CTIA: Mobile advertising tackles metrics in 2009

CEO Dan Smith said that while metrics are a key challenge for mobile – as they are for any new platform, it is getting better. There was very little visibility into mobile at all a few years ago, but that has clearly started to change. Advertisers, too, are getting savvier in what they use to evaluate their mobile campaigns.

“I think it’s an interesting year and no question, it’s going to be a difficult climate, but it’s one in which we will see more growth in mobile ads and more appreciation of mobile,” Smith said. “One thing that won’t be limited by the economy is growth in mobile data and traffic and a continued awareness of mobile as an important marketing platform. We may still see some trepidation in mobile ad budgets, and we may not be breaking new records in mobile campaigns, but there will be continued appreciation and attention around mobile ads.”

Sonali Shah, director of corporate development and strategy for VeriSign’s messaging and mobile media division, added that there are still issues to be worked out around privacy and security. But, when mobile ads do come in mass, it will be driven by the power of incorporating location-based services with ads as in the classic Starbuck’s example of a consumer receiving a coupon when they passed by the coffee shop. From an SMS aggregator’s perspective, there is a big and necessary opportunity to be found in SMS advertisements as well. Consumers generally don’t use all 160 of their allocated characters, making the remaining space optimal for a targeted text ad.

“Carriers are concerned because SMS volume keeps growing,” Shah said. “It never slows and they are wondering how people are monetizing it. It’s a cost to send out these updates even thought it does increase consumer loyalty. If we can get ad model right, it could be very powerful.”

The general consensus amongst most was that 2009 will be a good year to continue to build out the required infrastructure for mobile advertising, and then when the economy does rebound and companies reallocate their budgets, they will be poised to capitalize on the mobile ad opportunity. All the industry bodies have agreed to solve the metrics problem in 2009, so friction removal is underway, Wehrs said.

“Step one will be to slash [budgets], step two is to reallocate budgets,” Smith added. “It’s real easy to build the budget back up and put more in mobile and less in other aspects. 2010 will be great year for revenue. 2009 will be a good year from the infrastructure perspective.”