The future of advertising in the Internet of Things

blogs.imediaconnection.com

Everywhere you turn, you see connected devices -- smartwatches that communicate messages and exercise progress, thermostats that adjust based on preferences, home automation systems, and especially mobile phones. Each of these open a world of opportunity for advertisers, but only if they can figure out a way to get the right messages to the right consumers at the right time. Gone are the days where consumers tolerate messaging that's not targeted to them or communication from advertising that doesn't add any value. Brian Wong, the CEO of Kiip, and Christine Moll, category marketing director of vodka and gin at Gruppo Campari chat about the complex relationship between these items, advertisers, and consumers.

In today's programmatic landscape, there's an opportunity to leverage reaching these devices in real time in the same instant that consumers are engaging with it. These perfect instances are known as moments, or the partnership between event and context. If approached correctly, an advertiser that is in the right moment. According to data from Kiip, there are more than 700 million moment opportunities, and those are potential entrance points or your brand.

One example of this is a consumer that has completed a task on a to-do list at lunchtime. From here, McDonald's can send a coupon that feels like a reward. Another example would be favorite-ing a recipe in an app that leads to Kraft sending a discount for ingredients, or a game app collecting data about what time and on which kind of data you play the game. All this consumer data can result in a better understanding of who is using these apps and who you are speaking to.

Moments are a hybrid of data + CRM + media. It's important to keep in mind that you need to be creating a value exchange, and not just looking at it as a one-way advertising path. Try to think of new and interesting ways you can engage with a consumer and invent a new permission. There's a tangible positive result when you see a moment occurring on an app.

Moments will also come from devices, and the biggest device is obviously the mobile phone. Of course there are wearables, thermometers, car, etc., but we are most directly engaged with the screens of our mobile phones, and we expect a lot from them. The current generation is very connected -- we expect deliveries within a few hours from Amazon, immediate food from anywhere from Postmates, and car outside our door momentarily from Uber. These are all part of our demand economy.

Moll spoke about how Campari partnered with Kiip and Lyft to reach consumers through a CSR initiative that had a goal of providing value in a non-boring way. They wanted to be sure that they were creating meaningful moments at the right time, and rewarded customer engagement by offering discounts on Lyft rides. That way, the brand is participating in CSR by encouraging safe driving and the customer interacts with the messaging and gets rewarded for it -- a win-win-win situation.

The campaign saw 21 percent engagement, which is huge, along with a 48 percent increase in brand consideration, and a 4x higher redemption rate. Moll claims that the success of the campaign  is due to two things: it's not preachy, and it encourages smart decisions at the right moment. The association with positive moments helped distinguish Compari as a brand successfully tapping into this new wave of moment marketing in connected devices.