Show Me The Money

An interesting morning session at the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum in London, where speakers queued up to explain why the assembled delegates should be putting mobile on their media plans, if it’s not there already.
Some stats presented by M: Metrics caught my eye. First, as a medium for reaching 18-34 year olds, mobile scores. This age group represents 29% of the UK population. On TV, you can reach 29% of them. Magazine advertising gets you to 31%. With mobile, it’s 56%.
If you want to reach cash-rich, time-poor consumers, again, mobile scores, indexing 143 for consumers earning more than £50,000 per annum and agreeing with the statement: “There are not enough hours in the day.” This compares with 103 for TV and 129 for the Internet.
The stats also showed the growing propensity of consumers in the US to interact with mobile marketing campaigns. 11% of US consumers who receive a marketing text message will reply to it, compared to 10% of UK consumers. And that’s from a lower proportion of mobile owners in the US who have received a marketing text, compared to the UK. Equally surprising, to me at least, was the revelation that 3G penetration in the US stands at 23.9% of the population, compared to 23.6% in the UK. The US is catching Europe up fast, if indeed it hasn’t already done so.
For all the positivity, however, Simon Andrews, Chief Strategy Officer, Worldwide, for WPP-owned media agency Mindshare, brought a sense of reality to the proceedings. In his presentation, titled 'Show Me The Money’, Andrews made the point that money follows audience, but wondered how many more times he would hear that this year will be the year of mobile, just like last year, and the year before that.
While conceding that the opportunity for mobile is huge, Andrews lamented the fact that mobile campaigns are not profitable for the companies who put them together.
“A mobile campaign is unprofitable because it’s a cheap medium and it takes a long time to put together,” said Andrews. Andrews went on to say that branded utilities -  things like a brand-sponsored bar or restaurant guide for example – would be important in mobile’s future, while the role of banner advertising would be to drive people to download these branded applications.
And despite his earlier comments about the cost of putting mobile campaigns together, Andrews said it was incumbent on delegates to accelerate the move to mobile. 
“Don’t come to this conference next year if you haven’t run a mobile campaign,” he said. “I keep going to conferences and talking about it, but we’re not doing enough of it.”
After all the talk that you hear at any conference, this one included, about mobile’s potential, his words were a breath of fresh air. Let’s hope the delegates and the marketing directors and budget controllers out in the wider world, hear them and act on them.

David Murphy
Editor