Greater than branding power
What may have started as another outlet for banner ads and simple brand awareness has become something entirely more useful.
BrandinHand, for example, uses eight different business objectives when approaching mobile campaigns.
"There's a whole other world in mobile advertising and mobile marketing that we're currently engaged in," Bader said. "We don't just use it for brand awareness."
Trials, sampling, database growth and management, productivity in-store, interactive shopping lists, and loyalty programs are just some of the services that have become the flavor of the week at many firms.
BrandinHand's strategy is to tackle brands' problems whether they might be failed revenue opportunities or glitches in existing services. Wal-Mart loses an average of $60 in potential sales every time a customer leaves the store, Bader said, adding that there's probably a mobile solution that could fix that.
Regardless, campaigns shouldn't be pursued as a one-size-fits-all proposition, said Jack Philbin, co-founder and president of Vibes Media. Nearly every campaign's objective comes down to the CMO involved in the project.
"Conversions have different definitions for different people," Philbin said. "You're basically building an experience with people in a very different method and manner" with branded entertainment. "You can be in the same industry with very, very different objectives."
As such, solutions have to be matched up with each client's unique problems, he added.
Gauging value with less data
It should come as no surprise that so much of mobile marketing's success rests in the numbers.
"We need brands to be measuring performance on mobile to grow this into a business of a size that matters for a company like Yahoo," Katz said.
Bader argued that the players need to collaborate on building a data stream that gets incorporated into much larger business tracking platforms than today. Most agencies currently do little more than make "pretty pictures out of data," Bader said, hinting that a more comprehensive approach is needed.
"Fundamentally, you've got to choose who we're going to please first and who we're going to please later," Palmieri said. Millennial Media focuses on the advertisers.
Vlassopulous said he's found that mini case studies are the easiest way for marketers to find their way around the numbers trap. "We're rolling out the carpets and walking it every day," he said.
Measurement shouldn't go completely away, Vlassopulous said, but there are more valuable data points that can be provided through mobile campaigns.
Placing value or potential return on a client's investment is the tricky part, he added. He routinely finds himself asking "what's the return on that?" and readily admits "I'm not sure how to track it."
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