Marketing to the Rich

Wed, September 03, 2008

Here's an interesting story for Broadway marketers - particularly those targeting the younger slice of the traditional theatergoing market. According to a new research report, the more affluent you are, the more connected you are to both accessing the Internet via computer and via mobile device. The report states, "while 40 percent of affluent households use hand-held devices to access the Internet, the percentage rises to 57 percent among those in the $250,000-plus bracket from 34 percent for those at the $100,000-149,999 level." That’s a large percentage of people – almost too high to believe.

Let’s assume the research report is true… as theatre marketers, this spells out a big opportunity for mobile advertising to be explored considering we market to wealthy playgoers every week, particularly those willing to drop $125 per ticket for a play multiple times a year. I’m not exactly gung-ho on this just yet but the data and initial results we have seen warrants exploration.

Here’s why I like advertising on mobile devices (assuming display advertising)… first, the real estate given to ad units.  Because the viewing window on a mobile device is so small, there is typically only one ad on the screen so your creative definitely pops more than usual because it's not competing for attention from other ads. In addition, advertising on mobile devices also allows for some exciting interactivity including ‘click-to-call’ functionality and GPS based tools that make the advertising more actionable than traditional advertising.

With that said, I see a bunch of downsides… first, the tracking capabilities are pretty limited from what we’ve seen. The ‘click-thru’ rate is the primary measure as the ‘post-click’ activities are hard to track on the phone (consider many people will call to order rather than go through the cumbersome process of trying to actually book their tickets via a mobile website). Aside from the tracking, I also think the cost is often a bit high for a medium that really has a small population of users.

We have run a few tests including the New York Times mobile edition where we bought the arts section for a month surrounding the Tony Awards this past year. Across four shows, we saw click thru rates upwards of 1-2% which is way higher than online advertising interaction rates. So, from an interaction standpoint, there is clearly promise here (even though I think there were probably a ton of accidental clicks).

I think the NY Times is actually ahead of the curve in developing out their mobile presence. We were quite impressed with our initial test and they are continuing to try and be progressive in the mobile advertising space.

Whether you dip your toe in the water now or not, it’s something to keep a very close eye on. The testing we are doing is showing very strong promise – but, like all advertising, the more consumers get used to it the more they will try and tune it out!

Read more data here about online and mobile usage of affluent audiences.

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