So let\u2019s talk about targeting.<\/strong>
\nOur belief is that it needs to be done just right \u2013 under targeting or over targeting can be a problem.<\/p>\n
Most advertisers that are trying to do branding on mobile phones are big brands with big budgets and the ads will also be running on TV. The target framework for brand ads is generally two or three variables at most. The first two are always age and gender \u2013 that is how TV is bought. On top of that if you can have some sense of spending power \u2013 that\u2019s as far as brand buyers can go on a very large scale.<\/p>\n
There are other variables we can use for targeting. For example an advertiser like Nike may decide they only want to be on sports content. Or for movies and cars, and advertiser may want to do Thursday night, as Friday and the weekend are the big shopping times for these items.<\/p>\n
So that is all possible, but in general the targeting for branding is age and gender and income, that\u2019s all the eco-system can support at scale.<\/p>\n
What about location information?<\/strong>
\nReal time location as to where the subscriber is at this moment might be more relevant for transaction advertising. When you think of cars or consumer packaged good, its far less relevant to them where you are standing at this very moment, what is most relevant to them is whether you fit the demographic profile they want.<\/p>\nStoryboarding is an interesting concept, do you have experience with that?<\/strong>
\nWe have the capability for precise storyboarding, but have not implemented a campaign – yet. Another thing we are about to offer is a combination of brand and transactional ads that are coordinated at the individual level. So you might say: \u201cshow the individual my video ad that has the brand proposition 3 times. Once they\u2019ve seen that, then show them the banner 4 times that actually makes an offer\u201d. <\/p>\nYou said that most advertisers who doing branding ads on mobile are also on TV. Do they use the same creative, or develop something specific for the mobile format?<\/strong>
\n![ujjal_portrait2.gif]()
What we have seen so far, and what I think we will see for the next 6 months is that advertisers are taking TV commercials and re-purposing for mobile. We at Rhythm have editors that can take your ad and tweak it, and make it nice for mobile. It works reasonably well, but it\u2019s not spectacular.<\/p>\nGiven the momentum that we have, we\u2019ll soon get to a phase where people will make separate cuts for mobile, and then finally we’ll get to a phase with entirely made for mobile ads. Making video ads is expensive, so until the medium has a certain momentum, it\u2019s hard for agencies to justify making a made for mobile video ad.<\/p>\n
In your view of the overall market, what things do you think are holding back the emergence of mobile advertising?<\/strong>
\nI think that first of all we have to get a workable \u201cEco-system\u201d going. By eco-system, I mean there are three sets of players that have to play together in a way they never have before. The three \u201cgorillas\u201d are the people who provide content, the advertisers, and the mobile operators. They are all very large, very successful companies that have to adjust to a comfortable way of doing business together. There\u2019s a lot of push-pull still going on as to who owns what and who\u2019s really in charge and how the pie should be split.<\/p>\nSecondly, I think standards will help a lot. If not, it will confuse the ad agencies. Regarding ad formats, they know how to make a 30 second TV ad, and they know how to deal with print, but mobile is still awfully complex. Another standard is regarding terms and conditions for sale of media. In TV, people can make deals on the phone because the T\u2019s & Cs are well understood \u2013 you don\u2019t negotiate a new terms sheet each time. The internet took a long time to reach this level, and I don\u2019t think mobile is there yet.
\n
\nWhat about the consumers, are they ready? The agencies?<\/strong>
\n
I think the consumer is ready, absolutely. In terms of the agencies, I don\u2019t think they are, but mostly because they don\u2019t see an eco-system to engage with yet. If they saw all the players together offering them a simple way to engage, they would be all over it. Every agency has someone with a business card that says \u201cmobile\u201d on it, and they are looking at it. But at the moment they don\u2019t know what to actually do when they get to work on a Monday morning.<\/p>\nLets talk about the importance of pricing.<\/strong>
\nWell, clearly the \u201cfree\u201d element helps a lot. If you ask someone to make ads for mobile they always say \u201chow many people can I reach?\u201d When you offer things for free, you get explosive growth in consumer adoption\u2013 our first month ramp up after launch was faster than YouTube. <\/p>\nWhen we say \u201cfree\u201d, we actually mean that the service we offer with 3UK is in fact \u201czero-rated\u201d. This means that there is no charge at all for the data \u2013 the customer doesn\u2019t even need a data plan. So you could even have a prepaid subscriber whose minutes have run out so they can\u2019t make a call, but they could still watch the ad-funded video service.<\/p>\n
So clearly this is an \u201con-deck\u201d service. What\u2019s your view of the \u201coff-deck\u201d world?<\/strong>
\nThe main two disadvantages in \u201coff-deck\u201d are that you don\u2019t have the targeting, and you can\u2019t zero-rate. I think that the off-deck people can really succeed in low bandwidth applications. For example with banner ads you can be off-deck because you don\u2019t need a zero rating for that \u2013 there\u2019s not too many bits flowing. But for video, there is no economic off-deck model possible.<\/p>\nOne last thing \u2013 would you care to give us any predictions about the future of mobile advertising?<\/strong>
\nOne very interesting question for any new media is whether the media is best for \u201cbranding\u201d or \u201ctransactions\u201d, and therefore which form of advertising will be the biggest. My prediction is that mobile is a better tool for branding, and in a 2-year time frame the money for branding will exceed what\u2019s being spent for transactional advertising. Most companies are premised on the opposite assumption, but here is my reasoning.<\/p>\n
Two things make online transactional advertising massive. First you have high-ticket, juicy items like financial services, travel, personal injury lawyers, or any high-priced goods. These generate a very high click through price. And secondly you have a very \u201clong tail\u201d of another 10,000 categories. <\/p>\n
But the phone is more for impulse. So you don\u2019t have high-ticket items – people aren\u2019t buying life insurance, travel, or plasma screens on their mobile. And second you don\u2019t have 10,000 categories. Once you get past the first 5 or 6 categories of products, there is really no long tail at all. So until people change their buying behavior and start using their phone to buy plasma TV\u2019s and search for thousands of other items, I am hard pressed to see how there will be a lot of mobile transaction advertising.<\/p>\n
However, when people are enjoying short video clips, which is a TV like entertainment experience, then car brands are in, clothing brands are in, movies are in, CPG are in, restaurants are in, every large category is in. These are the advertisers we\u2019ve got on our service, and this is why it\u2019s my theory that branding is where the big money is.<\/p>\n
Thank you very much Ujjal.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Ujjal’s closing slide from his speech at Cannes Lions<\/span><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Interview with Ujjal Kohli, CEO of Rhythm New Media, one of the leading mobile advertising startups. Ujjal believes that mobile is best suited for Branding as opposed to Transactions. Rhythm has launched a successful ad-funded video service with well known brands and recently announced impressive numbers: 15% subscriber penetration in 3 months, and 75%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Interview with Ujjal Kohli, CEO of Rhythm New Media, one of the leading mobile advertising startups.
Online advertising has done a great job of what I call \u201ctransactional\u201d advertising, where you want the consumer to engage, click, and buy something. But no one has yet really addressed the issues of \u201cbrand\u201d advertising, where an impression is made just to warm up the consumer. You want them to know you, you want them to like you, but you are not trying to sell them anything at the moment. <\/p>\n
In \u2018transactional\u2019 advertising, measurement is sort of built in, as the number of people that click is a pretty good indication of how well the ad worked. This is why it\u2019s so accountable and growing so quickly, people like that.<\/p>\n