Some of my posts in response to WAP based advertising on the Wireless World Forum-
Let's not get into the realm of push and pull based marketing and try to fool ourselves and others about privacy
etc. Let me give you the example of another device which is most common to every household today – the television
set. people buy television sets to watch their favorite programs/ sports etc and not to watch commercials. They do
switch over channels during a commercial break but come back to it to continue watching the rest of the program.
Imagine what would have happened if TV were not supported by advtg spends. Accessibility of the medium would have
been restricted and the TV set would not have grown into such a mass media device. Now let us apply the same learnings
to the mobile phone. The mobile phone was born out of the need to stay connected. The very fact that the person
wants to stay connected means the consumer is willing to pay a price to be on all the time. If his airtime cost
can be subsidized by subjecting him to a barrage of text messages by the overzeaous advertisers what's the harm.
The subscriber pays lower tarrifs as the telephone operator makes money through the advertising model rather than
the subscription model which results in lower outgoings for the end subscriber and substantial savings. Advertising
supproted model has brought down the costs of accessing TV and in the long run the same woud happen in the
telephony space as well.
The operators would see the benefits of having an alternate revenue generating mechanism and lower the tariffs for
the common man. And if the operator can share the vast data that they have since you fill up a lot of personal
details when you apply for a cellular connection, TG based mktg/ advtg can be carried out very easily. It is
basically a dearth of mktg/ advtg and research people at the operator's end and hence they do not realise the
potential goldmine of info that they are sitting on. I have a background in media buying/ account
management and now wireless for he last 2 years and know for sure the kind of things that can be done in this
space.
In the wireless ecosystem it is common knowledge that ARPU on voice and text is going down drastically.
If 100 people were generating on an average 10 dollars for the operator increasing the subscriber base to 200
would actually end up generating about 8 dollars per subscriber which effectively means that you have increased
the volume of business but this increase has not kept pace with the average spend by the subscriber which has effectively
come down. The sooner the operator realize that, the better for them since setting up of cell towers and
maintenance/ upgrades is a highly expensive proposition. The other way forward is just get the data usage charges
out of the window which would get more people coming onto the data platform for surfing/ downloads etc. Absorb the
losses and drive the subscribers to the point where they cannot do without their daily fix of surfing on the phone
on the way back home etc. spoil them plain bad for choice and offer them differentiated content which is not
available anywhere to retain the eyeballs and thumbclicks. Gradually get in advtg supported models which would
make a call form p2p FREE provided he is willing to listen to a 10 second sponsor spot pre call connect.
This would generate a terrific listenership and brand recall for the advertiser and the figures would drive more
brands towards the platform. It is a classic chicken and egg story. The brand would not come on board till it is
assured of a minimum amount of subscribers. This data can again be shared with the Brand's out calling division
which can gauge the brand retention in the subscribers mind. There are lotsa ideas provided the operator is
willing to look at alternate revenue patterns.
There's a clasic adage attributed to the father of modern copywriting John Wannamaker- i know half the money I
spend on advertising is wasted but cannot figure out which half. Inspite of which most of the top dollars are
spent on TV/ Print/ Radio etc.
TV – has a very small sample size for television audience measurement studies using peoplemeters. data gathered
using a few thousand instruments is extrapolated for a million plus universe and all the advtg agencies go
about following it as if it were the gospel truth.
Print – handful of studies again based on sample sizes which are a little bigger compared to TV which provide you
with circulation/ readership patterns.
Radio – No comparative quantitative studies to guage the efficiency of the medium.
Internet – who are we kidding ? Click Through models for expensive/ limited web retail shelf space is what attracts
the advtg agencies since they can effectively economise monies for the clients by paying only for click throughs.
WAP – Inspite of all the things going in it's favor – Most nos of devices having overtaken the TV penetration. Most
effective tracking mechanism since you can track the actual user who has seen/ heard your spot pre-call/
downloaded your branded product in terms of the actual MSISDN/ Region/ Time/ Demographic and still not able to
call the shots with the agency and brand.
There is a vested interest at work here. An effective service which should be selling on it's own strengths with
the advertiser is being buried to death by the operators/ telecom regulators.
Show me a person who does mind listening to a 10 second spot so that his voice call can be FREE – would be difficult to find.
Show me a person who has a problem with downloading a branded game which is being paid for by the brand being advertised.
Show me a client who does not care about knowing his end consumer directly – demographics/ psychographics/
behavorial pattern which can be deciphered by studying his cell phone usage pattern.
If the answers to all these questions is in the negative then the only answer to the malady facing
WAP based communication/ advtg support needs to come out from the closed doors of the Operators/ Regulators.
Agree to the potential of mobile markeitng and subsidising costs by allowing advertizers to venture in content downloads. But the bulldozing of untargeted textual messages disrupts privacy and can actually irritate the user than doing any good. I feel there would be very few takers for such text message bashing at the cost of some minor reductions in subscriptions costs which are already very low. This can work with games, or content sale. Even if one agrees to receiving these messages they are more likely to be deleted without viewing and this kills the very purpose of advertising.
As far as operators are concerned they already have a unproportionate share in the revenue pie on content sale which needs correction. So they have to be prepared for reduced share and have to work on incresing numbers. It is only a matter of time when the unorganised content industry consolidates and awakens itself for independent branding ( dissociation with the operator in branding), though they will have to shell out some more rupees on advertising but is going to give them huge advantage in terms of bargaining power. Mobile content is less of a technology driven or user need industry but is a content pushed industry and its true once people are addicted to it, selling comes comfortably. A 10sec promo before a free download is a welcome here.
True ,mobile operators are sitting on a golden egg called database. Little bit of data mining and mapping of this data with the m-payment, banking data can actually help them in creating spaces for target marketing which would be a win-win proposition for the advertiser who gets more value for his money as well reap good returns for operators.
Advertising business models for print, TV or radio media are all uni directional, they can actually be bidirectional with mobile when combined with retail. Some efforts on data bases here can further create target groups for marketing. Mobile I feel has more potential and reach in second tier cities than private radio, cable TV or print media.
Mobile advertising has good scope provided the models are built carefully or else we will see many court orders cracking whips on mobile operators for breaking the privacy of individuals.
"Show me a person who does mind listening to a 10 second spot so that his voice call can be FREE – would be difficult to find."
Rajan: It depends on the urgency of the call. It's not as easy as you make it sound. I had heard (can't remember where) of a solution – you dial xxxx-number instead of dialling the number for the call.
For the advertiser, what is the value, as a TG, of a person who wants to listen to a 10 second spot for a free call? Also, where is the assurance that the person will actually listen for 10 seconds?
Some of my posts in response to WAP based advertising on the Wireless World Forum-
Let's not get into the realm of push and pull based marketing and try to fool ourselves and others about privacy
etc. Let me give you the example of another device which is most common to every household today – the television
set. people buy television sets to watch their favorite programs/ sports etc and not to watch commercials. They do
switch over channels during a commercial break but come back to it to continue watching the rest of the program.
Imagine what would have happened if TV were not supported by advtg spends. Accessibility of the medium would have
been restricted and the TV set would not have grown into such a mass media device. Now let us apply the same learnings
to the mobile phone. The mobile phone was born out of the need to stay connected. The very fact that the person
wants to stay connected means the consumer is willing to pay a price to be on all the time. If his airtime cost
can be subsidized by subjecting him to a barrage of text messages by the overzeaous advertisers what's the harm.
The subscriber pays lower tarrifs as the telephone operator makes money through the advertising model rather than
the subscription model which results in lower outgoings for the end subscriber and substantial savings. Advertising
supproted model has brought down the costs of accessing TV and in the long run the same woud happen in the
telephony space as well.
The operators would see the benefits of having an alternate revenue generating mechanism and lower the tariffs for
the common man. And if the operator can share the vast data that they have since you fill up a lot of personal
details when you apply for a cellular connection, TG based mktg/ advtg can be carried out very easily. It is
basically a dearth of mktg/ advtg and research people at the operator's end and hence they do not realise the
potential goldmine of info that they are sitting on. I have a background in media buying/ account
management and now wireless for he last 2 years and know for sure the kind of things that can be done in this
space.
In the wireless ecosystem it is common knowledge that ARPU on voice and text is going down drastically.
If 100 people were generating on an average 10 dollars for the operator increasing the subscriber base to 200
would actually end up generating about 8 dollars per subscriber which effectively means that you have increased
the volume of business but this increase has not kept pace with the average spend by the subscriber which has effectively
come down. The sooner the operator realize that, the better for them since setting up of cell towers and
maintenance/ upgrades is a highly expensive proposition. The other way forward is just get the data usage charges
out of the window which would get more people coming onto the data platform for surfing/ downloads etc. Absorb the
losses and drive the subscribers to the point where they cannot do without their daily fix of surfing on the phone
on the way back home etc. spoil them plain bad for choice and offer them differentiated content which is not
available anywhere to retain the eyeballs and thumbclicks. Gradually get in advtg supported models which would
make a call form p2p FREE provided he is willing to listen to a 10 second sponsor spot pre call connect.
This would generate a terrific listenership and brand recall for the advertiser and the figures would drive more
brands towards the platform. It is a classic chicken and egg story. The brand would not come on board till it is
assured of a minimum amount of subscribers. This data can again be shared with the Brand's out calling division
which can gauge the brand retention in the subscribers mind. There are lotsa ideas provided the operator is
willing to look at alternate revenue patterns.
There's a clasic adage attributed to the father of modern copywriting John Wannamaker- i know half the money I
spend on advertising is wasted but cannot figure out which half. Inspite of which most of the top dollars are
spent on TV/ Print/ Radio etc.
TV – has a very small sample size for television audience measurement studies using peoplemeters. data gathered
using a few thousand instruments is extrapolated for a million plus universe and all the advtg agencies go
about following it as if it were the gospel truth.
Print – handful of studies again based on sample sizes which are a little bigger compared to TV which provide you
with circulation/ readership patterns.
Radio – No comparative quantitative studies to guage the efficiency of the medium.
Internet – who are we kidding ? Click Through models for expensive/ limited web retail shelf space is what attracts
the advtg agencies since they can effectively economise monies for the clients by paying only for click throughs.
WAP – Inspite of all the things going in it's favor – Most nos of devices having overtaken the TV penetration. Most
effective tracking mechanism since you can track the actual user who has seen/ heard your spot pre-call/
downloaded your branded product in terms of the actual MSISDN/ Region/ Time/ Demographic and still not able to
call the shots with the agency and brand.
There is a vested interest at work here. An effective service which should be selling on it's own strengths with
the advertiser is being buried to death by the operators/ telecom regulators.
Show me a person who does mind listening to a 10 second spot so that his voice call can be FREE – would be difficult to find.
Show me a person who has a problem with downloading a branded game which is being paid for by the brand being advertised.
Show me a client who does not care about knowing his end consumer directly – demographics/ psychographics/
behavorial pattern which can be deciphered by studying his cell phone usage pattern.
If the answers to all these questions is in the negative then the only answer to the malady facing
WAP based communication/ advtg support needs to come out from the closed doors of the Operators/ Regulators.
Agree to the potential of mobile markeitng and subsidising costs by allowing advertizers to venture in content downloads. But the bulldozing of untargeted textual messages disrupts privacy and can actually irritate the user than doing any good. I feel there would be very few takers for such text message bashing at the cost of some minor reductions in subscriptions costs which are already very low. This can work with games, or content sale. Even if one agrees to receiving these messages they are more likely to be deleted without viewing and this kills the very purpose of advertising.
As far as operators are concerned they already have a unproportionate share in the revenue pie on content sale which needs correction. So they have to be prepared for reduced share and have to work on incresing numbers. It is only a matter of time when the unorganised content industry consolidates and awakens itself for independent branding ( dissociation with the operator in branding), though they will have to shell out some more rupees on advertising but is going to give them huge advantage in terms of bargaining power. Mobile content is less of a technology driven or user need industry but is a content pushed industry and its true once people are addicted to it, selling comes comfortably. A 10sec promo before a free download is a welcome here.
True ,mobile operators are sitting on a golden egg called database. Little bit of data mining and mapping of this data with the m-payment, banking data can actually help them in creating spaces for target marketing which would be a win-win proposition for the advertiser who gets more value for his money as well reap good returns for operators.
Advertising business models for print, TV or radio media are all uni directional, they can actually be bidirectional with mobile when combined with retail. Some efforts on data bases here can further create target groups for marketing. Mobile I feel has more potential and reach in second tier cities than private radio, cable TV or print media.
Mobile advertising has good scope provided the models are built carefully or else we will see many court orders cracking whips on mobile operators for breaking the privacy of individuals.
"Show me a person who does mind listening to a 10 second spot so that his voice call can be FREE – would be difficult to find."
Rajan: It depends on the urgency of the call. It's not as easy as you make it sound. I had heard (can't remember where) of a solution – you dial xxxx-number instead of dialling the number for the call.
For the advertiser, what is the value, as a TG, of a person who wants to listen to a 10 second spot for a free call? Also, where is the assurance that the person will actually listen for 10 seconds?