Verizon to Accept Ads on Mobile Phones and Online Marketing Implications

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Verizon is going to begin allowing the placement of ads on the phones of users

Beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones, company executives said.

In terms of online marketing, this is a huge deal. In terms of affiliate marketing, this doesn’t matter…yet.

The main reason has to do with the incredibly high CPM rates that Verizon will probably charge (through a Madison Ave agency probably) for placements. Most companies using the affiliate channel as the main resource for customer acquisition, retention and purchasing won’t notice or care… and for good market reasons.

However, larger merchants who are looking for cost effective ad buys will notice. It’s no secret that the inventory for advertising on the main online hubs is steadily beginning to reach saturation and once that plateau is hit, the market will shift back to where we were in 1998 with a space-seller market of high demand and low supply. Even with blogs, A-Listers and feed readers, most online readers will navigate (pun intended, Jason) towards a collection of hubs in the online sphere. That’s network game theory and it’s highly predictable if you have the tools and time.

Eventually (within the next 15 months), CPA will hop from the online fishtank into the mobile fishtank and begin to gobble up CPM rates and force a needed evaluation of quality placements. We’re certainly not at this point in this early stage of online and mobile marketing, but you still need to have someone evaluating this particular space for your future developments. The same thing could be said of early developments in banners, email, and even search. This game has only been in play for about a decade, so don’t get caught up in the present. Keep an eye on the past and the future as well.

Specifically, affiliate and CPA networks should take notice. No one is making use of the mobile space (yet… until the fabled acquisitions of 2007), but this is going to be lucrative space. If you are a network, get in now.

One Reply to “Verizon to Accept Ads on Mobile Phones and Online Marketing Implications”

  1. Not sure that I agree. I see this as an opportunity for very typical stuff. CPM to be arbitraged against CPA offers. Indeed, the only question is the price of inventory (CPM). Hello, Steve Denton… are you reading?

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