Manuel Angel Alonso Coto

Several weeks ago I was hosting this year’s first edition of Mobile Monday Madrid.
The reason why I was there substituting Ricardo Pérez was because we were devoting that session to Mobile Advertising, the topic that was on everybody’s lips in 2007 because all of us thought it was an industry that was about to explode, chasing the billions of dollars already being spent on Internet advertising. Now in 2008, mobile advertising could become a tiger escaping from its cage. Let’s take, for example, the recent interest that Google, which lives on its Internet ad revenue, has shown in mobile advertising. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said a few months ago that the company wants its share of mobile ad revenue because “they are twice as profitable or more than the non-mobile phone ads because they’re more personal.”

If mobile advertising follows a spending curve similar to Internet advertising’s one, it’s no wonder the industry sees big things ahead. Most experts, like eMarketer, say mobile ad spending reached $1.5 billion last year and are forecasting advertisers will spend close to $3 billion on mobile media this year, with that rising to $14.4 billion in 2011. But despite of these rosy expectations, there still is some caution evident because mobile advertising in a unique and unknown medium is bringing together carriers, ad agencies, publishers, mobile ad technology companies and brands. Everyone is treading on unfamiliar ground.

Anyhow, some of those in the mobile advertising industry, which has been making money mostly through text-driven ads, expect advances in networks and advertising capabilities to reach a boosting point in 2008.

We counted on first hand experience form the market to focus on a reality check on the status of Mobile Advertising concretely this year. These are the experts who were briefing us:

• Philip Gontier, Sales Director EMEA, JumpTap Europe
• Jefferson Wright Chandler, European Business Development Director at ShoZu Ltd
• Juan Antonio Muñoz, Founder of Unkasoft
• Iñaki Cabrera, Director of the Mobile Marketing Business Unit of Vodafone Spain
• David Purón, Research and Development Engineer, Telefonica R+D.

We were discussing about the growing access speed to Internet data from Mobile devices (25% of Spanish cell phones are already 3G); the drecreasing prices for Mobile web access (UK already has a fixed fee); the massive usage of mobile ad-servers not only for text and banners but also for mobile rich media; and the usability improvements thanks to mobile widgets simplified portals (the base for the iPhone). All these trends are helping Mobile Marketing to explode in Europe. Thus mobile click through rates are climbing up to 2%.

At the same time it’s clear there are several keys for a digital marketing campaign to be successful: engagement based on experience, communities development around contextual concepts and bidirectional communication.

And the use of cell phones as a marketing channel is a catalyst for the development of digital communities for prosumers, since they are perfect for accesing and sharing services, contents and experiences the very momento the need or the momentum arise.

That’s why the success of the digital marketing campaign form now on was defined as E= m²c: Engagement = mobile marketing * communities. Do you agree?

Best regards

Manuel A. Alonso Coto

Posted on 18 March 2008 in E-MARKETING

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