3 Things That Will Jumpstart Mobile Advertising

A question that I'm constantly hearing from mobile vendors comes down to the almighty dollar. Mobile vendors ask me: "How can I help you to convince your client to move more money into the mobile space?"

The key issue I find is the lack of consistency.

Tapping ideas that have made online advertising work could help mobile marketing move forward even more quickly. Consider these three areas:

Measurement

Now that our clients are comfortable with the back end reporting and data from ad servers and other online tracking, they'd like to see that same level of transparency and data passed back to them on the mobile side. However, we must jump through many hoops and undertake much work to ensure that something as simple as an app download can be tracked and then credited to the proper party. As a result, mobile campaigns are delayed and planning becomes more difficult while we try and find agreed upon measurement methods. Once we see positive returns, a successful campaign will be renewed and budgets will grow. But first there must be consistent ways to measure mobile marketing campaign performance.

Interactive Creative

The growth in smartphone usage has resulted in innovations in creative and has introduced rich media to the space. As click-through rates go down and the mobile consumer matures, advertisers need to find new and interesting ways to engage with consumers and share product information. Clients who have shaken their head to mobile in the past have perked up when we've shown them mobile rich media creative examples. A small banner can be an effective way to advertise a sale or a hotel room, but many consumer goods clients want a richer canvas for their message. As more of this creative becomes available, clients will be able to see the translation from what they're doing online and will look to bring that experience to the mobile platform.

Content

It was fascinating to read last week that USA Today planned to restructure its staff to focus more on mobile content. This move reflects a belief that the publication should focus on content where the consumer is and where they are consuming it. Mobile content is outstanding for utility. Content providers like Yelp, Weather.com, and others have focused on information on the go and have done an outstanding job of making content easy to read and digest on mobile devices. But utility is only part of what a consumer needs from a communication device. While we all log in to our e-mail and check it regularly, the amount of time we spend in e-mail compared to digesting a good article on our favorite website isn't comparable. Advertisers want to be around good content because of the halo effect it gives their brand. The more of this type of content we can bring to the mobile space and find unique and innovative ways to tie advertisers to it, the better the mobile experience will be for advertisers and users.

What's great about mobile marketing is there are brilliant people pondering these three things and many other issues. Advances have already been made to address these problems and there will be more improvements in the future. Remember, we can't wait for everything in the mobile space to be perfect before we start advertising there. Instead, we must find our consumers where they are (which is undoubtedly on their mobile phone) and push for the consistency we need to come as quickly as possible.