For a long time it’s been clear in my mind where mobile advertising is heading – firmly in the hands of handset manufacturers. Google and Apple now have their own ad networks meaning the two user experience juggernauts will own where the ads come from as well as where they appear.
I keep banging on about the opportunity they have to ‘redefine’ mobile advertising and ‘start from scratch’. What I mean by this is that the limitations of many current methods such as SMS, MMS, Bluetooth and banner ads can be erased because the manufacturers can make up completely new ad channels that utilise features of the phone. And because this will be achieved by using data rather than messaging, it allows for better value for advertisers using CPC, CPA and CPM. All this has influenced the following concept..
The Concept
On device semantic SMS advertising would turn every SMS the user ever sends or receives into an advertising opportunity for the manufacturer. At first that might sound massively intrusive but it’s all about the execution.
The thought that spawned this concept was making advertising so useful that it could change its perception in the eyes of the user so they wouldn’t even question its placement on the phone. I wanted to blur the lines so the user would see it as a tool rather than a direct ad channel.
It works by recognising keywords or the meaning of the sentence/conversation within an SMS and adding dynamic functionality to those words. For example, your friend asks you if you want to go to the cinema, the word ‘cinema’ would be highlighted and clicking it would reveal cinemas in the area.
Within a few clicks you can find out film times and buy a ticket, all within the device interface. This purchase can be tracked and the manufacturer gets a cut of the profits.
Other monetization methods include ‘sponsored’ placements.
If you look at this from a user perspective, it feels more like a service than advertising. The key element here is that this is ‘pull’ advertising, the user doesn’t get interrupted or slowed down with what they are doing. They see the highlighted word and make the decision to find out more.
There can be hundreds, even thousands of words/sentences that can trigger dynamic content. Although not every word can be monetised, there should still be an effort to act like a service and provide useful information for certain words/conversations when possible to increase usage.
For example:
Provides weather based on a conversation between two people:
Context Vs Semantic
Although this idea could work using either technology, I wanted to explain the reasons why each has it’s advantages and disadvantages for the end user.
Contextual advertising has been core of online advertising for many years with companies such as Google and Yahoo integrating it within their search engines and other products. It is readily available and generally easy to implement.
The technology looks for a number of keywords within the SMS such as ‘cinema’, ‘food’ or ‘restaurant’ and returns ads or menu options accordingly. For example the message “Let’s go get some food” would show a list of restaurants or food outlets if the word ‘food’ is clicked. However if the message said “That food didn’t make me feel very good at all”, it would still show the same results as the previous message as it has no way to understand what the user meant.
These differences could potentially waste advertisers money (if they have sponsored results, CPM etc) but also affect the usefulness of the feature for the end user.
This is where semantics comes in. Semantic advertising looks at the meaning of the entire message, not just certain words. In the example above it would recognise the user wasn’t actually interested in eating food at all and felt ill, therefore it could suggest nearby pharmacies instead. The ability to understand the persons needs more accurately will benefit the both them and the advertiser immensely. Another example is distinguishing the difference ‘Jaguar’ the animal or the car manufacturer when scanning the entire sentence.
Semantic advertising is still in it’s infancy right now and has arguably yet to be perfected. As we move toward a more ad-funded digital future, it will play a key part in analysing status updates, tweets and any other ‘lifestreaming’ data from users (with their consent of course) to create an advertising utopia.
The Future
Thinking further into the future, this sort of technology would be able to analyse your needs in real time which could influence the advertising you get when you browse the mobile web or watch a video on YouTube.
The only company I can see pulling off this sort of thing is Google, they’re already working on semantic search and currently provide some of the most useful free services on the web. But I expect Apple to be on the case too.
I’ve no doubt they are heading towards more integrated advertising models within the handset user interface.
Comments? Suggestions?
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Hello,
very informative. But wont it be invading privacy? The Semantic Sms will scan the sms and then act;which means such an application will read the Sms of the sender even though it is permission based.
thanks
Hi Rajshree,
Goes without saying that you could turn it off!
It could work like Gmail, which scans the content of your email to match relevant AdWords.
It depends whether people consider a bot scanning your SMS is an invasion of privacy. Like I say, people have bought it with Gmail.
The difference is that those ads on Gmail could be for anything, this idea uses the same Sponsored Result format used for Google Maps/Google Maps Mobile. This means that if you purchased inventory on maps, it could easily exist in this format too because it uses exactly the same data.
For example if you search ‘hotels’ in Google Maps, you’ll get hotels in the area and perhaps one that is Sponsored, same applies to this.
A mobile is very personal, but an email is not.
I am afraid most people will not agree on scanning their messages. It is probably the last personal thing they have.
If you turn off scanning content a whole miracle will disappear
How do you make that distinction? So a girlfriend sending you a email that comes to your phone is less personal to when she sends you an SMS?
Many people are making the assumption this concept will be forced on users and contain the same sort of ads you see when you search Google, but that isn’t the case. The ads aren’t going to be ‘Buy Ringtones Now!!” they are going to be part of useful information for the user, similar to searching maps.
And once, again this is Opt-In,assume that the first time you switch on your phone you get a prompt. If you don’t like it then you either don’t click on a highlighted word or turn it off.
Just like:
You think that most people would turn it off, but it’s all about how you position it. If you don’t find the functionality useful then fair enough. Personally, I don’t feel like this is intrusive in anyway because if I don’t want it I don’t use it. Simple.
Plus millions of Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail users have ads served based on their message/profile content and you don’t see that affecting usage.
From the work I’ve done I think consumers are becoming less fearful and more clued up. More and more personal information is being revealed via online and mobile through services like Facebook.
But the payoff is that you get services in return right?
Lets face it, companies like Vodafone/Orange know where you are all day and what is contained in your SMS messages. Facebook and Google know all your personal information. A bit of common sense tells you those companies aren’t in the business of going through your personal stuff looking to destroy or perv over your life.
I have to admit that when I started to read this post, I said to myself, “SMS advertising sounds so disgusting and I would rather stopping using SMS if I have to accept that thing oneday.” But when I went on reading, I found it, just like the author said, looks more like a service tool.
However, I still have some questions about that. Will the SMS advertising slow down the sending and receiving of the SMS？Or will it make me slow in opening the SMS?
Even though the problems I putting forward won’t exsit. I don’t think the conception of semantic advertising can come true in a few years, either. Just look at the “perfect” translation of GoogleTranslate. Can we expect a much better tool from Google to understand the meaning of people’s SMS? Personally, I don’t think so.
Spot on Murat. It is inevitable that a service as you have described will come to bear soon.
Apple’s purchase of Siri provides them with the “semtextual” – semantic+contextual: you heard it here first
– technology to provision this to SMS. Additionally, with the next bump to iOS incorporating Message Groups http://zd.net/haBTYC & Friends Around Me (otherwise referred to as “Apple goes after GroupMe’s & Foursquare’s lunch”), it is highly likely that Apple will provide ambient, rich, contextual ads and services to the SMS/MMS channels.
Other than Siri, the only other company that I have researched who have similar level of tech is http://www.thecleversense.com/tech.html
New free SMS plays like GroupMe, Beluga & Kik may (and should) provision the model you describe.
Interesting concept Murat. I’d think handset manufacturers would be very keen, in the main because of how it can be related to keywords. For most I can see it wouldn’t be acceptable. SMS remains a very personal channel and they’d reject the intrusion. But that’s not to say it wouldn’t work, there are always people out there who’ll accept a discount on a contract as long as they agree to receive ads.
But honestly, it could be yet another piece of advertising technology that helps kill usability of smart phones.