Mobile Advertising

Alex: I 100% completely agree with this

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I read this article last week entitled “Why 2008 won’t be the breakthrough year for Mobile Advertising”. It was originally published in the middle of Mobile World Congress.

It makes for very good reading and clearly outlines the one caveat that is currently preventing the mobile advertising boom that has been promised for the past seven years: Advertisers simply don’t have the money to buy mobile ads. Nate Elliott also goes onto theorise that interesting things may happen in 2009 and the real (European) breakthrough will come in 2010.

After spending a few days digesting, I have to say that it is one theory that I buy into… It’s nearly here and the recently announced Mobile Ad deals laid out in that piece show this. Combine that with the consistent month on month growth rate of companies like Blyk - who have bet the farm on this particular return of investment - and you can see that we’re almost at tipping point. But, again, as the article points out, we’ve been almost at tipping point for just shy of a decade.
By way of comparison, in the UK there’s a TV programme called Skins, (it’s young, a bit good, knows its audiences and once you’ve watched a few you’re hooked) and recently E4, the younger, digital sister channel of Channel 4, started airing Season 2.

This in itself is really no big deal. However the amount of cash spent on the blanket marketing is.

You can’t get away from it!

And not in a bad way either. The TV spots are stylised; hinting at character development and yet still keeping the dark, surreal undertone that flows throughout the show. The ’skincasts’, Podcasts containing interviews with the cast members are there for you to download to your MP3 player of choice, the community is there.

One of the interesting side effects of the first season, and something the UK media like to jump when there’s a slow news day, is the amount of young teenagers throwing themed ’skins parties’ and, if you’ve ever seen the show, they don’t leave much to the imagination.

The new campaigns around season 2 are aimed at these people. Tapping into this (youth) market, this mindset is a genius move that has (probably) done wonders for their ratings. And it’s not just TV ratings these days either. Other KPIs include web hits, unique visitors, content downloads, podcast listeners, community members etc… There’s a lot to be measured.

So what about Mobile? Is all the money in mobile ads? Probably not.

Is there money to be made from mobile ads? A little, although not the billions that everyone thinks. Not yet anyway. Not without some joined-up thinking around context vs content etc…

2yrs ago I was told ‘Content is King’, I said then what I still say now. Context is King. You can send me as much content as you like but if it doesn’t speak to me, I ain’t buying.

I digress.

Taking a look at the E4 mobile proposition.

Simple, optimised content which is easy to consume – Basic Mobile Web 101 (but I’ve talked about this before)

Taking a closer look – There are three tabs: Telly, Goss and… SKINS!

Brilliant - Not only that but you can watch a clip from Skins Episode 3 right now – one click away.

That’s great. Not just for the end-user experience but it speaks shedloads about the level of internal buy-in from all parties within the offices of E4.

Skins is clearly their ‘hero’ show for this season and is one of the channel’s better IPs.

This is a fantastic example of a blanket marketing campaign.

Mobile advertising needs to adopt similar thinking. You can’t just throw something into the mobile web and just expect it to work. You need strategy and process. Without this mobile advertising will never be the goose that will lay the golden egg. But it could well be a part of a few select bronze egg laying battery chickens.

The point I’m trying to make with the Skins example is that agencies and big media brands are finally coming to realise the amount of potential that lies in digital media. Mobile is part (albeit a new part) of this space.

And it won’t be long until they catch on. It just needs someone, or something, to make that first leap into the unknown.

SOURCE: http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/02/whatley_wednesday_-_mobile_advertising.html

Chasing the youth audience: a trivial pursuit?

Are the kids are all right? Channel 4’s brillant/awful (depending on your age) drama, Skins
Think back to your late teens and early 20s. Go on: the cocaine-induced dementia can’t be that bad. What were you doing? Were you watching television? Really? I know I was but I didn’t have any friends. But were you - social butterflies that you are - staying in, staring at the telly? Or had you taken the advice of Why Don’t You? and gone off to do something less boring instead?

(Before you complain, I couldn’t find the original title song. This, though, is quite funny.)

Anyway, you were, in all likelihood, off out snogging and smoking and doing stuff that young people do. (Remember when the most dangerous things you could do were sniffing glue or playing with a Frisbee by a pylon? There was no crystal meth around then to dissolve the bones in your face.)

With this in mind - and I mean young people’s lack of interest rather than the effects of crystal meth - you have to wonder about the wisdom of broadcasters pursuing a youth audience. BBC3 relaunches soon - becoming, judging from the on-air idents I’ve seen, BBC Three.

In an interview with the Guardian, new controller Danny Cohen promised to “move the channel’s centre of gravity younger, to the early 20s”. Having been king of E4 when Skins launched, he has seen what use one show can be for a channel, in terms of redefining its brand. Certainly, Skins at least slightly dispelled the notion of E4 as home to Friends repeats.

Now, I couldn’t bear Skins but as I’ve heard of broadcasters saying that if people in the 30s don’t like, don’t get or wouldn’t watch “youth” programmes, said programmes are halfway there, that’s probably a good thing for Skins.

Cohen, whatever he does with the channel, is putting his money where his mouth is. Among his commissions is Being Human, a comedy about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost starring Russell Tovey and Andrea Riseborough, which sounds promising indeed.

Another is the excellent The Things I Haven’t Told You, one of six drama pilots. It’s the story of a young girl searching for her vanished mother while simultaneously negotiating the obstacles, pitfalls and traumas of teenage life. To tell you that she dies at the beginning will in no way spoil your enjoyment of the show, which is smart, dark, witty, authentic, audacious and one of the best dramas I’ve seen in a long time.

(In this multi-media, many-platform age, the girl, Aisling, even has her own MySpace page.)

If in pursuit of dramas that engage a youth audience, Cohen commissions quality dramas everyone can enjoy - and The Things I Haven’t Told You is definitely one of those - all the better. But the danger is that audiences who don’t fall into that golden demographic are neglected and the very audience he’s trying to attract will be repelled by such a cynical courtship.

I wonder, are broadcasters panicking about this alleged “disengagement of younger viewers”? Wasn’t it always thus? In response to a report that young people were opting for online pursuits rather than TV, Tess Alps suggested the opposite.

Now I read somewhere - maybe the Journal of Made-Up in My Head - that young people’s brains are forming differently because of the way they multi-task. Clearly, they’re one step closer to becoming the Borg, but let’s not worry about that right now. Instead, let me ask: is there any point in chasing a youth audience? You’ll never catch them for a start. Not at your age.

SOURCE: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2008/01/chasing_youth_audience.html

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