You may or may not have heard the term “Appvert” before, but is certainly being tossed about with increasing frequency on the web due to the power and reach of the iPhone and the accompanying iTunes AppStore.

An appvert is simply an application designed to promote or be heavily inclusive of a product, service, event or brand. I guess you could say it bears some similarity to a concept those in marketing are already well familiar with…advergaming, or the purposeful inclusion of advertising within a video game.

The disruptive power of the iPhone / AppStore one-two punch to the other hardware manufacturers, wireless carriers and software producers is resulting in a recent flood of appverts, such as:

- Audi’s test/race driving course
- ESPN’s “Cameraman” sports photo comparison game
- the Obama 08 grassroots campaigning organization utility
- Carling’s iPint beer passing game
- the Nine Inch Nails’ version of the very popular Tap Tap Revenge game
- Columbia Pictures’ promoting the new James Bond 007 movie Quantum of Solace
- Trip planning apps from Travelocity and Hotels.com
- The Weather Channel’s just recently released app featuring forecasts, radar and local forecasts in video format

I invite you to query for these apps in iTunes to take note of a extremely important variable associated with each of these appverts…the tone of the feedback left by those who have downloaded and experienced these apps as I have.  Notice the significant variance in the audience comments overall?  Some appverts…ESPN, Pink, Obama ‘08 and some others…are highly rated, while most of the others have been criticized by the audiences they reached.  Why the difference?  Value.  The benefit to the audience in engaging the application.  Some apps have it, and the others…well, obviously lack end user benefit.

Are iPhone owners particularly picky or hard to please? Are we just overly critical? Or, is society so selfish that something has to be in it for me? Some readers may argue affirmatively to each of those questions, and you may be right to an extent.  But, imagine if you will if TV was mostly an advertising medium with little content.  How many would watch an episode of Heroes if the show/ad ratio was flipped…45 minutes of marketing and 15 minutes of Sylar doing his skull slicing trick?

Having now personally downloaded and tried over 180 applications (yes, I’ve hit the maximum nine home screens three times now), I can confidently claim that the problem with the poorly rated appverts is not the audience, it’s the mindset appverts’ designers, sponsors or owners.  Their focus was on their need of having their brand, their product, their message in front of consumers asap. Instead, they needed to first focus on the lifestyle, needs, challenges, personality of their audience. While it’s certainly okay to utilize the power of the iPhone and the AppStore as a promotional channel, marketers need to put at the center of their design or storyboarding efforts the end user.

This gets us to my contention that “appvertising” is not enough. What’s conveyed in that term, that mindset is nothing but an app and advertising.  I suggest that marketers must take their mobile application promotions to the level of “appvertainment” or “appvertility.”  Can you detect the root words in these terms aside from application and advertising?  There’s entertainment and utility/productivity.

I categorize the apps from Audi, ESPN, and Nine Inch Nails as having a purpose of appvertaining, while apps from Obama ‘08, TWC, Travelocity are clearly examples of appvertility.

Now, just taking an app a step beyond advertising by including entertaining or productive features is not sufficient to earning the acclaim of reviewers.  Your app still needs to be designed well with ease of navigation, fast performance, an attractive interface, great content, PC and/or cloud based integration, and social networking opportunities, if appropriate.  Additionally, you have to keep building on the solid foundation with fixes and enhancements fitting to the genre of application you are offering.

Take for instance the test drive application from Audi…definitely entertaining qualities there and reviewers have said it looks nice, but the game controls have been unsatisfactory to most reviewers and it therefore has a mediocre rating.  Travelocity’s application contains a decent amount of utility going beyond just reservations to also offering flight status and other info.  Yet, notice that the application, like Hotels.com’s app, has not been updated since launch over five months ago.  So, the utility which was once praised for going over and above the absolute basic functionality it could have been launched with, now is negatively critiqued by one reviewer after another for being weak. Why the change in perception?  Simple…the standard for a well done iPhone app has been raised by hundreds of other great apps that have gone to market since.

We are increasingly fielding requests for iPhone applications at OTAir from brands in a variety of vertical markets.  Often times, the goals presented by the prospect are limited to their perspective…presenting coupons, garnering lead information, allowing consumers to find locations near them.  While all valid goals, as a full service mobile marketing firm, we understand that those goals have to be achieved from the audience’s perspective, not the advertisers.  Creative implementations of features providing worthwhile entertainment, utility or productivity that appropriately facilitate or bear the advertisers objectives are necessary to achieve a 4 or 5 star rating in the AppStore.

So, don’t fear the wrath of reviewers and refrain from pursuing an engagement opportunity with your audience using an “appvert.” Simply focus on your audience’s needs first and on design, or better yet, find an experienced mobile marketing company such as OTAir to help make your app a valuable “appvertainment” or “appvertility” benefit to your audience.

Jim Washok
CEO & Mobile Solutions Architect