National Brands Beginning To Think Local On Mobile

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National brands that do not build effective local mobile ad campaigns will miss a major opportunity to connect with consumers in their neighborhood, Mike Boland, program director for BIA/Kelsey's Mobile Local Media practice, told MediaPost.

BIA/Kelsey's mobile ad revenue forecast suggests local, mobile campaigns will grow from $664 million in 2011 to $5.8 billion in 2016, representing a compound annual growth rate of 54.2%.

While the word "local" typically conjures up images of small businesses, Boland said national brands have begun to see a clear increase in performance for location-based targeted mobile ads. Adoption has been relatively slow until now, but Boland has begun to see signs of change. That change is coming from national advertisers.

As the second-largest mobile ad network, Millennial Media provides statistically significant evidence of mobile local advertising performance. The network reported last year that location targeting in mobile ads rose 53% year-over-year. Similarly, a September 2012 Balihoo survey indicates mobile local ad growth from national advertisers.

xAd, YP, LSN, Telenav, Moasis, and WHERE are other networks that provide insight. Boland said supporting Millennial's data, xAd also shows mobile local display ad click-through rates (CTRs) of 0.72%, compared with 0.1% mobile average, and 8.13% for mobile local search, compared with the 5% mobile average.

While CTRs offer a good form of measurement, Boland said mobile marketers really need to look more closely at what happens after the click because there's a high likelihood an ad can generate a phone call or request for directions.

"We know ads generate user intent, so craft the campaigns to include click-to-call links or an easy way to get directions for those that rely on foot traffic," Boland said. "It provides a tool to measure performance."  

Some 36% of the search clicks measured by xAd resulted in at least one secondary action. Some 58% were phone calls, followed by 36% for directions, and 1% clicking to view more information about a business.

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6 comments on "National Brands Beginning To Think Local On Mobile".

1. Kevin Bullard from ILFUSION Creative
   

   commented on: January 14, 2013 at 9:02 a.m.
   Wow! I think I saw a video a year or two ago saying just this thing...Hmm. Ilfusion
2. Mike White from Urban Shuffle
   

   commented on: January 14, 2013 at 12:43 p.m.
   Could not agree more with local advertising and the impact it can have on brands nationally, especially when location based targeting is considered in the overall strategy. While we have known this for quite some time, mobile has yet to have the adoption rate it deserves by marketers. It has been the "year of mobile" for multiple years in a row now. I think 2013 has a lot in "store" for us. As with any new strategies in technology comes new ways to deploy them. Marketers now have the knowledge and the tools to engage consumers without the learning curve and the high costs of deployment. Let this year be the rise of mobile marketing platforms and cloud based deployment. - Urban Shuffle
3. Geert Audenaert from Mobicage
   

   commented on: January 15, 2013 at 5:17 a.m.
   A nice example of this is Hyundai BeLux that rolls out over a 100 mobile applications for its dealers in Belgium and Luxemburg: http://www.rogerthat.net/2012/10/08/hyundai/
4. Scott Saunders from Internet Marketing Media
   

   commented on: January 15, 2013 at 2:50 p.m.
   Some retailers wait for a marketing application to prove itself. Last year P&G began local branding with mobile applications, this year Avon is doing the same thing. The days of print media as the big dog are declining rapidly. Hopefully Google and Yelp can get their "local" reviews act together this year too. - Internet Marketing Media
5. Faisal Laljee from Telefonica Digital
   

   commented on: January 17, 2013 at 7:29 a.m.
   Assuming these numbers are for the US, it would be useful to get these globally or for other continents.
6. Dan Greenberg from Impossible Software, GmbH
   

   commented on: January 17, 2013 at 12:35 p.m.
   And we can expect ad servers to respond with localizable ads, including video. (We provide the technology to the ad servers to do so.)

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