Mobile now beyond interest level, says ad:tech delegate

By Giselle Abramovich

April 16, 2008

Scott Dunlap is NearbyNow president/CEO

SAN FRANCISCO – The hustle and bustle at ad:tech San Francisco 2008 can be compared to midtown Manhattan at the end of business day. There were thousands of attendees walking the show floor and sitting through sessions on interactive marketing and advertising technology.

Although mobile was not the major theme of the show, attendees such as Scott Dunlap, president/CEO of online shopping search service NearbyNow, felt it’s an important component of interactive marketing and thus a fit with ad:tech. Mobile Marketer associate editor Giselle Abramovich interviewed Mr. Dunlap regarding his outlook on mobile.

What is the current state of mobile?
It's definitely beyond interest level and is currently in the state of experimentation.

If you compare it to last year, where folks were hesitant in trying it out, you can say that it's made its strides since then. At this point I feel that the most successful mobile efforts are using the mobile channel as an extension of another media.

What are the challenges that mobile faces?
One of the biggest challenges is that mobile only is still pretty complicated due to restrictions of a small screens and those caused by carriers. Mobile as an extension has more potential.

NearbyNow simplifies shopping for consumers who browse online but buy in stores. The technology makes it possible for shoppers to find products, brands and sales locally. Shoppers in a mall can take out their phone and search the inventory of the mall. The call to action is usually advertised on billboards around the mall.

Shoppers just opt-in by texting to the short code and the program texts back with a search-like application completely loaded with the mall’s inventory.

We have a couple million users a month that use our online site to reserve items to pick up. About 40 percent of these people asked for a message back that would serve as a receipt. That would be an example of how we use mobile as an extension of our existing efforts.

Which mobile campaigns really stick out to you?
Our experiment with Lindt chocolate is really interesting. We sent a text message to all users of our mall application. The call to action was to come to the Lindt store to try the new chocolate truffle.

This test saw a 14.8 percent response rate. We filled the store in about six minutes.

Lindt isn’t our only advertiser. Skechers shoes, The Body Shop, Metro Park and Ritz Camera have also bought ad space from us.

What are the benefits of the mobile channel?
In our case, proximity to a store is almost as important as a keyword is to search marketers.

Because mobile allows us to be really relevant, we catch consumers when they are at a high intent-to-buy [moment], since they are at a mall and in shopping mode. Mobile allows us to be relevant in terms of location and what the user wants.

What is mobile’s role at ad:tech?
What I have been hearing is that ad agencies are getting questions from clients about mobile and that’s new this year.