Mobile Fix: Re-imagination of advertising
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on mobile advertising, Facebook, Google and privacy….
The IAB have produced data on global mobile spend suggesting that mobile advertising – in its widest sense – was worth $5.3 billion in 2011. Search is twice as big as display. As Business Insider says – in their inimitable style – it’s hilariously tiny.
But this will change. As Mary Meeker says money follows eyeballs, it just takes time. GAFA need mobile advertising to work – as do all the content producers – so we will see innovation.
Facebook has finally unveiled its first ad product that works on mobile, which will drive revenue as soon as brands make their Facebook apps mobile friendly. And Twitter has announced that it already makes more money from mobile ads than desktop ones some days.
Google is pushing really hard to extend its dominance of search into display – and last week announced some very interesting moves to unify its rather unruly set of products. Over the years it has bought a number of smart businesses that it is now integrating with DoubleClick to make it easier for brands to buy. This platform, which some are calling an operating system for digital marketing, combines ad exchange and DSP capabilities with the core ad serving and measurement competences of DoubleClick.
It also includes tools like Teracent, where rich media ads are compiled in real time so a user sees the ideal ad for them; brands supply a range of assets – graphics, headlines, copy etc that the software compiles as an ad based on the knowledge of that individual user.
It’s unclear how quickly these features will get extended to mobile, but we suspect it won’t be that long.
Plumbing & Privacy
A key benefit of the Google approach is that the plumbing needed to deliver effective campaigns and measure them is baked in.
But with the EU and other regulators militating for more explicit opt ins for cookies and so on we can’t take the plumbing for granted. The industry has been shocked by a move from Microsoft to make Do Not Track the default setting in the next version of their Internet Explorer browser. Unless a user went in and changed the default settings then basically cookies won’t work.
Privacy is an issue for online and mobile advertising, but this seems a draconian step. Although it does highlight the need for online to deliver relevant useful ads, by using the sophisticated targeting opportunities – ie ads so good they are a service.
Death of TV is being exaggerated
More speculation on the imminent decline of traditional TV.
(TV) is not a business that will be affected by interactive technology the way the others have and the inner working are so entrenched and profitable change will be fought hard.
That said, TV is dying. But it will be a very very slow painful death and I would not bet on anything what happened to newspapers happening anytime soon.
And this is a well-argued response – if you expect the TV industry to just collapse keep daydreaming. So the challenge is how to make the most of TV by blending mobile experiences with the it.
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