Target Practice

Chris Goswami, Director of Product Marketing at Openwave, makes the case for targeting in mobile advertising

Chris_goswamiopenwave
At the risk of alienating the entire advertising world, Id like to
start with a simple statement: in general, people dont like
advertising. In print publications, people flick past them; on recorded
videos people fast forward through them; online, people click past
them; and on the mobile phone, people delete them. TV advertising
meanwhile relies heavily on entertaining the viewer, and making a
lasting impression (see, for example, the recent ad for Honda shot at
10,000 feet and broadcast live). But this is not necessarily possible
on the small screen of a mobile phone. So is mobile advertising, in
fact a contradiction in terms?
On the one hand, its important to
realise that the mobile phone is the ultimate personal device for most
consumers. Which other gadget do we have within arms reach for eighteen
hours a day? However, it is this same personal attachment which also
raises problems in exploiting mobile for advertising i.e., they dont
want their handsets to become like their home mailbox another
receptacle filled with offers for which they have no use.

Paradigm shift
With this in mind, its clear that what is needed is a fundamental
paradigm shift in changing the public perception of advertising, from
being an intrusive and generally irrelevant medium, into more of a
personal assistant. Here at Openwave were working to put this
paradigm shift into place, by developing systems which can build
individual user profiles and engage with users on a highly relevant
level.
Lets think of a possible scenario: Consider a 40-something father who
works nine-to-six and plays golf on weekends, and his 15-year-old
daughter who has a bit of spare pocket money but would like to find
ways to get more to spend on clothes.
The father probably uses his mobile to make calls and send texts only,
and views it as a communications device. Receiving an advert on his
mobile about summer jobs at Topshop for example, would cause some mild,
or perhaps not so mild, irritation that hed been contacted about
something so irrelevant, swiftly followed by a rapid thumb movement to
the soft Delete key. His daughter, however, is firstly likely to be
much more tech savvy and use her mobile for a variety of lifestyle
functions; and secondly, much more inclined to have an interest in a
youth fashion store. To her, the Topshop advert is very relevant and
shes very likely to click through to find out more.
Using the same two characters, lets say instead that the ad was a
recommendation for a local golfing store that was promoting a golf
weekend break you get the picture.
The dad in this story needs to save time whilst his daughter needs to
save money, but they can both use personal recommendations that have
been filtered to provide a high likelihood of personal relevance. We
all like a bit of help as long as its helping us to do something we
need to do or something we actually want to do. So maybe people do like
advertising after all – its just that we all like different ads.


Clickthrough rates

If we consider how this targeted approach could increase clickthrough
rates, we might be on the verge of seeing rates in the tens of percent.
Ad-funded operator Blyk, for example, has reported clickthrough rates
as high as 29% This is an incredible figure when viewed against the
current averages of around just a few per cent for online ads. If we
consider the return on investment that such a high percentage would
yield, mobile advertising suddenly starts to look like a very
compelling medium. After all what other medium enables brands to
determine not only who sees their ad but also when they see the ad and
even where they see it? This golden-triangle of contextual awareness is
only achievable through mobile.
Mobile advertising isnt totally new; weve been working with operators
for several years on pushing ads to end users, but the strategies
behind the campaigns to date have not been sufficiently targeted to get
the results that are needed. What is new is that the technology to
enable mobile ads to be highly targeted is now available from companies
such as Openwave. We can direct an ad to a subscriber based on their
previous behaviour, or based on what they are doing right now (e.g.,
looking at a particular website), or based on where they are located at
the time the ad is sent, or some algorithmic combination of all three.
We are working very closely with mobile operators who essentially own
this targeting information, and are helping them to responsibly exploit
this 360-degree view of users which they possess.

Discoverability
Targeted offers also solve another problem that has been endemic in the
mobile industry for almost 10 years. Its called the Discoverability
problem: operators have a wealth of content available, such as
ringtones, videos, music tracks and other specialist content, but no
easy way for their users to find content thats relevant to them.
Simply creating a portal and saying: Come find something you might
like using your tiny web browser and a lot of patience has patently
not worked as a strategy. This is a pull strategy. However, if an
operator knows which of its customers fit into the demographic of, say,
England football fan, through analysing past behaviour or examining
current context or location, it can target them directly with special
offers on tickets, wallpapers, kit etc, directly to their home screen
or starting page. For the consumer, this removes the need for them to
actively source this information by going online and navigating through
a multi-stage process, during which half the users drop off at every
click.
In conclusion, we see that mobile as an advertising medium is indeed
uniquely advantageous it moves with the end user and is in many ways
an extension of the users personality. For precisely these reasons it
is also the least tolerant medium if you get it wrong. I can overlook
ads in my newspaper that I dont like, but an irrelevant ad on my phone
could really annoy me. For both of these reasons, the industry needs
solutions that deliver a hitherto unprecedented level of targeting of
mobile offers or ads. This also creates opportunities for cross-selling
products, and indeed the take up of mobile data services in general, as
mobile screens become ever more capable and ever more relied on by end
users.
Issues of data protection and privacy can be overcome by keeping the
process transparent, easy to opt-out of, and beneficial for the end
user. Compare, for example, Amazons widely accepted and admired
recommendation service, with Facebooks recent foray into
personalisation by stealth under the name of the Facebook Beacon
program, which was widely criticised and eventually withdrawn. It is up
to those in this burgeoning new value chain operators, publishers,
brands, and platform providers – to ensure that this new business model
keeps the users interests right at the centre. This is the only way
that any of us will benefit from the brave new world of mobile
advertising.