SnapTell Blog

New Life For Old Ads

In this video interview with business news site BNET TV, Adam Schneider, Vice President, Sales, discusses ways that publishers and brand owners can use SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get solution to bring new life to ads that are, as Adam says, "just lying there dead on the page."

Adam also talks about recent changes he's seen in the mobile marketing space and the ways that SnapTell-enabled ads enables brand owners, publishers and marketers to collect actionable metrics which they can then use to finetune their marketing efforts on the fly and enrich the ways they connect with consumers.

Mobile Marketing - getting from here to there

RCR Wireless News has an opinion piece by Louis Gump, VP Mobile, The Weather Channel Interactive, on the state of mobile advertising. Gump cites the sort of stats that tend to be front and center in such pieces  -- JupiterResearch report predicted that mobile marketing in the U.S. alone will grow to $2.2 billion in 2012, up from $708 million in 2007 -- but moves quickly to the broader and more interesting question of where exactly the industry is today; how do we get there from here?

 

For some answers to that question Gump turned to INmobile, an online community of mobile executives. Snipped from Gump’s piece:

We posed the question where is mobile advertising on its growth curve? The majority of responses indicate that it is still early, but that the growth has begun to be noticeable. Specifically, 54% of respondents say that mobile marketing is an innovative tactic with occasional business impact. Of the rest, 38% say we are in early experimentation only, while 6% feel that it is now a significant platform for leading marketers and 2% say that it is an established part of the marketing mix.

 

There was a broad recognition that some big brands are using mobile to their advantage. However, the rationale for those who feel that we are in the earlier stages believe that many companies have not yet added a line item for mobile in their marketing budgets; the common definition of mobile advertising is broad; and many people are still hungry for metrics.

 

 

If you want to see the future of print advertising, pick up a copy of the July/August issue of Men’s Health, the first magazine in America to offer fully interactive advertising throughout the entire issue. 

Using SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get™ mobile marketing technology, readers can Snap a photo of any advertisement in the issue with their camera phone and Send it to SnapTell, in return they receive exclusive content such as product sample offers and discounts, sweepstakes information, and links to websites, photos, ringtones, and videos.

Also, each Snap and Send enters readers into a drawing to win the grand prize of a trip for two to the Wyndham Rio Mar Beach, Golf, Casino and Spa resort in Puerto Rico for 5 days and 4 nights plus roundtrip airfare. And three runners up will win brand new iPhones.

Snap.Send.Get technology is compatible with all camera phones, does not require special software for downloading advertiser images and is a 100% opt-in solution for the reader.

Some of the nearly 100 advertisers participating in the July/August issue include AT&T, Anheuser-Busch, Honda Motors, Louis Vuitton, Quaker Oats, The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble and Unilever USA.

“We’re excited that the Men’s Health issue is hitting the newsstands today. A lot of hard work and planning went into this campaign on both sides,” said G.D. Ramkumar, co-founder and CTO of SnapTell. “Now publishers and advertisers will have a truly unique and personal way to communicate with their readers through the one device nearly everyone is carrying on them at all times; a mobile device.”

To find out more about SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform, which enables brand owners to transform existing advertising collateral into engaging interactive mobile marketing campaigns, please email us at bizdev@snaptell.com

The MMA International Journal of Mobile Marketing

The Mobile Marketing Association has just published the fifth issue of the MMA International Journal of Mobile Marketing (MMA-IJMM), an educational resource created by the MMA Academic Outreach Committee.

Designed to provide information on the mobile channel and its use for marketing, it includes 10 articles from academics, industry experts, thought leaders and global contributors.

This fifth installment of the Journal focuses on the development of a better understanding of the who, how and why of mobile marketing.

Featured articles include:

• A Five Point Measurement Framework for Mobile Advertising Understanding
• Implementing Mobile Social Advertising
• Breaking Free from ‘Dotcom’ Thinking in a Mobile World
• Mobile Marketing: From Marketing Strategy to Mobile Marketing Campaign Implementation
• Mobile Research in Marketing: Design and Implementation Issues

The MMA-IJMM is published twice a year, you can subscribe or purchase single issues through the MMA website.

Magazines get Mobilized

AdAge recently published a story about how the push to make magazine pages more interactive "is building mass and, dare we say it, even real momentum as major publishers and advertisers adopt a pair of technologies centered on the cellphone." SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution is one of the two technologies featured in the article.

Snipped from the AdAge report:

Magazines including Rodale's Men's Health and Wenner Media's Rolling Stone are pushing ahead with SnapTell, which allows readers to take camera-phone photos of ads, send in the shots and receive whatever message a marketer has arranged.

Rolling Stone has completed one go-round with SnapTell and plans another for the fall, said Publisher Ray Chelstowski. Readers responded strongly to the ads, he said, citing one from the Discovery Channel promoting the season premiere of "Man Vs. Wild."

"You got a video back of the host of that show drinking animal blood," Mr. Chelstowski said. "That one really resonated."

"If this does take hold," he added, "what it really does is narrow that transactional gap for advertisers that takes you from not only print media to mobile but to actual transactions."

John Hadl, general manager at Brand in Hand, said he's used both technologies -- and thinks they're here to stay. "The value of digital is that it's a productive medium," Mr. Hadl said. "Mobile starts to bring that to other channels that have been one-dimensional, like print."

If readers continue to respond well, digital technology may be poised to support traditional ad sales more directly than ever.

Mobile Marketing Forum News

Case studies and the most interesting mobile marketing solutions will take center stage at the Mobile Marketing Forum in New York City next week. SnapTell is one of the event’s sponsors.

Among the brands presenting at this year's event are:

• adidas: a case study on the use of mobile marketing
• Fandango, Sears Holding Corp: a panel session on mobile marketing for retail
• CBS Corp: Opportunities for Mobile Marketing & Advertising in the US Market
• Univision, The Weather Channel Interactive, Handango: How multimedia in mobile marketing can improve response rates
• Anheuser-Busch: Case study on BudLight's March Madness

Additional brand participation includes: MLB Advanced Media, The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, Google, Yahoo! and more.

It’s all happening on June 10 - 11, 2008 at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square.  If you'd like to meet with SnapTell at the Forum to discuss our Snap.Send.Get Mobile Marketing platform or mobile marketing in general, please contact us. 

SnapTell at The New York Mobile Marketing Forum

SnapTell will be at the New York Mobile Marketing Forum on June 10th & 11th, 2008, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square Hotel.

The Mobile Marketing Forum is the place to learn about all things mobile; how to launch a mobile marketing campaign, how to define strategic objectives to ensure optimal engagement with the consumer and how to leverage all of the options in mobile effectively.

If you are interested in mobile marketing, this is the conference for you. And if you'd like to meet with SnapTell at the Forum, please contact us.  We look forward to seeing you in New York City!

Best Practices For Mobile Marketing Paper

New Media is offering a free paper (registration required) on Best Practices for Mobile Marketing.

The paper's central idea that “the results of traditional marketing methods are rapidly dwindling” and brand owners need to get into mobile marketing now to keep their message front and center.

"Regardless of whether your audience fits into the B2B or B2C category, or both, we as a global audience are becoming numb to the outpouring of pithy broadcasts, online intrusions, inundation of email spam and barrage of generation-specific print advertising campaigns. It has also become obvious that there is one thing that we all – Baby Boomers, Generation Y, Generation X and Generation Z’ers alike – have in common. We don’t leave home without our mobile phone! It’s become our identity. The type of phone people carry, the carrier they subscribe to and the services they use – reflect who they are.

A 2006 Nielson study showed that over 144 million people in the U.S. (85%) ages 13-54 own cell phones. It’s over 230 million today ... I don’t think there’s any argument that “mobile” has become today’s pervasive form of communications."

The paper explores how mobile marketing can enhance advertising response rates, increase buying traffic and build an opt-in community.

Get a Clue

We’ve seen a couple of reports on our Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution that bring up that bizarre little gadget from the late ‘90’s -- the late and unlamented CueCat. We aren’t really offended, because it’s such an obviously wrong and silly analogy. But we thought we’d set the record straight anyway.

The CueCat was an annoying extra device with limited functionality and extremely limited information-offering capabilities. Snap.Send.Get works on any camera phone (Over 70% of phones sold in the U.S. have cameras on them, and the camera is already rated by consumers as the most important feature on a cell phone after voice and text) and lets users request and receive information about a wide variety of products, services and entertainment. Some brand owners also provide unique content to Snap.Send.Get such as ring tones, wallpapers, games, and movie trailers.

Wikipedia, in its article on the CueCat, quotes reporter Debbie Barham of the Evening Standard as saying that the CueCat "fails to solve a problem which never existed." That about sums it up, we think.

When we first began developing Snap.Send.Get we wanted to create a service that would solve problems for its users. Something that would be both useful and fun to use, something that would make life a little more friction-free. We think we’ve achieved that with Snap.Send.Get, and as we push the image-recognition technology frontier we will provide more solutions that help consumers with their day-to-day decisions.

One example is our newly launched Mobile Entertainment Explorer which now offers access to information on over a million movies, music CDs and video games right from your camera phone. Just Snap a picture of any DVD, CD or video game cover with your camera phone, Send the picture to SnapTell (fun@snaptell.com) using MMS messaging and instantly Get back information including reviews, prices, run times, descriptions of the content and links about that DVD, CD or video game on your cell phone.

 

Mobile Marketing Dos and Don'ts

SearchEngineWatch’s Gregg Stewart wrote an outstanding piece on avoiding the potential pitfalls of Mobile Marketing, covering issues such as the importance of giving consumers what they want when they want it and noting that “just because it worked online doesn't mean it will work in mobile.”

Advertisers must understand and respect the similarities as well as the distinct differences between the different kinds of media, Stewart says, and his article provides ways to ensure brands don’t stumble when they make the move to mobile marketing.

For more mobile marketing guidance; New Media is offering a free paper (registration required) on Best Practices for Mobile Marketing, with the central idea that “the results of traditional marketing methods are rapidly dwindling” and brand owners need to get into mobile marketing now to keep their message front and center. The paper explores how mobile marketing can enhance advertising response rates, increase buying traffic and build an opt-in community.