A recent survey on mobile advertising highlighted that the TV ad market in the UK will be overtaken by spend on mobile by 2016, with mobile spend forecast to reach £4.5 billion as opposed to £3.8 billion on TV.
Indeed, mobile advertising is set to account for 30 per cent of all digital spending this year, with this figure rising by more than half by 2016.
This is an incredible growth, particularly when you realise that just four years ago the mobile market was worth £83 million.
After many years of predictions from the great and the good announcing that ‘this is the year of the mobile’ it looks like 2014 could be it. There’s been a huge proliferation in smartphone and tablet ownership, with 68 per cent of those in Europe owning a smartphone in 2014, and fast evolving technologies making it easier to target consumers via their devices.
Retargeting and mobile
However, one stumbling block for digital marketers has been the inability to service retargeted ads on mobile devices. There’s no easy way to identify and target users on mobile browsers, because it’s not currently possible to place cookies on tablets and smartphones.
Retargeting is a vital part of the marketer’s arsenal as our report The State of Industry Retargeting Report which includes feedback from more than 400 media buyers, agency and brand executives, has highlighted. It reveals 56 per cent of brands and agencies are now relying on retargeting to acquire new customers, while 42 per cent use it to build awareness and increase direct revenue.
In fact 49 per cent of brands and 68 per cent of agencies are moving their budgets from display into retargeting.
Social ad exchanges the answer?
Of key interest in this report is that social ad exchanges have emerged as a promising tactic for retargeting via mobile, and could be a way round the cookie issue. It found 41 per cent of respondents of both brands and agencies indicated that social media exchanges are ‘key’ to retargeting on mobile devices. Additionally, 38 per cent of buyers stated they are employing Twitter’s Tailored Audiences platform to reach consumers.
Twitter has been leading the way with its Tailored Audiences platform, launched in December 2013, which delivers the vast majority of promoted Tweets to mobile devices. That means even if a user visits a brand’s website on his or her PC, this data can still lead to a sponsored Tweet being read on a device such as a tablet. In fact, Tailored Audiences represents the first time consumers have experienced large-scale retargeted advertising in a mobile environment.
Working with Chango, and other selected programmatic advertising platforms, the social network is now able to offer brands and marketers far more targeted and relevant Promoted Tweets. In early beta tests of the service some advertisers saw lifts in engagement as high as 170%.
Previously, Twitter could only enhance a campaign with its own first-party data. But now, by accessing third-party data, brands can define specific audiences outside of Twitter and then connect with them on Twitter itself.
Targeting ads on mobile
So, how exactly might a brand use Twitter’s Tailored Audiences platform to engage with users on mobile? There are various approaches a marketer could take.
A promoted Tweet could be sent to in-market consumers who haven’t previously engaged with a brand but have searched for relevant terms. So, an example, could be a manufacturer of car seats for children delivering a special offer via Twitter to customers who had typed the words “baby car seat” into a search engine.
The brand could also identify a Twitter user who had just visited its own website, but who didn’t make a final purchase, and retarget them with a promoted Tweet or News Feed directing them to a special offer. Or a marketer could entice back dormant customers by analysing historical purchasing data and tailoring a Tweet at just the right moment to re-engage.
The Tailored Audiences platforms allows brands to plug in records from their own customer relationship management (CRM) databases to connect with existing customers on the social media network. For example, an advertiser could run a promoted account campaign on Twitter to its most active customers from the previous month.
No doubt we’ll see further enhancements from Twitter in the near future. But, the real revolution in mobile advertising is still yet to come.
Many ad tech players are busy working on technology that will one day replace the cookie altogether and allow ads to track internet users effectively beyond their desktops. It won’t happen in 2014, so expect the cookie to be around for a while yet. But, as mobile penetration continues to soar, we can expect demand for more cross-device solutions, like Tailored Audiences, to increase rapidly. It’s platforms like these that are really opening up and driving spend in the mobile advertising space.
