Mobile advertising is the kind of advertising method which is done using mobile devices as a media. An abrupt increase in the number of mobile users over the recent years has prompted the advertisers to focus more on advertising through mobile phones rather other traditional methods of advertising such as PC or TV.
Also, the shift of online activities from computer systems to more convenient handset devices gave a major boost to mobile advertisement. Though, mobile advertising today has a growing global market, it involves its own set of pros and cons. Let’s explore some of these here:
Pros of Mobile Advertisement
Users are connected to their mobile phones nearly every single hour of the day. They receive the message at the very moment it is sent. Despite of it in any mode, the message is received by the user as soon as the mobile device is turned on. Thus, mobile marketing techniques are much instant.
As per the recent statistics, about 90 percent of the text messages are read in 3 minutes after they are being sent to the user. Moreover, branded text messages have a substantial 98 percent open rate. On the other hand, emails are stuck just at 22 percent.
Creating content for the mobile devices, whether it is a video, images or a text, is much simpler and less expensive in comparison to the content for laptops or desktops.
Usually many people keep their mobile phone numbers for a longer period of time, in contrast to their email addresses. This makes the databases that use mobile phone numbers as unique IDs more effective. Also, it is a good way for the mobile marketers to understand and analyze user behavior in a better way. Hence, user response can be tracked instantaneously.
Cons of Mobile Advertisement
The very first disadvantage of mobile marketing lies in the fact that it intrudes into the privacy of the users. Thus, mobile advertisers should carry out the promotional activities only if they have permission from the user for the same.
The mobile devices usually have a small screen and there is no mouse as well. This makes navigation difficult for the mobile users. Because of this reason, most of the ads go untouched as the user may find it a time consuming task to go through each one of the details.
Mobile devices do not come with any standards. Thus creating issues of screen sizes, browsing and operations.
There can be a backfire in case the advertisement is not relevant to the user or is bad. Since mobile phones are a personal entity and the users might not like being disrupted with the inappropriate advertising.
So, if you are looking forward to try mobile marketing, then it is recommended for you to start with a small campaign first, choose a good mobile advertiser and give it a test run. When the right strategy is in place, a larger campaign can be rolled out.