Mobile Advertising: Understanding the Challange

Mobile Advertising: Understanding the Challange

Mobile advertising has become quiet popular in recent years. This comes with the obvious increased mobile usage; more the audience, more the advertising, simple math.

The irony is that despite evident data showing surge in the number of mobile users, the impact of mobile advertising is not certain. For instance, a car manufacturer creates a great ad for mobile. The ad is humorous and cleverly entertaining. It goes viral and people across social media platforms share it. But the question remains, how many potential car buyers could actually get access to the ad, and how many people were really influenced by the ad to buy the car? Media KPI would show how many people saw the ad, but for all you know the those were teenagers or college going kids who would hardly qualify as even the influencers for the buying decision of a luxury car. So who actually did see the ad? And as if this wasn’t enough for confusion, apps do not support cookies, so there is ambiguity on the customer’s buying profile. Over and above this, there are users who view the ad on their smart phone and then view it on their laptop, so for one user there’s data of ‘two views’, phantom viewers.

The Big Puzzle

Measuring results for mobile ads effectiveness is a big puzzle that marketers across the world are trying to solve. When a sale takes place, can it be credited to the mobile ad? Or the mobile ad is more like a link in the circle of brand awareness? These are important questions marketers need to answer before they plan their mobile ads.

To take a use case, say a person reads about a smart watch, talks to his friend who recommends the watch. Then he looks it up on his smart phone and comes across the advertisement video. He reads the reviews, sees the video, and decides to buy the watch. In this case, was the mobile ad of any influence, or it just filled as a link in the circle of product information or the new age buying cycle, that is. Was the video just a brand reassurance to the prospect, which in itself, is an ancillary but important nonetheless.

In another example, a person engaged in some app, encounters an in-app advertisement of a retailer offering a lucrative discount on handbags and at an impulse clicks it. A sale is made. Is the credit of the sale solely on the ad?

On the surface of it, yes, but there’s a lot more that goes in to converting interest into sale, especially online. Taking the example of the retailer again, it’s important what happens when the user clicks on the in-app ad. There are important considerations here. Should the user be taken directly to the discounted handbag section as this would save the user from unnecessary navigation or should the user be taken to the home page or the landing page where she can see that there’s discount on other products as well? Should the user be lead within the app or should be guided to the website?

Putting The Pieces Together

Apparently, there’s no absolute that can be pin pointed about an effective mobile ad strategy. It will be different from industry to industry, company to company, campaign to campaign and even customer to customer. What works for one, may be a total put-off for the other.

How do you know what works? Well, by knowing what works for whom! Information is the key to digital-age marketing. And companies who want to stay ahead in the game would have to focus on building upon customer information, enriching it at every customer touch point or contact window. Companies would need to focus on individual customer profiles more than on target groups. And the marketing strategy that would actually work, is mass personalization, mass advertising concentrating on individual needs. How to personalize mobile advertising? Read the next article – Mobile Marketing: Personalization & Engagement.


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