Effective media planning and buying is about reaching the target consumer with a relevant and consistent message at a time when they are most likely to pay attention to or interact with a brand. Such interactions could occur anywhere. Online, watching television, in a car while listening to the radio, staring at a billboard and now more often than ever, on the mobile phone.

The rapid growth in mobile phone usage clearly indicates a shift in how consumers are communicating and finding information. Low prices and robust mobile applications have made mobile phones ubiquitous, allowing a growing population from grade school students to grandparents to use their mobile devices to surf the web. Alongside that, we are also seeing a steep decline in traditional print and broadcast viewers. Acutely aware of the rapid shift in consumer viewing habits, advertisers are focused on extending their brands to the mobile environment and reclaiming those lost eyeballs. Rather than treating mobile advertising as an “add on” to other media channels like print or television, mobile advertising needs to be treated as a separate advertising media with its own key advantages. Achieving optimal results from the mobile media however requires a different mindset and skill-set as well as a thorough understanding of the mobile behaviour.

Advertising agencies usually specialize in a handful of mediums and most do not have the in-house expertise to leverage new media like mobile. Progressive mainline agencies are realizing the value that ad networks bring to the table in terms of reach and technology and are working closely with them to deliver better integrated campaigns for their clients. Ad networks use their deep rooted experience to create and manage engaging campaigns from the beginning to end giving agencies the flexibility of a hands-off management of the campaigns. Ad networks like mKhoj provide their niche skills to agencies to provide advertisers with creative optimization. mKhoj realizes the importance of actionable intelligence and transparent analytics. With this agencies will be able to measure the brand engagement thus being able to showcase better return on ad spend from the media mix invested on mobile advertising. This not only ensures customer satisfaction but also paves the way for agencies to obtain future buys from their advertisers.

The early adopters among the brands have already started leveraging these advantages by engaging with agencies and ad networks. Yamaha engaged mKhoj to help create awareness and interest for the launch of their newest bike. The statistics showed a CTR of over 1.3% across text and banner ads with a peak of 6.6% for banners. mKhoj also recently tapped the ever increasing cricket fan community in the APAC region for Cricket Nirvana. The online cricket content portal started averaging an incremental of 72% page views per day as a result of mobile advertising campaign. The campaign saw a peak CTR of 3.58% and an average CTR of 1.58%. We are at a stage of advertising where traditional is passé. With the enormous reach of the ad networks and engaging campaigns, brands and agencies have seen their dollar stretch further in these challenging economic times.

As the battle for pieces of tightening advertising budgets increase, we believe that the advertising space will be best served by the mutual realization of the new ways in which agencies and ad networks can work together.

- Abhay Singhal, Co-Founder and Head, Global Ad Sales