The Year To Be: A Sneak Peek Into Mobile Advertising Trends For 2015

A new year has just begun. What will it bring for all of us—booming market, scientific breakthroughs? We think 2015 will be the year when emerging markets will outshine developed markets, and most importantly, the year when mobile Internet penetration will grow by leaps and bounds. The later would make it imperative for the marketers to change their strategies for mobile advertising. Marketers need to adapt to the evolving consumer behaviour (where they are mostly consuming content on their mobile devices) with a mobile-only strategy and leverage user data to create customized mobile ad campaigns that serve ads that are contextually relevant to the user.

Some of the key mobile marketing trends in 2015 would be:

· Shift in eCommerce spends from app installs to SKU-based re-targeting
The future of eCommerce is M-commerce. When M-commerce was in its nascent stages, eCommerce players majorly ran app install mobile advertising campaigns. We now expect to see eCommerce spends shift from attracting new app users to SKU-based re-targeting, where users are targeted with specific product ads based on their intent. These re-targeted campaigns will provide a contextually-relevant experience and redefine the way consumers discover, shop and pay.

· Conventional brands will start leveraging native ads
Native Ads, currently a niche advertising format, will soon see widespread adoption by conventional brands. In 2014, we saw a near 100% dominance of App Install ads. However, in 2015, conventional brands will engage with their audience for various marketing objectives like branding affinity, lead generation, purchase intent etc. Marketers will closely emulate and leverage the characteristics of the mobile environment to deliver mobile ads that blend seamlessly with the mobile app and site experience.

· Smart data-driven media buys: Online/mobile-first will scale up
Today, market segmentation has changed and marketers cannot target customers based on just demographics. The mobile has become the center of the consumer’s universe and his interaction with mobile is generating petabytes of data. This data needs to be analysed and transformed into actionable user personas and intent signals that can help marketers deliver the most relevant ads to consumers. Businesses of tomorrow will run on the simple premise of data, the smarter the data is the sharper the results will be.

· Marketers will see Mobile Display as the new CRM
Brands will move beyond traditional methods of CRM on mobile such as the SMS or email to meaningfully engage with their customer base. Marketers will see Mobile Display Ads as the new CRM. This will help marketers make better, smarter decisions in real-time, taking relevant mobile messaging to the next-level. This will also offer marketers the ability to connect and communicate with mobile customers throughout the purchase process and across channels.

· Emergence of the new Mobile Media Currency – Video Ads, Rewards and Re-targeting
Brands can reap the benefits of successfully implementing integrated mobile experiences as they combine a variety of marketing formats such as video advertising, reward formats and ad re-targeting. Advertisers across industries will be able to retarget consumers based on their historical usage patterns. By incentivising consumers for engaging with a brand campaign, consumers are encouraged to interact with the ads. This integrated approach will emerge as the new mobile media currency for mobile games.

(About the author: The article has been written by Dippak Khurana, Co-Founder and CEO, Vserv)