Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of smartphone users worldwide use their device every at least once every 30 minutes, according to an IAB report published today (June 13), with ad recall on such devices registered at 86% on mobile web, and 90% in-app.

The findings were released in the trade body study entitled ‘Always On – A Global Perspective of Mobile Consumer Experience’, which surveyed users across the globe and found that over a fifth (22%) tap into their phones every five minutes.

Respondents came from North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa with the majority of them reporting that they access the internet via mobile web and mobile apps at least once a day (mobile web – 88% and mobile apps – 84%).

Meanwhile, awareness of advertising on both mobile web and on mobile apps was high among respondents, with nearly half claiming they took action after seeing ads on such devices, with the two platforms performing similarly in generating consumer response (45% on mobile web and 47% on mobile apps)....

Mobile marketing's awesome potential in 2017 is reinforced with reports like this one: research firm BIA/Kelsey predicts that US mobile-ad spend will exceed $40 billion -- and the industry can expect that number to pass $65 billion by 2020. 

Last year, mobile digital ad-spend fueled mobile-side growth on a path to outpace desktop ad-spend. Meanwhile, smartphones and tablet devices account for 51.3% of Internet use. By year's end, 75% of online content consumption will be mobile, media buying agency Zenith forecast late last year.

Numbers like these tell the story: for mobile marketing, a moment of transformation is at hand.This transformation will bring with it the following five trends -- changing how brands and marketers work with each other, with technology and with consumers....

Our industry faces a well-known duopoly, with Facebook and Google commanding an ever-increasing share of digital ad spend, both in the U.S. and globally. I recently dug into the data and forecasts available, to better quantify (for my own benefit and hopefully yours!) just how much Facebook and Google are eating digital.

Global ad spend, across all channels (digital, TV, print, radio, outdoor, etc.) is growing annually on average by 5.6 percent from 2015 to 2020, and will reach $674 Billion from $513 Billion in 2015.

The U.S. market will represent 35 percent of the global ad market, reaching $234 Billion by 2020 with a slightly slower growth rate compared to the global average, at 5.0 percent from 2015 to 2020. This is expected as rapidly developing markets in the East and a growing middle class represent new markets on which advertisers can focus.

45% Of U.S. Ad Spend Will Be Digital
33 percent of ad spend in the U.S. was digital last year and that is expected to reach 45 percent by 2020. In real numbers, that’s a $60-billion market growing to $105-billion, with a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.9 percent.

The growth of digital is more than 2 times higher than the growth of the overall ad market, which represents a tremendous opportunity for digital businesses. More people are accessing content online and more advertisers are spending their budgets online. Will the rising tide lift all ships?...

Mobile search is essential. In fact, according to Forrester’s Mobile Audience Data, Q4 2015, 87% of US smartphone owners rely on browser-based search on mobile devices. And the data reveals that Google’s search engine is the most common path to a mobile site even for well-known brands such as Amazon, Walmart and Kmart.

As a top discovery resource, companies can’t afford to wait any longer to implement a mobile-first search strategies. The biggest seen mistake today? Either lacking a strategy completely, or treating mobile search the same way as desktop search. As Forrester Research’s Dr. James McQuivey says, “When businesses first adopt a technology, they do old things in new ways. When they internalize a technology, they begin to do new things.” 

Consumers use mobile phones very differently than they use desktop computers. So must Marketers.

Forrester conducted an in-depth analysis of how consumers use Google search on mobile versus desktop devices to parse-out how consumers use the two devices differently. Today, Forrester finds that consumers purchase a range of categories on their smartphones: insurance, travel, financial services products, and even pet food. For this research we focused on the travel category because consumers are so likely to research and book travel on mobile devices – Forrester’s Mobile Audience Online Survey, Q4 2015 reveals that 29% of mobile users have purchased hotel rooms and 22% an airline ticket on their smartphone....

There's more evidence to support the growing importance of mobile devices along the path to purchase.

According to Nielsen's fourth-quarter 2015 Mobile Wallet Report, 37 percent of respondents said their purchases start with mobile shopping more than one-quarter to half of the time.

The report compares mobile use from the fourth quarter of 2015 to the same period the year before. It found that shoppers are using mobile devices, particularly smartphones, to assist with in-store sales more frequently than for online shopping.

Roughly 72 percent are researching an item or checking prices on a smartphone before buying. Store locators are popular with 60 percent of smartphone users, and 55 percent are using mobile coupons.

Reviews are popular with slightly more than half of all mobile device users and 44 percent of smartphone users use digital lists while shopping....

Dive Brief:

•  Kitewheel took stock of more than one billion brand and customer interactions on its platform, which revealed that marketers are in fact taking advantage of omnichannel campaigns.
• Social media led the way in interactions at 48%, while mobile apps were the fastest growing channel for interactions, and email (23%) is up 270% year-over-year.
• Even though social media accounted for the most interactions, the research also found that 70% of marketers are still using the channel for broadcast messaging rather than more tailored and targeted campaigns....

The latest example of this deals with mobile coupons. It turns out that consumers who lean on mobile coupons for food shopping – and that’s a lot of people – often change brands for the sake of variety, according to a new study.

The majority of consumers don’t use mobile coupons, but a third (33%) do. And that’s where the behavioral change potential resides.

Nearly half (44%) of mobile coupon users like to change brands often for the sake of variety and novelty, according to the study conducted by GfK. The survey comprised a look at 6,500 products in about 600 categories....

Philipp Schindler was Google's ad chief for years, but few would know it. Having hailed from Germany, Schindler spent a good portion of his 11 years at Google running its European business before quietly ascending to global chief business officer 13 months ago. Now, for the first time in this role, he sat down with Adweek as he prepares to take the stage on Monday to address the industry at Advertising Week.

Schindler predicts his three favorite "revolutions"—mobile, video and programmatic—will be so common that by 2020 "we will actually look back and laugh that we called them revolutions."
Per Google, two-thirds of smartphone users say they turn to their devices to learn about a product or service after seeing a television commercial.

With that in mind, the 45-year-old exec and his team will unveil to the Advertising Week audience a platform that allows brands to see how YouTube ads compare to TV spots for smartphone searches. Google data will show how its YouTube videos outperform linear TV by two times. "We're the prime time for the mobile world," Schindler proclaimed....

Mobile applications are responsible for 80 percent of digital growth and while they take up a massive chunk of all time spent on mobile, a report from comScore suggests that app marketers will have to work harder to cut through to the consumers they want to reach.

According to the report, mobile represents two out of every three minutes spent on digital media in the U.S. If brands and marketers want to capture that huge amount of time consumers spend on mobile devices, they will have a lot to compete with....

Mobile video ads are poised for massive growth in the next five years.

Revenues from these ads will grow from $3.54 billion in 2015 to $13.3 billion in 2020, which marks a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), according to PwC's annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report.

This means that mobile video ads will be the fastest-growing digital ad segment in the next five years. They will easily surpass desktop Internet video ad revenues, which are expected to grow at a 19% CAGR through 2020.

Furthermore, revenues from mobile ads are set to surpass revenues from desktop video ads this year, with $5.6 billion for mobile and $5.1 billion for desktop, according to the report....