Canadians are ready for mobile advertising

The Globe and Mail recently reported that mobile advertising was years away from a breakthrough. You can read their full article here.

Although I agree we are still in the early stages of mobile advertising, I would suggest that “years” is more likely about two years. Just as we’re seeing exponential growth in leveraging the mobile channel for marketing activities, we are now seeing similar growth in mobile inventory for brands looking to place ads on carrier networks (both on and off-deck).

In Canada, there was virtually no mobile ad inventory to buy a year ago. Today, there’s well over 5 million impressions in mobile inventory to be bought on and off-portal. Although relatively small in comparison to email or the desktop web, this is growing rapidly.

Industry insiders have indicated that the metrics are looking pretty good too.

Click through rates are around 2-3% and CPM ads are averaging over $25. This is less than half what we are seeing in the U.S.

Like SEM rates in Canada, mobile ad rates are a relative bargain right now.

Fill rates are averaging over 90% with some premium sites selling out consistently.

Should you be buying mobile ad inventory?

The answer is yes - if your brand, product, or service is targeting a demographic that is among the ~14% of Canadians who regularly use the mobile web to access information. Who are they? Up until now, mostly professional / affluent users who are on corporate data plans for their blackberry or other PDA device, but this is shifting to a more general audience - especially as social networking sites continue to roll out mobile-enhanced sites.

Avoid the biggest mistake

If you are planning on buying mobile ad space, remember that you need to support your call to action with either a number to call, a shortcode with keyword to engage, or ideally a mobile website that is fully optimized for the mobile web (w3c standards). Click for download is ok too.

Sending consumers who click on your mobile ads to a site that is not fully optimized is equivalent to sending them to a broken link.