Your mobile audience: what's in it for them?

One of the biggest opportunities for today's marketers is the mobile web. The cell phone is the device with the most potential to encourage immediate action, since most users carrying it with them all the time and since it almost always commands the user's immediate attention. The problem, however, is that most people don't want ads on their phones. In fact, they're only going to get more adamant about not wanting ads after marketers start making the mistake of assuming they do.

So how can marketers communicate with customers in a way that is constructive and welcome? The key is providing information that is useful to the consumer--on their terms, not yours. In a sense, it's like any other medium: by understanding what's in it for them, you'll do a much better job of being heard and engaging your audience.

What specific kinds of information can effectively be communicated via mobile? There are some great examples in this AdAge column, but here are a few others that immediately come to mind:

• Restaurant reservation confirmations, other service provider (doctors, dentists, stylyst) reminder. And giving customers the ability to make reservations/appointments via mobile web is a no brainer.
  
• Weight loss encouragement and nutrition reminders sent right before breakfast, lunch, and dinner by weight management and fitness centers
• Reminders about financial aid, registration, and other deadline from colleges and universities

The idea is to anticipate needs users will have while on the go. And as web users of all kinds become more task-oriented, more mobile will increasingly displace desktop computer use. That's great news if you have valuable information to share. If you don't, then it's time to start thinking about what you can do to change that. The best place to start? Ask your customers what kind of information--if any--they'd like to receive on the cell phone. If you've worked hard to earn their trust, they'll tell you. If you haven't, you need to work on that before expecting they'll give you permission to communicate with them via the mobile web.

Photo: sofa on stock.xchng

The changing science of media measurement

Measuring media consumption habits is becoming more and more difficult as people interact with content in divergent ways. If you watch The Office on Hulu, for example, you might not be counted as viewer under the traditional Nielsen model. And that makes it difficult for advertisers to judge the true value of any given medium or time slot.

A new technology, however, is trying to change all that by measuring consumer response to ads across multiple media. And they're doing it, as the Wall Street Journal reports, using the communication tool that is becoming the Holy Grail of all media--the cell phone.

[Integrated Media Measurement] embeds its software into the cellphones of the company's 4,900 panelists. The software picks up audio from an ad or a TV show and converts it into its own digital code that is then uploaded into an IMMI database, which includes codes for media content such as TV shows, commercials, movies and songs.

IMMI's database then figures out what the cellphone was exposed to by matching the code. Cellphone conversations and background noise are filtered out by the software, IMMI says, since there is no "match" in the IMMI database.

To get a handle on the effectiveness of a given ad, IMMI's data can show, for example, when a panel member is exposed to a movie trailer on TV and whether that same consumer later goes to see the movie. Similarly, IMMI data can show if a panelist watching a promo for a TV program will later watch the show, either on TV or online. IMMI thinks it can expand that idea from films and TV shows to consumer products like shampoo or toothpaste. It is testing its technology with a national grocery store chain.

Anyone who buys ads on mass media will want to keep an eye on new trends in measurement since the resulting numbers dictate the cost of airtime. On thing's certain: as we consume multiple media simultaneously and in nontraditional settings--even on our cell phones themselves--measuring consumption will become less of an exact science and more of an educated guess.

Graphic from the Wall Street Journal/NBC Universal

10-14 year olds prefer web to TV

A study cited in yesterday's New York Times indicates that for younger audiences, the web is taking "first-screen" status away from TV:

For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television.

If you're marketing to these audiences, there's another important factor to consider: the mobile web. With cell phones becoming an ever more ubiquitous part of the middle schooler's life, the best place to reach them is on the device that's with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, as the web and the phone become one in the same, the ethics of marketing to teens will get even more complex.

Fame is just a text away

Your chance to hang with the man with the pants.

Bonus coverage: Rumors of Jared's death are greatly exaggerated.

Full disclosure: Yes, Subway is a client of my employer. But that doesn't mean being in a TV commercial wouldn't be cool.

This photo worries me

(Click to enlarge) Nothing to worry about, you say, because the gadgets are pointed away from the driver? Well, it's from the UK, so guess which side the steering wheel is on?

Sometimes it's worth sacrificing some productivity in order to focus on the task at hand. Driving would be one of those times.


Photo: from the travel-i.co.uk website.

Small screen, big change

What's the single biggest threat to the way we use the web today? Our cell phones and PDAs, which continue to steal screen time away from our laptops and desktops. There are several reasons for this--our increasing reliance on our cell phones, an increasing shift in preference from e-mail to instant messaging, our changing web-surfing habits--but the cumulative impact is a change in the way content is being packaged and delivered. That's the larger context behind a recent Business Week article about how the mobile web means less ad inventory on Google and elsewhere:

Google can fit about 10 ads on a standard computer screen. (If you look at Google search results on a PC monitor, paid ads are the listings at the very top and along the right.) But on your cell phone, if you type in a search query at google.com you get only one or two paid ads in response.

Imagine the horror that would befall your business if a large slice of what you sell suddenly disappeared. A similar fate could befall companies that depend on online advertising, as small screens become the gateway to the Internet.

Even if you don't host ads, how well does your site translate to the mobile web environment? As more visitors to your site surf from their phones, it's worth thinking about.

Photo: altair on stock.xchng

PTOS--and everywhere else

According to a Washington Post story repeated in today's Journal Gazette, we're moving from PLOS to PTOS--Parent Texting Over Shoulder:

[P]arents are...becoming the fastest-growing demographic in text messaging...

In the past two years, use of the technology by those ages 45 to 54 increased 130 percent, according to M:Metrics, a market-research firm. By comparison, those ages 13 to 17 increased their text messaging by far less, 41 percent.

[...]

“Parents like the immediacy of it and that it is not intrusive. ... It’s become an important way of communicating with their kids,” said Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, the nation’s largest wireless carrier. Children are introducing their parents to the technology; in a 2006 study commissioned by AT&T, 50 percent of adults who text messaged said they started because of their children.

Two trends are contributing to this shift in how parents communicate:

1. The slow growth of text messaging as a replacement for e-mail

2. As mentioned in the story, a growing desire for immediacy. We love e-mail because it's simple and convenient, but it's asynchronous, meaning there's no expectation it will be replied to immediately. That's not true of texting, of course.

If you're a parent, do you text your kids? And if you're a kid, ru ok w/dat?

The Marketing Technology Blog on mobile phones and permission

It's been a while since I've posted about why telecomm companies and advertisers need to seriously consider adopting a permission-only standards when seeking to send ads to your cell phone. Yesterday, The Marketing Technology Blog's Doug Karr had some great commentary on that very subject. The entire post deserves a read, but here's a sample to get you started:

The bottom line is that if you don’t give the fifth ‘P’ - Permission - some attention, you’re more apt to do major damage to your long-term marketing. In other words, just because you can use a push technology such as this, doesn’t mean you should.

Doug gets it exactly right. If we keep inundating consumers with unsolicited ads, they are going to be less and less willing to give us any of their attention.

Poll results: ads on your cell phone

Our poll about ads on your cell phone isn't by any means statistically significant, but it still tells an interesting story about permission:

• 61% of you are " against them altogether"
• 38% of you are "O.K. with them if they're opt-in only"
• No one was "O.K. with them no matter what"

I've stated previously (here and here) that the telecomm companies should do everyting they can to make opt-in ads the industry standard. It sounds like most of you agree--and that you'd hang up on unsolicited ads, too, if you could.

Permission again left out of mobile phone ad conversation

This week’s Adweek reports on a new study:

One in three mobile phone users in the U.S.—or 78 million people—have seen or heard advertising on their phones within the last three months, according to the Mobile Advertising Report, a joint survey conducted by Limbo and GFK/NOP Research.

"The fact that so many people are aware of advertising [on their mobile phones] shows that it's going to have some sort of real presence in the eyes of the consumer," said Rob Lawson, CMO, Limbo.

Well, if mobile companies don’t listen to consumers, it’ll have a “real presence,” all right. Real negative, that is.

What seems to be missing from this study—and from most conversations about mobile ads, as SBB has discussed previously—is a discussion about whether opt-in only is the right choice for both advertisers and consumers. Why is that? Well, it could be that mobile companies haven’t thought to ask. But it’s more likely that they figure if they don’t ask you, it’s awful hard for you to say no.

How do you feel about ads on your cell phone? Take the poll in the right-hand column, or comment below.

Cell phone privacy story misses connection to permission

The AP story from today's Journal Gazette, "Privacy fears mount as ads hit cell phones," was a good outline of some of the challenges that marketers and consumers face as ads via cell phone move closer to reality. But the story missed a crucial point: what if ads could be available to consumers on an opt-in basis only? Take this example from the story:

“It’s proceed with caution,” said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of advertising distributor Burst Media Corp. “Are consumers going to be spooked by the idea that suddenly their phone goes beep, and it’s a Starbucks offer, and they are standing next to a Starbucks?”

Coffin seems to imply that the answer is yes. But what if you had asked Starbucks to send you that offer? And what if the only ads you received were the ones you had asked for? Advertisers and telecomm companies would be wise to realize that they'll only get one chance to do this right. And opt-in only isn't just right from a privacy standpoint: it's also the solution most likely to yield the best results.

How do you feel about ads on your cell phone? Take the poll in the right-hand column, or comment below.

Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net