Top tips for getting the most out of mobile advertising campaigns
Mobile advertising is coming of age. PwC's latest Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2014-2018 predicts that the UK mobile advertising market is expected to increase by 17% annually to reach a total of £2.2bn in revenue in 2018. Some 15.5bn apps are expected to be downloaded in the UK in 2018; 50% of the UK population will own a tablet by 2018 and 73% will own a smartphone. Advertisers need to have a strong mobile strategy in place if they want to reach consumers on their mobile devices. So, what are the key considerations for running a successful campaign?
Targeting
When first thinking about running a mobile advertising campaign, audience targeting should be top of your list of priorities, and establishing the appropriate metrics will ensure that your ads are being targeted as claimed. There are certain levels of information available on mobile users such as demographics (age and gender), device type and behaviour as well as location data. You should try and get some location metric into most mobile campaigns because it's one of the key differentiators of the medium. The caveat here is to avoid over-targeting, particularly around location, which requires significant volume; otherwise your campaign could be in danger of only reaching four people on a street corner.
Audience
Once you've decided on your target audience, you will then need to think about the sort of publishers that you want your ads to appear on. Different sites offer different user behaviours – for example, gaming apps tend to offer higher click-through rates but less conversion than traditional content. This could be because there are more accidental clicks in games than with traditional content because users are given points, tokens or virtual currency to use when they click on ads.
Make sure you get a full site list from your agency or network, and if they won't guarantee where your campaign will appear then you have to worry about where it's running. The old adage of you getting what you pay for holds true and that low rate you negotiated may not look so smart when your ads are appearing on the most ubiquitous gaming sites.
Formats
Next, you need to think about how to make sure your campaign is effective without being intrusive. This is a fine line, particularly in mobile. Formats that come out of the banner without taking over the home screen are better than pop ups that appear all over the screen. Formats that appear for a shorter period of time that are easy to close or skip are also less likely to annoy your target audience. If you are thinking about using video, make sure there is a clear value exchange between the brand and the user and always include a skip function so you can accurately measure completed views.
Measurement
Finally, you need to ensure that your campaigns are being adequately and accurately measured by analysing post-click behaviour and that you're being delivered the inventory and volumes that you were promised.
A final note on two of the latest buzz words: programmatic and data. If you are running a performance-based campaign then taking a programmatic approach will definitely give you scale (I would not suggest programmatic for branding) and might give you efficiencies but the promised land of targeting and frequency capping is not there at the moment. When it comes to leveraging the vast data available on mobile, you really need access to a DMP (data management platform) either via your media partner or agency, or your own. Some brands are investing in their own DMP to get a better understanding of their audience and how they behave so they can evolve their campaigns.
Asking some of the key questions outlined in this piece will help you to deliver a campaign to the right audience in a way that is engaging without being intrusive. Our own research shows that the UK is outperforming significantly when it comes to mobile ads, which is something that brands and agencies should take into account when they come to planning campaigns.
Mark Slade is EMEA MD at Opera Mediaworks.
To get weekly news analysis, job alerts and event notifications direct to your inbox, sign up free for Media Network membership.
All Guardian Media Network content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'Advertisement feature'. Find out more here.