10 Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch
Mobile and smartphone penetration in North America has reached
94.1%
1- this is great news for mobile marketers. In its
infancy, mobile ads started as simple text and picture messages,
but over the past few years, we've seen this channel explode into a
creative plethora of complex and engaging video and app ads that
are getting through to customers better than ever before. There has
never been a better time to get involved in mobile advertising -
but it's a fast-paced environment, so try and keep up, and hang on
tight!
In this article we'll take a look at some trends in mobile
advertising we're seeing and make our predictions of things to
watch out for in 2012. Let's get to it!
More Mediums
At present, mobile advertising can take many forms. From the
simple SMS or MMS messages, interactive in-game/app ads, and even
geo-location based deals; we're really only on the brink of what
mobile advertising has to offer. In just the past few years, we've
seen plenty of new and creative mobile ad placement strategies come
to fruition, and as the smartphones capabilities increase, we
expect this trend to continue.
Increased Revenue, More Ads, Cheaper Costs
Mobile advertising revenue is expected to double from 2010 to
2011 (and this trend is expected to continue1). With
advertisers knocking at the door, and more and more competition
using mobile advertising platforms, we're already seeing ad fill
rates go up, cost per click go down, and impressions increasing. As
mobile advertising becomes more mainstream, we expect costs to
significantly decrease, and if the iAd platform is any indication
(they've dropped their minimum ad buy twice from $1M to now only
$300K2, we're bang on with this prediction.
Mobile Website Ads vs. App Ads
The question of advertising on the mobile web or mobile apps is
becoming obsolete. With all the advertising platforms available
(like Adsense, Admob, Smaato and Mojiva to name a few) it's
becoming much easier to advertise on both mediums. With that said,
we do expect the constant battle between these two mediums
regarding click through rates and conversions to continue.
Custom-Designed Ads for all Resolutions
One particular challenge of mobile web advertising is sizing.
Due to the small screen resolutions, ads are kept quite small, and
click through rates suffer. When an iPad user visits the same page,
the question then becomes - why does this ad need to be so small?
We're seeing more and more mobile ads that are full-pages,
regardless of screen resolution for this reason - this provides the
best user experience, and we're expecting this trend to
continue.
Clever QR Codes
QR codes are just starting to get mainstream adoption, and we've
only started to tap into their true potential. Currently we're
seeing QR codes used for contesting, coupons, and in other simple
ways. Although we expect this trend to continue, we hope QR code
capabilities will open up a whole new world of possibilities for
marketers. For example, QR codes currently have the ability to send
out texts to the phones of the individual who scans them. So... how
far away are we from QR codes that act as opt-in's for text-based
advertising, or even QR codes with ability to integrate with apps,
such as iCal or Gmail?
More Video & TV Ads
We're seeing more and more unlimited data plans as mobile
providers compete for your business. With this, we expect to see an
increasing number of video ads, and with that, ads integrated with
streaming video websites such as Youtube, CNN or The Comedy
Network.
Geo-Location Ads & Deals
Facebook Deals and Foursquare are on the frontlines of
geo-location, peer-reviewed advertising - and businesses are
starting to reap the benefits. Although adoption has been slow, we
expect to see steady growth for these platforms. These types of ads
are relevant, timely, peer-recommended, and as expected, response
rates are very high. We expect to see some new GPS deal platforms
that alert customers of nearby deals in the near future as
well.
Clever Interactive Ads
As consumers are getting more and more wise to marketing offers;
advertisers are stepping up their game. Engaging / interactive
advertising is already being used by Apple's iAd platform. This
type of advertising is very cool - it's "game-like", but integrates
well with anything on the Apple platform (pictures, social media,
calendar etc.). We expect more marketers to flock to this channel
in the near future.
Incentive Based App Ads
A free version of an app is the most common example of this type
of mobile advertising. App developers give you basic features of an
app for free in hopes you'll want full feature access once you get
a taste. Angry Birds, takes this type of advertising to another
level, they offer extra levels in their game in exchange for liking
their Facebook page. Encouraging a specific behavior for virtual
money is another example. Call it bribery advertising - but don't
judge, it works.
Android Vs Apple
With Android platforms now supporting flash, expect to see some
flash ads make an appearance on mobile devices.
What do you think?
What are your thoughts on the future of mobile advertising? We'd
love to hear from you - connect with us on Twitter @GoRedengine.
Sources:
1http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats_
2http://mashable.com/2011/07/07/apple-cuts-the-price-iads/