Mobile Fix – It’s almost the end of the year and still the pace of change is relentless

Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on mobile advertising…

Facebook have just announced that timeline is now available on mobile. Over the coming months we’re going to see lots of developments in how Facebook use mobile and that’s going to have a big impact on the whole ecology.

And Amazon have broken with their usual secrecy to release sales figures for their Kindle. In the US they are selling over a million Kindle devices each week – with the new Fire the topseller. UK data is less specific but Amazon tell us they sold over three million items in just one day (December 5 – Cyber Monday) – with the Kindle the top seller.

Facebook are rumoured to be ready to jump into mobile advertising early next year and given the wealth of targeting data they have access to, they should do very well.

And this week we heard that Apple are struggling with their iAds product – dropping the minimum buy to just $400,000 (down from $1million at launch) and allowing a cap on the cost per click they charge in addition to the cost per thousand for the campaign reach. As George in Seinfeld was told, Double Dipping isn’t popular.

Still on mobile advertising, new data from a good Ofcom study shows that the UK is doing pretty well in mobile advertising compared to some – but there is still a way to go. Looking at mobile ad spend per head of population, the UK is at £1.33 compared to the US at £1.25. But Japan shows the potential with £6.52.

And eMarketer gives us a clue why we are lagging; whilst mobile gets around 10% of peoples time in the US, it only gets 1% of adspend. The UK figures are probably similar. As Mary Meeker points out, there is a $50 billion opportunity as this gap between time spent with digital and adspend closes. All the data and charts are on our blog.

Money always follows audience and we will eventually see mobile take its deserved share of adspend – especially as brands start to be able to close the loop between ad exposure on mobile and actual transactions.

We’re not that far away from campaign measurement that links exposure on the mobile device with someone checking in at a retail store, redeeming a mobile coupon and buying the product with their mobile wallet. When this happens we’ll see huge shifts in budget.

But one issue that needs work is understanding how mobile advertising works. Right now mobile is hampered by the disdain for banners and buttons that plagues online advertising. While mobile is unlikely to emulate the clutter that mars online we need some thinking about how and why digital advertising works.

Ignoring click-through for a moment, we see some advertisers like P&G buying mobile and online ads for reach. Studies from all the research companies show that online can and does affect brand metrics. But we need to understand how it works and we think its time to think about how low involvement processing works in digital. The theory from Robert Heath is well respected among marketers and is accepted as one of the ways that TV advertising works. The basic thought is that while we don’t consciously pay attention to a message, our sub conscious processes it with low involvement from our brain.

We suspect that’s how digital banners work and we’re keen to explore this if we can to prove this in mobile. Years ago we invented a brand (YesSirNoSir) and advertised it online, to see what the effect of pure digital was. One of our plans for 2012 is to replicate this on mobile and we’ll be looking for partners; if you would like to get involved get in touch.

Finally… it is Christmas and we’re out of here

Rather than cards we thought we’d share some of our collection of soulful Christmas music we’ve been building over the years. In the past this has been a CD and a YouTube playlist. This year it’s a Spotify playlist.

This will be the soundtrack as we enjoy Turkey and Pinot Noir on the beach in Sri Lanka. However you spend your Christmas we hope you enjoy listening and that you have a great time.

By the way if you still haven’t sorted New Year, our place in St Ives is available.

Click here for your full Mobile Fix (complete with links to background articles).