Brands get creative as mobile ads are transformed

It is one of the most sought-after adver­tis­ing slots in the world; half­time dur­ing the Super Bowl. Tens of mil­lions of addi­tion­al view­ers tune in almost exclu­sive­ly to see the ads. So when you invest eight fig­ures in a com­mer­cial, you want to be sure that you get it right.

Like many of the most mem­o­rable adverts, Coinbase’s 2022 Super Bowl offer­ing com­bined sur­prise with won­der. There was no need for a pithy slo­gan, no bud­get spent on A‑list actors. Instead, view­ers were greet­ed with a sim­ple QR code that bounced, pong-like from one cor­ner of the screen to anoth­er. It changed colour each time it bumped against the cor­ner of the screen in an obvi­ous nod to the screen­savers of yes­ter­year. But scan the QR code on your phone and you were tak­en to a land­ing page, which redi­rect­ed both new and exist­ing cus­tomers to the most rel­e­vant offer.

Twen­ty mil­lion peo­ple vis­it­ed the land­ing page, and down­loads of the Coin­base app increased 300% – bump­ing the com­pa­ny up into sec­ond place in the App Store charts.

It was a good exam­ple of how brands are rethink­ing adver­tis­ing for a mobile-first audi­ence, with inno­v­a­tive user expe­ri­ence at the fore­front.
The pan­dem­ic accel­er­at­ed the shift towards a world where almost every­thing – shop­ping, com­mu­ni­cat­ing and dat­ing – is hap­pen­ing on mobile. Many larg­er and lega­cy brands have found them­selves play­ing catch-up. Con­ver­sa­tions with con­sumers are no longer hap­pen­ing on the high street but on the screen.

But as the shift to mobile has gath­ered pace, adver­tis­ers have had to adapt to grow­ing con­cerns from con­sumers over the use of their data. Few seri­ous adver­tis­ers would ever want to be seen as mak­ing a poten­tial cus­tomer uncom­fort­able. ‘User-lev­el’ data strict­ly belongs to the indi­vid­ual unless agreed oth­er­wise. Fears over pri­va­cy and track­ing had the poten­tial to neg­a­tive­ly affect the rela­tion­ship between busi­ness­es and their cus­tomers – to the ben­e­fit of nei­ther.

Big tech com­pa­nies like Apple, who already owned the dig­i­tal real estate on which mobile adver­tis­ers thrived, intro­duced new pri­va­cy restric­tions. A recent iPhone update, iOS 14.5, intro­duces a pop up when you open a new appli­ca­tion which gives you the option to ‘ask app not to track.’ If select­ed, the com­pa­ny behind the app can­not access your phone’s iden­ti­fi­er for adver­tis­ers (IDFA), which is used by app mak­ers to dis­tin­guish dif­fer­ent users and under­stand how their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns are per­form­ing.

Since Apple’s app track­ing trans­paren­cy (ATT) was imple­ment­ed, data from Apps­Fly­er has shown that as of Decem­ber 2021, glob­al­ly only 46% of cus­tomers who saw the prompt have opt­ed in to have their data col­lect­ed while they use such apps. The over­all effec­tive­ness of ad cam­paigns has suf­fered as a result: ads on Face­book became 66% more expen­sive, all while reach­ing 22% few­er peo­ple, accord­ing to data quot­ed by eMar­keter from per­for­mance mar­ket­ing agency Tinu­iti.

As a result of these changes, it has also become more chal­leng­ing to mea­sure the impact of mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, and jus­ti­fy ad spend. IDFA is large­ly used by adver­tis­ers to under­stand which ads were work­ing. For exam­ple, if a user saw an ad for an app, clicked on it and installed it, adver­tis­ers could use that infor­ma­tion to under­stand what cam­paigns and chan­nels are work­ing, and bet­ter rein­vest in future mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. IDFA also helped adver­tis­ers run more rel­e­vant cam­paigns, and cre­ate expe­ri­ences that are bespoke to the user.

But these chal­lenges are not insur­mount­able, say indus­try lead­ers. Apps­Fly­er helps pow­er and mea­sure the mobile mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of almost 90,000 dif­fer­ent apps. Man­ag­ing direc­tor across the UK, France, MENA and Turkey, Paul Wright, says that after the iOS 14.5 update: “It sud­den­ly dawned on a lot of adver­tis­ers that the deci­sions they need­ed to make about the effi­ca­cy of their cam­paigns could actu­al­ly be made at the aggre­gate lev­el. If you could con­tin­ue to work with­out expos­ing user-lev­el data, brands could still be incred­i­bly effec­tive.”

Com­pa­nies like Apps­Fly­er are putting pri­va­cy at the heart of their prac­tice while pri­ori­tis­ing the use of new tech­nol­o­gy to make up for lost gran­u­lar­i­ty. Data clean rooms – col­lo­qui­al­ly known as the ‘Switzer­lands of data’ – offer safe envi­ron­ments where dif­fer­ent sources of data can be matched and enriched with­out any­one being able to access user-lev­el infor­ma­tion. Machine learn­ing mod­els, cod­ed bespoke for indi­vid­ual clients, allow adver­tis­ers to pre­dict the suc­cess of their cam­paigns even if con­sumers haven’t enabled the ATT pop-up.

As well as embrac­ing new tech­nol­o­gy, brands should also focus on build­ing the rela­tion­ship with the con­sumer, and being trans­par­ent with them about what data is being used, how they’re using it, and why, all of which can be done as part of a pre-prompt shown before the main ATT prompt.

Once this trust is estab­lished, Wright says, the cus­tomer may be more will­ing to share their data, because they will know how they will ben­e­fit.

There’s an increased focus on craft­ing inno­v­a­tive mul­ti­me­dia jour­neys, where the jump from bill­board to TV, or desk­top to mobile can all be part of the same adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ence. These more seam­less expe­ri­ences are often pow­ered by deep link­ing tech­nol­o­gy, which allows mar­keters to send con­sumers to the rel­e­vant des­ti­na­tion in the app; whether that’s a spe­cif­ic prod­uct page, dis­count page or offer.

Coinbase’s 2022 Super Bowl offer­ing was a great exam­ple of this, and a reminder of how mobile app brands can make the most of tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er smart, cre­ative, mul­ti­chan­nel adver­tis­ing with­out com­pro­mis­ing on mea­sure­ment or pri­va­cy.

Wright says: “Our goal is to find the safest pos­si­ble way for users to share their data with­out it being com­pro­mised in any way while still giv­ing that gran­u­lar­i­ty to adver­tis­ers and media own­ers so that they can opti­mise their adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. Oth­er­wise, we end up in this world where we’re back with spray and pray and no one wants to be bom­bard­ed with irrel­e­vant ads.”

Cus­tomers and com­pa­nies alike ben­e­fit when adver­tis­ing is rel­e­vant and want­ed. As the world increas­ing­ly relies on con­nec­tiv­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, there are few bet­ter places for busi­ness­es to be than on mobile, espe­cial­ly now that con­sumers can feel in con­trol of their own data.

To find out more, vis­it appsflyer.com

Pro­mot­ed by Apps­fly­er