Mobile Advertising Presents a Multitude of Advertising Opportunities

According to the online study firm, eMarketer, there are over 405-million mobile world wide web users worldwide. Projections see this figure reading over 800-million in four years. Staggering indeed, and an thrilling chance for internet marketers, specially in Africa exactly where mobile represents a much bigger penetration than fixed line Web connections.

It's also an thrilling chance to engage with prospects for the reason that it enables marketers to interact with them correct at their touch-point with the net, correct in the palm of their hand.

Handheld devices are becoming additional and much more enabled, and this mixture of PDA, camera, e-mail, MP3 player, web browser and so forth is only serving to make the penetration and dependency on these devices a lot more and much more prolific.

Clearly, with mobile and WAP internet sites, the mobile online brings a new dimension to ecommerce and the way transactions are accomplished.

How WAP differs from classic internet

WAP web sites want to be straightforward and suitable for the smaller screen size. In addition to the style and technical considerations when putting together a WAP web site, marketers will need to take into account that the purposes or intent of a mobile online user are potentially distinct to a person sitting in front of a laptop or computer.

WAP users tend to choose aim-driven services that supply quick answers to certain troubles. Examples involve finding the nearest hotel, a towing service or climate forecasts. Other utilizes for WAP incorporate entertainment-focused services for users who are looking to kill time.

Overall, WAP services must target users with immediate context-driven content.

Mobile services now contain every thing from SMS to podcasting and video-on-the-go, so the opportunities to advertise are virtually limitless.

The Mobile Advertising Association (MMA) released a whitepaper in April 2008 which presents an overview of mobile advertising as it stands.

The mobile channels that are defined contain the mobile internet, downloadable applications, mobile messaging and mobile video. Each channel presents a amount of advertising opportunities.

Mobile Marketing

The most apparent channel is maybe the mobile internet. On the mobile internet, advertising opportunities contain banner advertising, text ads and branded mobile internet websites.

Here, ads are primarily sold on a CPC or CPM basis. It is achievable to set up ads in a quantity of formats in the mobile internet channel, but these are most commonly banner and text ads.

Mobile Messaging

These days practically every single single handset, no matter how rudimentary, is able to send and obtain Short Message Service (SMS) and to a particular but far more limited extent, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). These form the basis of mobile messaging.

SMS is limited to only text characters, though MMS can consist of pictures, sound and video content. There are a number of opportunities for advertisers by way of the mobile messaging channel - these include text advertisements, branding though splash pages and animated images.

Downloadable Applications

Downloadable applications refers to software or specific content material that users download to their mobile device, that then remains on the telephone - these services can include things like games, ringtones and way of life tool applications. These varieties of application downloads are only offered to those users with compatible devices and information plans.

Advertising opportunities within the downloadable application channel include ad placement inside the apps, and branded applications.

Mobile Video

The final channel is mobile video. This refers to video that is sent by way of a cell telephone operator network to a handset's embedded media player.

Mobile videos are either streamed reside or downloaded either from the mobile web, or as aspect of an MMS.

Ad placement here can be as pre-, post- or mid-roll adverts. Marketers could incorporate static pictures or create branded videos particularly for this channel.

What are the expected outcomes?

These advertising opportunities can be helpful as component of a broader CRM method, for branding, direct sales and for driving users to a mobile or WAP site.

Quite a few mobile advertisers report response rates of in between 10 and 30 percent, meaning that targeted mobile advertising is a powerful tool. With the forecasts indicating a high adoption rate and rapid expansion in this region, the mobile arena is undoubtedly one that need to not be neglected when it comes to broader internet advertising and marketing techniques.