Indians Most Receptive To Mobile Ads : Inmobi Survey

Inmobi, in partnership with comscore has release a report titled – A Global View of Mobile Advertising which reveals unexpectedly high levels of user acceptance of mobile advertising in India. The report is based on a consumer survey of around 3500 users across Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, India, and Australia. They were questioned about their comfort and willingness to be served with mobile ads and also on any discernible benefits of the same.According to the survey 72% of Indians were comfortable with receiving mobile ads while over 50% were ready to receive them. The comfort level is higher than the Asian average of 69%. But the readiness was slightly below the All Asian figure of 54%. The report also highlighted changing consumer attitude towards advertising and made some key revelations about the smartphone market landscape in Asia.

?69% of Asians were comfortable with mobile advertising while 54% were ready for customised/personalised advertising – This certainly is good news for app developers who are looking to monetize their apps through ads. And represents the changing notion amongst consumers that ads are always intrusive and seldom helpful.

46% said they had benefitted from being introduced to a new product through advertising, 50% were willing to receive ads in exchange for free apps and 53% in return for a lower bill – I touched upon the transactional idea of advertising yesterday and this is just an indication that, increasingly, users are beginning to see exposure to advertising as a quid pro quo.

Men under-25 was the category that Mobile Advertising most appealed to – This also the section most likely to be early adopters, app-crazy, fanboys and probably explains why they are most open to mobile advertising and can see its perceived benefits.

As far as the smartphone market is concerned the survey found that Nokia was dominant in Asia with iPhone and Android only managing 11% and 2.5% respectively. Nokia also dominated when in came to the share of impressions with 47% Globally and 61% in Asia. iPhone has a measly 2% share of impressions in Asia but is also the fastest growing. And to give you an idea of how misplaced some of the iPhone VS Android ruckus is the iPhone is the single largest selling mobile advertising device in the world with 5% of the entire world’s share. And all the Symbian detractors (myself included) will be very interested to know that outside the developed world – Symbian commands 84% of the ad impressions.

Coming back to the 72% figure of Indians comfortable with receiving mobile ads. This is higher than figures for Europe and America. And yet, mobile advertising is a largely under utilized means of advertising. While ‘SMS marketing’ is very popular, it gives you nowhere near the same targeting abilities as a Mobile Internet Ad. Local commerce is yet to understand this, on a large scale anyway. A mobile is a highly personal device and it doesn’t follow the same principles of broadcast advertising a la TV and Radio. A mobile user is more likely to respond to a well placed, relevant ad than to an intrusive text message on a sunday afternoon.