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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."
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.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
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.
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.
My own theory is that the whole "personalized ads" concept is bullshit, at least when it's taken as far as it is now.
Someone who knows me EXACTLY (which seems to be what they're trying to do) would recommend to me pretty much just the things I already buy, and would buy anyways. I don't think I've *ever* clicked on an ad and bought what they were selling. Even if they could read my mind, all they would really be doing is giving me the link I'd be clicking on in a few seconds *anyways*.
In fact, it seems to do the exact opposite. I bought an SSD recently, and ever since my GMail has been showing nothing but ads for SSDs. Way to completely miss your chance - I probably won't need another for months, at the earliest. Or when I bought a laptop, for the next few weeks it was showing ads for Alienware laptops.
And then sometimes it gets things just completely, absolutely wrong. I swear that at one point, my Droid was *convinced* that I was a gay black man with AIDS. Wrong on all counts save that yes, I am male. I don't even know how it came up with that - there is literally nothing I've done that would support that idea. Needless to say, the "gay thug dating" and "HIV testing" ads had a zero chance of getting money from me (although it did get quite a few laughs).
So maybe the problem is that the entire framework of economic/advertising theories they're working on are *wrong*. Like when all the physicists' theories about the luminiferous ether had to be thrown out when it was demonstrated that no such thing existed. I would not be surprised if, decades from now, we look back at all this tracking and personalized advertising the way we currently look back at the "radiation" fad of the 50's - a lot of really bad ideas that we now know are completely wrong.
Android has a task bar type thing. When you hold the "Home" button for 3 seconds it brings up you most recent applications. Tapping on an application pulls it's most recent state from the stack and restores it exactly as you left it.
--Sparksis
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.
"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."
Or vagina.
The whole ad industry and it's suppliers (Google, FB etc) are run by marketers. The fundamental theory that drives marketing is that the more you advertise, the better you sell (up to a point of marginal returns). No one has seriously looked at this approach to marketing in a long time. The result is that the billions spent on TV/Radio/Newspaper are moving to online advertising. While online advertising offers improved feedback, it basically is push advertising - shoving something in front of you in the hope that you will bite. Well, think for yourself, does that work for you? I, mostly, am supremely annoyed by push ads and I think the age of push ads will quickly die. In the future, marketers will have to engage more personally with buyers and require more humans to interact with buyers to form some sort of trust. The age of holding (and hiding behind) a big megaphone and blasting your message will quickly come to an end.
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.
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