TechStuff Classic: Ads on the Go

How does mobile advertising differ from other online advertising? Why is mobile advertising such a big deal? How will mobile advertising shape online content?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Pay there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with our Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and it is time
for another classic episode. This episode originally published on October

(00:28):
two thousand thirteen. The world was such a different place
back then. This episode is called Ads on the Go,
where we talk about everyone's favorite topic advertising. But as
it turns out, it's important stuff and sometimes there are
ways to do it well where it's actually helpful, and
sometimes there are ways to do it really, really badly

(00:51):
where it's intrusive or worse. So let's listen to this
classic episode and i'll talk to you guys again in
a bit. Any company that has a web presence and
they are alone a company that is that is a
web presence period. Yeah, they're all concerned about this because
they want to make sure that they're continuing to serve
up and experience. There's a good experience for the people

(01:13):
who are using the web on whatever device they happen
to be on, and furthermore, something that can actually make
the money. Yeah, And as it turns out, this whole
mobile Uh, this move to mobile browsing is really disruptive
as far as that goes. But it's the it's it's
a pretty big industry of UM. As of August, according
to an insight company called e Marketer, the mobile advertising

(01:37):
global market is set to be UH worth over sixteen
billion dollars this year. That's a lot of money UM,
which is a growth and I imagine that we'll see
that number even go even higher because you're seeing when
you start looking at sales figures for things like tablets
and smartphones, there through the roof. And it's across the globe.

(01:58):
Although I will say, and we'll get into the US,
different parts of the globe value different platforms. Some are
very tablet crazy and some are like no, I want
my smartphone right absolutely, But but the marketers also saying
that the desktop ad market UM is set to peak
at around thirty five billion and be on a decline

(02:18):
after that. Yeah. And part of the reason for that
is that we're seeing more and more people move away
from those traditional desktop and laptop platforms. UH. And we're
also seeing because we're seeing this move toward mobile, that
itself is in part devaluing advertising on those traditional platforms, right,

(02:38):
So if everyone is moving to something else, then you
can't sell your your website that's designed for a desktop
as a an ideal place where you for advertisers to
put ads, because if no one's using a desktop of
you that website, then no one's getting that content right.
And when whenever you have that split, you're going to
have some people who are who are very happy with

(03:00):
their experience and some people who are not, just because
of the way that the page was designed. As I'm
sure everyone listening to this has has had the experience
of in the past. Right. There's even some discussion and
some debate about the value of, say a specific app
for a web content creator versus a mobile browser. So
there are websites out there that have apps. How stuff

(03:22):
works has an app, and then they also have a
presence on the web and actual website. And there are
some people who who say that they much prefer the
experience of going through a mobile website than using an app,
even if that app has been optimized to to really
feature whatever the content is of that website, Because I
guess partial part of it is that when you're in

(03:43):
a web browser, you have a lot more freedom to
go from one place to another, and that may not
be within the confines of whatever website you're visiting, whereas
if you're going through an app, that's pretty much what
you're seeing, right. So so okay, so some of those
more traditional method that's that that we're thinking are going
to peak in the next couple of years. Right. So,

(04:04):
of course, the one that we all know because these
date back to the very earliest days of web pages,
are banner ads, right. Those are the things that will
that you'll see along the top or sometimes along the
side of a web page that you're viewing. Right, Yeah,
some people, some people will go so far as to
differentiate banner ads from whatever appears in the side but sidebar,
but it's essentially the same thing. This is something that

(04:26):
is part of the frame of the website you're looking at.
So you're all familiar with this, I know, So I don't.
I'm not going to go into great detailble it is
because assuming that you're listening to a podcast, I'm pretty
sure you've visited a web page has had a banner
ad on it. So uh, that's one version another course,
or the dreaded pop ups and pop unders. These are
the ads that will either generate a window on top

(04:49):
of or beneath your web browsers. So if it's on
top of your web browser, you start interrupts your viewing experience.
If it's underneath, you'll see it when you finally close
your your page. Yeah, when you close your page or
you close your browser and suddenly you see like eighteen
different windows there, and you think, whoa, something starts making
noise that you're not looking at. Man, Hey, Lauren, let
me ask you is your favorite kind of add My

(05:10):
favorite kind of ad, You know, the one that immediately
starts to AutoPlay video with sound. That's my favorite. How
did you know? Yeah? It's also great when you're doing
research at work and then suddenly you've got like, you know,
despicable mean minions screaming at the top of their lungs.
But then and you're like, well that those didn't plan
on treating everyone to that professionalism. Or if you're or

(05:30):
if you're like me and you think I'm going to
click on this link and walk away to get coffee
because it's gonna take all on this page to load,
and then you come back and there's a guess going
on at your desk and all the writers and editors
of how stuff work hate you even more than they
did already anyway. So besides pop ups and pop unders,
you also have floating ads. These are the ones that

(05:51):
actually float over the text. They may even move as
you know, and block your view of it. And sometimes
there's not even a way of closing it. You just
have to wait and it goes away. And uh, expanding
ads these are the ones where if your cursor goes
over it, it suddenly expands to fill up and sometimes
we'll then start playing music video. Yeah, that can also happen,
but it'll it'll cover most of the web content that

(06:13):
you were going to visit. Then there of course ads
that are are not as line text ads which are
a little bit sneakier. Those those are the things that
you might have seen like a double underline and article
that you were reading that should you happen to click
on it, it might take it. It will take you
to some whoever is actually purchased the ad, and usually
it's something that directly relates to whatether the term is.

(06:34):
So for example, if I were to write a blog
post and I'm mentioning a particular type of camera, there
might be a double underlined version of the camera's name,
and if you clicked on it, it might take you
to say Amazon dot com or some other retail site
where you can purchase the camera. So I mean that's
what it's usually considered a slightly less obtrusive, but it

(06:56):
can also be sneaky or misleading or just you know,
it might be one of those things where you're really
you've trained your mind in that Wikipedia approach where everything
that's a link will just take you to a different
article and you're expecting an article and you get information
all rather than advertorial and you never know, you know, uh.
And then there are there's also search engine marketing. That's

(07:17):
where you end up paying a search engine to feature
your product on a results page that relates back to
whatever that product is. Those those will be like a
Google sponsored ads that pop up along the like usually
the first two at the top and then maybe a
few along a sidebar. Right. So it's generally are related
to your search and and can be really very helpful

(07:39):
depending on on the the algorithms that Google is using
for that particular ad. But um, but yeah, it has
has been found to to create some confusion in some
populations of Internet goers as to whether those are really
the best search result or something that is sponsored. Some
people apparently don't read the fine print right now, there

(08:01):
are different ways that these ads are actually making money. Yeah,
so we're going to take you into the inside. Come
along with us. Of course, if you've listened to texta
for a while, you've heard that Chris and I did
an episode about um web advertising ages ago, and you
probably have heard these terms from that as well. But
it's certainly important in our discussion about mobile advertising. So

(08:25):
one of the very common forms of compensation is the CPM,
which is cost per mill which is not cost per million,
but rather cost per thousand. And we're talking about impressions
here or views. So it's every single time that page
that has that add on it has been loaded into
a browser, whether that's someone who has loaded it and

(08:46):
then hit refresh a billion times or if it's a
billion people who looked at that page once. So it's
counting up every time that page is loaded, because every
time that page is loaded, that ad has been displayed,
and so that's a certain amount of money for every
in displays of the page and therefore the ad, right
and then that amount of money has changed dramatically over

(09:07):
the history of online advertising. There was a time where
if you had a really heavily traffic site, you could
demand a pretty high price for that. You know, we're talking.
You know, you might think thirty or forty dollars for
every thousand views isn't much, but if you get million
a million views per day, that really starts to add up.
But then, you know, you have we talked about devaluing,

(09:28):
you start to see that that amount go down even
for the most heavily traffic sites because a lot of
traffic starts to come in through mobile. And we'll talk
about why that's a problem in a little bit. Right.
So after that, you've got CPC, which has cost per click. Yeah,
now this is actually people who don't just see an ad,
but actively click on that ad to go through and
look at whatever the site is that that sponsors that

(09:50):
add So in this case, it doesn't matter how many
people view it. What matters is how many people click it.
And you could argue that this is not entire really
up to the content creator, because the content creator is
just creating stuff that they want people to to look at.
The advertiser would have to create an ad that was
enticing enough to get people to click, or tricky enough

(10:13):
so that people click on it by accident. Although I
think most people would argue that that's not very effective,
not really to the benefit of all involved. Right, you know,
it all depends on who's doing the marketing to Right.
If it's a third party marketing department that is creating
these ads and all they are concerned with is throwing
as much traffic to the to the advertiser as possible,

(10:33):
then they might not really care if it's truly effective
in getting people to convert. Where we talk about conversion
numbers to convert over into buying something, what's the whole
third one? That third one is cp A that's cost
per action, and that is going a step further than
cost per click. It's when someone has has clicked through
to a site and actually does whatever the advertiser wanted

(10:56):
them to do, like purchase a product or or in
er a free trial. So if you've listened, yeah, you've
listened to us talk about our sponsors. We have several
sponsors where they use this approach. So if our listeners
go and they sign up for these things, then that
means that the sponsor will end up paying whatever the
agree amount is. So, in other words, go and sign

(11:18):
up for those things, guys, because that's awesome for us.
Um also, I mean, our sponsors are great, so that
helps too. So let's talk about the mobile ad problem. Now.
The problem is that a lot of these these traditional
ads that we talked about, the banner ads and the
pop ups, pop unders, the text ads are a lot
harder to navigate or to see in a mobile platform,

(11:39):
particularly when you're talking about something like a smartphone where
the landscape of viewable area is really tiny, right right,
and people are moving through at a pretty rapid rate
of reading speed, maybe paying a little bit less attention. Yeah.
Or it may even be that in order to view
whatever the content is of the website, they re size
it so that they're only so that the text or
whatever it is they're looking at actually readable, therefore blocking

(12:00):
out the section of the page that had the ad. Yeah. Yeah,
that stuff might not even appear on the screen. Share.
There's also a lot of programming bugs in which I mean,
you know, we've got so many um so many mobile
devices and carriers and os is that at a certain
point it gets difficult for a single you know, web
developer to create a website that looks good on everything. Yeah,

(12:21):
a lot of these websites also have mobile versions of
them that are optimized for the mobile viewing experience, which
often means that they leave the ads off because there's
just no space for them. It ends up making the
content look all squished, and that's a terrible experience for
the user, which means that the user is less likely
to go to that website. So that means that in

(12:41):
order to monetize the website, we have to start looking
at different ways to to to have kind of ads
or sponsorships or whatever, because the traditional ways just aren't
They aren't designed with that platform in mind. Right, And
this is certainly not a new problem or a new
set of problems. As of two seven, mobile was becoming

(13:03):
a priority among media and marketing executives. Um, I mean
that was before the iPhone guys. Yeah, um, you know,
as of two thousand six, Nielsen had started tracking cell
phone use across media, right right, Yeah, I remember that
I could browse with my old had a Nokia phone
that hey Microsoft buying them now, but I had I

(13:24):
had an old Nokia phone that or Nokia phone that
that could browse websites and you would just get in
these little by texts and you'd have to you know,
you wouldn't get any graphics at all, It's just text. Uh.
I rapidly decided that was not an ideal experience for me. Yeah,
I believe I had a Samsung like a like a
flip flip phone that allows you to do the same

(13:44):
sort of thing a motor lay anyway, not important. It
wasn't until I got a smartphone that I really started
to use it to do things like browse the web. Yeah. So,
um so some some of the trends that are going
on right now, Yeah, let's talk about them. So I
got a lot of this information from Adobe. Now, Adobe
does a big Digital index report every now and then.
It's semi regular, is how I've seen it described. And

(14:07):
part of it is the State of Mobile Benchmark study.
And so these were some things that they found in
their study. They found that tablets drive more web traffic
than smartphones and may actually be a PC replacement when
it comes to web consumption. Now it's not that way.
It's not like they've completely replaced PCs already, but that
it looks like tablets are poised to take the place

(14:29):
of PCs when it comes to just browsing the web
and consuming content for those for those basic functions that
are you know, and anything more simple than you know,
complex photo editing or video editing like that. So in general,
people visit se more web pages per visit on a
tablet than they do with a smartphone. So, you know,
that just means that every time you get online with

(14:50):
a tablet, then you're you're in general, you tend to
be looking at more web pages than you would be
if you were using a smartphone at the time. Now,
it may turn out that people use smartphones more frequently
than tablets, and so maybe those numbers are a little misleading,
because if you're using a smartphone a lot throughout the day,
you may actually visit more web pages accumulatively then you

(15:11):
would in one visit with the tablet. And and there
are more smartphones out there in the wild than there
are tablets. There's absolutely true, there are far more smartphones
than tablets in the wild, although according to Adobe, tablets
are still driving more traffic um They said that people
who use tablets to browse shops are three times more
likely to buy something than someone on a smartphone. But

(15:33):
it's probably important now to look at some actual numbers
because because you said there, like, wow, if I was
if I'm using a tablet, I'm three times more likely
to buy something than if I were looking at the
same content on a smartphone. Hold on their big guy,
So far, this is where we start talking about conversion,
converting someone from browsing to buying. That's and that's that action.

(15:55):
That's that that's that cost per action kind of right
that we were talking about earlier. Yeah, this is this
is where we go from hey, that's a pretty pair
of shoes to hey, I own those shoes now. So
if you're using a smartphone, it said that there was
a point seven percent conversion rate, meaning that point seven
percent of the people shopping on a smartphone would buy
stuff on a particular on a typical visit. And so

(16:15):
three times that for for tablets, that would make it
two point two percent. Yeah, so when we're talking three times,
we're talking from less than one percent to just over
two percent. It's not it's not like some overwhelming number.
But also for PCs, not that impressive. Actually, it's only
three point three percent for PCs so again this is
and so this is not actually a method that is

(16:37):
working on on a particularly calculable level across the field. Yeah,
and if you look at if you look at just
the mass number of purchases, it ends up being huge numbers. Right,
we're talking billions of dollars. But when you're talking when
you're looking at all of traffic that is going to
these sites, it's a tiny little percentage. Now, if you

(16:57):
were to compare that to say, a person who walks
into an mortar store and how likely they are to
actually walk out with a purchase, I'm sure the numbers
are are pathetic. However, way more people can come to
your website than can come to a typical breaking mortar store. Yeah,
you know, it's just the physical limitations there means that
it's a totally different set of numbers. So even though

(17:17):
it's a small percentage, it may still be a large
number of people. Sure, that's still I don't know that.
Nonetheless as to me that that possibly a better system
could be found. Oh sure, if we can get to
a point where we are compelled to buy, you know
that we are punished if we do not buy, and
that world is coming, I said too much. All right,
So the leading operating system in the United States mobile

(17:41):
operating system, I should say in the United States is
here's a big shock. Yeah, people love their Apple products. Sheep.
I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. My wife. My wife
uses uh an iPad and an iPhone. She loves it.
I actually really think that iOS devices are amazing. I

(18:03):
just happen to be an Android user. So while I
make the joke, I am not one of those people
who's like Android good, iOS bad, which is which is
good because because I might we might have to fight. Yeah,
and I don't want to do that because she's scrappy, y'all.
I am elbows like knives. Um. But yeah, and that's
despite the fact that there are more Android devices overall

(18:24):
available in the market. Oh yeah, sure, by far, I
mean considering that the iPhone is one device. Yeah, you
can buy an older iPhone, but it's still one line
of products, whereas Android comes in all shapes, sizes, flavors,
and problems. Uh. There's this whole fracturing of the market
thing that we could talk about, but that's a different podcast. Uh,
tablet versus smartphone use is not study across the globe.

(18:47):
I mentioned that earlier that there are some places in
the world where people prefer to browse on tablets and
others where they prefer smartphones. So for example, in the UK,
about people use tablets, so that's the majority there. But
in China, it's like nine of the people in China
are using smartphones to browse the web. So so it's
also hard to create a strategy, a mobile strategy that

(19:11):
is going to affect the entire globe. First of all,
being able to do business around the world is problematic too.
That that's sure, sure, And then that's why companies like
I think that right now, Google owns more than half
of the share in the mobile digital ad market across
the globe. Google. When you think about Google, and we've

(19:32):
said this before, to Google is not really a search company.
Google is an online advertising company, right and and they've
incorporated YouTube into that, and they've incorporated they've incorporated everything
like tracking, GPS tracking, I mean, there's based upon what
region you're in. Now, a lot of this is opt in,
so you're not forced to do it yet the compulsions

(19:54):
coming people just telling you now, but no, you're not
forced to do it. But if you do it, then
you up getting what we call targeted ads. Right. They're
targeted to you based upon your behaviors, based upon where
you're from, if if there are more demographic things known
about you, like your gender and your age, that can
go into targeted advertising, which I understand for some people

(20:16):
it's really kind of a creepy idea, this idea that
the advertisers know more about a lot of privacy issues
wrapped up in this now personally, and this is this
is just personally literally, like just as it applies to me,
I don't apply this to anyone else. I love targeted advertising,
and the reason why I love it is because I'm
seeing ads that are really much more relevant to my

(20:36):
interests and I learned about things I never would have
known about otherwise, and I love to to be able
to do that kind of shopping. But I would not
say that everyone wants to have that exact same experience.
And there are people who have had very disruptive things
happened to them because advertisers were able to figure out
certain life situations and send the messages the unsolicited. Right,

(20:58):
there's that one horse story of that target girl who
is living with her parents and target based on her
purchasing behavior, sent her a congratulations you're having a baby jacket,
and then her father got all upset targets saying how
dare you send this to her, and then send another
lawyer's target saying I'm sorry, I did not realize my
daughter was pregnant, and boy, yeah, so they're There are
definitely ways that this this tool can go wrong, all right,

(21:21):
you know, it can be pretty awkward and pretty invasive.
At the same time, I do have to say that, yes,
I agree with you, Jonathan, and I personally am am
happier when, for example, I've just gone through a terrifyingly
bad breakup and Facebook is not sending me engagement ring ads.
That's a that's a great day for me. Yeah, yeah,
personally I could see that. Okay, that's fair. Uh. The

(21:42):
last point I have under the trends, this one I
recommend we all take with a huge grain of salt.
And the reason is that, like you said Lauren at
the top of the show, some of the sources we
have for the information are from companies that have vested
interest in online advertising, basically all of them, to which
which makes things a little bit sticky, right because I mean,
they might be saying, hey, you know, you shouldn't get

(22:04):
out of desktop advertising because it's going to come back
in a big way. And it turns out the reason
why they say this because they have this whole advertising
strategy that they want to sell you. But in this case,
there's a company called host Gator which is vested in
mobile advertising. So again let's let's take the end to consideration.
But they they say that they figure that mobile will

(22:26):
overtake fixed internet access by fourteen. So we're recording this,
which means next year we would see mobile browsing overtake
Internet browsing, or at least mobile access to the Internet
overtake fixed access. Now, while that is coming from a
company that is offering up mobile advertising strategies, it's also

(22:46):
one of those things that I find easy to believe
just based upon the trends we've been seeing so far. Now,
maybe it means that it's not really twenty four teen,
Maybe it will be a few more years down the
road before we actually see this happen. But I think
it is happening right, And you know, whether whether it
overtakes it or not, it's it's clearly a a functioning

(23:06):
revenue source um or. Facebook reported that as of Q two,
of mobile ads made up of its revenue. Yeah, and
in fact, that was one of those things that when
Facebook was having its I p O there was a
little bit of a shake up because Facebook at that
point had not really figured out how it was going
to handle the mobile ads part of its of its

(23:28):
revenue stream. And so they discovered that their um their
their revenues for one quarter that year were lower than
what had they had projected. And it was partially because
everyone was starting to I say everyone, So many people
were starting to use the Facebook mobile app or or
just to access Facebook on mobile platform, which again gives

(23:50):
you a totally different experience than than on a desktop.
It made it made a lot of investors lose faith
in them. And in fact, this, this news, this Q
two news um was basically what preempted the rebound and
Facebook staff this summer. It shows how powerful mobile really is.
We have a little bit more to say about ads
on the go, but first let's take a quick break. Okay,

(24:20):
so let's talk about some of the challenges about mobile advertising.
We've touched on some of them already, but we'll we'll
kind of have to pull them all into this gigantic
cloud of how do we do this right? So, the
type of content you consume might depend upon the device
you're using, because some devices use certain make certain type

(24:41):
of content easier to access or to consume. For example,
if a website is in flash, probably you're not looking
at that on an iOS device anyway. You know, Android
for a while supported Flash for a while. Um, yeah,
so you that that's a good example exactly when. I
don't know about you, Lauren, I don't know how how
frequently you you will occasion go out to eat at

(25:02):
some place where you're not really familiar with the menu.
But if you've ever had the experience where you click
on the menu thing and then you realize that the
menu was programmed in flash, you probably have had some
choice words. I have I have cursed the heavens multiple
times based on that. Yes, when occurred grasp of hanger,
which is the combination of being hungry and angry at

(25:23):
the same time. Lauren and I both suffer from this.
So you do not want to be in a room
with us when neither of us have had a snack. Yeah,
both both of us are are a tiny bit on
the hypoglycemic end and also have very particular dietary restrictions. Right,
it makes us really entertaining. The longer our podcast, the
longer our podcast goes, the more likely we are to
come to blows, not because we don't like each other,

(25:44):
but because we're angry. Well, I go into fits of
rage when I try and access something like a menu
on on a mobile device. And that's a perfect example
of how companies have to really take that into account
when they're designing their their mobile websites or their mobile applications.
They need to make sure that they are catering to

(26:06):
a platform that has its own set of advantages and disadvantages,
things that can and cannot do um. And then there's
also the concept of content grazing, which makes it even
more complicated, and that is that is the concept that
UM that most people when they're on their mobile devices
are doing multiple other things at the same time, maybe

(26:27):
watching TV, maybe on their tablet, maybe also checking their
smartphones simultaneous. Yeah, they might have. Usually it's too at
least two screens, probably more than two screens for some
of us, where we are consuming things on multiple platforms
all at the same time, all of which have their
own advantages and disadvantages, like I just said, so that
may or may not be related. You know that. I

(26:49):
think the hope like that, if you're watching television is
that you're going to be on your tablet looking up
extraneous information about that television program. Yeah, but that's not
necessarily the case, because let me tell you, I have
frequently watched uh Netflix on my Xbox three sixty. There's
gonna be a lot of name dropping here because I

(27:09):
want to just point out how insane I am. So
I've got my television on, I've got my Xbox sixty on.
I'm watching Netflix for that, So that's one thing I've
got going on. Meanwhile, I've got my laptop up and
I'm in Google Docs so that I can type in
snarky comments about whatever it is I'm watching, because I'm
probably doing this for another show I do. So. Then
I've also got my smartphone there where I'm getting all

(27:30):
of my status updates from various things because I don't
want to have too many tabs open on my laptop.
That slows things down for all the snark. So already
I've got three screens going. I have a problem, and
I'm not alone. It turns out the problem right, and
and and and people say all kinds of different reasons
for doing this, and and it might be it might

(27:50):
be that where you just don't want to put down
all of your feeds, where you have the slight addiction
to all of the information coming in. Are very kind
to say slight, yes, but that is that is one.
There's one where it's just I just want something on
the background. I just I can't have it be quiet.
I just have to have something on in the background
while I'm doing this other thing. And it's not that
I'm paying any attention to that, but I have to

(28:11):
have it on right or even that, you know, during
commercial breaks or if something is if you're having load
screen issues or something like that, your board exactly that
your board, and rather than be bored, you want to
switch your attention to something else to keep you entertained
what you're waiting for the boring thing to stop. I
am so guilty of that. That is really that's the
thing that I'm working on. But yeah, I fall into

(28:32):
that same sort of category. And We're not alone. There
are a lot of people, and of course everyone seems
to think that they are the ideal multitasker, even though
studies have shown repeatedly that the vast majority portion of
the population is actually good at multitask like one or
two percent of the entire population. Right, everyone else is
lying to themselves, me included, right, right, everyone else. Your

(28:55):
performance on every individual task you are trying to do
simultaneously declines for a few people, the supertaskers. This is
not the case. But if you are wondering if you're
a supertasker, you're not. I mean, I'm just safe to
say that statistically speaking. Nope. All right, So, um, there's
also the idea that we had before about these these

(29:15):
different screen landscapes, the fact that that websites are laid
out in a different way depending upon what kind of
device you're looking at. You know, if you're using a smartphone,
you're going to get a certain layout. If you get
a tablet's a different layout. That might be similar to
the layout you might get from a laptop or desktop,
but it's still a little different. It's not you know
that each one is trying to be optimized for the experience,

(29:37):
because one size does not at all, Like you can't
have one design of a website and expect that to
work across all devices. I mean there's a lot of
variety out there, right especially right Yes, and like like
we're saying earlier, there are so many different screen sizes
when you get into Android devices in particular that um
that it's yeah yeah, so so okay. So so you're

(29:58):
working with a whole bunch of different device all of
which are carried by many different wireless operators, working working
upon many different operating systems from many different locations. Um. So,
so location based stuff has to be very particular. Um,
the the the advertisers creating this content may not actually

(30:19):
be personally using the mobile platforms that they're working with,
and therefore might not be familiar enough with them to
really have insight into what will and will work for
for people. Um And and furthermore, um, you know, this
is all a new, new issue new as of two thousands,
I would say, I would say it's still very much
an emerging technology. I mean it's by now, I think

(30:42):
from a consumer standpoint, we're looking at and saying this
is a fairly mature technology. At this point. We're seeing
we're seeing refinements, but not giant leaps and evolution from
a consumer standpoint, But on the back end of it,
the actual creation and delivery of content, it's still like,
you know, corporations don't move at the speed of consumer merse. Alright,
So we've covered the fact that mobile advertising is hard.

(31:04):
You uh, Let's talk about some of the strategies that
have been applied to mobile advertising. We mentioned one targeted ads,
specifically targeting your not just your behaviors like what your
your past browsing habits are, but also your location. If
you do enable that, Like I said, for most systems,
it's an opt in situation, so you're not being tracked

(31:27):
to do it right or you know, in some cases
it might be an opt out like default on right.
I much prefer opt in obviously to opt out, just
because it gives the consumer much more transparent control of
what is going on with their data. But yes, you
in those cases, you will have the ability to reach
people and give them ads that are at least have

(31:51):
a probability of being more relevant to them than just
and you know, an ad from a database of sponsors.
Also video, it's a big, big deal with mobile advertising
and mobile platforms because since people aren't necessarily paying, you know,
they're they're not necessarily reading really in depth articles about
stuff on their mobile platforms. They might be watching a

(32:12):
quick video or listening to something. Yeah, there's a lot
more of video consumption on mobile platforms. Uh. And you know,
I remember a few years ago when the the cellular
speeds weren't really good enough to give a very good
experience for video, and I was thinking like that, this
is never going to take off. But of course, once
those speeds got better, and once the processors got better

(32:34):
and the battery life got better on these devices, it
became a viable uh thing, a viable feature. And so
a lot of web content creators are making a slow
move from traditional web content that you might think of
as a uh, you know, a database of articles, and
start to create more video content. Uh. And that's in

(32:54):
part because that's the kind of content that people are
seeking out. It's the it's easy to consume in these
mobile platforms. And it doesn't mean that the content quality changes,
it just the actual delivery of it changes. So you
then have a move to start inserting video ads into things.

(33:16):
But even that gets a little tough. I mean, depending
upon what you're using as a way of delivering video
to your consumer. For example, if you're using YouTube, YouTube
allows people to serve ads against their content, and if
you do that, then you get a certain percentage of
the ad revenue and Google gets the rest right. And

(33:37):
it's not an insignificant amount that Google gets, No, Google,
Google gets a significant amount of that, you know, depending
upon I don't know if all the agreements are the
same across all content creators. I imagine that there are
different ones, but at any rate, Google does take a
cut of that. And on top of that, Google also
has an algorithm where you can sometimes skip an AD.

(33:58):
If you've ever watched a YouTube video in five seconds,
So skipping that ad, I suspect impacts how much money
the the person who has that content will receive because
you've you've just allowed the user to skip it. Why
does Google do this, Well, it's for user experience, you know.
They It's it's this idea that by doing this, you
keep user satisfaction up. And uh, the algorithm is designed

(34:21):
so that there are certain times when you are not
going to be allowed to skip an AD. And it
doesn't necessarily mean that that particular AD is different from another,
It's just that the algorithm has lined it up that way. Um,
there are other ties where I guess there are ad
deals where no matter what, you're never able to skip it,
because I've I've seen some ads that didn't it didn't

(34:42):
matter why video I was watching, that ad was going
to play all the way through every time. Um, So
these deals are complicated. There's no one size fits all approach,
even with YouTube, and that's just one delivery system. Now
there are other ones that are out there on the web,
but YouTube is just one of those that's incredibly well known.
Right on top of that, you have social platform ads.

(35:03):
So this is using stuff like Twitter and Facebook to
kind of advertise, so you know, sponsored tweets where you'll
look at your Twitter feed and you're like, I'm not
following Burger King, Yeah, why am I seeing this? And
it's because it's a promoted tweet that that the company
in this case Burger King has paid so that you
will know that their latest version of the Whopper is

(35:24):
available or whatever, and so you'll you know, you'll see
that because it's been promoted into Twitter. Um. That's one way.
Another is a course on platforms like Facebook where you'll
see those ads that are maybe along the right rail
or occasionally you'll see sponsored inline. Yeah, you'll see sponsored
stuff pop up in your feed, and again that stuff

(35:44):
that companies have paid for and and in this case
that also tends to be run through some algorithms, so
that the ads that you see, Lauren are probably different
from the ads that I see. Before we finish up
with ads on the go, it's time for or well
an ad, let's take a quick break. I imagine that

(36:11):
you get fewer ads for my aforementioned example, engagement rings
than I do because I'm female and therefore I'm clearly
interested in receiving a diamond from somebody. And I'm married,
so if I start shopping for engagement rings, I'm going
to have some serious questions to answer. Also, yeah, it's
also based upon your browsing habits. I know this because

(36:33):
I was recently looking at a costume piece. I was
looking for a specific costume piece, and I went to
several different websites looking for this variations on this costume piece,
and then I went up back over to Facebook and
lo and behold, one of the things I was looking
for was right there in the right rail with the
other ads. So it was going beyond just my uh

(36:55):
my experience on Facebook. It was looking at my browsing
history fun times. So um. It does then filter the
various ads that you could get and goes with the
ones that you are most likely to find relevant based
upon your behaviors and what you've liked in the past.
And it may very well be that perhaps that that

(37:16):
ad I saw isn't related to my browsing history. Maybe
I liked something in the past that brought it up.
That's quite possible because it was just a coincidence that
you that you noticed because your brain had been on
that exactly exactly. It could very well be a coincidence.
I'm not totally on the this is the cause and
this is the effect bandwagon. I'm just so um. But

(37:38):
then there's also the suggestion that content creators have to
find ways to make the stuff they generate easy to
consume on mobile devices, and it has to be engaging
and optimized, and then that means that it needs to
be snack sized, kind of like we were saying with
more content moving to video. This this is this is similar.
This say is you know, if you do have an article,
have it something that someone can consume easily and quickly

(38:01):
while they're on a mobile tablet, mobile platform, it might
be a paragraph as opposed to an article. It might
you know, you'll see a lot of things like images,
slide shows, You'll see um, you know, quick quick things.
Because the idea is that no one wants to sit
and read an in depth article on a mobile platform,
or at least that that's not what the majority wants

(38:23):
to do. Because as soon as I say that, I'm
going to get a lot of people writing and saying
I love reading along articles on my mobile device. I'm
one of them. I write the train all the time,
so I'll read. I read books on my phone sometimes,
but I'll also read you know, really long pieces written
in various uh publications, So I'm outside the norm. They're

(38:43):
like I am, with lots of things. I can't help it. Uh.
And then also there's the chance of seeing more sponsored
content on mobile platforms. So in this case, you might
see a site or an article brought to you by
something if I fill in the blank, yeah, espe Actually,
if it's something that's related to whatever the content of
that like if it's a blog that's about a specific thing,

(39:07):
like a specific subculture or specific like it's you know,
a movie commentary or whatever. You could imagine that that
would be sponsored by a company that's related to that subject.
And um, I mean obviously that also means that you
have examples of editorial content and then there's advertorial content
where it's kind of that mixed between advertisement and editorial,

(39:30):
and then there's just ads. It does mean that there's
there's a lot more navigation needed on the part of
the user if they're if they're out for something specific. Sure,
that's that's actually a huge problem for me while I'm
while I'm researching especially topics like this that, um that
it's hard to tell sometimes whether articles from from some
of these marketing companies, yeah, are are just advertising around

(39:54):
services or if they're making a valid point, right, I
think that it's hard to say what the future will
be of this kind of thing. Um, I mean, obviously
mobile is going to play a huge part, so we
know that the question is, you know, people are trying
to innovate new ways of putting ad content into into
our our browsing experiences that is going to be um

(40:16):
less disruptive and and more natural and and just work
out better for everybody. You know. It's certainly nobody wants
the user to have a bad experience. That's not going
to make someone more likely to buy a product. But
at the same time, if there's not this support, then
the people who are creating the content have to find
other ways of making money because, you know, while there's

(40:37):
going to be some content created for free on the
Internet by people who are just very passionate about whatever
it is they're doing, the reality is if you want
to make a living at it, then someone has to
pay somewhere. Because we're not we haven't reached a point
where I can release a podcast in return for a sandwich.

(40:57):
I don't. I shouldn't say that because next thing I know,
I could be brought in for my annual review would say,
so here, you want to be paid in sandwiches? Um?
I think. I think that's how money works. In fact,
you can buy as many sandwiches as you want. Can
I buy other things besides sandwiches? I suppose you could.
I'm sold on this money idea. UM. There. For example,

(41:18):
while I was doing research for this podcast, I ran
across a study done by a CEO of a app
called pocket Change, and pocket Change is an apple lets
you earn points for activity on other apps. So wow,
it's a meta app. Yeah yeah, um so, so you know,
you'll you'll go and you know, for for the number

(41:39):
of pages that you browse, are the number of candies
that you crush? I don't know what that is, you know,
et cetera. Um, you you'll earn points that you can
exchange for rewards and and so it's a it's another
form of advertising. And um so in this way, what
what this app is doing is encouraging your engagement with
other apps and other services, and in return, you get

(42:02):
rewarded for it, similar to the way that you earned
might reward points on a credit card. That's ingenious. That
is incredible, I honestly when I was doing my research,
and that's such a simple, elegant way of encouraging people
to consumeth do what you want to do, and right like,
here are the things that's going to help you earn points,

(42:24):
and you know, and hopefully along the way, you are
going to enjoy whatever that particular content is. Obviously some
people would just be playing just to accumulate points, but
the hope is, of course that they're doing going beyond
that and they're actually consuming what it is that people
are creating right right. Microsoft has started doing a vaguely
similar thing with some of their Microsoft Points. You can

(42:44):
you can earn points by by playing games or by
downloading new games, and um, and I'm not sure what
you can exchange those points for right now exactly because
I've earned a grand total of zero of them. But
Lauren's an overachiever, and and you know that's not mobile.
But but I think that this is that kind of
gamification is something that people are starting to think about doing.

(43:07):
I can see that. Yeah, so there are some creative
ways that people are exploring to try and and and
generate money using the mobile platform experience. Because again, the
the traditional one we've talked about is becoming less relevant
over time. It's not like it's irrelevant now, it's not.
It's just it's just slowly declining or it maybe maybe

(43:30):
declines even the wrong word, but starting to plateau, and
then it looks like it's going to decline. So the
writings on the wall really people have to find other
ways of making this work or else entire companies could
end up having to either restructure drastically or even go
away because they cannot do business. Yeah. So, um, you know,

(43:51):
and and you know it's it's It'll be interesting to
see how it plays out. I'm sure that solutions will
be proposed, implemented, discarded, and refined. We're gonna see it.
It's never going to be a super clean process that
you can point from the beginning to the end and
say and here's the story. It's gonna be complex and
messy because that's kind of how humans are. But I

(44:13):
do think that we will crack this somehow where it's
going to be the kind of experience where no one
is going to be feeling like it was, you know,
like like you're being punished for browsing the web. That
that obviously would be the wrong message to show, because
like you said, Lauren, I'm not likely to buy something
if I'm irritated at my experience. But if it's an

(44:35):
experience that is entertaining, it's compelling, I'm feeling rewarded, then
I'm much more likely to buy something or to look
at a particular vendor services. So it's just making that work.
You know, it sounds like a simple idea, but making
it work in practice is a complex process. Well excited

(44:56):
to see where it goes me too, because you know,
I lax my smartphone, and I lacks my tablets and
I lacks my laptops. Also like having a job. That's
also good. Yes, considering that the way we work is
very much dependent upon this. Uh yeah, it's it's important
to us on a personal level. There's no getting around that.
And no, we love it. So please help us, help

(45:18):
us solve this. And that wraps up this classic episode
of tech Stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Listen
to an oldie, but a goodie. It is amazing for
me to think about something from seven years ago and
then realize that that's only about halfway through the run
of tech Stuff. But we're gonna keep on going through
and also giving you new episodes of tech Stuff on

(45:41):
that subject. If you have a suggestion for an episode,
send it to me via Twitter. The handle is text
stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from Heart Radio, visit the I Heart

(46:01):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H