This June, a colleague and I were kindly invited to present at AdMonsters’ 12th European Publisher Forum in Prague. We jumped at the chance to speak, and felt we had some important issues to raise surrounding mobile advertising operations; an area so far sparsely covered by any of the major UK bodies.
A little background on Orange and mobile advertising. As an operator we have an obvious affinity with the market, but like the rest of the industry at the moment, we are yet to fully benefit from the great potential mobile has to offer. Indeed we’re merely scratching the surface of what we are ambitiously setting out to do.
We brought mobile ad operations in-house at the beginning of this year and the learnings we have gathered as a result have been both large and frequent. It has been particularly fascinating to experience the differences and similarities between online ad serving and the new-fangled mobile technology. In truth online is still streets ahead, but be assured mobile is catching up quick.
Our presentation kicked off with some top-line facts and figures, resulting from both the IAB, and also a large piece of research into mobile media usage that Orange ran this year, entitled ‘Exposure 2’ (an aptly-named sequel to last year’s ‘Exposure’). Exposure 2 combined a qualitative study of 2,000 mobile media users with a qualitative study of 10 users across varying operators and handsets who took part in a video diary/blog.
Some key takeouts from this include:
- Mobile Media is here
- It’s the most personal and innovative medium
- We must treat mobile as unique
- We must reassure audiences about cost and trust
- Innovation, relevancy and reassurance are key to mobile marketing
From a commercial perspective mobile advertising was worth £28.6m in the UK alone last year (including search) and this was a growth of 99.2% year on year from 2007 to 2008. Forecasts are for exponential growth to continue for years to come.
All of this is interesting, but the real nuts and bolts of what we wanted to cover was still to come – the operational challenges that inevitably come along with a new and innovative medium such as mobile. Some are facing us now, and others we know will hit us in the not too distant future. So here goes…
Latency
This is a far bigger issue on mobile than it has proved to be online. When loading a web browser on your PC you would think nothing of a 1-2 seconds delay. On mobile, even a 500ms delay can be unacceptable. Admittedly, an operator such as us are likely to be stricter than your average mobile media publisher or third party. We after all own the relationship with the customer and QOS (Quality Of Service) is a vital part of keeping our customers happy.
3rd party tracking
There can be no dispute that there is a need for trust to be built between advertisers and publishers. There is an understandable demand for 3rd party tracking as there is on web. But is it as simple as it is on web? Well yes and no… Whilst it is not rocket science to re-direct an ad image request to a third party, there are a number of possible complications with this, including:
- With stricter latency requirements, this external call can cost valuable time.
- Traditional 3rd party servers (web) are mostly not equipped to handle the multiple creatives (often as many as 16 variations) required to match multiple handsets. Mobile ad servers typically can transcode in realtime from just 4 or 5.
- 5-10% discrepancy is accepted online, but in reality on mobile this can be a lot higher, potentially around 40%. At that level, is there still value in 3rd party tracking at all? Are publishers going to have to eat the level of discrepancy?
There is a danger that adaptations of established web technology sent to do the same job on mobile could fail if a fresh and well-researched approach is not considered. And whatever solution is proved to be best, this needs to be agreed by everyone and made a standard, in order to protect the industry from damaging inconsistencies in expectations.
This post will be continued next monday
Hugh has a BSc in eCommerce from Brunel University, and a strong background in digital media sales. He is now Ad Operations Manager at Orange UK, where he heads up both mobile and online ad operations, on the Orange portals and extended advertising networks
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