Mobile advertising should be incorporated into all media buys: Yahoo - Mobile Marketer - Advertising

Mobile advertising should be incorporated into all media buys: Yahoo - Mobile Marketer - Advertising

Yahoo debuted a new mobile rich-media ad unit last year

There is no question as to whether consumers have embraced smartphones with open arms, and the mobile Internet has finally reached enough scale to offer critical opportunities for marketers, according to Yahoo Inc.

According to Yahoo’s report, “Mobile Internet – Delivering on the Promise of Mobile Advertising,” brands have not yet realized the full potential of mobile advertising. In order to do so in 2011, brands need to approach mobile as a channel and not just a strategy.

“Mobile Internet came of age in 2010, offering advertisers the scale, tools and technology to develop effective campaigns and vie for a fair share of major media budgets,” Yahoo says in the executive summary of the report. “However, mobile advertising still lags behind the opportunity.

“Will brands realize the full potential of mobile in 2011? To do so, marketers will need to approach mobile as a channel, not a strategy, albeit a particularly effective channel due to its ability to connect with consumers in a very personal way.

“If it feels like mobile phones are everywhere, it’s because they are.”

Content consumption
With 96 percent wireless penetration in the United States as of December, according to CTIA – The Wireless Association, mobile phones are everywhere.

Mobile phones are personal devices and consumers are unusually attached to them, claiming they are an extension of their person and psyche, per Yahoo.

This dependence on the mobile device is for more than just voice services. Consumers are consuming a huge amount of content via their devices, with the Internet at the top of the content consumption food chain.

According to Yahoo, 86 percent of mobile Internet users surf the mobile Web while watching television.

Consumers are increasingly relying on their mobile devices for shopping, checking bank balances, locating restaurants or stores, navigating routes, monitoring health, paying bills, downloading music and videos, texting friends and making phone calls.

Yahoo says these behaviors prove that consumers have embraced smartphones with open arms and mobile Internet has finally reached enough scale to offer critical opportunities for marketers.

And then came the tablet.

Yahoo says in its report that tablets have emerged as a potential contender for screen dominance. With approximately 10.3 million tablet users in 2010 and that number expected to reach 82.1 million by 2015, tablets such as the iPad have undoubtedly caused a disruption in the mobile space.

In 2012 tablet sales will grow to 36 percent of U.S. PC sales, according to Yahoo, and this number will likely outstrip notebooks/mini-PCs, which are expected to be 32 percent of overall PC sales.

IPad users are open to advertising, especially if coupled with an interesting video (49 percent) or interactive features (46 percent), according to Yahoo.

Mobile advertising
There are obvious opportunities having to do with mobile advertising.

“Faster network speeds, function-rich smartphones and tablets, a burgeoning portfolio of applications and more engaging ad formats like screen takeovers and expandable ads enable mobile to compete with more established media,” the Yahoo report says. “As for mobile’s position in the media rankings, the facts speak for themselves.

“Mobile attracts younger, more affluent and more educated consumers and delivers on performance benchmarks such as awareness, message association and purchase intent,” it says.

Yahoo claims the most important function of the mobile device, as it pertains to marketing, is its ability to move the consumer through the purchase funnel.

Fifty percent of mobile users claim they have gone on to make a purchase after researching on their device, per Yahoo. A whopping 90 percent of mobile users access the Internet while in retail locations, turning the device into a sort of shopping companion.

According to Yahoo, mobile advertising is most effective when campaigns are coupled with online display. The company said in its report that the combination of mobile and online amplifies budget efficiencies and achieves synergies that increase key metrics such as awareness and purchase intent.

To prove this point, integrated mobile and PC campaigns resulted in a 54 percent increase in brand awareness, a 46 percent increase in brand favorability and a 42 percent increase in aided brand awareness, according to Yahoo.

Additionally, click-through rates on a movie campaign on mobile are 30-times higher than the PC counterpart. Ad recall scored 15 percent higher among users who viewed a mobile ad than any other channel.

“Use mobile ad buys strategically to smooth over audience troughs when traditional advertising traffic diminishes during work hours and on weekends,” Yahoo says in its report. “Mobile is finally scalable enough to be an extension of an advertiser’s communication strategy and should be incorporated into all buys."