• by Eric Korsh , October 9, 2014

Alright, already.  I know that mobile video is the next big thing.  I get it.  The volume of mobile video consumption and the rate of growth make the hockey stick look like a plateau. There are virtually no digital video networks with mobile usage lower than 30%, and some upwards of 70%. So why isn’t anyone doing anything really cool or transformative with it?

Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, and BuzzFeed drive significant mobile video consumption, but that does not necessarily translate into an obvious brand mobile marketing plan. Current ad sizes on screens are absurd, ads are intrusive, clicks are accidental, etc.

We have a mobile video conundrum: Consumers are increasingly mobile yet marketers are struggling to capitalize on it. But solutions can be found if we can align these three things:

1) Native advertising. Today, the feed is the new portal – and native is the art of producing relevant content that will appear in-stream. At its worst, it’s outright fakery, but at best it delivers consumer value without disruption.  For mobile, where most usage is app-based, it’s critical to be aligned with the user interest - and native content is designed for that purpose.  However, native content also necessarily self-defines as niche, which contrasts with:

2) New media buying.  Media buyers require video scale, and they’re achieving that, in part, through cross-screen and programmatic buying. 

With cross-screen buying, marketers are working to purchase the right video audience on any screen in a channel-agnostic way. This is partly a vestige of the role that TV, formerly the only video option on the planet, used to play in messaging. But it’s also because brands can’t be doing thousands of small transactions. 

Programmatic buying allows brands to purchase targeted media at scale at low cost and high efficiency.  This is useful because in digital, scale often requires long-tail or network partners.

3) Personalization . Mobile’s true differentiation from an advertising perspective is its targeting capability. We share other devices with one another, but smartphones are different.  They are uniquely marked to individuals.  Even as smart and connected TVs make advances through apps and tech, they are not (yet) marking individuals.

Equally important is the general consumer expectation that our feed make sense for us as individuals.  This is true for content, purchase recommendations from Amazon -- and, yes, advertisements from brands.

CONUNDRUM CITY

The problem is that there are too many areas of conflict here.  For example, personalization and native require high-touch, custom content, yet new media buying requires automation and simplicity.  While programmatic lets marketers create scale without large publishers, it doesn’t serve native content well. Cross-screen flies in the face of relevance and context, unless you’re affixed to a particular piece of content. But then you’re flying in the face of user experience or utility, repurposing the same ad everywhere. 

Since mobile’s value is primarily in targeting, we need to turn our attention away from mobile delivery at scale and toward the inherent creative changes we might implement based on data. And targeting must move beyond the where and include the when, and the why: a complete contextual picture.  We cannot mistake targeting for an insight.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

We need to understand and leverage the difference between shared mobile experiences and individual mobile events.  A shared experience might include a breaking news moment, a live or even linear TV event, or a concert.  An individual event is something just for you: a how-to video, a financial transaction, a message from a friend. These are entirely different experiences.

Once we better understand that, then we can start to determine what might be custom (native or personalized) and what might be automated.  This eliminates the notion of reaching segments with a single message, and puts us in the mindset of the consumer.  Doing so will help us understand what apps we might work with, and will force brands to be useful and intuitive instead of repurposed and blind.  Then we can begin to capitalize on mobile use. But for now – it’s back to the accidentally clicked, Intel chip-sized banner ad.