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Ad ventures in wonderland? |
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Monday, 17 December 2007 |
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Mobile advertising starts to get serious say the experts…
According to a couple of recent analyses, mobile advertising is now set to become a serious money spinner.
ABI Research reckons that, globally, mobile marketing is regarded as a new way to monetise services and develop new sources of revenue for mobile operators. In its analysis ‘Mobile Marketing and Advertising in Japan and South Korea’, the company says that Japanese and South Korean operators are building on existing technologies and consumer preferences to pioneer this new medium and by 2012, the total value of all mobile advertising and marketing will reach US$1.2bn and US$684mn in the two countries respectively. ABI adds that with closely-targeted marketing using demographic data from existing mobile subscribers, mobile ads over phones are effective in reaching consumers who are open to receiving commercial messages.
“Japan
and
South Korea
have almost the same market structures, value chains, and service applications. This is because mobile operators in both countries established their own mobile ad agencies to support operators’ business models for mobile ads,” suggests ABI Research senior analyst Andy Bae. “The relationships between operators and the affiliated mobile ads firms are close, in order to produce desirable business results.”
One of key reasons cited for mobile advertising’s market growth in the two countries surveyed is the well-established range of 3G and HSDPA-based handsets available in both. “Mobile search and gaming will be promising sectors for the next growth phase in these regions. Mobile operators believe that search results with location-based advertising messages could generate large revenue streams with gradually increasing usage by subscribers. Google and Yahoo are already implementing their business activities in the regions by cooperating with mobile operators in
Asia
,” notes Bae.
And mobile advertising is not just an Asian opportunity. The
UK
’s Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), for example, says that the next 12 months will mark a real turning point for mobile Internet advertising, when the experience will match the technology and consumers will get over their hang-ups about using their mobile phones for something other than communication and seriously surf on the move, occasionally interacting with advertising.
The IAB’s ‘mobile advertising: the emerging
UK
market’ report - written with the Mobile Marketing Association - points out that a growing number of consumers are already using mobile Internet. And they’re using it for news and entertainment, travel information and locations, price comparisons and e-mail. The IAB believes that male 16 to 34 year olds have proven to be the early adopters but other groups are steadily increasing their usage as familiarity with the medium develops. But although media owners already have established models for advertising on mobile, marketers have been relatively cautious thus far. However, argues the IAB, there are a number of benefits to mobile marketing that brands can exploit: enhanced targeting by demographic and day-part, the highly personal nature of the mobile phone, mass reach, and the fact that users are likely to have their mobiles always with them and always on.
This sort of logic apparently is not wasted on Microsoft (aka the Beast of Redmond). This month the Beast announced that mobile display advertising was available in the
USA
on MSN Mobile for the first time. “Microsoft is continuing to make significant investments in the MSN Mobile portal, adding new services and content that enhance the mobile experience and make it one of the best in the industry,” claims Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president and chief media officer of MSN. “By incorporating advertising on MSN Mobile, we are allowing advertisers to extend their existing campaigns from PCs to games and now to mobile phones, further delivering on our vision to extend advertising across multiple platforms and devices.”
John Williamson |
