Mobile Ad Conference Affirms Brands Are Starting To Move

• Posted: Sunday, February 10, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Advertising, Apple, Brand and Branding, iPhone, Marketing, Mobile Advertising

Last week in San Francisco, Informa held their Mobile Advertising and Marketing USA conference. There were speakers from all parts of the mobile advertising value chain as well as from all regions of the world. This post looks at the key discussion topics.

While its impossible to condense 2 full days of presentations and discussion into a brief article, here are some of the key themes raised at the conference.

Brands:
Finally we’re starting to hear from agencies that more brands are moving past the “test and trial” phase, and are viewing mobile as an ongoing part of their media plan. The budgets are often still relatively small, but the budgets are growing and a lot of the brands are placing “repeat orders” without the need for an agency to justify mobile all over again.

“Mobile is not the web, but …”
It has been a common theme that mobile advertising should not be thought of as simply a new form of online advertising. There are different ad formats, different customer patterns, different forms of engagement, etc. However, one speaker pointed out that at a higher level, many of the key successful philosophies from the online world should in fact be brought over to the mobile world, for example:

• Consumers like ads that are Entertaining.
• Ads should bring Value to consumers.
• Re-purposing content from one medium to another doesn’t always work.
• Creative must be “top shelf“, with as high a standard as traditional advertising or online advertising

iPhone:
It seems that the iPhone will in fact exert a strong influence on mobile advertising for a number of reasons. In the 7 months since its introduction:

• the iPhone is inducing consumers to browse the mobile internet. In fact, the more internet pages are browsed using iPhones than all the Windows Mobile phones put together, actually 50% more. Three key reasons for this seem to be (a) the improved user experience, (b) the flat rate data plan sold with every iPhone removes customers’ cost concerns, and (c) the content discovery process is familiar – like the web.


• the iPhone seems to have captured the imagination of agency creatives, and has made many realize that a mobile web experience can be great.


• the iPhone has enabled a new, higher quality level for mobile ads. While opinions were divided as to whether or not it is economically worthwhile to develop an ad version specifically for iPhone users, it was clear that some agencies would do this just to “push the boundaries” and show what is possible. This can only have a positive effect on the growth of mobile advertising.

Read more - MobiAdNews

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