Mobile Advertising to Evolve with Mobile Users

Close to 40 percent of the world’s population uses a mobile device, and they use these devices often. The constant growth of mobile users means that mobile marketing techniques should be the focus for marketing experts hoping to stay relevant among an incredibly tech-savvy population.

Marketing Land writer Aaron Strout pooled his marketing and mobile connections to predict what technology and data will come to power mobile advertising, and what form that new technology will present itself.

Technology
Two mobile experts, Ian Karnell and Andrew Korpf, helped paint a picture of where mobile advertising is headed technologically. Much of the emphasis will be placed on user-specific programmatic advertising.

For Karnell, optimizing mobile advertising rides on smarter data, tailored to fit the mobile device and key audiences.

“The data/audience dimension is uniquely different with mobile versus desktop,” Karnell said. “As users go about their daily lives with their smartphones, they leave a digital trail that tells brands who they are, where they have been, their preference and where they will go next.”

Using this “digital trail” smarter, looks like combining location and demographic data from CRM insights to drive user acquisition, cross-sell/up-sell, and retention campaigns.

Korpf holds a similar position on working smarter not harder, in terms of utilizing available date. But, Korpf also expressed an interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can be useful for mobile marketing. Considering the amount of information the mobile population seeks from its mobile devices—from restaurants reviews, driving directions, flight statuses, and movie times—AI presents an interesting opportunity, if executed correctly, for companies to insert offers and opportunities into group chats, Facebook conversations, and more.

Mobile Formats
There are a number of mobile advertising formats, the most widely used being: display, in-app, streaming, video, text/SMS, paid social/native, and location-based. As the technology behind mobile advertising continues to evolve, some of these advertising techniques will become a lot less effective, according to Strout.

Display advertising is the banners and pop-ups you typically see on your computer. These adds are disruptive (and largely disliked by web users), but also tend to be poorly targeted. Strout does not expect display ads to stick around much longer.

In-app ads are one of the most effective forms of mobile advertisings, because marketers have more control over where and how the app is integrated into the mobile experience and who is seeing the ad. App developers put a lot of work into researching their target audience, which serves as a helping hand to marketers using the in-app strategy.

Streaming, though not extremely effective, gives marketers the ability to target mobile ads to geographic regions and local populations. Streaming ads are used in entertainment apps, like Pandora and Hulu, and even fitness apps, like MapMyRun. Users usually can’t skip the ads, which make them more useful than a pop-up window.

Video ads still aren’t loved by consumers; but, their quality, and therefore effectiveness, has improved drastically in recent years. To really take advantage of this advertising strategy, marketers should focus on telling a short, moving story, to create a connection with the millions of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Youtube users.

Text/SMS messages remain one of the most popular mobile features. A huge advantage to this technique is that text messages reach not only smartphone users, but feature cell phone users, which are the standard in many developing countries. Marketers should beware, though, that consumers have a much higher standard for content delivered to them in their personal inbox.

Paid social/native ads are often seen as the most effective means of marketing, for both mobile and desktop/laptop platforms. Companies focusing on paid social and native ads become incredibly well informed on their customers’ behaviors, likes, dislikes, friends, etc. As mobile devices and services become more integral to social interaction, these advertising techniques will become increasingly mobile in nature.

Location-based advertising is powerful because it allows marketers to easily gather relevant information about their audiences. Despite its usefulness and room for growth, location-based marketing faces many issues with user privacy, which will need to be clearly defined and remedied for the technique to reach its full potential. For more information regarding mobile advertising, [Click Here].