Mobile Banner Ads Have Same Brand Recall As TV Spots
You really do learn something new everyday.
Apparently, “[m]obile banner ads…produce click-through rates that are ‘exponentially higher than online’ banner ads, where CTR has fallen to about 0.3%; mobile banners produce an overall click-through rate of 2%, even ‘slightly higher for entertainment brands.’
Very interesting stuff.
Very recently, Punchkick Interactive was asked to create a mobile marketing campaign by a client representing Motel 6. The goal of the campaign was to influence the buying behavior of Hispanics who are traveling on spontaneous road trips.
The SMS campaign integrates with traditional radio advertising, and offers travelers a way to sign up for alerts of fun events in their destination city. Travelers who sign up receive three days of event information. Mobile Marketer wrote a great article summarizing the details of this campaign.
Mobile Marketing Statistics Highlight Worldwide Usage
An new Experian study revealed a number of mobile marketing and text messaging statistics that I have not seen before. The short list is outlined below:
- By early 2006, thirty countries had exceeded 100% per capita cell phone usage
- In 2006 there were about 241 million mobile phone users in the United States — or, approximately 80% per capita mobile phone penetration
- According to industry estimates, it won’t be until 2013 that the US will top 100% per capita penetration
- Two thirds of mobile phone users are “active users of SMS text messaging.” What does that translate to? Approximately 1.8 billion people are actively texting today
- Globally, there are twice as many active users of SMS as are active users of email
- In the U.S. alone, roughly 300 billion text messages were sent in 2007
- SMS is typically read within an average of 15 minutes after receipt and responded to within 60 minutes
- While 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam
- 19% of text messagers say they use text messaging as a means of communication between themselves and colleagues
- 62% say they use text messaging to communicate with friends
- 55% say they use it to communicate with their significant others
Source: Mobile Marketing Watch
Additional mobile marketing statistics
We are working on a project for a client that has a very troublesome requirement as part of the custom content management system—the ability to enter ANY image URL into an HTML text field for use within a custom Flash application that we built.
This is troublesome because although the client does own the rights to the images they are using, they do not have any easy way to implement crossdomain.xml policy files on their image servers.
SO, we needed to come up with a workaround—hence the example below. Please keep in mind that this is just an example and the version optimized for other image types/videos/error checking/etc. is not posted.
<?php
// GET THE PATH OF THE TARGET IMAGE
if (isset($_GET["img"])) {
// READ THE CONTENTS OF THE IMAGE
$handle = fopen($_GET["img"], "rb");
$contents = "";
while (!feof($handle)) {
$contents .= fread($handle, 8192);
}
fclose($handle);
// DISPLAY THE IMAGE
header ("Content-Type: image/jpeg");
echo $contents;
}
?>
50 Useful iPhone Tips for Librarians and Researchers
College@Home created a list of 50 useful iPhone tips for librarians and researchers, and it actually brought up a few points directly related to mobile marketing…
2. Creating a texting service for patron questions. Giving patrons the option of texting in their questions to the library can make it easy for those who prefer to avoid telephone conversations the ability to get quick and easy answers to simple questions, and if librarians within your library are using iPhones they can respond to questions in between checking in or shelving materials and other tasks.
5. Check how your site looks on an iPhone. Many sites don’t quite translate well to mobile devices like the iPhone. Check how your library’s webpage looks by using an online tool like iPhoney or by checking it yourself on an iPhone.
7. Optimize your site for mobile devices. If you’ve checked out how your site looks on an iPhone and the result is not so great, consider creating a special page for mobile users to access your site. Many libraries are already doing so to maximize the usability of their webpages by patrons.
18. Track requests. You can use your iPhone as an easy way to alert patrons that their requests have arrived whether by phone, email or text and you can record and keep track of these requests as well.
23. Create content that’s easy to browse over an iPhone. If you’ve decided to develop a version of your site that’s more easily compatible with mobile phones, consider scaling it down the the basics. Simple search tools and information will be easiest to browse on the go.
