The Mobile Marketing Association is working to make sure the world, indeed, is flat.
The Denver-based nonprofit last week released its first set of global guidelines, tweaking its instructions for mobile Web advertisers and adding new rules for marketing campaigns centered on mobile messaging and downloadable applications. The new document is designed as a blueprint for marketers and carriers around the world, and builds on region-specific guidelines three geographic markets: North America, Asia Pacific and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The MMA also released a 21-page overview intended as a kind of primer for those looking to move into the space.
“To ensure the best consumer mobile marketing experience, it is essential to have industry-wide accepted advertising guidelines,” said Stephanie Bauer, a marketing manager for Verizon Wireless. “The MMA and its committees continue to update these guidelines reflecting the most up-to-date practices for marketers across the globe.”
It’s a small world
The new document is the MMA’s first major attempt to take case studies and lessons from one geographic market and apply them to other regions. That kind of world view not only helps develop best practices, according to MMA President Laura Marriott, it can expose marketers to new ideas. South Africa’s Vodacom, for instance, found success with a sponsored service that allows users to send a text saying “please call me” to a friend. The offering drew as many as 2 million users a day, Marriott said, because the cost of voice services is so high. While that model may not be directly applicable in North America – where voice has become a commodity – it might help marketers think of new ways to get advertising messages across.
“I think what’s changed in the last year is that I would say initially the U.S. was ahead in terms of mobile advertising,” Marriott said. “But over the last six to eight months, you’re seeing more brands and operators deploying not only in Asia, but in Africa. There’s just been more and more investment placed in mobile advertising.”
Mobile video to follow
The MMA plans to follow the new guidelines in the next few months with similar instructions for mobile video and television come-ons, and longer-range plans include helping to establish a set of standards for measuring mobile ad campaigns. Creating a blueprint that addresses all of the ways marketers can advertise in mobile – and then accurately measure those campaigns – will be crucial to moving the wireless advertising needle, Marriott said.
“We’ll have the main mobile media data formats covered” once the video guidelines are released, Marriott stated. “Why that’s important is that we’re out ahead of the market. We’re still in the early days of mobile advertising. . But one of the things we still need to solve is to make it easier for an advertiser to buy mobile advertising.”
