Mobile advertising

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Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mobile web site.

Contents

It is estimated that U.S. mobile app-installed ads accounted for 30% of all mobile advertising revenue in 2014, and will top $4.6 billion in 2016, and over $6.8 billion by the end of 2019. [1] Other ways mobile advertising can be purchased include working with a Mobile Demand Side Platform, in which ad impressions are bought in real-time on an ad exchange. [2] Another report has indicated that worldwide mobile digital advertising spend would reach $185 billion in 2018, $217 billion in 2019 and $247 billion in 2020. [3]

Overview

Some see mobile advertising as closely related to online or internet advertising, though its reach is far greater—currently, most mobile advertising is targeted at mobile phones, that came at an estimated global total of $4.6 billion as of 2009. Notably computers, including desktops and laptops, are currently estimated at 1.1 billion globally. Moreover, mobile advertising includes SMS and MMS advertising units in addition to the advertisement types served and processed via online channels. [4]

It is probable that advertisers and media industry will increasingly take account of a bigger and fast-growing mobile market, though it remains at around 1% of global advertising spend. Mobile media is evolving rapidly and while mobile phones will continue to be the mainstay, it is not clear whether mobile phones based on cellular backhaul or smartphones based on WiFi hot spot or WiMAX hot zone will also strengthen. However, such is the emergence of this form of advertising, that there is now a dedicated global awards ceremony organized every year by Visiongain. [5] [6]

According to the research firm Berg Insight the global mobile advertising market that was estimated to €1 billion in 2008.[ citation needed ] Furthermore, Berg Insight forecasts the global mobile advertising market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 43 percent to €8.7 billion in 2014. [7] eMarketer reported, that nearly $101 billion was spent on mobile ads in 2020. [8]

Types of mobile ads

  1. Click-to-download ads: the user will be directed to the App store or Google Play
  2. Click-to-call ads: the user will call to a phone number after clicking the button.
  3. Click-to-message ads: the user will be directed to an SMS application to message the advertiser.
  4. Image text and banner ads: a click opens your browser and re-directs you to a page
  5. Push notification
  6. Pin pull ads: mostly common in Playrix ads [9]

Mobile rich media

There are limitations to rich media on mobile because all of the coding must be done in HTML5, since iOS does not support flash. [10]

Handsets display and corresponding ad images

There are hundreds of handsets in the market and they differ by screen size and supported technologies (e.g., MMS, WAP 2.0). For color images, formats such as PNG, JPEG, GIF and BMP are typically supported, along with the monochrome WBMP format. The following gives an overview of various handset screen sizes and a recommended image size for each type. [11]

HandsetApprox handset screen size (px W × H)Example handsetsAd unitAd size (pixels)
X-Large320 × 320Palm Treo 700P, Nokia E70X-Large300 × 50
Large240 × 320Samsung MM-A900, LG VX-8500 Chocolate, Sony Ericsson W910iLarge216 × 36
Medium176 × 208Motorola RAZR, LG VX-8000, Motorola ROKR E1Medium168 × 28
Small128 × 160Motorola V195Small120 × 20

Source: Mobile Marketing Association [12]

History

Martin Cooper invented a portable handset in 1973, when he was a project manager at Motorola. It was almost three decades after the idea of cellular communications was introduced by Bell Laboratories. Two decades later, cellular phones made a commercial debut in the mass market in the early 1990s. In the early days of cellular handsets, phone functionality was limited to dialing, and voice input/output.

When the second generation of mobile telecoms (so-called 2G) was introduced in Finland by Radiolinja (now Elisa) on the GSM standard (now the world's most common mobile technology with over 2 billion users) in 1991, the digital technology introduced data services. SMS text messaging was the first such service. The first person-to-person SMS text message was sent in Finland in December 1994. SMS (Short Message Service) gradually began to grow, becoming the largest data service by number of users in the world, currently with 74% of all mobile subscribers or 2.4 billion people active users of SMS in 2007.

One advantage of SMS is that while even in conference, users are able to send and receive brief messages unobtrusively, while enjoying privacy. Even in such environments as in a restaurant, café, bank, travel agency office, and so on, the users can enjoy some privacy by sending/receiving brief text messages in an unobtrusive way.

It would take six years from the launch of SMS until the first case of advertising would appear on this new data media channel, when a Finnish news provider offered free news headlines via SMS, sponsored by advertising. This led to rapid experimentation in mobile advertising and mobile marketing, and the world's first conference to discuss mobile advertising was held in London in 2000, sponsored by the Wireless Marketing Association (which later merged into the Mobile Marketing Association). The first books to discuss mobile advertising were Ahonen's M-Profits and Haig's Mobile Marketing in 2002. Several major mobile operators around the world launched their own mobile advertising arms, like Aircross in South Korea, owned by the parents of SK Telecoms the biggest mobile operator, or like D2 Communications in Japan, the joint venture of Japan's largest mobile operator NTT DoCoMo and Dentsu, Japan's largest ad agency.[ citation needed ]

Mobile as media

This unobtrusive three-way communications caught the attention of media industry and advertisers as well as cellphone makers and telecom operators. Usually, Text SMS became a new media – called the “third mass media channel” by several media and mobile experts – and even more, it is a two-way mobile media, as opposed to either mobile or any other media like radios, newspapers and TV. Besides, the immediacy of responsiveness in this two-way media is a new territory found for media industry and advertisers, who are eager to measure up market response immediately. Additionally, the possibility of fast delivery of the messages and the ubiquity of the technology (it does not require any additional functionality from the mobile phone, all devices available today are capable of receiving SMS), make it ideal for time- and location-sensitive advertising, such as customer loyalty offers (ex. shopping centers, large brand stores), SMS promotions of events, etc. To leverage this strength of SMS advertising, timely and reliable delivery of messages is paramount, which is guaranteed by some SMS gateway providers.

Mobile media has begun to draw more significant attention from the media advertising industry since the mid-2000-2001-s, based on a view that mobile media was to change the way advertisements were made, and that mobile devices can form a new media sector. Despite this, revenues are still a small fraction of the advertising industry as a whole but are most certainly on the rise. Informa reported that mobile advertising in 2007 was worth $2.2 billion, which is less than 0.5% of the approximately $450 billion global advertising industry.[ citation needed ]

Types of mobile advertising are expected[ by whom? ] to change rapidly or immediately as the case may be. In other words, mobile technology will come up with a strong push for identifying newer and unheard-of mobile multimedia, with the result that subsequent media migration will greatly stimulate a consumer behavioral shift and establish a paradigm shift in mobile advertising. A major media migration is on, as desktop Internet evolves into mobile Internet. One typical case in point is Nielsen’s buyout of Telephia. [13]

The rapid change in the technology used by mobile advertisers can also have adverse effect to the number of consumers being reached by the mobile advertisements, Telephia. [14] due to technical limitations of their mobile devices. Because of that, campaigns that aim to achieve wide response or are targeting lower income groups might be better of relying on older, more widespread mobile media advertising technologies, such as SMS or any other mode of communication.

Viral marketing

As mobile is an interactive mass media similar to the internet, advertisers are eager to utilize and make use of viral marketing methods, by which one recipient of an advertisement on mobile, will forward that to a friend. This allows users to become part of the advertising experience. At the bare minimum mobile ads with viral abilities can become powerful interactive campaigns. At the extreme, they can become engagement marketing experiences. A key element of mobile marketing campaigns is the most influential member of any target audience or community, which is called the alpha user.

Privacy concern

Advocates have raised the issue of privacy. Targeted mobile marketing requires customization of ad content to reach interested and relevant customers. To customize such behavioral personal data, user profiling, data mining and other behavior watch tools are employed, and privacy advocates warn that this may cause privacy infringement. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS</span> Text messaging service component

Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia message. The MMS standard extends the core SMS capability, allowing the exchange of text messages greater than 160 characters in length. Unlike text-only SMS, MMS can deliver a variety of media, including up to forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow of multiple images, or audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone spam</span> Unwanted communication through a mobile phone

Mobile phone spam is a form of spam, directed at the text messaging or other communications services of mobile phones or smartphones. As the popularity of mobile phones surged in the early 2000s, frequent users of text messaging began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited commercial advertisements being sent to their telephones through text messaging. This can be particularly annoying for the recipient because, unlike in email, some recipients may be charged a fee for every message received, including spam. Mobile phone spam is generally less pervasive than email spam, where in 2010 around 90% of email is spam. The amount of mobile spam varies widely from region to region. In North America, mobile spam steadily increased after 2008 and accounted for half of all mobile phone traffic by 2019. In parts of Asia up to 30% of messages were spam in 2012.

Digital display advertising is online graphic advertising through banners, text, images, video, and audio. The main purpose of digital display advertising is to post company ads on third-party websites. A display ad is usually interactive, which allows brands and advertisers to engage deeper with the users. A display ad can also be a companion ad for a non-clickable video ad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Direct marketing</span> Model of communicating discounts and other sales offers

Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. AdSense is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies. In 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.

Mobile content is any type of web hypertext and information content and electronic media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like text, sound, ringtones, graphics, flash, discount offers, mobile games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid-1990s, the usage and significance of the mobile devices in everyday technological life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make photo snapshots for upload, twits, mobile calendar appointments, and mostly send and receive text messages, listen to music, watch videos, take mobile pictures and make videos, use websites to redeem coupons for purchases, view and edit office documents, get driving instructions on mobile maps and so on. The use of mobile content in various areas has grown accordingly.

Mobile phone content advertising is the promotion of ring tones, games and other mobile phone services. Such services are usually subscription-based and use the short message service (SMS) system to join up to them. Another method is broadcasting messages to the mobile phone's idle-screen, enabling the mobile operators or advertisers to reach millions in real-time. The advertising and sale of ring tones in particular has seen a massive growth in recent years, with some commercial breaks, particularly on music television channels and in motor racing, being dominated by such adverts. Advertising in newspapers and magazines has also become popular.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

Mobile local search is a technology that lets people search for local things using mobile equipment such as mobile phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. Mobile local search satisfies the need to offer a mobile subscriber spontaneous access to near-position services and information such as businesses, products, events, restaurant, movie theatre or other local information. Mobile local search is the search and discovery of persons, places, and things within an identifiable space defined by distinct parameters. These parameters are evolving. Today they include social networks, individuals, cities, neighborhoods, landmarks, and actions that are relevant to the searcher's past, current, and future location. These parameters provide structure to vertically deep and horizontally broad data categories that can stand-alone or are combined to comprise searchable directories.

A mobile campaign is a campaign, usually marketing, advertising, or public relations-related, through which organizations contact their audience through SMS. This form of campaigning allows organizations to reach out and establish relationships with an audience in a more individualized, intimate way. The foundational function of mobile campaigns is regularly referred to as mobile marketing. A campaign's goal can have varied consumer consumption objectives including flashing, informing or engaging. Mobile campaigns have developed from the periphery of advertising to being an integral part of an effective marketing strategy. Online advertising is the second largest advertising spend at $113 billion, next to television's $196.5 billion. Near the introduction of mobile campaigns, they were primarily created to boost the impact of primary campaigns. A good example of one of the first mobile campaigns is the viewer voting system employed in American Idol. Using the American Idol example, the primary campaign was television, and the engagement was mobile, “watch this show, and text to vote”. In 2012, there were over 131 million votes in a single night, setting the world mobile voting record. With over 90% of Americans having cell phones, and there being over 6.8 billion cell phones in circulation globally versus 2.4 billion with internet access, mobile campaigns are evolving to be the way of the future in advertising and consumer engagement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital marketing</span> Marketing of products or services using digital technologies or digital tools

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development during the 1990s and 2000s changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing. As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people increasingly used digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones, callbacks, and on-hold mobile ringtones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.

Location-based advertising (LBA) is a form of advertising that integrates mobile advertising with location-based services. The technology is used to pinpoint consumers location and provide location-specific advertisements on their mobile devices.

Website monetization is the process of converting existing traffic being sent to a particular website into revenue. The most popular ways of monetizing a website are by implementing pay per click (PPC) and cost per impression (CPI/CPM) advertising. Various ad networks facilitate a webmaster in placing advertisements on pages of the website to benefit from the traffic the site is experiencing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Targeted advertising</span> Form of advertising

Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting.

Social network advertising, also known as "social media targeting," is a group of terms used to describe forms of online advertising and digital marketing focusing on social networking services. One of the significant benefits of this type of advertising is that advertisers can take advantage of the users' demographic information, psychographics, and other data points to target their ads appropriately.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone</span> Portable device to make telephone calls using a radio link

A mobile phone is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, satellite access, business applications, payments, multimedia playback and streaming, digital photography, and video games. Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones ; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Promotion of products or services on social media

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.

The commercialization of the Internet encompasses the creation and management of online services principally for financial gain. It typically involves the increasing monetization of network services and consumer products mediated through the varied use of Internet technologies. Common forms of Internet commercialization include e-commerce, electronic money, and advanced marketing techniques including personalized and targeted advertising. The effects of the commercialization of the Internet are controversial, with benefits that simplify daily life and repercussions that challenge personal freedoms, including surveillance capitalism and data tracking. This began with the National Science Foundation funding supercomputing center and then universities being able to develop supercomputer sites for research and academic purposes.

References

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