by David Ip
It's kind of a running joke in the mobile community when we hear the phrase, "the year of mobile". It began in 2005, and for the past 3 years, many marketers have proclaimed that next year would definitely be the year. In my personal opinion, the ones probably saying it were the ones that wanted to get in and cash out. Real mobile marketers (those that actually plan to be here for the long haul) have been cautiously optimistic on the future of mobile.
For many pioneer brands, mobile marketing has finally progressed beyond the testing and learning phase. As a result, the community as a whole should expect to see an increased amount of integrated marketing campaigns integrating the mobile channel. What we're really waiting for is for mobile to become part of the creative and media plan for traditional brands. From my perspective, these traditional brands are finally starting to "get it".
From the agency world, my most frequent requests are for stats to prove that mobile really works. What I have found is that many agency folks (on the account, media and creative side) do not quite understand mobile and think it's just a less effective, mini version of the internet (which can't be the furthest from the truth).
In order for it to be the "year of mobile", brands and agencies will need better integrated measurement AND common measuring standards than what is currently offered today. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of the mobile ecosystem, many agencies and brands are currently receiving multiple reports from the messaging aggregators (e.g. Verisign, mBlox, etc), mobile application service providers (iLoop Mobile, Nokia Interactive. etc.) and mobile media partners (Yahoo! Mobile, Microsoft Interactive Advertising, etc). Brands and agencies are frustrated as well as bogged down having to integrate the different reports they receive on a recurring basis.
How do we solve this reporting conundrum? The industry as whole should aim to make the lives of agency folks easier by having players across the mobile ecosystem "play nice" to set up a standard reporting structure to provide to agencies and brands. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has setup a measurement committee for this and we definitely look forward to seeing the future fruits of their labor.
In the interim, there are some great mobile measurement companies out there filling the need from a statistical perspective. These mobile measurement pioneers are ComScore (formerly M:Metrics), Nielsen Mobile (formerly Telephia) and Dynamic Logic.
In a recent discussion with Jennifer Ng Okula, an Account Director at Dynamic Logic (A Millward Brown Company) Jennifer shared Dynamic Logic's philosophy on mobile measurement:
"From a measurement perspective, we think it’s important to measure the branding impact of mobile along with other more direct response and interaction measures. Mobile marketing is still in its infancy and the newness of the medium and the advertising in it can have a very strong impact on an advertiser’s brand. Ads in mobile are still very noticeable, consumers haven’t yet learned to tune them out. Therefore they can be very influential. We have proof of this as seen in our research showing that mobile banner ads have the ability to increase Brand Awareness and even Purchase Intent. We compared people exposed to a mobile campaign to those not exposed, and in initial performance averages from 21 studies we saw average increases of +6.9 and +4.7 percentage points in Brand Awareness and Purchase Intent, respectively."
In conclusion, we know mobile works. We just need to prove it to the people controlling the budgets. Once we get integrated measurement and standards in place maybe the following year can really be "the year of mobile".
Cheers and drop me a note if you have any questions: david.ip@MobileMarketingForBrands.com
