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Chitika Mobile Ad Study Draws Wrong Conclusion
Chitika’s Study of Mobile Ad Click Through Rate
Dreadfully Draws the Wrong Conclusion
Last week Chitika, an online advertising network, released a study of mobile vs. non-mobile click through rates on their advertising units. You can read their press release about the study here.
Based on 92 million ads shown (1.3 million of them seen with mobile browsers) they reported that the desktop ads got a click through rate of 0.83%, while the “mobile ads” as a whole pulled a mere 0.48%.
I added the quotes on the words “mobile ads” because these were not mobile ads at all. Rather these were the exact same ads that were built for desktop computers but shown on mobile devices.
The conclusion drawn by Chitika and dozens of bloggers and writers who covered the story is that mobile ads don’t get the same click through response as desktop ads.
Here’s the flaw in the logic of this…
The Chitika study actually reveals that mobile users are not likely to click on desktop ads shown on their mobile device. That is an entirely different thing than saying that mobile users are not clicking on mobile ads.
These are different devices and require different strategies. You cannot simply force desktop ads onto mobile devices and then cry out that no one is clicking on them. It doesn’t make sense.
That would be like airing an audio only ad created for radio on TV and then claiming that radio ads don’t work as well as television commercials. Or like running a black and white ad designed for newspaper in a four color glossy magazine and stating that newspaper ads don’t work as well as magazine ads.
Mobile and desktop Internet use is completely different. Mobile advertising is not just desktop advertising made smaller. Mobile advertising is a different media channel than Internet advertising.
What the Chitika study really taught us is not that mobile users don’t click on ads, but that mobile users require ads specifically created for mobile use in order to click on them.
Mobile Marketing Case Studies
If you are looking for mobile marketing case studies you can examine to find out what is going on in mobile marketing, check out the links below. Check back often too. I’ll keep updating this list.
Mobile Marketing Association
www.mmaglobal.com/resources/case-studies
Mobile Marketer
www.mobilemarketer.com
Not exactly case studies, but they have great coverage of mobile marketing.
Text Messaging by Ez Texting
www.eztexting.com/case_studies.html
Text to Screen
www.locamoda.com/partners/case_studies/
Smart Reply
www.smartreply.com/Pages.aspx/Case-Studies
Do you have case studies that you would like listed?
Please send me the link and I’ll get them listed.
Send a Text Message to My Blog
Welcome to my Wiffiti message board. It is titled Mobile Marketing Live because it is a live message board that displays text messages sent to it, displays tweets about mobile marketing and my book, The Mobile Marketing Handbook. Check it out. Below the board I will show you how to send a message to it.
Ready to see your message here?
It’s super easy. Just Text @wif6414 + your message to 87884.
Or you can tweet and include the words “mobile marketing” in your update and it will show up here as well. (Keep it G rated or it will not show up.)
If you want your actual name to show up, you will need to set up an account, edit your profile and link your phone to your profile. Otherwise you will show up as something random like GoldenPoodle1, which is what happened to me before I figured out the profile trick.
Want your own text message board?
Also super easy. Head over to Wiffiti, sign up and create a board. It is free. Enjoy!
Everybody Starts at Zero
The biggest misconception around mobile marketing lies in the idea that a business builds a database of mobile phone numbers and then dives into a mobile marketing campaign using these numbers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that in order to build a database of opt-in mobile numbers you have to do a mobile marketing campaign. Here’s why.
Text messaging is a mandatory opt-in marketing channel. It is never smart or ethical to send text messages that are not explicitly requested. And in many places around the world it is illegal to do so. This explicit permission is not granted simply by being a customer or giving a business a cell phone number for other purposes.
Opting in has very specific criteria. You have to get someone to text in to opt in, sign up online with using a fill in the blank form or reply “Yes” when you have gotten verbal permission to add them to your mobile list. None of these can be done without having a mobile marketing campaign going.
The good news is that everybody starts at zero. Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike all start with no one in their mobile marketing database.
Even better news is that it only takes a smart marketing strategy and powerful marketing implementation to get people opting in like crazy. Give people a good reason to sign up and make sure they know all about it and your campaign is underway. Your text message database is being built.
Waiting to start mobile marketing until you have a mobile database is impossible. You cannot build a mobile marketing database without doing mobile marketing.
Shout out to my friend Chris Torbit with SmartReply who coined the phrase “everybody starts at zero.”
“Is it on sale?” The mobile opportunity – people are buying now
GUEST POST:
Ann Cannon, vice president of CSG Systems’ Prairie Interactive Messaging
In today’s market, consumers are thinking twice before they buy almost anything. “How much do I need it?” “Do I need it all, or do I just want it?” “It is on sale?” Questions people ask when they’re uncertain about their own economic futures.
This “Is it on sale?” thinking presents an ideal opportunity for mobile marketing to worried consumers. For example, if a consumer has a genuine need and desire for a purchase more complex or higher value than an impulse buy – anything from an upgraded mobile phone to a new car – they may repeatedly pass up that item at full price, or even with some discounting. Stretching their spending dollars by waiting for a better deal is a safer move in a tight economy.
But what if that same consumer were to receive a coupon on their mobile phone while they were out shopping? Not a printed coupon sitting at home with the unopened mail, or an email coupon waiting in a distant inbox to be printed out and stuck in a purse or a pocket. Rather, a targeted offer made to the right consumer at the right time, in the right place.
This sort of precision targeting has been the promise of mobile marketing for many years, but few companies have yet to fully leverage such a strategy today. Confusing opt-in/op-out rules for commercial SMS messages, platform compatibility issues with sending MMS coupons to different families of smartphones, divergent carrier support for standards and commercial traffic – all of these factors and more have served to discourage corporate involvement in robust mobile couponing.
Yet there are best practices and design solutions which can work with all of these impediments to transform them into success factors. An inbound mobile marketing campaign driven by point-of-sale signage and advertising placements combines the consumer opt-in process with the marketing contact. Use of well crafted standard SMS messages (text-only) sidesteps MMS and barcode compatibility issues to reach all SMS-capable phones. Even minimal integration between the messaging gateway provider and your own retail management systems can provide end-to-end accountability and realtime program ROI.
You as a mobile marketer need to keep the following things in mind when pursuing this kind of program:
- How will the consumer become aware of your campaign?
- How will you obtain their permission to interact?
- How will the offer be redeemed at the point of sale?
By offering consumers mobile coupons, businesses can create stronger customer relationships while giving consumers what they want, resulting in increased satisfaction, and increased profitability.
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