The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Germany Announces the Addition of Leading Companies to Its Board Including Verve and Walldecaux

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Germany recently announced the addition of leading companies to its board including Verve, a leading location-based mobile marketing platform that connects advertisers with consumers to deliver successful business outcomes, and WallDecaux, outdoor advertising giant and part of the JCDecaux Group, the largest Out-of-home (OOH) advertising corporation in the world.

Tapping the expertise of its new and existing board members and member companies, which now includes Adjust, adsquare, AppsFlyer, Facebook, Google, SAP XM, Smaato, Snap Inc., Telefónica NEXT, Unilever and upday, Europe’s number one personalized news aggregator mobile app for Samsung smartphones, the MMA Germany also takes the wraps off an exclusive list of top trends and opportunities sure to have a huge impact on mobile and marketing in the year ahead.

Also Read: Mobile Marketing Association On Expansion Course In Germany

Leading Companies Reveal 2018 Top Trends and Opportunities

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising will deliver results off the charts

Andreas Knorr, Marketing Director, WallDecaux: As the last true mass media Out-of-home doesn’t just deliver impressive performance; it has great synergy with mobile, activating mobile consumers and encouraging engagement outdoors. This year will see this combination reach new heights as outdoor mobile activities and campaigns gain traction. In fact, the WallDecaux mobile activity index reveals mobile outdoor activities in Germany alone increased by nearly one-third in 2017, delivering a 65% boost and showing no other medium activates or engages consumers more than Out-of-home.

Vertical video and new storytelling approaches will have the edge

Andreas Rau, Head of Media Agencies – DACH, Facebook: Mobile is more than just a device, it’s fundamentally different from other channels and marks a massive change in consumer behavior. Consumers already watch millions of hours of video on their smartphones, and more than 100 million hours per day on Facebook alone. As this trend will surely continue more marketers will start to draw the right conclusions and create campaigns specifically for mobile featuring mobile video tailored to the fast mobile experience using new ways of storytelling with short length and vertically optimized formats. Better impact and results of these mobile campaigns will prove the approach is right.

Also Read: 3 Reasons Why Data Storytelling Will Be A Top Marketing Trend of 2018

Dynamic creatives will be critical at new stages in the funnel

Arne Kirchem, Head of Media – DACH, Unilever: Consumers are moving more to mobile media, and marketers must follow them. Expect mobile to take on a new role of importance in upper-funnel campaigns and activities aimed at boosting branding and awareness. The advance and success of mobile will be enabled by dynamic creatives and approaches that correspond to the consumer’s mindset and ‘need-state’ every stage on the consumer journey.

The capability to fight fraud successfully will become a key competitive advantage

Ben Jeger, Managing Director – DACH & Nordics, AppsFlyer: As mobile advertising spending continues to grow, bad actors are following the money and mobile fraud is becoming more advanced and pervasive. Despite the increase in resources dedicated to mobile, 70% of marketers have acknowledged, in a recent survey conducted by Forrester and commissioned by AppsFlyer, that at least 20% of their budgets are exposed to fraud. Therefore, 2018 will mark the year when marketers will invest heavily in the know-how and tools to fight fraud successfully.

Also Read: Technology and Transparency: The Growing Horizon of AI, Cybersecurity, Blockchain and the Battle Against Ad Fraud

Make way for the rise of ‘Deterministic Data’

Daniel Rieber, VP Marketing, adsquare: In the age of people-based marketing, advertisers want to target consumers based on accurate data. For this reason, the first-party data of app publishers, telcos and other companies who thrive from their direct relationship to consumers will become even more important in 2018. The introduction of GDPR will boost this shift, putting companies with first-party data in a better position based on their ability to seek and secure consumer opt-ins for data usage.

Also Read: Data in the New Year: 5 Steps for Success in Business Processes in 2018

Prepare for the massive impact of Machine Learning (ML)

Dominik Woeber, Head of Performance Sales, Central Europe – Google Germany: This will be the year of Assistance and Machine Learning. With more voice-enabled devices like Google Home, the Assistant platform is a key focus area. We strongly believe that Machine Learning will have a positive impact on several industries, and we’ve been leveraging Machine Learning for many of our consumer products including Google Photos and Google Assistant. Machine Learning also plays a vital role in our advertising products such as Smart Bidding and Google Attribution.

Also Read: Google’s Cloud Machine Learning family adds more APIs

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)will put consumers in more control

Jens Lappoehn, Managing Director, Telefónica NEXT: We will finally see a rebalance of mobile advertising in the direction of the consumer and end-user. The outcome will be more transparency in our ecosystem, paving the way for more specific targeting and fewer broad, generic campaigns, and providing consumers rewards for sharing data they deem appropriate.

Mobile fraudsters continue to increase; so marketers need to adapt

Niko Thielsch, Head of Sales – DACH, Adjust: Fraud continues to be more aggressive and innovative, forcing marketers to watch out for advanced fraud schemes like click injections, a new and more sophisticated form of click-spamming poised to have a massive impact on the industry.”

Also Read: Tencent Social Ads Platform Names Adjust a Certified Ads Measurement Partner

Marked increase in personalized news and information on all platforms

Peter Würtenberger, CEO, upday by Samsung: News will be fully customized—both to the user’s personal interests and the context of how they consume content. This will be a significant boost to the user experience and the effectiveness of marketing, an outcome supported by surveys that show that personalization can improve customer relationships and engagement by more than 90%. Expect to see this rise even further as increased use of voice and text-to-speech technology removes the friction, empowering people to consume their favorite news brands and content whenever wherever and however they want.

Transparency will top the 2018 business agenda for advertisers and publishers

Ragnar Kruse, CEO and Co-Founder, Smaato: Increased consumer data transparency—driven by GDPR coming from Europe—will become an important theme for the industry in 2018. Cutting out fraud, transparency and increasing accountability will continue to be key priorities for mobile advertisers and publishers alike as the industry’s responsible leaders work together to create and ensure common quality and accountability standards for the continued health and growth of programmatic advertising.

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