I just received a copy of Amethon’s recent report on Mobile Advertising microsite performance. Amethon is a specialist provider of mobile web analytics tools. Their clients publish almost 10,000 mobile sites globally and regularly publish aggregated data about mobile behaviours that they have identified in their client mobile sites. (A bit like AdMob’s monthly Mobile Metrics reports based on ads served to their publisher network)

This latest report is based an about 100 mobile campaigns, from Amethon’s global customer base. All of the data comes from developed countries with similar mobile penetration and is normalisd by population. Given this, and the fact that Amethon is an Australian company, I would suggest the data is fairly relevant to Australia.

The report ‘Mobile Advertising – After the Click-Through’ focuses on user interaction for mobile campaigns AFTER clicking on a banner ad.

Some of Amethon’s findings

• Mobile Sites (including Telco & off-deck) make up 23% of all mobile campaigns
• Automotive, Movie and Alcohol categories make up 44% of all mobile campaigns
• 50% of Movie category campaigns and 38% of Alcohol campaigns have a downloadable component
• Page views per visit were almost identical for campaigns with/without downloads
• Average page views per visist is 1.53
• Bounce rates for mobile campaigns sites are very high – 67%
• Excluding bounce visits (leaving after 1 page) average page views is high – 4.15%
• Only 33% of consumers venture beyond the first page of a mobile campaign site
• Mobile Services are the most common campaign type (22%) however these have below average page views per visit (1.35)

I thought the report successfully highlighted the current failure of our industry to deliver campaign microsites that offer a compelling, engaging experience.

Bounce rates (the number of people who leave after the first page) are significantly higher than online, where you might aim for 20 – 30% as an ideal. This highlights just how badly we as an industry are using ‘micro-sites’ in my opinion. While Mobile Advertising boasts higher than average click through rates, advertisers are clearly not optimising their campaigns to hold on to customers once they have clicked through.

Another observation made by Amethon is that campaigns have little ‘made for mobile’ content – ie. they are repurposing TV ads, movie trailers and the like. In my mind this is closely linked to the high bounce rates.

Mobile is a unique medium with obvious advantages for interaction, conversation and engagement. If we squander this opportunity by throwing old, re-used content at mobile users, we should expect little more.

Mobile Advertising is not just about getting the click throughs – it’s about what happens next, and it makes me tired to see the same old strategies being trotted out time and time again. It’s actually been years now. Let’s try something different!!

So what do you have to do to bring those bounce rates down and pick up average page views per visit?

• Clearly communicate the benefit of clicking on an ad – and don’t disappoint the customer once they arrive
• Use your mobile destination to create a MOBILE specific interaction by taking advantage of the unique properties of the medium (location, context, identity, mobility, immediacy)
• Don’t repurpose content from another medium – unless it makes perfect sense to do so (Movie trailers are an example that work. TV Ads are generally not)
• Use a mobile specialist to build your mobile site / micro-site / landing page. They know how to work with the small screen and optimise for different handsets. An average (or crappy) user experience does not encourage your customers to stick around.
• Think about mobile at the beginning of your campaign plan and integrate with online & offline components, with mobile to tie it all together.
• Be creative (please???)

Mobile is not ‘the little web’. It’s something else altogether – a whole new medium. Use it that way, and you WILL see results.

Now let’s cross our fingers that Amethon’s report this time next year will show a prettier picture and prove we’ve learned our lessons and moved on from here!

For more information and to request a copy of the report, visit Amethon.