Media Playground 2013: Mobile Advertising

The mobile advertising session at MediaTel’s sixth annual Media Playground event on Wednesday saw panellists take to the stage to analyse and give insight into what is often seen as a problematic issue for the industry.

Covering a range of topics from location-based ads, new venture Weve and its place in the mobile market, and whether mobile technology can even help solve global poverty, the scene was set by GfK’s Oliver Robinson with a pre-debate presentation in which he explored the huge rise in mobile technology.

Across Europe, smartphone and tablet use is at an all-time high, he says, with 54% of the European population owning a smartphone and 27% using tablets, though the PC / laptop is still a firm favourite, with 74% ownership.

Of the smartphone figure – which is apparently higher than the number of people that own toothbrushes – 54% browse the web daily, which is why it is absolutely imperative that mobile advertisers get it right – and, currently, the panel argued, they are failing.

Robinson said that if mobile advertising doesn’t respect what users are trying to do on mobile devices, it’ll end up doing more harm than good.

Simon Andrews, founder of addictive! followed this up to give his thoughts on the the current state of mobile advertising, taking his popular Newsline column, Mobile Fix, and turning it into a live show.

“It still sucks!” he said, adding further emphasis to a quote that the late Steve Jobs once said about mobile advertising.

He said that the problem with mobile advertising is that so many ads are either not optimised for mobile, not native to the device or take users through to a website that doesn’t support mobile viewing. It makes for a terrible user experience and is a waste of time and money for brands and consumers.

Raymond Snoddy, Newsline columnist, chaired the panel through the discussion, which as well as including Robinson and Andrews, also saw Michael Bayler, Director of Strategy at SapientNitro, Dan Hagen, Head of Planning at Carat and Ed Couchman, Sales Manager for Facebook take part.

In response to some of the points raised by Andrews, Hagen added that the mobile advertising industry needs to move faster if it wants to be successful – the amount of time spent on mobile devices and the amount of money spent on mobile advertising does not match.

And, according to Bayler, no brand outside of the technology field knows what to do with mobile, which he clarified was a challenge rather than a dismissal. He suggested that perhaps the mobile ad model needs to be rethought entirely.

“Well, I think we underestimated the speed at which mobile would take off,” Couchman said. “Take a look at Facebook – which is a mobile first platform: in just 18 months Facebook’s mobile ad revenue has gone from 0% to 24%.” The growth is phenomenal, and it’s difficult for advertisers to adapt in such a rapidly changing, technological landscape.

“Currently” Couchman added, “there is no natural ad format on mobile and they need to be native to the device.” Hopefully then, given time, this will happen.

But until then? “Don’t get in the game,” Hagan says. “Only do it when you have something polished; something of value.”

But things will slow down. The smartphone has now run out of devices to cannibalise and we seem to be seeing a bit of a plateau effect with each new upgrade seeing less of a technological leap than we saw only a few years ago. Given this breathing space, it could give advertisers the time to get things right.

Location, location, location

It was the issue of location-based and targeted advertising that really got the panel talking. Bayler said that many mistake location for relevance; ads might be smart enough to know where you are, but they need to say something of value too.

Unfortunately, the panel argued, they get the message – or value – wrong more often than not. This should be, Bayler insists, about empowering the consumer; “targeting is not empowering,” he said. “Value is empowering. We should not mistake location for relevance. It’s just another piece of data. We’ve too often had an ad that got the location right but its intent was entirely wrong.”

One of the main issue is that many companies overstep the line of intimacy. There’s a difference between owning information about a consumer and having a relationship with them.

“If you’re going to vibrate in somebody else’s pocket, you need to have something interesting to say,” Bayler said.

This prompted a discussion about Weve, the new start-up that uses the combined customer base of O2, Vodafone and EE and is now ready to take on Google and Apple in the UK’s lucrative mobile commerce space. It might have access to 15 million opted in consumers, and certainly has big plans to use target and location-based advertising, but the panellists were generally unenthusiastic.

Andrews said that he doesn’t see Weve as being particularly relevant and that he’d be surprised if it lasted more than 18 months. “Operators overstate their own importance and I don’t see them as that relevant.”

Weve will, undoubtedly, argue otherwise and before leaving earlier this month after successfully launching the company, Nancy Cruickshank spoke with Newsline to explain exactly why the venture will mean big things for brands.

A force for good?

Mobile has, in a very short space of time, radically altered our lives, but one final, sweeping question: can mobile technology solve poverty?

The general consensus was yes, with Couchman citing Facebook’s current project ‘Water Aid‘, which aims to overcome poverty by giving third world countries access to clean water and educating people in sanitation and hygiene. Mobiles are cheap, practical and empowering. They represent a bright future for everyone Hagen added.

Bayler was slightly more sceptical, saying that the only thing that will drive this is transparency.

“It’s a lovely thought though.”