ManSavesDog

For nearly a decade now I’ve been hearing, “This is the year for mobile advertising.” However, based on recent polling research I suspect the mobile industry has a bigger, underlying problem that that will greatly slow its adoption: Even advertisers hate the idea of ads on their phones.

In polls conducted with more than 2,000 visitors to Adweek.com, developed in conjunction with research provider Vizu, research showed that 76 percent of advertising types said, “Over my dead body” would they be willing to receive advertising on their cell phones. Only 15 percent said “Yes,” but it was a qualified “yes,” requiring permission. And these were ad people being surveyed, not general consumers.

As former CEO of the IAB, I believe I learned a thing or two about what it takes to create a new medium and garner advertising industry support.

First, know that I believe in the vitality of mobile advertising because I think it has a compelling, unique selling proposition and the power of locality — a new way for advertisers to target and bring relevance to their advertising messages. Mobile has many other strengths, including: interactivity; the fact that it’s personal (and will hopefully be personalized); its omnipresence (which, while unique, could also be accomplished with media mix); and its ability to do sight, sound and motion, with which marketers tend to be enamored.

As a marketer, I’d really want to be looking at those elements, in particular the USP, to figure out how they can be leveraged to get a competitive advantage for my brand. And it’s best to do that now, before my competition figures it out.

Today, cell phones and other devices already have a major audience. In the same research, we found that 77 percent of Adweek.com’s readers have a cell phone, 63 percent have a Blackberry or BB-like device and 72 percent have an iPod or similar device. It makes you wonder if the ubiquity and familiarity of mobile might be working against itself.

Plus, it’s not like advertisers don’t use the standard “medium” feature of their phones. Fifty percent of Adweek.com’s readers said they access the Internet on their cell phone at least once a week and 35 percent of those said they do it every day.

Additionally, 49 percent take business calls “anytime” and another 14 percent said they take calls from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thirty-one percent said they check their Blackberries until 11 p.m. and 22 percent said they check them all night. Finally, 63 percent said they text every day.

The data surely suggest this is not a medium that’s going to die from lack of reach, low usage or not having a USP. No, this is a medium that the most important consumers in the world, the advertisers, prefer not to be tainted with ads.

In my last Adweek.com piece I highlighted that the rate of ad blocking on the Internet is out of control and DVRs in TV land are demonstrating that consumers are fed up with advertising’s practices. Mobile is apparently suffering from contempt (as a medium) prior to execution.

I suspect that marketers, at some level, are afraid their own typical spray & pray approach used in other media might be applied to this much more personal medium.

I often get asked to speak on how we can avoid making the same mistakes the Internet made, to which I answer the following.

First, a new medium needs to prove not just its advertising effectiveness, but its cost effectiveness versus other options. Mobile hasn’t done this in the way that it needs to yet, and it needs to look beyond the value of a click, which the Internet was way too slow to address.

Second, as the new kid on the block, mobile needs to make sure an agency makes a profit in working within the medium, which requires there to be good operational processes, integrated technology to their other systems, common measurement, consistent nomenclature and, most importantly, standards across the board. Mobile appears to have just gotten started in these areas.

Third, mobile needs to figure out ubiquitous and compelling ad units that invite creative exploration. In 2003, the IAB announced the death of the 468 x 60 banner not because the banner didn’t work, but because creatives didn’t like it.

Fourth and most challenging is it needs to figure out how to minimize the inherent challenge of fragmentation at various levels including different carrier systems, different handsets, different software,  If TV acted like mobile and every cable network (or cable system) and every TV set was different, then clearly TV advertising spending would not be over $50 billion today. Mobile must deal with the fragmentation of its medium and complexity at every level. These are not small issues.

But in the end, I think the most important lesson learned is not to let your medium get to the place, like Internet advertising did, where anyone thinks pop ups and other consumer-offensive activity are OK. Resist ads like punch the monkey or flashing screens so irritating that some in the U.K. believed the medium could trigger epileptic fits. Don’t let the phrase, “But it’s effective,” be a defense for irritating the consumer.

So my big lesson learned for Mobile?

Fight to the death those who want to use/abuse the medium for short-term gain but long-term loss, even if a marketer. Attack any entity trying to participate in mobile who disrespects the consumer or outright annoys them.  Aggressively protect consumer trust, whether it be around issues of privacy or other issues of transparency to consumer.

Here’s a twist on the famous David Ogilvy quote that the customer is your wife: For new media like mobile, the customer is your advertiser. Act accordingly.

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Mobile Advertising: Supercharge...

First printed in Mobile Advertising

Reprinted with Permission in Adweek Magazine

“How do we not make the same mistakes the Internet guys made” is the most common question I get from each of the “newer” media channels, whether it be digital out-of-home media, IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) or mobile.

Looking back at my experience as the CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau during the initial growth of the industry from $6B to $17B in online ad spending between 2001 and 2006, it’s clear that success was not easily won. That’s hindsight, of course, for the online ad spending, but it’s opportunity for mobile advertising! No one wants to make the same mistakes and everyone wants to get there quicker.

There are a number of perspectives I gathered from that experience that I’d offer as relevant this time around.

A key obstacle was the degree to which marketers and agencies resisted the internet as a viable ad medium in spite of facts to the contrary. They’d explain away their disinterest with a number of reasons, including “Internet is not a mass medium” (false), or my favorite, “I don’t look at online ads myself” (which is equally not true). All of these caused the vast majority to miss the opportunity right in front of them to build their company; their brands’ and dare I say, even their own careers.

So what is my prognosis for Mobile medium on this score?

The good news is that that like the Internet, Mobile already is a mass medium. With over one billion handsets sold worldwide every year and a mobile broadband network infrastructure that can transmit those ads, mobile is at a basic level, ready for primetime advertising. Equally important is that Mobile has a number of unique attributes versus other media choices, including the locality, or geographic specificity, it can attain in addition to the potential personalization of the medium given that each consumer has their own handset. Both of those I would consider to be major differentiators and of major value to many marketers therefore permitting mobile the opportunity to capture some share of the nearly $500 billion spent worldwide in advertising annually.

But what about the challenges to growth in mobile marketing and advertising? First and foremost, they are up against the same thing we were — marketers/inertia. As progressive as the advertising industry supposedly is, it’s an industry that is, in my experience, very slow to change. Painfully slow. Research we did at the IAB indicated that 2/3rds of marketers describe themselves as “tried and true”. This is not a leading indicator of innovation, particularly when a key part of your job is to chase consumer eyeballs as they get continually bombarded with new places to look.

But why don’t marketers adopt new media easily? There are a lot of reasons but I’d think a big part of it is that they don’t recognize the value and they are uncomfortable with the new and, at least to them directly, unproven.

On some level, this is human nature and understandable. Mobile advertising, just like the early days of online advertising, is emerging, complex and filled with a lot of techno-speak. It would have been helpful back in 2001 to at least have a roadmap: How does the medium fit into what we’ve seen before? And what are its unique capabilities? What is the necessary technology? What’s the existing and evolving industry value chain and potential business models? What are the current challenges and what’s our best thinking on how they will be overcome?

But let’s return to other point raised around the value of the mobile medium and the opportunity within that.

Seminal research we conducted while I was leading the IAB indicated that when online advertising was added to a media plan in the 10 to 15% of total media mix range, the overall campaign results would increase around 20% to 30%. This increase was in part a result of adding any new medium to a mix but also because the demand was low relative to the supply and as a result the pricing made online advertising the so called “deal of the century”. There is no reason to believe that Mobile will not have a similar economics.

And for that reason alone, marketers should consider Mobile as part of the mix. While many marketers are slow to respond, the early adopters have a chance to capture immediate value while locking in long term benefits by gaining valuable experience. The marketing manager at Ford, who we worked with on one of the research studies, put it best. “We will use what we learned here [via the insights regarding online had to his campaign] to kick the competition’s ass”.

Additionally, the value of that unique knowledge to your brand also has value to your career. Many of those that I worked with in the early days of the Internet industry, whether they were at the agency, the client or the media company, witnessed their careers rocketing forward. Sure, the excitement of the business attracted the talented, just as Mobile is doing now, but it went well beyond that. They generally were able to distinguish themselves from their peers in both learning something new and then delivered big value back to their brands and companies. Basically, they leap-frogged normal career paths.

Peter Drucker, the father of Modern Management put it best, “Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.” Mobile is the next opportunity to capture knowledge, so go do it.

Greg Stuart

Former CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau

Co-author What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds

More on the book

Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market
by Chetan Sharma (Author), Joe Herzog (Author), Victor Melfi (Author)

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Wiley (March 7, 2008)

ISBN-10: 0470185988        ISBN-13: 978-0470185988