Mobile Local Advertising: What’s Working at #ILMWest

One thing is clear: there is opportunity in the mobile/local space.  Here at ILM West in San Francisco we’ve heard a lot of great numbers to prove this.

But how can businesses take advantage of this opportunity?  How do we navigate this new and quickly changing space?

This morning a panel of mobile ad networks and product developers tried to answer these questions. Present were Chi-Chao Chang (President of Products and Technology, xAd),  Andrew Osis (President, CEO and Cofounder, Poynt), and David Williams (VP, Consumer Product Management, AT&T Interactive).

Here is some advice the panelists offered:

• Because mobile is a growth area – it’s a great way for advertisers to capture consumer attention.
• Click through rates for ads are better the more locally you can target your audience.  Also, look into the click-to-call advertising for mobile. CTR is high.
• For creators of applications, be sure to send the user’s GPS coordinates to the ad platform if you have them. Otherwise send any registration information you have. Use whatever signals you can - including time of day.
• For your business, focus on the mobile web first so that consumers have a good experience when they find you through mobile search. Once you have a mobile web presence you can start to offer apps.
• When building an application, if you build for the lowest level device the advertising experience will suffer. If you build apps for newer devices the advertising experience will be more successful. Newer devices have better targeting capabilities.
• Local usage on mobile is so high that having ad results from local small and medium businesses is key.
• Should you build an app for your entire brand - or for a specific need? Experiment to see what works for you.
• Just like SEO on the web, there is app-store-search optimization you need to pay attention to. Right now generic names can be found more easily than brand name – though this may change.
• Competition among mobile advertising platforms is clearly intense.  This can only be good for publishers, advertisers, and consumers!

Wow – there is a ton of great advice in that list.  Thanks to the panelists for all of the valuable information!

This will be my last blog post from ILM West. I hope you found our coverage helpful. Happy local advertising!

David Kline | Microsoft Advertising