We cannot foretell the future of mobile advertising. We broke our crystal ball during the office Christmas party. So we did the next best thing. We consulted our company’s mobile advertising experts and asked them what they think the biggest mobile advertising trends for 2013 will be. This is what they said.
1. Stop selling
Users have become too smart to fall for that. It is time to stop equalizing marketing and selling and find a new way of creating relationships with end users.
The answer lies in content. The new era of mobile marketing, content marketing, has already begun to brew in 2012 and will continue to grow in 2013. Content marketing is all about creating quality relationships with end users using quality content. Note the word quality. This is most important, as it is only quality content that will make end users trust you and, when the time comes to buy, choose your products or services.
2. Multi-screening
Create campaigns that will follow users across all platforms – TV, desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile. Research shows that most users no longer use a single platform. We have become a multi-platform society and mobile campaigns must comply with this new trend in order to maintain current and reach new levels of efficiency.
The way to do that is to stay consistent with campaigns that are clear and compelling to end users and funnel them towards the goal, the action you want them to perform.
3. Real time bidding
Outsmart and outbid your competition. This method of selling and buying online ads is starting a new revolution in campaign execution. You can create the most effective campaigns and target users that are more likely to be interested in your products or services.
The technology for this “programmatic buying and selling” has been introduced in 2009 and allows advertisers to advertise on media that really targets their users. They are no longer buying bulk ad impressions, but select individual impressions, creating a tight cooperation between advertisers and publishers.
Basically, advertisers will have complete control of where their ads are placed and at what price. Publishers will have the complete control over the ads displayed on their desktop and mobile internet pages.
4. Mobile coupons
It started last year with Passbook and Windows 8 wallet. Android is yet to create a response to this new trend, but there is now doubt this will happen in no time.
This new trend of gathering and storing mobile coupons on mobile devices is a transition from current mobile payment solutions to a future m-commerce platform that will help create a completely paper money-free society.
Granted, mobile coupons cannot be considered as a mobile payment method, as they are not one. But, seeing that current mobile payment methods still haven’t reach their full potential, and they may not any time soon, the industry needs to come up with a new m-commerce platform. Mobile coupons are not this platform, but they will make mobile users accustomed to use their mobile phone as a part of the purchase process. Of course, that is not their only purpose. We must not forget the customer loyalty aspect and the promotional value of mobile coupons.
5. Responsive design
As the number of affordable (not to say: cheap) smartphone rises, more and more feature phone users will make the transition to smartphones. Those users will be more comfortable browsing the web than using apps, and they will transfer this behaviour to mobile internet. That is why it is important to use responsive design, which allows seamless web browsing experience over all internet connections (landline, mobile) and devices (smartphones, tablets).
6. Mobile ads’ evolution
As everything else evolves, so do mobile ads. And here are the ad formats that will mark 2013: augmented reality ads, HTML5 ads and pre-roll ads.
Augmented reality has already been used in some formidable ads last year. Soon enough they will be a standard, especially in mobile advertising where majority of smartphones support augmented reality. This enables advertisers to create a completely new dimension of ads and increase end-users’ immersion into the ad experience. Greater immersion will create greater ad impact on end users and improve the chances of their reaction/purchase.
HTML5 ads are especially suitable for smartphones. They enable placing several interactive elements into one full screen banner, including video, call 2 action and contact form (just to mention a few).
Pre-roll ads have already been used in 2012, but we see them rolling over many, many video clips by the end of the year. This is one model of native advertising all advertisers strive to achieve.
7. Windows 8
Even though the war for mobile users is currently fought between iOS and Android, Windows 8 is set on entering this battle and becoming a major player. With innovative software and hardware solutions and strong product placement, Windows 8 is not out of the game yet.
These are the predictions. We’ll see by the end of the year how right our predictions were, or if we should have gotten a new crystal ball.