The Pros and Cons of Mobile Image Ads
Google have announced an new avenue for online advertising - Mobile Image Ads!
Image ads have long been a big feature of pay per click (PPC) advertising. The Google content network is made up of a huge volume of web sites that serve both text and image ads. The content network claims to reach over 64% of all internet uses and can be a great tool for online marketing.
Mobile advertising has been hyped as one of the big areas of growth for marketing but this has yet to been seen. Google already place pay per click (PPC) ads along side search results made on mobile phones but this is a traffic source of very low volume. An £800 per day, pay per click campaign can be matched on mobile search with just a few pounds. The general feeling is that the marketing is accelerating faster than the technology and inclination to use it. I for one am very conscious of the potential costs involved with web browsing on my mobile and from personal experience it is still easier and cheaper to call directory enquiries.
On the up side of this low traffic and therefore low competition, it is also possible to set the search ads up as click to call. Where else can you get a call to your business for £0.25! The mobile image ads are required to go through to a mobile compatible web site, but these can have a click to call link on. After all the user is holding a phone already!
There have been a number of successful branding campaigns run on the mobile web. Gillette was one of the first and Mini launched part of their mass market campaign on the mobile web as well. It is likely that the number of available placements will be minimal at the start, with traffic and costs to match, so this is not just a venture for big businesses.
It is apparent that mobile web devices will be huge, even with a slow start similar to the general acceptance of mobile phones in general back in 1995. Now is a good time to start looking into and understanding this fledgling platform as it is and will the future.
