The Billions In Mobile Ad Money Nobody Can Grab

jfruh writes "Here's a pressing mystery: despite users spending an increasing amount on their mobile phones, mobiile advertising only produces 20% of the revenues per page that web advertising does. This seems like a big opportunity for somebody, but a whole complex of reasons might mean that it isn't just a matter of someone being smart enough to do mobile ads right. The whole advertising industry, which in many ways still resembles the Mad Men-era old boy's network, simply may not be equipped to cope."

Comments

Cant be done "right".

[Kenja]

The screen real-estate on a mobile device is too tight for an add to be non-intrusive and simply piss people off. Annoyed customers are not paying customers.

Re:Cant be done "right".

[arisvega]

The screen real-estate on a mobile device is too tight ..

As is bandwidth. Which also tends to be ridiculously overpriced.

Re:Cant be done "right".

[epp_b]

Exactly right. Ad-supported programs only encourage me to search for alternatives that don't insult and annoy me. Especially annoying are the unskippable (or delayed-skip) video ads that appear before program startup or between program actions (ie.: Words with Friends, MixZing).

Listen up mobile software writers: the way to entice people to buy your software is to release a limited version for free and a full-featured version for sale with additional, useful features. But don't omit so many features that will cripple the free version into uselessness, that will only cause users to lose confidence in your software (ie.: if I buy the program, how can I be sure that these features work properly?)

It's called "the first taste is free" and it's one of the oldest tricks in marketing.

For example, I downloaded an volume levels program (I refuse to use the word "app" since Apple has doucherized the term) called AudioGuru which can set the various volume levels on the phone differently according to the time of day. The free version that I use has only a single daily schedule, the paid version can schedule varyingly according to the day of the week.

See? It's still useful, not annoying, but the additional features would make it more useful and convenient. I will try it for a little while and I may find that I forget to set the volume on days where the schedule would change.

Select the features you'll omit by balancing users' money with their time and convenience, not by annoying them (hint: ads are annoying).

There you go, developers, you can have this tip for free. Now, please stop pissing us off with your ad BS.

Re:Cant be done "right".

[DarkOx]

What you don't understand is they want the ad to stick in your mind. Granted if you are so aggravated that you might select a competitors product out of spite that is a problem; but for the most you answering that question, even in the negative means the ad worked!

They just got you to think consciously about the content of their ad enough for you to directly act on it. Most ads are more or less ignored. Before sn ad can accomplish anything else its got to get your attention. You answering the "was this relevant" question at all proves they did that much. The nature of the question requiring to think about what you just watched increases the likelihood you will remember it later as well, another win.

Re:Cant be done "right".

[steelfood]

On the desktop, you pay for the connection, but there's no limit to how much you can download (outside of the max bandwidth x time calculation). In that case, the price of advertising is fairly cheap to the consumer.

On the phone, you're paying by the bit. This means even the extra text that gets sent across the air to your phone is costing you money. That cost becomes fairly significant when you're receiving flash or HTML5 ads with animation and video and whatnot.

The answer to why mobile advertising remains largely untapped is fairly obvious: it directly impacts the customer's wallet.

Mobile ads are a waste of time, space, and money.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Be honest those of you who have a smart phone, when is the last time you saw an ad on it and seriously thought about even clicking it, much less spending money on what was shown?

Re:Mobile ads are a waste of time, space, and mone

[Missing.Matter]

Advertising isn't always about getting you to buy a product then and there. While that's nice, it can be much more subtle than that. For instance I've never seen a TV ad for mouth wash and rushed out to the store right after to buy some. But the next time I did actually want to buy mouthwash, I went to the grocery store and was confronted with about half a dozen brands. Which one do I buy? Well, probably the one that is more familiar to me, the one I have seen advertised the most.

The trouble with advertising on smartphones

[Animats]

There's the screen real estate problem, of course. More important, though, is the business model. Phones are sold to carriers. They make their money from service charges. They don't need ads. They'd rather have paid services be paid for through them.

Unwanted

[sqrt(2)]

Advertising is unwanted, and intended to mislead. It is especially obnoxious on a platform that costs a lot of money and has a small screen. Phones and plans are expensive and then on top of that you tell people they are going to see ads? They're not going to be happy. I especially hate efforts to spy on me in order to increase the effectiveness of ads that I don't want to see for products I don't want.

Moreover, I find *ALL* advertising to be annoying and unwanted, the more custom tailored it is to me the more offensive I find it. Also, advertising seems to operate under the assumption that people have money to spend. Tell me, how is an advertising based economy going to work when every year more and more people are unemployed? I don't care how targeted and relevant your ads are, people without jobs aren't going to buy your product/service.

The advertising economy is headed for a huge crash, and mobile is just an especially obvious example. It's a scam, top to bottom.