Mobile Fix: People don’t dislike ads – they just dislike irrelevant ads
In the latest Mobile Fix, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, suggests how operators can add real value…
Loyalty & Churn
Our thoughts last week on the opportunity for operators to fight churn through big picture thinking around content and services caused a few discussions. As did our belief that app stores are unlikely to make much money for them.
One area where we do think operators can add real value – and create significant value – is through managing the marketing messaging their customers see. With Blyk and O2 More some operators are already building SMS based advertising businesses, but the bigger opportunity is in facilitating mobile advertising.
Why doesn’t O2 use the data they have on me to better target the ads I see when I read the Guardian mobile site? That would benefit me, through a better experience because the ads are useful. It would also benefit the Guardian as they could potentially charge a higher rate for the ad given the profile that the O2 data provides. And it benefits O2 as well, they have a new role in a $50 billion business.
Given the whole experience takes place on O2 data, they have the right to play in this space. Of course they are up against some established players like DoubleClick but with the data they have – and the ability to fund the capex – they should be able to compete. And Vodafone and Telefonica have already invested in Amobee, who are developing some of the systems and processes needed to make this happen.
But there is another way into this market that no-one is taking… yet.
People don’t dislike ads – they just dislike irrelevant ads. There is an emerging area called VRM (vendor relationship management), which proposes that people start to manage their own profile and select who they want to have a dialogue with. This is the counterpart to CRM – where brands attempt to manage the dialogue they have with people.
As people start to realise the value of their data, they will want a better way to manage their profile. Who better to do this for you than your mobile operator – who knows a huge amount about you and is increasingly the conduit for marketing messages.
We included this sort of thinking in some futurology we did years ago – imagining that the role of ad agencies might switch from representing brands to representing people. Now AT&T are thinking about this type of role and smart thinkers like Alan Mitchell see this as a way to reinvent marketing.
Embracing this opportunity would give operators a new type of relationship with their customers – extending the delivery of data and messages into ensuring their customers only see content and messaging that they value. In doing so the operator establishes the right to charge advertisers and media owners for access to their customers. But because the profile ensures the most relevant messaging, the wastage is reduced (possibly lightening the impact of advertising on the network?) and the money involved is higher, so everyone wins.
And the customer benefits through their bill being reduced – maybe even to the point where they don’t pay for the device or the service – as Eric Schmidt suggested a few years back.
New ways of buying media
Unlocking the value of the data the operators have, requires new ways of managing advertising and therefore new ways of buying media.
The unique targeting opportunities of mobile is both a huge advantage and something of a disadvantage. Whilst planning a mobile campaign to reach an audience like the one below is reasonably straightforward, buying is not.
Men 18 – 24
& In Central London (postcodes W1, WC1, W2)
& Between 9am and 4pm Monday to Saturday
& Who have searched for sports content in last 28 days
& And have a iPhone 3gs/4 or Android phone running Froyo
The amounts of money involved are (currently) relatively small and this amount of work makes it uneconomical to buy in the usual way.
So people can do one of two things.
If you’re an unreconstructed jack of all trades agency you might tell the client it is still not the year of mobile and continue to push them towards TV and outdoor, where you make good money.
Or if you’re a specialist, you try and innovate around the process of buying. So the emerging area of exchanges and demand side platforms (DSP) have a lot to offer mobile. This technology driven approach to media buying is getting a lot of attention from people like Google, Yahoo and the Agency holding groups.
Why? Because it promises to industrialise media buying – so you don’t need lots of people in expensive offices shouting down phones – and it enables data driven buying, combining proprietary data on customers with commercially available data from people like Experian.
This is a complicated area, with lots of jargon and three letter acronyms (DSP, RTB etc) and it’s pretty controversial too, as its newness and potential for opaqueness concern some on the client side. There have been a few stories focusing on the relationship between Publicis and Google – but it’s clear from the comments that people in other agencies are concerned too.
iPad magazines
As the tablet market drives headlines about both stellar growth and it’s impact on publishing we’ve seen a new entrant this week that highlights the potential and the pitfalls of this new platform. Richard Branson has launched Project; a very ambitious iPad magazine and most people seem impressed – we certainly like it. But it takes some getting used to and even comes with an instruction manual.
In the early days of dotcom, when we were building million dollar websites for people like IBM, GM and PlayStation, we used to bore people with a theory about the grammar of each medium. This essentially meant people quickly come to understand how a medium works and if you go against the grammar – or prevailing understanding – you risk people getting confused and giving up.
In newspapers we know the news will be at the front and the sport at the back – with ads scattered through the content. In TV we know there will be an ad break every 12 minutes or so and that most shows will reprise what’s happening very frequently, so people just tuning in know what’s going on.
Online the grammar has established that navigation is across the top or on the left side. There will usually be a search box, almost certainly at the top left – and the shopping basket is probably around there too. People have been taught this by Amazon, MSN, Yahoo and thousands of other sites, so you ignore the grammar at your own risk
On mobile – phones or tablets – the grammar is still being developed and the jury is out on whether the web will drive similarities or whether touch and the smaller screen will create new grammar.
Some people are playing with different approaches and some are simply repurposing print or web content. As style commentator Alice Rawsthorne points out for, such an exciting new platform the content is so far quite disappointing.
We wonder how the imminent Murdoch entry into this space will work.
Specialists or jack of all trades? Agency models are evolving.
Whilst new approaches like DSPs will change media agencies, there is a lot of debate over whether traditional creative agencies will win out over digitally focused ones.
BusinessWeek use Don Draper to make a strong argument that the quality of thinking and strength of client relationships gives traditional agencies a real advantage and that they can more easily acquire the digital chops than vice versa.
Certainly agencies like Goodbys, Wieden and BBH are doing a good job of creating ideas that embrace digital. But many other jack of all trades agencies just don’t get digital, and the opportunity for specialists to evolve is certainly still there. As a number of UK agencies like Dare and Glue are proving.
Will we see similar trends in mobile? Right now the pace of change means that unless you specialise you just won’t know enough to do a good job. But balanced with that needs to be a deep understanding of how mobile fits with other marketing and business initiatives, and a lot of the tech focused mobile shops just don’t get this.
As content becomes more important we will see new types of agency emerge and the new venture from talent agency William Morris Endeavour does look interesting, given the talent they have access to and their understanding of how to create addictive content. This video interview with the CEO of Endeavour is well worth watching, especially if you’re a fan of Entourage as this is the guy they based Ari Gold on.
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