NEW YORK-Advertisers will have to devote a line item in their budget toward mobile marketing by 2007, an expense that could reach into the millions of dollars for some companies. How the mobile advertising market will develop is anyone’s guess, but it will happen; in truth the machine has started turning. So was the message at last week’s Mobile Marketing Forum.
The association has moved beyond the boot camps of past years to a sold-out attendance of 400 this year; room size has increased by 10 times compared to last year. Attendees from advertising agencies, publishers, aggregators, carriers and others trying to develop the mobile marketing space demonstrated their commitment with full sessions sprinkled with much hallway chatter. Few left early and even the last session was well attended-signs of a potentially major industry indeed.
Instead of “bludgeoning American consumers to death” with irrelevant ads, purpose-filled content can enlighten the wireless marketing experience, prophesied David Verklin, chief executive officer of Carat Americas, one of the nation’s largest advertising agencies, during the keynote session.
This year, companies are using discretionary ad dollars to test mobile marketing options, noted Tom Burgess, CEO of Third Screen Media. Next year though, budget line items will be set aside for mobile.
But lest anyone think the future is free of obstacles, Burgess frankly pointed out a few problems. Brands need efficient solutions in order to buy into wireless-just like they use to buy other media.
And an oft-repeated complaint among speakers was the ridiculously slow pace it takes to register a short code. It’s faster to shoot a TV ad, edit and distribute it than register a short code, lamented Jim Hood, CEO of HipCricket. He said it takes four to five months to score a short code.
And while a couple of comments hinted that U.S. operators still try to control too much of the mobile marketing experience, “carriers are a lot further along than people think” in figuring the role advertising will play into their business plans, Third Screen Media’s Burgess confided. However, carriers must be focused on solid business models that will not alienate their customers.
For their part, wireless operators collectively voiced caution to their counterparts even as they admitted to being the biggest evangelists within their respective companies for driving the mobile marketing space.
Carriers are opening up to off-deck applications, noted Jim Ryan, vice president of consumer data products at Cingular Wireless L.L.C. “Cingular can’t offer everything under the Cingular brand. It’s impossible.”
But mobile marketing is a game-changing experience, Ryan said. The ability for brands to interact one on one with their core targets has never been available before. As such, it would be short-sighted (even stupid) to apply old rules to this new space. Wireless customers are willing to pay for content and brands are willing to pay to connect with these paying customers. An Internet model should not be followed here, he warned. “Don’t erode the value by giving it way for free if you don’t have to.”
Carriers were attentive to criticisms that multimedia messaging services have been slow to get in place, but promised the lag time would allow carriers to direct the experience instead of playing catch-up.
Dave Oberholzer, associate director of information and news programming at Verizon Wireless, conceded the nation’s second-largest carrier was intentionally late to the MMS party.
Having the rules in place before the medium takes off is just smart businesses, contended Chris Black, director of mobile marketing and interactive media at Cingular. “If we don’t screw this up, we’re all going to be winners.”
Continuing to be the voice of reason in a space that could explode-some said estimates of $1.5 billion in annual mobile marketing revenues by 2010 were conservative-carriers talked about the basics. Industry needs to concentrate on getting users familiar with text messaging before it rushes into more advanced applications like MMS and mobile video.
Sprint Nextel Corp.’s John Styers, director of data services, recounted the carrier’s monorail experiment at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Attendees could text to a short code for a free monorail ticket. But Sprint Nextel employees spent most of their time at the show teaching users how to send text messages, Styers said.
Mobile marketers and carriers, especially, need to keep a cautious mentality, said Styers. “You don’t want to violate anyone’s personal media since they are driving revenue.” On the other hand-perhaps a comment that the industry is at a tipping point-industry can’t sit around pontificating about the subject any longer, he said. It’s time to test strategies and then adjust, based on results. RCR
