As people move between screens, we deliver cohesive advertising experiences that move with people.
In advertising, “the right message at the right time to the right person” is our mantra. This is particularly true with the proliferation of mobile devices. Today, users do what they want, buy what they want, and watch what they want whenever they want. This has become one of the most valuable opportunities for reaching and targeting prospect audiences.
The mobile device is no longer simply used for messaging and social, but rather as a go-to source for information, inspiration, and entertainment. We use our devices as a way of connecting with friends and family, solving unexpected problems, or making immediate decisions during nonhuman moments. These moments (like waiting in line at the grocery store, waiting at the gate in the airport, or even between commercial breaks) are what we know as “micro-moments.” These moments of immediacy and utility are happening in-app and represent an opportunity for brands to shape our decisions and preferences.
People with access to a smartphone or tablet now spend an average of three hours per day on them, and 84 percent of that time is spent in-app. Every time they pick up their phone, they begin another micro-moment. From an advertising-investment perspective, it’s widely known that there’s a disparity between the amount of time people spend on their mobile devices and the ad dollars allocated to this medium (but that’s a completely separate issue that could be a whole other blog post).
Over 3 million available apps vie for the attention of mobile-obsessed users, yet these users spend most of their time with a select few. Though the list of “top apps used” varies by person, there’s no denying who the powerhouses are within the space (think Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc.). These social and messaging apps have made great strides recently to retain and gain users and to capitalize on the smartphone’s growing use as a storytelling mechanism to boost engagement within apps.
If high reach and high engagement are objectives for your campaign, it is worth considering mobile in-app advertising. This advertising model delivers a message to an already engaged audience at a scale comparable to that of television.
Mobile in-app advertising also can avoid ad blockers, which is crucial considering the fact that the use of smartphone ad-blocking software has jumped to 20.7 million people in the United States. According to eMarketer, as the use of mobile devices grows, so too will the use of mobile ad blockers. To put numbers to that statement, the number of people using smartphone ad blockers will jump 62.3 percent this year, while the number of PC-based ad-blocking users will increase by 30.1 percent.
Need another reason to use mobile in-app advertising? How about this: Mobile in-app advertising lets brands use real-time location data to create highly targeted, hyper-relevant “right place at the right time” marketing messages with a higher propensity to convert.
However, we cannot simply reach the right consumer at the right time. As marketers, we also must be mindful of the quality of content that consumers expect within the ad experience. We need to tap into the two-way interactivity and endemic features of specific devices to further drive ad relevance to resonate with consumers.
The keys to targeting in mobile are identifying the “micro-moments” that are most relevant to a particular brand, layering data points native to the mobile ecosystem (such as location or weather), and focusing on in-app environments to find users where they spend the most time and are the most receptive. We can only believe that advertising investment will continue to grow and be redirected to mobile as user behavior continues to prove the value of this medium.