Braj Mohan Chaturvedi: 07/31/08

The business of encouraging people to buy products and services using the mobile channel as the medium to deliver the advertisement message
--- Internet Message Access Protocol

Mobile advertising is an innovative and a customer-centric approach to reach promising customers. It includes advertising in the form of Short Message Service (SMS), mobile alerts, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), mobile games and videos. Mobile advertising can be divided into two main categories: Mobile Push Advertising and Mobile Pull Advertising. Mobile Push Advertising, can be in form of solicited or unsolicited advertising News alerts, job alerts and cricket score alerts are a few examples in this category. Mobile Pull Advertising, on the other hand, is defined as advertising when users request for the services from the service-provider for instance daily horoscope.

Mobile advertising is the latest buzz in the field of advertising, since it is a cost-effective way to promote and inform the target customers. With the advent of new media, mobile advertising has become one of the most demanding and integral part of marketing mix.

Benefits of Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising is cost-effective and offers flexibility to inform target group as and when required. In the case of mobile advertising the advertising message can be personalized with respect to Target Audience. The mobile advertising is interactive in nature and advertiser gets feedback immediately. Though mobile advertising offers flexibility to contact target group as and when required. It also gives option of permission-based advertising, which is also governed by telecom rules and regulations. The mobile advertising is still not brand creator but it is more helpful in brand recall and brand interactivity. The benefits of mobile advertising include: flexibility of content, speed of reach.

Limitations of Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising has limited message content. It is mostly driven by key words and target audiences in most of the cases take mobile advertisements casually. Moreover it still has very limited reach as compared to other conventional tools of advertising. The visual display is not as impressive as TV advertising. Though the advertiser has more control on the mobile advertising but still cant calculate ROI of advertising more accurately. Most importantly, mobile advertising is often criticized for intrusion of target audience privacy.

Guidelines for Mobile Advertising
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published guidelines for mobile advertising. These guidelines are designed specifically for the Asia-Pacific region to encourage the use of mobiles for advertising-related purposes as well as its acceptance by marketers and consumers.

As of now it is not in practice. There are companies, and advertisers violating the defined guidelines but we are moving in the direction where the advertising world will take it seriously.

Conclusion
Mobile Advertising is at infant stage of the life cycle. The share of advertising spend on mobile advertising is minimal but when advertising spend is seen from the lenses of life cycle it is a good start.

Katyayana

This Blog is dedicated to all the Management Professionals who want to challenge the set pattern, who are practical in their approach and dont think in thin air; who believe that strategy is all about making things simple; who strongly advocate the “Rule of Simple” and who believe that impossible is nothing. - Just like Katyayana. Katyayana was a disciple of Gautama Buddha. He is also known as Kaccana or Kaccayana, Mahakatyayana, Mahakaccana and in Japanese as Kasennen. Katyayana is one of the “Ten Disciples of the Buddha”. Mahakashyapa, Ananda, Shariputra, Subhuti, Purna, Mahamaudgalyayana, Katyayana, Aniruddha, Upali and Rahula. He was foremost in explaining Dharma. He was born in a brahmin family at Ujjayini (Ujjain) and received a classical Brahminical education studying the Vedas. Katyayana was a Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India, around the time of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. He is known for two works:- The Varttika, an elaboration on Panini’s grammar. Along with the Maha-bhasya of Patanjali, this text became a core part of the vyakarana (grammar) canon. This was one of the six Vedangas, and constituted compulsory education for Brahman students in the following twelve centuries.- He also composed one of the later Sulba Sutras, a series of nine texts on the geometry of altar constructions, dealing with rectangles, right-sided triangles, rhombuses, etc. Katyayana certainly have been a man of very considerable learning but probably not interested in mathematics for its own sake, merely interested in using it for religious purposes.He wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for religious rites and to improve and expand on the rules which had been given by his predecessors. Katyayana would have been a priest instructing the people in the ways of conducting the religious rites he describes. Authorship: Nettipakarana, a work of grammar, and Petakopadesa, a treatise on exegetical methodology, sulvasutras dealt with geometry.