‘Advertising spend on mobile is in India’
What are the initiatives of Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to standardize mobile marketing ecosystem?
As an industry body, we are the custodians of mobile marketing and advertising. We are the only body in the world which frames guidelines, privacy policies, and code of conduct for using mobile as the next medium for advertising and marketing. We faciliate the propogation of evangelism of all the guidelines and practices. This is a new medium and for this to grow we need to set standards and best practices. We have framed guidelines around mobile advertising and marketing including guidelines around location based services, advertising currency, search and audience measurement, privacy guidelines, and advocacy guidelines. MMA has over 13 committees where every aspect of the mobile such as usage on apps, commerce, and education have been framed to take this industry to the next level.
Please elaborate on the better messaging platforms to reach target consumers.
The best messaging platform is ‘opt-in’ and ‘double opt in’. The opt-in model seeks permission from consumers and their preferences for ad-related information. This platform helps to send contextual messages and it will also be appreciated by target audience. The marketing opportunity is huge but it should not be led by spam, it cannot be a broadcast message.
What is your perspective on the m-marketing industry in India? Is the industry different in India from the rest of the world in terms of market focus, usability, and brand integration?
Yes, to a certain extent it is different. The fundamentals of mobile marketing won’t change. The inherent things like performance, interactivity, contextual all of that remains the same. The difference is, in India, the delivery of the messaging is predominantly on feature phones as compared to west. The current marketing efforts are on feature phones more than smartphones. But that will change soon due to the proliferation of smartphones.
It will catch up with the western world but pure landscape of the market will take a little longer to make it happen. And the opportunity for mobile is far greater due to the penetration of mobile phones in India. It enables big brands to reach out to the next billion in India. Once the industry starts delivering, better platforms will emerge and usability scenario will be much higher; and brand integration is also increasing.
Nearly 7% of the advertising should be spent on mobile and 20% on another medium to get the effective return on investment and to have the best optimized investment for the media mesh. Right now the mobile marketing industry only acquires about 1% of the ad spent. The total advertising spent on mobile in India is around 180 crore excluding SMS, according to our estimates.
malinin@cybermedia.co.in