Mobile advertising is a young and very important field in the world of publicity. You’re playing Angry Birds, Candy Crush Saga or Fruit Ninja and an ad pops out. Many users click on them unintentionally and find themselves on some website. They may read it, they might not read it, but the fact is they clicked a banner and probably gained money for that website.
Android mobile advertising
Although he didn’t give importance to the significance of the iPhone release, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also didn’t give importance to Google’s Free to use Android platform when it launched, because Google didn’t charge money for OEM’s to use it. Since the launching of Android (5 years), nevertheless, it’s evident that earning money from the direct sales of Android devices was never part of Google’s plan.
In order to understand how overwhelming this is, take into account that no other company made even a billion dollars in mobiles advertising revenues in 2012 (Facebook was the closest – 450 million dollars). And in 2013, eMarketer forecasts that Google will gain 8.85 billion dollars in advertising revenues, which will be the 56% of all global advertising revenues in the world, while Facebook is supposed to take the second place by generating 2.04 billion dollars. When you think that mobile advertising revenues doubled between 2011 and 2012 and are expected to do the same this year, then it appears that Google without planning it has gained monopoly in the mobile advertising.
Apple mobile advertising
iAd is a platform for mobile phones developed by Apple for its iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad line of mobile gadgets that allow third-party developers to directly incrust ads into their application.
Just like AdMob eases the integration of advertisements into applications sold on the iOS App Store. If you click an IAd banner, within the application it will appear an advertisement on the entire surface of the screen, unlike other advertisements that send you into Safari web browser. The advertisements are supposed to be more interactive compared to other advertising services, and you can close them anytime and return to where you left your application.
Among the companies that use the services of iAd are: Nissan, Citi, AT&T, Chanel, GE, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, GEICO, Unilever, Direct TV, Target, TBS and Disney. For the right of placing their advertisements on iAd, the companies paid 60 million dollars each.
Jobs in mobile advertising
According to AdvertisingAge, the worldwide revenue will reach $24.5 billion in 2016 with mobile advertising revenue creating new opportunities for app developers, ad networks, mobile platform providers, specialty agencies and even communications service providers in certain regions.
The organization Mobile Marketing Association commissioned a study that screens mobile marketing to add $400 billions of incremental output and almost a million jobs for the US economy by 2015.
Whereas the results of the study are meant to lead the marketers to spend more on mobile, the study is part of the MMA lobbying endeavor to demonstrate the job creation prospects of mobile marketing and possibly tackle potential regulation.
Mobile advertising trends
Since mobile devices are becoming users’ favorite computing devices, it would be foolish for advertisers not to take advantage of this. Along with the evolution of mobile technology, mobile advertising also has changed. Let’s see the main mobile advertising trends for 2013:
- More aggressive multiplatform strategy. Advertisers adapt their campaigns to smartphones and other smart mobile devices, but most of them only adapt to 1 or 2 platforms out of all the mobile ecosystem variety. Feature phones are still controlling the 80% in emerging markets, so maybe that is where mobile advertisers should direct part of their attention.
- Increased mobile search. At the moment, mobile search already plays a very important role in the advertising world. During the following 5 years this situation will continue this way, because consumers will still search for products and services using their mobile devices. What will change is that, together with a better orientation, advertisers will offer more relevant ads based not only on location and keywords, but also on more accurate search engine results.
- Better analytics. Nowadays, mobile analytics tools which advertisers use to measure the success of their campaigns lack the sophistication advertisers expect. The Mobile Marketing Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have established great guidelines. Nevertheless, these guidelines are still evolving and not everybody plays by the same rules. In the next 5 years these guidelines will be quite evolved and companies will be able to use better analytics tools and the results will be much more accurate.
- Higher interaction. The great majority of mobile ads are created in either text or banner format. Users can only click on them, which means that the interaction level is very poor. There are also multimedia ads with a quite high level of interaction, but there are much less of those. Advertisers don’t use them because of several issues: the expensive cost and the fact that not all devices render this type of ads. In the following 5 years this type of ads will be common and users will interact with them in ways that aren’t known at the moment. Additionally, augmented reality will make interactive mobile advertising more appealing and entertaining for users.
Mobile website landing page
85% of the consumers that visited a business, purchased a product or hired a service, did it because a friend recommended it. Mobile landing pages are optimized for virality and for being shared on social networks in order for your clients to access them. When they share and talk about your business, this information is distributed and seen by their friends, who share common interests and will love to see your offers.
Mobile devices were last year’s star product and it’s a shame to not take advantage of your advertising opportunities fully. People love scanning QR codes, so you can create a QR code campaign where, after scanning the QR code, users will be led to your landing page where they will be able to see your offers.
