In a survey conducted by Werbewoche, industry experts confirm the remarkable growth in mobile advertising in recent months. And they all expect further steep growth. Marc Lottenbach, Head of Publishing at 20 Minuten Online, has noted "significant growth in revenue from in-app advertising at 20 Minuten" over the past twelve months. And Stefano Buzzi, Head of Advertising Market at Tamedia's Newsnetz, puts it in a nutshell: "We expect growth of over 50 percent for the current year compared to 2010. Overall, however, the share of mobile advertising in total advertising sales is still in the single-digit percentage range." At NZZ, Remo Baumeler, Head of Online Advertising Market, predicts revenue growth of 20 to 25 percent this year, which corresponds to last year's growth. He adds: "The prospects remain good, the potential is far from exhausted. "Simon Morton, CEO of the online advertising agency Admazing, also expects the mobile advertising market to grow by 50 percent per year and is promising products developed for this purpose. Michael Baum, Managing Director of the marketing company Stailamedia, which specializes in mobile advertising, refers to the German market, where the Federal Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW) recorded growth of almost 40 percent in the mobile advertising market in 2010. "I see development in Switzerland at least on a par with Germany," comments Baum, adding: "Overall, the industry will grow even more strongly in the coming year." Finally, the answers from Google provided by the Swiss press office indicate that this is a global phenomenon. In the third quarter of last year, annual revenue from mobile advertising amounted to one billion dollars, and at the same time, mobile search queries increased 2.3-fold worldwide. More than 80,000 content providers have registered on the AdMob network, which Google acquired in November 2009, in order to generate advertising revenue. In the past year, traffic has increased three and a half times and now amounts to 2.7 billion queries per day.
The focus for mobile advertising is on apps, especially on the iPhone and also on Android devices. Says Newsnetz-Buzzi: "A large proportion of advertising money is currently flowing into the iPhone. Advertising within apps is widely accepted by advertisers and also offers more opportunities than advertising on mobile sites." And Baum from Stailamedia reveals that the advertising options on apps are more flexible than on mobile websites, especially when it comes to pre-rolls, interstitials and expandable ads, and that higher CPMs can be achieved. Advertising on tablets, on the other hand, is not yet an issue. "At the moment, there are hardly any projects for tablets, neither on the supply side nor on the customer side," says Simon Morton, confirming the assessments of the other interviewees. However, it is also widely expected that tablet advertising will increase in the future. A development that Google is already preparing for with new advertising formats that are specially optimized for the possibilities of tablets. In the last six months, traffic via tablets on the AdMob network has increased by 300 percent.
When it comes to marketing mobile advertising, it is clear that a lot is still in flux. "We market mobile advertising ourselves," says NZZ-Baumeler, adding that intermediaries/marketers also have a good chance in this growing market, provided the right offers are found. Marc Lottenbach also relies on self-marketing, but admits: "However, mobile advertising is booked via all channels, most frequently via agencies or directly with 20 Minuten Online." Meanwhile, Stefano Buzzi from Newsnetz reports: "The majority of bookings are made via agencies, as is also the case with traditional online advertising. Direct bookings make up around ten percent." And Simon Morton concludes: "The traffic is generally still too small for strong self-marketing and it is therefore necessary to bundle the reach via networks." In addition, the complexity of mobile advertising is high and there is little experience, which is why customers rely on the support of intermediaries and marketers.
In terms of pricing models, fixed CPM prices are clearly in the foreground today, and it is expected that this will remain the case for premium inventory, but that other performance models will also become established over time. Higher prices are currently paid for mobile advertising compared to online advertising. One reason for this is that users are usually reached exclusively by advertising on a very personal device in an often personal environment and the attention and click rates are correspondingly high.
In addition, demand is relatively high, but supply is rather low, meaning that there is currently excess demand in the mobile sector. It is to be expected that prices will fall as inventory increases and roughly match the previous online prices. The special targeting options that are available for advertising in the mobile sector are currently hardly used. This involves targeting according to technical criteria such as operating system (iOS, Android), device type/screen resolution or mobile provider.
Targeting based on the user's location, known as location-based services, is of particular interest. Simon Morton points out that with the many targeting options based on socio-demographics or user interests, online advertising is much more advanced today. Nevertheless, mobile advertising is increasingly being booked by all customer segments, as the publisher representatives confirm. In the case of marketers, Admazing mainly sees experienced customers for whom online advertising is now an integral part of the marketing mix and who want to go one step further. Meanwhile, Stailamedia distinguishes between two groups: On the one hand, companies that have launched mobile applications for their customers and want to push them to the top of the download charts as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the focus is currently on brand communication.
According to Google, 79% of all websites globally do not have a mobile landing page, i.e. they are not optimized for use on mobile devices. This clearly shows that although the topic of mobile is very popular, expertise and experience in this area is still far from being sufficiently established everywhere. The communications industry is clearly building up expertise in this area. Stefano Buzzi, for example, says: "Know-how has grown noticeably in recent months and is now considerable at many agencies." But Simon Morton qualifies: "A lot of additional training and experience is still needed in this area." As in the entire online sector, the complexity is high. And Michael Baum laments: "Unfortunately, both advertising segments still lack the large creative budgets to actually produce a separate subject for each campaign objective." There is still a lot of testing and experimentation going on in mobile advertising. Many things are being done for the first time, as many of the advertising spaces and technologies have only recently become available.
Reliable and comparable reach and success figures are needed in order to plan and manage mobile campaigns effectively. Google sums up the current situation as follows: "Most people don't understand their mobile traffic, be it on their websites or in their campaigns." That's why they want to help advertisers, site operators and agencies to better understand the special characteristics of the mobile sector. In Switzerland, mobile users are not shown separately in the current Net-Metrix figures, but are treated in the same way as other online users. According to Buzzi, Tamedia is interested in "credible usage figures that reflect all channels" and is therefore supporting a Wemf project that will make it possible to compare the figures for the various channels from next year. The criteria for a successful app are the download charts and the corresponding ratings. Baum points out that the exact download figures for apps are rarely published, however, which is why unique users cannot always be determined. Page impressions, on the other hand, can be easily identified by integrating an ad server. Christoph J. Walther
MOBILE TRENDS
The following aspects are particularly important for assessing future developments in the mobile sector:
Growth: Unlike new technologies in the past, smartphones are spreading much faster. Swisscom sold 322,000 mobile devices in the first quarter, more than half of which were smartphones. And revenue from mobile data transmission by Swisscom customers rose by 23.1% compared to the previous year.
Rich-Media: There is still hardly any video advertising on mobile devices. This will change as soon as speeds and availability continue to increase, the cost of mobile data transmission decreases and more flat-rate tariffs are offered.
LBS (Location Based Services): Enormous opportunities for completely new campaigns and forms of advertising will open up if location-based data is one day combined with profile information and recommendation marketing from social networks - assuming user consent and data protection.
mCommerce: Experience shows that users in the mobile sector are more receptive to payment models. Shopping and paying with a click on a smartphone is already a reality today. The mobile share of eCommerce will be an important growth factor in the coming years, which is why not only publishers with payment apps for content, but also more and more retailers are setting up mobile-optimized online stores with corresponding payment models.
NFC (Near Field Communications): If cell phones are equipped with an NFC chip, they can be used to pay securely at the POS. But they can also be used for ticketing and couponing. Because it is lucrative to participate in such payment streams with business models, a wide variety of solutions with this abbreviation will be the talk of the town in future.
