ipad and mobile advertising

Long But worth a read , recent article in a small business mag


Got an iPad ? We've got an ad for it. By Andrew Grill
The idea of mobile advertising ? highly targeted messaging straight to the hands of your customer ? should have been very attractive to SMEs, but has failed to get traction. With the advent of the iPad and other tablets, Andrew Grill argues that the idea of truly ?mobile advertising? may finally be taken seriously.
Advertising presented on the iPad ? perhaps renamed ?iPadvertising? ? will finally allow brands and agencies to truly extend the message across all mediums and start to crack the elusive mobile space.
Until the arrival of the iPad, the mobile industry as a whole has been fixated on the possibility of advertising on mobile devices.
I am sure the folks at Google/Admob will argue that with 443 billion+ ?global impressions served? that business is booming.
I beg to differ. When was the last time you saw a great mobile ad on your Nokia, iPhone, Samsung or HTC? Better still did you click it and did it lead to a purchase? No? I didn?t think so.
My personal view is that mobile advertising on non-tablet devices has been a huge disappointment. For all of these ads served, how is it that we don?t hear more case studies of how mobile advertising has driven sales etc? Many will say that mobile ads are more about ?brand awareness?, but I feel that the promise of mobile advertising will not be fully realised in its current form.
The problem has been twofold: the standard mobile?s screen real estate does not lend itself to anything more than a banner ad (which is a direct replication of the web advertising experience); and advertisers have not taken advantage of the unique benefits of mobile ? namely it is a personal media device and should be treated as such.
I am not advocating that we move towards highly personalised ads as a solution, but there should be some level of relevance applied to the selection of ads that are served to a mobile device.
With the launch of the iPad, finally we have a device with not only a much larger screen, and hence larger real estate, but we also have a device that has been purpose built for rich and engaging content.
From the day I bought my iPad, one of the main uses has been to read newspapers, which is my one real vice ? I read as much as I can, not just to stay informed with what is happening in the world, but to also shape and challenge my own opinions on a variety of subjects.
What has really piqued my interest as I use the iPad on a daily basis are the new styles of advertising that are finding their way into these dedicated newspaper apps.
For me, for advertising to be truly successful and accepted on a mobile or portable device, it must conform to the three Ps of mobile and social advertising, namely: Privacy, Preference and Permission.
What I have noticed with some of these innovative iPad ads is that they really do invite you to interact and play with them. One that caught my eye was for Ford, and by wiping the ad with your finger in much the way you wipe steam from the shower glass, the ad came alive and showed you the inside of the car.
Because the predominant iPad utility is to consume media on a larger screen, I am more tolerant of advertising. Because the iPad ads contain an element of interactivity, they are more appealing, and hence the ?dwell time? (the time spent lingering on the ad) is much longer.
The final thing that lends itself to the iPad as a credible ad format is that creatives finally have a suitable canvas to extend the brand message and idea beyond the TV spot or press ad onto a tablet device.
Smaller businesses will soon see that clever integrated tablet based advertising is a cost effective means of getting their message out and driving and engaging traffic back to their websites.
With the recent introduction of the Project and The Daily iPad, newspaper apps from Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch respectively, we will start to see iPadvertising come into its own.
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