The purchase of Double Click by Google is a confirmation that Google has two core competencies – search and advertising. Search is what they do, but advertising is how they make their money. The fact that Microsoft and others were bidding the business talks to the driving power of advertising within the interactive media channel. The acquisition news this week, along with several other articles about carriers, media companies and technology companies got me thinking. And then, I woke up this morning to the following picture in my in email box:
Well then, I just did the happy dance. This picture, along with some other things my company has been developing in the localization, mobilization and personalization space pulled it all together for me.
Mobile has limited real estate. On-screen navigation of Web sites is difficult on most devices. And the mobile phone is viewed as much more personal than a desktop or laptop computer. So as a marketer, I have to ask myself how can I get my message across quickly, effectively and in a manner that consumers will accept? As a business owner, I want a single infrastructure that will support all of my web services and marketing campaigns and deliver them efficiently to my customers on whatever device they choose to use. So what’s the least common denominator to reaching them on any device using my existing infrastructure? The Browser. So let’s look at what’s working and not in the realm of mobile data services and advertising:
The downside to carriers – the walled garden approach – limits access to things users want
The upside to carriers – menu-based navigation – easy, intuitive, works with any device
The downside to text ads – doesn’t grab attention – may be overlooked
The upside to text ads – contextual relevance, space savings – required for mobile
So why not combine the best of all digital advertising practices and use the browser to navigate, brand, provide contextual relevance and catch the consumer’s eye. Technically, this is not an easy task, but I believe its power and practicality are undeniable. While mobile will never provide the full visual impact or amount of data displayed on a television or a 15” monitor, we can do much better than we are doing right now.
So as mobile marketers, we just need to grab enough attention to get someone to see and select our menu item (the equivalent of a click-through). If it can take them directly to the action we want, right there inside the menu – all the better, as we limit the barriers to the desired action. We want maximum customer choices (open garden) as this leads to more marketing revenue. As long as the attention grabber fits within the context of the menu structure or mobile page content, it will be viewed as relevant and should have a higher response rate. The attention grabber can be a photo, logo or icon and can be accompanied by text, as in the first image. So if the first image, which is a bit busy, did not drive home the concept of how powerful menu-based web services and marketing and can, this one, which is not quite as flashy, should:
This includes links to on-device applications, links to web sites (think favorites or bookmarks in the menu), location-based services in the menu, and mobile marketing in the menu. Now go back and add the Google logo next to the search item, a CNN logo instead of the words “CNN”, a picture of the Sun next to weather or a logo or stylized text in place of the “Your ad here” text. And as I consumer, I can add a photo or image to my application links, creating the equivalent of a mobile shortcut from my browser. Ease of use and navigation just got a whole lot easier, and marketing just got a whole lot more powerful.
As humans, we are programmed to respond to visual stimuli. Users can personalize their menus (just as I attach a photo to my contacts and many of us do to our blog profiles) and marketers and leverage menus both contextually and visually. I truly believe that what we have developed opens up a whole new world of mobile marketing, personalization and Web services. We have extended browser capabilities and addressed the root problems of convenience and size that drove the bifurcation of the Web (Web/Mobile Web). This approach can merge the two back together, making it much more cost-effective and consistent in terms of how businesses deliver their services and messages to connected consumers.
