Today everyone is aware about the convenience nature of mobile phones – known as third screen after TV and Computers, its growing popularity seems to be catching the eye of advertising media. Mobile market subscription in India for September was 248.7 million released by TRAI, mobile advertising is becoming more popular way to promote the products. It is emerging as biggest competitor for internet advertising. Around 8.3 million customers were added in the month of August.
Internet advertising contributes around 1.8% of the country’s total advertising spend which pegs online advertising at around Rs.300 crore. While the current mobile advertising market is estimated to be around Rs.6 crore.
Personalized ads is one of the key feature for mobile advertising (eg. depending on the monthly bill of a mobile user the advertisers would send them the right content ads).
The online mobile advertising also includes broadcast sms, brand jingles as caller tunes, music, video and games download. The mobile music industry is picking up steam in India. Indians have purchased more music on mobile than any other source purchasing music in first three months of 2007.
Meridian Mobile ( a part of UK based Meridian Group and Manufacturers of FLY handsets) CEO, Mr. Rajiv Khanna , said “the cellular growth in India is faster than that of personal computer penetration and this will result in huge opportunities for advertisers”.
Today cell phones have become much cheaper and are capable of data transfers, it is compatible and easy to carry. GPRS rates also going to be reduced in near future and also the purchasing power of people has increased. Today Indian market and economy is booming, cell phones have become more of necessity than a fashion statement. It enables to connect people instantly no matter where they are. Easy accessible services of internet and office services like word, power point, excel, etc on cell phone is proving to be more useful.
This is attracting more and more advertisers into mobile advertising field.
We had earlier also blogged about mobile sms advertising services of whose model we had questioned later, companies like mGinger, mGarlic, sms2india, sms gupshup were some of those companies. They provide sms advertising service where you get ads of only those products in which you are interested in buying at your own convenience. You can also earn affiliate income by referring it to your friends and family.
Time will tell whether people are comfortable with such mobile advertisements and their promotional offers as a mobile is very personal device on which many people may not be comfortable sharing their personal space on. Though it can prove to be a fine source of earning income but in the long run it can seem to be irritating and a monotonous act. Mobile advertisers should come out with new innovative ideas which will be more comfortable with huge audiences.
we at zestadz believe that mobile advertising trend will grow exponentially in the next 2 years. as you have pointed out in the artcile ,it is still early years for mobile advertising arena in india, but with good VAS services offered to the end users at the lowest prices, we believe that mobile advertising will soon become an important medium for the advertisers to brand their product.