Have We Reached The Year Of Mobile, Yet?
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 17, 2010
The test phase is complete and 2010 will go down in history as the "year of the budget." Amielle Lake, chief executive officer at Tagga Media, told attendees at OMMA Global in San Francisco on Wednesday that this is the year we will prove enough case studies to start dollars flowing into the space.
Still, online ad budgets have this line item that just says "mobile," but it doesn't mean SMS messaging or display advertisements, Lake says.
Today, the majority sit at about $100,000, says Patrick Collins, chief executive officer, 5th Finger. Likely spurred on by the approximate 60% of subscribers who now have data plans, according to Dan Lee, director, mobile audience measurement solutions, The Nielsen Co.
Keeping up with consumers who rely on mobile isn't easy. Some are beginning to use the handheld device as a shopping tool. A mobile strategy might not fit in well for all companies. For us we look at the objectives of the client and collectively what will become the best strategy," says Tina Unterlaender, account director mobile, AKQA.
Most clients, about 75%, want to do mobile, but the remainder requires a lot of hand-holding and explaining, Unterlaender says. "It's not a scary thing any more," she says.
The stereotype that suggests the brand comes to the agency and says "I want it all" doesn't work. Agencies need to take a step back and examine the client's marketing mix, rely on analytics, and determine whether the goal will become to produce a direct response channel or a branding. campaign.
"Every client wants to see their brand on an iPhone," says Niles Lichtenstein, director, of mobile strategy and integration at Ansible, who says the agency is working on a concept of "no phone left behind."
Lake also suggests companies need to start optimizing Web sites for mobile phones. "How many people have a busienss card with a Web site address on it that isn't optimized for a mobile phone?" she says.
$100K budget for mobile applications... who are the advertising agencies kidding? GUI, Data Integration, app functionality not to mention licensing IP with all the new patents now emerging from Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. The top two players have dropped a $1 Billion investment in the mobile consumer market.... If I'm a mobile user and I download your branded app to my phone, I'm with some 40M other smart phone users on my network, I think you would at least spend one penny or 1% per user or $400K on mobile apps that derive some benefit and get me to spend more than one cents on your product or service. If not, you are not even showing up to the game.
Whether it’s the year of mobile or not, mobile’s come a long way. At this point most of us have our cell phones close by all the time, and it’s true we’re starting to use them as shopping tools. But it’s still most likely we’ll make a call to buy something, especially if we’re already holding a phone (rather than deal with a tiny browser window and slow load times). Companies getting into mobile are realizing that it’s not the phone, it’s the phone number. It’s still easy to get what you want by making a call. I’m interested to see how businesses who want to advertise in mobile are adapting their media for this channel, and how many of them are making plans to include phone numbers in their mobile ads.
-Jason Spievak, CEO, RingRevenue