OTHER SUCCESS STORIES IN MOBILE ADVERTISING
While there’s no question that mobile advertising is a relatively new concept to most business owners, there are quite a few other success stories out there. New and innovative ways of advertising to users via their mobile devices are cropping up every day, and many have been extremely successful. Let’s take a look at some other very successful mobile advertising strategies.
MOBILE ADVERTISING FUTURE: NEW APPLICATIONS WITH POSSIBILITIES
As time goes on, we’re certain to see the mobile advertising market soar. So far, consumer response to mobile advertising has been very positive, giving more and more businesses reason to search for ways to increase business via the mobile revolution.
The creation of content and applications for the mobile user is a growing and changing business. Today there are many applications that we can expect to expand over time to become great advertising venues. And, of course, even as we’re writing this book, developers are creating new applications that we don’t even kn ow about. As an advertiser, it pays to keep abreast of the newest hot mobile applications. Following are some applications that we see as having great potential for advertisers in the future. These are the ones to watch.
WIRELESS CARRIERS
While today’s mobile advertising centers around ads placed on websites that are accessed through the mobile browser or via text messaging, you can be certain that will change. It’s also certain that wireless carriers will have difficulty continuing to add services and content without either using advertising monies to fund it or raising subscriber rates. In our current economy, cell phone companies as well as wireless users will certainly find advertising more palatable than rate increases.
In the near future, expect to see the ability to access various services via the wireless phone device itself, without going directly through the browser. Such services will almost certainly be advertiser sponsored.
Advertisers could negotiate directly with cell phone carriers to have their services included as an option right on the main menu of the phone. This type of advertising can prove very lucrative to the advertisers and to the wireless carriers as well.
Informa Telecoms and Media, a market research firm, estimates that advertisers will spend more than $11 billion by 2011 on mobile marketing. As a “middle man” wireless operators could potentially take up to 50% of this revenue by negotiating contracts with content providers.
In spite of the obvious financial possibilities, wireless carriers are considering how to approach this type of service very carefully. You see, while wireless users are happy about being able to choose to trade the viewing of advertisements for free content or services, they are overwhelmingly not open to advertisements coming to them unsolicited via their cell phones. After all, they are paying for service – they should not have to view unsolicited advertising. So, while it’s certain that we will eventually see some form of advertising content available on wireless devices without the use of the browser or text messaging, it’s unclear how it will be presented.