Mobile Phones are new Frontier in Advertising
Posted on March 11, 2007
Filed Under Marketing/Advertising, Web Marketing
LONDON: ON ADVERTISING
Eric Pfanner
Old media got left behind in the race to go online, in part because the prospects for advertising, traditionally the major revenue generator for newspapers, magazines and television, seemed unclear on the Internet. Then online advertising took off, and old media are still playing catch-up.
Now, with the next iteration of the Internet, the mobile Web, spreading around the world, publishers and other content providers are trying to keep up, lest they get in late on another advertising bonanza.
Last week in London, the Online Publishers Association released a study showing that use of the mobile Internet is on the rise, along with acceptance of mobile advertising.
The survey, conducted by TNS Media and Entertainment in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, found that 76 percent of cellphone owners in those countries now have access to the Web from mobile devices. The researchers, who polled about 1,000 people in each country, found that more than a third of those with mobile Web access used such services. The Web-using population ranged from 34 percent in France to 54 percent in Britain.
Studies commissioned by trade organizations are sometimes just disguised marketing exercises, and indeed the publishers’ group’s numbers seem surprisingly high, compared with other recent surveys of Web access by mobile phone users. According to M:Metrics, a research firm based in Seattle, 14 percent of British cellphone users accessed the Web for news and information in the fourth quarter. In Germany, a mere 3.2 percent did so, according to the firm.
Still, even if the lower estimates are right, mobile marketing could be a big thing, simply because the numbers are enormous. Some oft-repeated measures: Around one billion mobile phones will be sold around the world this year. Globally, there are more cellphones than PCs.
“I always hear about the cellphone as being the ‘third screen,’ but I think about it as the first one,” said Bob Greenberg, chief executive of R/GA, an agency based in New York that specializes in digital advertising, speaking at a conference sponsored by the publishers’ association. “It’s with me all the time.”
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