itsmy.com - a popular mobile-only social network with over 1 million registered users announced today that they will be handing over control of ads to their users.

Users can now self-select from 15 categories what types of ads they’d like to receive. For example, there are fashion, sports, and entertainment categories. An initial test of 20,000 users saw 82% make their own ad selection. CTR response rates in the test group was 3%.

This whole strategy is interesting and worth following over the coming months as it’s essentially taking the exact opposite approach of behavioural targeting which has been working great in other online channels.

If they can combine user behavioural targeting with self-selection, my bet is that response rates would improve even more. I would even test a subscription model for self-selecting “no-ads”.

Having said that, many mobile devices do not support cookies or other user tracking mechanisms, so trying out a self-selection model makes sense… for now.

Here’s a re-post of a video demo of their platform from this year’s world mobile congress:

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.

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The Globe and Mail reported today that Microsoft is again talking to Yahoo. Get the full article here.

Seen largely as a way to counter any potential Google and Yahoo advertising partnership, a new Microsoft relationship would bolster their rating and access to the market while giving Yahoo shareholder value without raising too many regulatory eyebrows around anti-trust.

The long term play

Although still relatively small compared to the desktop web market, partnering with Yahoo now means Microsoft can also get access to their leading mobile platform.

Within two years mobile advertising in Canada will include inventory for marketers that will reach beyond Carrier on-deck portals. Already we are seeing early versions of mobile search (with proximity capabilities), mobile video, and mobile social networking sites with built-in ad-serving abilities. This market is going to be massive.

It also sets up the possibility of another takeover attempt in the not so distant future.

Last week at CTIA Wireless I had a chance to sit down with Michael Chang, the CEO of Greystripe to talk about mobile gaming and more specifically about his mobile advertising platform.

Greystripe currently has over 800 java based mobile games which are distributed through their own site (gamejump.com) and about 100 other sites and partners.

What makes them unique is the fact that any person with a java-enabled mobile device can download their games for free as Greystripe’s gaming network is ad-supported.

Users downloading games must view 2 pre-game ads and two post-game ads in order to access their games.

Mobile Ads have not been a barrier to engagement

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It’s a silly excercise, but everybody does it.  After a banner year for mobile in Canada, here are 10 outrageous predictions for 2008:  

1. SMS third-party advertising - every SMS you send is 150 characters…most of which is sent as blank space. I predict new services will take advantage of this in 2008 to deliver SMS advertising to off-set mobile costs for the consumer (but only if they opt-in of course)
2. Mobile Web advertising will take a piece of your media buy. We’ve seen it happen with online media…now with more inventory becoming available off-deck, the time is right to test and pilot this channel
3. MMS Common Short Codes will finally arrive and usher us into a new era in Mobile marketing in Canada….or at least catch us up to the rest of the world.
4. Mobile payments (m-Commerce) will start to emerge from text books, blogs, and sales pitches.  Look for pilots from Interac, Visa and at least one of the major banks next year.
5. The iphone will finally arrive in Canada - but it will be the second generation 3G phone that will support higher internet access speeds and cool features like video calling. This will be offered exclusively on the Rogers network - but don’t be surprised if another non-mobile retailer offers them for sale first
6. Fixed or low-cost data plans will be universal across all carriers in Canada. It’s already started with Bell and Rogers now offers an $80 / month plan for 500 megs of data - plenty for most of us. It’s still a long way from other plans around the world that are 4 times cheaper or better, but it’s a start
7. Due to fixed or low-cost data plans, look for the mobile web to catch fire.  Marketing campaigns will start incorporating mobile web strategies as part of their marketing mix
8. A new mobile carrier will be announced. The Canadian government announced the opening of new spectrum and is reserving a piece of it for a new player and with special engagement rules that will make it easier for a new competitor to enter the market.
9. Google will continue its charge towards world mobile domination. Look for their gphone sometime in the 3rd quarter and look for them to either bid on spectrum in the U.S., buy a carrier like Sprint outright to own a piece without having to go through the auction process or leverage their new mobile platform called Android to get direct access to many subscribers across many carriers.
10. Social Networking will make the leap from desktop to Mobile as a primary interface / access point 

Even if only a few of these come to fruition in 2008, it will be a great year for Marketers and a great year for Consumers.

Happy Holidays!

The CWTA just released their third quarter report on the Canadian mobile industry. Highlights include:

1. September 2007, person-to-person text messages totalled 946.7 million (approximately 31.5 million per day), up from 795.3 million in June 2007.
2. The total number of person-to-person text messages sent during the first three quarters of 2007 totalled 6.8 billion, surpassing the total of all text messages sent in 2006 which was 4.3 billion messages. Canada is on track to deliver over 9 billion text messages in 2007.
3. There are now over 19 million mobile subscribers in Canada or about 60% adoption overall. Adoption is around 70% in major urban areas and around 80% in major cities.
4. There were over 500,000 new subscribers in the third quarter.
5. 80% of mobile customers are on postpaid plans - so 20% are on prepaid plans.
6. There have been 18 applications processed for mobile micro-payments (mCommerce) in Canada in 2007.

What does this mean for marketers in Canada? It’s time to divert marketing budget to mobile. If you are looking for support with customer acquisition campaigns - SMS is still the way to go… or at least where you should begin your efforts.

Mobile web (including advertising) is growing and it’s now possible to buy inventory off-deck. Off-deck means developing something that isn’t carrier specific or that does not rely on the carrier for delivery. This means you can now promote your product or service beyond the confines of the “on-deck” carrier web experience.

For marketers looking for customer retention or growth tactics to compliment existing initiatives - SMS is still a great place to start by offering alerts, timely news, or information that is specific and personal to your customer. Stay away from many to 1 messages. Mobile is a very personal channel that rewards 1:1 communication. 

Marketers who have had success using Mobile have seen 94% open rates or better on SMS and 15% response rates to a call to action.   I don’t know about you, but that’s information I’ll be sharing with all our clients as we roll into the new year.

In the past few months we’ve been watching as Google, AOL, Yahoo, and Nokia have been making moves to extend or enter the mobile advertisting space.

Microsoft has decided to also join the party and has started placing ads on their U.S. MSN mobile page to follow efforts already made in Belgium, France, Spain, Japan, and the U.K.

The Bank of America will be one of the primary buyers of ad space - supporting their innovative mobile banking website and experience at bankofamerica.mobi. Paramount Pictures and Jaguar are the other two primary buyers.

Microsoft also plans to bring new features such as astrology, movie tickets through movietickes.com, ringtones, wallpaper, games and video clips on MSN Mobile via an agreement Microsoft has with Thumbplay.

Although Microsoft is late to the game, the mobile advertising space is still young and relatively small.  This is not like the nineties when Microsoft had to catch and kill Netscape who already dominated the browser market.  

Steve Levy, President of Market Research in Eastern Canada for IPSOS Reid, declared at this week’s CMA digital marketing conference that there is no mobile marketing in Canada. According to their research, 27% of Canadian marketers agree that mobile marketing will be very important in the future with 9% indicating they are practicing it now. Steve indicated he didn’t know how anybody could actually be doing mobile marketing now as Canadian carriers don’t yet support it.

I had an opportunity to speak with Steve after his presentation and suggested that his definition of Mobile Marketing was likely different from the 9% practicing it in Canada today.

He pointed out that when he walks by a retail outlet he doesn’t get coupons or messaging sent to his mobile device - which is how he defines mobile marketing. His definition really refers to location based services (LBS) or sometimes referred to as location based messaging (LBM). LBS / LBM does work in Canada across all carriers for those with built-in GPS in their devices (like the Blackberry 8800), but all the examples I’ve worked with require you to download a supporting application to your mobile device to make it work. Related to this are QR Codes (or Quick Response Codes) which are already rampant in other countries. Oh, another interesting stat from the Ipsos-Reid survey, 29% of marketers believe that QR Codes will be a part of many campaigns in the next three years. I’ll cover more on LBS & QR Codes in an upcoming article.

Mobile Marketing is more than LBS and QR Codes, although it is true that the future of Mobile Marketing could revolve around them.

Mobile Marketing is about creating conversations and creating engagement with audiences through the Mobile channel. Put another way, mobile marketing is about amplifying branded events, extending product or service experiences and extending the reach of a campaign which may already include TV, print, web, and email.

When I give an overview of Mobile Marketing to our clients, I tend to break it out into four channels:

1) SMS (or text messaging) & MMS

2) Downloading (ringtones, video & images) & Applications

3) Mobile Web

4) Mobile advertising

Of course others may define or categorize the mobile channel a bit differently, but I’ve found that using this approach can bring clarity and focus to your conversations. Over the coming weeks, I’ll provide my point of view of how to leverage each of these channels into your marketing mix. This year’s CMA conference had its moments, but I’m looking forward to next year’s conference where I’m expecting a location based message to be delivered from centre stage.