• by Christian Henschel , October 17, 2014

According to eMarketer reports in June 2014, mobile will experience the biggest increase in total media ad spending across the US, representing 10% of all media ad spending by end of year, surpassing newspapers, magazines and radio for the first time.

As mobile has firmly carved out its place in the marketing industry, advertisers are weaving together more complex cross-channel campaigns via email, online, social media and more, making “integrated marketing” the new norm. Likewise, mobile app publishers are testing cross-channel campaigns, experimenting with more traditional broadcast media, such as TV to surprising outcomes.

Measuring marketing effectiveness is essential for all marketing disciplines, and mobile marketing no less. The key three questions that any mobile publisher asks: Where do I get my most valuable users? Once they are in the app, what do they do? How is my app performing in the different app stores?

To answer these questions, publishers need access to attribution and post-install analytics. Yet, providing this data for mobile apps is much more challenging than in the online environment, where cookies are able to track users across different sites.

Tracking attribution across cross-channel campaigns poses additional technical challenges, and TV advertising attribution is particularly difficult among a mix of other mediums. Cross-industry partnerships are essential in getting the different technologies to “talk” with one another – and the conversations are just starting to happen.

With the new tools recently made available and good industry partnerships, tracking TV campaigns is now possible. It’s key for publishers to access real-time data that can link spikes in organic installs to ad timing. TV tracking has previously existed in various forms – from Nielsen ratings to similar tools for the Web – but not with the same user focus now possible.

From travel apps and food delivery service apps to financial tech services and mobile banking apps, publishers across a variety of verticals are now beginning to access real-time data and trackable results from TV advertising. For example, the travel app ‘GetYourGuide’ recently ran a TV ad campaign targeted to consumers in Germany, resulting in thousands of tracked installs captured within a five-minute window at the time of the TV spot, which shot the app up in the Apple App Store from Global Rank position 71,664 to 2,063.

Real-time data is enabling publishers to track data across channels like never before, and truly enabling growth in the TV sector for mobile app publishers. 

What will the near future bring? As technology advances rapidly in the mobile sphere, we’ll see more tailored, optimized content delivered in real-time on broadcast mediums. Partnerships and collaborations will become more essential than ever to ensure compatible technology, providing publishers with enriched data so they can make the best financial and marketing decisions.

In just a matter of months, we expect that TV ad tracking connected with app download numbers will shift to attribution, linking actual users with TV as the advertising source. That will enable app publishers to compare the lifetime value of their TV-sourced users with all other advertising sources from different campaign channels such as a Twitter, Facebook, email and even paid search.

Given the recent advancements in campaign tracking and real-time data, publishers can approach this new sector with more confidence in their data. The future is bright for mobile, and broadcast media poses an interesting new growth sector for mobile app publishers.