At the beginning of the week I attended the IMA's Mobile Advertising event that took place in Tel Aviv. the event was very well planed, and on schedule, every lecture started and ended on time! that was so surprising. I think that was the first event I have been to in Israel that corresponded to the time table! the place was full, it looked that there where allot of women, compared to other mobile events I have been to. I was proud... :)
The lectures where interesting. Most of them demonstrated the extra creativity needed for mobile advertisement. TurkCell showed some very interesting ways to advertise, which involves users consent to get advertisements. They talked about coupons that users receive from their favorite brands which are discounts only available for mobile users, and that way making users want to receive the advertisement. The most interesting thing they talked about was commercial ring tones, the user sends a SMS with a short code and then he "subscribes" to a ringtone of some brand. Every time the rington is played (i.e the user has an incoming call), the user gets credit-his phone bill is reduced. the number of times the ringtone is played is monitored. The technology used is called RBT (Ring Back Tone). This is the song we hear when calling a friend. Turkcell uses a company called TonlaKazan (meaning Tone&Win) to achieve this.
Guy Ami-Ad,from Mobi, gave a rememberable lecture with allot of examples of innovated advertisements. a basic idea is that with a mobile, you can get to the user any time and any place, in the bed before he sleeps, or even in the bathroom.... he talked about having loyal users, and doing it by billing them only "after a few clicks".. and how important is it to make the users involved in the brands advertisements. there were many more interesting lectures and talks.
I think there are many advantages for mobile advertising. from the advertiser side, the user is available at any time and any place, tracking and monitoring the result are very easy and there is no better way of knowing your target client by his profile and interests whereas just having an advertisement on TV.
From the developer and business side, I think there is a barrier of where the technology in the mobile industry can develop and this is just because every thing in mobile cost money. Having advertisement to cover various charges on the mobile will increase demand in mobile technology.
Disadvantages? none, or am I grafted? :) the only issue I see is spamming users with advertisements, but in the case of mobile advertisement the user needs to consent getting advertisement or coupons...
