What You Need To Know To Succeed in Mobile Advertising

In November 2009, AdMob released a report indicating that iPhone and Android users currently account for 82% of US mobile web traffic. There’s no doubt that the two platforms have radically changed the marketplace.

Here are the things you need to know about how iPhone and Android have changed mobile advertising and why you, as a job seeker or marketer, need to make the call now.

Your customers are on more than one carrier – A complete mobile marketing strategy must consider reaching audiences subscribed with all the various mobile carriers (e.g., Verizon, O2, Orange, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile).

Marketing begins and ends with numbers – The mobile marketing platform has lagged behind the web in terms of the ability to provide advertisers with critical metrics and control to measure and optimize their ad campaigns. Expect Google’s acquisition of AdMob to have tremendous implications for mobile advertising. AdMob serves ads for more than 15,000 mobile sites and applications worldwide and openly shares the mountain of actionable data they are collecting. AdMob has announced that it is supporting the Palm Pre/Web OS phones, demonstrating their cross-platform capabilities.

You don’t necessarily need to have an app – A recent WhitePages and MediaVest study showed that advertising performance is just as strong on the mobile web as it is on an app. The downside of apps is that consumers need to upgrade to get new versions of the apps, while a mobile site can simply be updated. A mobile site does not necessitate the consumers to do anything for it to update, all the burden is on you, the marketer, and that is good. As long as mobile carriers can scale their 3G networks to meet demands, the future of wireless is very likely to go back to the mobile web.

Location demands persistence and endurance – While location will be a key driver in the future of mobile advertising, the mobile industry will need to overcome a few challenges in order for location-based marketing to truly take off. One, the popularity of applications requires persistence and the ability to run more than one application at a time (Apple needs to wake up on this one). And two, battery drain from frequent GPS/location requests and poor cell tower coverage.

A different call to action – The key to the success of any marketing campaign is to make it easy for the consumer to react. For one, easy click-to-call actions have been seen to have contributed to +5% conversion results for advertisers.

If you want to learn more about how to reach your audience via mobile marketing I highly recommend Mobile Marketing Leadership. Only for those with a bit of cash to spend I’m afraid but definitely the No1 resource out there for this growing market.

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