Mobile Media

Another year has come and gone in the media world. As quickly as media continues to evolve and new media opportunities are born, a year in the media landscape can seem like a decade … heck possibly even a century. In real years the Internet is still relatively young, no more than 20 years old. However over those years the Internet, and specifically advertising across it, has drastically progressed.

During the early years of Internet advertising, banner ads were very limited in their capability.  The ads were static, tracking was minimal and targeting was simply based off demographics. Fast forward to 2012-2013 and the ads are now rich in nature, allowing for video to run within the banner placement. Targeting has developed so much that if chosen, a single person can be reached with very specific messages across various sites throughout the Internet. Tracking has grown exponentially beyond simple clicks, enabling media professionals to truly measure how effective an ad, website, placement or ad size has performed. However, just when advertisers and media professionals learned most of the tricks of the trade with advertising across the Internet, it has now appeared to reach a tipping point, just as cable did when it surpassed the big four broadcast networks in overall viewing.

Over the last several years there has been a major explosion of growth with smartphones, tablets and many other devices providing access to the Internet on the go. Across many major real-time information sites, such as weather and sports sites, traffic from mobile devices has exceeded (or nearly) 50 percent of their total traffic and as sales of these devices continue to grow, so will the traffic to these sites grow and the opportunity to reach these consumers who are utilizing them. As with any major change, the survivors are typically those who best adapt to the environment surrounding them. Whether by choice or not, the advertisers that realize this earlier rather than later (likely after some testing and learning) will significantly reap the benefits and most likely be the ones to survive.

So for 2013, all advertisers’ New Year media resolution should be to explore advertising opportunities across this growing mobile landscape. There are several opportunities that exist and finding the best one for your business could be as simple as expanding your paid search media buy to target mobile devices, or testing how geotargeting can help to increase sales and drive more traffic to your business. Perhaps it’s taking advantage of this mobile growth and reaching your target consumers with mobile video ads. Considering that virtually every mobile device has a screen and that significant amounts of TV content is now being made available for these devices, there exists a ripe opportunity to reach these consumers via their mobile devices.

TV, which is overall a very mass form of media, now is very targetable when an advertiser takes advantage of a mobile device’s targeting capabilities and, in this media professional’s opinion, targeting is key when considering any advertising efforts, mobile media or general media opportunities. An advertiser can spend as much of their budget as possible, but when the wrong consumer is reached, results are typically lacking. However, with the smart targeting capability of mobile media, the device’s mobile nature and overall capability to accept dynamic advertising, advertisers are quickly approaching what has long been sought after since the dawn of advertising: reaching the right consumer, at the right time, at the right place, with the right message/price, ALL driving for an instant sale. We are not there yet, but if any form of media had the capability to deliver this long sought-after approach, mobile media is it.

I have quickly come to realize that the more I’ve utilized mobile advertising as part of my current client’s media plans, the better the results have become. Some of this is due to learning something from the prior campaign and applying this experience to the new campaign. However, this is also due to mobile advertising’s quickness to change/adapt. Since a media plan can be adjusted on the fly to provide for stronger results instantly, this tends to provide better results the more it’s executed. Testing, learning,  and adjusting are key to advertising across the mobile media landscape. So don’t let another century—-I mean year–go by before testing and learning from mobile advertising as part of your 2013 advertising efforts.

Adapted on March, 19th 2013

By Tom Marciw