

Why Advertising on Mobile Sucks, From the Marketer’s Perspective - dmor
http://distributionhacks.com/why-advertising-on-mobile-sucks

======
jrabone
Has it occurred to the advertards that perhaps one of the reasons behind the
rush to mobile/tablet devices is that the user experience is SO MUCH BETTER
without the insanity that is the advert-polluted desktop internet? After all,
$12 million / month from in-app purchases (CSR Racing,
<http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/15/natural-motion/>) suggests that the money is
out there.

No, I think it probably has not. We're just page-views to be commoditized to
most of these jerks.

~~~
corin_
First off, if you need to resort to name-calling then you haven't argued your
case well enough.

Secondly, my work has never taken my near mobile advertising, so this is
purely a personal opinion: you really think that avoiding adverts is anywhere
near the top of reasons why people would use a mobile device over a PC/laptop?
Have you ever known anyone cite that as a reason? Compare it to reasons such
as portability, etc...

Disclaimer: Given a large amount of the small company I work for's revenue
comes from selling advertising on our websites, and separate to that I spend
six figures monthly on buying advertising elsewhere, I'm one of the "jerks" so
perhaps my opinion is biased.

~~~
larrys
"Have you ever known anyone cite that as a reason?"

To add to this thought - It is well known that people _tune out_ all those ads
anyway so it couldn't possibly be a reason to leave the desktop, eh?

------
CyrusL
I have to disagree with this. It's probably true that e-commerce checkout
processes are less optimized on mobile than on desktop, but that doesn't have
a huge bearing on ad rates.

The majority of all ad spending is for brand awareness campaigns, not direct
response. That's why CPMs for TV spots are still higher than both desktop
banners and mobile banners even though TV has no checkout process. The prices
are driven by Coca-Cola's spending, not ShamWow's spending. Also, desktop
banner CPMs have been going up lately because of the new agency trading desks
like Cadreon, Vivaki, and Xaxis. They are helping brands finally buy more
digital ads because it's a lot more complicated and fragmented than buying TV,
radio, or print.

Also, mobile usage is exploding right now. It makes sense that prices would be
low while supply is growing faster than demand. Over time, the usage will
level off and the ad dollars will catch up. I think the CPMs then will be a
much better judge of the effectiveness of mobile ads, and I think they will be
driven by how well brands can engage with consumers through mobile devices.

~~~
jonknee
> That's why CPMs for TV spots are still higher than both desktop banners and
> mobile banners even though TV has no checkout process.

TV advertising has high CPMs because the results are hard to measure and
executives like seeing their ads on TV. It's old school. There's also very
little supply compared to online--you may like seeing your ad run during
Sunday Night Football but that only happens 16 times a year. Facebook has more
eyeballs than that every day.

~~~
majormajor
TV and other "old media" also commands big money because companies like Apple
focus on it and still see massive successes. It works. Does Apple even do
banner ads at all? I don't remember ever seeing one.

~~~
sheraz
Apple has done banner ads in the past. I remember a particularly attention-
grabbing campaign they did a few years ago on the NYTimes home page. It was a
fairly creative piece.

~~~
jonknee
Yea, I have only seen their banner advertising on large established media
brands (probably kicked in as part of print or TV campaigns). Apple is old
school with advertising, Steve was intimately involved in creating the
advertisements and I'm sure in placing them.

Apple does do some AdWords advertising (I see an ad pointing to Apple.com when
searching for iPhone), but I have not seen any Apple video ads on YouTube.
Perhaps that's because they don't want to pay Google any more money than they
have to.

------
shinratdr
> buying stuff on mobile is a terrible experience and fewer people do it than
> on the full-size desktop browser. Things you can buy easily (games, apps,
> content) is all cheap and single serve (< $10 per purchase)

It's not a coincidence that most mobile purchases were made from iPads this
holiday season. Plenty of other tablets still offer a substandard browsing
experience and the more obstacles you hit, the more likely you are to abandon
purchasing on your mobile device and switch to a desktop.

It also helps that most online retailers factor in how their site performs on
an iPad at this point. You can't just sweep how iOS based devices continue to
trounce Android based devices in terms of showing up in weblogs under the rug.
Even on a more modern device like a Galaxy S III running up-to-date Chrome,
it's a noticeably worse experience.

It's a vicious cycle. They don't show up in logs frequently enough, so the
experience doesn't improve (in fact in many cases it gets worse), which in
turn results in less attempts which continues to validate the company not
offering good support, and so on. Just selling them clearly isn't enough.
Google can continue to tout how they're activating <insert insanely high
number> of Android devices per day all they want, but something is clearly
amiss when people aren't using them enough.

------
jonathanjaeger
It's not simply about landing pages that confuse a user or sub-optimal user
experiences (redirects and other confusing changes to the interface).

Look at the verticals that pay a huge amount for lead generation in the
desktop space: insurance, online education, health & wellness supplements,
various medical/legal portals, etc.

These high-paying marketing verticals need people to fill out full forms to
get the most out of their leads. In addition, having a full experience through
the desktop allows users to click on subsequent links for more information so
they gain trust before filling out information or signing up for a website.
You simply can't get this whole experience on mobile, and until that problems
is solved, you won't see anyone doing crazy volume in the marketing world on
mobile for those high-paying verticals.

~~~
jrabone
The lead-generating scumbags need to be clamped down on, hard. When a phone
service provider sells YOUR customer data to the highest bidding lead-
generator, you'll agree with me.

Telefonica - you are scum, and you've lost as many customers as I can talk to.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
True -- but there's a difference between unwanted spam where your phone
service provider is selling your information via some obfuscated Terms of
Service that you barely know you agreed to vs. you searching for something on
Google or clicking on a display ad that truly interests you. Of course, there
are bad actors in the latter case too, but every business is a lead generator
in some way and it's not 100% clear cut.

------
Spooky23
The article is spot on re: poor placement resulting in worthless clicks. I've
clicked on several useless advertisements, particularly on newspaper sites due
to floating banners, banners stuck next to the site navigation, etc. The
irrelevance of newspaper-site ads is always striking -- particularly when
Ghostery shows something like 18 tracking cookies on my local paper's site.

My son (11 mos) racks up some significant clicks on a few apps that we play
with (a virtual bongo drum, etc) because he lacks the motor skills, and the ad
is placed adjacent to the playing surface.

Everyone these days seems to forget the core value proposition of AdWords back
in the day -- they offered relevant, unobtrusive text based ads in the heyday
of flash-based "punch the money" and pop-under "x10 camera" ad campaigns.
Google always gave a hoot about the desktop user experience early on.

------
kdavis
This will all come to a head, very soon.

Mary Meeker's forecast, the very same from which the inset slide is drawn,
predicts the smartphone/tablet installed base will overtake desktops Q2 2013.

Something must break. It will be interesting.

~~~
chamanbuga
Source: <http://bit.ly/JVfaeK>

IMO, the most interesting slide is # 17. Advertisers spent 25% of their budget
on print media even only 7% of the consumers time was spent on the print
media.

~~~
corin_
While 25% vs. 7% sounds illogical, it isn't necessarily. Maybe one person
seeing a print ad gets the same results as 10 people seeing an online ad.
Maybe for any single person, one print ad has the same effect as seeing 10
online ads. Maybe print ads reach not only less people, but also _different_
people to online ads, and therefore even if it's less cost-effective it is
still cost-effective enough to be worth spending money on. It's not a simple
decision to make :)

------
fonosip
All these mobile estimates use numbers from adnetworks That do not include the
market leader. (maybe monopolist) google.

Yet google is heavily incentivizing adsense publishers to go mobile. Why ?
because it is more profitable!

An iPad or iPhone user is way more valuable than a desktop user.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Good point! Fab keeps talking about how their iPad users are much more likely
to be spenders on the site, plus their mobile purchases over the holiday
season speak for themselves.

------
Kiro
I think Google Wallet will solve this problem:
<https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/online/>

It makes the shopping experience as frictionless as when buying an app.

------
hiddenstage
Traditional banner advertising isn't ideal for mobile screens. Mobile
advertising WILL be huge - but it will come from ads being baked into the app
experience rather than simple banners.

