Dissecting mobile marketing: what works on the small screen?

Dissecting mobile marketing: what works on the small screen?

Whosay has hedged it bets on influencer marketing as the way to crack the mobile code. According to their 2017 Influence Marketing Insights report, the company found that influence marketing performs better than other forms of media and advertising, achieving three times better video view-through rates on Facebook. “There is a physical change of behavior… around carrying smartphones and we haven’t altered our advertising thinking to address those tactile changes,” said Steve Ellis, chief executive officer of WhoSay. But other than influencers operating on social, does mobile advertising work with consumers? The panelists at Advertising Week New York’s ‘We must be able to do better than this: making better ads for mobile’ panel think so. Ellis hosted the panel and started off by pinpointing what’s not working in the industry, such as banner ads, pop-up ads and pre-rolls ads. He noted that “junk mail, by definition, gets better engagement rates,” than these other advertising techniques, with 1-4% engagement. Engagement rates are only a small part of the picture, with content type, platform and functionality playing a huge part in user experience and the relationship with advertising. Brian Wong, chief executive officer and founder at Kiip, a mobile advertising network, honed in on consumer behavior and how consumer experiences outperform other forms of advertising, especially on digital and mobile. Wong said that we need to be “Making advertising something that people really like again.” But in order to create effective experiences, marketers, agencies and brands need to start understanding “what people actually do on the phone,” Wong added. As a piece of this user experience, Ian Schafer, chief experience officer at Engine USA, a multi-faceted...
What Remains True In Mobile Marketing Across Time & Space

What Remains True In Mobile Marketing Across Time & Space

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. While we’re never sure who ‘they’ are, we can be sure of this age-old wisdom. It rings true in the general business arena where consumers always appreciate that priceless combination of good value and great service. This remains true whether the customer searched the streets for the best passage to Rome 2 000 years ago, or today searches the pages of the web for the best package next cruising season. In the specialist sphere of mobile marketing, there are similarly certain fundamentals that remain true across time and space, and no matter what the latest tactical technology is. Regular readers of this blog would know that we tend to emphasize the importance of mobile marketing message personalisation, customization of platforms and seamless interaction between different bearer technologies like SMS, MMS, USSD and others. We might call these little nuggets of advice the pillars of the mobile marketing discipline. We always seem to come back to them. However, when it comes to what seems to stay the same in mobile marketing, here are a few specifics that marketers would be wise to remember: Smartphone Use Continues to Grow While feature phone use remains big in Africa, and SMS is King, the availability of $20 smartphones means smartphone usage on our continent is on the up and up, and on track to eventually match usage stats in developed markets. Video is Big Every smartphone user will tell you that videos play exceptionally well on their phones, no matter the handset brand. Some mobile browsers are better than others, but...
Video In Mobile Marketing Continues To Expand

Video In Mobile Marketing Continues To Expand

At the end of last year we wrote about the incredible expansion of video in mobile marketing and pointed out the little-known fact that YouTube is the second-biggest search engine after Google. As the use of video expands and marketers incorporate more video in their mobile campaigns, it is pertinent to remember that a short 60-second video has the same impact as literally tens of thousands of worlds, and possibly more when you add emotional impact. To quote eMarketer, a great resource often referenced on this site, a whopping one-third of the entire US population is already watching “video content on a mobile phone at least once a month.” South Africa may lag in some areas, but certainly not in mobile, so there’s no reason to suspect our mobile video viewing stats would differ wildly. When the client brief demands it, InTarget is able to work with a host of content providers to execute multimedia campaigns across our various mobile marketing bearers and publishing platforms. We’ve built up a formidable amount of knowledge when it comes to knowing what video content works on which bearers and platforms. If your own client, or employer, is delaying the move to producing video for mobile campaigns, here’s a few points to let them chew on: Video Displays Perfectly Across Different Devices When visiting a website using a laptop, tablet or smartphone very often the text doesn’t look great or very readable, even on some sites that are supposedly optimised for mobile. The opposite is true for video. It always look great and there are no screen size limitations that affect mobile phones...
Mobile Ads Need To Be Viewable & Not Overly Intrusive

Mobile Ads Need To Be Viewable & Not Overly Intrusive

Two pieces of news that made their appearance on the web this week caught my eye. The first item is fantastic news (and contains a dash of obvious common sense) for those mobile marketers and their clients who might have been worried by all the recent talk of the burgeoning ad blocker industry. Apparently, a whopping 83 percent of people using ad blockers only want to avoid overly intrusive adverts that take control of their browsers away from them. I think that’s a pretty obvious observation and brings us firmly back into the realm of reality when it comes to blocking software. We all know that consumers use advertising to inform their purchasing decisions. Why then would they opt to block all ads? They know they would make some pretty lousy buying decisions if they did that. So, this new survey by popular ad blocker, Adblock Plus, confirms that the vast majority of consumers are only looking to block intrusive overly “obnoxious” ads. The article I read suggests a way forward for marketers faced with increasing numbers of blockers. That way forward is how InTarget has been designing mobile campaigns since its inception. Campaigns must inform, not annoy. The must be personal, not irrelevant. Ads must speak to, not speak at. It’s as simple as that – almost! The second mobile marketing item that caught my attention was the news that advertisers are wasting about R14 billion a year on non-viewable ads. A report from ad verification company, Meetrics, says publishers are upping the speed at which ads are re-loaded or auto-refreshed to raise inventory levels and revenue. The...
Immediate Action Ability A Boon For Marketers

Immediate Action Ability A Boon For Marketers

Immediate gratification has to be one of the most outstanding features of the world we live in today. In centuries – or even decades – past practically every call to action was by necessity followed by a significant amount of preparation. Imagine the act of making what is today a simple cup of coffee in 1780. The decision to drink coffee was not followed by the flip of a switch and the consumption of the beverage within a minute or two. It was followed by the making of a fire to boil the water needed in the preparation of coffee, and plenty of steps after that. You had to really be convinced in 1816 that you wanted coffee. Today, you might say that consumer consumption is a lot more frivolous. Not only have technological advances made access to desired goods and services so much easier, leading to much more rapid consumption after the decision is made, other recent modern developments such as consumer protection legislation have virtually eliminated the purchase risk for consumers. So the point of another lengthy introduction on this blog is that modern mobile marketers really don’t know how fortunate they are to be interacting with consumers in 2016 that have the means to make immediate consumption decisions, followed by very rapid consumption of what’s been purchased. However, to take full advantage of the immediate action by consumers that is now possible thanks to mobile and other technology, marketers need to keep a few things top of mind. The first is what marketing textbooks, business gurus and your own common sense has been telling you all...