Marketers Struggle With Effective Mobile Ads

Despite the fact that spending on digital video ads is expected to nearly triple from $5.2 billion in 2014 to $14.8 billion 2019, with mobile making up an ever-growing share of that growth, marketers still struggle to develop the most effective mobile content.

The average user increased their mobile video viewing time by 36% from 2014-2015, compared to a 3% decrease in TV viewing during the same time period. Additionally, 58% of video ads are now served across device.

Those campaigns that used a hybrid of mobile and PC exposures saw increases in key metrics like brand and ad awareness, and brand favorability. The data comes via a new study by Yahoo in partnership with Nielsen and Hunter Qualitative.

When it comes to mobile devices, making sure that videos are optimized for the orientation of the screen is critical. Brand lift generated from viewing an ad in the appropriate orientation was as high as 80%. Horizontal ads are more effective at generating purchase intent and increasing familiarity.

It would be impossible to talk about mobile video without mentioning millennials.

The study recommends shifting the emotional tone of content depending on the intended outcome: comedic tones familiarized them with the brand, dramatic and emotional ads appeal to them, and informational ads make them more likely to purchase.

Fifteen-second ads were more effective than 30-second ads in native video formats. Auto-start video ads in native environments achieve 51% higher aided recall, 10% higher brand familiarity, and 4% higher affinity.

There are other small steps that brands can take to generate more favorable outcomes from consumers, such as making their logos larger. And, according to the study, it doesn’t matter when a brand is introduced during a video, either visually or verbally—it generates awareness all the same.

7 comments about "Marketers Struggle With Effective Mobile Ads".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics, May 2, 2016 at 10:09 a.m.

    Ben, here are a few added quantitative findings from Nielsen's recently released "Comparable Metrics" report for the fourth quarter of 2015.

    1) During an average week, 73% of all adults use a smartphone an average of about 700 minutes per user. The corresponding stats for TV are 86% and roughly 25,000 minutes per viewer.

    2) Only 46% of smartphone users view one or more videos on their devices per week and, taking just these, they average only 54 minutes doing so over a seven day period.

    In short, one reason why advertisers of the TV branding type---as opposed to others----have been slow to embrace mobile video as an ad platform is the fact that its usage, while increasing at a much faster rate than TV, remains very tiny by comparison. Add to this concerns about mobile audience attention spans, the ways that ads are placed. ad "viewability" issues etc. and you have your answer.

    This is not to say that mobile will not develop as a perfectly viable branding ad medium. But it may have to adapt and deal with some of the problems to do so. Most important, mobile needs to offer much more engaging  content if it expects to increase its video consumption to levels that make advertisers sit up and take notice.

  2. Morris Freeman from Urban Spectrum , May 2, 2016 at 2:12 p.m.

    Televison still has a larger audience, but the TV stats quoted by Ed Papazian can't be right because there are only 10,080 minutes in a week (during average week smartphone average usage is 700 minutes per user... TV is roughly 25,000 minutes per viewer).

  3. Chuck Lantz from 2007ac.com, 2017ac.com network replied, May 2, 2016 at 4:55 p.m.

    Morris: With 2.5 TV sets and a case of Red Bull in the fridge, it could happen.

  4. Leonard Zachary from T___n__, May 2, 2016 at 5:10 p.m.

    Ed the numbers you quote don't work. 60 min times 24 hours times 7 days is 10,080 minutes.

    The recent Google and Facebook numbers also dont reconcile with Ed's analysis.

    Actually Ed's statement that mobile is not engaging is fundamentally flawed.


  5. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 2, 2016 at 5:45 p.m.

    Actually, a correction on my math is needed. However, just to cut to the chase, here is a set of numbers from the same Nielsen report that is more understandable. According to Nielsen, during the fourth quarter of 2015, TV's average minute adult audience was 51,410,234. By comparison, video viewing on PCs accounted for 1,907,092 adults; smartphone videos garnered 242,690 viewers and tablet videos a mere 97,451. If we add up the last three to get a total for digital, it comes to 2,247,233, or only 4.3% of the TV audience. Digital video will have to do a lot, lot better if it is going to challenge TV as the primary medium for most branding campaigns.

  6. Demos Ioannou from DCI Consulting LLC, May 4, 2016 at 10:15 a.m.

    Let's not forget mobile ad blockers.  With up to 50% of millenials using them (AdAge) the efficiency is slashed dramatically.
    I am amazed at how high percentage gains off of tiny base size gets so much attention.

  7. Leonard Zachary from T___n__, May 4, 2016 at 2:52 p.m.

    Ed are you basing all of this on a 40K panel versus real-time aggregated data????

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