I’m a huge believer in the mobile advertising market. Though a nascent industry and still plagued by privacy concerns and the like, there’s no arguing that mobile ads offer advertisers the ability to optimally target a specific audience usually in an environment perfect for an actionable response.
A recent mobile ad trial by T-Mobile in the Czech Republic seems to confirm the potential. In fact, the trial was such a confirmation for the wireless carrier, it may roll out SMS/MMS mobile advertisements in the fourth quarter of 2009.
The trial consisted of 22 advertisers including big names like Coca-Cola, Nestle and Ford, 32 different campaigns and 3, 133 ad recipients in two groups–26 to 50 year old urban women and young people under the age of 26. Here’s some key stats pulled from the trial:
- average response rate (depending on campaign could be a clickthrough or a registration) was 27 times higher than a traditional internet banner ad (2.72% compared to 0.1%)
- most successful campaign had a response rate of 11.78%
- least successful campaign had a response rate of 0.29% (nearly three times higher than a banner ad)
I don’t believe this trial factored in location although it was confined to the Czech Republic. But if a non-geoaware mobile ad campaign can produce such extraordinary results, imagine the potential success of a campaign that includes location information. More targeted, more actionable.