Marketers know that consumers shift devices throughout the day, engaging with their brands by visiting a website, watching a video, downloading an app, making a purchase or completing any other conversion event (Ferrario, 2015). Most of that activities could be completed on a mobile phone. The world is now evaded by the smart phones, then why not using mobile advertising?

1. Mobile advertising’s trend:

According to a recent report from IAB and Ovum (2015), most marketers now consider their firm as either very experienced (21%) or somewhat experienced (45%) in mobile advertising. However, the number of marketers are in early phase of their mobile advertising, with 22% still inexperienced and 14% just starting out.

On the other hand, mobile advertising spending in the US jumped 76% to $12.5bn last year, overtaking display ads to become second-largest online ad format (IAB, 2015). What makes mobile advertising becomes so popular is because of the number of phone users and the hour people spend on mobile increasing every day. US adults spent more time on mobile phone than they did on the PCs for the first time last year, with the gap of 30 minutes each day (Bond, 2015), which proves the power of mobile phones in modern life. As a result, marketers who are ignoring mobile advertising or hesitating to use mobile marketing should start thinking about using it.

2. Effectiveness of mobile advertising:

Although mobile advertising is growing everyday, its effectiveness is sometimes may not as good as what marketers expect. According to Ovum (2015), 5% of marketers said they were satisfied with their mobile advertising activities why 37% said they were only “fairly satified” with the result of their mobile advertising.

The reason of mobile advertising may not be as good as what marketers expected may be because of different factors such as no one sees your advertising, mobile advetising having different outlook compared to advertising on PCs or simply mobile users does not click on the advertisement. Of course, getting an ad in front of a target doesn’t guarantee interaction, and the majority of mobile device users had not clicked on an advertisement in the month leading up to polling.

Then, what marketers should do to make sure their mobile advertisement is effective?

3. Mobile Advertsing – Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s:

• Do know your customer and plan mobile accordingly: Knowing customer target and having the right tools to reach them will save company’s money and time while increase overall effectiveness. As a result, it is important for marketers to know who their target audience is, to figure out who they are trying to reach and how to reach them (Kats, 2012)
• Do keep it simple: Mobile provides less space to advertise the products so that it is important to make sure the mobile advertisement is as simple as possible. However, simple does not means plain. Marketers should draw consumer attention by simple but succinct message (Bash, 2014)
• Do make sure that your advertisement repeat appearing in a limited time: Repetiton and time pressure influenced effectiveness of mobile advertisement (Rau et al., 2014). It is better to send mobile advertisement in a low pressure context and send less than 3 mobile advertisement to a consumer each day to have the best effect (ibid).

Don’ts:

• Don’t follow the mobile trend that have nothing to do with your campaign: Trends aren’t always a good guideposts. Company should not follow the trends but to focus on what works best for them (Kats, 2012)
• Don’t use the same ads on different devices: Mobile, tablet and PCs does not have the same outlook. If you put you tablet ads on your mobile phones, chances are the ads will look to big and not visually appealing to consumers (Bash, 2014)
• Don’t give the customers too many choices: Again, marketers must keeps their campaign as simple as possible. It is fundamental that marketers know what their objectives are and go from there (Kat, 2012)

In conclusion, mobile advertising is a trend at the moment. Everyone is hyped about it but marketers should keep in mind that although it is a trend, a trend may not always be effective without putting time and effort to perfect it.

References:

Bash, T. (2014). Mobile Marketing Dos and Don’ts. [online] eMarketing & Commerce (eM+C). Available at: http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/article/mobile-marketing-dos-donts/2 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Bond, S. (2015). Digital is reshaping the world of advertising. Financial Times. [online] Available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60b8747e-bc1f-11e4-a6d7-00144feab7de.html#axzz3YcW1BVwF [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Emarketer.com, (2015). Ever Wonder Why Consumers Don’t Click on Mobile Ads? – eMarketer. [online] Available at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Ever-Wonder-Why-Consumers-Dont-Click-on-Mobile-Ads/1011110 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Ferrario, B. (2015). Brands Celebrate Cross-Device Choice Beyond Facebook, Google. [online] Adage.com. Available at: http://adage.com/article/drawbridge/cross-device-expands-facebook-google/298273/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

IAB, and PWC, (2015). IAB internet advertising revenue report. [online] Available at: http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_Internet_Advertising_Revenue_FY_2014.pdf [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Kats, R. (2014). Top do’s and don’ts of mobile marketing – Mobile Marketer – Strategy. [online] Mobilemarketer.com. Available at: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/strategy/13367.html [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Marketer perceptions of mobile advertising. (2015). 3rd ed. [ebook] Ovum. Available at: http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_Marketer_Perceptions_2015_Final.pdf [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Rau, P., Zhou, J., Chen, D. and Lu, T. (2014). The influence of repetition and time pressure on effectiveness of mobile advertising messages. Telematics and Informatics, [online] 31(3), pp.463-476. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0736585313000634 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].