The Mobile Diamond in the Rough

by John Katsos, Senior Sales Engineer, Mocean Mobile

Near Field Communications (NFC) isn’t the only way to make money from mobile devices. Even though it is currently one of the hottest topics in the mobile industry, there are other ways to leverage the ever increasing number of smartphones out there. So where else can people invest? What is the next can't miss industry? How can I get a step ahead of the competition? Mobile advertising.

According to Gartner, the mobile ad revenues are expected to double this year from last from $1.6 Bn to $3.3 Bn. They are forecasting growth to $20.6 Bn by 2015. Clearly there is money to be made and holes to fill.  If you can develop, or if  you have a site which draws traffic online, why not create a mobile version and find a white label, self serve advertising solution? 

The key to white labeling is that it's your company that customers see. You can “create” your own secure ad network out of the box, white label it and suddenly you have your own customized ad server. You don't need to create this functionality yourself and staff a product support team. You can allow advertisers and publisher to manage their own mobile ad campaigns. You can take payments by credit card, or even paypal. The rest is up to you.

Some of these white label solutions even have different ad networks already integrated in their platform so that you can seamlessly populate unsold ad slots from other ad networks, no one will ever know, and your fill rate will be higher than the rest. All they see is your name and brand across the site. NFC may be the hot topic, but white labeling your mobile optimized site is the hidden diamond in the rough.

Geo-Location: The Key to Unlocking Mobile Value

by Grahm Mosley, VP Platform Solutions, Mocean Mobile

Mobile smartphones have changed our lives.  Texting, social, weather, news and games at your fingertips when you are “on the go”.  Last year a Pew Research Center study found that 83% of Millennials (18-29 yr old) like to keep their phone within reach while sleeping.  A stat that I don’t find surprising at all, partially because it’s also my alarm clock.  Our phones are with us at all times, which means that the content and ads that we consume are also “on the go”.

For the first time a unique users’ hyperlocal geolocation is available for one-to-one marketing.  This is the holy grail of impulse marketing.  A city street corner targeted “buy now” coupon banner ad for coffee or some targeted item is the classic example.  Are marketers doing this now?  Is your business being left behind?  Can a store target every person that walks down their storefront street?

The quick answer is “no”, at least not at scale.  There are a couple of challenges that have staved off the adoption of this hyper-local advertising, namely that not all mobile ad calls are created equal. Normally, ad requests that come from standard mobile web browsing only contain the same level of targeting as a home desktop computer, gateway IP address.

Application based requests from platforms such as iOS and Android will contain city corner level GPS data only if the user allows the application.  This significantly reduces the scale that a marketer can leverage this hyper local targeting.  It’s also possible for a publisher to collect profile information such as address or zip code, but this won’t give you location of a user at a given moment. 

Even with this access to hyper-local, it’s difficult for marketers to effectively craft campaigns to leverage this at reasonable scale.  Most marketers are still buying on DMA basis and targeting platforms (iOS, Android, RIM, etc) and carriers.  Some publishers that have access to granular geo information are using mobile based ad servers to offer agencies very targeted campaigns, but this has not become accessible across the entire ecosystem.

Geo targeting is intrinsic to mobile advertising and will be a cornerstone to maximizing the value in this medium.  There will likely be a number of changes during the next year that will affect what publishers and marketers are allowed to do.  It is important that the partners and technology vendors that you choose to work with, allow you to leverage this information and provide you with the proper guidance on best practices.