Sunday 16 November 2008

Mobile advertising will grow

As the technology has evolved over the last decade so does various mobile applications and services related to it. In today’s competitive and saturated market operators and vendors are spending significant amount of time in drafting new strategies which will result in new revenue generation.

It is all about making the consumer interested and getting into the feeling of the general public in terms of what they would like and what would interest them. Mobile advertising is one such step in that area.

In the last year alone mobile advertising had emerged and there is a buzz out there related to it. I have noticed that people including myself take more notice of a mobile ad than advertising on TV or on a PC screen. And with a billion new phones being bought every year, the potential market is huge. Does this really mean that people out there really believe that it's going to be worth billions in just another two to three years?

There is no denying from the fact that mobile phones offer advertisers many different ways to reach an audience. With more and more people accessing internet from their mobile there is a potential area for growth. Placing ads at the start of a video or adding them to the results of a mobile search are less intrusive forms of promotion. I think we'll see people responding well to this kind of ad.For one thing the credit crunch will force advertisers to reduce traditional outlets like print and TV, and push them to explore cheaper and more targeted avenues, such as mobile devices.
So eventually, revenue from mobile advertising might rival that on other channels. But until then the industry will have to knock a few zeros off its forecasts.
You mist have noticed receiving various SMS from your operator sending you a message related to some product or event. SMS advertising for consumer goods, such as food and fashion is rising significantly specially in Europe.

Recent study by comScore suggested that more customers were getting ads for consumer goods such as food, fashion, restaurants, travel and financial services. In the three months ended August 2008, the number of offers received for non-mobile consumer goods rose 15 percent, compared to last year.

Food is the fastest-growing category of SMS advertising since August 2007, at a rate of 53 percent, followed by clothing-fashion at 38 percent and restaurants at 37 percent.
Mobile advertising is relatively new in the market and just like any other new thing it will take some time to settle down. However there are some articles floating around which suggest that mobile advertising is overhyped. Although these suggestions are based on some fact and data collected by the reputed analysts, I still do believe that mobile advertising will pick up especially after the latest credit crunch. In my view every time we see a launch of a new product or new technologies there is an excitement around it and in this process sometimes it gets overhyped. Same might be true with mobile advertising as well.

But like the Internet revolution before it, mobile needs to emerge from the technology foothills and develop media experiences and advertising solutions that delight and satisfy real consumers' needs and wants.

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