The Big Picture on Small-Screen Advertising.
July 13, 2008
Imagine holding all TV programming, movies and millions of user-generated videos in the palm of your hand—then add in a few spot ads.
When it comes to justifying serious investments in mobile video and television advertising, marketers are struggling.
On one hand, they cannot ignore the attraction of combining the reach of television with the targeting capabilities of mobile. But, on the other hand, consumer adoption of mobile video and television so far has been underwhelming.
“Historically, the gap between hope and reality for mobile video/television has been attributed to immature technology,” says John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, Mobile Video and Television: Ads Wait for a Clearer Picture.
“Video content on mobile phones looked broken or washed out. Soundtracks often did not align with the moving images,” explains Mr. Gauntt. “The mobile devices themselves were voracious consumers of battery life when displaying video content. And carriers were not sure how commercial video and television services would affect their mobile networks.”
Fortunately, many of these issues are being resolved.
“iPhone’s success raised the bar of consumer expectations regarding mobile multimedia,” says Mr. Gauntt. “Handset manufacturers worldwide are in the midst of revamping their product lines against this new benchmark.”
The question then becomes: Will ad revenues follow?
“It is difficult to create forecasts for mobile video and mobile TV advertising due to the fact that the market is still fragmented and undeveloped,” says Mr. Gauntt.
iSuppli estimates that mobile video advertising worldwide will reach $427 million this year.
Furthermore, iSuppli forecasts that mobile video advertising worldwide will be nearly $3.8 billion in 2011.
On the somewhat higher side, Magna Insights estimates that online video media advertising will reach $555 million this year in the US alone, and rise 45% to $805 million by 2009.
Nevertheless, Mr. Gauntt cautions, “Until consumers are presented with a clear-cut, simple and inexpensive value model for accessing mobile video and TV content, it will be hard to segment audiences at either an industry or geographic level.”
Courtesy of http://www.emarketer.com
