Ad Man

David Murphy catches up with Mobile Advertising Evangelist Andrew Grill

DM: So Andrew, tell us a little bit about yourself and what a Mobile Advertising Evangelist does for a living.

AG: Im an Aussie by birth, have worked in marketing in the telco industry for 20 years, for Optus and Telstra, then I left to run a commercial property start-up and came back to the industry in 2004 with Legion Interactive in Sydney, who are a bit like an Australian version of WIN. After that, I worked with a company called Seeker Wireless providing Location-based Services. I was the companys third employee and I took them to the world and opened their London office in 2006. Then I got a taste for the mobile advertising space and I realised that with my background in marketing, mobile advertising was a perfect fit, so I left the company in July and set myself up as a Mobile Advertising Evangelist.

DM: So whats keeping you busy right now?

AG: Im consulting with some companies that are doing some interesting stuff. Ive also being doing a blog called London Calling for the last four years. For the last year, its been focused on mobile advertising, but it also covers social networking, location and other stuff, but its all firmly focused on mobile

DM: So who are you working with?

AG: Just now, a lot of my energy is focused on a company called Gigafone, who have a very smart mobile application. To my mind, for mobile advertising to be successful, there are three boxes it has to tick: Permission, Privacy and Preference
So it has to be permission-based, it has to respect the privacy of the individual, and it has to take account of their preferences. A lot of mobile advertising solutions I think are pay and spray. They just put ads out hoping someone will see them, and I think this has to change, and this is what I like about Gigafone. With their solution, the user is in full control, they can tell the advertiser what sort of ads they would like to see, and the platform rewards them when a call or a text comes in and full screen ad delivered to handset related to what interested in.

DM: So how does Gigafone work?

AG: Theyve been up and running in Russia for the last three years and they have 600,000 users there. When you receive a call, youre rewarded, either by talk-time minutes or free content. The platform enables the operator to go out to their pre-pay customer base, and offer them free minutes of talk-time if they are prepared to accept advertising on their phone, as a way of retaining them. Or they can offer them free content. Its really down to the operator how they choose to reward the customer.

DM: And this is just in Russia?

AG: For the moment, yes, but we will be live with operators in Asia very soon, and there are also operators in Europe trialing the platform.

DM: So for the consumer, the appeal is free talk-time or content. What about the advertisers?

AG: Were seeing great interest from brands and agencies, because this goes beyond the mob banner. It allows creatives to develop interesting mobile ads; it could be a short video, an animated wallpaper, anything. It allows brands to design something interesting.

DM: And what sort of advertisers are we talking about? Is it all very mobile-centric?

AG: No, were seeing FMCG brands, car rental companies. Its across the board, and it needs to be, because every user is different. They only want to see advertising thats relevant to them. If the ads are relevant to what people are interested in, they like it.

DM: And the ads that Gigafone is serving. Presumably these are all direct response ads, clicking through to a mobile site?

AG: It works best when its done in conjunction with a mobile website, for sure, but it  comes back to preference, because all the time, we are asking people what they are interested in. This is why smart advertisers like the technology, because it provides a feedback loop. This is really the elephant in the room. Mobile operators dont have access to the data advertisers need. Once you start asking people what they are interested in, theres a step change in the perception of advertising.

DM: I would imagine, then, that you admire what Blyk is trying to do.

AG: Blyk have been groundbreakers because they were the ones that said that this was possible. Its permission-based and its opt-in and they have turned the whole thing on its head. I guess the challenge now for Blyk is how do they take that model into a different demographic, because 16-24 year olds like the idea of a conversation with a brand. It may take some time to work out how to make that model work with older consumers who have more disposable income. But fair play to Blyk, they broke the mould, and they can take a lot of credit for the fact that advertisers are now thinking about mobile.