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Clearing some myths about buying mobile advertising

By Marcus Startzel

There were conflicting statements made throughout Advertising Week about the seemingly daunting process for creating and buying for mobile. I want to address this head-on for every advertiser nationwide.  

You already know how to buy mobile ads. You have spent years creating advertising campaigns and buying media on television, radio, print, outdoor and the Internet. The principles are the same, and the process is sound. 

Once you learn how to drive a car, you can pretty much drive any car. Although locating the wipers or the cruise control can be a temporary challenge, it is generally an easy task to arrive at your end destination. 

Buying a mobile ad can seem complex with all the buzzwords, devices and types of advertising such as SMS versus display. But if you look beyond the shiny gadgets and keep your eye on the end destination, you can achieve simple and highly effective mobile media execution.

Consumer adoption rates, sophisticated devices and faster connection speeds have opened a new market opportunity for advertisers.

Creating an engaged medium, mobile advertising has introduced an enriched, dynamic medium with SMS, video and applications that has evolved the industry away from the traditional cluttered and flat advertising mediums which have failed to meet the goals of brands and advertisers. 

Perhaps this is why more than 50 percent of newspapers are now formatted for mobile, followed by consumer magazines at 40-plus percent, according to a September 2009 report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. 

At the end of the day, advertisers want to reach an engaged audience and they should not miss the opportunity because they are afraid to sit in the driver?s seat. 

Four score and then ...
There are multiple ways to buy mobile, just as there are multiple ways to buy a car. 

Buying mobile direct through a carrier or a publisher is comparable to a buying direct through a dealership and restricts you to the inventory available on the lot. 

For example, you may want to target X demographic in Y geo-locations. However, you may find the narrow inventory and reach restricts your campaign goals and does not allow for flexibility. 

As an alternative to buying direct from a carrier or publisher, ad networkers offer access to all the ?dealers? or carriers, publishers, and competing ad networks. 

Our State of the Industry report cited ?insufficient reach? as the primary reason, by far, for campaign under-performance, followed by ?wrong creative,? and ?technology barriers.? 

While the leading ad networks allow you to target the broadest reach, they also provide in-house creative teams. 

Most importantly, ad networks offer mobile specific solutions to help advertisers maximize their performance with real-time tools and reporting.  In other words, they make things easier.

No matter whom you choose as your driving partner, buying and succeeding with mobile advertising can happen in four easy steps. They are:

Identify your goal. Do you ever enter your car without a final destination in sight? The same goes for mobile advertising. 

Our research findings showed that 53 percent of marketers cited internal resources as their primary reason for refraining from mobile advertising. Use the experience of your mobile advertising partner, whether this is a carrier, publisher or ad network to define your end goals.

Plan your strategy. This is where the fancy gadgets ? wipers, cruise control ? can come into play. 

While targeting options are endless ? channel, country, carrier, device, demographic and geographic ? you can leverage an experienced mobile advertizing partner to sort through hundreds of mobile device attributes and usage patterns in order to reach a precise target audience. 

More than 80 percent of agencies who have participated in mobile campaigns have hired or developed internal resources to support them, per our research. Take advantage of their technology and their reporting tools and let your partner do the back-end for you. 

Engage your audience. Unlike other mediums, there is a broad range of methods to capture the attention of your audience from banners to rich-media.

If you do not have an in-house creative team, there are many mobile partners who provide their own award-winning teams. Before you let anyone in your car, do a background check.

Analyze the results. Whether it?s the miles per gallon, breaking system or likelihood to breakdown at the most inopportune time, a car has certain measurable characteristics that help determine your next purchase. 

The right mobile advertising partner will provide reporting tools to analysis the effectiveness of your campaign goals across engagement and reach. 

While the opportunity for mobile continues to grow at a rapid rate, advertisers who lag based on false fears will fall behind. 

According to Nielsen, 21 percent of households nationwide have gone wireless. 

And advertisers are responding.

The Aberdeen Group study reported 62 percent of companies are increasing their budgets for mobile marketing even as they reduce or completely eliminate programs in many other areas. 

With these four simple steps, you are already on the road to meeting your campaign goals. By selecting an experienced mobile partner with a broad reach and mobile specific technology, you can even find the cruise control.

Marcus Startzel is senior vice president of sales at Millennial Media, Baltimore. Reach him at .