Extreme Sense

InMobi's James Lamberti debunked a few mobile myths in his presentation earlier this weekI seem to have spent virtually all of the last two weeks either attending conferences or in briefings with various industry figureheads, all of which has left me with little time to get any of it written up, but it’s all on my To Do list I promise.

One of the most fruitful days was spent at the latest mobileSQUARED Roadshow in London on Wednesday. These events, staged by research firm mobileSQUARED and organised by events firm Camerjam, always have a good vibe to them, and always provide some interesting stats.

There were two presentations that caught my eye this time round, from both extremes of the mobile marketing spectrum. One was from James Lamberti, global head of research and marketing at mobile ad network InMobi. The other was from Donald McLeod, head of marketing services at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK.

He outlined the journey his institution had been on to go mobile. This embraced mobile advertising and campaigns through Blyk to reach out to prospective students, but the main driver for McLeod was data collection. His team were going out to recruitment fairs and getting names and addresses of prospective students, that then had to be rekeyed, with the inevitable data entry errors.

The solution they came up with was an iPhone app that they could take to recruitment fairs, enabling prospective students to fill in their details on the phone. This triggered an email to them, with a link to the University website, where they could complete the registration process.

In January of this year, they created a mobile website to reach out to prospective students in far-flung places – Nigeria was one mentioned by McLeod. This had a brief description of the 50 most popular courses at the University, with a data capture form which went straight into the University’s CRM system. To date, the site has had 12,740 unique visitors, and a total of 17,505 visits, generating 38,416 impressions. 20 per cent were indeed from Nigeria, but 25 per cent were from the UK.

In addition to this, McLeod has also created an intranet-type mobile site (Myherts.info) for current students. This has campus maps, details of events, bus times and social media feeds.  Next year, McLeod plans to increase the University’s use of QR codes to drive mobile traffic, revamp the prospecting site and run more advertising campaigns.

I really enjoyed the matter-of-fact way McLeod described the University’s mobile odyssey, and the fact he was happy to share some very ordinary-looking stats which, when you consider the resources they were working with, actually start to look pretty good. I also liked the use of the iPhone app to capture data. This definitely wasn’t a case of doing an app because the chairman said we have to have one.

There were a couple of points McLeod made that resonated with me. The first was that, when he started out, people wondered what he was doing. “People don’t realise mobile exists, they don’t think it really works,” he said. The second concerned the attitude of some of the mobile operators.

“Our campaigns on Orange World have been successful,” he told delegates. “We would look at other sites but the other operators need to turn up to meetings when they have booked them with us.” I won’t embarrass the operator he mentioned to me by name over a beer afterwards, but let’s say it came as no surprise, given the time I have wasted trying to get information out of them in the past.

The second presentation that caught my eye was from James Lamberti from mobile ad network InMobi. He outlined six questions or opinions he gets constantly from mobile refuseniks, then used some of the findings of a massive research project, partly undertaken in conjunction with comScore, to show how misguided each is. They are worth sharing with you here, I think. Let’s run through all six...
 
“Mobile is just like the desktop”
To refute this, Lamberti cited part of the research that asked consumers how they would choose to respond to an ad on their phone, the options being to call, purchase, search, do something viral with it, or get some content. The most popular answer was call, cited by 23 per cent of respondents. “So do you support click-to-call?” asked Lamberti. “The singular focus on content misses the creative opportunity. Taking a PC desktop banner and sticking it on mobile to drive someone to a thick content location, I get it, and it is an important part of mobile, but there is a tremendous opportunity to engage consumers in a variety of other ways that are unique to this device. There may be workflow issues, but calls to action should be linked to device usage."

“Can we talk about what’s new?”
Here, Lamberti used the research to challenge the idea that we are all into the latest, greatest thing, such as location-based services, for example. When asked about the benefits of mobile ads they had seen in the past, the top answer (53 per cent) was “Introduced you to something new”. Next was “Given you something for free” (29 per cent), and then “Entertained you” (26 per cent). “Helped you find something nearby” (12 per cent) was down towards the bottom of the list.
“Hyper-targeting, LBS etc are cool and sexy, but they do not exist at scale,” said Lamberti. “Don’t start there because consumers not seeing it, and they don’t care because they see plenty of other benefits.”

“Do you offer hyper-targeting?”
Here, Lamberti challenged the idea that advertising on mobile should be all about pinpoint targeting, with reference to a campaign for the Salto Alto show brand. The part of the campaign targeting the precise demographic the brand was interested in delivered less than 10 per cent of the clicks, but a broader, less precisely targeted campaign to find other people who might like the brand increased reach by a factor of 10.

“You can hyper-target on mobile, but it makes sense to go broader and invite other people to raise their hands,” Lamberti said. “Targeting is a guideline not a rule. If you have a hard-nosed, ‘no spillage’ approach to mobile, you are missing what it can do.”

"Where are your best practices?"
Lamberti’s point here was that mobile is still an emerging medium, and it is hard, and indeed misguided, to try to apply generic rules across mobile advertising as a whole. To prove his point, he used some of the InMobi research showing that women are less interested in making a call in response to a mobile ad, but more interested in doing something viral or related to social media than men. Men, on the other hand, are most interested in social media and PC-style search and content. But then, said Lamberti, the results of the research into response to an automotive campaign didn’t follow this trend at all. His conclusion? “Best practices will be brand- and campaign-specific, but the good news is, CPC (cost-per-click) pricing means we learn at our expense not yours.”

"Consumers are not ready"
Lamberti debunked this myth with findings from the research showing that 69 per cent of European consumers say they are “very” (43 per cent) or “somewhat comfortable” (26 per cent) with mobile advertising. Lamberti also noted that the research found that what consumers want from mobile advertising is an authentic exchange of value, rather than free offers. Here, he cited those benefits of mobile advertising stats again, with 53 per cent of European consumers agreeing with the statement: “Introduced me to something new” compared to 29 per cent for the statement: “Given you something for free”.
 
“No thanks, I prefer to wait”
To knock this one on the head, Lamberti pointed to stats showing that PC web usage declines as mobile web usage grows, and noted that FaceBook has gone on record as saying that they expect desktop access to their site to decline as more people choose to access it from a mobile device. “If you champion mobile in your organisation today, in two to three years time, the rest of the organisation will be working for you,” he said.
That may be stretching the point slightly (though I doubt Lamberti would agree with me on that), but it was good to see him make his points so forcefully, all backed by good, solid, primary research data.

David Murphy

Editor