RAB: Mobile Marketing Offers Opportunity for Radio

While ad dollars for traditional media in free fall, budgets for mobile marketing are expected to increase 40 percent this year, offering a ripe opportunity for radio, a group of mobile marketing execs said during the opening day of the Radio Advertising Bureau conference here Monday. According to eMarketer, the segment will attract $6.5 billion in ad revenues by 2012.Citing Nielsen data, Katz360 president Brian Benedik said there are 145 million mobile media consumers in the United States today, defined as anyone who uses a cell phone to send or receive text messages, download content or access the mobile Internet.According to Nielsen, 138 million of the 259 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. used their cell phones for text messaging, as of second quarter 2008. Additionally, 43 million used their phone to access the mobile Internet, 39 million for email, 28 million to download applications, 24 million to download games, 14 million for full-track music downloads, 11 million to watch mobile TV and 11 million to listen to streaming online music or radio."Seventy-six percent of listeners use text messaging and 66 percent want to text with your radio station," Benedik said."It's not emerging, it's here," said Weatherbug.com director of mobile advertising Erin Wilson. "Advertisers want to be part of radio's mobile strategy." Although it boasts more than 400 radio and TV station clients, broadcasting represents only a portion of HipCricket's business, said the mobile marketing company's CEO Ivan Braiker, a former broadcaster. "Our business in the brand division in the last 90 days has-been greater than it has in the past five years," Braiker said.David Ross, chairman of mobile marketing and technology firm 3C Interactive, said ad agency mobile marketing budgets are coming "fast and furious" and told broadcasters in the packed meeting room at the Shingle Creek Resort that listener databases are seen as "very valuable" by advertisers. Braiker went as far as saying that radio's "license value is going down and [its]database value is going up."But KSTP-FM (KS95)/Minneapolis general sales manager Jeff Gonsales said that despite two years of incorporating mobile applications into its sales offerings, the Hubbard Broadcasting hot AC still faces challenges: "The biggest challenge has been making sure the sellers can talk intelligently about the mobile audience, along with managing the expectations of clientsand sales people."While advertiser appetites for mobile are growing, fueling agencies that specialize in the platform, most of KSTP's mobile sales have been local direct, Gonsales added.According to Ross, advertisers are increasingly drawn to bundled products, where for example, a radio spot activates a text message component. "If you're just going to sell :30s and :60s, you're done," Ross said, urging broadcasters to sell radio's ability "to create a conversation between the station or the personality and the audience."With the ongoing rollout of Arbitron's PPM ratings service - 33 markets will have converted to electronic measurement by the end of 2009 - stations increasingly rely on text messaging to spur listeners to tune in for specific programming events. According to Braiker, when stations "push out an invite for a specific listening event, it can double their cume."

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RAB: Mobile Marketing Offers Opportunity for Radio

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