The days of being limited to mobile text advertising with SMS are over. Today’s statistics show that most users spend more time in apps than browsing or checking texts, and mobile advertising trends are showing a huge increase in the types of advertising currently being done. From using mobile advertising networks to creating mobile video advertising, the new mobile world can seem a bit confusing if you’re not used to it. Keep reading this guide, where we’ve identified the six biggest mobile advertising trends that your business needs to be aware of.
Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #1: Mergers of Mobile Advertising Networks
The explosive growth of mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising has given rise to thousands of relatively small mobile advertising networks. One of the mobile advertising trends you can expect in the next few years is that these companies will start to fuse together.
When mergers begin to pick up steam among these mobile advertising networks, you may have more choices for one stop solutions for mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising. Because mergers can sometimes result in changes to user interfaces, you’ll want to keep on top of any merger or acquisition news that could affect your mobile advertisements.
Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #2: Mobile Video Advertising
Mobile advertising networks weren’t able to fully take advantage of video ads when they first came out. This wasn’t because mobile video advertising didn’t work well, but rather because the capabilities of wireless providers hadn’t yet caught up to mobile advertising trends.
With the proliferation of 3G and 4G networks across the United States, it has become more and more feasible to replace mobile text advertising with video. Mobile video advertising has been shown to be significantly more effective than advertising with text and images alone. These ads now represent one of the biggest mobile advertising trends.
To take advantage of the new mobile video advertising market, you can start by using similar videos to your traditional web ads. Today’s mobile advertising networks may also let you make a video interactive, which can make its conversion rates even higher.
Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #3: Location, Location, Location
As mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising have become more sophisticated, so, too, have the targeting systems from mobile advertising networks. More than any other factor, mobile advertising networks have latched on to geolocation services as the next big mobile advertising trends.
Unlike a traditional laptop or desktop, mobile phones contain GPS technology that can pinpoint exactly where a potential client is at the time when they see your ad. Mobile advertising networks can now target so accurately that it’s possible to make sure your mobile text advertising or mobile video advertising is seen exclusively by people within a few blocks of where you are sitting right now.
Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #4: The End of the Desktop-Ported Mobile Site
If your firm started using mobile text advertising some time ago, you may have simply directed ad viewers to your normal website. Mobile advertising trends show so much traffic being funneled through smartphones that you’d be foolish to continue directing potential clients to a website that isn’t optimized for mobile.
When you use mobile advertising networks, you should also make a mobile optimized website that still contains all the major information from your old website but in a shorter, easier to read format. Then, you can direct all your current mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising to this version of your site instead of the old one.
Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #5: Marketing With Apps
In summer 2010, mobile consumers spent an average of 43 minutes using apps and 64 minutes using the web every day. By December 2011, consumers were spending more time on both activities, but apps had eclipsed browsing: people now spent 94 minutes on apps and 72 minutes browsing the web.
Consumers of mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising are now more likely to be looking at an app than at the web as a whole. What does that mean for mobile advertising trends? Well, for one thing, it means that your firm may want to consider focusing on mobile advertising networks that advertise in apps rather than on the web. These mobile advertising networks are better situated for current trends than web-focused networks are.
It may also be time to consider supplementing your mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising with building your own apps. Mobile advertising networks can help you develop your first app. The interactivity of apps makes people substantially more likely to take further action (like calling your firm) than if you had used traditional mobile text advertising or mobile video advertising.
The kinds of apps you can build are limited only by your imagination. You can make an app that is informative, entertaining, or both. Like great mobile video advertising, a really amazing app also has the potential to go viral, spreading out on the internet even without direct marketing efforts.
Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #6: Better Analytics
So far, it’s been much harder to track the results of mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising than other types of web ads. Why? It’s not because the analytics are actually more difficult, but rather because mobile advertising networks have been slow to build the same kinds of analytics tools that other web advertisers have developed. Now that there’s big money in mobile advertisements, analytics companies have begun to see the potential in developing analytics software exclusively for the mobile market.
As mobile advertising continues to evolve, and especially as networks merge their information and tools, you’ll start to see better analytics leading to better lists of best practices. If you want to stay on top of your mobile ad campaigns, keeping an eye on analytics is crucial. New analytics software may let you perform a number of geotargeted split tests, as well as figure out which landing pages help your conversion rate most.
