• by Paul Palmieri , January 27, 2009

While Jim Carrey's latest film "Yes Man" was not his biggest box office victory, it did raise the question for each of us, of our decision-making sophistication.

The film highlighted an exaggerated and funny scenario where one person's responses, decisions, directions were bluntly and blindly either affirmative or negative. Like many comedies though, the predictable takeaway was just the opposite: Every day presents opportunities on both sides of "yes" and "no." The more sophisticated takeaway, however, was that although too much of anything is not good, boiling away nuances and getting to "yes" and "no" creates action, reaction, and ultimately, results.

In the mobile advertising market, 2008 was a big year of growth--including and especially the fourth quarter. This growth occurred somewhat because of clients saying "yes" to mobile experimentation, but it was largely due to the "yes" of budget expansion because mobile worked. By worked, I mean that it was more efficient at delivering an engaged consumer, broke records for recall, and produced actions consistently for direct marketers.

This performance, even in a new medium rumored to have too much hype, is the reason mobile will continue to grow in a challenging economic time. Mobile is emerging not as a casualty of the economic situation, but as a critical component of delivering media effectiveness while driving efficiency to the overall media plan.

In 2009, the growth of the mobile advertising market relies on more action orientation in the market. Here are some things to consider saying "yes" to:

Yes: To moving beyond the iPhone

The iPhone is certainly a phenomenon, and played a large role in the mobile ad market in 2008. Many brands have deployed iPhone sites, designed applications for its app store, and generated great results. Reaching the mass market with mobile experiences that are exciting and effective can be achieved on other mass market smartphone platforms like BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. According to our network data at Millennial Media, this could mean a lift in available audience of 400%, and can be deployed and measured seamlessly.

Yes: To mobile specific targeting

Mobile offers some great advantages in targeting. Taking advantage of what is mobile specific can really drive extension of your message. Time of day is one -- consumers use the mobile phone more at night and on the weekend. Target a campaign in this mobile specific way to surround your audience. Another is customer precise data. Large mobile ad-networks and mobile publishers have been pursuing and deploying precise targeting of demographic profiles right from the start -- obtaining permission from the users and delivering campaigns against it. Use this precision to bolster the index based audience composition scoring delivered by companies like Nielsen and comScore.

Yes: To mobile rich media

Mobile rich media is becoming more generally available. From expandable and carousel creative units, to rich media inside the banner, mobile media is evolving and can deliver stories better and better each day. Choose the ad networks that can deliver the highest reach and the largest rich media reach. Publishers who are supporting mobile rich media early in the year will be paid dividends later in the year.

Yes: To investing in your mobile destination

As mobile continues to take its place in the media mix, the cumulative effects of the investment in mobile media can only be realized if a brand's destination has a greater degree of permanence than a simple landing page. Mobile destinations need not be as complex as a website, but they do need to be well thought out, planned and activated. An entire year of driving consumers to a specific mobile effort will produce the best result. If a brand is just not ready to commit, longer term deals with ad networks or publishers may create a semi permanent destination at a low cost. Either way, consistency is important to achieve 2009 results.

Yes: To replacing inefficient Internet spend with mobile

Lastly and most importantly in 2009, the almighty dollar is king. Let's look at a comparison of a small online and mobile spend to illustrate how mobile as a persistent piece of the overall mix can drive engaged consumers:

$10,000 spent online

At $5 CPM, that would mean that the brand bought 2,000,000 impressions. Clients would most likely freq cap the buy at 1 in 24 or something similar over a 30-day period. So, a frequency of 10 impressions is probably reasonable. This would mean that 200,000 people saw the campaign. And, at a clickthough rate (CTR) of 0.2%, that would mean the campaign generated 4,000 clicks. Of course, there would be an assumption on unique to raw clicks (the percentage of the clicks were repeat visitors). In online, the audience is larger than mobile, such that the unique to raw should be pretty high, let's say 80%. Therefore, the online campaign produced 3,200 unique "engaged consumers" with the campaign.

$10,000 spent in mobile

At $10 CPM, that would mean that the brand bought 1,000,000 impressions. At a frequency of 10 impressions per user, the ad would have been seen by 100,000 people. (Some of the smarter people might argue that the natural frequency of mobile is a bit higher than online because the audience is smaller, and I think they'd possibly be right, but not in all cases, as we see in the Millennial Media networks.) The big difference in mobile is that CTRs are much higher. At a CTR of 1%, this campaign would provide 10,000 visitors. With a unique to raw ratio of 60%, we'd provide 6,000 unique "engaged consumers." That's an 87% improvement over the same amount of spend in online.

Combine these compelling economics of engagement with the reality of the migration of users away from online for certain content types (e.g., sports, weather, nightlife, entertainment) reported by Nielsen, and mobile may be the brightest spot in all of advertising in 2009.

Yes.