Mobile banners – really?

693284 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:18:00 GMT

News arrives that CNET, the Telegraph and Trinity Mirror have signed up to Nokia’s Media Network – so advertisers can add them to the list of sites on which their mobile banners can appear. But, should they bother?

Nokia claims that click-through rates average 10% on the network but, having seen mobile banners in situ and tried to navigate around mobile sites on a regular basis, I can’t help thinking that won’t last for long.

Most mobile banners are for mobile content – games, screensavers, ringtones, nudie pictures etc. That’s because that’s all you can really buy through your phone. They are thus a natural click for mobile users. They also tend to dominate, yet blend into, the existing content on mobile web sites in a way online banners really don’t, which helps the click-through rates. And as more services come to mobile, especially with pay-per-call being more commonly exploited, then ad space on mobile sites will be more sought after by traditional advertisers, and rightly so.

But, it won’t be long before the decline sets in. As more advertisers arrive, the more likely it is that less value will be delivered behind the click. That will help us to develop our mobile banner blind-spot. Meanwhile, mobile usage will see that the amount of inventory available goes up by at least as much as demand. All that means that the value of banners will decline just as it has online. On big horizontal sites like MSN and Facebook, they go for 30p a thousand – that’s approaching free.

So, for a while, mobile banners will generate good cash for media owners as advertisers try it out. But, once their agencies get round to doing the numbers, something won’t add up and commoditisation will hit the mobile sector too. Maybe then, while all that plays out, we should be focusing more attention on where lasting value is likely to be.

Search has shown us how ‘advertising’ really works on the web – and it’s not really advertising. We look for things, it offers links to those things. That some of those links are paid for is neither here nor there – in fact, when you consider the investment in SEO, they’re all paid for.

The same thinking has to apply to mobile – to deliver monetisable services not advertising messages – and that’s why I’d think hard before I bought a load of mobile ad banners, even from Nokia.

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812253 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:08:00 GMT

Apparently no matter how weird, worthy, dull or deranged you are, there's a social network for you and the Crave part of the Cnet website have been good enough to pull togeter the 50 most bizarre social networks.

It makes fascinating reading what people get up to from the understandable but oddly named Sermo where over 65,000 doctors share their knowledge from the frontline of medicine, to the supportive divorce 360 for people contemplating, going through or recovering from divorce to the stalkers dream of Loopt - a friend-locator site that uses GPS to turn your mobile into a homing beacon or the dark (self explanatory) Goth passions. I personally found the my free implants the most extraordinary.

Social networking is booming with emarketer.com predicting Worldwide advertising spend on social networks forecast to reach £2bn by 2011 with roughly 11 million UK Internet users visting online social network sites regularly in 2007. And the market is booming—60% of respondents to an early-2008 survey said they had created a social network profile, up from 27% in 2007.

So if you have a brand that is interested in where they can reach recovering alcoholics (sobercircle if you are interested) or Hamster lovers (yes seriously - complete with a paw pointer - see hamsterster.com) then here is your answer !

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Mobile banners – really?

Enjoy Salsa? Live in Brighton? check out Anderstand