Mobile advertising is undeniably the future

The fact that a huge amount of data can be processed quickly and cost effectively, it leads to more relevant and personalized advertising

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Mobile, for years, has been perceived as a small illustrative tool, which is slick and trendy and has the potential of attracting people on a platform that instructs, even consumes their thoughts which have always been exceedingly promising with a very high potential reach. Mobile advertising is poised to take over other forms of media with native, programmatic and location-based ads becoming immensely popular and valuable. But how far have we reached yet?

There’s one common aspect among tablets, connected TVs, wearable devices, computers and smartphones: They all play an imperative role in a contemporary user’s purchase journey. Lack of faith or absence of investment in insights poses advertisers today with a major challenge of being able to recognise behavioural patterns across all these devices. The consumer world requires tailored content that is relevant, optimised and impeccable across display panels. The potential for marketers to gain a competitive advantage with mobile is evident and a few pioneers have proved its potential with effective innovation.

2014 was a milestone year for expands across all things digital. We Are Social’s New Digital, Social and Mobile in 2015 report indicates that the year will witness an increase in numbers of mobile generated data that nudge the market to another level. Mobile’s share of global web traffic leaped to 39 percent since last year, with one-third of all web pages now served to mobile phones; with India being the second largest with a 72 percent of mobile’s share of web traffic. With 946 million mobile connections and a growth of six percent in the number of mobile subscription since January 2014, the mobile marketing world is a bandwagon worth investing in.

Today’s consumers are driven through multi-device and multi-channel experiences prior to taking the final decision. With a surge of the final decision being taken on the smartphone, the consumer on the move with lowering attention spans is making time to read, make purchases and recommend his preferences to others through the medium of mobile. Marketers need to understand that it’s all about reaching out to prospective customers through a planned course of action and relevant strategy.

To begin with, one needs to pay close attention to the mobile enhancement process. Marketers already comprehend their need to make the best of the funnel to achieve a much desired switch, yet many still haven’t utilised their websites or landing pages for mobile. Similarly, many mobile ads are still not as engaging as they ought to be and are often weakly targeted from the rest of the customer drive. You must ensure you are able to provide a seamless and customised experience in order to receive the right returns.

Examine human behaviour and tweak your tactics to drive success on mobile. We are now marching towards a new era of perspective and relevant experience based on exclusive customer needs and wants, in the framework of their specific location. Mobility enables this and marketing strategies can leverage upon it.

Mobile advertising is a new-age phenomenon that reaches out to diverse audiences. From the younger generation to the older, everybody has a distinct method of using smartphones and a brand must personalise their way of reaching out. A sense of making it cool and exciting connects brilliantly with the youth while education and enhanced experiences have always been noteworthy in reaching out to older age groups. A recent example would be of Pepsi in Turkey which transformed 30 million cans and table mats into cinema screens via augmented reality. Users could point their phone camera at the can and interact with it, while playing games and winning prizes. Simple and effective, the key selling point was the immediacy of the marketing offering, combined with a distinguishable ‘wow’ factor.

With mobile phones constantly competing with the computer, mobile commerce applications are driving app-only discounts and deals, encouraging a higher number of download and purchases through a smartphone. Myntra.com, an ecommerce venture catering to fashion and casual lifestyle products has taken the bold route of going mobile-only, indicating the audiences it reaches out to are using mobile phones as the only medium for their purchases.

Today, there is more data being developed than ever before, largely because of the advances in data dispensation technologies that make it possible to do more with less. The fact that a huge amount of data can be processed quickly and cost effectively, it leads to more relevant and personalised advertising.

As advertisers continue to take the wheel of today’s complex mobile scene rolling, there will be successes and failures, and marketers must be receptive to taking the experience as learning towards a final shift of reaching greater heights through mobile advertising.

- By Zafar Rais, CEO, MindShift Interactive

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.