At Spreed we are strong believers in mobile advertising and we know that the early days of this market are going to be filled with trials and tests. The market is still very young and filled with banner advertising and non-actionable landing pages. The next step is to leverage the unique opportunities made available by mobile devices. These opportunities include actionable banner ads that allow users to download coupons directly into their phone (similar to your physical wallet), call companies directly from their ad or even get directions to a stores location using the phones internal GPS.

Actionable advertising that creates value and provides high levels of emotion are important, but it also needs to be paired with best of breed targeting. The most unique form of targeting on mobile phones is their ability to pinpoint a users exact location no matter where they are. Location based advertising will be a huge success when paired with actionable advertising. Imagine seeing a banner or receiving a popup offering you directions to or coupon for a store that you are extremely close to.

Web based advertising was able to pinpoint you to your city, but this new breed of location based advertising will allow stores to draw a geometric shape around their location and push and advertisement to users that come anywhere within their desired parameters. Given that mobile phone users are constantly moving around their respective cities, this opens up lots of potential for local and more importantly retail advertisers (the bread and butter of newspaper advertising).

In Finland, a recent trial in conjunction with McDonalds and Nokia’s Ovi Maps tool advertised discounts on cheeseburgers when they were close to a McDonalds restaurant. This campaign saw a whopping 7% CTR. Once users clicked into the ad they were presented with the option to download a coupon or get directions to the restaurant. Amongst the users that clicked on the advertisement 39% went on to request even more information and interact with the ad.

These are clearly much higher than the CTRs for standard digital ads on the web. “Location is the new demographic. It’s no longer just about age, gender, and socio-economics, but about reaching mobile users who are in a geographic position to buy,” said Chris Rothey, vice president, NAVTEQ Media Solutions who helped put together this trial. “These findings show the power of LPA in helping advertisers find location-relevant consumers and guide those consumers into stores.”

Spreed believes in both smart mobile targeting and fun and ‘emotion rich’ actionable advertising. Our CleverAds platform is now able to target based on exact locations. Advertisers can draw a line down a street, a circle around a store with a given radius, or any other geometric shape. Contact us or any of our publishing partners if you would like to run a location based trial with your brand.

Even more good news regarding the mobile advertising industry so far in 2010. It seems that all the hype (whether deserved or not) surrounding the iPad has translated into some very early successes for newspapers like Gannett’s USA Today. The Washington Post is reporting that USA Today sold a $50 CPM for its inaugural advertiser on the iPad, Courtyard Marriott. That comes to $0.05 per impression, compared to less than $0.01 per impression for USA Today’s Web site. Such pricing suggests the iPad may prove to be a lucrative new source of revenue for newspaper and magazine publishers.

MediaPost News has a great post on the subject at the link below

‘USA Today’ Gets $50 iPad CPMs

Mobile ad networks have typically charged $10 to $20 CPMs for advertisers looking to reach consumers via ordinary mobile phones. Premium prices range $30 to $40 for mobile video and for particularly desirable cohorts, like iPhone and smartphone owners, super premiums of $50 for popular publications, in the case of USA Today.

WaPo reported that one mobile marketing company, Mobext U.S., said publishers are charging two to four times their typical online rates, — generally under $10.

We need to apologize for the lack of posts in the past month, but as you can tell by the title, things have really been picking up. BuzzCity, a global advertising network that releases a quarterly advertising index, reported that mobile advertising grew by 38% globally in Q1 of 2010. As a personal anecdote, we can  report that Spreed’s clients  have been bombarded in Q1 by advertisers interested in reaching their respective mobile audience.

CEO of BuzzCity, KF Lai, stated that “This double digit growth is also seen beyond the top 20 markets reported on in the study. America saw a 54 percent increase of ads served over the three months in Q1 of 2010,” he said. “This sharp increase in growth, globally and in the U.S., can be attributed to the mobile-centric agencies who are delivering more constant and structured investments in the mobile medium.”

We must note here that these numbers reflect mobile banner advertising and not SMS or mobile search advertising. Banner advertising which is currently the heart and soul of mobile application advertising has traditionally been a fraction of its other two, much more mature siblings.

It is exciting to see the Canadian numbers grow by 68%, considering that Spreed’s headquarters are in Canada and a number of a marquee clients also are run out of the great white north. Canada is still only ranked number 5 in the World for mobile advertising spending. However, this is the first year we have made the top list and all of these figures are proof that mobile is a viable channel. Those media organizations who supported the wait and see strategy in regards to their mobile strategy should definitely take these numbers to heart.

Mobile advertising is still just a fraction of mainstream digital or broadcast advertising. However, page views and overall app and mobile web usage are increasing at a rapid rate. It is important to start on a mobile strategy at some point in 2010 if your organization wants to lock down users and start building up statistics in order to attract these advertisers.

Please see the chart below for exact numbers and rankings.