The Smartphone in Your Hand, a Tiny Device at Glance, Holds Major Significance in Terms of Marketing. How? MTS Got the Experts to Answer That Question

‘The Most Significant Gap in Mobile Today Is the Performance Marketing Category’

Michael Jaconi – CEO, Button: In the marketing tech world, I still think that mobile is a tremendously underserved category. As the gap between time and money spent on mobile continues to close, I believe we’ll see transactional revenue streams emerge as more and more important than the traditional advertising models we’ve been used to. I think the natural progression is for advertisers to move to a more CPA-oriented mindset, as this typically yields the highest measurable ROI for brands.

You’re seeing this trend already with companies like Yelp acquiring Eat24, Facebook introducing the monetization of places, The New York Times acquiring WireCutter, TripAdvisor’s efforts with Instant Booking, and the story about Buzzfeed’s commerce-specific team.

If you want to look at the breakdown of channels in desktop and try to compare those to mobile, you’ll quickly recognize that the most significant gap in mobile today is the performance marketing category. Over time, we believe this will actually surpass the 20% seen in the desktop because of the transactional nature of the mobile device. There is a marketing mix that exists in the desktop that will be fully replicated in mobile. If you break that down it looks like this:

• Search: 32%
• Email: 18%
• Organic: 15%
• Display/Advertising: 15%
• Performance Marketing: 20%

‘Seamlessly Integrating Content with Advertising Can Have Measurable Engagement Benefits to the Mobile Consumer Journey’

Adrian Velthuis – Chief Revenue Officer, Mobile Posse: Increasingly, marketers need to identify how to take advantage of the highly popular content discovery arena before consumers disappear into the vortex of the dominant players. Simply put, “How can I reach the consumer first, BEFORE I let Google or Facebook control their buying journey for me?”

If you look at companies like Outbrain and Taboola, they, like Mobile Posse, have recognized that seamlessly integrating content with advertising can have measurable engagement benefits to the mobile consumer journey. By reaching customers organically – through the native smartphone experience – and presenting interesting, contextual content, advertisers can take advantage of consumer behavior and the data insights that come with it.

‘Phones Will Continue to Grow in Importance’

Adam Fingerman – Co-founder and CEO, ArcTouch: We’re now spending more time on our phones than on our computers, and it’s safe to say that our phones are at arm’s length when not being used. The intimate relationship created by the ubiquity and mobility of smartphones have made them incredibly valuable for brands working to engage more deeply with customers. Because of this, phones will continue to grow in importance, with wearables, home assistants like Alexa and Google Home, and other connected devices to follow as among the most valuable, personal ways for brands to connect with consumers.

We’re in the midst of a big shift when it comes to applications. Apps that used to live in silos on mobile phones are fast becoming the center of experiences that transcend platforms. Mobile voice assistants like Siri and the Google Assistant are pulling information from apps (if the apps support them, which they should) to give people glanceable information at the moment they need it. Messaging platforms like Facebook’s Messenger, Kik and Slack have AI driven bots that serve as brand concierges, and offer up a slice of information then usher people to deeper, more engaging experiences through deep linking to apps and the web. As Forrester recently put it, marketers and product strategists need to consider an “App+” strategy to engage more deeply with their customers — you need to get out of that tool mindset and consider experiences that span across mediums.

‘By 2020 There Will Be Some Sort of Clearinghouse for Mobile Browser Fingerprinting’

Daniel Meehan – Founder and CEO, PadSquad: The digital market has some interesting challenges to figure out when it comes to measuring audiences in a mobile-first world. The app space allows for IDFA targeting, better attribution, and high viewability, but for the vast majority of ad inventory, there is utility based and in gaming.
Mobile web is restricted based on browser settings, and lack of 3P cookies in Safari, but offers audiences that are typically in consumption mode engaging with content. My sense is that by 2020 there will be some sort of clearinghouse for mobile browser fingerprinting that can be matched to mobile IDFA to develop an industry standard so that data targeting and measurement can be more robust and accurate across devices, browsers, etc. This will lead to more intelligent benchmarks for marketers, and not the hodge-podge of third-parties that exist today, all only telling parts of the measurement story.

Recommended Read: 4 Questions Every Marketer Should be Asking about Device Graphs