Damon Henry: Internet Marketing Blog

I recently completed reading the March 2008 eMarketer’s Mobile Advertising report. It’s packed with very good insights into mobile adoption in other markets and the affect those markets will have on the US mobile market. eMarketer focused much of their attention on Brazil, Russia, India, China, also referred to as BRIC. There were really strong correlations between the eMarketer report and a similar digital BRIC study developed by Cap Gemini for General Motors a few months back.

A practice that’s strong in Europe is the concept of subsidizing cell phone usage in exchange for viewing ads. This makes since due to the larger number of prepaid subscribers in Western Europe. eMarketer expects this practice to be ported to the states in the coming years. “The big, big multiplier will be when mobile data plans start to become subsidized by advertising” proclaims Mike Baker, VP mobile advertising for Nokia. This is one of many quotes singing the praises of subsidizing the medium. What I see happening are advertisers and marketers attempting to turn mobile devices into television sets. They’ll accomplish this by forcing users to log into a portal and view ads once a day for 5 minutes of free air time. Now that’s what I call innovation. If all else fails, go with the banner ad. Speaking of banner ads the report quotes Scott Keliher, Virgin Mobile USA’s VP of advertising as saying “There’s a section of their account called Sugar Mama, and users know there are nothing but ads there. They’ve made the specific decision to go watch ads.” Really??? I’m sure you’re ad creative is impressive, but I’d venture to guess that they went there to get free air cell phone minutes, not view ads.

The problem is that research from agencies like Millward Brown and Nielson support the fact that users are willing to view ads for free stuff in return. Everyone but us Americans of course. You may have tricked us with TV commercials and OLA’s, but we typically don’t fall for the same tricks twice (except for George W).

Mobile’s ability to activate traditional media whether it be TV, billboard, print, or place-based will be its most useful near-term utility. Longer-term the ability for location awareness makes for some interesting killer apps as mobile moves away from simply phones to mobile gaming devices, cars, and whatever’s next.

This entry was posted Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 11:41 am and is filed under Global, Mobile, Strategy, Advertising. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.