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Where does advertising end and content begin?

It’s pretty clear that engaging an audience via mobile advertising requires a different approach than through many other media. Simply sending an interruptive text straight to the device in somebody’s pocket isn’t likely to be received well; it’s likely to be seen as spam. Connecting with a mobile audience requires marketers to understand that they’re not sending users simple advertising, they’re sending them content.

Take, for instance, the SMS sent to Blyk members back in January from the UK government youth agency Connexions. The campaign didn’t just send users texts with a call to action, rather it sought to engage them by asking them to respond to a number of introductory questions as a lead-in to a conversation. Accordingly, the campaign got a 36% response rate — far higher than most standard, interruptive campaigns.

The campaign offered users something of value in exchange for their response, and that’s a key point. That in exchange for users’ attention, in exchange for access to their mobile phone, the most personal of devices, advertisers need to give users something in return. That something can take many different forms: a discount coupon, a piece of useful information, some entertaining video content, and so on. In some sense, the marketing aspect of the message needs to take a back seat. The initial focus needs to be on delighting the recipient in some way — and then you can get the marketing message across.

Marketers need to see themselves as content providers. A movie trailer isn’t an ad; it’s a piece of mobile content with the potential to engage and entertain the viewer. If it delights the recipient, it doesn’t simply make them want to go see the film, there’s a possibility they’ll pass it along. Do people pass advertisements along? Not really. They pass along content. Sometimes that content happens to be an advertisement.

Forget blurring the line between content and advertising. In reality, that line doesn’t exist.

Carlo Longino is a Las Vegas-based writer, analyst and consultant in the mobile industry. His past experience includes work for Nokia, Nortel, and a number of other mobile companies, and he blogs at MobHappy.

Entry Filed under: Advertising, Brand, Culture, Design, Technologies, guests