Justin Spratt, chief executive officer (CEO), at Quirk.
Justin Spratt, chief executive officer (CEO) at Cape Town-based marketing agency Quirk, was speaking at the Digital Services Africa conference in Johannesburg today (Wednesday) about mobile advertising as a tool in the mobile ecosystem.
“If you are an internet purist, it is actually not about the mobile phone, it’s about the internet. And the internet is about every single device. We talk about mobile as a separate channel and a separate device and a separate channel,” Spratt said.
According to findings, 40 million households in the United States have IP addresses, enabling tracking across much more meaningful media strategies than advertising.
“If you only focus on mobile, you are probably missing the trick”, Spratt said.
“The way that we are actually approaching this as a mobile access site causes us to lose focus on what we are trying to do and that is consumer media and trying to sell stuff.”
Recognising the ecosystem is important in ensuring mobile activity in combination with tablets and even small PCs as relevant mobile devices.
The role of SMS will remain as “super powerful” as it currently is, with the “please call me” totally underrated with figures and conversion proving it is a success as an advertising channel.
According to statistics, 53 per cent subscriber traffic from mobile advertising comes from SMS.
With smartphones being the future, BlackBerry predicts 80 per cent smartphone penetration in South Africa by 2014.
The mobile trend will move towards the empowerment of consumers, Spratt said.
Apart from SMS advertisements, coupon ads such as Checkers’ successful eezicoupon will continue to grow in success as more retailers enable mobile coupon redemption.
Despite the extreme “nowness”, there will also be the option to swiftly back-out on buying based on information.
Direct response makes e-commerce a cliché because “it’s all about the money” when it comes to interactive transaction.
“It’s actually remarkable how the mobile device trade forms part of e-commerce,” Spratt said.
Furthermore, research reveals nine out of every ten mobile searches leads to action and more than a half leads to sales.
“ I don't know if there are any spammers in the room, but those guys are making a s* load of money,” he said.
Mobile advertisements also fare four to five times better than any other form of advertisement due to user interface.
Geographically aimed advertisement will play an important role in purchase success with click to call (measuring call duration from clicks) and click to download being successful methods.
Furthermore, value-adding content will be a hit with users with visual integration built into the user experience.
