• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, February 5, 2010

 "Really? The one about my friends' taking my entire dorm room and moving it to the lobby of the building?" 

"Yes."

 "The one about their turning every single item in my room upside down one night?" 

"Yes, yes, yes. Dad, you have told the same stories all of my life. And by the way, how much of a jerk were you in college that made your 'friends' want to screw with your room all the time?"  

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of being a parent, and a seventeen year-old does not need any more reason to loathe her father than she musters up on her own.  

But I do repeat myself. And some things are worth repeating, especially about the under-appreciated strengths of the mobile platform as a marketing vehicle. I know I banged this drum before -- in my last column, in fact.  But I really believe that mobile advertising offers marketers a platform for engagement that fixes some of the problems the Web introduced -- namely clutter, diminishing share of voice, lack of user focus, ad invisibility, and a real tie between ad and context. As I argued in my last piece (https://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121771) the sponsorship model and brand integration with content can be enormously effective on mobile and in ways that never really evolved on the Web.

And so, as if on cue, our friend from InsightExpress, Joy Liuzzo, sends me a deck this week on the latest benchmark, cross-campaign studies comparing mobile brand effectiveness with online campaigns. Over one thousand Web campaigns were set against over 100 mobile ones and mobile proved to have norms that were 4.5 to 5 times higher than the Web. In top-of-the-funnel metrics like unaided awareness and aided awareness, mobile ads moved the needle 9%, while the Web had only 2% and 3% lifts.

Even more interesting is how the effectiveness actually improves as we get lower into the funnel. For brand favorability, mobile gave a 10% delta and for purchase intent 12%, compared to 2% in each category from the Web. In fact, Joy told me that these latter measures actually have improved over time rather than diminished. Across the board mobile ads are simply more visible, more memorable, more communicative, and ultimately more persuasive than their Web-based brethren.

When we break the numbers down by mobile media type (mobile internet, SMS, mobile video), the mobile Web is generally more effective across the metrics. SMS is particularly strong in aided awareness and ad awareness. Mobile video, not surprising is stronger than the other formats for brand favorability. And again the effectiveness of mobile Internet, SMS and video on purchase intent is quite good, at 11%, 10% and 9% respectively.

Most interesting is the way mobile outperforms Web advertising on key product categories. For instance, for travel and retail, mobile seems a much better place to improve aided awareness, while mobile CPG and auto ads beat the Web counterparts most handily on brand favorability.

And it is at the bottom of the funnel where we see some very impressive multiples specific to product categories. Purchase intent metrics for CPGs is three times higher on mobile ads than from online campaigns. Tech purchase intent is seven times higher and retail purchase intent is eight times higher.

As mobile moves out of test budgets and comes to occupy a line of its own, and as the medium gains serious scale, these are the sorts of numbers that could (should) move money.