Mobile phones. Is it really the right media for advertising?

Eyes of consumers are probably the most important thing for advertisers who want to know how many people they have reached last month. Such media as TV, radio, Internet and billboards give an opportunity to count. For example, advertisers know the number of viewers attracted each week by a popular reality show or a late night show. Billboard advertising provides a metric as well: Times Square Bulletin, the mecca of advertising, reaches 1.5 million people every month. The same goes for the Internet:  Google Analytics and similar services provide measuring tools of the website audience and supply detailed statistics about visitors.

All of these media have three things in common:

1. A guaranteed number of people reached. Advertisers have a good idea of how much money they need to spend to reach a certain number of potential consumers in particular context.
2. People gather around these media because they are interested in something, be it a TV show or a web site. They don’t turn on TV to watch commercials, they just happen to be there during the breaks in the show which they enjoy watching.
3. One may say – people don’t flock around billboards to enjoy reading about “Always Coca-Cola”. But every day they take a glimpse and absorb this message. As in television, radio and Internet ensures consistency of a marketing message.

The same is not true for mobile advertising. When a mobile user receives an unsolicited SMS with an ad on his/her personal mobile phone, the message it carries becomes irrelevant. The recipient no longer controls the situation as in the case of other media. He or she are not there for something they want. As a rule they become irritated and quit paying attention. Or they sue. In addition, advertisers can’t really measure the number of eyes they attract, as there is no indication whether he/she has read the message.

Besides that, how many times can you assault your subscribers with spam? Once a week maybe? A more frequent reach will drive them nuts and will likely harm your reputation. But sending your message once a week doesn’t guarantee neither that the user will notice it, nor that the message will be consistent enough to get imprinted in the consumer’s mind.

Maybe mobile marketers should concentrate on creating services that give value to mobile users? Services, to which people come on a daily basis, which are not a collection of ads but something of value to them. This way, ads will no longer annoy users, and advertisers will attract people’s eyes without being too obvious and too aggressive.

So to answer the question – are mobile phones the right media for advertising? Indeed they are, if the right approach is used.

Later we will talk about one of such services – Eyeline’s Ads-n-Balance. Stay tuned.