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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Mobile banners – really?