What Does the Future Hold for Digital Ads? (mobilemarketingwatch.com)

What do you call a 5% conversion rate for digital advertising? Nearly impossible. That’s the dilemma that advertisers face as conventional advertising continues to have declining return numbers even as the amount of spending in the space continues to increase. All 3 types of advertising vehicles currently available to marketers and brands, including search, display and social ads, are ineffective at best. Heck, 50% of clicks on banner ads areaccidental, and the CTR for display ads is an abysmally low 0.11%! In the face of these ever dwindling numbers, marketers have been forced to look elsewhere and also adjust their strategies. That’s according to Samantha Pena, a business blogger writing on behalf of Hudson Horizons in a recent B2C post. What comes after the banners stop? One of the most exciting ad platforms right now are so-called ‘rich media ads’. These are ads which go above and beyond the normal, static advert and actually engage with the user through games, videos and sound. These rich media ads have a much been getting much higher click-through rates.  In fact, it’s been shown that users who view a rich media ad are 3 times as likely to continue on to the website that displayed it. Sponsored or ‘native’ advertising is also very hot.  Promoted posts on websites like BuzzFeed are where the line between editorial and advertising are merged, something that has an excellent effect on sales but hasn’t been embraced by fans of journalism with integrity. The trend has crossed over to the big boys however, and today even the venerated New York Times has sponsored content on its pages and its website. So what’s it take to create affective ads? In the end, advertising is about making a connection with consumers so that, when it’s time to make a purchase, they already have an affinity for your brand. That means; Emphasizing your brand while downplaying sales Giving your customers a clear and defined choice Whatever you do, do not annoy Personalize your ads as finely as you can If your digital ads follow those rules, customers will beat a path to your door every time.

Marketers and Advertisers, Take Note: Demand for Mobile Content Is on the Rise (skyword.com)

Mobile content is playing a bigger role in today’s content marketing strategy compared to last year. According to Demand Gen Report’s 2014 Content Preferences Survey, 86 percent of B2B buyers desire access to interactive or visual content, and they prefer it to be optimized for mobile.

“Desktop and laptop PCs certainly still gather the most traffic from buyers,” the report stated. “However, mobile phones and tablets are catching up with their more established counterparts.” B2B buyers who often use mobile phones to access content increased from 42.9 percent in 2013 to 55.8 percent in 2014. Ninety percent believe content needs to be mobile-friendly—clean and easy to consume.

This is a continuously growing preference with both B2B buyers and consumers. Ninety percent of American adults own a cell phone, half of whom use it to download apps and access the Internet. The Content Standard recently reported major increases in Internet usership via mobile devices, noting that the heaviest users, 16- to 24-year-olds, spend more than two hours a day on the mobile Web.

Some brand marketers saw New York Fashion Week (NYFW) as a great opportunity to leverage increases in content consumed on mobile devices, thanks to the on-the-go crowd. When February 2014’s Fashion Week event ended with a snowstorm, American media company AccuWeather popped up to promote its MinuteCast app. The app provides a minute-by-minute localized breakdown of precipitation forecasts—e.g., when it would rain and for how long—based on a street address or GPS location. Steve Smith, chief digital officer at AccuWeather, told Mobile Marketer that they already knew mobile weather was one of the most popular forms of mobile news content, but that NYFW presented an opportunity to “connect those dots in a public way, as the stakes are so high and looking ideal is a must.”

Uber also saw an opportunity, partnering with GLAMSQUAD to promote a series of special package deals. For example, Uber users could book a beauty appointment with an $85 discount if they used the promo code “Uberglam.”

While marketers like Uber and AccuWeather continue to sketch out, plan, and execute new ways to integrate mobile content into their greater content marketing strategy, e-commerce players like Facebook and eBay are setting their sights on the future of mobile advertising. Facebook’s value recently topped $200 billion amid optimism that it could capitalize on mobile advertising; eBay, on the other hand, reversed its previous stance and brought back its in-app mobile ads.

Marketers and advertisers alike are anticipating the future of mobile use and looking forward to embracing and innovating the ways consumers interact with content.

Retargeting and Reengagement in Mobile App Marketing (cmswire.com)

Featured: How Leading Marketers Are Using Big Data to Boost Conversions & Profitability

With millions of mobile options in app stores, competition for attention is higher than ever. That's why it's so critical for marketers to engage key audiences to ensure the longevity and visibility of their apps.

Mobile has moved in leaps and bounds over the past year to make an attempt to catch up with other online marketing techniques.

Mobile app marketing success used to be measured by the number of clicks on an advertising source. Then the focus moved to how many people installed the app. Now the industry is starting to realize that engagement and retaining valuable users is key to marketing success.

Mobile marketers are looking beyond the install to get the best value out of their user base.

Retargeting Techniques

So how do we deal with this changing landscape? The two key approaches are retargeting and reengagement, which entice a user who has shown interest back into an app.

Retargeting is when specific, individual users are targeted online or through mobile. In the mobile world, a list of device identifiers is provided to the network, and the network then serves the ad once the device is identified. It's a good way to trigger a one-to-one interaction between a consumer and a brand that is highly personalized and specific.

When users install an app and use it for the first time, they become active users. If they stop using the app for a period of time, they can be retargeted with a marketing campaign.

 An advertising network can target a particular set or segment of users based on their device IDs. Through analytics, the device IDs for the user segment can be provided: for example, retargeting "all users who haven’t triggered a session in the past three weeks."

The network is then able to display the ad to the list of devices, enticing the user back into the app. The user then needs to be reattributed to the new advertising source for driving the user back to the app.

Reengagement Options

Reengagement is identifying someone who has downloaded an app, and then enticing them to return to the app, or use it more frequently. Reengagement uses various tools to reengage users who are inactive, and the best tools for driving reengagement are typically deep-linking, push notifications and in-app and online ads.

Things work differently in the world of apps in a few crucial ways. For starters, there are no cookies — no easy way for apps to follow a user into other apps or even out onto the Internet with personalized offers. Instead there is a more binary distinction. In order to do retargeting on mobile, a device and identifier is needed, whereas reengagement does not need any unique identifier as it principally targets a group of users rather than a specific one.

Evidence suggests that reengagement can draw huge benefits with minimal investment. Trademob, which developed the first mobile retargeting platform focused entirely on apps late last year, has already demonstrated up to 300 percent higher in-app conversions, and up to 95 percent lower costs for acquiring quality users through their retargeting campaigns.

Deep-Linking

Deep-linking in the app world is when a user is taken to a specific app or place within an app. Crucially, deep-linking is only possible if it is specifically supported by the app, making it a function that must be planned before coding.

Many publishers and ad platforms have not executed deep-linking well. When a mobile device encounters a deep-link triggered by a user click, it asks the already-installed apps if they recognize the deep-link.

Non-recognition would result in the customer receiving a white page error and consequently leaving the site. Therefore, a fallback where the user would be redirected to the App Store and invited to install the app is needed. There is no common accepted way to do this so companies like adjust or deeplink.me have come up with sophisticated workarounds.

Push Notifications

Push-notifications are simple, text-based messages that pop up on the device and have to be opted-in for by users. The message can ask users why they have been inactive, suggest they come back, prompt them to make a purchase or make offers such as discounts on new items. The goal of push notifications is to attract attention without annoying the user.

From Attribution to Reattribution

Attribution, which is the art of connecting an install to its source, is a critical component of determining the return-on-investment of any marketing campaign. If you cannot attribute user actions to a specific campaign or creative, you cannot track their behavior to understand whether a marketing campaign reengaged any existing users.

In the web world, assigning proper attribution is simple. A user clicks on an advertisement at CNET for a new MacBook laptop, for example. The ad sends the user to BestBuy. The user buys the MacBook. BestBuy knows that user came via a CNET ad and not via an ad on Gizmodo. Attribution is generally achieved in the web world through construction of unique page URLs that reflect the origin of the visitor, or through cookies.

Mobile Industry Takes the Month of August Off as Users and Marketers Show Less Activity (appdevelopermagazine.com)

In its August app index, Fisku is reporting that app users and the mobile industry as a whole were somewhat lethargic as indexes for app activity and app marketing costs were down.

This can bee seen with the Cost Per Loyal User (CPLU) Index, measuring the cost of acquiring a loyal user for brands who actively market their apps, which came in at $1.86, representing a 6 percent decrease from last month’s index. 

Both Android and iOS Cost Per Install (CPI) dropped – down 31 percent month-over-month and 26 percent year-over-year on Android, and on iOS down 5 percent from July, but up 40 percent year-over-year. Fisku attributes this to summer holiday slowdowns, along with anticipation for Apple’s new iPhone 6 and iOS 8.

The Cost Per Launch Index, which tracks engagement and life-time value of mobile users, continued to climb on iOS, up $.23 for a 23 percent increase month-over-month and 49 percent year-over-year. However, Android’s CPL dropped to $.09, down 23 percent month-over-month and 21 percent year-over-year. Fisku explains this is a result of the net effect of the reduction in marketing activity which was most visible on Android, and also presents marketers with great timing for capitalizing on lower costs.

The App Store Competitive Index, which measures aggregate daily download volume among the top 200 ranked apps, dropped 15 percent from July’s 6.2M to 5.3M in August; again showing the impact of the pre- iOS 8 holding pattern.

Read More http://www.fiksu.com/blog/august-index-reflects-slowdowns-impact-iphone-6-launch-app-use-and-marketing-spend

Visuals are indispensable for converting millennial shoppers on mobile: report (mobilecommercedaily.com)

Pictures and visuals are cited by 55 percent of millennials as the element of the mobile shopping experience they would not live without, according to a new report from Instart Logic.

The findings from the firm’s debut “Feet on the Street” report point to how visual information and image quality are an important part of the mobile shopping experience that have a direct impact on shoppers’ research and decisions to purchase. Interestingly, visuals are more important for female millennials, named by 72 percent as essential compared to 50 percent of males.

“The visual experience must be engaging, and delivery of visuals cannot take long,” said Corinna Krueger, head of corporate marketing at Instart Logic. “For instance, the survey found that 55 percent of millennials ‘could not live without’ compelling visuals; this outweighs all other factors.

“Among women, that percentage is considerably higher – 72 percent,” she said. “Men tilt significantly to reliance on product descriptions and reviews, but 50 percent of men put visuals first.”

Browser vs. apps
The company interviewed millennial shoppers at the Union Square shopping destination in San Francisco.

The findings point to the need for strong mobile customer experiences for retailers looking to convert millennials and highlights several key trends retailers should keep in mind when trying to reach these consumers this holiday season.

One key finding is that most millennials prefer browser-based shopping over applications, with 57 percent more inclined to make a mobile purchase within the browser versus 43 percent who favor an app.

The One Kings Lane mobile site

“The majority of millennials vote for browser-based shopping, meaning the retailer’s mobile site,” Ms. Krueger said. “Our survey found that fifty-seven percent of millennials are more inclined to make a mobile purchase within the browser versus 43 percent who favor an app.

“Millennials, despite their collective buying power are price-conscious, they are diligent and swift researchers,” she said. “They search for options.

“To bring traffic in, retailers need to focus first on making the browser experience fast, gratifying and frictionless, because that is where their less committed customers are.”

Speed it up
Speed was also found to be important, with the failure of photos and other visual content to load quickly the most frequently cited reason for abandoning a mobile shopping site.

Approximately one in five millennial mobile shoppers would only wait two seconds for a mobile shopping site to load, and 68 percent would wait no longer than five seconds.

The survey also found that millennial mobile shoppers have two primary wireless shopping areas – home and work as well as on the go.

Home sweet home
Home and work, where Wi-Fi access is dependable, are the favored areas, with two-thirds of millennials preferring to shop from their mobile devices while at home. A small fraction also shops while at work locations.

These findings suggest that retailers need not be overly concerned about showrooming with these consumers.

Among female millennial shoppers, 71 percent are usually at home or work when they shop on a mobile device.

In contrast, 41 percent of millennial men favor mobile shopping while in transit, in a store or waiting on a line compared to just 23 percent of men. On-the-go mobile shopping faces challenges such as unreliable 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi networks.

Optimizing experiences
Another finding is that 38 percent of millennial men said they could not live without product descriptions and reviews compared to just 17percent of women.

For retailers looking to reach millennial shoppers this holiday season, Instart Logic recommends considering shifting investment from app development to optimize faster page loads on mobile sites. Retailers also need to be sure they deliver fast performance along with compelling visuals for shoppers at home, work and on-the-go.

It is not too late to get started on enhancing a content delivery network. Last November, One Kings Lane moved its Web traffic to Instart Logic and saw immediate reductions in page load times and better consistency across all devices.

“Retailers should think about the browser experience now, and aggressively use the next six weeks to test, pilot, and switch to new technology that can ensure faster performance to mobile devices over all types of wireless connections,” Ms. Krueger said.

What Does Native Stand For In Native Advertising (developereconomics.com)

Native advertising is not a recent buzzword.

Native advertising has been around for quite some time in the print and digital world. Keyword-based search ads on a search results page, or an advertorial in a newspaper supplement are examples of such ads. But it’s only in the recent past that we have seen native advertising on mobile phones really take off. Traditionally, mobile advertising was limited to banner and interstitial ads but these ad formats compromised user experience. Native ads are a step-up from traditional ad formats and are designed to offer an in-context experience to the user.

What Makes Advertising Native

For an ad to be native, these are 3 things that matter – content, form and function.

• Content: Does the ad unit have content that resembles the rest of the content on the page or does it stick out like a sore thumb?
• Form: Does an ad become part of the content screen that the user generally takes notice of, or will it be a part of his blind spot?
• Function: Does the ad unit match the functionality of the rest of the content or elements of the app in which it is displayed?

Native ads are deeply integrated into the mobile app. They mimic the look and feel of the content stream in which they are placed. This is completely different from traditional ad formats like banners, which due to their sticky position at the top or bottom of the screen have become a victim of banner blindness.

Consider a news app which has a feed with each news item consisting of a headline and an accompanying thumbnail. The content, form and function framework for native ads will then look like the following:

• Content A native ad in this app should look similar to news feed, which means it should contain a headline and a thumbnail.
• Form The visual elements of the native ad should be the same as that of a news feed. For example, if the thumbnail of every news item has a border, so should the thumbnail of the native ad.
• Function If the news app requires users to scroll for news feed, then any native ad in this news app should also scroll along with the rest of the content.

Native ads sound great, but do they work

While the desktop world boasted of 1 – 2 percent Click-Through Rates (CTR) on native ads, mobile users seem to be more welcoming of this new ad experience. CTRs on native ads are 8X higher than traditional formats and advertisers are seeing 6X higher conversions [source: InMobi network].

According to research by IPG Media, consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than display ads. The study also showed that users visual attention for native ads was nearly equivalent to the visual engagement of original editorial content.

Getting creative with Native Ads

There are a numbers of ways in which publishers can use native ads. The most commonly used ones are the app wall, carousel, chat list, content stream, content wall and news feed.

App wall

Carousel

Chat list

Content stream

Content wall

News Feed

What to look out for while adopting native ads

Native ads are still relatively new to the mobile space and the level of customization offered varies amongst ad networks. Choosing the right ad network is therefore very critical when it comes to using native ads in your app.

Up until recently, native ads were implemented only by publishers with big teams, on a case by case basis with special effort required for every advertiser that they integrated with. The ease of integration offered by an ad network in terms of minimal programming overhead is another aspect to consider when integrating native ads.

Scale is the third thing you should look out for when monetizing your app with native ads. This wasn’t very scalable though. With more ad networks embracing the self-serve model, it is now possible to integrate native ads in your app without significant effort and in a relatively short time.

Focus on the user

The mantra behind native advertising is placing the user’s experience at the center. If not done well, native ads could boomerang on a developer’s monetization efforts. Editorial content and sponsored content (native ads) need to be clearly demarcated. Convention is to mark every native ad unit as an “Ad” or “Sponsored” content to ensure that users aren’t ‘tricked’ into clicking a native ad. As long as publishers and advertisers keep the user’s interests in mind, native advertising is set to transform mobile advertising.

McDonald’s franchisee builds relationships via QR code-enabled daily sweepstakes (mobilecommercedaily.com)

A McDonald’s franchisee in Germany recently drove 10,500 visits and developed mobile relationships with 8,600 customers by enabling users of the Myfavorito app to scan a QR code and spin a virtual lottery wheel for a chance to win daily prizes.

The QR codes are placed at sponsor events, in advertising, on promotional materials, product packaging, flyers, posters and other media. Based on the success of the ongoing effort, it is now moving into the second stage via a partnership with a local football club with both partners running daily sweepstakes offers.

“We wanted to organize a lottery for the Erfurt area, in addition to national marketing, in order to generate more visits in our restaurants and attract new customers,” said Dominik Neiss, CEO of the Erfurt McDonald’s franchise operation.

“Our lottery was to produce thousands of winners and motivate, especially, the young target group, but also families and company employees, to get engaged in our brand and products and to pay us a visit,” he said. “However, we did not want to be a ‘big spender,’ but instead develop something sustainable.

“For example, it was important for us to be able to reach the participants even after the lottery to advertise relevant offers, promote local campaigns and to better link our customers with us.”

Mobile offersThe franchisee partnered with one-to-one marketing platform Myfavorito for the program.

The virtual lottery wheel is filled with a variety of offers, such as free items, dollar off deals and loyalty points, with the odds for winning predetermined by the marketer.

Customers participate by scanning a QR code with the Myfavorito app. The draw takes place automatically and the participants learn immediately on their smartphone if and what they have won, as well as where they can pick up their prize and how long it is valid for

Users must present their smartphone with the winner’s notification in order to redeem their offer.

Whether participants win or not, they can try again the following day by re-scanning the QR code.

The results from the effort, which was launched six months ago, include 8,600 participating customers who participated more than 33,500 times.

In terms of prizes, 16,800 were distributed and more than 10,500 have been redeemed in the restaurants. Of these, 3,800 were smaller instant prizes and 6,700 were loyalty points that were later converted into loyalty bonuses.

Another 21,000 visits were generated by Myfavorito app users who were redeeming standard mobile coupons and collecting regular loyalty points.

Instant gratification
The McDonald’s franchisee was looking for a program that would meet the needs of McDonald’s customers, who, according research conducted by the company, will only participate in sweepstakes if they are simple, if they can see immediately if and what they have won and if it is possible to participate several times.

The franchisee decided to partner with Myfavorito, another Erfurt-based company, which offers a one-to-one marketing platform that includes CRM software, mobile apps, social networking, cloud computing and real-time data analysis.

The main component of the program is the Myfavorito app, which is available for Android and iOS devices. The app enables users to connect with brands, merchants and publishers by adding them to their “favorites” list.

Users maintain their own profiles and are accessible to companies via instant push messages.

The platform also includes mobile coupons.

Restaurant locations are automatically added to a participants favorites following the first scan or redemption of a prize.

“The McDonalds daily lottery on the regional spread was an outstanding success  - nearly 9,000 customers have participated 33,500 times (multiple 3.7) in the lottery so far, they can now be reached directly via push messages and their preferences are known,” said Dirk Schlenzi, CEO of Myfavorito. “[Additionally] 16,800 prizes were distributed automatically to the participants – more than 10,500 prizes have been redeemed in the restaurants, of these, 3,800 were smaller instant prizes and 6,700 loyalty point prizes on which were later converted into loyalty bonuses.”