After session 1,2, 3 and 4 came the last session on mobile marketing. Given than India has over 300 million mobile phones this session should be of prime importance to digital marketer purely because of its reach. This session had some nice insights by the panelists on how to approach mobile marketing.

Rathi  Gangappa National Account Manager, Onmobile stated that consumers are trying to get to content and the advertising agencies and advertisers come in between the content and that is the basic ad serving business. There is immense opportunity in voice based business on mobile. Then there is response based advertising on text media and then wap banner servicing, etc. and finally video advertising with the roll out of 3G hence there are no dearth of ideas.

Hence there is no dearth of ideas but the fear is of consumer backlash to intrusive advertising. Question is how can we use the mobile medium without annoying customer and vice versa for advertisers?
Customer acceptance becomes the vehicle for innovation and therefore customer acceptance is key.

Atanu Mandal President & COO ACL Wireless made the following points:
-    Mobile advertising has been around for sometime with short codes and sms and voice coupons etc.
-    Mobile is better because it is versatile and interactive with highest penetratin and rapidly growing and sharp profiling and ppc model.
Why is mobile advtg in its infancy still?
o    Mainly sms and wap based campaigns.
o    Low level of network integration and high customer access cost.
o    Weak targeting and segmentation.
o    Low customer tolerance for incoming sms and voice.

What will lead to a shift?

Mobile advertising by on deck publishers will lead to a paradigm shift
o    Contextual, Interactive, Multi-modal and Non-intrusive is the future of mobile ads
o    Operator as a media publisher is capable of delivering relevant, targeted and nonintrusive ads

o    Also gratification based opt-in is something the operator is best placed to execute.
o    Operators can provide advertisers customer profiling and targeting mechanisms

Saurabh Vartikar Head Mobile Marketing, Mauj spoke about harnessing opportunities in mobile be its reach, richness, engaging ability, measurability, viral effect, cost effectiveness, targeted audience and  personalization.

He also spoke on the difficulty faced by an advertiser in understanding the media, knowing the 300mn subscribers as well as jargon and measuring cross media effectiveness. He said another problem for advertisers is segmentation of users as according to Admob there are only only 2 lakh is premium subscribers out of 300 mn.
He also pointed out some other concerns like  only 10-15 million usersuse mobile internet and how many respond to advertising? Sms has reached full universe of mobile users but is it hitting my target audience? Users are willing to receive ads but can they be compensated for it?

Vishal Maheshwari Director - Mobile, Yahoo! India said that Yahoo thinks the mobile is BIG and its here to stay. He stated that mobile is a constant source of information and connection in general media consumption. He also felt that mobile was very personal and the statistic that proves it is the one where lost wallet is reported in 24 hours but a lost mobile is reported in 60 minutes.
He outlined 5 must do’s while pursuing mobile advertising:
o    Keep it simple
o    Embrace the medium
o    Remember the audience
o    Learn and optimize
o    Have realistic expectations

Naveen Tewari, Chief Executive Officer, mKhoj spoke about the following three points:

1. Largest reach
2. Precision and Exceptional ROI
   
3. Advertiser will flock the medium

Large reach
o    Early days but mobile subscribers is already crossed 300 million
o    Mobile has shown extreme growth in past 9 months
o    Estimated gprs users at 50 -60 million and active at 10 million.
o    Mobile internet has grown at 300-400%
Precision and Exceptional ROI
o    Mobile has reasonable targeting ability
o    Mobile advertising has great ROI
o    Advertiser can also get information about the consumer who interacted wth his ad so that he can make an informed decision
Advertiser will flock to the medium
o    Brand advertisers are typically cautious to sign up for a new medium, but once they do they have stuck on
o    It takes a few trial campaigns to sign up for long term
o    There are specific segments of advertisers for which the medium has started to give consistent value like mobile content players, applications portals, entertainment, automobile segments, youth, handsets and accessories.

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