Commentary

Just an Online Minute... Mobile Results

Mobile devices may still be ages away from being acknowledged as a real medium, but some advertisers are having moderate success with AvantGo, according to an announcement the company made this morning.

My major problem with the release is that is starts out with, "With average click-through rates that are five times higher than standard online advertising and stronger recall rates than television advertising, mobile marketing has come of age as the most productive and cost effective medium for reaching a highly desirable demographic." Everyone repeat after me: "Click-throughs are NOT a good measure of ANYTHING online."

Keeping that in mind, companies such as American Airlines, Chrysler Corporation, CNN and RollingStone.com have realized somewhat impressive results from running on AvantGo.

RollingStone.com, for example, launched a newly redesigned mobile website on the My AvantGo service earlier this year and in the first two months following the introduction, active usership increased by 330%. With the redesign, the channel has attracted more sophisticated advertisers, the first of which was a two-month sponsorship by Honda for its new Element vehicle.

Another example: Jeep conducted a mobile advertising campaign via My AvantGo in conjunction with the initial launch of the new Jeep Liberty. The ads brought in a 1.5-2% average click-through rate, which lead them to collect more than 15,000 leads.

And finally, the recently launched American Airlines My AvantGo channel attracted 80,000 users within the first few months. The channel offers flight schedule and loyalty program information to develop customer relationships. The new channel was honored with an Excellence in Interactive Marketing Award from DFW Interactive Marketing Association for Most Effective Wireless Campaign on Mobile Devices.

Are these isolated examples? Yes. Is mobile marketing worth looking into? Yes, carefully. Are we close to the Minority Report scenario? I'd give it a few more years.

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