The term mobile advertising often leads to confusion as it has different meanings to different people.
Mobile advertising can be accomplished in a variety of ways: SMS (Short Message Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), Bluetooth, infrared, in-game/app marketing, LBS (Location-Based Services), and mobile web.
However, I am focusing on CPA offers on mobile web for their growth rate and targeting ability.
Mobile web advertising is a hybrid of traditional banner, search advertising, and PPV (Pay Per View), in that it is interruption marketing.
As with PPV, the user is seeking a specific bit of information, such as movie times or weather. If you are getting in the way of these activities, you better have something good to say.
Affiliate marketers who use paid traffic often rely on PPC (Pay Per Click). They learn customer behavior in one circumstance and then have a difficult time moving from PPC to another method, as it requires a different mindset.
So why move into mobile web advertising? It’s a relatively untapped traffic source bound to grow as mobile web becomes the standard and feature phones (non-smart phones) die off. Worldwide mobile advertising was $2.6 billion in 2007 and is projected at $19.1 billion by 2012, according to eMarketer.
So what works on the mobile web? CPA offers that require limited user interaction, such as zip/email submits, mobile coupons, and downloads.
It’s unlikely an iPhone user is going to fill out a ten-field form or enter their credit card information. The focus is quick interaction to generate an action.
As with PPC, PPV, and media buys, tracking what converts is essential. It has been said a million times before, but I still see people direct linking without any tracking whatsoever. “Track, analyze, and regroup” should be your motto.
To get started, the big three PPC engines have their own mobile ad offerings, and in recent months each have bought out smaller networks.
You’ll want to begin where the traffic is, so start with a network like AdMob or AdWords (iPhone and rich media targeting setting) and then scale out to other sources once your learn the ropes. You do not want to start at a smaller network first, as you’ll need enough data to understand the mobile demographic.
Many networks allow you to target by variables such as operating system, type of connection (cellular vs. WiFi) and geographic location. This type of targeting opens up a lot of options for you as the advertiser.
Take geo-location, for example. Local lead generation could be a real possibility using this method.
The focus for your campaigns should be simple and clear. Think about the intent of a mobile web user as they often are not just browsing but searching for specific information.
Your goal is to make your information what they are looking for.
Mobile web and other mobile marketing methods are at the very early stages of development and getting in now is paramount.
Michael Grabowski is an affiliate marketer, and you can find him on Twitter @mgrabowski.
Download the entire FeedFront issue 11 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/29057000/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-11
FeedFront issue 11 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2010/07
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Nice post…definitely untapped. I look forward to the grow of this medium.