BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Are Mobile Video Ads The Next Big Thing?

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Mobile Advertising Is Going To Take Awhile To Dethrone TV (Econsultancy)
Last week we relayed Matt Cohler's comments that mobile will grab TV's advertising crown, but can it really overtake TV, which still generates more than double the revenue produced by all web advertising? In practice, mobile advertising suffers from a number of challenges, including:

Size
Efficacy
The annoyance factor
Inventory glut

Can these challenges be addressed? Yes, some more easily than others. But there's no reason to believe that they'll be addressed sufficiently enough any time soon to produce the time of shift that would be required to propel mobile advertising to television-like heights. Advertisers and publishers still have a lot of work yet. Right now mobile is less than 1% of total U.S. ad spend.

Are Mobile Video Ads The Next Big Thing? (Velti)
Yes, Given all the stats, are some key highlights and takeaways important for mobile marketers and advertisers to consider.

Key Highlights:

Mobile video consumption is high in Europe
Mobile video ads are seeing high eCPMs relative to other mobile ad formats
YouTube rolled out skippable mobile video ads this past August, which viewers love

Key Takeaways:

Mobile video is the next big thing in mobile advertising
Larger portion of digital marketing budgets will be allocated to the mobile video channel as mobile video consumption rises
YouTube’s skippable mobile ads make it more expensive for advertisers to reach viewers through YouTube (advertisers only pay if a viewer watches their ads for 30 seconds or until completion)
YouTube’s skippable ads could lead to a slight decline in viewership for smaller publishers, which would lead to interesting effects in the mobile video ad space

It will be interesting to see how things turn out in mobile video advertising.

How To Search Optimize Mobile Websites (Webbiquity)
Mobile web search is no longer of importance only to restaurants and retailers seeking to bring in more local street traffic. It’s rapidly becoming imperative even for the big-data, desktop-centric B2B world. While mobile site SEO has some similarities to traditional best practices, it also has many of its own unique requirements. Here are a set of on-page, technical and link-building techniques to optimize a mobile website for search:

Use keywords
Keep meta titles short
Include social sharing
Link mobile with corporate website
Use Google’s keyword research tool
Get listed on other popular mobile sites
Validate your code
Verify your site

86% of adults own a mobile phone and more than half of them use their phones to access the Internet. So get on it.

Twice As Many Mobile News Readers Prefer Browsers To Apps (Mashable)
News organizations have invested significantly in native apps, yet nearly three times as many tablet owners and twice as many smartphone users access news primarily through browsers rather than apps, according to Pew Research Center. 60% of tablet news readers and 61% of smartphone news readers in the survey said they get most of their news through web browsers on those devices. 23% of tablet news readers and 28% of smartphone news readers claimed they use apps, while 16% and 11%, respectively, said they use apps and web browsers equally. The study found that mobile devices aren’t so much cannibalizing news consumption as adding to it. Interestingly, it’s not the portability of mobile devices that’s leading to greater news consumption on those devices. Rather, most people said they read news on those devices at home, and about half only do so once per day.

Apps More And More Important Than The Mobile Web (BI Intelligence)
Mobile apps are becoming more important to people, not less important, according to this chart plucked from our big presentation on The State of the Internet. It's an interesting trend because it shows how mobile behavior is different than traditional desktop computing behavior when it comes to the web.
chart of the day, time spent on mobile web vs apps, oct 2012

The mobile web is just not as rich an experience as native mobile apps. That's why Facebook is transitioning away from HTML5 towards native apps.

Glad We Cleared That Up, So Who Wins The App Versus Mobile Site Debate? (Mobile Marketer)
Here's the best advice I've heard: Go with both! When in doubt, roll out a mobile site and app strategy. "While apps will always have a place for the loyal customer, the first place people are going to go it to the Web to contact that brand and an app will come later as real estate will become precious," according to Roland Campbell, senior director of solutions engineering at Usablenet. "The general consumer will hit the mobile Web more often," he said. "They’re not going to grant you space on their screen. Once they have become a loyal customer of your brand you can add something, like an app, that really adds value." Marketers who do not have a mobile presence are missing out on a big opportunity.

How To Know Which Strategy To Go With First (MGD Advertising via Infozguide)
Most consumers access the web via smartphones, tablets or other portable devices these days. So, as stated above, the question becomes what is better: a mobile app or a mobile website? There are various points that can help clarify which is better and why. Here's a great infographic from MDG Advertising which will help clarify the difference between the two options. It's not a matter of either or, it's a matter of which is the first priority.

Mobile Site Or App