Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Next Generation Mobile Advertising!

This particular post may not be very relevant to Enterprise IT. But I wanted to cover it more from the mobile technology perspective especially in the areas of marketing, customer analytics.

If your IT unit is working with Marketing to design Tech-enabled marketing solutions, this post is a must-read.

For the past couple of weeks, i have been watching the new ad from an Indian Telecom Service Provider AirCel on its new service offering - Blyk. Blyk is a youth-centric mobile service that brings exciting MMS and SMS on events/updates, offers, trivia and opionion polls from their favorite brands. Now, doesn't sound like a mobile advertising campaign?. Yes, it is. But, the difference is in the delivery model.

First, the service is a permission based marketing. Users need to subscribe to the service to receive the ads. Ok, Why would anyone want to receive ads on their mobile phones?. The claim is you will receive highly personalized targeted offers which will be useful to you. Ok, How would you deliver personalized messages to someone?. Know them in detail to serve them better. At the time of subscribing to the service, you will be asked for interests, like, dislikes, brands, etc. which will enable the service provider to serve targeted messages. Ok, What is the bottomline?...You will get paid to receive the ads.

Now, doesn't that sound interesting?. Yes, the operator would give bonus talk times or free text messaging service to receive ads on your phones. Blyk is also positioned in the social context. You can refer friends and get bonus talk times, etc.

In the current mobility boom in India, I strongly believe this service could catchup big time among young adults, in the age group of 16-24.

Ok, This is all about the service. What is so techie about this idea?

When Google entered into mobile business, lots of people were speculating that Google is entering only to monetize their advertising business in mobile media. But, they are proved wrong as Google is mainly focusing on Operating System, Applications, In-App Advertising, and even Mobile Phone devices (with Nexus One and Nexus S Series).

With these developments, I dont think Google is leading the mobile advertising technology.

I have an android phone and I don't think the In-app advertisements that I receive are relevant. Most of the times I get to see ads that push me to buy Galaxy Tablet, which I dont like it anyway.

Some of the interesting aspects that I observed in Blyk are:

- Permission & Profile based Marketing. The concept has evolved from getting the permission of the customer to understanding his preferences. This will eventually help build a persona or profile with the service provider so that future communication between the two will be much more useful. Unlike Print/TV media, Mobile per se is a personalized channel and understanding the preferences will make the service much more exclusive.
- Engagement based Marketing. It is not just spam. It is about co-creation, engaging with the customer segment that is interactive and responsive. Customer can answer queries, participate in polls, influence the compaigns and eventually empowers the customer.
- Mobile Advertising Analytics. Now the icing on the cake. With the profiling, targeted messaging and two-way communication, the analytics on top of these campaigns would truly reflect the customer's interests, key trends that would influence the market. This would enable creating new services/products.

Of course, there is whole lots of other issues like Data privacy that needs to be resolved on the way of next generation marketing.

Marketing is getting redefined with the advent of mobile technologies. In future, the marketing channels could evolve from being mere information providers to highly personalized service assistants for individual customers. These service assistants could either help you get things done or achieve your aspirations or be more efficient.

No comments: