Rick Joubert, Head of Mobile Advertising at Vodacom, flew onto stage to investigate the development of mobile as a medium to rival traditional media.
Rick pulls up a list of the Seven Mass Media: - Print
- Recording
- Cinema
- Radio
- TV
- Internet
- Mobile
The top five are cold. The bottom two are hot and interactive. These are attracting more and more adspend away from traditional media. Each new media has the potential to cannibalise the one before it but this has never happened completely, but it does have a decreasing effect of course.
What do brands want from media? Reach, targeting, frequency and response. Mobile offers all these, with portability and payment mechanism built-in. According to Rick, mobile has twice the reach of TV and three times the reach of internet.
"Mobile advertising has been over-hyped in the short-term but under-hyped in the medium to long term. Martin Sorrel, WPP (mid 2007)".
Some stats for a bit of perspective: - More than 1 Billion monthly impressions (excluding short codes, mobile CRM and SMS spam)
- This will rise to 50 billion by 2011
- Vodacom, MXit, global ad networks and the rest
Vodacom's role in mobile advertising: - Take the lead in developing and growing mobile as a medium
- Commercial, technical and creative standards
- Policy and self regulation
- Measurement and auditability
Rick threw down the gauntlet by saying that mobile advertising in South Africa is currently all about Vodacom and MXit. He wonders why more isn't being done by MTN, Media24, Avusa and other major media players. Justin's new role sounds like this should be on Avusa's To Do list, at least.
Some of the results they've achieved for their ad clients: - 100 000 leads per month for Metropolitan Life
- 84 000 downloads of Nike branded content
- 52 000 downloads of Steers branded content
- 485 000 brand engagements for OMO
