Disney’s opinion on mobile advertising…do you agree?

James Smith, VP of online and emerging platform advertising sales for the Disney Interactive Media Group recently conducted a very interesting interview with eMarketer. The conversation touched on a number of topics with the main focus placed on the current and future use of mobile advertising for the Disney groups.

Here are some of the key standout points raised from the discussion. 

Currently Disney have two different approaches to mobile advertising; the first being the mobile web which people access from a mobile device and covers everything from playing games, buying tickets and researching events. The second is driven by a newly purchased company called Tapulous which has some of the leading mobile games on iTunes. The combination of these two approaches enables Disney to offer a unique platform to take existing franchises and extend them into mobile games.

Although Disney is so technically advanced, they are aware that not all advertisers are in the same position. For this reason they find that having rich media (makes use of a range of interactive digital media) is what is working best for them right now; allowing those who are still processing the move from marketing on-air spend to online spend to mobile spend, to connect with the customer regardless.

In-game mobile ad integrations along with banner and video ads is proving to be the most popular and successful mobile advertising for Disney. Like all organisations that use this, Disney is cautious to protect the user experience for each game and wants to focus on deeper in-game integrations that are more campaign –focused and drive larger deal sizes.

According to Smith, Disney are currently looking into the location-based opportunities for developing ad solutions – everything from geofencing (the practice of limiting mobile employees to a specific location by tracking them with GPS) to location –based social media and mobile couponing. If successful tools are created for this it will take mobile advertising to a new level sooner than expected.

Of course like all new technology, there are some problems. For Disney and probably most other global companies using a similar strategy, the biggest challenge at the moment is the level of measurement for mobile advertising. Currently, the same measurement techniques used for online is being used for mobile which does not provide the level of information necessary to measure mobile advertisings success levels!

If like Disney, other global companies are adopting a similar strategy it is only a matter of time before it becomes the standard practice for all businesses. Watch this space!

Read more:

eMarketer, Disney Sees Advertisers Flock to Mobile Rich Media and Video, December 2011

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