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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."
I saw an ad once that interested me, but I didn't click on it simply because it would have exited the app I was in and switched to a web browser. If my phone had the equivalent of a taskbar that allows you to quickly and easily switch between open programs, then I probably would have clicked it. Of course, that was one ad in the seven months I've owned a smartphone.
Annoyed customers are not paying customers.
Hulu could stand to learn from this. In general their ads are just what they are, but they always have that "Is this ad relevant to you?" thing up in the corner. There's some ads that I dislike, so much, I actually take the effort to click no on. Surprisingly I then continue to see those ads over and over again. This generally just annoys me to the point where I would never, ever, purchase whatever product that is, or from whatever company is advertising.
Ironically the advertisers could get a much bigger bank for their buck by not wasting money showing a particular ad to people who have already said that the ad doesn't interest them.