Lots of mobile news around at the moment, starting with the announcement from AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace. They have just announced that the firm has served over five billion targeted ads since the launch of the site in December of 2006.
The fast expansion is attributed to the growing number of mobile web sites, advertisers and the natural increase of mobile internet users.
CEO Omar Hamoui reinforced this in a statement made in a press release, “AdMob’s growth is a testament to the growth of the mobile internet and proof that advertising business models are viable in mobile. Mobile is a unique environment with new challenges and we are proud to work with our publishers and advertisers to unlock the enormous opportunity in mobile marketing.”
AdMob serves targeted banners and text ads for mobile sites using contextual and demographic information that fits into the mobile specific parameters. The top Markets (by ads served) as reported by AdMob are the U.S. (45% of impressions), South Africa, United Kingdom, India, Germany, Australia and Israel.
And MySpace is picking up momentum in Canada with a new mobile portal. It is launching its service in an initially-exclusive deal with Rogers Wireless, the country’s biggest mobile carrier in terms of subscribers. release
But unlike some other social networking sites that offer mobile services for free, Rogers and MySpace will charge a C$5 (EUR 3.45) monthly fee to access the service, although users who sign up before October 31 will get six months of usage free. Additionally the portal will only work on certain handsets. Users of the service will find many of the same features that MySpace’s mobile portals have in other countries, including the ability to post comments or blog entries, search for friends, and read and respond to MySpace email, as well as edit their profiles.
MySpace launched two Canadian portals, one in French and the other in English, in May of this year, and currently has around 4.1 million users in the country, according to Marketnews (MySpace has around 115 million registered users worldwide, according to comScore Media Metrics). It does not provide stats on mobile-only usage but Travis Katz, SVP and GM of MySpace International, claims there has been “incredible uptake worldwide for MySpace Mobile initiatives.”
And finally from traditional media, more moves from traditional media into mobile: Gannett is launching over 100 mobile Internet sites to beef up its presence in the growing local information market. The sites - covering 84 daily newspapers, 19 local broadcast Web sites and USA Today - will feature news, sports, weather and other local information, and will be free to access (provided users have unlimited mobile Internet surfing plans in their contracts). The content will be produced by Gannet’s Information Centers, hubs that generate content used across different Gannet media outlets (from print and television to Internet and mobile).
The company release does not mention 4Info, but Matt Jones, Gannett’s director of mobile strategy and operations, tells us that it will be used in the new local site services. Gannett has had a growing relationship with the SMS-based mobile search company—in June announcing a US$10 (EUR 7.36) million investment and an intention to use 4Info’s mobile search and interactive advertising services for its national flagship title USA Today.
Jones says the local mobile initiative will not be crossing over with the online advertising venture Gannett has been working on with Tribune, which has its own local mobile sites. He says Third Screen Media will be one of the companies serving ads onto the local sites, but he did not confirm whether Google will be involved. Gannett was an early partner of the search giant’s business selling print newspaper inventory to Google advertisers; Google of course has high hopes of taking its advertising services mobile (not to mention getting deeper into local services to help further its advertising reach).
The mobile announcement comes at time of declining revenues in Gannett’s core newspaper print business and broadcasting business. In July, the publisher reported Q2 revenue fell to US$1.93 (EUR 1.42) billion from US$2 (EUR 1.47) billion last year, although profits rose to US$365.7 (EUR 269.4) million, from US$310.5 (EUR 228.8) million, an 18% increase from the same period a year ago.
Gannett has not yet said whether it intends to launch a similar mobile service with its Newsquest titles, the second-largest regional newspaper group in the UK. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves... Hewlett-Packard's worldwide media director, Scott Berg, controls a budget of US$ 829 (EUR 611) million and is a big fan of nontraditional media. HP, for example, is devoting 70% of its back-to-school budget to online and viral messaging.
Yet Mr. Berg is frustrated by the limitations of mobile-web advertising; marketers who push out ads rather than allowing users to opt in; and strategies that overlook the most important consumer need in mobile marketing: search.
"We've had experience with advertising on the deck of some phone carriers -- just didn't work out for us," Mr. Berg said. HP also tested off-deck ads on the mobile web and came to the conclusion that search, at least for the time being, is the way to tackle the new media.
"I would much rather spend the money on the search terms than the advertising because I can track it, I can understand it, I can tweak it based on consumer needs," he said.
The key, he believes, is for marketers to realize people are using their phones for information - and smart advertisers will market around that rather than simply pump out a steady stream of ads.
He said HP's latest mobile strategy, which is set to roll out next year, will be based on the thinking that the mobile phone is a utility for consumers.
"I have a number of concerns about the push technology. One of the big ones is there's going to be a huge backlash by consumers if we start to push text messages or voicemail messages, and that's going to lead immediately - immediately - to legislation against this type of activity," he warned. "Right now you have the do-not-call list. That could possibly get more stringent, in my opinion, if marketers tend to go overboard in push technology in mobile phones."
Instead, Mr. Berg said he is defining a strategy that will tie in with HP distributors, resellers and others so the mobile phone will prove useful to consumers at the point of purchase. Many of those efforts will be related to search, a much different process on the mobile phone than on the PC.
"When you're walking around, you're looking for a place to go, a place to go shop. Perhaps you're trying to check a price within a store and checking to see if there's another better price online," he said. "How can we utilize the natural use of mobilephone technology in the way that search is applied to it in an everyday benefit back to the consumer?"
But Mr. Berg said not all HP mobile-marketing efforts will be limited to search. He said the company's Yahoo March Madness HP Courtside '07 promotion, which provided scores and information during last spring's men's college basketball tournament, drew more than 890,000 unique visitors.
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