Ad man: Creative, not technology, must lead mobile ad push

Fresh off an agreement this week to chair the advertising track at next month’s TM Forum Management World show in Orlando, the head of mobile technology for ad agency OgilvyOne emphasized that service providers can play a key enabling role in the advertising value chain. But, he said, placing technology – rather than an understanding of consumer needs – at the center of mobile advertising has led to many more misses than hits in the early days of this fledgling marketing medium.

“It’s about bringing creative into the mix right at the beginning and arming them with a good knowledge of what’s technically available and what they can do and then letting them use their creative process to come up with the best ways to use mobile for a brand but with the consumer at heart,” said Scott Seaborn head of mobile technologies at OgilvyOne UK.

That said, service providers have a key role to play in the advertising value chain, especially in mobile, where enabling technologies like subscriber-targeting and location-awareness offer so much added value, Seaborn said.

To help enable that cooperation between the creative and telecom worlds, OgilvyOne this week agreed to chair and support the Digital Commerce and Advertising Summit at the Management World event. The TM Forum has been delving increasingly into how service providers fit into the content world, including advertising, via so-called Content Encounter demo areas as well as the new ad summit, which will debut at this year’s event, said Martin Creaner, president of the TM Forum.

“It’s a real sign of the times that companies like Ogilvy are helping the forum touch on topics relevant to this overall theme of expanding the value chain,” Creaner said. “Service providers are at a critical crossroads and conflict point, with the potential for whole new businesses offering content-based services, paid for with advertising models. Quite frankly, [service providers] don’t know much about this. They have the technology and capabilities and access to customer info; but they don’t have a huge knowledge base about how to leverage it.”

According to OgilvyOne’s Seaborn, carriers have a great opportunity to work with the advertising industry and provide enabling technologies – but there needs to be better communication and collaboration between the two industries.