One thing you can be sure of in an ad recession is that budgets for unproven marketing channels get gone. This means that – as an ad channel at least - mobile will have to take yet another break; we’re probably another two years away.
Trying to view mobile [phones] as an ad channel in the first place is of course a mistake. In fact, the internet (whether web, email, IPTV, whatever) in general isn’t much cop at 'advertising'. As a marketing channel it’s the absolute business. But, because of its on-demand nature, its real strength is in only one of the four ‘p’s and that’s ‘place’. It is as a distribution channel that the web has proven most disruptive as any newspaper or retailer could testify.
Mobile, in my view, could be just as disruptive but, again, as marketing channel not ad medium – and again in distribution. It stands out most as the channel to deliver on people’s ‘here and now’ needs and as an enabling mechanic. Voucher codes, for example, are getting big in the online retail/affiliate sector. In the US, redeeming online codes in-store is commonplace. How better to do that than have the code sent to your mobile?
Nonetheless we will turn the mobile into an ad platform somehow – it’s what we know. But, now that the Bellwether report has confirmed our fears, we can expect any money that was set aside for its exploration to have been handed back to the finance director.
