Yellow Pages Association Blog

Mike Boland, led a panel discussion of high interest – Monetizing Mobile Yellow Pages – with Chung Cheong from AT&T Interactive, Sergio Alvarez from Ai Media Group, and Krishna Pillai from Convergent Mobile.

Boland opened the discussion by providing facts and themes that demonstrate the opportunity in mobile:  63 million mobile Internet users, 29% smartphone penetration, and growing usage that will match desktop internet use by 2014 according.

“The mobile access points are happening when people are away from their desktop or print book, so it’s an opportunity to reach new users or existing users at incremental touch points.”  And the marriage of mobile and social is driving popularity of mobile, while augmented reality apps, voice search, and bar codes add new possibilities.

Sergio Alvarez asked the audience a philosophical question – what’s a mobile device?  Is an iPad a mobile device?  The device landscape is diverse and fragmented, and can generate different results for advertisers and searchers.

Krishna Pillai says it’s important to think about what your end goal is before developing new apps and products in this fragmented market.  “One of the things I tell my clients is to think about what you’re developing.  Look at the audience.  Is it an audience that uses theses devices?  If your application does not use a lot of the native features of the device, think about why you really want to go through all that headache or writing for that device.”

Chung Cheong believes that customized messaging based on targeting – such as time or day or location of the user – is an important consideration for a mobile advertising program.  The difficult part of that approach is that it requires a lot of advertiser input.  “Restaurants or plumbers might be good at food or fixing a sink, but not necessarily advertising.”

Because of the complexity of some of these programs, Cheong believes that for many advertisers, it makes sense for most advertisers to consider mobile another channel as part of a larger advertising bundle and to analyze closely the advertisers that needs a more in-depth approach.

Pillai agreed that customization makes mobile a very powerful channel.  “Because the mobile device is such a personal device and is such a ubiquitous device, users are very welcome to receiving information on their mobile device.  There is a more timely aspect to it.  When a consumer is looking for information, it is for something within the next hour or next several hours.”