Once again, I dive into the confusing world of Mobile Internet Advertising. A world, so we're told, where the streets are paved with gold. Based on the evidence I've accumulated, mobile advertising is subject to a lot of hype and not a lot of professionalism. Take this example as seen on my BlackBerry 9000. Flickr iPhone Advert First off the bat, it gets my phone wrong. It should be using the User Agent to determine which advert to serve. Well, let's be a good consumer and click on it…
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I feel a bit guilty about including NatWest's latest mobile advert in my Badvertising section - because it's mostly very good. But it shows exactly why you need to carefully examine every link within your site and see how useful it is for your customers. You may have noticed this animate banner as you wander around the mobile web. NatWest Advert Here it is in context NatWest Ad on Times Site So, what do we see when we click on it? The Good NatWest Mobile Site Now, this is pretty good! …
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America and Canada both celebrate a holiday called "Thanksgiving". Although, for complex reasons, the celebrate it at different times of the year. Outside of North America the holiday simply doesn't exist. Much like the US doesn't celebrate Guy Fawkes night - the British don't celebrate Thanksgiving. So, I was a little surprised to see this advert for #tweetsgiving on my mobile. What is tweetsgiving? For now, let's ignore the perils of assuming that your country is the entire market…
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How do you indicate that something on the web is "clickable"? The W3C - the body which sets the standards for the Web - recommend you don't use "Click Here" for link text. Normal text is usually underlined and / or a different colour when it is a hyperlink - images don't have any specific decoration to indicate you can click on them. In this animated GIF, an advert for Lexus, we see a call to action which says "Click Here". Lexus Advert Would it not be obvious to readers that this is an a…
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HTML is a complex beast. Especially when it comes to languages. I don't mean the difference between English and French but between UTF-8, Windows-1252, and all the other methods for encoding text. When it goes wrong, you can come a cropper - take a look at this advert for the BlackBerry. Somehow a character has crept in to the text which can't be rendered by the browser. BlackBerry? Advert? Immediately, one gets the sense of a poorly tested advert - one which probably goes to a dodgy s…
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One of the joys of the Internet is that it is international. Anyone, from anywhere, speaking any language can visit any page on the World Wide Web. This makes life difficult for advertisers. Not only do they have to ensure that what they're showing is applicable in the viewer's country, but also that it's legal and written in the correct language. If they don't, at best they've wasted their inventory, at worst, they're breaking the law. Google runs this advert for its BlackBerry software. …
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Another in the occasional series looking at mobile advertising gone bad. Who doesn't enjoy a good, clean game of scrabble. After a busy day reading The Times, nothing takes the edge off the day like a word puzzle. Wait! What's this? Scrabble Banner So far, so good. A clear, professional banner. It clearly emphasises that - although it's an advert - it's endorsed by The Times; so you won't get scammed. Three mentions of the word "mobile" might be overdoing it though. Let's click... S…
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It's been a while since I last wrote about Mobile Badvertising. Although we're constantly told that mobile advertising is going to be HUGE, you wouldn't know it from looking at the adverts on mobile sites. Over this occasional series, I'll be picking examples from popular UK sites. I've tried to avoid naming the sites in question, but sometimes it's unavoidable. The Lie Is that too good to be true? One of the reasons that advertising is dying is that we've become immune to its lies. When …
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I've seen two very different adverts recently which, in my opinion are bad. Very bad. I'd even go so far as to say that they are terrible. The first is a poster advert seen at my local train station. A tagline, a shot of the service and a URL. Let's break it down. 1) The URL. I initially typed in w4mobile rather than w4mobiles - and got a non-mobile friendly page. It would have been better if they'd bought a few similar sounding domains or set up a mobile friendly .mobi address. 2) The…
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