ADOI Blog

Mobile Advertising Interview: Christian Cadeo, Admob Asia Pacific

garytay on 07 6, 2010

Christian is no stranger to mobile advertising working with AdMob, one of the world’s largest mobile advertising network, who recently published its quarterly Southeast Asian Mobile Metrics Report:. Mobile traffic in Malaysia increased to 161.4 million in the first quarter of this year…

Mobile is touted as the key driver for Social Media. In Malaysia, Maxis has announced its intention to be an integrated player, side-stepping jargon like triple play and quad play, insisting instead on a holistic ambition with data, voice, entertainment and more… what sort of opportunities do these present to marketers?

With such an approach, more consumers will jump on to the mobile bandwagon, mainly due to the entertainment offerings by mobile operators. The number of adopters will also keep growing as more interesting content becomes available – improved data plans, smartphones, rich mobile content – which media and mobile phone companies are creating. This is still in the early stages, but is growing very fast.
What this means for marketers is, they can better reach their customers through the use of richer content, targeting a wider range of consumers without losing the ability to cater individual messages for each one. There is neither compromise of content nor reach.

What about Social Networking on mobile?

According to ComScore, 77.5% of the web population in Malaysia can be reached by FaceBook. According to FaceBook, about one fourth of the people using the social media platform regularly access FB on their mobiles. Given these metrics, it would be only a matter of time before brands start developing content specifically for social networks, further encouraging more people to get online on social networking sites using their mobiles.

Mobile provides the ability to target by site, phone model, demographics and location, all of which are key to advertisers…

By serving highly interactive ads, a marketer can build interest for the brand. Surveys can also be done on mobile platforms. These give marketers a better understanding of what the consumer which would, in turn, result in better quality ads.

AdMob serves ads which link to mobile pages. These pages bring another dimension to just standard banner ads, offering more comprehensive content that engage customers and ensure better click-through. An understanding of the lives and needs of the target customer and being able to connect with them emotionally is key to building the relationship.

Tell us about services like Lovegety in Japan which contain social-media elements allowing users to broadcast their live locations to a network of potential profile matches, alerting them when a matchmaking possibility is nearby….

Location-based social media, such as a Lovegety and Foursquare, open up opportunities for both consumer and marketer. Consumers get to access information of actual places as they visit these places and, this allows marketers to leave information in a cloud, i.e. advertisements.

Privacy issues and permission-based marketing remain an issue for mobile. What is the latest update on this concern?

There will always be an argument over these two issues, but without insightful consumer information, consumers will probably only get ads that either make no sense or incite no interest from them.

The ability to track consumer decisions may be deemed as an invasion of privacy, due to the use of private information to predict consumer choices. Trust is an important factor in consumers accepting content and we can build this by giving them more relevant information.

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