Mobile Advertising: Matter Arising For Marketers And Brand Custodians

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Mobile advertising

By Tunji Faleye

In the present human endeavours one does not need to be told the efficacy of mobile phone.  When it was invented as a channel of communication by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973 using a handset weighing, they didn’t have inkling that it will become so phenomenal. The first commercial automated cellular network was launched in Japan by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 1979. This was followed in 1981 by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

Fast forward to 2001, the third generation (3G) was launched in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard. It was also upgraded to 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G enhancements based on the high-speed packet access (HSPA) family, allowing UMTS networks to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity.

By 2009, it became crystal clear that 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming media. Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized fourth-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvement up to ten-fold over existing 3G technologies. Interestingly, the first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard, offered in North America by Sprint, and the LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.

At this juncture, it is imperative to say that the evolution of mobile telephony has enhanced advertising that the likes of Facebook, Google and Snap deserve accolade for being in the vanguard of driving the rapid growth of mobile advertising, which includes social, video, search and programmatic.

For instance, agencies are spending a lump sum on Facebook and other social media despite the fact that they never intentionally plan to carve out a budget for mobile. Now a day, they reason that there is a need to make their ad budget goes where the audience is which are the Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

 

Marketers, Brand Custodians and Mobile Advertising

Recent industry reports on the state of mobile advertising revealed that marketers should not hesitate to have proper plans for mobile advertising in their fans engagement programmes.

For instance, a cursory look at the U.S market revealed that social video grew immensely in the U.S. last year and it will continue to increase in the subsequent years in that market.

Apart from U.S, Google and Facebook still have the biggest market share in mobile advertising in other part of the world. Interestingly too, Magna Global report recently revealed that the size of the global mobile advertising market by 2021 will increase by $215 billion. This will represent 72 percent of total digital budgets.

Nigeria is not an exception especially when one puts into consideration the massive population of the country which stands at 180 million.

What marketers have to understand is that base on 180 million people, Nigeria has a mean population of 19.2 years which means that the country has a very young population. Also, with the life expectancy of a Nigerian which is less than 50 year, it is obvious that the nation has well about 60% of its population in the youth category.  This is therefore instructive that we have entered into an exciting new digital era where marketers should evaluate their penetration and make judicious use of the mobile platform.

Bolaji Okusaga, Managing Director of QuadrantMLS, in a recent interview with Brand Communicator says, “marketers need to be proactive now that technology is driving the market so much so that it is increasingly difficult to separate a genre of marketing whether it is advertising, direct or PR because technology is driving active convergence.

“Technology has made it possible to watch TV on phone and to drive graphic content on mobile-so you talk about infographics. Now, what we then begin to have in terms of offerings is such that you couldn’t tell if it is direct, above the line or PR.

“If I were to do PR that didn’t take note of mobile and didn’t actually look at it that the habit of news followers and people you probably want to speak to has changed in terms of their media consumption habit, then, I will probably be getting it wrong.”

He added that information of the multimedia nature is actually the way to go right now. According to him, “if you were practicing PR and engaging in advertising language, you hope to get into conversation by gathering journalists together and try to serenade them on your brand values, and you give them information and hope it will travel far, then you are joking in today’s world.

“Ten years ago, that would have probably being the best way to go about it. A lot has changed in terms of the practice.”

 

Image result for mobile advertising

 

Vast advancements in technology have made the process of developing a responsive, unique and powerful advertising content very paramount.  This will enable marketers and other brand custodians to showcase their brands and services to a wide range of audience through the use of mobile advertising.

Also, unparalleled commercial opportunities await a number of brands if they are not left behind in the use of mobile advertising. Marketers also need to know that with smartphone usage prevalent, consumers demand for instantaneous advertisement of their favourite brands has to rise dramatically, especially when you realised that the difference between feature phones and mobile phones is already nearing 50/50.

Analysts’ opinion

Though analysts argue that the problem with consumer engagement doesn’t lie solely within the confines of a smartphone screens, however, it is advisable that brands innovative their marketing strategies for optimum deliverable. They should also devote 80 per cent of their consumer engagement strategies to mobile advertisement in the fast changing world.

 

 

 

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