MSG Develops Mobile Advertising Primer With Bango; How Do Ad Networks Really Stack Up?
I’m recharged after a week at CTIA Wireless and another week of conferences, meetings and briefings in London, and ready to let loose with a steady stream of exclusive interviews/podcasts and industry analysis.
More of that throughout the week. But first, a high point of my trips was spending the day with Bango and road testing mobile advertising campaigns and mobile analytics tools with María Sánchez, Bango Digital Marketing Manager. To give marketers the inside track on how an actual campaign works, Bango has created a small-scale mobile site dedicated to weight loss and dieting called Mobislim. Maria and I took it out for a spin, setting up mobile campaigns with Google, Yahoo, Medio Systems, JumpTap, Mojiva and Millennial Media (Decktrade).
I should qualify that by adding that we attempted to set up campaigns with these companies. Not all could accommodate our modest campaign (offering a free low-cal foods chart for download on mobile). In fact, the results of our impromptu experiment may surprise you.
I know I was shocked, and signed on immediately with Bango to write a white paper (Mobile Advertising For Newbies) to provide sound advice and analysis on running campaigns and measuring results. In this project we expertly show what is involved in setting up three campaigns and measuring performance metrics using three analytics tools. The white paper is slated for release shortly after ad:tech in London and I’ll post a link where it can be downloaded for free.
Getting back to Maria and my experiences with real mobile advertising campaigns. Well, let’s just say that I now understand why Google has an iron grip on paid search advertising (despite numerous usability and targeting issues).
Google offered us the option to choose between setting up a mobile or online campaign early in the process and guided us every step of the way.
In contrast, Yahoo didn’t offer the option to create a mobile-only campaign, forcing us to call the company offices in the U.K. (BTW: Yahoo never called back, leading me to believe the company lacks the internal processes to properly handle publisher/advertiser requests like ours. If that is indeed the case, then Yahoo is likely leaving some serious money on the table.)
Medio asked us to fill out a form (Maria is still waiting for a reply).
JumpTap was easy enough to set up but then, when it came to inputting name, address and credit card details, it short-circuited on us. It may have been the fact that we were claiming Maria’s address in the U.K. But in a global mobile world it should nonetheless be possible to set up campaigns in other countries… After several attempts we gave up altogether. Shame.
Decktrade was a no-brainer, but severely limited our choice of keywords, forcing us to choose keywords we neither wanted nor felt captured the essence of what we were offering for free download. Put simply, we could bid on pre-defined channels that did not include the keywords we thought matched our campaign. Not very inspiring or empowering for mobile publishers/advertisers just waking up to the mobiad opportunity. If I pay, then I should set the parameters – and if I am offered a channel it should be a balanced mix of effective keywords. (Google allowed us to input loads of keywords, again another point in its favor.)
Mojiva worked out fine, but there is a catch. It pre-fills fields including pay-per-view (rather annoying since we wanted to do pay-per-click campaigns only) and could cost you mega-bucks if you aren’t careful. We were experimenting with $0.10 per click and ran up a pay-per-view bill of over $2,000.00 in the process. We called Mojiva who were nice enough and told us to simple delete the other field – but you have to wonder why it was pre-filled in the first place…
Overall, it was an educational experience and I look forward to documenting our real-life experiences both in the white paper and in our blogs.
You can check out Maria’s blog – which provides a place where people can follow the tests done on Mobislim and feedback their own experiences – here. At MSG, a new design will allow me to capture every detail in a special micro-site dedicated to mobile advertising, so check back regularly.
I also encourage you to try out your own mobile advertising campaigns and direct traffic to the Mobislim mobile site, if you don’t already have one of your own. With a free Bango mobile analytics account you will be able to measure how the different campaigns perform, see the number of unique visitors and where the traffic is coming from, plus calculate the conversion rates for all their campaigns.
Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter.
Note: My offer to all mobile analytics companies stands. You are welcome to use MSG as a platform for your thought leadership – and invited to submit columns or contact me directly to arrange a Q&A.
