Mobile Phone Ads: New, Exciting, Tiny
Posted: May 18th, 2008 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Media And Advertising | Tags: iPhone, mobile ads, Safari, Stephanie Bauer Marshall, verizon | No Comments »An article on Online Media Daily extols cell-phone banners as more clickworthy than banners appearing
elsewhere, and equally as conducive to recall as TV advertising:
“The banner ads work really well, and that’s where you have the greatest reach,” [mobile advertising leader for Verizon Wireless Stephanie Bauer] Marshall said, adding that she “was blown away” by IAG data showing they were on par with TV spots in terms of brand recall. (IAG used the same method for measuring brand recall that it does with TV ads.) Mobile banner ads also produce click-through rates that are “exponentially higher than online” banner ads, where CTR has fallen to about 0.3%; mobile banners produce an overall click-through rate of 2%, even “slightly higher for entertainment brands.”
I’m blown away too..by the lack of insight. The high CTR isn’t runoff from some magical quality inherent in cell phones. Interactive, phone-friendly WEP pages are still relatively new in the American mainstream, and so are ads that are designed (both visually and technically) for the mobile screen. Advertising (along with porn) is always going to be at the forefront of new technology, and users – especially users who are regularly surfing the web on their phones in 2008 – want to see what those crazy kids have come up with this time. I click on all sorts of things in my iPhones’s “Safari” browser that I wouldn’t click on otherwise – including -ads – because I want to see how they display, especially if I’m looking at something that was obviously designed for phone browsers.
As for TV-level recall. We’ll see how that pans out when mobile banners are so common that users stop noticing them, or start blocking them. Mobile bandwidth is precious, and ads can slow page load. And when the iPhone API is unlocked, some of the countless free applications available from hackers around the world are bound to be ad blockers.
photo by woodleywonderworks on Flickr.
hi Michael,
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Thanks
Hi sukhjinder,
Did you see the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica? That moment at the end where they plugged in the hypbrid and the base ship jumped was pretty dramatic, wasn’t it?
I agree with your view, but think there are other factors at play too. Your behavior is of the early adopter, and while there is a good percentage of users still in that segment (probably still a majority in the iPhone category), there is also a lot of clickthrough from Joe User, just using the device as a tool and not a toy.
So what then attracts those clicks? If I take my own personal experience and abstract it out to Wild Speculation Land, my thinking is twofold:
1) It’s hard as hell to get a proper bead on anything in a regular phone. The number of misclicks is frustrating beyond belief. Now, most times that misclick just brings up a menu, or calls someone, or does something innocuous. But sometimes it also clicks an ad, which gets tracked and now BAM all of a sudden Verizon thinks I love Nelly Furtado. And since I’m on mobile web so infrequently, hell I just proved to them that 10% of the time i saw an ad I clicked on it.
2) When surfing the mobile web you’re distracted. To a level no normal banner ad subjects you to. On a computer you’re multitasking: chatting, surfing, emailing, what have you. On a mobile browser you’re doing all that (to a frustratingly difficult degree) AND at the same time listening to your mp3 player, trying to hear train stops as they go by, picking up laundry, what have you. So you may look back down at your screen and forget why the hell you were on this page. But hey! Nelly Furtado. ::click::
Pace: In some future decade when you’re up against the wall, and the State is pointing to a spreadsheet indicating that you have shown interest in Nelly Furtado, I will direct them to this thread. You’re safe.