By Zephrin Lasker
Feb. 17, 2011
Smartphone adoption rates have greatly increased the use of mobile apps. According to Morgan Stanley, Internet mobile adoption rates are ramping up faster than desktop Internet did, and the number of smartphone users is increasing exponentially. To date, over 3 billion apps have been downloaded from the iTunes store alone. An iPhone user downloads an average of 40 apps. Android users are not too far behind at an average of 25 app downloads per mobile device.
All of the above have led to mobile quickly becoming a “must buy” for advertisers. It’s no wonder that eMarketer projects mobile ad spending in the U.S. will surpass $1 billion in 2011. But just what is the most important lesson for an online marketer looking to deploy a mobile campaign? The first step is to evolve beyond the click.
A large portion of mobile advertising solutions today are patterned after click-based online display banners. But click-based ad units don’t create user-friendly experiences on mobile devices because they force users out of apps and direct them to a clunky mobile browser.
Steve Jobs recognized this problem when launching Apple’s mobile platform, iAds. "Today when you click on a banner ad, it yanks you out of your app and throws you onto the advertiser’s web page. So people don't click on the ads,” he said at the 2010 iOS conference.
Mobile ads that force people out of an app offer a sub-optimal user experience. For this reason, the last year or so has seen the rise of in-app advertising solutions. The in-app mobile advertising market will rocket to $8 billion by 2015, according to Borrell Associates.
Today, there are primarily two types of in-app ad mobile app advertising solutions. The first kind focuses on delivering a TV commercial-like experience. Apple iAds, which delivers a branded experience in mobile app environments, is an example of this kind of ad. iAds offers a deep branding experience at the moment of engagement. Brands such as AT&T, BMW, Campbell, Dove and Nissan have used Apple iADs to engage consumers within mobile apps on the Apple iTunes store.
The second half of 2010 saw the launch of a new kind of in-app advertising – mobile signup ads. Mobile signup ads work by presenting users with a simple sign-up form where they can opt in to receive email communications from brands that they want to hear from. The advertiser then engages the user with branding messages after the initial touch point – via email, Facebook or Twitter. Major brands like the ASPCA, Tommy Hilfiger, TigerDirect and many others are using signup advertising to deliver relevant deals and information to their prospect base. Marketers can run ads across top apps on both the Apple and Android platforms.
In-app mobile advertising may very well be what marketers need in order to finally kick the click. Both iAds and mobile signup ads will allow marketers to measure mobile ad campaigns using more meaningful metrics than the abstract click-through. With iADs, marketers can measure brand engagement metrics and with signup ads, they can measure the number of people that have signed up, the quality of people that have signed up and how they respond over a lifetime via email or Facebook. In both cases, the marketer gets a more meaningful view of the campaign and how consumers perceive their brand.
The jury is out on whether online advertising that relied on clicks works in the online advertising world. But one thing is for sure. The click-reliant model will definitely not work in a mobile world.
Zephrin Lasker is CEO and co-founder of Pontiflex Inc., a leading email and social acquisition platform. He has been involved with online marketing since its inception more than a decade ago. He can be reached at www.pontiflex.com.