Limited prospects for WAP advertising
Mobile advertising can be used to address the target group directly, but not without their consent
Mobile advertising can be used to address the target group directly, but not without their consentWireless advertising could be the stuff of advertisers' dreams. The advertising recipient carries the advertising space with them and has virtually no way of avoiding the advertising. No wonder, then, that one or two companies have succumbed to the temptation to send advertising to more or less randomly selected cell phone owners on their handsets. But as a rule, they don't like such campaigns at all. Customers want to be asked beforehand, because advertising via SMS is something very personal. one form of wireless advertising that is already widespread is web-to-phone SMS: a cell phone owner can be sent a sponsored SMS via websites, which contains a short advertising message at the beginning. There are also SMS services to which end users can subscribe depending on their interests. They are also suitable for specific product information.
WAP with question mark -
because of the high costs
"Wireless advertising is not yet a huge boom, but we are seeing a solid trend towards more advertising on cell phones," says Volker Budde, Vice President Strategic Product Development at Adlink's headquarters in Germany. At the moment, SMS messages still dominate wireless advertising, although WAP would actually be the better advertising medium.
The advertising message does not have to be limited to text alone, the possibilities for interactivity are much greater. The problem is that relatively few people own WAP-capable cell phones, most of which still have a graphically limited display. In addition, WAP use incurs not inconsiderable connection costs. Martin Radelfinger, Managing Director of AdlinkSchweiz, has his doubts about WAP advertising: "People will jump directly from SMS advertising to advertising on handhelds that integrate mobile telephony and PDA functions. Wireless advertising will then be used on the
fully functional Pocket PC browser and on PDA-optimized Channels Avant Go."
Of course, there are already functioning forms of WAP advertising, but they are still very rarely used. Patrick Hofer, Managing Director of Kaufcom, which offers WAP solutions for companies and WAP services: "Experience has shown that the interstitial advertising method, where the user first has to watch a few seconds of advertising before reaching the desired content, is not so popular. When surfing WAP via GSM, such advertising costs the surfer around two centimes each time - with GPRS it is less than 0.3 centimes. We have had good experiences with WAP advertising in the form of links. Depending on the link and link text, click rates of between 8 and 20 percent are achieved."
Target group advertising with
regional design
Studies in Europe and the USA confirm the high click and response rates for wireless advertising. Advertising in which a specified telephone number can be called directly from a cell phone has been very successful in the area of wireless advertising. The adult industry in particular is taking advantage of this.
Location-based marketing is developing into an interesting form of wireless advertising. Because cell phone owners can be located precisely thanks to the radio cells of cell phone antennas, advertising tailored to the respective region could be considered, for example for restaurants or cultural events. Cooperation between the network operator with the location information and the advertiser is important here.
Patrick Hediger
WAP with question mark -
because of the high costs
"Wireless advertising is not yet a huge boom, but we are seeing a solid trend towards more advertising on cell phones," says Volker Budde, Vice President Strategic Product Development at Adlink's headquarters in Germany. At the moment, SMS messages still dominate wireless advertising, although WAP would actually be the better advertising medium.
The advertising message does not have to be limited to text alone, the possibilities for interactivity are much greater. The problem is that relatively few people own WAP-capable cell phones, most of which still have a graphically limited display. In addition, WAP use incurs not inconsiderable connection costs. Martin Radelfinger, Managing Director of AdlinkSchweiz, has his doubts about WAP advertising: "People will jump directly from SMS advertising to advertising on handhelds that integrate mobile telephony and PDA functions. Wireless advertising will then be used on the
fully functional Pocket PC browser and on PDA-optimized Channels Avant Go."
Of course, there are already functioning forms of WAP advertising, but they are still very rarely used. Patrick Hofer, Managing Director of Kaufcom, which offers WAP solutions for companies and WAP services: "Experience has shown that the interstitial advertising method, where the user first has to watch a few seconds of advertising before reaching the desired content, is not so popular. When surfing WAP via GSM, such advertising costs the surfer around two centimes each time - with GPRS it is less than 0.3 centimes. We have had good experiences with WAP advertising in the form of links. Depending on the link and link text, click rates of between 8 and 20 percent are achieved."
Target group advertising with
regional design
Studies in Europe and the USA confirm the high click and response rates for wireless advertising. Advertising in which a specified telephone number can be called directly from a cell phone has been very successful in the area of wireless advertising. The adult industry in particular is taking advantage of this.
Location-based marketing is developing into an interesting form of wireless advertising. Because cell phone owners can be located precisely thanks to the radio cells of cell phone antennas, advertising tailored to the respective region could be considered, for example for restaurants or cultural events. Cooperation between the network operator with the location information and the advertiser is important here.
Patrick Hediger
