You’ve probably read all the articles about how big an opportunity Mobile Advertising is, and heard case studies for brands who’ve done ‘great things with mobile’ overseas.  But what about here in Australia.  A recent ACMA media release put the number of 3G mobile phones inAustralia at more than 4.5 million. That’s an audience worth targeting.  But what is possible, how do you do it & how much does it cost?  Oh, and what is it again??

What is it again?

I define Mobile Advertising as mobile display, mobile search & mobile content sponsorship. Unless you already have a mobile site, your mobile advertising campaign will need a mobile destination site, or mSite for the user to click through to (mobile TV advertising would be an exception here).  

Mobile Advertising might be used to build brand value, drive traffic to a mobile site or to support a mobile marketing strategy such as an SMS mailout, competition, game or giveaway.  Web to mobile techniques like beams, mobile barcodes or SMS shortcodes can be used to supplement mobile advertising.  (added later: QR Codes are also a mechanism for driving users from offline channel to mobile)

For some background on all of the above, see my recent article about driving traffic to a mobile site – reposted here on Mobilista.

Mobile advertising should support your traditional campaign goals and can be implemented independently or in support of traditional channels.  Although branding is the simplest mobile execution, traditional direct marketing campaigns convert well to the mobile channel (competitions, give-aways, direct response by phone / email etc).

As a mobile advertiser, you need to put your message in front of customers who are already looking at content on their mobile phone.  In the most simplistic terms, mobile advertising is about placing your message within that content.  Just like online media, you can serve banners into a mobile site, buy ads to appear against mobile search results or sponsor a mobile website or mobile TV show. 

Buying Mobile Media

A mobile banner is simply a clickable graphic served onto a mobile page.  Globally, click thru rates (CTRs) on mobile banners average at around 6%.
  Some local campaigns have seen CTRs of 10, 20 & 30%.   These CTRs will likely settle at between 1 – 3% as mobile advertising becomes more common, and the ‘curiosity factor’ is reduced.  Unlike online, mobile banners tend to dominate the mobile browsing experience, taking up as much as 25% of the screen.

So how do you buy mobile banner media?  In Australia the media buying environment for mobile is fragmented and the ad products vary widely.  (added later:  MDigital is a Melbourne based startup who can now take care of your aggregated mobile media buying)

The nature of the mobile industry means that your audience can be reached in three ways.  Via the mobile phone Carrier, the content Publisher, or an Ad network.   Across all of these channels, I would estimate there to be at least 500 million impressions available for buying in Australia. That includes banner ads served across the major publishers’ mobile sites, banners & sponsorships on all the available carrier inventory, and text ads using Google Mobile & AdMob. My estimate is most likely conservative. 

Based on the addressable market and performance estimates, there’s no reason an advertiser couldn’t achieve several hundred thousand clicks on a month long mobile campaign.

2008 has seen the Australian carriers really step up to mobile advertising. Vodafone, Telstra & 3Mobile have formal strategies for selling advertising on their mobile content portals.  Vodafone leads the charge in simplicity & transparency, with a published rate card available online (http://www.vodafone.com.au/personal/aboutvodafone/mobileadvertising/index.htm). 

Additionally, Australia’s major mobile publishers, Fairfax, News, NineMSN & Sensis all offer mobile advertising on their ‘off-deck’ sites.  Off deck sites are simply mobile websites that are not available from a Carrier’s home page or portal.   Even sites which ARE linked to from a carrier’s portal can be accessed ‘off-deck’ by typing in the URL, requesting a link via SMS shortcode or finding it on a mobile search engine.

Unfortunately, buying mobile media is not as simple as sourcing all the rate cards and buying up impressions.  Each carrier & publisher has a different view on how mobile advertising should be positioned & sold.  

NineMSN offers a CPM based approach, whereby banners can be served across each of their mobile sites for approximately $75 CPM.  This includes their ‘Mobilised’ portal as well as their popular Entertainment Guides, Cleo, Ralph and 9News.   

Similarly Vodafone will serve banner ads on their mobile portal ‘Vodafone live’ for between $60 – $75 CPM.  On top of this, targeting can be added at a rate of + $5CPM for each targeting filter, such as age, gender, location or device type.

If you want to reach the big user bases, you need to deal with Telstra & 3 Mobile.  Telstra offers a ‘run of network’ proposition of $30 CPM for untargeted banner ads across their Sensis & BigPond mobile network.  This includes mobile sites like Yellow, Whereis, CitySearch & the BigPond mobile portal.  Add another $20 to your CPM and you can target by age, gender, income and more. $10 on top gives you location targeting as well.  Sensis MediaSmart is set to release an updated rate card & brochure in the next few weeks, which will include details of all the mobile advertising opportunities on Sensis & BigPond’s mobile sites. (added later: I still haven’t seen this)

3 Mobile has a more customised approach to mobile advertising.  Rather than offering simple banners on the Planet 3 mobile portal, 3 prefer to work with advertisers to design customised, integrated campaigns.  This customised approach is also adopted by News Digital Media who publish a news portal, Carsguide & mobile ticketing site Moshtix, and Fairfax Digital who publish The Age & SMH mobile sites, Drive, Domain and the Good Food Guides on mobile.  More on integrated campaigns below.

Buying mobile banner media is only part of the equation however. One of the tricky things about designing for mobile phones is the variance in device types.  For this reason, mobile banners need to be created in multiple sizes.  AIMIA has established a Mobile Advertising sub-committee to create and lobby for adoption of standard mobile ad sizes.  The latest version of the Mobile Ad guidelines can be found here (http://www.aimia.com.au/i-cms?page=1.35.3434.3435) and are a good starting point for consistency in mobile advertising, but not all publishers support them yet.  Until industry standards are adopted you should ask for banner specs before designing your ad creative.

A Mobile Destination

In addition to mobile banners, you will need a mobile destination site.  Also knows as msites, adsites, campaign sites, mini-sites or landing pages.  This is where your customer clicks to after seeing your mobile ad.  Whether you use banners, search, SMS or another means to promote your mobile campaign, the ultimate destination is (almost) always a mobile site.

So how do you put together a mobile destination site?  This is a complex area and one I should discuss further in a future article.  In brief, you can either outsource or build it yourself.   The most expensive option is outsourcing to a specialist mobile development house, such as TigerSpike or Icon Mobile.  The sky’s the limit in terms of cost, but this is the only way to guarantee creative control.

At the other end of the scale there are many free online solutions for building a DIY mobile destinaton, such as Mippin (http://www.mippin.com) and local startup MoStyle (http://www.mostyle.mobi). These solutions work well for community sites or for the delivery of blog & newsletter content.

Local company mNet lets you create mobile sites online for as little as $100 per month using the Campaign Mobile online self service platform (http://www.campaignmobile.com).  Campaign Mobile is well suited to simple mobile ad campaigns and your mobile site can be up and running fast.  Or if you’re willing to spend a little
more, mNet’s mobile development team can custom design a site for you for as little as $2k.  

If you want the whole thing taken care of, the easiest option is to sign up for one of the campaign based mSite solutions on offer by the Carriers & Mobile publishers.  Vodafone will build you a simple mobile site for $3750, Sensis’ template based adsites start at $3,500 and 3 Mobile’s basic offer is $2,950.  Many will now include a free mobile ad-site or landing page with a media buy, but be warned that this site may not be available off-deck and will probably be deleted as soon as your campaign ends.

These simple websites will include 2 or 3 pages of text, images, and a basic function such as a content download or direct response form.  More complex ‘standard’ sites can cost up to $10k and all offer customised development at a price, usually charged by the day. 

Integrated Mobile Marketing Campaigns

If you already have a mobile site, or have a good handle on the various components of a mobile marketing campaign you may simply want to buy mobile banner media and manage the rest yourself.  (as mentioned above, MDigital can arrange an aggregated quote for mobile media based on your requirements).  

3 Mobile work with advertisers & agencies to develop end to end solutions targeting their user base.  A typical campaign might start with a targeted SMS push message to opted in 3 customers.  The SMS would include a link to a customised mobile campaign site.  Mobile banners across the Planet 3 portal would drive additional users and content sponsorship might be arranged for a suitable section of the portal.  The mobile site itself could incorporate a competition or give-away, such as a free ringtone or mobile game.  Angus Beattie, Mobile Advertising Manager at 3 Mobile believes at this early stage that there is a large benefit from dealing directly with the media owner, and he would welcome calls from interested advertisers.

News Limited & Fairfax also work with Advertisers to design appropriate branding opportunities on their mobile sites.  Banners, co-branding and content sponsorships can be arranged.  

Commonwealth Bank’s sponsorship of Fairfax’s Domain mobile site (http://m.domain.com.au) is an example of a mobile sponsorship that works well for both parties. CBA includes branded banners on each page of the Domain mobile site, which click through to an mSite listing recent offers & an interactive mortgage repayment calculator. Talk to Chris Watt at Fairfax to find out more.

As well as offering simple CPM based media buys, Vodafone’s rate card also offers SMS & MMS mailouts, mSite development, Mobile TV sponsorship, Bluetooth and an image recognition tool called ‘Colour Snap’.  For full reach of Vodafone’s audience, you can also advertise on the phone bill & in Vodafone’s glossy print mag.

The limitation of developing an integrated campaign with one carrier is that you are constrained to their user base.  A mobile site built by a carrier is generally rated ‘free to browse’ for their customers.  This means you don’t need to worry about your users copping data charges for interacting with your campaign.  On the other hand, if you want to extend your reach beyond the carrier’s user base, this may be cause for concern.

NineMSN perform something of an aggregator role, as they can arrange mobile banners (on their own properties) across several carriers, as well as onselling some of Vodafone’s inventory.  Not just a media aggregator, NineMSN have an impressive portfolio of Mobile Marketing case studies through their 5^th Finger company and can put together a mobile solution to suit most scenarios. 5^th Finger make excellent use of messaging in support of mobile advertising, will build a mobile campaign site to your specs and can work with some of the carriers on your behalf.  

Alternatively you can put your own campaign together by buying a selection of targeted banner media from one or more of the carriers/publishers, choosing the mobile site development option that gives you the most flexibility, and even setting up a simple push SMS to your own database of customers.

There’s nothing stopping you from driving additional traffic to a site built for you by a carrier or publisher – it’s just a website after all, with a URL that can be distributed in various ways. Below I describe some of the ways you can drive additional Australian users to your mobile site.

Off Deck Traffic & Mobile Ad Networks

Mobile Ad Networks Google & AdMob offer Advertisers the opportunity to buy traffic on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis.  These Ad Networks generally focus on users looking at off deck sites.  

Both Google & AdMob deliver simple text based ads with character limitations of around 30 – 40 characters.  CTR averages range from 0.3% – 3% depending on the campaign & message. 

Google Mobile Adwords is a search engine marketing (SEM) product, very similar to their online SEM offering.  Google has a mobile search engine which can be accessed by visitinghttp://m.google.com.au . Several of the Australian carriers also make Google search available on their portals.

Advertisers bid for mobile keywords separately to online keywords. Mobile text ads look much the same as Google Ads do online, except they are a little shorter.  Ads are returned in search results, usually at the bottom, and they link through to a mobile site, or a ‘click to call’ phone number. 

Usage of Google Mobile in Australia is still small compared to the number of customers browsing the carrier portals.  But at an average of 10c – 15c per click, mobile search is a cost effective way to generate additional usage & awareness of a mobile campaign – after all you only pay when someone clicks.  Google has recently launched Mobile Image ads in Australia, which gives Advertisers the opportunity to extend an existing graphical banner campaign.

AdMob is a global network of mobile publishers who are willing to display your ads on their site. The ads are text based and are very similar to Google Ads.  Each mobile site publisher in the AdMob network is allocated a channel such as Downloads, Entertainment or Communities. Advertisers bid by channel to display their ads on mobile sites within that channel.  Average bids range from 25c – 60c. 

AdMob provides some impressive targeting which makes their local proposition appealing.  Ads can be targeted by country, carrier & specific device (added later: now includes iPhone targeting & iPhone specific ad units).  This means for example, a mobile ad campaign booked onto the BigPond portal can be supplemented with text or image based ads through AdMob, targeting only Telstra customers using eg. Nokia N95 and iPhone handsets.  Australian traffic on the AdMob network is significant, with many millions of impressions.  Even with a CTR below 1%, a typical campaign can result in as many 10,000 clicks to your mobile destination.

To drive mobile traffic from your online site, check out new beta service BeamMehttp://www.beamme.info/.  BeamMe offers a send to mobile button that you can insert on your website.  Users enter their mobile number to receive an SMS with a link to your mobile site. Alternatively you can set up an SMS shortcode that allows users to SMS a request for your link to be sent to their phone. SMS the word ‘TV’ to 19 34 34 to see how it works.

QR codes are an option for driving traffic from a print or outdoor medium.  QR codes are a type of  barcode that can be printed or displayed in a newspaper or magazine or outdoors on a poster, billboard or bus shelter.  When customers scan the code using scanning software on their mobile phone they are instantly linked through to a mobile site. Check out local startup QMCodes (http://qmcodes.com) for more information.

Get onto it!

If you’ve made it this far, there’s no reason you can’t launch a mobile advertising campaign inAustralia right now.  Admittedly it is a complex and fragmented market, but this shouldn’t stop Advertisers making the most of the opportunities that are on offer.  When you start planning your campaign, don’t be afraid to ask questions and demand flexibility.  Many of the major players would prefer you deal exclusively with them, but no-one has all the answers and in the current marketplace you can pick & choose the services you need.

If you’re interested in finding out more you can contact me on emily@mobilist.com.au or subscribe to this blog to stay up to date with the latest industry offerings.  My business Mobilist provides mobile advertising consultancy and Mobile SEM services.

NOTE:  This article was originally published on Digital Ministry, but has since been moved or deleted (?)  I have reposted it here so that it will have a permanent bookmark.  

NOTE: the facts in this article were valid at May 2008.  For an updated view please feel free to contact me on emily@mobilist.com.au

(sorry I’ve had to block comments temporarily to deal with spam on this post.. commenting will be back up soon!)