Too many ad agencies are needlessly developing apps in their quest to reach mobile audiences, when they often have neither the skills nor the financial inclination to do the job properly, the industry has been warned.
Greg Grimmer, the COO of Fetch, who co-hosted a mobile marketing debate with MediaTel and Facebook on Friday, said that the brands who are winning in the 'app economy' are the ones prepared to make the full investment in developing, launching and maintaining an app - while those still trying to produce apps as part of a marketing campaign are almost always destined for disappointment.
"What we're now saying to brands and advertisers is don't try and drag people away from their social feeds - Twitter, Instagram or Facebook - harness their power to get them to download. re-visit or purchase from your app but don't try and have an advertising conversation away from the feed." Grimmer said.
According to Facebook, people now spend around 25 per cent of all their mobile phone time on its app, with Rob Newlan, EMEA head of Facebook Creative Shop, saying that from a branding perspective, unless it has "great utility", he thinks advertising apps are "too often an indulgence".
"You have to respect people's time and apps are a heavyweight experience," he said.
According to Newlan, Facebook is not interested in developing separate apps for brands and wants to see marketers using the Facebook news feed to reach users because that is where audiences are choosing to spend their time.
However, acknowledging the existence of an increasingly large "app graveyard", Karmarama's executive chairman, Jon Wilkins, said that he feels brands should be investing in apps, but not in a "singular" way.
"It needs to be part of a connected, digital process," he said. "Apps need to be viewed as living, breathing things rather than static campaign extensions."
Wilkins added that people often "confuse technology with the content".
"The content in apps is poor at the moment, but the actual functionality of what an app can bring to a customer is great, so we just need to use them smarter."
Rob Rees, CMO of Freestyle Ltd, said that one solution to the problem is to see clients invest in whole new skill-sets.
"It's now about content management and editorial," he said. "Brands can create a community [via an app] very easily, but it's about keeping it fresh and I don't think many brands always want to make that continual investment."
Despite the warnings, Grimmer told Newsline that Fetch has grown by working with clients such as hotels.com , eBay and Expedia who have built extremely successful app businesses.
In the US, he said, test budgets for app marketing could run as high as $2 million - to test the product, find out of there is consumer demand and then determine if it is valuable or not.
"That's what the 'app economy' means if you're in the Silicon Valley," he said. "Our clients in the US all have ambitions to globally scale at speed - they are hard taskmasters but know what positive change they want from their marketing spend be that installs, traffic or sales.
"Whereas, here in London, and despite the growth of Tech City, there is less appetite to use traditional marketing methods - even in mobile - to achieve their business goals. European clients need to remember that it's paid, owned and earned in that order - if you forget to invest in your mobile real estate, then you've heightening the risk of failure."
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