Mobile internet users 60% more likely to accept mobile advertising says Nielsen Mobile
I picked up some interesting mobile advertising stats via marketingcharts.com from a recent (July 2008) Nielsen mobile study called Critical Mass The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web.
Key takeaways from the report included
- The US, UK and Italy are leaders in mobile internet penetration, with 15.6% of mobile subscribers in the US, 12.9% of subscribers in the UK and 11.9% in Italy actively using the mobile internet; New Zealand (1.6%) and Indonesia (1%) have the lowest mobile internet penetration rates
- 26% of mobile internet users recall seeing some form of advertising while using the mobile internet
While the study is quite US centric, one interesting finding in the report is quoted verbatim below:
“Already, many consumers expect to see more mobile advertising. 23 percent of US data users expect to see more of it, and many mobile data users are open to marketing as a means of subsidizing the cost of their overall mobile media experience.
32 percent are open to mobile advertising if it helps to lower their wireless bill. Mobile Internet users, for their part, tend to be more open to mobile advertising than users of some other forms of mobile content.
Mobile Internet users are 60 percent more likely than the average data user to find mobile advertising acceptable. We see a similar bump in receptivity among mobile video users, leading us to believe that mobile advertising is most acceptable to consumers via media types with which they are accustomed to receiving advertising.”
A focus of the report is to show how all you can eat data plans help to drive usage, something I have been saying for some time. Encouraging users to explore the mobile internet without “bill shock” makes them more comfortable with the mobile web, and hence more conditioned to receiving advertisements.
The challenge facing mobile advertisers is to ensure the ads are requested (permission based), targeted (need excellent profiling here) and fun (this is up to the creatives – but banner ads and text messages will not win any Lion awards).
Nielsen mobile also have a report published in September 2008 called “Realizing Potential: Overcoming Barriers to the U.S. Mobile Advertising Market” which is also worth a read. Here they discuss what they believe is holding back mobile advertising, which is something I have commented on in a separate post.
What we as mobile advertisers need to do is make mobile easy and not provide an impedance to success.