Hot off the heels of Google offering free Mobile Adwords until mid November and The Kelsey Group boldly predicting mobile search to generate more than $1.4 billion in ad revenue by 2012, comes a new survey from Nielsen/NetRatings and WebVisible, which shows a whopping 92% of 2000 U.S. Internet users surveyed, felt that receiving local business ads on their cell phones would be “irritating.”

This doesn’t bode well for mobile marketers and SEO's who are hoping to cash in on the mobile hysteria, particularly when the same survey revealed that nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users believe they are overexposed to advertising.

Here are some additional highlights from this highly informative survey:

1. 56% “only get ads they want or need” from the Internet and 53% from television.
2. 80% researched a product online and bought it at a brick-and-mortar.
3. 74% use search engines to find local businesses in retail and services versus:
Print Yellow Pages – 65%
Internet Yellow Pages – 50%
Newspapers – 44%
White Pages – 33%
TV – 29%
Consumer Review Sites – 18%.

And don't for a minute assume that Internet Users aren't influenced by consumer ratings and reviews. 67% said they would "probably avoid a restaurant with only two stars", while 90 percent said a hotel review that said it was "noisy with uncomfortable beds" would keep them away!

What does this all mean? Well once again, the truth lies somewhere in between as the mobile space is massive and the monetization potential enormous.

As it stands, the existing advertising models aren’t going to work for two reasons one; poor user web experience on phones and two; same old advertising ideas! This survey clearly shows that if you want to market on mobile devices, you'll need to make it more like the web and TV and not the same old, same old!

Share This!

4 gripping comments