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Paran Johar is JumpTap's Chief Marketing Officer. Before joining JumpTap, Mr. Johar was EVP of Digital Marketing for North America and Managing Director of MRM's Los Angeles office. Mr. Johar's responsibilities included overseeing all operations of the LA office and all digital marketing in North America including online media, search marketing, and mobile marketing. Prior to MRM, Mr. Johar was GM of the Los Angeles office for Tribal DDB where he was responsible for all online media, SEM, and SEO activities.

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Wal-Mart Mobile Advertising

Written on
Dec 30, 2008 
Author
Paran Johar  |
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Wal-Mart Mobile Advertising

IphoneADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — I grew up during the PC Internet advertising revolution.

I remember the early years, going to Circuit City to use the Internet for a client project because our IT department didn’t understand why we needed it. I remember playing our “in house legal counsel” and adding arbitrary language to T&Cs just to see if a publisher would accept our terms. I remember getting invoices 12 months after the actual media ran on websites. I remember the CFO telling me that if Google wouldn’t accept our billing process, we’d buy them (I kindly referred him to check the market cap of Google vs our agency holding company!)

Those wonderful early years were the perfect dry run for keeping pace with mobile advertising. This last year of mobile Internet advertising reminds me of those early times of the PC Internet – creative standardization, T&Cs, and research studies. And doesn’t it sound all too familiar that most major holding companies now have a “mobile division or agency” within their corporate walls?

I think it’s important when looking at mobile advertising, to remember we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Mobile is a subset of the Internet, just a sexier (for now at least) medium than its interactive brethren because of the personal and always on nature of the device. And because of the modern wonders of mobile search and other brilliant targeting technologies, the user actually can tell you what, when, and where they choose to interact with your brand.

So in 2009, I predict we finally stop talking about it being the year of mobile and acknowledge it is here. Mobile advertising is not a nascent market anymore; it’s in its adolescent stage and rapidly heading to adulthood. The industry needs to stop focusing on predicting a specific moment in time that will be a “tipping point” for the medium; but more on defining the key milestones we need to achieve significant growth and show mobile advertising is a force to be reckoned with. In 09, we’ll need to put our money where our mouth is and give brands and agencies the knowledge and ability to move mobile out of experimental spend and to justify it being a must have centerpiece of any media plan.

Smart marketers won’t stop marketing in a down economy; they will just hold their agencies more accountable and try and capture market share. In 2009, they will seek higher responses rates from campaigns, better returns on their marketing spend and higher levels of engagement with their audiences. And this is where mobile shines.

Here are my bets for mobile advertising in 2009.

As we fix the front end of the media planning process, we’ll also need to address the back end side of metrics and measurement. We will see almost all the mobile ad networks /providers/publishers integrated into Internet third party tracking tools such as Doubleclick and Atlas. If you want media planners to consider mobile part of their media mix, we’ll need to make it easy for them to measure their campaigns via their existing tools.

On that same theme of tools, efficiency in planning and buying will become more and more pervasive. Mobile search and ad networks will become increasingly self-service mobile systems that are fully integrated, allowing for easier testing, buying, and optimizing. Combined key word search and display networks will showcase how media planners can leverage each component for greater targeting and relevancy.

We’ll see more creative options as we see new and engaging “semi- rich” media ad units being tested in the market. In 2008, Internet rich media provider Pointroll was one of the first to release an expanding ad unit for the iPhone. I’m guessing we are going to see many of the Internet rich media providers expand their product lines into the Mobile Internet. These new rich media units will be critical as creative agencies begin to concept more and more integrated ideas with mobile at the center of their plans.

Agency talent will continue to enter into the mobile ecosystem. As more and more agency talent realizes the power of mobile to connect brands to audiences, they will share best practices and work closely with technology companies to deliver on what advertisers and brands are looking for. This will speed education to all parties involved and help bridge the Silicon Valley/ Madison Avenue mobile divide. Agencies will also continue to expand their mobile offerings. In an effort to diversify, increase their revenue, and create unique points of differentiation, more and more agencies will begin to showcase their mobile talents.

Targeting technology will be increasingly critical as advertisers realize that relevancy is the key to success in mobile advertising. Because of the uncluttered environment and personal nature of mobile, consumers will ignore generic advertising and engage only with mobile ads that are relevant to their interests. Targeting technology that integrates information from multiple sources including carrier data as well as search, behavior, and contextual information will be instrumental in reaching an advertiser’s target audience efficiently.

Wireless carriers will make aggressive moves in 2009 to create a sustainable role for themselves in mobile advertising and make significant moves to reinvent themselves as ‘media centric’ organizations. They will realize that if they don’t, the train will leave without them. To avoid being devoured by Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo, they will partner with innovative vendors whose interests are aligned with their own to help them with this evolution. They will begin to leverage their user data such as geographic, demographic, and search history to develop a valuable foot hold in the mobile advertising ecosystem.

Mobile search will begin to take center stage. As internet search evolved to all encompassing desktop search tools, so will mobile search evolve. The mobile user experience becomes more fluid and integrated between hardware, software and mobile applications and search will evolve into a ubiquitous format – to a “phone-top search.” This will further blur the line between ondeck/offdeck, mobile content and applications. The beauty of this will be infinitely more creative ways to not only target, but to engage with users at the appropriate time and place. Mobile ad networks will have to address the phenomena with new types of mobile advertising located on different parts of the handset.

We will see the “Walmart Effect” in mobile advertising as the giant retailer seeks to bring affordable smart phones to the masses. Mobile Search and Internet access will become a “must” have as access to anytime information becomes pervasive in our culture.

Direct response advertisers will learn the ease of “Click to Call”. This will spawn an entire new generation of advertisers trying to optimize call center volume via the Mobile Internet. As this intensifies, we will need to be careful as some advertisers will try and abuse it. The industry will need to self regulate to avoid outside intervention.

Marketers will view mobile as a communications tool, not just a broadcast medium. They will grow increasingly excited as they understand the evolution and that the Mobile Internet is an extension of the PC Internet. This shift in understanding is what will help grow mobile advertising in 2009. It will not be easy, but if we learn from our past, we can attain a new era in advertising.

– Express your opinion, comment below.





Reader Comments.

C’mon seriously? The CMO for mobile advertising company telling agencies and advertisers that they need to get on board with mobile advertising in 2009 – gimme a break. And the things he expects to get accomplished in one year’s time is absurd. Rich media is barely mature on the web, it’s nowhere near ready for mobile. Besides, the experience isn’t even close to being ready. This is a joke, right?

Posted by Joking? | 4:22 pm on December 30, 2008.

OK, ‘Joking?’ has a fair point about timescale but is absolutely off the mark with every other letter of his ill-thought out comment.

Someone who is not prepared to give their name/nickname nor an email address or blog/site to get back in touch is probably worried of the repercussions of their wayward commentary and thus trying to hide – Not a great role model for interactive media.

Anyway, with regard to the main topics Paran highlighted in his article, he is spot on.

Of course he is pushing the agenda hard given that he works in the industry but here’s the deal: SOMEONE HAS TO OR THINGS WILL NEVER MOVE FORWARD.

Yes, Paran stands to benefit if agencies and advertisers acted on every word he writes BUT so do the agencies and advertisers themselves.

Joking?’s point on rich media is laughable – after all, what is rich media?
I would argue vehemently that if something is rich in relevance, interactivity and engagement, like mobile, then it will be perceived more positively by the audience than something that is only rich in creativity/aesthetics.

Joking? – You need to get involved in mobile and form your opinions from there rather than mumbling criticism from the sidelines. You’re either on board with every single one of US or you are a small part of everybody else, your choice.

FYI – I have never met Paran nor do I have anything to do with JumpTap. With this said, my career is heavily entrenched within interactive communication including mobile and I am a commentator on anything ad-funded.

You can check out more of my thoughts and musings at http://www.adfundal.com – You can also easily get in touch through my blog ;-)

Onwards and upwards,

Al

Posted by AdFundAl | 10:11 am on December 31, 2008.

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