Messaging in Mobile Advertising and Marketing
by Nancy Broden
A couple of recent high-profile sales in the online advertising space - Third Screen Media to AOL’s Advertising.com and aQuantive to Microsoft for an eye-popping $6 billion - brings to mind the role of messaging in mobile advertising and marketing.
Mobile advertising and marketing has been on the rise as cell phone penetration heads toward (or tops) 100% in countries around the world. With more mobile phones in the hands of the lucrative teen and young adult market, it is natural that brands leverage the mobile channel as a way to reach reach prospective customers and foster loyalty among existing customers.
Campaigns with a mobile messaging component were among the earliest tactics employed. Although there is a rush to develop more sophisticated methods using WAP-based content or search, messaging remains the most effective mobile advertising and marketing tactic. At the Mobile User Experience conference in London earlier this month, Antti Ohrling, co-founder of the advertising-funded mobile virtual network operator Blyk, provided reasons why will continue to be the case.
Among 16- to 24-year olds the three most popular mobile services are:
- Voice
- Text
- Alarm Clock
73% do not use expensive mobile data services. Thus tying a mobile advertising campaign to WAP-based content that the consumer must access via the browser on their device is not a sound decision.
The key to success in mobile advertising and marketing is timeliness and relevance. Ohrling’s research suggests that 71% of mobile phone customers would appreciate receiving advertising messages targeted to their interests. This audience views targeted communication as offering them an opportunity, rather than as an interruption or a nuisance.
Leveraging the opportunities presented by the mobile context itself promises the best results: “Mobile devices are, above all, about person-to-person communication, so smart marketers can design campaigns that take advantage of that capability and feature a peer-to-peer messaging aspect”, reports the marketing research firm MarketingSherpa. For example, campaigns that feature free home screen wallpapers will encourage the dissemination of branded material from person to person via messaging services.
While mobile advertising and marketing is likely to grow more sophisticated over the next few years, until text and multimedia messaging is supplanted by something better, it will remain a key ingredient in successful campaigns.
