“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column is written by Chris O’Hara, co-founder and chief revenue officer at Bionic Advertising Systems.
Mobile is truly the biggest opportunity in advertising right now. Sorry, but nothing else even comes close.
Not only are mobile devices nearing ubiquity – research shows they’re owned by more than nine out of 10 earthlings – smartphones are nearing ubiquity in the developed world, too, with 56% penetration. People are on mobile all the time, and more than half of them use the mobile device as the primary way they access the Internet. At 1.8 hours a day, media consumption on mobile devices now surpasses both television (1.5 hours) and desktop (1.6 hours). If marketers would match their investment in mobile advertising, now at just 4% of media budgets, with the amount of time we spend there – 20% of our time – a lot of people would make a lot of money.
Not only is mobile the fastest-growing, most exciting place to be in advertising right now, it’s where the hugest opportunities are. Did you know that 44% of Fortune 100 companies don’t have a mobile-optimized website? That is insane.
Mobile is now first among equals when it comes to marketing channels, and every advertiser should think that way when they start putting their plans together for 2015.
Everything Has Already Changed Forever
Procter and Gamble loves to talk about “the moment of truth,” which is when a consumer stands in front of a store shelf and chooses between two products. Why did they buy Tide detergent instead of Surf? There are a lot of emotional connections between brands and people, whether you are buying soap or making a decision on your next high-ticket item, like a dishwasher. Although brands still need to make an emotional connection, there is an entirely new dynamic driving the many different “moments of truth” we have every day.
Today, we also have what Google calls the “zero moment of truth,” or the fact that every consumer with a smartphone can find out when they are standing in front of that shelf every good and bad thing ever written about a product. So, as a marketer, how do you handle that every one of your customers has the acquired knowledge of the universe in their hands at all times? They can get all the reviews, see all the coupons and deals, and ask their friends before making a decision. That’s going to keep us all busy for years to come in ad tech.
Stop Saying ‘Funnel’
Mobile killed the sales funnel. Somehow, over the last year or so, the AIDA funnel died a quiet death after 116 years. The idea of driving potential customers through a process of “attention, interest, desire and action” has been replaced with something we now call the “customer journey” – a circuitous route, where marketers must be in control, or quickly able to react to, all kinds of touchpoints.
If that sounds confusing, you are not alone. Most marketers struggle with the sheer data expertise needed to create and build sequential messages that follow a consumer from television to tablet to smartphone as they learn more about brands or products. In 2014, the customer journey is mostly handled through retargeting on as many devices as possible, but the lack of a universal ID makes telling a good story across screens pretty tough.
If you want to be able to do that as a marketer, or help marketers do that on your audience as a publisher, then it’s all about the data.
The Tom Cruise Thing
At every mobile conference, someone usually shows a slide with Tom Cruise from “Minority Report.” In the 2002 movie – released more than a decade ago! – we saw future Tom walking by interactive DOOH billboards for Lexus and the Gap, receiving all kinds of personalized offers after being retina scanned. Everything in that movie now exists, including facial identification, in-store beacons, real-time creative delivery, geolocation, RFID and personalization.
We are living in a “Minority Report” world, and sooner or later, we are going to figure out how to put all of the pieces together at scale. Was that a mobile ad that Tom Cruise saw, or will we be calling it something else? Does it matter?
Follow Chris O’Hara (@chrisohara) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.
