Previously we’ve looked at how mobile gaming can be used as an effective marketing tactic. This touched on issue that typical online ad metrics, such as CPM (cost per thousand) and PPC (pay per click) were not necessarily the best metrics to use in the mobile world and that perhaps we shouldn’t simply transplant them from the PC-based web to the mobile online world.
Indeed, a recent report from Nielsen, entitled Beyond Clicks and Impressions: Examining the Relationship between Online Advertising and Brand Building, comes to a similar conclusion across the board with regards to online, whether PC-based or mobile. It concludes:
- Click-through rate is not the right metric to measure brand impact — virtually no relationship exists between clicks and brand metrics or offline sales.
- There is emerging evidence that brand metrics in response to online campaigns are correlated with offline sales impact.
- Online ads can succeed in driving brand impact, though success is not guaranteed and advertisers must embrace new online branding metrics to separate themselves from the competition.
At last month’s Mobilize 2011 conference, this topic was tackled from the angle: looking beyond CPM for monetisation. The panel discussion acknowledged that while mobile advertising would continue to be a key part of the equation, there are a lot of new ideas and opportunities when it comes to monetising better through mobile.
The panel discussion was kicked off by Zephrin Lasker CEO of Pontiflex, which takes CPM and PPC a step forward with its AppLeads service, which only charges advertisers when a user signs up in some shape or form, perhaps by providing their contact details.
Lasker says that mobile is a must buy for New York ad agencies today, compared to 12 to 18 months ago. This has been driven very much by a changing consumption pattern, he says.
“So you have to get into mobile but if you’re going to be there you have to do it in an effective way,” he says. But “99% of the legacy vehicles are not effective” and the reality is that “if you’re there, but you’re doing it wrong, then you’re wasting your money”.
Brian Wong, CEO of Kiip, whose rewarding achievement moments we’ve covered previously, agreed that mobile ad spend is no longer seen as a luxury, but rather a necessity. However, he goes on to say that a mobile campaign is not yet seen as its own thing, more of an appendage to existing campaigns, but this will change.
Keren Zemer, the VP of business development at Appsfire, summed it up by saying: “Users are getting over exposed to ads and we need to get the attention of the users to make them get out of the app where they are. So it’s important to develop new ways to get their attention.”
Not too much crystal ball gazing was done in terms of what this new way might be, but the consensus certainly seemed to be that the current mobile ad method is broken.
View the full discussion here.
