What Do Media Planners Really Want From Mobile?

An interesting article popped up on MobiAD News the other day, which talks about what Media Planners are looking to get from Mobile. Rather than relay the article wholesale, I though I'd pick out some salient points:

• "Potential" - One very big potential for mobile is that it should become a media channel of choice for FMCG brands

• Buying Media - A major problem is that the mobile media market is very fragmented, making it a time consuming and inefficient task to contact all the individual media owners. We need transparency!

• Measurement - One of the biggest issues around measurement is that the data – if it is available at all – it is not provided in a way that is easy to use. It makes it very inefficient from a time and cost point of view to operate in mobile

• CTR (Click-through rate) reliance - If we only measure CTR, then it will create problems later on when we clients start to want to run brand campaigns - …. the role for mobile will be far more about engagement and awareness

• Economics of a Media Agency - there was a strong consensus that today mobile is not profitable for media agencies. Both because of the inefficiencies mentioned above, and also because of the large amount of consulting expertise that has to be provided to clients.

Comment: This is really interesting feedback from "the other side of the fence" - it basically points the finger at the mobile industry for not being easy to work with, not providing great data, and using poor measurement tools. In contrast to the bullish statements made by "Mobile Advertising" companies, it's nice to how the "customer" (and by that I mean those on the media side) feel about Mobile. Ultimately it's very positive because these are great learnings for Mobile Ad providers - and the potential and uniqueness of Mobile means it can suceed for sure - it's just needs some further work to bring it on a par with the other, more mature, advertising mediums. [Via: MobiAD News ] --- Related Articles at IntoMobile:

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