On Cyber Monday, Susan Redgrave, Just Media’s Trafficking & Analytics Specialist, shares her timely thoughts on the use of mobile ads:
“I recently broke down and traded my old school Blackberry in for the ‘new and improved’ iPhone 4s. What I didn’t entirely realize was that this would then open me up to the world of mobile advertising, which I have to say, did not make me the happiest consumer on the market. This I’m sure will strike at least some of you as surprising as I dearly love my work in the online marketing and advertising industry; and to be fair, in general I DO love advertising. I am one of “those” people who dig when a company can target a banner or textlink or even a whitepaper to me based solely on my previous searching or clicking. However, with mobile advertising, I dislike when ads pop up during my very important Angry Birds game. Although, I have been told that if I break down and pay for the game those ads will cease. All of that being said and to try to give you a little background on my feelings on the subject, I am writing this because after attending this awesome webinar the other day, I actually can see the value and promise in mobile ads. The webinar was called, “Mobile Advertising: Right Person, Right Time, Right Message” and was presented by Avinash Kaushik. I would say that for most people out there (including skeptics like me) it is virtually impossible to listen to this gentleman speak on mobile advertising and analytics and NOT get excited. He is extremely passionate about these two subjects and presented us with many examples of how and why mobile advertising is important to our ever changing technology driven lives.”
“One of the many ways to use mobile advertising involves when our shopping goes offline; which may appear to be counter intuitive at first, but hear me out. Now-a-days many of the products that we use everyday have the QR code on them. We can use our mobile devices to scan those bar codes which will usually bring us to different pages and examples about products that we are considering purchasing. Avinash mentioned that he was recently at Costco and bought a box of strawberries that had one of these QR codes on them. Now, personally I wouldn’t think of trying to scan a box of strawberries and have it show me anything of interest, but in his case, it did. The code brought him to a page that told him more about the company, but more importantly for me; it gave him recipes for him to try. As a mom of an 8 month old and who also happens to work full time, I am always on the lookout for new recipes to try. I immediately thought that whoever is running the marketing at the strawberry company needs a raise as I would never have thought about doing this before. At the very least this has made me remember the brand and because I had a good experience, I will most likely choose this brand over another one that is in the store.”
“He also mentioned that he recently was in the market to buy a new TV set and went to a local store to check them out and to do some research. To him they all looked the same. But one of them had a QR code on it so he scanned it; leading him to the amazing site that told him everything he wanted and needed to know about the TV. I know that anytime I am out shopping I almost always pull out my iPhone and try to search on Google or Amazon for whatever it is that I am thinking about buying. I rely more and more on other consumer’s reviews and honestly I reject a lot of products based simply on the score I see the minute that I search for a product.”
“As our society goes more and more mobile, this is going to be that much more important. I think that even the skeptics among us need to embrace and understand that this world of mobile advertising is only going to get bigger and so much more important. We are using our mobile devices in almost every aspect of our lives and I think this is an area of advertising that could potentially become bigger than ‘traditional’ online advertising. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I am hardly ever without my phone and this gives the advertisers an opportunity to turn me on to their products almost 24 hours a day and not just the hour or two that I spend online on my laptop.”
For more information about Just Media, Inc., and how a mobile campaign could work for your business, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Contact: John O’Connor, Director of Partnership Development. johnoconnor@justmedia.com.
