The popularity of smartphones has been shown to be on the rise since the introduction of the iPhone all the way back in 2007 – this evolution from its predecessors allowed consumers to play around with a plethora of additional features, such as streamlined web browsing, a touchscreen for easier control and even app stores to provide users with even more options to entertain themselves. The r efinement of these features has led to smartphones becoming a staple product in many people’s lives – research carried out by Statista shows that in 2015 there were around 1.86 billion smartphone users worldwide.

The rapid growth in the smartphone market meant businesses had to adapt their practices if they wanted to have an edge over their competitors. Nowadays, there are many different types of mobile ads, such as banner and native ads. Smartphone web browsing has also meant that businesses have to code their websites in such a way that the browsing experience will be enjoyable on both the PC and the smartphone. However, this doesn’t mean that older forms of mobile advertising are irrelevant – SMS ads are still prevalent.

An example of a banner ad

An example of a native ad

In considering what forms of mobile advertising to use, businesses have to consider the many advantages and disadvantages of their methods.

One of the biggest advantages of mobile advertising is the fact that there is a very high likelihood that consumers will actually read or view the ad itself. Ads sent in the form of SMS are more likely to be read on the simple basis that they come in the form a direct message to the consumer. The interface of smartphones also allows for easy access to SMS, in comparison to e-mail. Whilst an e-mail may just gather dust in someone’s inbox, a text message is often immediately opened and read. Some mobile platforms also don’t show the name of the sender, meaning the user often doesn’t know who sent them the message until they open it. The effectiveness of SMS is further supported by the fact that they have an open rate of 98%, in comparison to the 22% of e-mails. However, SMS advertisements also run the risk of being seen as spam messages and can negatively affect the business’ reputation. As such, a certain level of care should be taken when using this form of advertising – too many SMS ads sent can eventually irritate users, and to this end consent is one factor business’ must consider. Consent has been shown to be important in decreasing the level of customer irritation (Selda Ene, 2015), meaning it is especially important that businesses only send SMS ads to users who have expressed interest, as well as having an opt-out option to provide them with an easy way to stop the messages before their irritation turns into annoyance at their brand as a whole.

An example of SMS advertising

Mobile advertising can also make effective use of the data it collects. In conjunction with social media platforms such as Facebook or Youtube, they can essentially customise their ads to each user. This ensures that users will at least have some level of interest in the ads they are shown, increasing the likelihood of a click. Mobile platforms also offer an additional advantage in that due to mobile data, business have access to a user’s location and can hence further tailor their ads for the users. For example, users in London would see banner and native ads for services provided in London while people in Brighton would see services found in Brighton.

It has also been found in a study that the public perception of mobile perception is in fact fairly neutral, rather than negative (Tri Dinh Le, 2014). Although users did not have any particularly positive emotions when encountering ads, it was widely agreed that these ads helped them to collect information on products they were interested in. Another interesting finding was that the factors of Credibility and Entertainment held more weight on their attitude than Informativeness and Irritation. The significant of Credibility suggests that businesses should look towards being honest in their ads rather than exaggerating their claims – many users simply did not believe them and ignored them if they did. The factor of entertainment also suggests that something that is eye-catching or interesting is simply more effective in mobile advertising, rather than bombarding the user with information.

In essence, it is clear that mobile advertising plays a large role and likely will continue to in a business’ success. However, these businesses should also be careful in their methods – they should take care not be too intrusive, and in order to maximise the effectiveness of their advertising they should focus specifically on and take advantage of the unique aspects of a mobile platform – the fact that it is highly personalised and likely always going to be on with their user.

References

Ene, S and Özkaya, B, 2015. The Role of Mobile Advertising on Consumers’ Purchase Decisions: A Research on Consumer Attitudes towards Mobile Advertising. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science. Vol 5 No.1, p235 -248

Le, T.D and Nguyen, B.T.H 2014. Attitudes toward Mobile Advertising: A study of mobile web display and mobile app display advertising. Asian Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, 87–103

In the modern age it is clear that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have become some of the most popular networks on the internet, the key example being Facebook with over 1,870 million active users . The rise of social media can largely be attributed to its characteristics that differentiate itself from other websites, these being their ability to allow for the opportunity to communicate with others over the internet and in effect allow them to form groups with other like-minded people. Social media platforms that operate on a more personal level such as Facebook or WhatsApp also allow one to keep in contact with friends and family, regardless of where they are in the World.

The ability to communicate on social media creates a new avenue of exposure for businesses, such as through the ‘Share’ button on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter – These forms of electronic word of mouth essentially provide businesses the opportunity to receive a high level of exposure, allowing them to reach a wide number of potential customers, simply through viewing their content that was posted by others.

However, despite this it is clear that these advantages can only exist if the business themselves have already established themselves in the industry. A brand new start-up would not gain popularity from simply starting a Facebook page! As a result, in order to reap the benefits of social media to its fullest extent a business must first make itself known to its target market. For physical businesses such as restaurants or retailers, this could be done on-site: for example, on the restaurant’s menu or providing access to Wi-Fi only when the customer has ‘Liked’ their Facebook page.

For online businesses however, they will have to rely on methods other than simply a Facebook page or Instagram account in order to attract consumers. One such method is the use of influencers. A recent example of the usage of such influencers can be seen from the developers of the mobile game ‘Shadowverse’, known as ‘Cygames’, a game developer based in Japan. Here, they reached out to multiple streamers on Twitch.tv, and in particular one known as ‘Kripparian’ in order to promote their game. To those who don’t know, Twitch.tv is a live streaming website in which users can stream whatever they are doing on their computer to others viewing their channel. As of January 2015, Twitch had more than 1.5 million broadcasters and 100 million visitors per month. 

On Twitch, Kripparian was a streamer of ‘Hearthstone’, one of the most popular games on Twitch,  and who himself had over 900,000 followers and over 150,000,000 overall views on his channel. In addition to this, he also runs a Youtube channel with over 882,000 subscribers in which he uploads clips from his stream. In this study (Yung-Ming Li, 2011), it is established that there are numerous factors involved in determining the strength of an influencer, such as the “Review Rating” and “Popular Author” approaches. In the present scenario, Cygames’ may have decided to use Kripparian as an influencer due to a multitude of factors that they could have examined, such as the average number of views per video, the like/dislike ratio, his frequency in posting content and the channel’s growth rate in terms of subscribers. Some additional points of interest are also found in this article, namely the category of ‘Authenticity’. Cygames’ may have looked into things other than simply his Twitch and Youtube stats, such as his character, personality, his opinion on ‘Hearthstone’ and in what regard his viewers hold his opinion.

Cygames’ decision to use Kripparian and other Hearthstone streamers allowed them to penetrate the niche market they wanted to: Western players who had interest in online collectible card games. The success of their decision is reflected to some extent from the growth of the Shadowverse subreddit: a webpage in which the game itself is discussed. A notable influx can be seen on the dates of August 31^st and October 28^th. August 31^st was when Kripparian posted his first video relating to Shadowverse and October 28^th was when another video was posted about the additional content that was added to the game as well as when Cygames released the game on the Steam platform, expanding the game to PC users as well.

All in all, Cygames’ endeavor into the western market can be seen to be a success. At present, they hold an average of 5,000 – 6,000 players on Steam, and over 500 thousand downloads on the Google Play store. In addition, they appear to have recognised Kripparian as a strong influencer – As of today, he has been sponsored to post seven videos in total.

References

Li, Y.M., Lai, C.Y. and Chen, C.W., 2011. Discovering influencers for marketing in the blogosphere. Information Sciences, 181(23), pp.5143-5157

In 2014 a broadcasting service known as SKY based in New Zealand were faced with a challenge: How could they boost their number of subscribers with the upcoming fourth season of ‘Game of Thrones’? The issue surrounding this was that the majority of people who were interested or were fans of the series had already subscribed, meaning SKY had to somehow appeal to those in the population who had already written off Game of Thrones as a series that was simply ‘not for them’. To this end, SKY appointed the advertising group DDB in order to come up with a solution. In the end DDB managed to reach 43 million people in 168 countries.

How did they manage to accomplish this feat? Firstly, DDB decided that appealing to existing fans would be the correct choice. Appealing directly to people who weren’t interested in Game of Thrones would have been challenging seeing as they had already written the series off. On the other hand, by appealing to existing fans they could hopefuly spur them into talking about it consistently, and attract their friends and others to the show through simple word of mouth. DDB then carried out research using Brandwatch Analytics to find out which themes of the show were the most popular within New Zealand. They identified this to be King Joffrey – He was the character who instigated the most discussion, and who had the most emotional impact amongst the show’s viewers. DDB then erected a statue of King Joffrey with a winch and a rope around his neck in Aotea square. With every tweet of #bringdowntheking the winch would turn and tihgten the rope. This incited online responses from fans, and DDB used this opportunity to further engage them through intelligent use of Brandwatch. They identified the participants with the most followers and gifted them with special flairs, and for regions with less participation such as Brazil and France they contacted the local communities and sparked further interest surrounding the statue.

Through the success enjoyed by DDB and SKY, it is clear that integrating both the real world and the internet into advertising stunts can have a huge impact on the public. The nature of the internet and social applications such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat allows for events such as this to quickly spark in to a huge, worldwide, phenomena. This event also shows the importance of utilising data properly through software such as Brandwatch …interrupted by Asher

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