I was talking to Nick Lane in Barcelona last week. Nick was the excellent MC of the MMA Forum in Barcelona and ex-Informa Principal Analyst, now doing his own thing at d2Consult - if you’re interested in anything from expert strategic planning to investment proofing your business plan, get in touch with him.
One of the issues we talked about was the difficulty of defining what mobile advertising actually is, as opposed to mobile marketing. This is especially the case when many people (including brands and agencies) see the mobile channel as sms push.
The situation is also confused by surveys such as the one launched by Airwide Solutions, which entirely focused on push-based messaging as if this is the only way to get involved in mobile marketing. In fairness to Airwide, this is probably intentional as their business is based on messaging and corporately, they’re probably not going to be interested in researching or promoting the mobile web.
Airwide’s research concluded that marketers saw outbound sms and mms campaigns as a rich vein to be exploited, with 71% claiming to be spending 10% of their whole marketing budgets in two years. Apart from being wholly unbelievable - currently about 10% of marketing budgets go to digital channels in total - it’s also pretty unrealistic because the reality is that push campaigns like this really don’t work very well most of the time. But if it was true, Airwide are going to make lots of money, which was the point of the survey in the first place, namely that they’re a great partner for these types of campaign - fair enough then.
There’s another survey featured by eMarketer today which helps explains why push marketing doesn’t work terribly well. And that’s because users don’t want it - sorry all you marketers in the Airwide survey. 2/3 of respondents said that they wouldn’t subscribe to a service featuring retail offers delivered by text message. And 92% said that they’d find local business offers sent to their phones irritating. Note well, you Bluespammers.
The problem with using the mobile as a push channel is that even if you do get people to subscribe to the service (and don’t even think about a non-subscription based service), it’s very easy for messages to be quickly viewed as spam. Don’t forget that while spam is partly about permission, it’s also partly about perception. So even if the user agrees to get messages, if they subsequently find them irritating, they’re still spam. Thus, if the user is in a bad mood or the message isn’t very relevant, targeted or engaging, eventually the user will unsubscribe and that’s the end of that.
I know from experience a lot about this, having been involved in a start-up back in 2000 which operated location based marketing sms. email me for a free copy of the white paper I wrote, if you haven’t read it and are even considering launching something like this. It’ll save you a lot of time, money and energy.
What does seem to work very well though is mobile web advertising - I’ve been writing a lot about AdMob recently, so I won’t blow that trumpet again. But believe me (again based on actual experience) that pull marketing works very well. As does pull in the context of asking people to respond to another medium (like a poster) for more information via sms.
Where push sms can work very effectively is in CRM type marketing and it still amazes me how few companies use this to deliver timely, useful and valuable information, such as delays for travel companies, transaction details for banks or last minute offers for cinemas and theatres.
In sender-pays markets, the economics of Push Vs Pull don’t stack up either. Let’s say that an sms outbound campaign costs around 10 cents each and you have a 5% (very high) response. That means each response has cost you $2.00. If you run the same campaign on the mobile web, each response will cost you about 50 cents as a likely maximum on a pay per click model - and probably less than 30 cents in most markets, most of the time.
So where does that leave the debate about what exactly is mobile advertising? Advertising is inherently pull based, I would argue. Anything that isn’t pull can certainly be called mobile marketing, in the same way as a direct mail campaign is marketing, but not advertising. Which leaves us today pretty much with mobile web advertising as the only channel that can be described like that.
So mobile advertising = mobile web. Which is great news, as I always wanted to work in advertising.
What do you think?
[...] Craig wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBut if it was true, Airwide are going to make lots of money, which was the point of the survey in the first place, namely that they’re a great partner for these types of campaign - fair enough then. There’s another survey featured by … [...]
Not this year, maybe next, because the big issue is mobile web use. The figures I have seen suggest it is roughly 30% of all mobile users in developed countries use the mobile web.
So push based, assuming the call to action is not a link to a mobile web site, will reach all the “target” audience (if you can identify them).
Pull based is limited because it can only reach 30% of the “target” audience, because the rest of the “target” audience do not use the mobile web.
Using your figures, a push based campaign may cost $2+ per response but logically it will get you 3 times the number of responses that pull based campaign at $0.50 per response. So as a campaign manager what would you choose?
The big advantage of a pull campaign is you don’t need to (or can’t ) identify your audience, and you might get responses from outside your expected audience. Plus at the moment you can assume the pull audience is more tech savvy with a higher disposable income.
Nick - thanks for the comment.
A couple of points.
Even if you are right and Push is better than Pull at the moment, you said it yourself “if you can identify them”. The idea of finding a meaningful amount of people who had truely opted in on a mass market scale is pretty unlikely - certainly in the markets I know about. Might be different in Australia. But you could never reach around 30% of people like that (using your stats).
In addition, you’d also have to pay a list broking fee per number you used, which would push up costs significantly.
You also have to consider budgets in finite terms.
As an example, even if you could sms all the people in the UK (which you couldn’t) at 10 cents each (broking fee and transmission fee), you be paying $4 million, which is way beyond most budgets.
Then sms is also limited to 160 characters of text making the creative execution limited, as you have to assume that any link in there wouldn’t be used by an awful lot of the recipients.
So I think pull wins over push this year as well as next.
Russell
Interesting piece today Russell and as a principle I share your scepticism about hugely favourable research that comes from those with a vested interest (bet we all quote it though when it suits us). So by the same token I’m totally convinced by your arguements in favour of the mobile web.
You’d be amazed at the number of clients who are still at ground zero with mobile and also the numbrer that we have to ween off the idea that mobile is just like email and direct mail where you buy a list and push messages etc.
That being said we have had some very solid and encouraging results this year for push campaigns, but these started with the consumer initiating them by responding to a mobile call to action on some other media. Most encouragingly for us we have had tiny (less than 1%) opt outs from the promotional messages sent on behalf of the brands.
We had to work had at it though.
I expect us to be working with mobile advertising with clients from Q2 next year, but I don’t see it as their entry point into the mobile channel.
Hi Paul - I wouldn’t be even remotely amazed at the number of clients at Ground Zero. Actually, there’s quite a few agencies like that - present company excepted
I’d put the type of mobile marketing you’re writing about more as CRM though ie an ongoing dialogue and I am surprised, as I said above, that more clients aren’t using this type of activity.
Cheers
Russell
I’m a hundred percent with Russel on the idea that push, -actualy as far as I’m concerned: independent of the communications channel, not only mobile - only works after you have asked the receiver for permission. Push without permission results in turning the majority of what were meant to be potential customers a minute ago into people with negative vibes towards the advertiser’s brand - not different from any other form of unsollicited harassment (does sollicited harassment exist?:-)
A far as defining mobile advertising in relation to mobile marketing, i would say that mobile advertising is a subset of mobile marketing the same way (TV or print or and other form of) advertising is a subset of marketing. Goals for TV or print or mobile advertising campaigns in my opninion and experience should be subject to overall marketing campaign goals, same way as for any other marketing vehicle, concentrating on the channel specifics, i.e. audience profile and medium capabilities.