For marketers and advertisers, mobile has ushered in a new way of connecting directly to the consumer. Since mobile devices can both send and receive information about the owner directly to and from the device, advertisers have reached the holy grail of being able to track and market to the target demographic at the right time and right place.
However, one of the challenges with contextual mobile devices is that it is common practice to get users’ consent before collecting, tracking and delivering a contextual ad to the end user. Furthermore, once consent is gained, what kinds of ad strategies are effective for what kinds of users? How is your strategy affected by users in different global regions?
No better place to investigate this question than at the Mobile World Congress this week, in Barcelona. The premier industry event drawing around 90,000 people, MWC is a true global mashup of mobile-related apps and services. This includes companies that are focused on mobile advertising, marketing and real-time experiences. I spoke with several of these organisations and learned that when it comes to contextual marketing, you’ve got to really understand how much target audiences can vary from region to region.
I caught up with Xavier Buyse, CEO of Adsmedia, a mobile advertising company whose platform leverages a variety of “opt-in” data sources - from location, to carrier data, to information from social media to deliver highly targeted ads to mobile device users. “Opting in is extremely important,” he told me when discussing the need to get consumers’ approval to push ads to their devices. “But the approval rate varies greatly from region to region.”
In Brazil, the opt-in rate is extremely high. Telefonica, one of the major mobile carriers in Brazil has a user base of 89m, and an impressive 50m mobile device owners opt in to have ads sent directly to them on their device, he told me. However, for Telefonica in Europe, only about 20% of users opt in. The social and economic differences play a major factor in the first step of directly reaching the consumer.
In addition to the disparity in opt-in rates between global regions, there is also a significant difference in the frequency of offers pushed to end users. “In Brazil you can push five offers a week, while in Spain if you push more than one a week you will upset users,” Buyse explained. “Social behavior of the region heavily influences individual behavior for targeted ads.”
This creates a system that not only learns the behaviours of an individual user, but as a social region as a whole. “The system is a learning node for social behavior, Buyse notes, “because of this advertisers pay more for the ability to gain insight and access to such a highly targeted user base”.
But just because a user opts in, doesn’t mean they are going to automatically interact with your ad. Not all ads work in all situations. Once you understand social behaviour for opting in, you need to further understand what kind of ads work best. I spoke extensively with Heiko Genzlinger, CEO of Trademob, another mobile marketing platform that specialises in re-targeting the right ad to the right person.
Genzlinger told me that “there is a major difference in click rates between banner ads and native ads in mobile”. For users who have been inundated with banner ads for many years, they’ve seen that the introduction of native ads produce a three to 10 times improvement in click rates. They spend a lot of time educating their clients on the types of ads they should produce based on the data they’ve been able to collect on their platform. “When the user experience is not aggressive, the user is much more comfortable in clicking on purpose,” Genzlinger said.
When it comes to contextual marketing, you need not only data scientists, but social psychologists as well. You have to look at group dynamics as much as you try and look at individual dynamics. You have to look at what types of ads are effective for the type of user you are targeting. Contextual marketing is a dynamic, constant tuning endeavour. It takes effort, analysis and understanding. You have to understand that your target demographic may behave differently in summer than winter; while at work vs while on vacation. If done wrong it can spell disaster for brands. Do it well and you have a direct link to the few people that actually matter: your consumer.
Benjamin Robbins is co-founder at Palador, a mobile consultancy located in Seattle, WA. He can be found on Twitter @PaladorBenjamin.
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