Facebook made headlines recently with its announcement of the Audience Network ad platform. This ad platform will act as a third party advertising platform for mobile phones and tablets, similar to Google's AdMob and Apple's iAds platform. The main differentiator with the Audience Network is its ability to use an individual's user information to help serve up the most targeted and contextually relevant ads. Many industry marketers are eager to test Facebook audiences and see if they can boost their mobile marketing return on investment. We analyze three potential ways that this could affect the paid marketing universe.
"Programmatic Buying" Becomes the New Preferred Paid Advertising
Companies like Flurry, and Nexage have been the historical market leaders of the mobile ad platform space and have focused their service offering around it. This has allowed them a head start in terms of user mobile insights and behavior. With the growing shift in mobile use Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook have all made the leap to compete. What this means is a highly saturated and fragmented marketplace. As the competition heats up it may get increasingly difficult to clearly distinguish a preferred platform or single market leader. Mobile marketers will have to have a combined mobile platform approach to really find a perfect mix for their demographics.
Mobile Ad Personalization Causes a Consumer Backlash
While it may seem like the perfect solution ad personalization may in-turn lead many consumers to no longer use or mask their activity on their phones. A growing number of consumers or potential leads are already leery of what they feel is a "big brother" like targeting. With Facebook and Twitter using users personal information to target, and Google reading their users Gmail contents to deliver ads, we are already reaching historically intrusive levels. One backlash strategy would be for consumers to alter their records or create multiple accounts to hinder the ad quality or personalized targeting. This form of targeting could become the 21st century's version of cold calling homes.
Ad Traffic & Conversion Figures May Not Correlate with B2B or B2C Sales
There is no doubt that mobile and tablet application traffic will continue to grow over the coming year. The real question is are these users receptive to advertising when it pops up on their applications. A lot of times users may execute a mobile ad action by mistake or in an attempt to bypass the ad and speed up the delivery time to their application. It may actually be counterproductive for many B2B or B2C companies to advertise with apps as they could harm their brands perception and quality.
What the Future Holds for Mobile Marketing
As the mobile apps ad market continues to grow, users will dictate the best method and balance for these ads. It will take a significant amount of time and market learning for the leading platforms to find the best way to valuably target audiences. In the interim companies should continue to have a strategically guided paid advertising strategy that may include mobile advertising as one component of a greater whole.
Photo credit: Geralt