Few thoughts of Pradeep Shrivatsava, Chief Marketing Office, Idea Cellular, on how to increase the potential of Mobile advertising.

There’s need for operators to find new revenue streams. VAS is good option, but it accounts for about 10% of total revenue. It can’t become 30% overnight. Companies need to decide how much to invest in this, hoping that this will grow to 12-15-20% over a period time.

Would you continue focusing on urban population or would you build for rural audience? This is a choice operators will have to make. There is a huge potential. Idea mobile radio has several lakh paid subscribers. Regular radio operators are surprised by this. Mobile search on Google and Yahoo today is more on mobile than laptops and desktops. So we’re talking about something big here and there’re ways to monetize it.

The second panel discussion at IAMAI Mobile Ad Conference “Mobile Advertising : The next Big Thing – Capabilities and Challenges” is now under way. Interesting question floated by the moderator [Shailesh Rao, MD, Google India] on where do panelists see mobile advertising going in the next 03 years? The comments are as below:
Raj Singh, MD-India, 2ergo Group : Couple of things are moving rapidly now. Mobile has a very large reach now. Brands now have a stake in the growth and utilization of this medium.

Pradeep Shrivastava, CMO, Idea Cellular : Currently, mobile advertising comprises of SMS blasts and banners. Permission based marketing almost does not exist right now. We have almost a very crude form of advertising right now. In next 03 years, unique engagement models will appear. For instance, people who use roaming a lot, could also use travel related services. The ecosystem will evolve a lot – mostly, comprising of local brand sign up. We will also see a move towards Pin Point Targeting.

Sanjay Singh, CMO, One97 : Currently, ringtones and other mobile downloads as an industry are more than music industry otherwise. We will see more such trends appear. Google presented advertising as a value add-on for consumers when the norm were pop-up banners. Similarly, we will see/ need strategies that are unique for mobile advertising.

A R Vishwanath, Chairman/ CEO, IMI Mobile : The key leap for mobile industry right now needs to be contextualizaton. Content that you serve needs to be customized from a users personality and behavior.

Shailesh Rao, MD, Google India : Mobile advertising agencies and advertisers need to experiment and be willing to risk at least in the short term.

Debasis Chatterjee, CEO, Netxcell gave insights into the potential of mobile advertising.

Netxcell Limited is a pioneer in the telecom sector, with a collective vision: To cater to the global emerging and demanding trends in wireless technology.. To know more about Netxcell, check netxcell.com/

Excerpts from his talk, during session 1 of the Mobile Advertising Conference:

Between 2000 and 2009, amount of ad inventory radio ad got is 4.5 times. Print ad grew only by 1.4 times, 12.5 times-tv, mobile advertising has started from zero and has reached sound position.

Mobile advertising is highly interactive. Interlinking between data and voice gives us enormous potential, though there are limitations like price of the hand set, features of handset, enablers, operators and so on.

Mobile advertising comes with a tag. It is not as easy as print of TV ad. While TV ads are easier to produce and deliver, mobile advertising has multiple stakeholders and a combined effort is needed.

Though active data users are just 5-6% of mobile subscribers, we’ve reasons to be optimistic. In India, internet revolution will come through mobiles and not PCs. The scope and possibilities are enormous. Even a simple A2B service like miscall alerts can be leveraged for advertising.

A decade ago Govt agencies were in 44th position in terms of ad spending, now they’re no 3. Similarly schools and organizations have increased spending. We need to tap into this.

Vinish Kathuria, COO, Spice Digital, made some interesting points in his initial talk in Panel Discussion on Mobile Business Models.

According to Vinish, existing business models may not be enough. He says, that we need to get people excited about something for it to be effective. He asked an important question “Are people going to get excited or burdened with mobile advertising”. He further added that mobile advertising should add value to the consumes. He went on the say that we are still in the first few overs of the IPL, we will need some IPL like innovations [Mongoose bat and other innovations] and the business models are still evolving.

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/ievents/4523681662/” title=”vinish by Ievents IAMAI, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2689/4523681662_0f97707dfa.jpg” width=”332″ height=”500″ alt=”vinish” /></a>

Vinish also gave the example of Print Media. Most of the advertisements are from government sector. GOI [Government of India] used print media to get the word across – for instance, Right to Education recently. However, the best medium to get such a word across is mobile. He again went back to IPL, saying that there will be room for Test Players in T20 but there are specialist T20 players as well – who are exciting. He concluded by saying that the Mobile Specialists are emerging [more need to emerge] and that the mobile landscape has to evolve to cater to 700 million people who will have a phone in next few years.

Find Vinish Kathuria on LinkedIn * Facebook

Mahesh Narayanan is Country Manager at AdMob, is a Digital Media Evangelist and in previous avatars has served as a Senior Industry Manager at Google.

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/ievents/4523039815/” title=”mahesh by Ievents IAMAI, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4004/4523039815_3e9200be03.jpg” width=”500″ height=”332″ alt=”mahesh” /></a>

In the kickoff panel discussion on “Creating a Successful Business Model for Mobile Advertizing in India”, he stresses that mobile advertising is a measurable mass media where all details are trackable. This is the most interesting aspect of this medium and can potentially change the way media planning takes place.

At AdMob. through their platform, they are able to view the handsets, operators and mobile platforms that people use. According to him, 64% of the market is using smart phones. iPhones contribute 4-8% of the traffic.

Serveral data plans contribute to the internet on mobiles. For example, Aircel in the last 9 months through their unlimited data plans have exploded the market 800x

A plethora of publishers/ users create content accross various genres. Eg: sports, video clips, via social networking.. range of activities that users are engaging in is very wide.

Advertisers should look at this activity to tap into the user movement and interests. This medium is just getting more and more relevant, and the market is still at a nascent stage.