What is Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing.

Overview

Some see mobile advertising as closely related to online or internet advertising, though its reach is far greater — currently, most mobile advertising is targeted at mobile phones, that came estimably to a global total of 4.6 billion as of 2009. Notably computers, including desktops and laptops, are currently estimated at 1.1 billion globally. Moreover, mobile advertising includes SMS and MMS advertising units in addition to the advertisement types served and processed via online channels.

It is probable that advertisers and media industry will increasingly take account of a bigger and fast-growing mobile market, though it remains at around 1% of global advertising spend. Mobile media is evolving rapidly and while mobile phones will continue to be the mainstay, it is not clear whether mobile phones based on cellular backhaul or smartphones based on WiFi hot spot or WiMAX hot zone will also strengthen.

Types of mobile ads

In some markets, this type of advertising is most commonly seen as a Mobile Web Banner (top of page) or Mobile Web Poster (bottom of page banner), while in others, it is dominated by SMS advertising (which has been estimated at over 90% of mobile marketing revenue worldwide). Other forms include MMS advertising, advertising within mobile games and mobile videos, during mobile TV receipt, full-screen interstitials, which appear while a requested item of mobile content or mobile web page is loading up, and audio advertisements that can take the form of a jingle before a voicemail recording, or an audio recording played while interacting with a telephone-based service such as movie ticketing or directory assistance.

The MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has published mobile advertising guidelines, but it is difficult to keep such guidelines current in such a fast-developing area. The fifth version of mobile advertising guidelines composed by the MMA includes the following types of mobile ad units:

• Mobile Web Advertising Units:
• Mobile Web banner Ad;
• Rich Media Mobile Ad (RMMA);
• WAP 1.0 Banner Ad;
• Text Tagline Ad.
• SMS Advertising Units:
• Initial SMS Ad (Appended) – contains the primary, non-advertising portion of the message, and is typically 20-60 characters long;
• Complete SMS Ad (Full Message) – has a length of up to 160 characters and is typically delivered as a reply to an Initial SMS Ad or “Text (keyword) to (short code)” call-to-action.
• MMS Advertising Units:
• MMS Short Text Ad – is typically appended to the content (or body) portion and contains the primary, non-advertising content of the MMS slide;
• MMS Long Text Ad – fills all of an MMS slide and can contain a clickable link;
• MMS Banner Ad – a color graphics ad unit displayed at the top or bottom of an MMS;
• MMS Rectangle Ad – a color graphics ad unit that fills all of an MMS slide;
• MMS Audio Ad – an audio clip that is played while an MMS Rectangle Ad or an MMS Full Ad is displayed.
• Mobile Video and TV Advertising Units:
• Billboard – an advertising image shown before the video;
• Pre-Roll, Post-Roll and Mid-Roll Units – short promotional videos play before, after, or in the middle of the video content;
• Bumper Ad – short promotional videos (typically a flash video file) that plays before or after other content associated with the player or video (which means it has greater playback priority than pre-rolls);
• Book Ending Ad – typically a combination of a pre-roll ad and a bumper ad that appears after the video content;
• Overlay Ad – still image or an animation with a semi-transparent background that is displayed over the video content;
• Companion Ad – still image or an animation that is displayed alongside the video content.
• Mobile Application Advertising Units:
• In-App Display Advertising Units:
• Mobile Application Banner Ad;
• Mobile Application Interstitial Ad;
• Rich Media Mobile Ad (RMMA);
• Integrated Ad – an ad unit designed to resemble the elements of the app in terms of visual appearance and usage context;
• Branded Mobile Application – an application specifically developed by an advertiser and uploaded to an app store;
• Sponsored Mobile Application – a publisher’s downloadable application which features a sponsoring arrangement at various places across the application.

The effectiveness of a mobile media ad campaign can be measured in a variety of ways. The main measurements are impressions (views) and click-through rates. They are also sold to advertisers by views (Cost Per Impression) or by click-through (Cost Per Click). Additional measurements include conversion rates, such as click-to-call rates and other degrees of interactive measurement.

Mobile media can run on a mobile web page or within a mobile application, often referred to as in-App.

One of the popular models in mobile advertising is Cost Per Install (CPI) where there the pricing model is based on the user installing an App on their mobile phone. CPI Mobile Advertising Networks work either as incent or non-incent. In the incent model the user is given virtual points or rewards to install the game or App. The industry is slowly moving away from the CPI model and to a Cost Per Action (CPA) or Cost Per Event (CPE) model, demanding more from the ad network, boosting retention/engagement rates of apps. This inherently means that ad networks would only get paid if a user completes a specific event. To track this data most apps have some form of marketing SDK installed on their app. This not only tracks installs and user activity, but also attributes the data to a specific ad network.

Mobile Rich Media

In addition to standard mobile display banners, a growing trend is to include rich media execution within the banner ads. This includes banners that would expand to a larger size, offering advertisers a larger display to communicate their message. Games within the banner to make the experience more interactive or a video within the banner space.

There are limitations to rich media on mobile because all of the coding must be done in HTML5, since the iOS does not support flash.

Mobile as media

This unobtrusive two-way communications caught the attention of media industry and advertisers as well as cellphone makers and telecom operators. Eventually, SMS became a new media - called the “seventh mass media channel” by several media and mobile experts - and even more, it is a two-way mobile media, as opposed to one-way immobile media like radios, newspapers and TV. Besides, the immediacy of responsiveness in this two-way media is a new territory found for media industry and advertisers, who are eager to measure up market response immediately. Additionally, the possibility of fast delivery of the messages and the ubiquity of the technology (it does not require any additional functionality from the mobile phone, all devices available today are capable of receiving SMS), make it ideal for time- and location-sensitive advertising, such as customer loyalty offers (ex. shopping centres, large brand stores), SMS promotions of events, etc. To leverage this strength of SMS advertising, timely and reliable delivery of messages is paramount, which is guaranteed by some SMS gateway providers.

Viral marketing

As mobile is an interactive mass media similar to the internet, advertisers are eager to utilize and make use of viral marketing methods, by which one recipient of an advertisement on mobile, will forward that to a friend. This allows users to become part of the advertising experience. At the bare minimum mobile ads with viral abilities can become powerful interactive campaigns. At the extreme, they can become engagement marketing experiences. A key element of mobile marketing campaigns is the most influential member of any target audience or community, which is called the alpha user.

(Source: Wikipedia)