Mobile Media Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

The best way to responsibly understand and share with others what mobile advertising is, read the wikipedia article now.

This post will be just restating the obvious for the new media readers among us, but even then, you have to keep up daily to maintain a clear head about what is relevant vs what is mere intrigue.

The bottom line in case anyone asks you, mobile advertising, the little $600 million step-child to internet advertising altogether, consists of two main things:
1) Little banner on on little screens on phone browsers.
2) Sponsored text messages, or some other way to use text messaging without crossing the line into spam.

Although mobile marketers only talk openly about a steady increase in this existing paradigm, as no one apart from visionary entrepreneurs wants to be pinned to specific predictions, the real gut about the exciting future of mobile advertising lies in emerging disruptive mobile media ideas and innovations. We’ll see quite a few things fail, and a few things rise to redefine the mobile landscape. Of course as an self-promoting entrepreneur myself I believe our audio advertising model will be one of the disruptors.

Take a look at this chart I found from a post last summer…

I bet if we got a focus group of 20 mobile executives together now, most would say this revenue breakdown is already outdated. I would be one of them, and would argue purely from changes in pricing and consumer trends since last year, that the pie will be cut in a whole different way.

This manner of consolidation might streamline ad distribution, or it might create a bottleneck that limits radio’s desperate need to innovate and work in line with the changing landscape of advertising toward the interactive age.

We can only speak as pioneers of a new kind of radio advertising that requires a degree of creative thought from our partners. With creative independence being in short supply these days, my initial reaction to this announcement is that of concern.

There is something very sweet about being in the right place just ahead of the right time.

Informa Telecoms and Media report, entitled “Mobile Advertising Services: Generating revenue through subsidised content” points to great trends coming into being, but even they can’t predict newer types of mobile advertising that is not even on the radar yet.

We are in that spot, with interactive spots available now, highly measurable and profitable.

This article from Ad Age on the growth of alternative advertising is a must-read for CMO’s and agencies looking to gain or maintain leadership.

Although covering a very broad topic, the elements related to mobile advertising, and what radio categorizes as NTR or non-traditional advertising is the most dynamic area of growth in alternative advertising. Having said that, this growing quarter of the larger set is disruptive, volatile, and dynamic. The numbers are impossible to predict, although we all welcome consultants doing their prognostications anyway — that’s what they do.

What will the affect of CelleCasting be for radio advertising by making it interactive? What will be the affect of social media as people begin to share their ad preferences, and use RSS more and more to get informed on their own terms? What other innovations in mobile advertising are on the horizon?

No one knows… but you can bet the CMO’s and agencies who are investing ahead into new media pioneers now will be rewarded. Toyota set 10% of their 2008 ad budget aside for alternative, experimental media. I feel this is the right amount of seed to plant into the future of advertising.

Most people cringe at the idea of receiving ads on the most personal of media devices - their mobile phone. It’s invasive and annoying, many would argue.

Add in some free goodies in exchange and you’ll find a slightly warmer reception to the idea. A recent study posted in eMarketer found that almost half of those surveyed would even pass along ads to others for perks such as free music downloads and SMS messaging.

In other words, give me something cool, and I might tolerate your ads.

What about free, unlimited, on-demand access to dozens of great radio programs? And what if the value delivered was not only in the content received, but in the ad itself? That’s right - ads that present offers in which listeners would actually be interested. What if those ads were presented in an inobtrusive way that allowed listeners to respond instantly, but only if they were interested?

Sound impossible? It’s not. It’s a reality.

Ten years ago, mobile advertising was in its infancy, something that most cellular users had not encountered. In 2008, an eMarketer study finds that 58 million US mobile subscribers have seen a mobile advertisement on their phones in the past 30 days. That accounts for 23% of U.S. mobile subscribers.

While far from market saturation, it does represent a substantial increase, one that will continue in its upward trend.

But just how lucrative is the mobile advertising market? Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers. MocoNews this week summed it up by showing that mobile advertising forecasts range anywhere from $11 billion to $250 billion in the next several years.

Compared to the $871 million spent on mobile ads worldwide in 2006 (according to Informa Telecoms & Media), even the most modest projection represents an 1100% increase.

But will mobile users tolerate ads served over their most personal media device? eMarketer goes on to say that for some, the answer is yes.

In addition, 32% of mobile data users said they were open to receiving mobile advertising if it lowers their overall bill and 13% were open to mobile ads if it improved the media and content currently available.

This stat overlooks the more subtle and natural form of mobile advertising, the audio ad. When served in the midst of audio and radio content that consumers deliberately seek out, those numbers may increase. After all, the audio ad overcomes barriers inherent in data based ads, because it is accessible to every phone. It is universally accessible, just like the audio content that is attached to it with cellecasting.

The next few years will see enormous increases in mobile ads. We predict a big portion of that will be in ubiquitous, short, interactive audio ads placed amidst premium talk radio content that is more and more moving to on-demand mobile delivery.

As the jewel of his keynote in the RAB Radio conference yesterday, Jeff Haley said that if radio was available on every mobile phone, and if half the subscribers listened to it for half an hour a day, then that would create $3 billion annual increase in radio advertising revenue. Then he said we need to commit to seeing this happen. Here it for yourself.

We are with you Jeff, and dare I say, already a few steps down the road. We have enabled any talk format radio to be delivered to all 243 million cell phones as well as the 181 million landlines anywhere, anytime on CelleCast. It is not dependent on FM tuners being put into handsets and the instant on-demand capabilities create the kind of passion re-ignition value needed to reach todays consumer.

Having developed the technical network to make this happen and as we prepare to launch the Dr. Laura Program as our marquis program cellecast, we are now ready to engage the advertising community squarely to accelerate the achievement of the 2020 goals.

To give you the three points of what the Radio 2020 initiative is, here it is from Jeff’s speech:

1) Address perceived concerns about the health of Radio head on.
2) Engage the industry head on to connect stations, producers to “build an entire radio ecosystem”.
3) engage consumers to reignite their passion for radio.

BTW, this initiative was first presented by NAB’s David Rehr at the 07 NAB Radio show in Charlotte. He had 4 points. I remember then that we were poised to deliver 3 of the 4. When I speak at the Radio Convergence Conference in San Jose next month, I’ll be sure to bring this up.

Also of interest from Jeff’s state of the industry address:
Katz and Interep and RAB are creating a new hub for advertising communication. What will these mean for media buyers?

There are many times in life where being new makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. Remember your first day at school? Even your first year in middle school. CelleCast has been this fresh entrant into the world of media in various forms over the last year and it is often very tempting to feel like an imposing newbie in a world of big veterans. So I thought this post would be a good way to let you know how I deal with it. What I try to do is to see our fledgling start up more like this:

Cute, adorable and full of amazing potential to add great value to the lives we touch.
Yes that is us.

So now is the time to adopt CelleCast into your NTR outlets, while we are still light enough to pick up and well trained to complement the changing world of radio.

Anyway, although I couldn’t resist the analogy, the original intent of this post is to let everyone know I’ll be working in the Bay Area from 2/11 to 2/23 while getting certified to to guide our daughters canine companion and bring it home to Vancouver. That should make me a very sensitive and more sympathetic exec as well.

For all the hype about mobile advertising and what a giant it will be in the future, its current state is still fraught with many challenges. MocoNews reports that among them are too much complexity, fragmentation, carrier’s issues, and ultimately, convincing marketers to do a mobile campaign.

All that pertains to visual (text and banner) mobile ads, converging on a space where they are not yet expected or accepted. True, they’ll likely become normal down the road. But in the meantime there is a painfully overlooked way to do mobile advertising: audio.

After all, aren’t mobile phones first and foremost an audio channel? So serving ads through a audio channel should most naturally be in the same form.

Believe it or not, doing mobile audio ads sidesteps all the challenges mentioned above. Pair ads with popular radio and audio content that consumers are accessing more and more from their phones, and you’ve got a winner. A solution that sidesteps carrier issues because the ads can be served to any handset in the world. This also eliminates the complexity because we’re all already trained to listen to ads on the radio. It doesn’t require a new behavior to be learned. No complex click through screens on tiny mobile browsers. Just a quick painless audio ad, inviting consumers to push one button if they want to hear more.

Universal accessibility for mobile campaigns. Achievable sooner than you think.

eMarketer reports that in the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, 78 million US consumers saw or heard advertising on their mobile phones. That’s almost 30 percent of the population. Yet, advertising budgets were disproportionate to the bottomless potential in this realm, compared to spending on other media. From the article:

“There is a clear disparity between the high reach of mobile media and the low percentage of marketing budget currently spent on the medium, which creates an obvious opportunity for savvy media buyers,” said Rob Lawson, president and co-founder of Limbo.

Just what we’ve been saying for the past year. What marketer wouldn’t want to place their ads on a medium that reaches over 243 million people in the U.S.? It’s pervasive, measurable, targetable and 100% accountable; all things that are quickly becoming “musts” on media buyers lists of prerequisites for their buys. Media research firms all show that mobile advertising is a medium of undeniable, impending exponential growth.

For radio and other traditional media, this is a good thing when looked at with the proper lens. You’re in the business of producing content, and monetizing it with advertising. Since the ways advertisers spend their money is changing, so must the way you distribute your content. Put your content where advertisers are putting their dollars, and your revenue will continue to grow.

Smart broadcasters will act ahead of the curve. They’ll see where ad dollars are going (mobile), and make sure their brand is represented there - giving their advertisers a reason to innovate with them in the process. They’ll find the most universal solutions that bring the best revenue potential and make themselves profitable new media pioneers.