Guest comment: An intimate mobile future- understanding the smartphone audience

New research from SAY Media highlights new levels of trust and dependency between consumers and their mobiles. Paps Shaikh, Commercial Director, SAY Media looks why context and environment are key factors to consider when planning any mobile strategy.

The relationship between consumers and their mobile devices is still one that is not completely understood. Statistics prove that our ever closer intimacy with this technology ranges from the sublime to ridiculous – while most people would admit to being one in four people who take their phone to bed, are you going to own up to being one in seven who takes it into the bathroom?
Recent research released by SAY Media in partnership with ComScore found that 65% of respondents feel anxious when they leave the house without their phone, reflecting a growing dependence on these untethered devices. This reliance on mobile provides new ways for brands to engage consumers wherever they are. But the real indicator of just how close we’ve become to our mobiles, whatever their brand or device type, lies in how we choose and interact with the content it serves us.
This is why it’s all the more important for advertisers to understand exactly what works, and what doesn’t in mobile marketing. What’s interesting is that the obstacle to better mobile advertising (and more of it) isn’t an absence of ideas or capabilities; the mobile marketing ecosystem just needs to command greater attention within brand owners’ budgets: “The UK sales teams generally work very hard for their budget,” says Mark Halliday, Head of Mobile at Manning Gottlieb. “It’s still quite early days in mobile versus alternative media channels and it seems the whole industry is trying to do whatever it takes to encourage spend from an eclectic range of advertisers.”
Halliday is keen to praise the new generation of ‘engaging and enchanting’ mobile advertising. “I’m incredibly excited about the proliferation of mobile rich media formats,” he says. “It’s no longer a rarity to see and experience an ad that you would actually want to spend time with. Mobiles and tablets are acting as gateways to additional content and doing it in increasingly creative ways.”
But it isn’t just the devices that got better – although that has played a major part in the channel’s growth. A powerful handheld device is only a good marketing opportunity if it carries engaging, well-constructed and carefully designed content.
When it comes to the nuts and bolts of what works, SAY’s study evaluated data from more than 100 recent campaigns in order to understand which elements make them most effective. The full results can be viewed here but three of the most interesting findings for advertisers are as follows:
• Mobile ads get consumers into the marketing funnel faster with three to five times higher click-to-site rates than the same campaigns online.
• Features such as product carousels, mapping, and “lookbooks” saw click-to-site rates three times as high as similar mobile ads without these interactive elements.
• The inclusion of video in mobile ads increased time spent: for auto ads we saw a 28% increase in average time spent (compared to those without video) and for technology ads, there was a 32% increase in time spent.
This validates the belief that mobile marketers now need to be thinking in terms of “content first.” Advertisers can experiment with gimmicks like geo-tagging and augmented reality until the cows come home, but what really underpins a successful mobile ad campaign is compelling, relevant content.
When it comes to mobile, content isn’t just about what’s happening on screen or the choices and interactions available to the viewer. By their very definition, and as demonstrated by the bathroom statistic, mobile screens can be viewed anywhere, and this is something advertisers need to be aware of, according to Stuart Miles, journalist and founder of mobile technology website Pocket-Lint.com.
“One of the biggest mistakes that advertisers and content producers make is failing to understand the environment where that content is going to be accessed,” explains Miles. “The problem isn’t just about screen size, it’s about understanding where the person is supposed to be accessing that content, app or ad, and avoid the user fumbling and flustering through the experience.”
Miles’ view is shared by Paul Berney, Chief Marketing Officer and EMEA Managing Director of the Mobile Marketing Association. “Some advertisers still fail to consider the different mentalities and behaviour that consumers bring to the mobile channel. Some people think that all they need to do is replicate on mobile something they’ve done on another channel, and it will work, but of course we consumer data and information differently on our mobiles.”
So as the screens and the content they display become more sophisticated, marketers now need to think a lot more about user context and environment in a way that they haven’t had to before. As more research, like the recent findings from SAY, helps to increase our understanding of the intimate relationship between handset and user, marketers need to think outside the handset.
By Paps Shaikh
Commercial Director
SAY Media
www.saymedia.com
Discover more about the changing mobile landscape in an exclusive series of short films featuring Stuart Miles and Paul Berney below;