Mobile advertising. Remixed.

Posts Tagged ‘user experience’

Yahoo adds ‘mobile reach’ to full web ads, destroys customer experience

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Yahoo have found a way to take more cash off their advertisers hands whilst destroying consumer confidence and making it sound like a win-win for everyone.  Boy are their clients going to be disappointed.  What they’ve done is automatically started showing advertisers’ full web ads on iPhones and Androids.  According to the recent Yahoo blog entry:

The coolest part is you don’t have to do anything to expand the reach of your ads. We’ve done it for you. As of today, your ads should begin appearing immediately on these devices for relevant searches, if they have not already.

With this tweak, standard Sponsored Search ads (40-character header, 70-character description, the host URL—you know the drill) will appear on these mobile devices, giving your ads wider appeal and more relevancy to people on the go.

Will it expand the reach of their ads?  Yes.  Will it give them wider appeal?  Probably.  Will they be more relevant?  Of course not.  Because the landing pages for these ads were built for the full web.  Some will use flash.  Some will have video or sound streaming.  Some may offer PC/mac downloads.  And all will be fullscreen sized and force the user to scroll around the page on their mobile screen to see what the offer or content is.  Even on an iPhone, the impact of a full web landing page will be greatly reduced compared to the full web experience.

This means advertisers will be throwing away money as smartphone users click on promising ads only to be disappointed by an incomplete or unreadable landing page (if they can wait long enough … only a small proportion of smartphone users around the world have 3G data speeds).  And Yahoo will massively increase ad exposures and click throughs thus generating lots of yummy extra revenue for nothing.

Advertisers need information and control.  If they want to bring iPhone and Android users to a full web landing page, fine.  But if they know what they’re doing they ought to create specific landing pages for these devices so their message can really be made relevant and impactful for their audience.  Yahoo should give them the choice.

My advice to advertisers: Tell Yahoo to take your full web ads off smartphones and let you use their Yahoo Mobile Sponsored Search product for that instead like you always have.

Update: Google got it right by giving their advertisers the option – see their blog post New Adwords options for iPhone and G1 .

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-adwords-options-for-iphone-and-g1.html

Tags: , ,
Posted in Ad network news, Knowledgebase | No Comments »

Admob stops Linked List ads

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

From Aug 3rd Admob will no longer be offering ‘Linked List’ ads to publishers.  This adserving method consists of a simple link on the publisher’s page saying something like ‘Great Mobile Sites!’ which opens up an Admob mobile page filled with ads.

Admob Linked List ads

Admob Linked List ads

I have always been surprised that Admob offered this option, because it does not sit well with their policy that publishers should not incite people to click on ads on their site.  In this case, ads are being misrepresented as trusted links to other sites.  Of course when the user clicks on the link and is presented with a page full of ads, it is pretty obvious what they are, but that creates distrust from the user.  They won’t click on that link again, that’s for sure.  Admob’s advertisers probably did not realise that their ads were appearing on this page either.  So although the ad performance is likely to have been poor, this type of adserving should be stopped primarily for the sake of site integrity and the user experience.

Tags: ,
Posted in Ad network news | No Comments »

Of Course Mobile Ads Increase Brand Awareness

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

According to a post on Mobile Marketing Magazine, an IAB study has quantified the obvious. Here are the main points:

  • You can use mobile to raise awareness
  • Mobile advertising can be effective across all demographics, but especially 18-34s
  • Brands and mobile Internet sites should put the user experience first
  • Mobile display advertising needs a clear focus
  • Mobile is more effective when something of value offered

You could say the same for full web advertising too.  It’s just that much more important for mobile advertising because surfing the mobile web is slower and/or more expensive so users are less forgiving of the content and ads that take up their screen space, time and energy.

Tags:
Posted in Industry news, Knowledgebase, Uncategorized | No Comments »