Putting the “app” in “vertisements”

App-vertisements are muscling into advertising budgets and marketing mixes all over. Rather than developing traditional marketing and advertising messages, brand managers are now connecting with audiences via more than 35,000 applications that have flooded the iTunes Apps Store for iPhone and iPod touch owners.

Big brands such as North Face, Levi’s, Audi, Burger King, Chanel and Adidas have found a new platform allowing customers to interact with their brand in new and engaging ways.

As profiled in AdAge.com, North Face created a free yet branded app that provides snow forecasts for ski resorts (but quietly displays the distinctive North Face logo with your snow results).  Audi uses the gaming approach with its A4 driving challenge. Levi’s uses “in-application advertising,” with its shakable ad.

Apple’s impressive success with the App Store (launched a mere nine months ago) is fueling a mobile-application market boom that is sure to draw more branded app-vertisements.

As AdAge writer Garrick Schmitt noted, “Consumers, once wary of using their phones for anything more than talking or texting, now seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for mobile applications.”

To date, the iTunes App Store has served up a selection of 35,000 applications to the 30 million devices in the market. Overall, there have been 1 billion applications downloaded with an average of 20-40 applications used per user.

According to Social Media Today, the 3 basic rules to follow when creating a branded mobile application:
1 - Make it free. Charging and seeking to recoup your costs is by and large a non starter
2 - Make it interesting, so it gets noticed among the thousands of other apps out there
3 - Make it useful for your target audience. Give people a cause to use it again and again rather than being a one-hit wonder.

The good news is that branded mobile apps and app-vertising are still in their infancy, so now’s a great time to experiment. Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay predicts mobile advertising will become a $7.2 billion market worldwide by 2012, up from $700 million last year. And with Silicon Alley Insider estimating that in-app advertising fetches a hefty $20 to $30 CPM, there’s no turning back now.