In last week’s post we looked at the waves Apple’s freshly announced hardware would make in the mobile landscape. This week we want to take a dive into how new trends in mobile marketing have been shaping its growth and potential indications for its future.
By now its no secret that internet traffic from mobile devices is higher than from PCs, with the majority of that traffic coming via mobile apps. Most of us are constantly bound to our smartphones and tablets. We’re always anticipating emails, scrolling through our social media feeds, listening to music, keeping track of our grocery lists, logging our physical activities, playing games - the possibilities are practically endless. It’s as if we’ve grown these kinds of high tech computerized appendages- using our devices for almost everything has become entirely natural and seemingly essential to our daily lives. Any kind of interruption in our day-to-day activities seems like a hinderance, as anyone that has experienced traffic or delays in their morning commute can attest to. It just seems that much more annoying and entirely unnecessary.
Most forms of mobile advertising are just that - pesky nuisances that cause an unwelcome distraction when we’re clearly focused on something else. Fortunately, some brilliant minds have begun to answer our pleas and started to create compromise between the people and the advertisers. Kiip whose tag line is “Mobile Advertising People Like” has come up with an innovative way of utilizing moments in our daily mobile experience to connect us with brands.
Brian Wong, co-founder and CEO of Kiip, first caught on to the idea that a better advertising experience needed to be developed to help celebrate and reward users in their everyday mobile app use. Instead of continuing to create disruptive and unnecessary banner ads for games, Kiip formed a platform to connect brands with mobile app developers to produce gratifying advertising experiences for their users. Mobile gamers began to be rewarded with virtual currency, free samples, special offers, and other relevant items. Since initially starting with games, Kiip has expanded their rewarding advertising experience to other mobile app verticals such as: music, fitness, cooking, productivity, and shopping. By leveraging crucial engagement points in people’s daily app use and the natural human desire to be appreciated and rewarded, a unique and effective form of advertising has emerged.
Other forms of advertising, not specific to native apps, should also be examined for their versatility and performance on mobile. Content, video, and social media marketing have been advantageous for savvy marketers expanding their reach beyond just display rather seamlessly and easily onto mobile devices. These forms of digital marketing are just as, if not more, engaging for mobile users. While measurement capabilities continue to improve, these kinds of advertising opportunities will progress even further on mobile.
Overall the entire mobile web experience is truly beginning to evolve. Publishers are steadily realizing that a responsive website is not enough. Being entirely adaptive on mobile is necessary to engaging users and keeping their attention. Anticipating user desires by deep linking is essential to staying competitive amidst the endless expanse of websites and mobile apps available.
Publishers, brands, and developers finally seem to be catching on to what mobile users need and want. They’re beginning to enhance the mobile experience with clever advertising methods instead of painfully intrusive banners and everyone is all the better for it. The engagement rates with well designed and thought out ads are higher and users are less resentful for having their mobile activities interrupted. People are winning by having better experiences and advertisers are winning with innovative and engaging ways to showcase their brand. With these trends in marketing taking off and new advances in technology, we’re in a fine position to watch the future of mobile advertising unfold.
Which types of mobile ads can you endure? In your opinion, which are the most bothersome?
