In the last couple of years, mobile and social have been the biggest buzzwords in digital marketing, generating a disruption in the market like no other. It is only natural then that when we combine the two, we're creating a mighty marketing force. But why does the match between mobile and social work so well for advertisers? Let's break it down:
1) It's where [almost all] the users are
This is probably not news to you, but almost everyone is on social these days. The latest figures show a whopping 2 billion monthly active users across the globe, with more than half of these on Facebook. According to GlobalWebIndex, 28 percent of the time we spend online is on social.
Big as it is in digital, it's even more dominant when it comes to mobile, as social networking now generates more than 70% of its activity on mobile, growing 55% in the past year, comScore says. The mobile social leap is seen across the board: on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, to name just a few.
2) It's where the most engaged users are
Other than its big numbers, social users on mobile are also top quality. They're highly engaged which is best reflected in the amount of sharing they do. In fact, mobile users share twice as often as desktop users across platforms. When broken down, Pinterest leads the way with 75% of pins on mobile, followed by Twitter with 71% of tweets coming from mobile devices, while Facebook's percentage of mobile sharing is lower at about 50%.Facebook also differs from Pinterest and Twitter in engagement by operating system: Android users are more active on Facebook, whereas iOS users are more active on Pinterest and Twitter
3) It's where advertising simply works
Being an engaged mobile user on social networks also applies to sharing and engaging with sponsored items, be it posts, tweets, pins, images, etc. Overall, mobile social ads boast click-through-rates of 1.37%, which is much higher than the average 0.35% for the traditional mobile banner ad.
When we look at data from specific social networks, we see that Facebook's mobile ads have a 187% higher click-through-rate than desktop news feed ads and a 22% lower cost-per-click, one-third of Pinterest users click on sponsored posts at least weekly (across platforms but mostly mobile in practice as a whopping 80% of Pinterest traffic comes from mobile), whereas promoted tweets boast a CTR of 1-3%.It's no wonder then that advertisers are flocking to mobile social networks. If we examine their massive ad revenues and compare desktop and mobile share, mobile dominates Facebook revenue with 73% while on Twitter mobile's cut is no less than 89
4) It's where high quality users can be acquired, at scale
The best indication on the quality of social users surfaces as we move down the funnel, beyond the click and beyond the install. Specifically, I'm talking about the retention of acquired app users over time.
As you all probably know from your own experiences, the number of apps we keep coming back to day in and day out can be counted on one hand. According to Nielsen, the average smartphone app downloader has around 42 apps on his or her device. However, of 3,743 users who had downloaded an application to their device in the past 30 days, 84% said they use less than 10 apps daily, and 55% said that they only use between one and four apps every day.
Making an app stick is perhaps one of the hardest things app developers have to deal with. And since most apps, especially games, are free and rely on in-app purchases to drive revenue, retention and lifetime value (LTV) is the lifeline an app's business. The problem app marketers face is that advertising costs keep on rising. The average price of acquiring a loyal user hit $3.09 in March, a 10% increase month-over-month and a significant 113% rise year-over-year. On social, CPI costs have increased by a more moderate 64% year-over-year to reach $3.39. That's why advertisers need to spend wisely and target users who are most likely to not only install an app but more importantly to keep on coming back and increase their LTV
An analysis of AppsFlyer's data covering over 100 million advertising-driven app installs shows that running mobile campaigns on social networks is definitely a smart thing to do. When we compared the retention rate -calculated as the unique number of users who were active a day after installing the app (day 1), and then on days, 7 and 30 out of the total number of unique users who first launched the app in the selected timeframe-we found that on social, the number was nearly 50% higher than average of non-social networks on both iOS and Android. Zooming in on social vs. search, the retention rate on both operating systems was roughly the same. Overall, the retention rate of social networks on Android devices was 15% higher than iOS, although the gap narrowed over time with only a 5% difference on day 30
The data above is cross-vertical and global so there's a lot of variance in a case by case basis. But the overall trend paints a clear picture of the quality of social networks. This doesn't come as a surprise considering their access to an unmatched scale of data about their users and a massive investment in developing advanced targeting capabilities. Although more and more ad networks are pouring a lot of money into R&D and are seeing their effort bear fruit, they still have a way to go to match the social networks.
5) It's where video ads are already making a mark
Video, mobile and social is the golden triangle of digital.
Facebook enjoyed the biggest growth in the past six months, going from 1 billion views a day in September of last year, to 3 billion in January to 4 billion in April (even if these videos are auto-played, the growth rate is impressive to say the least). Of the 4 billion, 3 billion videos were viewed on mobile - that's a 75% share compared to 60% of total views in September.
Although still in its "early days", according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook video is already showing a lot of potential. In Q4 2014, for example, Facebook video impressions -on both mobile and desktop-saw an average CTR of 3.35% - far more than any other ad format on the social network.
Noah Mallin, head of social at media agency MEC Facebook's video ads do exceptionally well on mobile, where the engagement rate is up to 5% higher than video ads on other mobile platforms. In line with its promise, RBC estimated that Facebook would sell $700 million worth of autoplay native video ads in 2015 alone.
Facebook is the main challenger to the king of video - YouTube - which shows 1 billion videos on mobile every day, while its mobile ad revenue increased more than 100% in the past year. According to data released by the company, users are 1.4 times as likely to watch YouTube ads on smartphones and also 1.4 times more likely to share the ads you watch on mobile.
On Twitter, 90% of Promoted Videos views take place on mobile devices. The social network reported a 28% higher purchase intent lift for users who chose to watch brand videos on Twitter than for users who saw the same videos as pre- or mid-roll ads during a 22-minute program. It also found that users watching branded content on Twitter versus other platforms were more willing to remain engaged with videos longer than 30 seconds.
In the latest news from the mobile-video-social advertising front, Pinterest has just introduced Cinematic Pins, which can be classified as a form of video ads. They are a new motion-based mobile ad format that moves during scrolling.
Last week, Snapchat announced that it has 100 million users who watch an astonishing two billion videos per day. The company has just rolled out a new ad format: 10-second video ads, costing 2 cents per view, that will run between the articles and videos on the app's Discover section. There's no reason to believe that these formats won't perform just as well as other video ads on social networks.
6) It's where native advertising outperforms other native ad environments
Native advertising is red hot. By creating ads that are in the same format as the editorial content, marketers are providing a much more streamlined user experience, especially on mobile. According to Yahoo, effectively integrated native ads gained 3X more attention than non-native mobile ads, and a 2.6X higher CTR than other Yahoo mobile display ads.Within native, social will account for the biggest share of ad revenue, according to BI Intelligence. This comes as no surprise as social is perhaps the "nativist" form of native advertising with powerful social sharing tools and an algorithm that most likely increases frequency of sponsored posts liked by your friends
To sum up, the above data should point a clear path for mobile marketers. Social networks' mobile properties are proving to be an extremely effective space to advertise their products on, and should be a key part of any marketing mix.