Credit: Ajay Vishwanathan

Mobile Advertising

Mobile Internet is a distinct advertising medium that will foster an ecosystem of advertisers, publishers, and innovative companies.

• JUNE 2011

Mobile Internet usage across the world has significantly increased over the past year. The advent of smart phones and tablets has accelerated growth of this medium. Application ecosystems such as iTunes App Store and Android Market have given this medium an identity of its own. Advertising on mobile Internet is both a significant opportunity for marketers and agencies as well as a challenge for technology-intensive startups in this space. While advertising on mobile started with SMS, its non-targeted as well as intrusive nature meant a better alternative was round the corner. The proliferation of devices, increase in connectivity, and growth of content has resulted in display advertising on mobile Internet emerge as a dominant form of advertising. In the next three years, advertising on mobile Internet is estimated to be a $60 billion industry.

The mobile device is unique in terms of its personal, always-on nature and typifies the user’s persona unlike the PC. Beyond the fact that advertising on mobile is digital and Internet-driven, this industry is fairly distinct from the PC Internet advertising space. Advertising mediums largely appeal to three senses: visual, auditory, and motor. Most mediums appeal to one or two of the three senses, for example, television appeals to visual and auditory senses while the PC appeals to visual and motor senses. Advertising on smart phones and tablets however appeals to all the three senses simultaneously.

Smart phones and smarter operating systems enable the ads to leverage the capabilities of the operating system to deliver highly interactive and engaging ad formats. For smart phone users, advertising is not just a banner anymore. Today, an ad can have a banner, a YouTube video within that, call to action like Tap-to-Call, Add-to-Facebook, Follow on Twitter or tweet, View landing site, and more — all without the user leaving the application or web page on which the ad originally appeared. (See “You Are the Ad”) Publishers and application developers benefit greatly from this by giving their users richer experiences, thereby increasing the engagement of users with them.

For the advertisers, return on investment is the key and to capture the most for them out of these new advertising platforms, InMobi has developed an Advertiser ROI Tracker (AdROIt) that helps advertisers understand return on investment of their spends on InMobi’s network and gives feedback to its ad serving system to deliver the campaign to relevant users, within the expected ROI range. This has resulted in advertisers accepting the medium and increasing their spend on mobile Internet.

As the adoption and usage of mobile advertising grows, the new medium is in for exciting times.

Sridhar Ranganathan is vice president of product management at Inmobi, Bangalore, India.