David Haskins, in his Computerworld blog, recently likened advertising on mobile phones to bulldozing a rain forest to put in a strip mall. There is clearly a debate on the value of mobile advertising as evidenced by the comments to this blog. There are a few key themes that always come to the surface -- relevancy to the individual, lack of intrusiveness or invasion and the imperative to always deliver value to the individual. Our advisor, Bill Harvey, who is a veteran in measuring advertiser ROI in digital media describes an alternate approach to mobile advertising.
Elizabeth Chaney
In our humble opinion, Haskins is both right and wrong at the same time. He's right that most consumers will be as enraged as he is if they receive unwanted interruptive ads on their cellphones. He's right that there will be a gradual shift from user payments to advertiser payments in the telco value-added services business.
What he's wrong about is the way advertising will really work on the cellphone, and how the shift from user-pays to advertiser-pays will occur. But everyone else has been wrong about this too, with few exceptions.
iO is defining a different approach to mobile advertising by drawing upon the expertise of its advertising advisory board and key management who have led changes already sweeping through the ad business. Advertisers need to completely switch tactics from grabbing attention to giving gifts. By this we mean content or services that the consumer actually perceives as gifts, not "stuff" that can be rationalized in conference rooms as gifts. A gift would be content that an individual likes, brought to them free on their cellphone by advertiser X, or a service brought to them free on their cellphone by advertiser Y. All backed with targeting and ROI measurement of results.
This is iO's plan, unique in the mobile industry today, but sure to be copied. Fortunately for iO, it's easier to talk the talk than to walk it.
Bill Harvey
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