What consumers expect from mobile ads?

While consumers’ expectations of smartphones are rising everyday, the mobile industry hasn’t educated consumers about the limitations of mobile devices and this has led to idealistic expectations of mobile phones and mobile ads. A part of their unrealistic expectations is that smartphones can do just about anything and everything for them.

Before the Smartphone’s boom, most cell phone owners were satisfied with only clear voice calls, fast texting, and simple games. But times have changed and consumers have great expectations from their mobile devices; they want the best smartphones at the lowest possible prices. They demand more features, better performance, the coolest apps, and indirectly the best mobile ads.

The competition in mobile OS market is intense and bloody! Everywhere you go, you see Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, or Symbian devotees trying to make their friends switch or upgrade; marketers and advertisers are adding mobile to their strategy; manufacturers and app developers fight for increased market presence; wireless carriers try their best to attract more customers, and basically everyone in the mobile industry is fighting for more profit, higher market share, or stronger presence.

As a result of this hype, today more than ever before, mobile advertising is up swinging. Mobile advertising campaigns have become the key to making money with mobile marketing. This means that the opportunities for making money are endless, but the question is how can you turn mobile ad campaigns into successful mobile marketing that puts money in your pocket?

How to best turn mobile ads to dollars?

Cell phone adoption rates, especially smartphone adoption rate are rising everyday, so is the importance of mobile advertising; therefore, marketers should keep in mind the necessary qualities in creating successful mobile ads.

Marketers should also bring into consideration that many consumers are still less than thrilled about ads on this very personal device. In order to increase the usefulness of the channel, mobile marketers must cater the features and formats of their mobile ads to their consumer’s preferences. Meaning that they should understand not only do consumers expect mobile ads to inform, but also they expect the mobile ad to provide relevant information tailored to their preferences.

According to a survey from Yahoo! and Nielsen Company, being informative was the most important quality of mobile ads for a wide variety of products and services. Relevancy was a relatively close second in most categories. Respondents cared relatively little about the graphical and multimedia elements of the ads. This contrasts with research on iPad advertising, which has shown that tablet users pay more attention to the look and feel of the ads and care more about the colors.

According to the InsightExpress “Digital Consumer Portrait” published in 2010, the heaviest mobile users generally did not find mobile banners annoying, while full-page ads were seen less favorably.

Based on the research that has been done on mobile ad campaigns and our expertise in this arena, we recommend marketers to focus on relevant information for their mobile ad. A smartphone user’s satisfaction of mobile ads will only improve if the mobile industry releases flawless, informative, relevant mobile ads that truly offer excellent value and choice for the user.

As mobile ads are getting millions of clicks and eyeballs, it’s important to create an ad that meets users expectation. Time on a mobile ad with a brand is a great deal for a retailer; it is a very intimate experience exploring a brand on such a personal device; isn’t it?

The most interesting article that I came across this week was about cell phone payments and an interview with RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis.

I have been particularly interested in payment processing with mobile devices for some time now and specifically noticed that its really starting to take off in other places of the world such as Asia.  I always imagined that if payment processing were to take place, it would really need to be driven through the carriers.  I guess Mike Lazaridis also sees it that way.

In his interview with Laptop, there were discussions about PayPal and the ability for apps to be paid for through Paypal.  Unlike Apples iTunes model, this means that Blackberry users have one extra step and that is to sign up with PayPal.  Obviously Lazaridis recognizes this barrier and has mentioned that they are working with carrier partners to get the payment processes to be handled on their end.  If this does in fact happen, the mobile space in North America would forever be changed.

The only reservation I have is where the carriers would draw the line on payments.  Would they allow for payments only from applications or would they allow payments to be processed through retailers and be billed to a cell phone bill at the end of the month.  And if they did in fact allow for billing by retailers would they ultimately become a credit agency?  Would they allow some of their users to make purchases and they would prohibit others?  Will they begin to replace VISA, MasterCard and AMEX?

I can’t say for certain what role they will play but I am sure that they will take a larger role in our daily payment process. This is only a little while away and it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.