Mobile is a channel, not a strategy: Yahoo exec at OMMA Mobile
February 8, 2008
Louis Gump is vice president of mobile at The Weather Channel Interactive
NEW YORK – Until now the mobile market has been a wireless carrier game, with no media experience. But Google Nokia, Fox, Microsoft and Yahoo’s entry should cause a lot of changes.
These large companies may not know all there is to know about mobile, but they are experts on advertising, panelists told mobile marketers yesterday at MediaPost’s OMMA Mobile show. So merging the two should not be so tough, the audience was told in the morning keynote.
“I think right now there is a pretty broad-based acceptance of mobile advertising,” said Louis Gump, vice president of mobile at Weather Channel Interactive. “Already 7 percent of major advertisers plan to spend more than $1 million on mobile advertising in 2008. Thirteen percent will spend more than $100,000.”
Although experience in the channel is growing, marketers are still trying to incorporate their online knowledge with mobile.
“We haven’t exactly cracked the mobile code yet,” said Glenn Myers, director of mobile product management at Microsoft.
Just like in life, practice makes perfect and with more campaigns, marketers should get mobile down, the panelists agreed.
Yahoo’s mobile site at m.yahoo.com has 18 million unique users a month, a panelist said.
“We mostly focus on downloadable space,” said Paul Cushman, director of sales at Yahoo Mobile. “We have access to a lot of people and we have to wrap them to get clicks and drive awareness.”
Yahoo, along with Google and other big players have an open strategy, which is the notion of getting carriers to open their walled gardens.
For AOL, buying mobile advertising network Third Screen Media was the first big move into mobile, per Jason Gruber, director of mobile and telecommunication at AOL Media Networks.
“There is a natural correlation between location-based services and the mobile phone,” Mr. Gruber said. “That’s why we mostly focus on delivering real-time, targeted local information.”
Many brands use mobile as part of their cross-media marketing strategy, Mr. Gump said. Once marketers see how well the mobile aspect of their cross-channel campaigns work for them, they move on to strictly mobile campaigns.
“Mobile is a channel, not a strategy,” Yahoo’s Mr. Cushman said. “Don’t force it. If it does not fit with what you are doing, walk away.”