Mobile Advertising

MocoSpace is a mobile community that is entirely supported by advertising.  While it’s still early days compared to the Web, it’s proven to be a viable business model for us.  It wasn’t always so obvious.  Back in 2005 when we started Moco, there were very few companies that enabled businesses like ours to monetize.  Today that’s changed.  Mobile advertising is definitely a hot topic with major players like Google, AOL, & Nokia moving quickly into the space. So far most of what I’ve seen is mobile versions of what’s happened on the Web, ie banner and text ads.  While the dollars are growing quickly, mobile is still a  relatively  small line item on agency budgets.  The fact that it’s on everyone’s radar is a big improvement from 2005, and I think the future gets nothing but brighter from here.

Why do I think mobile advertising works and will continue to work:

1. People like free services in exchange for ads, ie radio, tv, Internet

2. Most of the mobile ads I’ve seen are fairly relevant to the audience so whether its coupons, store locators, ringtones, etc. I think most people find them much more interesting than much of what’s on the Web.

3. Mobile phones are so personal, and surfing on them is such a focused activity that it’s a great platform for branding building.

4. Because Moco has over 1.5 million members and nobody has complained yet

Here’s a list of some of my favorite partners, and a good place to start if you are thinking about advertising or monetizing your mobile site:

1. Admob is an easy to use platform with good reach and lots of ad $$.  It supports CPC and CPM ads. Omar Hamoui (ceo & founder) is a class act as is the rest of the team.  That means you’ll get good service from them, and paid!

2. ThirdScreen, now AOL, is a bit more complicated to use, supports only CPM advertising, but the platform is very rich and lets you do and know a lot about your site, campaigns, etc.  They just got acquired by AOL, but the new team has been cool to work with.

3. Medio is another good choice.  They offer a good, easy to use platform, and have proven to be a reliable partner since as long as we’ve been doing business with them.

There are lots of other companies out there including Yahoo, Google, and Nokia.  I haven’t worked with all of them, so I can’t really recommend them yet.  Yahoo and Google will certainly be players in the space.  If you want to advertise, both Yahoo and Google have good mobile reach, but if you want to monetize your own mobile property I’d recommend giving them a few months to further refine their offerings.