» Standards Will Support Growth of Mobile Ads

Standards Will Support Growth of Mobile Ads

June 3rd, 2008 by Greg Harris

MobiAd News is a great newsletter to read about the mobile advertising industry. They do an excellent job of covering the industry in general, and are an excellent source of information.

Yesterday’s lead story was about using advertising standards to support the growth of mobile ads. I agree completely. Advertisers will not be ready to throw serious budgets into mobile without understanding what the consumer is experiencing, and what they are getting as a result.

We need to define a common understanding of what will be delivered to users which is consistent, regardless of which operator is managing the network. It is vital that the value chain for all players involved be clearly defined and expectations and inter-relationships between players fully understood in order for the business to flow freely and the lofty ambitions for this industry be fully realized.

While I have mentioned the need for standards in tracking mobile ads, there is obviously a need for standards for delivery and content as well. With so many different browsers, having a few standard ad sizes like on the web is not possible. Also, with new more powerful phones arriving every day, we are no longer just talking about simple banner size issues.

Standards to date have mainly focused on web browser and banner adverts but this is changing to multimedia advertising and video in particular. Estimates from Juniper Research state that SMS campaigns currently account for the largest proportion of mobile advertising budget; with nearly 1.5 billion mobile users receiving SMS advertising in 2008. But the increasing popularity of mobile TV services mean that ad spending in this area will rise from just $335 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013.

Both the OMA and the MMA have taken a role in defining these standards from both a technology and a user experience standpoint.

According to the article, a key priority for the MMA is to define metrics that will allow advertisers to uniformly monitor the effectiveness of mobile ads. That is also a key priority for Mobilytics. Not only do standards metrics need to be defined, but the industry needs to be able to compare and analyze all types of ads across the different mobile channels.

Work carried out with ad agencies and advertisers has revealed a need to educate and assist when it comes to mobile advertising. A lack of understanding means that the potential for this diverse and flexible medium is not being realized by key players in the value chain. And to make the process more seamless, a high degree of interoperability and standardization is needed

About 60% of Mobivity’s clients use SMS for marketing purposes. Some of those clients also do banner advertising, have a wap site, and do SMS campaigns with other content providers. You can imagine how a lack of standards and cross channel tracking can make understanding the data difficult.

Using Mobilytics, an advertiser can see how each channel, publisher, or ad version is performing against each other, and how each medium (sms, wap, banner, video,in-game) stacks up.

Without this information, advertisers will never put serious money into mobile. Gone are the days of “I know half of my advertising money is wasted, I just don’t know which half.”

Accurate metrics, combined with industry standards and guidelines are needed to legitimize what is unquestionably the most personal marketing medium there is to reach the consumer.

The mobile handset offers tremendous benefits to advertisers as the only personal device offering interactive, highly targeted advertising that benefits both advertiser and consumer. The secret to unleashing this potential will be in getting the balance right and ensuring that all parties enjoy a positive and rewarding experience - I believe that the definition of industry guidelines is a key step along the road to making this happen.