Mobile Marketers Demand Better Ad Performance, Standards

by Laurie Sullivan, Nov 17, 2011, 7:05 PM

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It's still far too difficult to buy advertising online, and about 90% of ads on publisher sites never appear on a part of the screen that consumers view without scrolling down the page, said Greg Stuart, Global CEO, Mobile Marketing Association, during opening remarks at the industry conference in Los Angeles.

The Web and technology have yet to evolve to properly support mobile marketing, said Stuart, who called for the industry to create better standards and protection against negative influences from those who don't understand the Web and prevent the challenges on mobile what he believes happened online.

Stopping just shy of calling the mobile Web the "wild, wild West," Lisa Ciangiulli, director of solutions marketing for the carrier business group at Alcatel-Lucent, told MediaPost the industry lacks standards. That's a sentiment shared by many in mobile advertising and marketing. 

Audience targeting, marketing and buying remains fragmented, while the desktop market has had time to mature. Too many companies vie for a piece of the chain with independent sales forces, platforms, which makes it much more unwieldy for buyers.

There is a huge divide between the way the mobile operators do business and the advertising community. Ciangiulli said those who want to buy inventory targeting consumers between the ages of 18 and 24 must purchase the inventory from multiple mobile ad networks to try and reach an audience. If they want to advertise through mobile operators, the advertiser needs to buy inventory through each operator in a market.

Alcatel-Lucent created a platform and processes through Optism to aggregate multiple mobile operators' inventory by market and region. A tool does campaign booking through a Web interface makes it easy. The platform designed in conjunction with GroupM media buyers lets them go into the tool and choose specific markets and address all subscribers that meet specific criteria.

The mobile advertising platform asks consumers to opt-in before completing three questions that enable the company to more accurately identify them in the correct market segment. The platform and strategy focuses on "thinking human," which customizes the communication between the brand and consumer. 

The trick becomes gently nudging people into gently answering the questions. Typically, only about 90% of the people will answer the first question, the second drops to 75%, and 60% answer the third question. At Alcetel-Lucent an algorithum does the nudging. 

Marketers look for technical solutions rather than complete solutions to make sure subscribers understand processes. "You need to remain very careful to protect subscriber data and privacy," said Mihai Vlad, head of insight and audience management at Alcatel-Lucent. "If someone doesn't like a Coke campaign delivered through AT&T, the consumer will become angry with AT&T not Coke."

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