Tips for Optimizing Mobile Advertising This Holiday Season
Black Friday has been known as the beginning of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. for more than 65 years. In 2005, the first Cyber Monday took place, and in 2017 we’ll see more shopping on smartphones and tablets than desktop during the holiday season for the first time, according to a study from Adobe.
Needless to say, the importance of effective mobile strategies in retail cannot be overstated. Retailers need to leverage mobile to seamlessly blend online and in-store sales. With the holiday season coming to a close, mobile advertising still presents a huge opportunity for retailers to attract, engage and reward customers.
Considering the increase in mobile shopping, it seems logical for retailers to spend more money on mobile advertising during this time of the year. Here are a few ways for retailers to spend smartly for an optimal return on investment.
Drive Repeated Actions Through Mobile In-App Remarketing
Mobile in-app remarketing helps brands to connect with shoppers who have already shown an interest in a product or service. It’s cost effective, can provide meaningful impact, and has a proven ROI, in part because you’re focusing on people who have already begun their journey down the marketing funnel. Retailers can apply in-app remarketing to retarget users based on their last activity (e.g., adding an item to their cart, adding an item to their wish list, a product page view, etc.), or cross-sell and/or upsell users who have already made a purchase.
Most recently, one of the largest brick-and-mortar retailers, with a prominent digital and mobile presence in the U.S., wanted to drive transactions through its mobile app. The retailer used dynamic ads with deep links to remarket to consumers who had browsed products on its app. The results were incredible:
- 25 percent higher return on ad spend compared to retailer expectations;
- two time higher clickthrough rates delivered through dynamic creative optimization; and
- two time higher clickthrough rates through showcasing products across different categories compared to single-category creatives.
Location Data and Advertising Work Together During the Holidays
Location-based mobile targeting isn't just a tool for geofencing; it can help brands target specific audiences based on the behavior, interests and demographics of mobile consumers. Mobile location-based tools allow marketers to do the following:
- Discover where customers live, work and play, providing a rich user profile to target and nurture consumers. Location data is the “cookie” that unlocks places holiday shoppers visit in the real world.
- Use key demographics to find potential customers who will more likely take advantage of holiday promotions based on their income, ethnicity, age and life stage.
- Retarget key audiences with an affinity for specific brands or retailers based on the places they visit.
Engage Holiday Shoppers With Mobile Video
To maximize the effectiveness and cost efficiency of holiday campaigns, advertisers should consider using mobile video. It’s proven that consumers respond and interact much better to video ads and give their undivided attention to mobile video at twice the rate they do for TV. Research from MediaShift showed 76 percent of consumers between the age of 18-29 watch videos on their smartphones, while 46 percent of the 30-49 crowd does the same. Total ad spend on video is anticipated to surpass $13 billion in 2017, and will increase to more than $22 billion by 2021.
Great Time to Jump on the Mobile Programmatic Bandwagon
Mobile programmatic advertising offers marketers an opportunity to take precise, accurate targeting to the next level by reaching the right audiences at higher volumes, without sacrificing quality. While the trend began with standard display, marketers can now automate advertising across social media, mobile, video and TV.
This holiday season, brands and retailers should build a comprehensive mobile strategy that includes retargeting, location data, programmatic and mobile video. Mobile video can provide added impact during the holidays as the medium can increase performance and engagement, which can be compounded even further by adding a layer of interactivity.
Martin Berman is vice president of North America, remarketing, for InMobi, a provider of contextual and personalized ad experiences on mobile devices.
