the prospects for mobile advertising. A whopping 79 percent of consumers surveyed said they find the idea of ads on their mobile devices annoying. Among other findings: Most consumers expressed little or no interest in receiving ads -- even when those ads are part of a fr*ee content/app offer; a mere 3 percent of consumers said they trust mobile ads; and only 1 percent said they are, or would be, influenced by text ads on their mobile phones. (Forrester polled 11,134 US and Canadian households -- and used data from four other similar surveys.)

But it's not all bad news. The move by Sprint and Verizon Wireless (both operators have opened up to offer ads on-portal -- Verizon said it will place banner ads on its deck starting this year) lays a solid groundwork for a broad distribution of mobile ads. Now advertisers just have to follow up with well-executed campaigns. Despite consumer aversion to mobile ads, campaigns that fit the medium, and focus on delivering value, can produce positive results. Forrester cites several examples, including a grocery store in Cambridge, MA, that has replaced its loyalty card program with a mobile-only approach that delivers users promotions directly to their mobiles based on their past shopping habits and history. To date, 82 percent of the retailer's shoppers have enlisted in the program, the report said, and 64 percent actively use it.

Advertisers can choose from three methods to get their message across: Text messaging (often incorporating special offers, coupons and short codes), banner ads on a mobile browser, or ad-funded content/app schemes (a particularly tall order since Forrester stats show over 80 percent of consumers consider mobile ads to be a bother -- even if they get fr*ee downloads in exchange for watching them).

Still, success is in reach if advertisers accept that mobile abides by a new set of rules and requires a new mindset, Forrester concludes. This means abandoning classic marketing techniques and understanding that the mobile channel is abbreviated (users don't browse on their mobile, so marketers need to deliver value and relevance without extra steps); transactional (there's a tight connection between the call to action and the user response, so make use of it through methods like click-to-call); and measurable (mobile offers more information about users and their locations, profiles and preferences, so it beats zip-code based approaches by a mile); and integrated (mobile can be tied in with on-premise advertising at outdoor events, on billboards -- the works). As this article in AdAge points out, advertisers that get this (and companies including Toyota do) will eventually bridge the disconnect between industry enthusiasm and consumer acceptance.