@ CTIA: Mobile Marketing

Mobile advertising is creating a lot of discussion, because most people think it is necessary but if done incorrectly will cause irreparable damage. And they’re not 100% sure how to do it correctly. I spoke with Laura Marriott, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association about this, and she thinks that with the rules created by the MMA (and enforced by the carriers) more companies are willing to enter the market…”we’ve seen [mobile campaigns] go from the hundreds to the thousands].”
So far the MMA has released guidelines for premium SMS cross-carrier content services in North America (the big fish caught first — more than 90% of revenue is still generated by basic and premium messaging) but has also created a mobile video and television committee to look at advertising in that medium.
“The key to mobile is exclusivity,” said Laura. “Deliver something to the consumers that they can’t get through any other channel, so coupons are becoming big…exclusive product information.” This approach seems to work. Buongiorno runs a system for UK operator O2 called O2 Extras, which is an opt-in club using SMS to drive people to a WAP page, basically to promote the different forms of content on O2. I was told the service has pulled in over half a million users in a little over a year out of O2’s 2 million subscribers, and in addition to the revenue a “very high significant percentage of customers” claimed they would never leave O2 because of that service…so done right mobile advertising works.
The MMA does research on consumer perception of mobile advertising (only available to members) and it’s still only a small portion of the population which has participated in a campaign, about 6%, with the majority of users participating being in the 13-34 age group and the 24-34 being the most active. Most of the campaigns are for interactive TV, such as voting for something or text-to-win, which explains the age-skew.
Other interesting things to come out of my conversation with Laura…”If a brand is going to run a mobile promotion and they want quantity they’ll offer a prize and get a ton of people participating. If they’re going for brand awareness then what they’ll do is they’ll offer smaller and sustained prizes for smaller and sustained interactions…that allows them to get consumers who are interested in their brand.”
The MMA has a number of groups but the plan is to release guidelines on mobile WAP, followed by interstitial ads, MMS and then advergaming. “We define mobile marketing as the use of wireless media across media marketing communication programs,” said Laura, so the organization also looks at advertising in other media for mobile content.

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