Marketers are catching up to mobile

The advent of mobile adver­tis­ing has been some­thing of a recur­ring dream over the last decade with each year that pass­es promis­ing to be the one when the trend goes main­stream.

That may trig­ger a “heard it all before” atti­tude, yet there is grow­ing evi­dence that mobile has not only start­ed to make its mark, but is ready to ful­fil its poten­tial as the dom­i­nant medi­um for adver­tis­ers.

The glob­al mobile adver­tis­ing mar­ket is set to sur­pass $100 bil­lion in spend­ing next year when it will account for more than half of all adver­tis­ing expen­di­ture. These fig­ures, com­piled by eMar­keter, sug­gest that spend­ing will almost dou­ble by 2019 and account for 70 per cent of the over­all bud­get.

Brands now have a pletho­ra of options from video on demand to ban­ners, rich-media for­mats and real­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences

The rise of adver­tis­ing-based apps such as Face­book has final­ly pro­pelled mobile into the mar­ket­ing lime­light

The rise of the smart­phone and tablet along­side adver­tis­ing-based apps such as Face­book have final­ly pro­pelled mobile into the lime­light and it is grow­ing fast. In 2014, the Inter­net Adver­tis­ing Bureau said that 23 per cent of all dig­i­tal spend­ing in the UK was tar­get­ed at the small­est screen in the house com­pared to only 16 per cent report­ed for 2013.

This brings with it the func­tion­al­i­ty of a smart­phone com­pared with more sta­t­ic for­mats such as bill­boards and desk­tops. Mobiles are per­son­al, loca­tion spe­cif­ic and con­tain a huge amount of per­son­al infor­ma­tion that can be of tremen­dous use to an adver­tis­er.

Utilising mobile functionality

Neil Bruce, head of mobile for Mind­share, says: “Brands now have a pletho­ra of options from video on demand to ban­ners, rich-media for­mats and real­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences. Touch screens mean you can adapt slid­ing func­tions to ads, use accelerom­e­ters and hap­tic engines. And, of course, there is still stan­dard dis­play, those infu­ri­at­ing ads that you hit by acci­dent and they take you to the app store. There is a lot for brands to nav­i­gate.”

Mr Bruce says mobile can breathe life into more tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty, high­light­ing Jaguar’s spon­sor­ship of Wim­ble­don. “They need­ed to ampli­fy what they did there,” he says. Unable to use the actu­al ten­nis con­tent, which is con­trolled by broad­cast­ers, Mind­share instead equipped the spec­ta­tors with wrist­bands that col­lat­ed bio­met­ric data includ­ing excite­ment lev­els and the vol­ume of the applause. This was turned into a data stream that was then col­lat­ed and piped to ten­nis fans. “That increased Jaguar’s asso­ci­a­tion with the event and put it at the fore­front of lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy,” he argues.

Robert Franks, man­ag­ing direc­tor of dig­i­tal com­merce at O2, says spend­ing on mobile adver­tis­ing is ris­ing, but that it does not yet reflect the amount of time peo­ple are glued to their phones, with on aver­age 2 hours and 26 min­utes spent every day look­ing at the screen. O2 is one of the only UK mobile net­works that is still try­ing to crack the mobile adver­tis­ing mar­ket after it bought Weve, a cross-indus­try body, ear­li­er this year, with Voda­fone and EE hav­ing thrown in the tow­el.

Mr Franks argues that the mar­ket is slow­ly catch­ing up to the mobile oppor­tu­ni­ty. “Big brands and agen­cies absolute­ly get it. Vir­tu­al­ly 100 per cent of major brands’ web­sites are opti­mised for mobile. But you still need con­tent that is engag­ing to con­sumers. We are using gyro­scopes and accelerom­e­ters in the phone to achieve that.”

Engaging customers

He points to a cam­paign for BMW that showed the inte­ri­or of a new mod­el in 3D and let the user rotate their phone to explore it as if they were look­ing around. That trig­gered sub­stan­tial fol­low-up and gen­er­at­ed traf­fic to deal­er­ships. Loca­tion is also crit­i­cal with a cam­paign for Nec­tar help­ing to show shop­pers not only how many points they have, but where they can spend them.

Noam Neu­mann, head of mobile strat­e­gy at UK-list­ed mobile tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Mato­my Media, says: “It is known that every cam­paign has its spe­cif­ic goals to achieve, but there is some­thing which is com­mon to all of them – brand aware­ness and engag­ing users are the foun­da­tions of every cam­paign, and the new mobile world offers just that. Rich-media and video cam­paigns using smart-buy­ing DSPs [demand-side plat­forms] that are buy­ing a set demo­graph­ic at cer­tain times and places can cre­ate top user engage­ment. Today there is no lim­it to what you can achieve with your cam­paign.”

The issue for many small busi­ness­es is cost as not every­one has the resources of Jaguar or BMW. Mr Neu­mann says that inter­sti­tial ads, which appear while a web­site is down­loaded, or old-fash­ioned ban­ner ads can be more cost-effec­tive ways to tar­get a new gen­er­a­tion of media users.

Ad block­ing is a call to arms for the indus­try to raise the bar – we have to raise the qual­i­ty of what is being deliv­ered

Mindshare’s Mr Bruce agrees that choos­ing a lay­ered approach can pay div­i­dends. “Those on a lim­it­ed bud­get need to devel­op a con­tent strat­e­gy. Don’t just car­pet bomb con­sumers with sta­t­ic ads. Don’t pour your entire bud­get just talk­ing to cus­tomers over social net­works,” he says.

For O2’s Mr Franks it is a case of doing your home­work with so many small agen­cies now offer­ing mobile adver­tis­ing ser­vices. “There are lots of small­er com­pa­nies between the agen­cies and the pub­lish­ers, and some do an amaz­ing job. Oth­ers talk a good game, but don’t deliv­er. That makes peo­ple more cau­tious,” he says.

Ad-blocking

The biggest debate to hit the bur­geon­ing mobile adver­tis­ing mar­ket is play­ing out right now as the sud­den advent of ad-block­ing tech­nolo­gies has cast a pall over the sec­tor. Apps like Face­book and Twit­ter are rife with ads that con­sumers have until now accept­ed as a trade-off for free access to those ser­vices, yet the aggres­sive tone of the ad-block­ing devel­op­ers has caught the indus­try off guard.

Net­works which once tar­get­ed mobile adver­tis­ing them­selves now warn that cus­tomers are annoyed at the slew of irri­tat­ing ads, which pop­u­late their phone, with some esti­mates sug­gest­ing that between 10 and 50 per cent of a consumer’s data allowance is eat­en up by ads they have no inter­est in. Both EE and O2 have pub­licly expressed inter­est in ad-block­ing tech­nol­o­gy at the net­work lev­el.

Both EE and O2 have pub­licly expressed inter­est in ad-block­ing tech­nol­o­gy at the net­work lev­el

“Ad block­ing is a call to arms for the indus­try to raise the bar – we have to raise the qual­i­ty of what is being deliv­ered. There has to be a val­ue exchange,” says Mr Franks on O2’s deci­sion to explore the tech­nol­o­gy.

This is echoed by Mr Bruce. “The poten­tial growth in ad block­ing could be a bless­ing in dis­guise. Mobile adver­tis­ing has got lazy and greedy. The very worst of the desk­top mar­ket has been adopt­ed – sta­t­ic and non-engag­ing,” he claims.

There seems to be recog­ni­tion with­in the indus­try that adver­tis­ers and com­pa­nies have to find a way to make mobile adver­tis­ing less intru­sive and more rel­e­vant. With a smart­phone in their pock­et, an adver­tis­er – with per­mis­sion – can not only tell where a cus­tomer is, but where they have been and where they are like­ly to go. Build­ing an advanced pro­file can break down the bar­ri­er between intru­sion and pro­vid­ing val­ue.

“It’s got to be more than just send­ing a text when some­one walks past a Star­bucks. It’s about under­stand­ing con­sumer behav­iour and deliv­er­ing some­thing that is rel­e­vant to them,” Mr Franks con­cludes.