• by Philip Rosenstein , September 27, 2016

Marketers like Anheuser-Busch InBev are having a hard time getting their attribution models right for in-app advertising -- an issue the beverage company's  director of innovation and strategy, Jonny Silberman, discussed with Real-Time Daily Editor Tobi Elkin at MediaPost’s OMMA Programmatic event on Tuesday.

“The mobile environment is cookie-less. As we invest more in programmatic, we are going to focus on mobile, where at the end of the day there is mobile in-app and mobile Web,” continued Silberman. “We are finding most of the inventory in the mobile in-app environment, but that is also where we have the most trouble with measurement.”

A further problem here is merging offline data with data from mobile campaigns -- a big focus for the company since mobile is "where the core of our audience lies,” according to Silberman.

“Take the example of Oculto Lager, a tequila-inspired beer for which we target potential audiences on mobile with a location-based approach,” he said. “On the surface we see metrics, but data on brand health and sales is much harder to realize. We see measurement restrictions for mobile in-app.”

He added, “We send our targeted audiences to particular bars or stores, and we saw a lift there, but the data on actual purchases was harder to measure. That is where I would like to see an advancement in the marketplace.”

Despite the difficulties of measuring the outcomes of mobile in-app advertising, AB InBev is devoting up to 25% of its digital ad dollars to programmatic, with growth expected in the near term.