Brands not seizing mobile marketing opportunities: MMAF

At the Mobile Marketing Association Forum (MMAF) in Singapore on Wednesday, experts warned that mobile advertising agencies are at risk of becoming jaded as they wait for brands to pour investment in the sector.

A call was made for better education around the opportunities of mobile marketing and a suggestion for brands to set a mandate for mobile advertising spend.

Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO of Mindshare Asia, said mobile is now the primary device to access the internet in emerging markets.

But he said the gap between the money brands spend on mobile advertising and the amount of time spent by consumers on mobile devices is actually widening.

He said, “Getting the act right in terms of social media has actually diverted people’s attention away [from mobile marketing] and this was especially challenging at a time when budgets were at a squeeze in a number of markets.”

It comes as Victor Fernandez-Lahore, director of global media innovation at Unilever, admitted that Unilever is not spending enough on mobile marketing. Damien Cummings, online director for Dell in Asia-Pacific and Japan, added that Dell’s mobile marketing strategy was “under construction”.

Barney Loehnis, Ogilvy’s digital lead in Asia, said the industry needed to be educated about the benefits of mobile marketing.

He said, “I am not too sure the CEOs and CMOs of brands and agency heads are pressurising their creatives, consultants and planners hard enough to crack this because it’s not simple and there is an awful lot of work that needs to be done."

“I think when we talk about education it’s about learning by doing, not by sitting in a classroom," he added.

Trevor Healy, CEO of Amobee, warned that some players in the mobile advertising industry are “jaded” as they wait for brands to invest in mobile.

But he added, “These markets take a lot of time, you have to be very patient. You can make a decision that you get impatient and step out, but what history has taught us is that if you step out too early you probably will lose, so you have to stay the course.”