Monday Note

Mobile audiences are large and growing. Great. But their monetization is mostly a disaster. The situation will be slow to improve, but the potential is still there — if the right conditions are met.    

This year, a major European newspaper expects to make around €16m in digital advertising revenue. The business is even slightly profitable. But there is a catch: while mobile devices now provide more than 50% of its traffic, advertising revenue from smartphones and tablets will only reach €1m. For this particular company, like many others, mobile advertising doesn’t work. It brings about 5% or 6% of what desktop web ads do — which, already, suffer from a 15 times cut in revenue when compared to print.

Call it a double whammy: Publishers took a severe hit by going digital in a way that compounded commoditization of contents with an endless supply of pages. The result is economically absurd: in a “normal” world, when audiences rise, advertising reaches more people and, as a result, rates rise. At least, that was the rule in the comfy world of print. No such thing in digital media. As many news sites experienced, despite double digit audience growth, CPMs (Cost per Thousand page impressions) actually declined over recent years. Fact is, this sector is much more sensitive to general economic conditions than to its extraordinary large adoption. And as if that wasn’t enough, publishers now take another blow as a growing share of their audience moves to mobile where money hasn’t followed… yet.

Granted, there are exceptions. Nordic media, for instance, benefit from an earlier and stronger mobile adoption (think Nokia and Ericsson, even before smartphones). Supported by many paid-for services, Scandinavian media houses extract a significant amount of profit from mobile. Similarly, Facebook mobile operations are faring quite well. According to the latest TBG Digital report, Click Through Rate (CTR) on ads placed on mobile News Feeds are 23 times higher than those displayed on the desktop version (respectively a CTR of 1.290% vs. 0.049%).

The digital mediasphere is struggling with mobile ads. In June, we went through most of the causes (see Jean-Louis’ note Mobile Advertising: The $20bn Opportunity Mirage). Problem is: there are still few signs of improvement. Inventories are growing, ad creativity remains at a low point (just look at the pixelated ads that plague the bottom of your mobile screens). As you can see below, programmatic buying is on the rise as this low-yield market remains vastly intermediated (click to enlarge):

– Too many middlemen? –

This results in the following eCPMs (effective CPM is the price advertisers are willing to pay for a given audience) as surveyed for different mobile platforms:

iOS iPad........... $0.90-$1.10
iOS iPhone......... $0.70-$0.80
Android Tablet..... $0.60-$0.70
Android Phones..... $0.40-$0.60

Advertising-wise, mobile is mostly a dry hole.

OK. Enough whining. Where do we go from here? What to expect in the next 18 months? How to build upon the inherent (and many) advantages offered by the mobile space?

For rate cards, we have some good news: prices on Android and iOS are converging upward as Android demographics are rising; soon, the two dominant mobile platforms will be in the higher price range. The value of ads is also likely to climb a little as screens gets better and larger, and as bandwidth increases: such improvements will (should) allow more visually attractive, more engaging ads. The ecosystem should also benefit from the trend toward more customized advertising. Ideally, promotional campaigns should be completely integrated and provide a carefully designed continuum within the three digital vectors: desktop web to be viewed at home or at the office; mobile formats for quick reading on the go; and tablet-friendly for a slower, more engaged, lean-back consumption (reading time is five or ten times higher on an iPad than on a PC). But, again, as long as creative agencies or media themselves do not commit adequate resources to such a virtuous chain, the value created will stay dangerously close to zero. (Those players better hurry up as a myriad of agile startups are getting ready to take control of this neglected potential.)

A few more reasons for being bullish on mobile. For instance, the level of personalization has nothing to do with what we see on the PC; a smartphone is not shared; it’s personal; and it’s the best vector to carry an intimate environment in which to create one’s dedicated social interaction system, transactional tools, entertainment selections (games, movies, books, TV series), etc. Mobile devices come with other, high potential features such as geolocation, ability to scan a bar-code — all favoring impulse buying. (This happened to me more than once: In a Paris bookstore, if the only copy left of a book I want is worn-off, or if the salesperson seems annoyed by my mere presence, I quickly scan the bare-code and order it from Amazon on the spot, right from the store. Apparently, I’m not the only one: about 20% of mobile users admitted they scanned a bar-code, or took a picture of a product in a store). And soon, these features will be supplemented by electronic wallet functions. Think about it: which marketeer wouldn’t dreamed of having access to such capabilities?

– frederic.filloux@mondaynote.com

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