Understanding Addressability with Mobile Advertising [Infographic]

Addressability and identity are some of the hottest topics in the world of digital advertising today. But what do we mean when we talk about addressability, and how should the broader digital advertising ecosystem be thinking about and approaching identity?

Check out this infographic to learn more.

What is Addressability? 

• “Addressability is what connects advertisers and publishers to consumers across digital channels and devices.” – LiveRamp 
• Addressability is “the process of customizing a brand's message, product, placement and timing to match the personal lifecycle needs of the customer at a specific point in the purchase cycle, thus optimizing relevance.” – Karlin Linhardt, Chief Outsiders CMO 

How Is Mobile Advertising Addressability Changing? 

The five biggest changes and announcements impacting mobile advertising from the past five years: 

• February 2022: Google announces plans to roll out Privacy Sandbox to Android. 
• June 2021: Google announces that it is set to expire support for third-party cookies in Chrome in 2023. 
• April 2021: iOS 14.5 officially goes live, meaning that Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency is officially in effect. 
• January 2020: The State of California officially begins enforcing the California Consumer Privacy Act. 
• May 2018: The General Data Protection Regulation takes effect in the European Union. 

• Why Addressability Matters 

Consumers now spend 4.5 hours per day on their mobile devices, and 79% of all digital engagement takes place on smartphones. And those numbers are even higher in younger demographics. This is the medium that people like best at this point in time.  

Mobile app developers provide willing consumers with access to their content in exchange for the opportunity to present those consumers with a reasonable number of sponsor messages. An ad-supported business model enables publishers and developers to offer their content/apps for free while still being able to see revenue. 

In turn, advertisers have the right to know that their advertising spend reached its intended audience, the majority of which is people likely to be interested in, or in-market for, its products and services. 

“As we all become more uncomfortably comfortable with the demise of third-party cookies, the initial shock is turning into full-blown action for most. The collection of first-party data and even zero-party data is a top priority if not THE priority for this year as publishers attempt to rebuild trust and direct consumer relationships.” – Raquel Hudson, AdMonsters Contributing Writer 

“The shift from broadcasting to directly addressing customers is a subtle change, but quite radical in its consequences for marketing practice. Broadcast media send communications; addressable media send and receive. Broadcasting targets its audience much as a battleship shells a distant island into submission; addressable media initiates conversations. The new marketing does not deal with consumers as a mass or as segments, but creates individual relationships, managing markets of one, addressing each in terms of its stage of development.” – Robert C. Blattberg, Professor of Retailing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and John Deighton, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 1991 

Key Addressability Use Cases: 

• Monetization: Many advertisers prefer to only reach audiences with a propensity to buy or be interested in their products or services. By making their ad inventory as addressable as possible, publishers can increase demand for their ad slots, thus boosting overall revenue, 
• Data Management: Considering the vast amount of information now available to both advertisers and publishers, it’s important to understand what data needs to be prioritized and if any data needs to be handled in a special/specific manner. Identity is key to both pursuits, helping advertisers and publishers determine what may need to be prioritized and if any particular constraints have to be applied. 
• Media Planning: Before running a campaign, it’s critical to understand who needs to be targeted, where they can be found, when they are most receptive to marketing messaging, etc. 
• Targeting: Identity is key to both helping advertisers know who they should be targeting with their ads and in making sure those ads actually reach the right audiences. 
• Optimization: Once a campaign is in progress, it is often helpful to see which audiences are responding well to select messages and then to tweak over time. This is possible at an audience level only when specific users or cohorts are addressable and identifiable. 
• Measurement: According to the classic Peter Drucker quote, “You can't improve what you don't measure.” And addressability is key to measure, both to ensure that the right audiences are being looked at and that the right metrics are being taken into account. 

The Targeting Framework: How to Think About Addressability and Targeting 

Three core ways to think about identity: 

• User-level (using identifiers grounded in consent) 
• Interest-based (using online and offline behavior to model audiences including lookalikes) 
• Contextual targeting (using content signals to find relevant audiences) 

The Way Forward: Best Practices For Today 

Advice for Advertisers  

• Take a holistic approach to addressability, utilizing a variety of solutions to find and reach your best audiences.  
• Continue to invest in mobile, as mobile audiences will continue to grow.  
• Build out your first-party data stores, and work with partners who can supplement and complement your data. 

Advice for Publishers 

• Implement options to make your ad inventory more addressable (UnifID, explanation of ATT prompt, sign-ins, etc.) and test multiple solutions to discover what works for you.  
• Move to in-app bidding to receive the highest eCPMs for available inventory and optimize your yield strategy based on addressable and non-addressable audiences.  
• Implement ad units that command higher eCPMs (like rewarded video). 

InMobi is Here to Help 

1) UnifID is InMobi's solution that enables app publishers and developers to easily integrate with multiple identifiers/identity solutions  

UnifID makes it easy to:  

• Safely collect and store consented first party data.  
• Work with/integrate with multiple identifiers/identity solutions.  
• Make ad inventory more addressable. 

2) AmplifID is InMobi's upcoming solution that enables advertisers to activate first-party audiences programmatically through universal IDs.  

AmplifID makes it easy for buyers to:  

• Reach their target users in high-performance mobile environments.  
• Find addressable mobile supply at scale for multiple universal IDs.  
• Target based on first party data with or without DSP support for the ID of choice. 

3) InMobi’s identity graph allows for combined knowledge sharing to better understand, identify, engage and acquire consumers in a privacy-compliant way, making it easy to:  

• Enable advertisers to gather permissibly-sourced first party data,  
• Gain a deeper understanding of consumers and prospects by leveraging InMobi's data lake.  
• Activate on the combined knowledge through InMobi Exchange and/or managed service ad buying. 

4) InMobi’s Data Lake Strategy is to build the widest, deepest, cleanest data lake on mobile users in North America. This will enable our partners to use performance data with identity for multi-touch attribution, media mix modeling, Next Round Media Planning, etc. 

Our goal is to make it easy to:  

• Identify the best audiences on mobile.  
• Find and target audiences on mobile utilizing a variety of high-quality data sources. 

Interested in learning more? Head to www.inmobi.com/company/contact to schedule a call with our mobile addressability experts. 

Sources: 

• https://liveramp.com/addressability-marketing/  
• https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/addressability-the-new-term-for-digital-marketing/all/  
• https://blog.google/products/android/introducing-privacy-sandbox-android/  
• https://blog.google/products/chrome/updated-timeline-privacy-sandbox-milestones/  
• https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/ios-14-5-offers-unlock-iphone-with-apple-watch-diverse-siri-voices-and-more/  
• https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa  
• https://gdpr.eu/  
• https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-time-spent-with-media-2021-update  
• https://www.admonsters.com/eletters/call-in-the-addressability-task-force/  
• https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/interactive-marketing-exploiting-the-age-of-addressability/  
• https://www.forrester.com/report/assess-your-identity-approach-now/RES177092