Crisp Voices Blog

Dealing with Fragmentation in Mobile Advertising

23 Aug 2010 - Tom Foran

The digital agency 360i recently came out with a new report titled “Mobile Marketing and the Challenges that Lie Ahead” (embedded below), which spells out, pretty accurately, the challenges facing mobile advertisers. I’d specifically like to address the Fragmentation issue.

Back in the day, big brands were worried about creating a mobile presence for the thousands of handsets, browsers, and operating systems that abounded in mobile. In more recent times, these same brands have been focused on just one device – the iPhone – and mostly building an app, or for some, a mobile site for that device. With the growth of Android, the introduction of the iPad, and the growing number of smartphones accessing standard online content (see Xavier’s post for more on this,) fragmentation is again an issue.

According to 360i:

“Fragmentation will be one of the more persistent mobile marketing challenges. Which devices and operating systems are used by your target customer base? How does your audience divide their time across various mobile channels? How can you find them across a jumbled array of publishers and ad networks? How do you develop enough creative units that work across all the devices included in the media plan?”

Sounds like a bit of a roadblock, right? Not necessarily – here is where Crisp comes in. Crisp’s ad formats work not just across mobile platforms – like iPhone, Android, and iPad – but also across channels including mobile applications, mobile optimized websites, and standard Internet sites. Using our ad components, you can create ads like full screen expandables with hotspots, tap to video, tap to find location, and more that will run across all these channels. We’ve partnered with over 700 premium and local sites and apps to pre-certify these ad formats--so rolling these out across the entire media buy is seamless.

360i also pointed out the challenge of monitoring data from yet another stream. We help out here too. Crisp can provide a holistic view of the entire campaign – across sites and apps. And I’m not just talking about click-thru rates (CTR). Everyone knows that if you are serious about mobile advertising, you need to measure ROI not just by CTR but through interaction and engagement. Our rich media engagement metrics include Panel Interaction Rates, Display/Dwell Time, Video Plays and Completion Rates, and more.

I believe that the entire mobile industry will benefit when there is less fragmentation and when one creative can run across the entire set of sites and apps in the media plan. That is the problem we are solving. One creative + one set of reports= more satisfied agencies and advertisers and ultimately in larger repeat buys.

So don’t let the challenges in mobile advertising impede your campaigns. Talk to our experts to see how rich media vendors like Crisp have solved these problems, and we’ll provide some tips on some of the other challenges 360i points out too.

360i Report:

Mobile Marketing & the Challenges that Lie Ahead

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Metrics Matter: Brand Advertisers Need to Go Beyond the Click

7 Jun 2010 - Tom Foran

Mobile advertising is highly effective, but measuring that effectiveness has been far too difficult. The reasons are well documented: multiple devices, online reports don’t translate to mobile, what you can measure technically varies from online given different forms of interaction (e.g. no mouseover), lack of standard definitions, etc.

In Phase 1 of Mobile Advertising (pre-2010), this lack of post-click analytics was fine; ringtone and other direct response advertisers simply wanted to sell product and could care less about engaging the user. But brand advertisers demand more – they want to know detailed information about how their campaigns perform well after the click (or tap).

It was good to see Kathryn Koegel call out Steve Jobs in Ad Age for talking about CTR (click-thru rate) as the way to measure iAd effectiveness. As she points out, "just admit it's a DR (direct response) business based on gaming and not some kind of brand engagement play as his ad examples showed. We all know about the fallacy of clicks as a pure measure of ad impact."

Crisp tracks metrics that matter to brands, and does so across platforms and devices. It’s probably the most important thing we do – delivering a unified report to enable agencies to measure their campaign’s effectiveness and optimize on the fly. Once dominated by performance ads, more and more mobile sites and apps now feature ads from Fortune 500 marketers. These top brands realize the importance of reaching their target audience on the most personal of devices. And now that they can track interactions like display time and video plays or incorporate games and surveys into mobile ads, they are hooked.

Emotion and magic are great for press events, but that’s not why brands are flocking to mobile. It’s all about the metrics.

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What Does Apple Blocking In-App Location Ads Mean for Mobile Advertising?

21 Feb 2010 - Tom Foran

Apple made it official, announcing they will reject any app that "uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location."

While not surprising, it should not discourage marketers looking to use location-based ads. Crisp delivers 100% opt-in location advertising for mobile web and apps (yes, including iPhone apps!)

Looking to target iPhone users to drive them to your nearest retail location? With Crisp's location-aware ad units, it's a snap. Want to allow Blackberry users to input their zip code into an ad unit to get directed to the nearest theater? No problem. Crisp delivers location-based ads across a wide array of publisher sites and apps.

How does it work? In each instance, the user provides their consent to allow the ad unit to utilize their location.

Example Campaign:

Location based mobile ad campaign example
If you are an advertiser looking to leverage location targeting, contact us at sales@crispwireless.com.