Imagine this. You are in a mall and having splurged on clothes and perfumes, you stand in the queue waiting to pay the bill. At that moment you receive a contextual advertisement for a chicken outlet nearby. No prizes for guessing, what your response would be. You would rush to the store to check out if there were any products that you would like.
Yes, mobile advertising is the new kid on the advertising block. Companies are all too keen to push ringtones and advertisements to consumers’ Bluetooth handsets at swish outlets like Café Coffee Day or Crosswords.
Worldwide, the market for mobile advertising is a big one estimated at $1 billion. This market is set to grow what with the number of mobile phone users now pegged at two billion and set to swell further. In India, however, the market is still in the early stages of growth and is currently pegged at Rs 20 to Rs 25 crore — slated to grow further in the next few years. With TRAI announcing the Do-Not-Call registry service, Indian advertisers are looking for innovative ways to reach out to customers.
Experts observe that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is bound to go down unless operators come up with a few value added services. Mobile advertising could be just one of them. “True, the size of the mobile advertising market is miniscule as yet but it has the potential to grow at a large pace of may be 100 per cent, giving operators a new source of revenue,” says Saumya Chattopadhyay, Head, Strategic Planning, Rediffusion Y&R.
Mobile advertising holds great promise for marketers. Marketing campaigns through chatty SMS lingo and MMS video clips have already been found useful. Marketers have always done product promotions through the medium and the response has been warm. The mode has been used not only by interactive radio and TV channels but even charitable companies. However, things will change soon with Internet style advertising being beeped on your mobile.
The future of mobile marketing is intrinsically linked with “permission marketing”. But before we go on, it is important to remember advertising by nature is intrusive. So while you may not mind being bombarded with advertisements in the evenings while watching TV or while driving and listening to the radio, you will not react kindly if you meet the same while doing business or catching up with your loved ones. Mobile advertising, therefore, will work if you, the consumer, give your permission in lieu of free minutes or SMSes, opines Chattopadhyay. Thus for example a consumer while making an STD call may agree to listen to three minutes of mobile advertising in exchange for free call time before the call is connected. But till then this will be met with stiff resistance and opposition from users.
However, the next big jump will come from the launch of 3G and fast Internet browsing speeds for mobile devices. Then a lot of specific mobile advertisements will be made which will have a structure which is very different from the regular TVC or banner advertising on the Internet. “In the future, there will be a fusion of brand advertising and entertainment for mobile devices. For example a brand can generate original entertainment content which consumers will not mind receiving and then playing back while commuting or during their moments of relaxation,” Chattopadhyay says. For example, a Colgate Super Hit Muqabla can be send to consumers every week having the top 10 film songs of that period which consumers would not mind watching. However, for this to be effective, it needs packaging to the right audience. “If a college student has to be addressed, the content needs to be packaged to his taste,” says Chattopadhyay.
The opportunities will expand even further. With traditional advertising channels like print, radio and also TV becoming less effective as consumers now prefer information in the digitised format, mobile advertising is all set to become popular. Gen Next is particularly hooked to the Internet. The young segment in the age group of 18 to 34 has some special characteristics. Besides a high disposable income, the group is brand conscious. Also the attention span of this section is very small. Mobile operators could thus take advantage of this and beep their product information to the segment.
True, Bluetooth has been around for sometime now but it has been mostly used for the transfer of personal data. Now companies have gone one step further and have set up Dongles (servers) that beam data across shopping complexes, thereby making the commercial use of data possible. However, there are certain difficulties in this mode of advertising. Although the number of Bluetooth enabled phones has increased, what is essential is that the Bluetooth has to be switched on. “Also most users are not so tech savvy and do not even understand the use of Bluetooth — a situation that could prove challenging for advertisers,” says Chattopadhyay.
The opportunities are indeed boundless but there is a distinct possibility of spam messages filtering in too. Small wonder, then that people are still hesitant to receive Bluetooth messages just as you would hesitate to accept a lift from a stranger.
The author is a well known
industry watcher