This is a guest article by Frederic Joseph, COO of S4M.
1. 2016 is set to become a landmark year for establishing mobile viewability as an industry metric.
Mobile campaign success metrics will evolve and become infinitely more transparent. This is great news for advertisers. The Media Rating Council (MRC) will publish its final recommendations on Mobile Viewable Impression Measurement in Q1 2016, which will have a huge effect on the whole industry, forcing all players to dramatically rethink how mobile campaign results are tracked and reported. Transparency in the mobile ecosystem is imperative, and the industry will bring more means of accountability that customers will be demanding.
2. Impressions and clicks will be obsolete for mobile campaign evaluations.
Advertisers will move towards post-click metrics (including post-installs and visits) as a measure of success. With growing awareness that mobile viewability is lacking and mobile clicks are not true measurements of a return on investment, advertisers will demand to see genuine user engagements with owned and earned media, beyond merely impressions and clicks. Partners who are able to measure all post-click actions will be a must-have for brands.
3. Brands will rely on media partners to craft their mobile creatives, making the most of native device functionalities and better integrate cross channel strategies.
Brands are aware that mobile devices require a dedicated marketing strategy, but advertisers are still communicating in traditional ways using banner display ads. In 2016, advertisers will take advantage of mobile-specific capabilities such as “like swipe” functionality, the accelerometer and vibration. Brands will want to deliver a flawless mobile user experience and tell their stories in truly tactile and immersive ways. Furthermore, the arrival of the iPhone 7 and the increasing adoption rate of wearables such as smartwatches will further stress the need for seamless cross-channel integration.
4. The industry will seek out specialists.
In the last couple of years, the trend has been to consolidate all areas of online marketing expertise across different channels (including social, mobile, desktop and display advertising), resulting in brands using one or two major partners for a “one size fits all” approach. However, as brands look to maximise their impact in each of these channels, there will be a shift towards using dedicated specialists to better optimise each channel.
5. App consolidation.
Customers will continue to spend more time in mobile apps than in mobile browsers, and marketers will shift their attentions accordingly. They will also spend longer periods on their favourite apps rather than switching quickly between a plethora of downloads. Brands will need to follow their users as they switch between applications and their browser, and marketers’ attentions will shift towards apps over browsers due to ad-blocking technology.
6. Time spent on mobile will surpass that spent on all other digital screens: the impact for commerce will be significant.
2016 will see mobile overtake all other singular forms on media consumption*.
With 51.5% of our media consumption taking place via digital this coming year*, mobile is set to take the lion’s share of attention with 28.6% of our time spent on mobile devices. Whether using mobile devices at home or on-the-go, the impact in 2016 will be sizeable for commerce. 42% of consumers researching goods via mobile are likely to buy within the hour, and one in five are looking for a specific address suggesting conversion will take place in store**.
Brands will be able to further understand their customers’ purchasing decisions based on location, and real time insights used correctly will allow marketers to better allocate budgets with a much higher degree of precision.
* Source: eMarketer
** Source: xAd’s 2015 UK Mobile Path to Purchase report
By Frederic Joseph
Frederic Joseph is the COO of S4M. S4M is a performance advertising platform for mobile. It includes two offering; FUSIO by S4M – an analytics tool that uses an algorithm to predict, serve, measure, optimise and deliver mobile ad campaigns in real time, and YANCO by S4M – the performance advertising platform which uses the power of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to identify potential customers in real time. Find out more here.