Commentary

Don't Short-Sell App Engagement -- Or Video

I’m with Greg Stuart. It might surprise you that I agree with the Mobile Marketing Association CEO in his pointed criticism of negative influences that still haunt mobile marketing. He made these criticisms in mid-November at the Mobile Marketing Conference in L.A., saying that technology had not yet evolved enough to support the best consumer experience on mobile devices.

I’m in this business of mobile advertising. From my point of view, banner advertising on  mobile networks or within a mobile app does not fulfill the promise of this media. It clutters the user experience for an app and has terrible click through rates, most of which are caused by accidental clicks. That lacks value for an advertiser. We can do better to support the customer experience and advertiser value.

We are on the edge of a transformational change in mobile advertising.  Coming from a history of 20 years in brand management, I’ve seen a range of ad units in my career, but nothing compares to the effectiveness of video.  The key, however, is how to present the video in an environment that is relevant, and present it to a user who is open and willing to receive that message.

I believe video is a big part of the answer. Mobile marketers need a video format that delivers dynamic advertising in largely free apps where consumers are open to receiving ad messages. But we’re behind the curve. To illustrate how far behind the industry is with mobile video, I recently got an email from a prominent industry trade association for their mobile conference (not the MMA), and it included a video asset that took more than three minutes to load and buffer on my phone, before it actually froze. It was even more ironic that this marketing asset came from an industry association touting their insights for an upcoming mobile conference.

Another area that causes a poor user experience in mobile is “offer walls”.  Even though some powerful forces have worked to limit these web pages, they persist.  While providing good revenues in the short term to publishers, for advertisers, they can be deceptive.  Advertisers who are trying to find scale in mobile are attracted to it, but when you look at the user experience, we have found that they generally attract a consumer who’s looking to get something for free and are less valuable consumers to the advertiser in the long term.

Our research has found that users are 15-26x more likely to come back to an app, engage and monetize vs. leading “offer walls.” The main reasons: The right audience was served with access to the most relevant app, the video itself tells the story of the app in a way that no other medium can, and we are not incentivizing the click to download. Therefore the user experience is pure -- and advertisers are only getting engagement from users who are truly interested and engaged with their product.

Offer walls persist because some app developers believe they promote affiliate offers, drive leads and increase app distribution. All of this is true to some extent. But as consumers continue to be more sophisticated about their mobile experience, the long-term cost of using offer walls must be equally weighed.

The best way to promote and advertise mobile apps is by getting them in front of the right audience. Offer walls may claim to do that, but high quality mobile video ad networks will be more specific and in the end drive the best engagement. Unless you’re in the mobile business for the short term, there’s no other way to play it.

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