Survey Finds 61 Percent of Mobile Users Would Agree to View Advertising for Discount on Monthly Bill

Transverse, a pioneer of open source business solutions, today released the results of a wireless and mobile industry research survey which provides insight into mobile customers’ phone use and their willingness to view advertisements in exchange for discounts to their monthly service bill.

The survey, commissioned by Transverse and conducted by iGR, a market strategy consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile industry, interviewed 810 wireless subscribers ages 18 to 65, found that the majority of respondents were receptive to mobile advertising. In fact, 56 percent of mobile users said they would view ads on their phones if they were given a 25 to 50 percent discount on their monthly bill.

Among the other key findings of the survey were:

* Mobile users under the age of 35 were most receptive to advertisements on their mobile device as incentives for discounts on their monthly service bill.
* Younger users ages 18-25, who are more apt to text, were among the most willing to trade the number of text messages sent/received while audiences 26-44 years of age, who are more apt to talk, were most willing to trade voice usage for discounted services.
* 46 percent of those surveyed said that a 25 to 50 percent discount on their monthly bill was enough of an incentive to provide access to their usage patterns, including browsing, email and texting habits, as well as location - but not personal information such as the content of texts and emails.

“Mobile advertising has taken on many forms, and is generally considered to be intrusive. But when consumers are given the choice to receive ads and share their usage patterns in exchange for discounts, mobile advertising has the potential to be highly targeted and highly effective,” Iain Gillott, President of iGR. “These survey findings indicate that consumers are open to non-traditional mobile advertising models.”

“With today’s economy, consumers are actively looking for ways to cut back their monthly expenses,” said Jim Messer, president and CEO of Transverse. “When a carrier is able to open up their customer base to create better value relationships among users, brands, merchants and the media companies, consumers will see a significant reduction on their monthly bill, advertisers will have a highly targeted avenue to reach their audience, and wireless service providers will see new revenue streams to improve their bottom lines. All of this is made possible with state-of-the-art OSS technology available today.”

Serving Your Customers With Mobile Marketing

Is your company Web site easily browsed by mobile devices like phones and BlackBerrys? If not, you may want to do something about that — soon.

Mobile_MarketingJust maintaining your Web site may seem daunting enough. But there’s reason to start planning ahead to the next frontiers of Internet usage. All signs suggest that online browsing will be done increasingly by mobile phone.

A July report by Nielsen Mobile showed that 15.6% of U.S. subscribers “actively use” the mobile Internet – that is, use the Internet services on their mobile device at least once a month. And that number is rising quickly as more carriers bundle their voice plans with plans that offer Internet usage.

Questions for Yahoo's Head of Mobile Advertising and Publishing

Yahoo may not have its own mobile OS or branded phone like Google, but its mobile offerings -- such as Yahoo Go, OneSearch, and OneConnect on the iPhone -- reach millions of users worldwide.

At the helm of Yahoo's advertising initiatives is David Katz. Appointed in June, Katz has overseen the launch of a search and display ad partnership with AT&T and one with T-Mobile. ClickZ talked to him last week about Yahoo's mobile progress and its plans for 2009.

Q. What has happened in the two months since you took over?

A.We've had a busy couple of months in terms of what we've accomplished. We launched a mobile search and display partnership with AT&T. We launched partnerships in Asia as well [with carriers in Malaysia and India].

On the product side, our big [news] is the launch of rich media ads in the Yahoo Go product. The challenge was most phones don't have Flash support. With Yahoo Go we can control the media experience. A great set of brands can get excited about [the ad offering], with recent campaigns from Ford, Mountain Dew, Nationwide, and we just launched with the Sci-Fi Channel.

How Do Mobile Users Spend Their Time?

Texting tops the list.

Mobile users in the US are on their phones more than ever, talking, texting, watching videos and using the mobile Web.

Over one-half (54%) of mobile users surveyed in September 2008 by Azuki Systems said their usage had increased by more than 25% over the past two years. One-fifth said their usage had increased by 50% or more. One-third of respondents talked on their mobile phone more than 10 hours per week, and 34% of respondents ages 17 and under talked for more than 15 hours weekly.

But minutes of talk time became a commodity long ago, and mobile carriers—and the marketers who want to reach mobile customers—are looking to mobile data for new revenues.

The survey results should encourage them: Nearly four out of 10 mobile Internet users surfed the mobile Web for 2 or more hours every week. That number is likely to rise as smartphones continue to go mass market; 62% of mobile users surveyed said they either already owned or would own one within the next 12 months.
Nearly four out of five mobile users said they sent text messages from their phone, and 29% of those who did spent more than 2 hours every week on the activity.

The percentage of mobile users who told Azuki they sent text messages was even higher than results recorded by Nielsen Mobile in Q2 2008. Nielsen also found texting to be the most common mobile content activity, although it estimated that only 53% of mobile users engaged in SMS messaging.

Mobile marketing spend to rise 150% in five years

Mobile marketing is set to take off as major brands look to invest in the platform over the next five years, according to an independent survey commissioned by O2.

The survey shows brands will have increased their spend on mobile marketing by 150% come 2013 and do not anticipate any impact on budgets as a result of the economic downturn.

The survey, which was carried out by Vanson Bourne in May this year and included marketing and IT directors at 100 leading brands, also found that the personalised nature of mobile marketing campaigns means they generate a higher response rate than traditional advertising.

Of those marketing directors questioned, 60% favoured mobile marketing because it was considered better for close targeting, especially in financial services advertising.

The use of mobile marketing is increasing with specific services gaining in popularity. Text-to-win competitions and text-to-call-back or email campaigns have increased in use by more than 20% each, while retail and financial services ads were judged the most popular mobile advertising areas.

SMS was used by nearly a third of all businesses interviewed, yet half of the marketers questioned who have yet to make use of mobile marketing campaigns claim they are concerned that their customers will view the text messages as spam.

Simon Dean, head of mobile media at O2 UK said there has "never been a better time for brands to engage with their customers via mobile".

Dean said: "One in 10 of those we surveyed already think mobile marketing has saved their business at least £1m when compared to other marketing solutions.

"With more consumers than ever browsing the web through their mobile handsets, there is a significant and largely untapped audience for brands to target their customers directly."

How to get the most out of mobile marketing

The movement to access content on mobile platforms is gathering pace: 57 per cent of mobile phone users will have 3G internet access by 2011, according to Forrester Research.

So far, the speed of the mobile internet has limited its development. But the popularity of flat-rate data plans, the proliferation of services and applications, and the emergence of high-speed devices such as the iPhone 3G and BlackBerry Bold, have made the technology viable and accessible.

Marketing group Nielsen estimates that going mobile will extend the audience reach of many internet sites by an average of 13 per cent. To get their hands on this ever-growing market, search providers are introducing applications and services, and opening up new possibilities to market on a personal level.

For marketers looking to use mobile web browsers, it is critical that their offering is presented in a practical, consumable way. For media-driven sites such as Disney.co.uk, this is a straightforward proposition - making a 'snack-sized' portal that balances advertising with content. Retailers have been more cautious, given the difficulty in displaying sufficient quantities of information to encourage a purchase.

But, unlike the fixed internet, the mobile web has no established models by which to measure success or failure, which makes it difficult to justify its slice of the marketing budget. It is therefore important for marketers to start to obtain a view of how their customers are interacting with their brand over this channel. Are visitors viewing more than one page on the site? Are their browsers capable of handling video? What screen size do most visitors use?

The mobile internet is reaching critical mass. Digital marketers need to understand its value and how to communicate with visitors accessing their sites with handheld devices. Maximising its potential begins with analytics, and using the lessons of the internet will help us understand how to deliver value.

Riding the Perfect Storm of Mobile Marketing

A flurry of new studies and product releases last week seems to point to one thing: we're about to enter the perfect storm for mobile marketing. And it's time to think about how mobile marketing is different and how we can fit it into our increasingly complicated campaigns.

And while you may feel like you've heard this before well things are different now. The technology's become fairly mature. People are used to texting and mobile e-mail. Devices work a heck of a lot better, and today's mobile devices now come tricked out with GPS, Wi-Fi, cameras, and a host of other features that the old four-function flip phones of yore could only dream of.

People are changing their use of mobile technology, too. Fully 17 percent of households are ditching their landlines for mobile phones, and Nielsen Mobile predicts that the number could jump to 20 percent by year's end. While it's not a big surprise to anyone that teens are leading the mobile revolution, I was amused by a recent Harris Interactive study which found that nearly 60 percent of teens credited their mobile phone for improving their lives and that four out of five teens carry mobile devices (a 40 percent jump from 2004). In fact, the devices have become so much a part of their lives that the same study found that 42 percent of teens could text blindfolded!

While the mobile Web and mobile marketing in general have had their share of overhyped moments and jump-the-gun promises in the past 10 years, there's no question now that if you're a marketer, you'd better be paying attention. And once you start paying attention, you'd better start thinking differently.

Source: clickz.com

Mobile Ads Might Work with Teens

Their attention has a price

Nearly one-half of teen mobile phone users in the US said they would be at least somewhat interested in accepting mobile ads, as long as they got something in return, according to a September 2008 study conducted by Harris Interactive for mobile trade group CTIA.

For the past three years, Synovate has surveyed mobile phone users in the US on behalf of the Mobile Marketing Association. Each year, at least three-quarters of respondents said they were not interested in mobile marketing.

College Students' Social Networking

Many collegians are on daily.

Social networking is an everyday activity for the majority of college students, and the percentage of students who use the networks daily has nearly doubled in the past two years. EDUCAUSE compared social network usage at 44 colleges and universities in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It found that nearly twice as many students at these institutions use social networks every day in 2008 (59%) than did in 2006 (33%).

Source: emarketer.com