RISMEDIA, October 12, 2010—Earlier this year, a lot of attention was drawn to the world of mobile technology and mobile advertising, in particular when both Google and Apple decided to ramp up their mobile advertising businesses. In January, Apple bought mobile advertising company Quattro for $275 million. A couple months later, Google completed a highly scrutinized purchase of Quattro rival and industry-leading mobile advertising company AdMob for $750 million.
While numerous reports from industry analysts show that mobile advertising dollars pale in comparison to dollars spent on traditional online advertising, an equal—if not, greater—number of reports speculate that mobile ad spending will increase exponentially over the coming years to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Regardless of the dollar amount, one thing is certain: mobile advertising within the mobile technology currently being used in real estate can provide tremendous benefits to both buyers and sellers.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “I do not want to be inundated with any more advertisements than I already am;” and I can appreciate that. However, when you step back and take a deeper look, mobile advertising has the ability to be much more relevant than the traditional pop-up and banner ads you’re used to seeing online. In addition, as more advertisements find their way into cutting-edge mobile marketing technologies, the cost of those technologies to the end user can be dramatically reduced.
Let’s first look at the latter of the two scenarios. It is no secret that real estate consumers are turning to their mobile devices for more information than ever before and property information is no exception. The mass adoption of text messaging lead-generation services, mobile websites and applications has yet to come to fruition due to the cost of services like this. However, we have already seen providers significantly reduce the cost of text messaging lead-generation services when the user allows them to be ad supported. Ads from large national retailers and big box consumer goods companies, such as Best Buy or DirecTV, tend not to offend either the user or consumer. The more targeted the ads become to real estate, the more subsidized these services will become for real estate agents who opt-in to receive and participate in programs with such ads.
On the consumer side, mobile advertising is not only more relevant, but much less intrusive. Ads can be either simple text within text messages and/or banner ads on a mobile website. Furthermore, serving ads to the mobile device presents the advertiser with the ability to give you geographic and time-sensitive offers that are more valuable to you as a consumer. Because you are on a mobile device and inherently mobile, advertisers can serve time-sensitive ads with greater discounts and drive you to the nearest store locations using the GPS on your mobile device. Lastly, with specific demographics, such as advertisements within real estate mobile marketing programs, advertisers can serve ads that are specific to the home-buying/-selling demographic such as home improvement needs.
In closing, mobile advertising will soon be seen within the real estate space and the mobile marketing programs currently available. While, at first glance, it can seem like just another way for advertisers to brainwash us, with a deeper look, you can see that mobile advertising presents more benefits than most all other forms of advertising on both sides. Welcome mobile ads and leverage the mobile marketing technologies they are incorporated in to make more money for your business.
Seth Kaplan is president of Mobile Real Estate ID.
For more information, visit www.mobilerealestateid.com.
