The long hangover – the ongoing trouble with mobile advertising

Yesterday I wrote about the likely slow demise of the so-called mobile internet and mobile operator portals (if they don’t shape up). But what does this portend for mobile advertising?

Just this week the Media Guardian in the UK made the case for mobile advertising in article titled Pocket-sized powerhouse. They trot out familiar pro mobile as ad platform arguments:

• Unlike the TV or the PC its always switched on.
• You always have it on you.
• It’s possibly the most interactive gadget we have (not true but it is interactive)
• 95% of us have one.

“Mobile has the potential to be the most exciting advertising medium ever,”

That’s marketese hyperbole in overdrive for you. Thanks Geraldine Wilson, vice-president of Connected Life at Yahoo! Europe. Connected Life handle the display ads on mobile portals for Vodafone, T-Mobile and 3.

Yes. Mobile as advertising medium has never been knowingly undersold.

These arguments for mobile advertising have been made for quite some time now.

But as the Guardian asks quite rightly, if mobile is such a good advertising medium, why does it account for less than 1% of all ad spend?

General SMS campaigns seem to be well and truly over. Brand owners have figured out how unwelcome this intrusion is in our personal space. Such is the personal nature of a mobile that the reaction it generates is even stronger than the reaction one gets from an ad in your Facebook personal newsfeed.

Whether these ads can be tailored and targeted to such an extent that consumers welcome them, AND brands will take the risk, remains to be seen.

I concede that the mobile operator portals have made some money selling display ads. In the US Admob have sold quite a lot on all manner of sites.

But as I mentioned in my previous post. Operator portals are about to start discovering what Yahoo! and MSN did on the web not too long ago. If your product is not as good as a rival’s, your customers will go to your competitor no matter how much cross promotion, and brand awareness you have. They are likely to begin a slow bleed in their audience.

As mobile devices sophistication grows, there is a chance that mobile ads will just become part of the general web ad mix. The only panacea I see are creative use of location based targeting, mapping and other mobile typical stuff like the accelerometer. Only that can make reaching customers via mobiles more relevant. Time will tell.

In the short and medium term brands looking for the wow factor will have to look at brand sponsorship of mobile applications or building them themselves. This includes viral strategies like Carling’s recent iPint application, which converts your iPhone into an interactive pint of virtual lager.

Advertising as content so to speak. You will hear about this a lot.

Interesting to note the plethora of fan videos of the iPint on YouTube.