Mobile Advertising Still Annoying, Text The Best Format: Report

Most forms of mobile advertising are still annoying to a sufficient number of people to engender caution, according to a report by analyst group Forrester. Of those surveyed, 65 percent said they were annoyed when an ad appeared while a web page was loading, 57 percent found ads appearing alongside maps annoying, 56 percent found banner ads annoying, 48 percent found paid search ads annoying and the least annoying ad format was pre-rolls for mobile video clips or games, reports BrandWeek. I'm guessing ads showing while a web page was loading was deemed to be annoying because people thought it was causing the page to take longer to load, and the others seem to be related with how familiar people are with the format.

Around 30 percent of people have interacted with mobile ads according to Forrester, but only 1 percent had clicked on a banner ad while browsing on their handset reports MediaPost. The survey also found that only 7 percent of mobile users trust ads on their phones. Mind you, there are no comparable figures given for the level of "trust" on ads in other formats, and it's the same with what people find annoying?are banner ads only annoying on mobile phones or on the web as well?

Anyway, Forrester claims that SMS is the most effective form of marketing because of the way people use their handsets, saying "text messaging is more likely to be successful than mechanisms involving mobile data, including couponing and [two-dimensional bar] codes". The recommendation is to combine text messaging with out-of-home, or things like send-to-a-friend messages and referral incentives.

The Chicago Tribune has a piece on mobile advertising quoting eMarketer in that "worldwide spending on mobile advertising totaled $2.7 billion last year and is expected to hit $4.6 billion in 2008, rising to $19.1 billion by 2012. In contrast, eMarketer projects that Internet advertising in the U.S. alone will reach $25.9 billion this year". The vast majority of the 2008 spend will be in message-based marketing, tipped to reach $4.2 billion this year.

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