• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, March 2, 2015

Getting the right message to the right user at the right time and place has become the hackneyed motto of digital advertising. Perhaps it sounds so shrill and even tiresome precisely because it is not being done very often or well. At best, most campaigns and brand communications I experience as a consumer are lucky to get one of the four parameters right.

But even if you can’t get to a consumer at precisely the time and place that is most effective for a purchase decision, there is something to be said about targeting just the right time of day. The "when" parameter cuts more than one way.

The mobile agency Fetch (Dentsu Aegis) has aggregated data from campaigns across 100 global markets, using millions of data points to understand how day and time impact ad responsiveness in mobile apps. Fetch found that while overall mobile usage peaks at midday and in the evening hours, ad responsiveness is much higher at around 11 a.m. and noon than it is during the highly active TV prime-time segment. (Fetch defines “ad responsiveness” as a user taking some action on an ad, either an app install or a page view).

While ad responsiveness varies across product categories, it does seem that a spike occurs starting at around 11 a.m. in our willingness to engage with the ads we see. That is in some ways counterintuitive, since we presume that people in the midst of their workday are least likely to want to be distracted from whatever task brought them to their phone.

It is also interesting to note that ad responsiveness surges again in late afternoon, peaking at around 4, and nearly to the same levels as at 11. It's actually during the more-leisurely evening hours that Fetch finds us much less likely to engage with ads on our phones. And once we get into the early morning hours, while mobile usage remain surprisingly high, ad interaction craters. We are online but can’t be bothered with pitches, apparently.

Of course you could see some sense to these patterns. A lot may rely on what kinds of apps we tend to use at different points in the day -- and also, the modes we're in. These metrics also do vary by category.

But Fetch also found that user engagement or value indexes much higher in the 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.  day part. These are the consumers who prove to be of highest value to advertisers, according to whatever engagement goal they have.  

As Fetch itself notes in the report, there is a telling irony to these numbers. People seem most willing to engage with ads and be taken off-track from their original task during their work hours, rather than during their off hours. Interestingly, even evening hour mobile users convert much higher on weekdays than they do in the same daypart on weekends.

It seems clear that there are overall mindsets at play here for most of us during certain times of the day and week. But our willingness to be distracted most during just those hours when our productivity presumably is highest probably explains a lot. Now we just need to see a breakdown of when and where games of TriviaCrack and Clash of Clans are played most.