Analysis of Mobile Ads on the iPhone

Much has been said about the opportunities that Internet-enabled mobile phones and so-called smart phones bring to advertisers.

While I agree that the next 3-5 years will bring about significant innovation with regard to mobile advertising, current mobile-based advertising has shown a lack of effective execution.  Granted, my view is biased toward advertising on the iPhone, simply because the iPhone is the device that I use on a daily basis.  However, along with the Blackberry, the iPhone is certainly the most sophisticated and advanced cell phone available, and should offer a good case study of advertising execution.

Below, I offer an analysis of various advertising on iPhone apps that I use daily.  I have also given each ad a letter grade.  To determine the grade, I considered the the advertisement itself (i.e. the banner or text ad, whether it had a call to action, placement), the landing page after tapping on the ad (usability on a mobile device, messaging) and whether or not the ad was tracking a conversion, thereby delivering the ability to track a true ROI for the campaign.

Weather Channel

The Weather Channel application places a small advertisement at the top of the screen.  The current advertiser when I pulled my screenshots was Zyrtec.

The drop-down ad is actually pretty good.  The unopened ad says “The fastest 24-hour OTC allergy relief.”  There is not a call to action, but the ad is simple and easy to read.

When I tap on the banner, the offer drops down.  There is a clear image of the Zyrtec product and a very clear message.  So far, so good.  However, the second screen fails to execute well for a mobile device.

After I tap on the expanded offer, I am redirected to what appears to be an internal page from the regular Zyrtec site.  The page has extremely small type.  While I can zoom in on the text, it would be better to have a landing page that is optimized for a mobile device.

Once I zoom in, I can see that there is a “Download PDF” link to redeem a refund if I was not satisfied with the product.  When I tap on the link, nothing happens.  Why would the advertiser require that the user download a file if they are on a mobile handset?  It just doesn’t make any sense.  It would have made better sense if the user could enter their email address and receive the necessary file in an email that they could print off later on.  While conversion tracking may be implemented on the “Download PDF” link, it is irrelevant because it is not possible to download, let alone print, the form to be sent in.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: D-

New York Times

Similar to the Weather Channel application, the New York Times hase an advertisement on the home page of the app.  While the New York Times has featured various different advertisers in it’s in-app advertising, they also fill those advertising spots with ads for their own content and features.  This was the case when I reviewed their advertising execution.

The NY Times runs ads on the bottom of the screen, as opposed to the Weather Channel which ran its ad on the top.  The landing domain m.nytimes.com is listed in the ad, along with clear messaging “Find movie showtimes.”

The landing page is optimized for a mobile device and lists current movies.  From there, the user can view showtimes or reviews from the New York Times.  The user can easily get the information they are looking for on this well optimized mobile page.  The conversion metric here may simply be click-throughs, however it is feasible that the NY Times is tracking clicks through to reviews and/or showtimes.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: A

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune iPhone-optimized site uses Google AdSense to serve advertising on the site.  The Tribune runs AdSense on the article pages of its iPhone site.  The Trib also runs small banner ads on the homepage of the site.  However, like the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune was advertising its own content, so I opted instead to take a look at the AdSense.

The ads on the Tribune’s iPhone site are located below the article.  It seems very likely that many users would finish reading the article and neglect to even look at the ads.  But, as Internet-marketers know, we don’t need many users clicking on the ads.  If we have enough traffic on the site, we just need a small percentage of the traffic clicking on ads, and that makes the system work.

University of Phoenix ad

I tapped on an ad for what appears to be a University of Phoenix affiliate site.  The landing page does not appear to be optimized for a mobile phone, however the page is very simple and actually works quite well as a mobile landing page.  The first page captures information such as citizenship status, prior level of education completed and email address.  Then, after tapping on the continue button, the user can submit additional information such as address, phone number, and whether or not they want a University of Phoenix representative to contect them.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: B+

ESPN

The ESPN iPhone optimized site serves ads on the top of the site, above all of the content.  It is similar to the Weather Channel and the New York Times in that it is analogous to what we think of as a traditional banner ad.

In this case, the ad includes the company name, a call to action and a landing page domain.  However, there is no indication of what is being advertised.  I am not familiar with Knight, and to be honest I have absolutely no clue what they are advertising.  I’m not sure if it’s software or an ISP or financial services or what.  With all of the other ads, I had at least a decent idea of what the advertisement was trying to push.

After tapping on the banner ad, I found that the landing page was actually on the ESPN.com mobile site and not on an external site.  The landing page simply has a small amount of text from the advertiser and a URL.  However, the URL for www.knight.com is not clickable.  Despite trying to touch the URL to go to Knight.com, I was not able to be taken anywhere on the Knight website.  While the advertiser may be able to track click-throughs, they are not capturing visitor information to record any type of conversion.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: D

Conclusion

Based on the four mobile advertisements reviewed, it appears that the biggest area of improvement for mobile advertisers is in the area of mobile usability.  Two of the four ads sent users to non-mobile  optimized landing pages, and another sent users to a page with the advertiser URL that couldn’t be clicked on.  Many of the advertisers were able to strike a good balance between short messaging and clear phrasing letting the user know what is being advertised.  Surprisingly, but thankfully, conversion tracking seems to be something that most of the advertisers had the capability of tracking.  While mobile advertising is certainly progressing, advertisers need to consider and account for the mobile medium when creating ads, as opposed to retro-fitting existing assets that are better suited for a user on a fully functional computer.