29
June
Header bidding as an ad technology has evolved from being a less understood concept to a mainstay over the past few years. The shift from a legacy, waterfall-based mediation logic to a simultaneous mediation logic (as seen in the header bidding world) has proven to be an effective monetization strategy for app publishers. Besides driving more programmatic revenue to their apps, header bidding is also operationally more efficient.
However, most header bidding conversations in the market have publisher benefits at its core. This has often led demand partners to believe that header bidding is a zero-sum game, which is far from the truth. Header bidding as a technology has both sell-side and buy-side advantages over app inventory that’s mediated through a traditional waterfall model.
1. Access to Significantly Larger Audience
Header bidding addresses a crucial challenge many advertisers face: access to quality inventory and users, at scale.
Let’s look at a traditional waterfall model where the inventory is passed on from one ad exchange to another in order of historic pricing (eCPMs). Each hop down the waterfall takes away the more premium inventory from the available pool of supply. In this scenario, advertisers connected to an exchange that is placed lower in the waterfall model, in all likelihood, will not have access to the same volume of inventory or scale of users that they would like to see or be willing to pay
In the first part of this blog, InMobi pinned insights from industry leaders on the digital evolution, relevance of communication, data-led mobile insights, and creating lasting connections as a part of the ‘New Normal.’ Here are thoughts from a few more leaders on “Marketing in the New Normal.”
Purpose-driven Advertising will Help Build Lasting Connections
Eka Sugiarto, Head of Media – Indonesia and SEAA, Unilever
“This pandemic is far from over and between now and when the vaccine becomes a common practice, there are consumer needs and behavior patterns that shift the demand cycles. Marketers should seize the opportunity to be the best choice by staying relevant and at the same time should venture to improve people’s lives and well-being through their marketing and advertising initiatives. Marketers should also ask themselves, whether brands can be a force for good through thoughtful inspiration, education, and useful information. Brands with strong benefit delivery should make it easy for people to trust the product offering and create a conversion point. A focus on facilitating discovery for customers, explaining “what’s in it for me” through both advertising push and pull will help.”
Retail Experiences Need to Step Up with ‘Digital’ Innovation
Charu Aggarwal, Chief Strategy Officer, India and South East Asia, Havas Group
“With the pantries now stocked at the push of a button and all kinds
Amidst the pandemic, marketers are finding unique ways to create new demand, redefine value chains, and deliver brand experiences. Marketers are embracing this disruption to repurpose their core marketing strategies that align with the new normal way of marketing, i.e. through digital evolution. The big question arises “How can Marketers scale their Marketing strategies in the ‘New Normal?’ InMobi brings forth the multifold views of marketers that are driving high impact right from formulating new strategies to delivering the right customer experiences.
Digital Darwinism Drives the New Normal
Shweta Srivastava, Head of Digital, Philips India
“Covid19 brings a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world where the ‘Smartest will survive’, the one who follows ‘Digital Darwinism’. Organizations transform because of transforming consumers and customers and to attain VUCA, they need Smart Marketers who help them transform quickly.
With restricted movements and social distancing measures become the New Normal post Covid19 and see a predominant growth in the usage of digital platforms where consumers are always-on. So, the marketing strategy also needs to be up and running on Digital mediums. Advertising has to be smarter to understand the behavior of a smart Consumer and be more relevant to them.
In
12
June
Television ads and Facebook may be the new default channels to reach voters, but for candidates, their political parties and other political advertisers like PACs, (especially those open to the benefits of political digital advertising) there is no better way to reach prospective voters than through mobile apps between now and Election Day in November.
With most voters still wary of large public gatherings and facing the lingering effects of the pandemic, mobile is the ideal platform as consumption continues to grow over the past many months. In fact, as travel remains subdued and TV consumption continues to shift towards subscription services like Netflix and Disney+, mobile apps outside of the walled gardens will provide the highest ROI.
Top 4 Reasons Why Political Ad Spending Should Focus on Mobile Devices and Apps Beyond The Walled Gardens
There are four key reasons why political advertisers should include independent mobile apps beyond Facebook and Google in their digital marketing campaigns:
1) It’s An Ideal, Data Driven Way to Target Voters
Let’s say your campaign is looking to reach voters of a certain demographic but you cannot know for sure with television what with a panel based approach allowing you to make only an educated guess about a show’s audience.
With in-app advertising, however, you can be a confident that you’re actually reaching your target audiences, thanks to the inherent data-driven
20
May
In the midst of literally everything happening in the world right now, in-app marketing may well be the last thing on your end – even if you’re in the mobile app marketing space. But, if you want to have a direct connection with both current and potential users, then you need to have a high quality in-app marketing campaign in place today. This was true in the past, but it’s especially the case today.
Note: This is the second post in a three-part blog series. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads and dramatically disrupts life as normal, here are our thoughts on what our trusted customers and partners can do to weather the storm. To read the first post on understanding consumers today, click here.
In this second post, we discuss while why marketers of all stripes need to reach consumers through mobile devices and what a good in-app marketing strategy looks like today. What do brands need to know.
Understanding the In-App User Experience
As we noted in the previous post in this series, it’s critical to first and foremost understand the consumer and what they need right now. Once that has been established, you need to then speak directly to them through the media of choice.
And, increasingly, that is
05
May
InMobi Exchange is now taking steps for a complete transition to first-price auctions, and we expect to complete the move in Q3 of this year to make a gradual transition for our demand partners. While demand partners tweak their bidding strategies to adapt to this change, we believe this will create an environment for advertisers and publishers to arrive at a fair and transparent auction that benefits all players in the advertising value chain....
But what is the real motivation to make this shift?
Second Price vs. First Price
In a world where supply-side platforms (SSPs), exchanges and in some cases publishers run nested auctions under different clearing schemes, it’s important to have all demand from bidders compete on an equal footing when the final auction is conducted.
Let’s understand this from two examples.
Winning bidder at SSP, undeservedly, loses the publisher side auction because of second price.
Winning bidder at SSP, deservedly, wins the publisher side auction because of second price.
In a first-price auction, winning bids get to compete at the final auction with the actual bid price they were willing to pay for the impression. In a second-price auction, their bids can become less competitive - some might
04
May
Connected TV (CTV) is the latest area of hyper growth in digital advertising. This is not news to anyone, but what most buyers underestimate is both the potential of this channel as well how companies can adapt to this rapidly changing space as user preferences evolve.
For context, first consider the broader shift that made users today spend more time on mobile (and, by extension, apps) than on any other screen. As smartphones went mainstream and as internet connectivity improved, people’s consumption of video, which is the preferred format for media consumption, moved from desktop to mobile web (albeit for a brief time) to mobile apps. This shift happened because of two reasons:
Apps could stream premium long-form (more than five to seven minutes) video content (TV shows and movies) that were often not available on broadcast TV.
People could watch these shows and movies whenever they wanted to.
But mobile apps cannot replicate the intuitive large screen experience of watching videos. This is where digitally connected TV devices and smart TVs found their natural fit with consumers. And so, naturally,
01
May
Welcome to our second edition of Mobile Insights with InMobi! This is our new Q&A series, where we sit down with leading mobile marketing and in-app advertising experts to get their take on the current state of the world.
Note: Want to check out our first installment in this series where we talk mobile gaming with InMobi’s Jobie Tan? Click here to check it out.
For our second interview, I sat down with Robyn Meyers, InMobi North America’s Vice President of West Coast Brand Partnerships, to discuss the current state of entertainment and streaming during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our 18-minute conversation, we talked about the current state of the streaming wars, which kinds of titles are especially popular right now and what media and entertainment companies need to do to see success today during these unprecedented times. Tune in today to hear the full conversation!
LISTEN NOW
InMobi · Mobile Insights with InMobi: Q&A with Robyn Meyers on Media and Entertainment During COVID-19
Q&A Transcript
MATT:
Hi everyone. Welcome to another edition of Mobile Insights with InMobi. This is Matt Kaplan from InMobi’s marketing team here, and today. I'm very excited to be joined by the
23
April
COVID-19 has proven to be a truly global pandemic, impacting people in just about every corner of the world. The Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman have closed schools and universities and implemented strict lockdown measures following pandemic hits in each location.
To what extent has COVID-19 influenced consumer behavior in the region? To find out, we turned to the data. By analyzing mobile in-app ad requests in February and March, we can see how COVID-19 and government responses to it has impacted people and their behaviors throughout this region.
COVID-19's Impact on Mobile Usage in Gulf Region
From March 15 onwards, every Gulf nation saw a notable increase in mobile app usage. During the second half of March, the highest mobile usage was recorded in Saudi Arabia, the most populous of the six countries, followed by the UAE and Kuwait.
Between the week of March 2 and March 11, mobile usage increased 2% in Saudi Arabia. But, between the week of March 12 and March 18, usage increased by 42%. The most dramatic increases during these periods were in Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. For example, in Qatar alone, mobile usage increased 76% during the week of March 12 and March 18 compared to the previous week.
Why was mobile usage spiking during this period? This is when the number of cases kept on increasing - and when lockdown measures either were first implemented or beginning to really sink in
As the world come to terms with a new reality in the face of COVID-19, brands and marketers globally find themselves having to answer a difficult question - what should they be saying in these unprecedented times? Or, should they even respond?
Do Consumers Want Brands to Stop Advertising?
When Kantar recently surveyed more than 35,000 consumers, immediately after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, their expectations were clear:
75% of respondents believed that brands should inform consumers what they were doing
And, only 8% thought brands should stop advertising
In fact, data after the 2008 financial crisis shows that brands that continued advertising came out stronger - up to nine times faster in stock value than others. With consumers making their expectations clear, what should brands keep in mind during these unprecedented times?
Embracing Purpose-Led Brand Communication
Brands, legacy or new, are important during a crisis and should stay true to their purpose. They must remember the following tenets of purpose-led communication:
Long-Term Approach: Brands must take a long-term approach by being respectful and sensitive to the times they are in, where an immediate push for sales takes a back seat for prioritizing consumers’ needs.
Mental Brand Equity: Marketers must leverage owned, earned and paid media channels to provide consumers with information that can help navigate these times – be it with educational ‘how-to’ guides or product updates, in a periodic and time-sensitive manner.
CSR/PSA Initiatives: By engaging in initiatives
The InMobi Exchange is now available through a direct connection on Google’s Display & Video 360 (DV360) platform for advertisers across the globe.
What does this mean for advertisers?
This means that all advertisers, agencies and Agency Trading Desks (ATDs), who work with DV360 as their choice of DSP can now access 100% of InMobi’s SDK supply and audiences directly via the platform. Media buyers can leverage both Open Exchange and Private Marketplace deals on the InMobi Exchange directly via DV360.
The direct connection brings efficient pricing benefits to media buyers by eliminating third-party integration platforms, providing access to InMobi supply at scale (without any third-party platform throttling logics in play), and ensuring a much tighter integration.
How can advertisers activate InMobi on DV360?
DV360 users now don’t need to access it through other exchange partners. Media buyers must activate InMobi directly on DV360 for managing their mobile marketing programs at scale on the InMobi Exchange. To get started, InMobi will need to be selected as an approved exchange that the buyer wants to see inventory from on their targeting portal.
DV360 users can enable InMobi using the following steps:
Sign in to your DV360 account
Select Settings> Basic Details from the Menu
Locate the Exchanges Section
Check the box next to InMobi in “Targeting and Inventory Sources”
Click Save
InMobi is a TAG-verified mobile app exchange with a reach of over 1.3 billion unique users globally.InMobi has
The rampant spread of COVID-19 has certainly changed the lifestyles of people across the world. At InMobi we’re able to give you near real-time insights on changing consumer behavior during the COVID-19 crisis from our 2nd party data (via our Audience Intelligence Platform). The analysis reveals the following trends derived through data signals captured by InMobi Location polygons, of which we have 87,000 across Australia:
The customer footfalls in various places of interest
Changes in the app usage across different categories
Safety Becomes a Priority Leading to Decline in Footfall
With people practicing social distancing, there is a drastic decline in footfall across places of interest. Recreation areas like shopping centers, beauty salons, hotels and motels have experienced a significant reduction in visits.
Shopping Centers
Shopping centers saw a steady decline with the first few coronavirus cases coming to light in January. The curve flattens a bit in February while people resort to social distancing and with newer cases surfacing in the beginning of March, footfall hits rock bottom, constituting an overall decline of 48% in shopping center visits.
Supermarkets
While Shopping Centers witnessed decline in footfall, the supermarket visits stabilized with everyone trying to stock up kitchen supplies due to fear of a possible lockdown.
Beauty Salons
Beauty Salons saw a steady decline of 47% from the first outbreak of reported cases of the pandemic from the last week in January. And there were two instances that experiences a
COVID-19 has profoundly changed our lives, our work and our industry. Like many of you, we have asked ourselves what we can do to help.
In this spirit, we are proud to partner with Amobee and other leaders in the industry to run public service announcements. These PSAs will reach global audiences, and they lead readers to the World Health Organization’s website.
What’s the goal of the initiative? We are committed to keeping the public around the world informed regarding the measures they can take to help prevent the spread of the virus.
To learn more about this global effort or get involved, head to this website.
LEARN MORE
For data and insights from InMobi’s intelligence solutions on how COVID-19 is impacting people across the globe, head to inmobi.com/covid-19.
Brand safe advertising has always been a top-of-the-mind issue for marketers, especially the ones that have a large loyal base that transcends generations and geographies. This is especially important given the multiple nuances that both performance and brand marketers must cater to. Even a single misstep can have a cascading impact.
This is a problem even in benign times, as advertisers find it difficult to find fully brand safe opportunities to reach their audiences (at least at scale anyway) without hitting some sensitive content that may put off a small but vocal set of consumers. Think an advertisement for room fresheners next to a breaking news story on a drive-by shooting or a story around a tragedy involving a controversial topic.
Naturally, this has become even more pertinent in today’s pandemic-induced, anxiety-filled times, where the content being consumed in various corners of the internet is leaning strongly downbeat. Brands, therefore, need to be very cautious and should accordingly ask for accountability from their supply-side partners on how and where their ads appear in a brand safe environment.
Seen from the other side too, recent research from Integral Ad Science found that consumers have very strong and particular preferences about which brands they are comfortable seeing ads for when consuming coronavirus-related content.
So, what can digital advertisers do to avoid brand safety pitfalls, especially when using programmatic advertising to reach mobile audiences? In the in-app world, the most obvious answer
For 2020, InMobi was recertified by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). Specifically, InMobi was again Certified Against Fraud (CAF) by TAG, making InMobi the recipient of the CAF distinction for three years in a row.
There are over 100+ companies that have been recertified by TAG in this round. It’s indeed a big win for the industry as a whole and is reflective of the important collective efforts being taken by ad tech vendors to combat fraud.
“This year’s seal recertifications demonstrate that long-term commitment by TAG members to the fight against criminal activity in digital advertising. With a record number of leading companies participating in TAG programs, we are creating a consistent, unified, and secure framework for digital advertising round the world,” said TAG CEO Mike Zaneis.
Fraud remains a significant concern among both advertisers and publishers in the mobile programmatic ecosystem. For example, in a recent discussion with Digiday, leading voices in the ad agency world cited ad fraud as among their top concerns right now.
But, as this year’s TAG certification round shows, the ecosystem as a whole is taking fraud extremely seriously – and this is leading to major changes throughout the value chain. According to numbers cited by eMarketer, not only did the amount of digital display advertising budget lost to fraud drop significantly between 2015 and 2019, but ad fraud is no longer a top cited concern among marketers and media buyers.
Material Benefits of TAG
This March will officially mark one year since the IAB Tech Lab officially launched Ads.txt for mobile apps. Long available to web publishers, including mobile web, ads.txt is a much more recent addition to the mobile in-app advertising.
“Ads.txt is a simple yet effective step to drive transparency in the programmatic world. Considering that publishers and buyers have no direct contact with one another, both become susceptible to unauthorized reselling, counterfeit inventory and domain spoofing. First released in May 2017 - the ads.txt solution for website and mobile web publishers has seen tremendous success,” said Abhay Singhal, CEO of InMobi Marketing Cloud and co-founder of InMobi.
Let’s take a look at its effect on the mobile ad tech space over the past 12 months.
Calculating the Impact of App-Ads.txt on In-App Programmatic Advertising
If nothing else, app-ads.txt has proven to be enormously popular among the app developers and app publishers that make money by offering up ad inventory. Already, close to 80% of the apps that InMobi works with have this text file available in their app store listings. This is impressive considering that at first, app-ads.txt could only be implemented in Google Play store listing and only later became available within all of the major app stores.
Note: Need a quick reminder on how app-ads.txt works and why it’s beneficial? Check out this video featuring InMobi’s Sergio Serra to learn more:
How do ad networks and ad exchanges stack up? In short, ad networks offer dedicated support, while ad exchanges are largely technology platforms that serve as an open digital marketplace.
Note: Need some reminders to level set? Check out this blog post for all of the ad tech definitions you’ll need to follow along, and this blog post for how programmatic media buying works.
How Ad Networks and Ad Exchanges Stack Up
As MarTech Advisor has noted, “An ad network is an aggregator that collects ad inventory from publishers and sells it to advertisers. It acts as an intermediary.” Basically, ad networks act as resellers or direct sellers, representing specific ad inventory to buyers on behalf of particular sellers.
How does this stack up to an exchange? In comparison, “An ad exchange is a digital marketplace that enables advertisers and publishers to buy and sell advertising space, often through real-time auctions,” Digiday has noted.
To help understand the difference, consider this useful analogy from MarTech Advisor: if an ad network is akin to a stockbroker, then an exchange is like a stock exchange. By serving as an open online marketplace, ad exchanges can do the work of multiple ad networks while also ensuring that everyone has a fair shot at bidding on and winning any ad inventory made available.
Curious to see which brands can be classified as ad networks vs. ad exchanges? Check out this blog post from
In 2020, there are lots of marketing challenges facing everyone from the biggest marketing teams all the way down to small businesses. But, we think there will be three issues that will have an outsized impact on brand marketing efforts in the U.S. in 2020:
The 2020 Presidential Election
The 2020 Summer Olympics
Ongoing Concerns Around Privacy, Trust and Transparency
But, just because these are issues that just about every marketer faces in 2020 doesn’t mean they need to derail all of your brand marketing plans. Here’s how these issues will impact your marketing campaigns, and how you need to overcome potential challenges with your marketing strategy in 2020.
How to Talk to Potential Customers During the 2020 Presidential Election
At this point in the year, it’s hard to miss all of the news around the 2020 elections - and the final vote is still many months away. In particular, the election presents marketers with three key issues.
For starters, the election is likely to drive up advertising costs across the board. Considering that some major social media outlets like Twitter have already largely banned political advertising, the remaining digital marketing channels that still allow it will become more competitive, with brands, candidates and political groups all spending millions of dollars to get their message across to people through these channels.
It also presents brand suitability concerns. Do you want your messaging to appear alongside a political story? Considering the state of the election
30
December
As mobile devices become increasingly pervasive and indispensable, today’s consumer is by default a mobile consumer. For today’s consumers, smartphones are with them during literally every part of the day. The mobile phone is way more than a phone now, as the device is how we shop, communicate with others, travel, make payments, take consumer surveys and conduct many more activities.
In the past, mobile used to be thought of as the second screen. That’s no longer the case. Mobile devices have become the most personal screens in our lives, traveling with us everywhere For many people, especially younger folks, mobile is the primary screen, as it is the first thing they see in the morning and the very last thing they look at before going to sleep at night.
In fact, the myriad products and services available on mobile devices have become so central that consulting firm Deloitte refers to it as a “smartphone addiction.” No wonder people look at their smartphones and other mobile technology more than 50 times a day on average now.
“Today, why bother specifying between a consumer and a mobile consumer? Considering the current state of mobile technology, saying global mobile consumer is like saying tiny shrimp or ATM machine - it’s just redundant at this stage,” Richard Thomas, Head of Brand Marketing, North America at InMobi, noted in August 2019. “Every brand today, no matter what space it’s in, must
26
December
Is 2020 the year that digital out of home (DOOH), over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) advertising finally goes big? All signs point to a resounding yes. Expect both connected TV advertising and OTT advertising to grow by leaps and bounds in 2020.
“We’re seeing a continued increase in spending for video across platforms, but the growth has been primarily focused on mobile and Connected TV,” says Vanja B. Brzin, VP of Product Marketing at Celtra.
Defining DOOH, OTT and CTV
Before we get into it, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. For starters, digital out of home (DOOH) refers to screens and devices found outside of the home or the office. DOOH encompasses everything from elevator displays to gas station pumps and everything else in between. These outdoor screens are powered by apps, and marketers are beginning to be able to run digital advertisements in these environments programmatically.
OTT refers to video that is coming over the top of a traditional TV set. Instead of delivering video content through linear TV or traditional cable, OTT video is delivered through an internet connection. OTT devices can include a smartphone, a tablet or even gaming consoles. Apple TV and Roku are big names in the OTT hardware space, while Netflix is the top player in the OTT streaming space.
CTV simply refers to a television set that is connected to the internet. This
20
December
Mobile ad fraud has long been a major concern with everyone in the in-app advertising space, siphoning away budgets, reducing campaign effectiveness and making the entire ecosystem less trustworthy. But, issues around ad fraud have not gone unheeded. The industry has made major strides in its fight against fraudsters in 2019, and our team of mobile marketing and advertising experts expect this push to continue throughout 2020.Highlighting the Current State of Fraud in Mobile Advertising
As Steven Woolway from DoubleVerify noted
in conversation with InMobi’s David Di Angelo in 2019, mobile in-app ad fraud remains exorbitantly high – and will remain in the millions of dollars in the foreseeable future. Click spam, click injection, SDK spoofing, faked installs, click flooding (a form of click fraud) and invalid traffic (IVT) are just some of the types of mobile ad fraud that will continue to plague digital advertising in 2020.
Mobile app install fraud is an especially pressing concern, and is likely to remain a major issue for mobile marketing professionals looking for new users for their mobile apps. In 2019, marketers
lost an estimated $13 billion to app install fraud. Considering that fraud costs in this space almost doubled from 2018 to 2019, marketers need to be worried about this rising trend.How to More Effectively Fight All Forms of Fraud
What can brands do to more efficiently protect their in-app ad spend from fraud in 2020? For starters, machine learning (ML) can go a long way towards fighting
19
December
In the programmatic-first world of mobile advertising, data is central to everything. Perhaps no topic is as talked about in this space today as data. Data is extremely top of mind for just about everyone in the mobile marketing and advertising industries.
How is data collected for mobile app ad campaigns, and what specifically is being gathered? How is that data being used, and is it being utilized properly? What do data-driven advertising campaigns on mobile devices actually look like? Throughout 2020, marketers will be taking pains to answer these questions.Sourcing Data for Mobile App Advertising in 2020
"I think in mobile for the past couple of years, people have just been taking desktop analogous numbers. I have this on the desktop and I'll apply that into mobile or these are my desktop travel segments and I'm going to take that from the desktop side and find those users in mobile. I think we are getting to a point where people are starting to ask, ‘Where is that data coming from and is it coming from a mobile specific source?’ So when I think about one of the biggest challenges holistically of even my trust with analytics packages, it's where is the backend data coming from?” Mike Brooks, SVP of Revenue at WeatherBug, noted.
He added, “By taking a stronger look at the source of mobile data, I think it's going to open up some holes for people who have been
17
December
When it comes to complying with the CCPA, ad tech vendors and their digital advertising partners need to be fully aware of what the law presently entails and what they need to do in order to comply with the new regulation.
Note: This blog post is just for informational purposes only, and is not designed to serve as a full legal guide. This must not be read or treated as legal advice. For more specifics, including your position and compliance requirements under the law, please be sure to obtain the services of a licensed law firm and/or consult lawyers fully knowledgeable on the law. The full InMobi guide on CCPA can be found here: localhost/california-consumer-privacy-act. What is the CCPA?
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a comprehensive data privacy regulation applicable to the users based in the State of California in the United States. CCPA becomes effective from January 2020 and at a high level imposes transparency with regard to the collection, processing and use of consumer’s personal information and provides consumers with certain rights regarding such usage. Under the law, consumers can ask for control of how their data is used: elaborated as Right to Access/Right to Forget/Right to Opt of Sale, etc .
According to the IAB, the law is designed to provide users with more control over how personal data about them is used and collected. Once the law is in effect, users
16
December
This post comes courtesy of Amber Bagwell, Content Marketing Manager at Everflow.
With the rapid growth of mobile advertisers, fraud is increasingly draining the wallets of advertisers, publishers and everyone in between. Criminals are moving in and mimicking real performance, confusing real installs with fraudulent installs. Not only is fraud eating into an increasing share of marketer’s ad dollars, it also creates bad data, making it impossible to correctly optimize an ad campaign if you don’t take steps to protect yourself.
Let’s take a look at common types of fraud that may be painfully familiar. However, rather than being reactive, there are steps you can take to protect your advertiser, publisher and supply partners, to effectively stopping fraudsters in their tracks.Common Fraud Type #1: Click Injection/Ad Injection
Click Injection/Ad Injection is where the affiliate injects their tracking link to fire off a tracking click right before the user completes their conversion. This lets fraudsters hijack the credit for delivering that conversion.What can you do?
You can use reporting around the Click to Conversion Time (also known at MTTI or CTIT) to see the time in between the click and the install/conversion. If you see a large number of installs coming in either super quickly or super late, it could signal fraudulent traffic.
By regularly checking your reporting, you can catch the most common types of fraud; it is nearly impossible for a real
12
December
This post is from Richard O'Sullivan, Executive Director, Australia and New Zealand for InMobi.
Throughout the Australia-New Zealand (ANZ) region, brands are devoting more dollars to both programmatic and mobile in-app advertising channels. In fact, a significant percentage of the
$8.8 billion Australian digital ad market is now devoted to in-app channels and conducted programmatically.
But, as advertisers devote a greater share of their budgets to mobile channels, it’s crucial to make sure that they are not wasting their programmatic spends and are getting the greatest value from their campaigns. To this end, it’s critical that brands implement (and work with partners that implement) best-in-breed technology standards and benchmarks.VAST over VPAID
For many marketers today looking to run video ads, there are two key video ad serving tags available: VAST and VPAID.
Check out this blog post for more information on what these mean and what they entail.
As a leader in the in-app advertising ecosystem, InMobi has been committed to providing users a seamless video experience, which has consistently been a top concern for both publishers and advertisers. This is why InMobi adopted VAST over VPAID in 2017, as VAST ensured faster load times and buffer-free experiences.
While certain players preferred to stick to VPAID for its ability to deliver interactive experiences, many began leveraging VPAID for its measurement capabilities. InMobi chose to stick with VAST, as VPAID’s render and fill rates were unsatisfactory for publishers, while
25
November
Programmatic has been hailed by advertisers across the globe for its potential to streamline the ad buying process, while offering target audiences at scale. But what is its effect in Southeast Asia?
To find out, we surveyed more than 50 digital marketers with the responsibility of media buying across leading brands and agencies in the region. The goal was to hear directly from those on the front lines about what they think about in-app programmatic advertising, to see if it’s understood well and finding value.
Our latest report, The State of Mobile Programmatic Ad Buying in Southeast Asia in 2019, highlights - the current landscape, challenges undermining the in-app programmatic advertising industry and a glimpse into its future. This survey is the first of its kind research program for mobile marketers.
It is designed to help mobile marketers better understand the responsibilities, activities, challenges, and current/future trends of the mobile programmatic world. Get your complimentary copy today!
DOWNLOAD NOW
What did our survey uncover? Here are the highlights of the report:
Close to nine out of 10 brand marketers possess only a basic working knowledge of programmatic advertising. Despite that, 93% of these advertisers aim to conduct their programmatic media buying in-house.
Around 90% of advertisers see efficiency gains with programmatic buying. Programmatic buying of inventory reduces the human involvement and the chances for errors and delays, thus improving the efficiency of a campaign instantaneously.
When evaluating programmatic partners, performance along with control
21
November
We are excited to announce the formation of a Customer Advisory Board for InMobi Exchange! Our flagship Customer Advisory Board features an array of forward-thinking, programmatic-first companies who will help chart the course of InMobi’s innovation as we continue our mission of providing a fully transparent, safe and data-driven programmatic marketplace.Who Is Participating?
Ad Tech industry disruptors and thought-leaders including but not limited to executives from some of the industry’s most recognized DSPs, Agencies, Brands and Publishers.Why Participate?
Meet with the leading voices in the programmatic industry.
Learn about how other companies are using technology to solve and scale their programmatic businesses.
Have your ideas and voice heard, and have the ability to materially influence one of the world’s leading programmatic exchanges. Why Are We Convening This Advisory Board?
Here at InMobi, we have built our success on customer compassion, scale and transparency. The Customer Advisory Board is a significant way for InMobi to understand our customers’ goals and key initiatives so we can align with your vision and better ensure our shared success.
Since InMobi's early days, we've sat side by side with customers to work on solutions to their key revenue challenges. As we’ve grown and continue to grow, building on those meaningful engagements with customers has been our top priority. We’re constantly looking for more and better ways to understand their business goals. Our Customer Advisory Board is a key
14
November
What are the biggest mobile app monetization trends of 2019 and 2020? Based just on media coverage alone, in-app header bidding is definitely on the top of the list.
But is in-app header bidding actually part of the average app monetization strategy today?
Last year, we surveyed dozens of app publishers, app development professionals and others in the mobile app advertising space to get their real opinion on in-app header bidding, mediation and many other topics. What we found was that while in-app header bidding adoption was nascent, it was already providing real benefits to the mobile apps where it was in place, and thus was likely to be included in everyone’s business models in 2019.
So did our prediction come true? To get to the bottom of this, we again surveyed dozens of experts in the field, from gaming apps to omnichannel ad exchanges and everyone in between, to get to the truth. What did our research reveal?
Download the full report today to find out for yourself.
GET IT NOW
While you’ll need to get your complimentary copy of the full
2019 Report: Predicting the Future of In-App Advertising and Monetization, to see all the details, here’s a sneak peek of what our data says about in-app header bidding in particular:
38% have in-app header bidding in place now, up from 31% last year. 45% said they were not utilizing it because they didn’t understand the technology, versus 31% who said the
12
November
As
we’ve previously noted, most shoppers in India use a mobile device to make a purchase. The problem is that while consumers are quick to embrace mobile devices, brands are not. This can especially be pronounced during large-scale events such as Diwali, Christmas among others.Consumer Frictions on Mobile
At all stages of the customer shopping journey, consumers report issues with the mobile experience offered by their favorite brands. Here’s just a small snapshot of what our research revealed:
Long video ad load times.
Lack of communication in local languages.
No omnichannel experience provided.
Not enough reviews and ratings.
The product that someone gets is different than they looked at online.
There are too many steps needed to make a purchase, and the checkout process isn’t optimized for mobile.
Poor after-sales service (delivery, installation etc.)
Consumers want a seamless mobile shopping experience. Brands aren’t providing it, though.Greasing the Wheels on the Mobile Consumer Journey
More than four in five consumers globally say they will immediately switch to a new brand if they have had a bad experience, according to Kantar, and
three-fourths of consumers expect a consistent brand experience wherever they engage with a brand (e.g. website, social media, mobile, in person).
Brands need to eliminate the various frictions - information, experience, relevance and payment related, to maximize their chances of winning the connected Indian consumer. Here are the three main things they need
11
November
This post is written by Ruby Ban, Lead Account Manager on InMobi's Demand team.
Think about the classic marketing funnel. In the mobile in-app advertising space, we tend to focus a lot at the very top and very bottom of the funnel. If you want reach and awareness, there are a lot of options. And if you want app installs and downloads, there are also a lot of options.
But what about the middle of the funnel? What if a brand is looking to drive engagement, signups or one-time purchases? In this realm, there historically hasn’t been as much available, especially within the mobile in-app advertising ecosystem.
That is changing, however. After all, my goal (and the goal of InMobi overall) is to make sure we’re always meeting a client's marketing objectives. It is increasingly feasible to do mid-funnel prospecting effectively within mobile apps, so long as campaigns are set up appropriately.Understanding Mid-Funnel Prospecting
Let’s level-set on definitions here. What do we mean when we say mid-funnel prospecting (MFP)?
As I briefly mentioned before, MFP encompasses everything in between pure branding/awareness campaigns and those with hard, down-funnel KPIs like app installs. MFP combines the benefits of in-app advertising (device IDs, targeting, etc.) with the benefits of mobile web (form fills, established tracking mechanisms, availability for all businesses, etc.).
MFP is ideal for clients that already have awareness and are looking for web traffic (with calls
16
October
Is mobile advertising horrifying? It doesn’t have to be ghoulish! In-app programmatic is a treat, not a trick.Instead of getting TP-ed or running out of your favorite candy, be sure to follow these tips and tricks on how to make mobile programmatic advertising work for you.
15
October
Note: Originally published in Campaign Asia on October 8, 2019.
When it comes to reaching and engaging consumers on mobile, programmatic has firmly emerged as the preferred channel for digital marketers. Zenith reports 65% of all digital advertising spends globally are expected to be on programmatic by end of this year led by mature markets such as the USA and Canada. InMobi’s 2019 Mobile Programmatic Advertising report shows a synonymous trend for global in-app spends with North America alone accounting for 59%. However, what is encouraging is that half of the top markets across the globe are from Asia Pacific.How is Southeast Asia uniquely poised for in-app programmatic?
Southeast Asia has seen a steep increase in the adoption of apps with close to two times the global downloads in the last year. An average smartphone user in SEA spends close to 4 hours a day on apps, 33% higher than the mature markets such as the USA and Canada and significantly higher than time spent on other media including TV and print. The SEA consumer is not just mobile native, but an in-app native - making SEA the perfect hotbed for in-app programmatic.
Excluding China, Southeast Asia is leading the charge in Asia Pacific - 5 out of 7 key markets are among the top 20 global in-app programmatic spenders. In looking at Q2 2019, in-app programmatic spending rose by one-third in the region compared to Q2 2018.Key challenges with in-app programmatic adoption
Despite the shift from consumers and
07
October
Mobile Apps are Critical for Understanding, Identifying, Engaging and Acquiring Today’s Consumers
As I’ve already mentioned, today’s consumers are mobile first and mobile centric — and they use apps very differently (and much more frequently) than they use mobile web browsers. But what does this mean for marketers? How can today’s marketers use this knowledge to further their goals? How can they provide their message to the right audience and deliver a great brand experience?
I firmly believe mobile apps can and should be central to helping marketers more effectively understand, identify, engage and acquire mobile consumers. Here’s how.
LEARN MOREUsing Apps to Understand Consumers
Mobile can yield vast amounts of data — so long as it can be appropriately gleaned. Here are some examples to consider:
You can often tell a lot about someone from where they spend their time. For example, people who are often found at airports on Mondays and Thursdays are generally business travelers, while those found at stadiums and arenas on weekends are likely sports fans. When available, knowledge from carrier data can help you truly unlock your customer's DNA. Check out this blog post to see what this data reveals about pizza consumers. Mobile apps can be a great way of getting direct feedback from consumers. This is especially the case with younger consumers, who are much more likely to see and fill out a survey from their phone than they
30
September
Here’s how to take in-app mobile performance advertising to the next level.
Running mobile performance advertising campaigns but want to scale them to see more high-quality app installs? Here’s what you can do to expand the reach of your in-app performance marketing efforts and achieve unprecedented mobile growth.
LEARN MOREWhy Performance-Based Advertising Strategies from 2012 Don’t Cut it Anymore
Remember what so-called advertising experts were pushing a decade ago? In the past, it was all about scale and reach. And when it came to scale, mobile was the top choice.
Back then, performance media buys took a spray and pray approach. Performance advertisers would leverage social media (including Facebook and Twitter ads), search engine marketing and a wide variety of ad networks and ad exchanges to reach just about everyone. The thought process was that by casting a wide net, you’d snag enough of the right people eventually.
Alas, the good times were not to last. Marketers trying to take this kind of wide approach to performance advertising became doomed to fail. So what happened in the intervening years?First, the type of apps being brought to market are very different. In 2012, Angry Birds and Draw Something were among the biggest apps of the year. These kinds of apps had mass appeal, and could conceivably be downloaded and used by at least half of the smartphone-owning audience in a more mature market like the U.S.
Today,
27
September
Download our Latest Report with Kochava to Learn How to Build Multi-Touch Attribution Models That Really Work for You.
Want to know more about how to build multi-touch attribution models that actually work for you and ensure that your partners are doing the right thing at every stage of the consumer journey? We’re here to help you move beyond single touch attribution and implement a mobile marketing attribution solution that eliminates fraud and ensures that everyone working with you is committed to optimizing your conversion events.
We recently teamed up with data-driven mobile attribution and in-app analytics experts at Kochava to develop a new white paper on multi-channel attribution and multi-touch attribution modeling best practices in the mobile in-app space. Be sure to grab your complimentary copy of
How to Set Up a Multi-Touch Attribution Model: Understanding Incentive-Compatible Multi-Touch Attribution today! Whether you’re using the W-shaped model or the time decay model, or whether you’re focused on paid search or in-app advertising, this guide is for you.
DOWNLOAD
Grab your
free copy of this white paper today to learn about:
Why you need multi-touch attribution for your mobile marketing efforts. How to set up your attribution models so that you’re incentivizing your partners to do the right thing at every marketing touchpoint. What incentive-compatible multi-touch attribution looks like across the customer journey. Why you should adopt a weighted model and why shouldn’t give equal credit
19
September
Here’s Your Complete Guide on All Things Mobile Video Advertising
Interested in learning more about in-app mobile video advertising? Then this guide is for you.Why Include Video Content in Your Mobile Advertising and Marketing Strategy?
In-app video advertising is an ideal way to engage and acquire mobile users and provide them with a positive user experience. It’s been proven effective, and is now one of the best mobile marketing tactics to leverage. Some food for thought from
InMobi’s 2019 Mobile Programmatic Advertising Trends report:
In the U.S. in Q1 2019, click-through rates (CTRs) for video ads were over 2x greater than native CTRs and over 10x greater than CTRs for banners on average. In Q1 2019, the average CTR for a video ad in the U.S. was 3.16%. In comparison, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) had previously reported that back in the first three months of 2018, the average CTR of a video ad was 0.26%.
Video ads are also highly viewable as well, making them great for top-funnel and mid-funnel campaigns. In Q2 2019, we saw, on average,
video completion rates of around 80% and viewability of 91% via private marketplace deals. In fact, during this period, InMobi’s average video viewability rates were 50% higher than Moat’s nationwide benchmarks and 59% than what Integral Ad Science (IAS) reported as the average rate.
For a good example of just how viewable in-app video ads can be,
consider fast food chain Wendy’s. They
17
September
Here’s what you need to know about mobile ad viewability today.
When running mobile advertising campaigns, whether in mobile apps or on mobile web, mobile ad viewability is key. No matter where an ad is running, whether in a newspaper, on TV or in digital (i.e. desktop and mobile) environments, it’s critically important to prioritize and measure viewable ad rates. If ads aren’t being seen by real people on a particular channel, why bother devoting ad spend to it?
But how do you know if the viewability rates for your desktop or mobile campaigns are any good? Without a viewability standard in place, there’s no way to tell if the viewability metrics you’re seeing are good or bad.
LEARN MORE
To help establish viewability guidelines and benchmarks in the digital advertising space, Integral Ad Science (IAS) recently released its
Media Quality Report for the first half of 2019. Gathering insights from a variety of data sources, including integrated software development kits, IAS’s biannual reports provide a useful and comprehensive snapshot of desktop and mobile viewability in advertising. Here’s what the data reveals.Highlights of The Report
Reflecting changing media consumption behaviors, especially within the mobile market, mobile app display viewability grew the highest, by 9%, when compared to desktop and mobile web. Video ads continue to deliver better viewability across both desktop and mobile. Mobile app display time-in-view beat mobile web display time-in-view by 4.6
11
September
An omnichannel DSP is very different than a niche or highly specialized DSP. Here’s how to decide which one is right for you.
When selecting a demand-side platform (DSP) for your programmatic campaigns, should you choose an omnichannel DSP or a more specialized DSP? That all depends. To go over the differences between these two types of DSPs and to determine which one is right for your digital advertising and programmatic media buying priorities, check out this
Whiteboard Wednesday video:
Video Transcript
All DSPs are not the same. Some are omnichannel, while others are niche. Let’s dive into what these terms mean.
An omnichannel DSP is meant to be a one-stop solution designed to work across a variety of channels like desktop, video, audio, OTT, etc. Often, these DSPs are ideal to scale top-of-funnel awareness.
A niche DSP is mainly focused on one channel and one channel only, like video or display. Niche DSPs also frequently focus on specific mid-funnel and bottom-funnel goals and objectives.
So which option is right for you? That all depends on your goals and what you’re trying to achieve.
If you have an app business and want new users with a high lifetime value, then a niche DSP with an in-app focus is ideal for you.What is a DSP Anyway?
In the world of online advertising, what is a DSP and why would brands and agencies use one? Here’s
how
09
September
In 2019, the IAB Tech Lab has released a number of new standards and technologies designed to dramatically increase transparency in the programmatic mobile advertising world. App-ads.txt, the in-app extension of ads.txt, first went live officially in March, and sellers.json and the OpenRTB SupplyChain Object were released for public comment the very next month.
But what do these technology standards do and how can they be used in tandem with one another across the entire supply chain? To help answer these questions, some of the best GIFs on the internet are here to help.Definitions
As has been
noted before on the InMobi blog, “Ads.txt is a simple solution that gives publishers complete control over who is selling their inventory. The publisher creates a depository of authorized sellers that can be accessed by the buyers. Buyers can hence identify the legitimate sellers of the ad inventory they desire.”
In short, app-ads.txt is a file that states clearly who can and can’t work with a particular app for ad monetization.
What about Sellers.json and the OpenRTB SupplyChain Object? As
Sergio Serra, product manager for InMobi’s SSP strategic business unit, explained in MarTech Series in May, the OpenRTB SupplyChain Object and Sellers.json are like a map and key for programmatic advertisers. The SupplyChain Object provides a mapped-out overview of everyone involved in a particular transaction, and Sellers.json helps programmatic pros make heads or
19
August
Use This Mobile User Acquisition Checklist For All of Your UA-Based Mobile Ad Campaigns.
Mobile user acquisition strategies driven by through mobile ads, while effective, can quickly drain your budget if you’re not careful. Want people to be downloading your app? That’ll cost you between $1.29 and $4.47 per install, according to eMarketer. Looking to acquire loyal app users - i.e. highly active users? That can set you back
over $100 in some instances.
Acquiring new users for your mobile app through in-app advertising doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. Be sure to follow this checklist and answer these questions before starting any paid mid-funnel or bottom-funnel campaign designed to bring in new mobile users.
Target Audience(s) Defined
The granularly your campaign targets users, the better. In the realm of UA, it can often be more effective to get in front of fewer people - so long as those individuals have a higher propensity to download and actually use your app over time.
For example, consider these two scenarios. In scenario one, your campaign yields 100,000 impressions and 1,000 downloads, but only five people are still using the app after 90 days. In scenario two, the campaign has 50,000 impressions and 200 downloads, but 90 days later 50 people are still using the app - and making significant in-app purchases to boot too.
Which option would you choose? Scenario two reached fewer people, but more of the right kind of people for your app-based
15
August
Download the 2019 Mobile Programmatic Advertising Report Today!
GET REPORT
“Programmatic is the worst thing that happened to advertising and is our only hope for the future.”
We don’t know which financial services marketer
said this to Digiday in 2017, but perhaps no quote so appropriately sums up how many marketers and advertisers feel about programmatic ad buying today. By using software and algorithms, instead of human conversations and manual insertion orders, programmatic advertising has upturned the status quo - whether brand advertisers are ready for this shift or not.
So, in the intervening time since this quote was said, how has programmatic media buying progressed? Are advertisers clinging to the tried and true, or is programmatic becoming truly dominant?
To find out, we took a look at data from
our own exchange stretching back from the beginning of 2017. Here’s what our Mobile Programmatic Advertising Trends 2019 report found.
GET IT NOWTracking Programmatic’s Progression
In short, programmatic has never been hotter. From a global perspective, we discovered the following:
Global mobile in-app programmatic budgets grew 141% between 2017 and 2018.
Programmatic is on the rise in every geography, but its growth is especially strong in North America. Between 2017 and 2018, U.S. spending rose 215%. The U.S. continues to be the largest market. China is the second largest in-app programmatic ad market. Between 2017 and 2018, programmatic ad spending in China rose 102%.
In Q1 2019, only 45% of all mobile programmatic ad spending went to banners in the
15
July
It's not performance marketing vs. brand marketing. It's brand marketing + performance marketing.
In the world of mobile advertising, it’s historically been seen as performance marketing vs. brand marketing, with both camps as polar opposites of one another. They may both be marketing, but they function totally independently, with little regard to what the other team is up to.
But is this really the best approach? Are performance and brand marketing really diametrically opposed? In today’s always-on environment, cross-device environment, the difference isn’t nearly as clear cut as it once was. Instead, marketing teams are much better off having brand and performance marketing work in tandem with one another to drive overall business goals.How Does Your Target Audience Actually Buy Today?
The funnel model of marketing is one of the oldest. The goal is to initially hook as many people as possible and then try to slowly but surely push them into becoming loyal customers, with the idea that lots of people will drop off over time. This model presupposes a linear buying model, in which potential customers take very specific, known steps before making a purchase.
But is this model actually correct? Is this really how people buy? Not quite.
For example, consider Google’s report into how a prospective car buyer gathers the information she needs to procure a new automobile. Over the course of three months, she conducts almost 140 Google searches, along with countless
11
July
Keep reading to learn why you need to fully map out your mobile app customer journey.
What does your full mobile app customer journey look like? What happens from the very first time potential customers interact with your brand to the time they become initial users and then highly loyal users of your app?
It’s highly critical for any app marketers - including
performance marketers - to know precisely what average mobile customer journeys look like before investing heavily in any one or several marketing strategies. Without this critical knowledge of the customers’ experience, all app marketing initiatives are likely to end in disappointment.What Do Mobile Customer Journey Maps Look Like Today?
The classic user journey map in marketing is the funnel. The idea being is that someone asks very high level questions at the beginning of their user journey, and that your job as a marketer is to address these initial pain points and then educate them on why your previously unknown product is right for them.
The only problem is that this kind of linear thinking is that it just doesn’t pan out in the real world - especially as mobile devices give people access to more information than ever before. Today’s consumers don’t need you as a brand to educate them on their problems and potential solutions.
The modern user experience is all about action. How can you, as a brand, enable
08
July
Check Out Our Infographic Below to Learn All About Multi Touch Attribution.
Increasingly, marketers are aiming to move away from legacy, single-touch attribution and tracking mechanisms like first-click and last-click attribution and fully embrace multi-touch attribution models. But what does multi-channel attribution mean and what does a full path model really entail?
Multi-Touch Attribution vs Single Touch Attribution
A multi-touch attribution model describes any methodology that accounts for the various key touchpoints an individual will see and experience before they take a desired action. In performance advertising, individuals will see a variety of ads from different networks before taking the desired action. Multi-touch attribution enables marketers to account for all of these ads when determining who gets credit for this action.
“Last click attribution as the sole measuring stick for digital performance advertising should go away within the next few years,” says Anne Frisbie, Senior Vice President of Global Programmatic and North America at InMobi. “Our belief is that this a very important trend that we hope plays out as quickly as possible. Last-click attribution was great when search marketing first launched at the turn of the century, i.e. compared to no measurement at all. But now, nearly 20 years later, it is clear that last-click attribution is not sophisticated enough and that it misattributes value back to media partners since many organic activities that marketers shouldn’t have to pay for are captured, i.e. they aren’t truly
13
June
“We all judge the book by its cover. The better the book cover, the more we believe the content is better.”
The above remark by noted UX expert
Anton Nikolov holds true for digital advertising as well. However, there’s one catch.
If the expectations set by the ad are not met, then it will invariably lead to a bad experience for the user. Best case scenario, a poor ad experience will lead people to quickly dismiss an ad or quickly forget about it once it’s seen. In all other cases, a poor advertisement can result in a negative opinion towards the advertised product or even the brand as a whole.
Here’s a three-step process to making sure your ad stays true and avoids such pitfalls.
1. The ad should clearly state its objective
Why does the ad matter? Does the copy and design communicate clarity? Does it evoke positive emotions in the consumer?2. The ad should deliver on the promised value and utility
It should meet or exceed expectations. In order to do this, empathy is key. “To understand and be understood” should be the motto of every advertiser. It’s okay not to get it right the first time, or for that matter every time. But the intent has to be there. Treat every interaction as an opportunity to get to know your consumer’s needs better. Arm yourself with data to help you in this effort.3.
11
June
For many performance marketers today, online advertising and offline advertising are seen as two totally separate, distinct ways to reach target audiences. And in the world of performance app marketing specifically, online marketing is heavily favored over offline tactics like newspaper advertising.
On the surface, it’s easy to see why any company with a heavy digital presence would focus on digital channels primarily. Tactics such as email marketing, search engine optimization and social media advertising offer hard KPIs, allowing marketers to both only pay for desired results and to quantify precisely the impact of their efforts.
Let’s say a small business with limited budget wanted to promote its product or service. It could run online ads like Google display ads, and quickly see a return on investment even if the initial spend amount was small. Compare that with print advertising. With print ads, you hope someone sees it and takes action, but you may not ever know the ROI of that initial spend. It is for this reason that many online-centric businesses have prioritized digital channels.
But is this kind of either/or positioning the best way to structure your marketing campaigns? Maybe not. After all, people still see billboards, watch linear television and read newspapers and magazines. For many performance app marketers, it can often be advantageous to combine online advertising and offline advertising in an intelligent manner to drive new business.The Premise: Should Offline Advertising
05
June
For marketers and advertisers in the user acquisition space, mobile app cost per install (CPI) has long been the default bidding model. Cost per install campaigns, where advertisers pay ad networks and other partners only when they drive installs of their mobile applications from the app stores, are ubiquitous.
But is this really the best use of ad spend for getting users for mobile apps? In our latest Whiteboard Wednesday video, Srinivas KC, VP and GM of InMobi DSP, argues why marketers should worry less about average CPI costs and instead using CPX bidding to buy against the most important metrics for the business.
Transcript:
Hello, welcome to another edition of InMobi Whiteboard Wednesdays. My name’s KC, and today we’re going to talk about CPX bidding. Everybody’s heard about CPC, CPM, CPI and all of the kinds of bidding in the programmatic world, but what in the hell is CPX bidding? Well, let’s get into it.The Evolution of CPI Campaigns
Traditionally what mobile marketers have done was to depend on CPM bidding, so when they’re buying media from an exchange or an ad network, they typically ended up paying on a CPM basis.
That evolved over time, and over the last many years, models have evolved from paying CPC - that is cost per click - to potentially CPCV and CPP, which is cost per video view or cost per playable, and those kinds
16
May
Many organizations are not handling attribution well today. A 2018 study from ClickZ and Fospha found that only around 9 percent of marketers in the U.S. thought their companies had an “excellent” understanding of attribution. In fact, over 34 percent actively said their businesses had either a “below average” or “very poor” understanding of “data-driven attribution.”
Yikes! So how can marketers correct this? How should they be thinking about attribution today?
We recommend that all marketers prioritize these attribution actions and mindsets.Multi-Touch and Cross-Device Attribution
The days of just looking at clicks and single actions in your advertising efforts are increasingly in the rearview window. Haven’t we moved beyond 1997’s terminology and measurement? The customer journey today is much more complicated than one activity leading to one action. More often than not, a series of efforts among many different people will lead to sales (and rebuys). In 2019, we want marketers embrace multi-touch attribution and to understand how efforts across devices (both offline and online) impact final buying behaviors.Also, consumers today don’t see ads, learn about products, interact with others or make purchase decisions in a vacuum. One single action rarely lead to one single result. So why, then, don’t brands account for these myriad actions? People today get information in real life and online, and use many different devices from television sets and laptops to smartphones and tablets. Even old school tactics like billboards, radio ads and
08
May
What, exactly, is cross device attribution and why is it necessary today? Prajwal Barthur, Director of Product Management at InMobi, explains in our latest Whiteboard Wednesday video:
30
April
If you’re new to the world of mobile ad tech, it’s likely you’ve found yourself at the receiving end of a steady stream of jargon. Some of the most common terms flying around when it comes to video and other creative formats are VAST, VPAID and MRAID. But what do these terms mean and how do these technologies differ?
What came first?
The Video Ad Serving Template, more commonly referred to as VAST, was first established by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to standardize communication between an ad server and a video player. Built during the desktop era and later adopted by mobile, the template helped facilitate scale by creating a standard, ultimately unlocking massive potential for both advertisers and publishers. The template uses an XML schema to transfer important metadata, including which ad to play, how long should it last and if it’s skippable.
Post its introduction by IAB in 2008, the template has undergone several iterations to keep up with the industry’s shifting needs.Great, so VAST fulfilled all of the industry’s requirements?
Not quite. Advertisers love interactivity, and VAST in its original form couldn’t address this requirement. The IAB put together the Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) to offer advertisers interactivity; interestingly, VPAID was also used for its measurement capabilities since it could collect a range of data points such as ad playback and engagement details.
By layering VPAID on
25
April
As issues relating to brand safety become ever-greater concerns for advertisers, a number of brand safety tools have come out in the market purporting to address these woes. But can these solutions and management platforms actually protect your brand and ensure no poor ad placements?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of tools out there that claim to be able to keep your brand safe but won’t actually be able to. How do brand marketers determine which options are worthwhile and which one won’t be able to help? When reviewing various brand safety solutions, be sure to ask these nine questions to determine ultimate effectiveness.1) How is Brand Safety Defined?
Unfortunately, there’s no one universally agreed-upon definition of brand safety, as we highlighted in our previous post. But, there are certain placements that are off limits for just about all brands, like fake news sites.
Before choosing a solution, make sure their definitions align with yours. If not, then see if they are willing to alter their definition to suit your needs.2) How Does the Solution Address Brand Suitability?
While some ad placements are downright damaging and problematic, others are not not ideal.
Brand safety refers to issues that are likely to damage a brand’s reputation and/or bottom line. A placement that’s just not suitable is likely to only put an advertiser in an uncomfortable situation - but nothing else probably beyond that. It’s
23
April
Is there one central industry-wide brand safety definition within the ad tech space that all digital advertisers must follow? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
While there are certain ad placements that are deemed less than ideal by just about all digital marketing pros out there, there’s also a lot of gray areas and nuance when it comes to what brand safety includes and excludes within the realm of programmatic advertising.Shortfalls with Catch-All Brand Safety Definitions
Here’s how the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) has attempted to define brand safety: “The term ‘Brand Safety’ describes the controls that companies in the digital advertising supply chain employ to protect brands against negative impacts to the brand’s consumer reputation associated with specific types of content, criminal activity, and/or related loss of return on investment.”
But this definition leaves a lot to be desired. It’s hardly a handy catch-all definition that can be applied to make sure a brand’s image is not tainted by the accidental placement of an ad next to inappropriate content due to issues stemming from programmatic advertising.
This vagueness is likely on purpose. That’s because what is acceptable to one organization may be totally unacceptable to another one. For example, while one brand may be loathe to have its ads appear on fake news sites or next to controversial social media posts, others may have no qualms with it.
“Every brand has their
16
April
Test. Optimize. Deploy. Repeat.
This is the virtuous mantra that digital and growth marketers stand by. But how does one implement it? What are the steps? What tools are available to conduct these experiments? How do we measure the uplift in performance?
Before we get started, let’s delve into why A/B testing is necessary and how it helps in maximizing campaign performance.Creative Optimization Framework
In every collection of creatives there will be a few that perform well and others that do not. Ensuring that users are shown the better performing
creatives will better attract the intended audience for your app (and increase conversions).
For this to happen, new creatives need to be added regularly while creatives that perform below par need to be removed.
Note: A creative variation (variant) contains variations to one or more of the following elements:
Headline Subheadline Paragraph text Call to Action text Call to Action button (size and color) Images Logos Inclusion or exclusion of App Store / Google Play store badges) Background
CTA link (landing page / deep link) is, strictly speaking, not part of the creative elements that goes into a variant, and hence not considered part of the creative optimization process.Defining the Optimization Goal
It’s important to determine the parameters the creatives will be optimized or ranked on.
Rather than go with Click-Through Rate (CTR), or Installs per 1,000 impressions (IPM), or even Click to Install (CTI), we recommend optimizing
11
April
For any marketing strategy featuring ads running in mobile apps, teams have a variety of mobile marketing metrics they can buy against. But which ones are capable of actually yielding a positive return on investment? Are marketing campaigns based on vanity metrics or metrics that matter for the company at large?
Over the past decade plus, the kinds of mobile app metrics that marketers buy against has evolved significantly. But, many of the current pricing models in place today could use an overhaul. Let’s dive into the current problems, and what a potential solution looks like.Highlighting the Current World of Mobile Advertising Pricing Models
At first, all advertising on app screens was just based on media. Marketers paid just to show their ad to a set number of users. This is where the ubiquitous CPM (cost per Mille, or cost per 1,000 impressions) comes into play. Ad partners were there just to show ads. That’s it.
From there, pricing models evolved to put more onus on the user. Now, ad networks are beginning to take a little responsibility for what people are doing once they see an ad. CPC (cost per click) is perhaps the most popular user-based pricing model; another common example is CPVV (cost per video view).
One step further than both is a pricing model based on the outcome. Here, the ad network is actively invested in customer engagement and a final, desired action. In
04
April
In-App Programmatic Advertising Explained from A-Z
Need programmatic advertising explained to you in layman’s terms? No worries, because we have you covered here!
Interested in learning more about the current state of mobile programmatic? Be sure to download our latest report for insights straight from our leading global mobile in-app ad exchange!
GET REPORTProgrammatic Ads: A Definition
Anytime you sell or buy digital ads using machines or through any kind of automation, that’s considered programmatic advertising. Programmatic enables buyers and sellers to collect and make deals without having to manually process insertion orders or develop one-on-one deals.Different Types of Programmatic Media Buying
When it comes to buying and selling programmatically, there are a few ways deals can be structured and managed.
With open exchanges or open marketplaces, available ad inventory (i.e. potential ad placements on apps or websites) is made available to anyone, and the highest bidder in an ad auction gets to place their ad in that spot for a given amount of time. This is the advertising world’s equivalent to buying on a stock exchange like NASDAQ. While it’s relatively easy for advertisers to set up and optimize campaigns at scale with open exchanges, they historically have had issues with low impression costs, fraud and less-than-stellar ad quality.
In a private auction, which is also sometimes known as a private marketplace or a closed auction, a publisher allows a select group of
26
March
When it comes to measuring mobile app marketing attribution (i.e. marketing campaigns with ads within mobile apps), it’s tempting to just port over web attribution models from Google Analytics or solely focus on single actions like when users click to download the app.
But, these kinds of outdated user acquisition methodologies no longer cut it. For mobile marketers and app advertisers today, reaching, acquiring and retaining customers through mobile devices requires much more careful thought and planning.
LEARN MOREProblems with Legacy Approaches to Mobile App Marketing
Let’s dive deeper into the current state of user acquisition within in-app advertising and marketing. In the past, these campaigns were solely focused on getting people to install the app in question. Ads for the app would include a deep link connecting to the app stores, with pixel tags often used to track the final install.
And who gets credit for this single action? Typically, the ad network, exchange or other ad tech provider responsible for showing the ad that was finally clicked and acted upon would get ultimate credit for the action. Less frequently, the actors responsible for showing the very first ad to someone who later installed the app would get either primary or secondary credit.
Kochava and AppsFlyer log these as “assists.”
So what’s wrong with this picture? Why is this “Last Click” attribution model problematic?
For starters, it doesn’t accurately reflect the way people are
27
February
Would a stockbroker invest in a stock if only the ticker prices were accessible and none of the firm’s financial statements?
Definitely not.
What is stopping the broker is the lack of transparency. As a consumer, we need transparency to make the right purchase decisions.
The overarching purpose of transparency is to build trust. It is for this reason we don’t order medicines from an unknown drug store or provide our credit card details to a fintech upstart. There’s the overwhelming fear of consuming counterfeit medicines or risking our life savings to potential fraudsters.
It should be no different in digital advertising, especially in programmatic buying. In fact, media buying not only requires trust and transparency, it depends on it.
The need for greater transparency and trust in the digital advertising market has become more pronounced over the last couple of years with issues such as ad fraud, brand safety, rise of ad blockers and underhand practices plaguing the industry.What Does Transparency Entail?
Simply put, transparency means total visibility into the entire buying funnel (as made available to the demand-side platform, or DSP) required to make efficient purchase decisions for the buyer.
At the very minimum, this entails transparency into the following:
Media source (traffic source and traffic type) Media (app bundle ID and app name) Pricing (bid price and clearing price) Impression path (creative, placement type and slot size) Campaign setup (dashboard access to check
13
February
Watch Our Whiteboard Video on Bid Shading
Today, to determine the winner of an in-app programmatic auction, bid shading is becoming an increasingly common way to determine the final price paid of the demand-side platform (DSP) winning the auction.
This model of bidding has arisen as more publishers and supply side platforms (SSPs) are moving to first price auctions - or considering this bidding strategy - as DSPs are not always keen on the highest bidder paying exactly what they bid.
In this latest Whiteboard Wednesday video, Ryan Gauss, InMobi’s Platform Product Manager, explains how bid shading works and how it impacts what the buyers bid, win rates and bid history. The video also highlights how both first price and second price bids affect a DSP’s chance of winning and final payout rate.
Transcript
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Wednesday. My name is Ryan Gauss, and I’m the Platform Product Manager here at InMobi. Today we’re going to be discussing Bid Shading, why it came about, why it’s needed and what the advantages and disadvantages of it are.
So before we get into Bid Shading, let’s talk a little bit about First Price and Second Price Auctions. And, as we discussed in our previous Whiteboard Wednesdays on First Price and Second Price Auctions, in a First Price Auction what typically happens is the DSP or the buyer or the bidder -
11
February
Too often, in-app advertising and trust are not associated terms. Why is both business and consumer trust in the digital advertising industry so low?
To learn more about what InMobi is doing to improve and guarantee trust and transparency throughout the mobile in-app advertising and marketing ecosystem, download our white paper on 5 Ways InMobi Ensures Trust and Transparency today.
DOWNLOAD GUIDE
Here are some of the biggest issues plaguing this form of advertising today:
Fraud. According to mobile measurement company Adjust, mobile ad fraud close to doubled beginning the beginning of 2017 and the first few months of 2018. For some organizations, four out of every five dollars spent on mobile advertising is consumed by fraud. As money increasingly flows into mobile and in-app advertising, fraudsters are unfortunately following right along. Lack of Transparency. From the perspective of end users (a.k.a. regular folks like you and me), 2018 abounded with stories that highlighted the sometimes frightening ways brands use - and misuse - personal data. And from the perspective of brands and app publishers, it can be increasingly difficult to keep tabs on the entire value chain, with so many players in between point A and point B now. These factors have made transparency one of the biggest trends in mobile marketing today, and have helped give rise to new transparency-focused initiatives such as app-ads.txt. Brand Safety. Close to 75 percent of all marketers in the U.S. have dealt with
17
January
If you’re looking to embrace programmatic media buying in 2019 but don’t know where to begin, then consider these examples of programmatic advertising to see how others have approached real-time bidding and automated advertising campaigns.
Increasingly, in-app digital advertising is going programmatic. In our latest report, Mobile Programmatic Advertising Trends 2018, data points from the InMobi Exchange showed that budgets dedicated to programmatic media buying jumped over 300 percent between the first six months of 2017 and the first half of 2018.
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Here are four data-driven case studies highlighting how app publishers, brands and demand-side platforms (DSPs) have benefitted from in-app programmatic buying.1) How Appreciate Optimizes Programmatic Campaigns to Help Clients Maximize Ad Spend
As a leading DSP, Appreciate has consistently leveraged the programmatic prowess of the InMobi Exchange to help its clients get the most value possible out of in-app advertising and marketing. By working closely with the InMobi team since 2017, Appreciate has been able to double its presence in the U.S. market and grow a whopping 500 percent between the second and third quarters of 2018.
How did they do this? There were a few key factors to the success of this programmatic partnership:
Data: Thanks to all of the information that’s coming in from all of the programmatic transactions, Appreciate and InMobi can more effectively identify new growth opportunities and potential areas of improvement.
Scale: Reaching an ever wider audience was key here, but this is where programmatic
10
January
The very best marketers - the ones that always hit their goals and move the business forward - advertise in mobile apps.
That’s why the in-app advertising market is red hot right now. Mobile ad spending and ad revenues will likely reach record highs in 2019,
predicts eMarketer.
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What’s so special about in-app mobile advertising? Why are the best of the best running in-app ad campaigns with greater frequency?
Here’s why:1) Your Target Audience Uses Mobile Apps a Lot
In 2019, the average smartphone owner in the U.S. will spend over two hours every day using apps - 134 minutes to be precise in 2019,
according to eMarketer. And by 2020, that’s expected to jump up even higher.
In comparison, the typical smartphone user will spend just 13 minutes using a mobile web browser in 2019, and a paltry 12 minutes in 2020.
With mobile devices likely overtaking television sets as the most popular screen in the house this year, this shows just how ascendant apps have become.
And what kinds of apps are people using? There are a few top apps used the world over, but people are utilizing a lot more apps every day than you might think. In the U.S., the typical smartphone owner leverages more than 10 apps a day and around
30 in an average month.
This may all be the tip of the proverbial iceberg too. As the number of cord-cutters and cord-nevers rises and as apps
07
January
In 2019, what will be the biggest data driven marketing trends? What data-led marketing strategies will take the lead in the new year?
To find out, we gaze into the crystal ball to reveal how data-focused marketing execution will evolve in 2019. Here are our top five predicted trends for the new year.
Interested in learning more about the biggest trends in ad tech and martech in 2019? Be sure to download our 2019 trends report today to see what we think will be huge in the new year.
GET REPORT1) Greater Emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
In this day and age, it’s
hardly surprising to say that artificial intelligence (AI) is a key trend. After all, it seems as though everyone is talking about AI and machine learning (ML).
But beyond the buzzwords, what does this actually mean for marketers? How can marketers and advertisers actually benefit from AI and ML? Likely, expect the following applications to come further to the fore in 2019:
Predictive analytics - Through the analysis of previous behavior and action, ML algorithms can help predict the future. This is hugely beneficial for marketers, and these kinds of applications will become even more popular in 2019. Predictive analytics can give marketers accurate insights into how their campaigns and efforts are likely to perform, helping them for effectively allocate their time and limited budgets. Prescriptive analytics - This takes predictive analytics one step further. Instead of just predicting likely
26
December
Is 2019 the year that cross-device attribution and multi-touch attribution marketing become the norm in mobile in-app marketing efforts? We believe that in the new year, multi-touch attribution models will finally be more popular than last-click attribution model, and that mobile marketers will more firmly quantify cross-device activity in their attribution models.
Note: This is the sixth and final post in our series on top trends for 2019. Previous entries covered
transparency, OTT, in-app header bidding, data and machine learning.
LEARN MOREMoving Beyond Last-Click Conversions with Mobile Ads
In most digital ad strategies historically, the only marketing touchpoint that mattered was the final click. Campaigns were deemed successful only if they came from one particular ad or promotion.
This model emerged at the beginning of digital marketing and advertising, back before Google Analytics appeared on the scene. This used to be the easiest way to measure a campaign’s success, which is why it became so popular.
But, a number of issues with this attribution model have emerged and come to the fore. For starters, it fails to take the entire customer journey into account. It’s not likely that someone sees an ad from a brand they’ve never heard of before but then decides to click on their ad and then make a purchase.
More likely, someone needs to see an ad multiple times and also read about the company from multiple sources before they make a purchasing decision. Last-click
21
December
As a marketer, you cannot ignore the power of mobile. But, do you know how to best leverage the myriad possibilities it offers your brand? With #MobileMonday, we bring to you stories of how the biggest global brands are winning customers on mobile. Check out the best of innovations by marketers in our 2018 throwback. Follow
InMobi on LinkedIn to receive more updates on #MobileMonday.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#1
L'Oréal Paris India: Beauty for all - Retail Consumer Experience in your palm!
6 awards: MMA Smarties India - Most engaging mobile creative, MMA Smarties APAC - Best use of AR/VR, Maddies - Excellence in Innovation, India Marketing Awards - Customer Experience on Mobile, Mobexx awards - Excellence in rich media campaign, Mobexx awards - Excellence in AR/VR
For over 200 years, L'Oreal - the iconic beauty brand, has provided affordable luxury to those who demand excellence. The brand has further cemented its cult status through its partnership with Cannes, the legendary French Film Festival. While many Indian Ambassadors including Aishwarya Rai and Deepika Padukone, have walked the red carpet, women across the subcontinent couldn't help but feel disconnected from the excitement and glamour oceans away. The brand knew it was time to create a unique and immersive experience for their consumers. The brand launched a mobile-first ad campaign that utilized augmented reality to encouraging users to Get Deepika's red carpet look. This brought retail experience in the consumer’s palms.
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#2
Diageo India:
3
20
December
In terms of improving the overall effectiveness of targeted advertising, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) hold a lot of promise. While machine learning systems have been all the rage already in 2018, we believe machine learning algorithms will become an even bigger trend with mobile in-app advertiser campaigns in 2019.
Note: This is the fifth post in our series on top trends for 2019. Our first post was on transparency, the second predictions post focused on OTT, our third post talked about in-app header bidding and our fourth blog discussed data monetization. Stay tuned for one more blog post all about what leading figures in the mobile advertising and marketing space think will become pervasive in the new year.
LEARN MOREPotential Benefits of AI and ML in Mobile Advertising
In 2019, here are just some of the ways in which ML and AI will help maximize lift and improve ad performance across the board.
For starters, AI can go a long way towards ensuring that
ad creatives are the right fit for any target audience. Through advanced computer vision algorithms and extensive historical performance data, brands can determine what precisely it was about a particular ad creative that worked well in the past, and predict with greater certainty what kinds of creatives will perform well in the future.
“By applying advanced predictive analytics capabilities to the development of mobile ad creatives, however, mobile marketers can be more confident about the effectiveness of
11
December
Is 2019 the year that ad supported OTT video viewers reach a critical mass, or will the number of people who watched ad supported OTT remain low? Will the amount of ad supported OTT video be scant in the new year, or will the number of people watching ad supported streaming video content rise to unforeseen heights?
We are confident that content on streaming services will become bigger than ever before in 2019, and that the dominance of traditional television on the largest screen in the house is declining.
Note: This is the second in our series on top trends for 2019. Our first post was on transparency. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts all about what leading figures in the mobile advertising and marketing space think will become pervasive in the new year.
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07
December
In 2019, we expect brands and their advertising partners to focus more on accountability and digital advertising transparency. Next year, transparency and control will be increasingly critical to everyone from the head of media buying at major brands down to advertising agencies and everyone else in the online advertising community, as issues around brand safety and lack of transparency become too big to ignore any longer.
Note: This is the first in our series on top trends for 2019. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts all about what leading figures in the mobile advertising and marketing space think will become pervasive in the new year.
Where Marketing Campaigns and Media Spending Currently Fall Flat
Digital media companies have been rapidly embracing programmatic advertising and real-time media buying across mobile apps. According to
our latest report, mobile programmatic spending rose over 300 percent between the first half of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017. And, between January and June 2018, 56 percent of all in-app ad spending was conducted programmatically.
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But, all is not rosy in this new, more automated world. While programmatic has promised greater transparency, for many brands this has not been the reality. In particular,
concerns around brand safety and an overall lack of transparency have emerged as the biggest issues cited by brand advertisers throughout both 2017 and 2018.
As brands look to spend more on mobile in-app advertising to more effectively reach and impact today’s mobile-first consumers, they want to
13
November
For brands, there are many top mobile app advertising benefits. In comparison to just about any other marketing strategy option, mobile advertising within apps has a number of unique advantages for mobile marketers - or even general managers of advertising more generally.
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Here are the top eight perks of mobile in-app advertising that make it the best mobile strategy.1) Target Consumers Without Cookies
Within mobile web advertising or any other browser-based marketing effort, most data available to marketers and advertisers has traditionally come from cookies. That may be fine
for Cookie Monster, but it won’t cut it for savvy marketers today.
There are a few core problems with cookies:
Cookies miss close to two-thirds of all mobile devices, since they’re only available with browsers and not apps. They have a short shelf life. Some cookies only last until a user’s session is over, failing to capture historical trends. Also, many people set up their browsers to automatically clear even persistent cookies. They are specific to devices, so they don’t account for people who use multiple devices. For example, let’s say a target customer looks at a website on a desktop and then later looks at the same site on a laptop later in the day. Cookies would track this as two separate people coming to the site, not one person coming from separate devices. It doesn’t capture identifying information like email addresses,
18
October
'Tis the season again. India is gearing up for the festivities and mobile is set to play a major role in discovery, research and shopping. Check out the latest insights that we have for you in partnership with AppsFlyer, on how app marketers can build a smarter mobile marketing strategy.
09
October
Have you ever wondered, how does in-app advertising work? What goes on behind the scenes to make mobile advertising happen today? Then this guide is for you. Learn More about Mobile In-App AdvertisingIntroducing the Digital Marketing Players in Mobile App Advertising
In the past, advertisers would communicate directly with app developers and publishers whenever they wanted to run an in-app ad campaign. Essentially, the advertiser would pay the publisher directly for access to their user base.
But, as the number of apps (and brands investing in digital advertising) rose, these one-on-one deals no longer made sense. Programmatic ad buying and real-time bidding have affected matters further, by introducing greater automation and efficiency to the mix.
Note: If you need a refresher on all of the acronyms and terms used in mobile advertising, then be sure to check out our guide.
So, who’s now involved in getting an ad to appear in an app?
On the advertiser side, a marketer will either have their own team members and/or a creative agency develop a mobile app advertisement and put together the creatives to use. From there, a demand-side platform (DSP) will aggregate creatives/campaigns from multiple advertisers, and then work to ensure they are offered up to app publishers.
On the app publisher side, developers and app owners will integrate with a source of advertiser demand either directly or with a supply-side platform (SSP) that aggregates publisher supply. Typically, this
04
October
Programmatic media buying has been a boon for digital advertising, but that doesn’t mean problems with programmatic advertising are nonexistent. Despite the many benefits programmatic brings to the table - increased efficiency, less human error and less manual effort, for starters - many media buyers are reticent to commit their digital ad dollars to programmatic channels.
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But, these naysayers may be surprised to learn that most of the common gripes are easily addressable. Here’s how it’s done.Problem #1: Lack of Transparency
In a recent survey of media agencies conducted earlier this year, this was by far the
top challenge cited by programmatic advertisers. With so many different players involved in getting an ad from an advertiser to their target audience - not to mention all of their acronyms - it can be hard for some to keep track of everyone and determine who is and isn’t involved in a given campaign.
Solution to Problem #1: While this is a common concern, it can be addressed. For starters, we are totally transparent with all of our supply chain partners about what data we collect and how it’s used. We also let advertisers know exactly who they’re targeting and what apps they’re using before a campaign is ever run. And, unlike others, we provide app-level campaign performance in as close to real time as possible. That way, all of our advertiser partners always know
13
September
Here's How to Make Mobile Ads That Really Work
Even with the best targeting, insights and ad networks in place, any in-app ad spending will all be for naught unless you create and deploy the most effective mobile ad creatives. If people aren’t enticed to view, hear and interact with your ad, then your ad campaign will fall flat. The success of any mobile marketing effort rests on the creative.
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But, while advertisers have mostly mastered effective ad creatives on older formats like print and television, mobile in-app advertising is a whole different ballgame. What kind of creatives work best on the mobile device?Top KPIs for Mobile Marketing
Let’s get into how effective ad creatives are developed. Whether you’re creating fullscreen video ads, interstitial ads, native ads, banner ads and display ads, it helps to have... a firm understanding of what success looks like.
Is the goal of the campaign to generate high click-through rates back to a landing page? Is having a specific conversion rate for the ad important? Or are impressions and views the key performance indicator? It can often help to design the ad (and the larger campaign) around its ultimate goals, and that typically helps streamline creative decisions.
And, if you’re not sure what video ad metrics you should be tracking, then be sure to check out out guide on the topic.Key Principles of Effective Mobile Ad Creatives
06
September
Increasingly, more and more people are spending a whole lot of time in front of their smartphones instead of television sets or even desktops and laptops. Consider these figures from eMarketer:By next year, people in the United States will spend more time looking at a mobile device than a TV.This year, the typical American adult devotes more than three hours and thirty minutes a day to their mobile devices, up 11 minutes from 2017 averages.In the U.S., 90 percent of all time spent with a smartphone is spent using apps.Brands want to be where their target audience is, so their agencies must adapt. Any brand agency worth its salt today must be able to provide its clients with a range of advertising options for reaching and targeting mobile users.For agencies just stepping foot into the world of the app store and app developers, let this guide show you how to advertise on apps so that your client see real, lasting results at scale.As part of our ongoing Mpower Mobile Masterclass series, we’ve been traveling the country to talk to agencies just like you about all things mobile in-app advertising. If you’re interested in having a mobile ad expert stop by, drop up a line at scheduleachat@inmobi.com to schedule a session.How is Mobile Advertising Different from Digital Marketing?First, before we dive into all things app, let’s take a moment to
22
August
You’ve spent several months creating a fantastic app, and users are signing up by the minute. Now comes the time for you to kick back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. But as you begin your journey towards app monetization, you are likely to be overwhelmed by the seemingly countless players in the ecosystem. Here are some key factors you should keep in mind before you zero in on the right monetization partner.Complement your User Experience with the Right Ad Experience.In a world where the user is king, user experience is no laughing matter. You’ve relentlessly tinkered your app and built the best experience for your users. It’s crucial that you don’t disrupt this experience you’ve painstakingly constructed with intrusive and irrelevant ad formats. Strike the right balance by choosing a partner who will not only be a great revenue generator but also provide ad experiences in tune with your app.Access Demand from Across the GlobeWith the geographical boundaries blurring due to the rapid increase in global smartphone penetration rates, apps rarely cater to single-country audiences. Today the world truly is the app developer’s oyster. A global audience supplements global demand, and it's crucial to choose a partner who can help fulfill the unlimited potential your app holds. As audiences from different countries log in to your app, brands will look to tap into the audiences your app offers, making
21
June
In our previous article, we had discussed various strategies deployed by anti-fraud solutions to counter fraud today. The most prevalent technique being static threshold detection (i.e., defining known frauds, and then focusing on detecting those anomalies with predetermined fixed thresholds).
However, this is both ineffective and inefficient against constantly evolving, newer fraud methods for a simple reason — how do you find something when you don’t know what to look for?
No system can be 100 percent foolproof. There will inevitably be fraudulent installs/events that solutions fail to catch (false negatives) — or worse, flag clean installs/events incorrectly (false positives). This is critical, since such inaccuracies have adverse impact on advertising ROI, as we will see later.
This brings us to the next point: how does one evaluate the countless anti-ad fraud solutions available in the market?
We have made that daunting process easier for you with this systematic checklist to evaluate anti-fraud products.1. Accuracy and Reliability
Say a mobile campaign delivered 100 installs, of which 20 installs are fraudulent. The (accuracy) problem with most anti-fraud solutions is which 20 they flag as fraud.
One way to evaluate this is to compute the false positive and false negative metrics.
The confusion matrix (Image source: sanyamkapoor.com)
It is important to note that both false positives and false negatives reward bad players in the long run and hurt clean players severely.
More importantly, false positives and false negatives hurt advertisers even more as
14
June
“Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.”
— Isaac Asimov, Foundation
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Until recently, the approach to fighting mobile ad fraud has been defensive and reactive.
For instance,
Ad networks and publishers deploy rudimentary static defense mechanisms and wait for the bad guys to counter them before deploying hotfixes or undertaking countermeasures.
Anti ad fraud frameworks work mostly on static data, which is only good enough to detect - not prevent - limited types of fraud.Reactive Approaches Focus on Detection over Prevention
This cat-and-mouse game has continued unabated with the bad actors continually evolving, varying their means of attack and using techniques that have grown in complexity and scope over time. The
Methbot operation showed how the ad fraud industry has become more sophisticated and organized.The Tide is Shifting towards Fraud Prevention
The methods used by ad fraud crime syndicate are fast changing in the wake of increasing adoption of advanced data analytics and machine learning algorithms by adtech. After all, an automated learning system that continuously detects and prevents fraud is much more desirable and more efficient over static rule-based and manual intervention systems.
At InMobi, we are taking control of the battleground by using the attackers’ own predictable yet ever-evolving methodologies to not just detect fraud as it happens, but to actively prevent it as well.How is the Current Framework Being
08
June
All is not rosy in the digital advertising space. Increasingly, fraud is becoming a major concern to advertisers. Ad fraud is expected to cost brand and performance advertisers $19 billion - $51 million a day - in 2018, according to Juniper Research, which is equal to around one out of every $10 of all digital ad spend.The problem is especially acute with video. The percentage of firms worried about fraud specifically on their video ad networks rose from 33 percent in 2017 to 48 percent this year.This is far from a new problem, as fraud is nearly as old as time. Fraudsters follow the money, and as in-app advertising spend rises, nefarious players will continue to want to illicitly grab a cut. The questions for everyone in the digital ad space then becomes, what can be done to combat ad fraud, and can it ever be stopped for good?Know Thy EnemyThis famous idiom from Sun Tzu’s Art of War may be referring to military battles, but it’s just as apt in the battles against ad fraud. The problem is, when it comes to fighting fraud, everyone’s got their own definitions - and these can often be conflicting.For instance, consider how some would use Mean Time to Install and Retention Rate (daily/monthly usage) metrics to identify fraud. If an ad network sees a sudden spike in installs (low MTTI) but then a low retention rate after the first month, it
29
May
Programmatic is ideal for many publishers and advertisers, especially those seeking an efficient delivery of ads at global scale, but it has come under fire of late. Issues ranging from ad fraud to brand safety concerns have caused some advertisers and publishers to see programmatic as problematic. Will investment continue alongside the bad press?
Despite the lingering issues and worries, programmatic - when done right - has a lot of advantages in the trust and transparency department. The key point here is, as always, when done right. As programmatic has grown, many unsavory players have entered the market and sullied its once good name. When it comes to programmatic, it pays to do your due diligence. A good partner, however, should offer you these four key reassurances:1) Trustworthy Data-Led Insights for Advertisers
As the old saying goes, knowledge is power. Even its detractors will admit that programmatic offers a trove of information and insights. While some may dispute some of the data they receive from programmatic partners, legacy advertising options like newspaper print ads, billboards and television spots are fraught with measurement difficulties too. The immediacy and volume of programmatic provides a potential treasure trove of data to analyze, which brands can use to fine tune and perfect their ad offerings - so long as the most impactful metrics are being measured.
The insights that brands can glean through programmatic can help them better talk to - and ultimately reach
17
May
In-app advertising is at a crossroads. Ad fraud is reportedly at a record high. New buying technologies like programmatic are coming under fire. Brands are worried about their ads appearing next to objectionable or sensitive content. Consumers are increasingly worried about their data, and government agencies are cracking down.
So where does all this leave the industry? For those that have always had a commitment to honest and trustworthy advertising, it means doubling down on the long-standing practices that do right by publishers, advertisers and end users.
The mobile ad players committed to the Right Way of doing things focus on these three tenets:
1) Transparency
It’s hard to trust what you don’t know. Mobile advertising is far more than just point A (advertisers) and point B (apps/websites). The machinations going on behind the scenes connecting brands with publishers can appear opaque, which sometimes breaks down trust. A December 2017 report from AppsFlyer and Forrester found that 15 percent of digital marketers
didn’t know about all of the programmatic players involved in getting their ads displayed.
These transparency issues have especially come to the fore over the past 12 months, with advertisers shocked to find their spots on highly political websites or next to objectionable user-created content. According to the Forrester/AppsFlyer study, 33 percent of mobile marketers said they lacked visibility in where their ads ended up online, especially when buying programmatically. And when it comes to addressing issues of
08
May
Last year, we had organised Impressions - our first flagship summit for CXOs and senior decision makers in the mobile marketing and advertising space in Jakarta, Indonesia. We are bringing Impressions to India this year. And leading up to the event, here are the top 5 reasons why you can’t miss Impressions this summer!#1 Master Mobile-first MarketingAs smartphones become the primary screen for consumers, mobile is no longer just a part of the marketing strategy. MOBILE IS THE STRATEGY. If you are a marketing decision maker in your organisation, Impressions is your platform to understand and master mobile-first marketing. Request for your invite by clicking here. #2 Learn from Industry ExpertsImpressions brings the most influential minds in mobile, marketing and media in India under one roof. Hear from leaders across brands, agencies and technology companies about the role of mobile in today’s marketing mix and their secret sauce of maximising ROI. The who’s who of digital marketing will be there, so should you!#3 Decode the latest trendsBe witness to the latest insights on the top trends in mobile marketing. Deep-dive into the most pressing topics such as data, trust and programmatic in the mobile marketing landscape, and how to make the most of your investment on mobile. #4 Indelible Impressions!Impressions 2017 in Jakarta had some unforgettable moments - be it the InMobi experience zone to interact with the most innovative Ad Tech products from InMobi, a robot to emcee the
22
March
InMobi regularly hosts, participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from the InMobi InDecode workshop held on “Maximising ROI on Mobile” in Bengaluru, India.India has become the second largest app downloads market in the world, and continues to have a huge growth potential. However, increasing fraudulent installs and user uninstalls are major impediments to Maximising ROI on Mobile. The Bengaluru edition of InMobi InDecode hosted growth marketing leaders who intended to build an advanced understanding of ad fraud and in-app remarketing. Kicking off the event, Vasuta Agarwal, VP & GM at India, introduced the audience to the top trends shaping growth marketing in 2018 and the biggest challenges faced by advertisers. Other speakers for the day included Prajwal B S from InMobi, Anand Bhaskaran from BigBasket, Mahip Dwivedi from Flipkart, Abhiruchi Bhushan from Myntra and Raghav Singhal from PhonePe. The Fallacy of Downstream MetricsWith an estimated loss of $350 million being accounted to mobile ad fraud, it was time to address the elephant in the room. Prajwal B S, Director - Product, took an absorbing session on the various types of fraud, the dilapidated state of the anti-fraud crusade and the advanced techniques advertisers should adopt to #FightFraud. 85% of all fraud happens way upstream in the ad lifecycle - before the
19
February
InMobi regularly hosts, participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from the InMobi webinar on “Being Mobile-best in a Mobile-first India”.
2018 is slated to be the year of big transformation in India as mobile comprises 52.7% of all digital ad spend, up from 38% in 2017. India has emerged as the second largest app ecosystem in the world with users spending more than 50 billion hours on apps, amounting to 90% of their time on mobile.
Clearly, in these changing times, the biggest challenge is to Be Mobile-best in a Mobile-first India. The InMobi webinar, thus, was focused on helping marketers
Understand the top 7 trends for 2018 in mobile marketing;
Gain awareness of the top 5 challenges every marketer is bound to face;
And prepare for a mobile-first 2018
Mobile marketing is the next big thing
While the consumer obsession with smartphones rises, marketers are not far behind. According to InMobi research, 75% of Indian companies plan to increase their mobile spend in 2018 and 67% companies are streamlining their mobile marketing efforts more than before. In addition, 7 out of 10 organisations claim that mobile will become a key part of their marketing and commerce strategy. No wonder then that mobile is the next big thing for marketers.
Ad viewability and fraud remain major challenges
While there are several challenges faced
01
February
Today, InMobi announced its support for Active View, Google’s viewability verification product. The integration with Google means that buyers can buy in-app VAST mobile video inventory on InMobi Exchange that supports Active View viewability metrics.Buyers who are using DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) and DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) can now track and buy against Active View metrics on InMobi Exchange for in-app mobile video campaigns including vertical video.InMobi remains fully committed to the IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement SDK initiative, and plans to be an early adopter when it is released in 2018. Due to the importance of viewability for in-app mobile programmatic buying, InMobi and Google product teams have worked to create this immediate solution for supporting Active View for current 2018 campaigns. This solution will remain in effect until the launch of the IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement SDK initiative.“We’re excited to be supporting Google’s Active View viewability product. DCM and DBM customers can now measure buffer-free, high definition in-app VAST video on InMobi Exchange, verified by Active View, at scale globally,” said Sergio Serra, Product Manager Brand & Programmatic at InMobi.For more information, please contact Kayla Wilson at kayla.wilson@inmobi.com
27
December
As mobile technology evolves to create value for advertisers with advanced targeting capabilities, high customization and precise measurement, the mobile ecosystem continues to be threatened by an ever-expanding and evolving web of ad fraud. Estimated to cost growth marketers approximately $350 million in 2017, ad fraud has left advertisers scrutinizing the authenticity of each impression and every subsequent user interaction. According to Forrester Research, ad fraud will reach $10.9 billion in wasted spend by 2021, so it’s now more important than ever for the industry to come together and fight this battle together.Introducing The InMobi Anti-Fraud FrameworkAs a trusted partner of leading brands across the globe, InMobi has taken the initiative with its Anti-Fraud Framework to protect and enhance value for advertisers. Most fraud checks today are downstream (post-click) and account for only 15-20% of all fraud. InMobi scrutinizes fraudulent activity at each point upstream, right from the time of publisher onboarding, to the install event.The InMobi Anti-fraud Framework includes:Authentication of Publisher Properties - InMobi implements strict policies and processes such as ownership verification, brand safety checks among others to authenticate the media that advertisers are buying. These measures arrest malpractices such as site subletting and duplicate accounts.Ad Serving Checks - InMobi employs several run-time diagnostics and analysis on render and on click. InMobi’s fraud detection algorithms ensure that each view, interaction and action on a served ad is by humans and not automated traffic.Third-party Install Validation
15
December
InMobi regularly hosts, participates in and contributes to a series of events, meet-ups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from “Data Hack Summit 2017,” an event organized by Analytics Vidhya in Bangalore, India.
In this edition of the InMobi event diary, we cover our presence at the Analytics Vidhya-hosted event “Data Hack Summit 2017.” Aimed at bringing together the finest data scientists across India and the globe, the Data Hack Summit covered the latest trends in analytics, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).As the ‘AI’ and ‘ML’ buzzwords make their way into corporate boardrooms, data scientists at the conference were busy delving into the real science behind the hype. InMobi was part of one such session on “The need to rethink Deep Learning.” The session was focused on discussing the current applications across industries, the challenges in getting impact, and the evolution of deep learning as a tool in the data scientist’s armoury.The Need to Re-think Deep LearningAvi Patchava, VP, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, India at InMobi was part of the panel discussion on “The need to rethink Deep Learning.” Moderated by Kunal Jain, Founder & CEO of Analytics Vidhya, the panel also featured an eclectic mix of other researchers and practitioners - including Dr. Kirk Borne, Principal Data Scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, Dr. Srinivasan
13
December
InMobi regularly hosts, participates in and contributes to a series of events, meet-ups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at our recent visit to one of India’s top business schools - the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, where we addressed students of the Big Data and Analytics Certificate Program.In this edition of the InMobi event diary, we cover our visit to the well-known Indian Institute of Management of Bangalore where we addressed 60 students of the Big Data Analytics Certificate Program. Speaking on Machine Learning in the Wild, the event was a great opportunity to interact with a student group comprising experienced professionals looking to move to the field of Big Data and Analytics, and address their concerns and thoughts.InMobi was invited to address the 2017-18 batch given the on-ground experience in applying Big Data and Machine Learning technologies in the mobile advertising industry. InMobi has been applying these technologies for several years and their relevance has only grown as the industry and company have evolved. Avi Patchava, VP, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, at InMobi addressed the batch. He was introduced by Dr. Shankar Venkatagiri - Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Avi led the discussion with 8 Essential Tips to consider when designing, building and deploying a Machine Learning model towards a business problem:Tip #1:Be clear
13
December
InMobi regularly hosts, participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from “TechNEXT,” an event organized by GE research at their offices in Bangalore, India.
In this edition of the InMobi event diary, we cover our presence at the GE Research hosted event “TechNEXT.” TechNEXT is a forum at GE that familiarizes a deep technologist audience with what’s next and what’s cool in technology by bringing them face to face with industry leaders and their insights. InMobi was among the few invited to participate in GE’s inaugural TechNEXT event. The panel aimed to unravel the process of building a digital DNA through the age of digital-industrial transformation by leveraging Artificial Intelligence & data insights in particular.Delivering a Digital transformationAvi Patchava, VP, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, at InMobi was part of the panel discussion that was moderated by Vinay Jammu, Technology Leader for Physical-Digital Analytics at GE Global research, and featured Dr. Shankar Venkatagiri - Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore - and Sameer Dhanrajani - Chief Strategy Officer at Fractal Analytics. Digital transformation - Setting Up for SuccessThe panel noted that a digital transformation is a narrowly focused initiative around one or two technologies that can deliver the most value for the business given
10
November
With the holiday season around the corner, the pressure to attract a substantial share of the $682 billion opportunity has never been more intense.If you are a marketer, you probably already understand the pressing challenge of retaining quality users for your business. And if you are a retailer, the challenge is even more acute, as 60% of your online consumers now use mobile for shopping and researching. With consumers spending 90% of their time on mobile inside apps, retailers continue to struggle to retain their hard-earned app users.Thankfully, we have a time-tested solution for you that is known to deliver 10x higher CTRs, 150% higher conversion rates, amongst other unbelievable returns. Find out how you can achieve the same for your brand this holiday season. Download the full infographic
28
September
Part three of InMobi’s doing mobile video right vlog is now live, with InMobi’s Creative Director Nate Barnes, talking about the in-app latest trends and emerging standards, in mobile app creativity and interactivity. If you're yet to watch Part - 1 and Part - 2 of this Programmatic & Viewability of this series, it's available
here & here.
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19
September
Updated July 2, 2019Learn More About AVOC And Other Viewability Benchmarks
Video consumption on mobile devices, specifically smartphones, has exploded over recent years. Nowadays, adults are spending over 1.5 times more media time on mobile devices than on their desktops. Specifically, around
90% of the time spent on smartphones occurs within apps, not on the mobile browser.
Interested in learning more about mobile video advertising and other in-app creative opportunities? Reach out today to learn more.
LEARN MORE
While industry spend still lingers heavily in mobile browser-based ads, brands are quickly shifting focus to meet users where they are with in-app video advertisements.
By embracing video that is built for the mobile device and also the behavior of a mobile user, advertisers can achieve superior performance that only video can deliver.
But measuring beyond a viewable impression is crucial to know if your ad is being seen, heard and completed by a human. You must understand how these metrics combine to tell a complete story on your overall mobile video performance.
Read more: Learn how an MRC-accredited solution such as an SDK integration allows for greater in-app measurement and better mobile performance.
Traditional industry metrics that matter for mobile ads have included:
View-through rate
Completion rate
Quartile completion rates
Cost per mille (CPM)
But new standards allow us to take a deeper dive into the performance of our ad campaigns. So in this post, we’ll show you an expanded set of mobile
11
September
Part 2 of InMobi’s doing mobile video right vlog is now live, with InMobi’s Senior Director of Strategic Alliances, Carl CF Fredrick Martensson, talking about the in-app latest trends and emerging standards, in mobile app viewability. If you're yet to watch Part - 1 of this series, it's available here
Check out our latest vlog below:
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When is an install not really an install? When a fraudster tricks an attribution partner into tracking an install that has not taken place on a real device, attributing it to a paid source. Fraudsters use device emulation software in virtualized environments (on server hardware) to fake installs in an effort to claim advertising revenue to great effect. Fake installs defraud everyone along the advertising chain - taking money away from advertisers, publishers and networks. On a traffic flow sample of over 400M installs over 17 days, we estimated that $1.7M1 worth of installs were being paid to fraudsters faking installs. How Fraudsters Take Advantage of Data Centers Fraudsters use commonly available device emulations software to affect data centers, programming scripts that make the emulator create a new random device with a fresh Device ID. On that device, they then create a user and have that user engage with adverts. The emulated device will download the target app from an app store (or from local storage to cut down on traffic cost), triggering an install. Finally, the emulated device opens the installed app (to trigger an install event, which is then transmitted to the attribution provider). Sophisticated fraudsters might even go as far as storing the session for later use, in order to create third or seventh day retention by opening another session at the desired time. How Fake Installs Impact App Businesses The principal effect of fake installs on an
11
September
At InMobi, we recently conducted a quantitative survey to explore what app marketers are thinking and how they are strengthening their app’s success. The idea was to address the lack of industry level data on app performance marketing trends and strategies, giving marketing leaders a sense of peer perspective on the questions they are likely to face. This blog is the first of a five-part series outlining some of the key insights from this survey, and what it might mean for the app world. This first post will highlight the insights from marketers’ self-assessments, perspectives on their teams, their goals/objectives, as well as key marketing & advertising challenges they face. If you haven't had a chance to read this comprehensive report yet, download it now to learn what 800+ app marketers had to say about their strategy, priorities and innovative solutions to the biggest app marketing challenges. Marketer Profile: Pioneers in a Dynamic EnvironmentWhile app marketing is a relatively new discipline, its challenges are unique. 65% of those surveyed opined that they have 4 years or less of mobile app experience and are successful. This is a testament to the strength and passion of app business leaders. App marketers do not tend to define themselves as experts. In a constantly evolving industry with new strategies and tactics to learn every day, only a handful of marketers call themselves app marketing experts (14%). Big Goals – Lean Teams65% of the survey respondent’s teams comprised
05
September
Now, more than ever, people are using their mobile devices for every aspect of their daily lives. Just five years ago, adults in the U.S. spent twice the amount of time on their desktop computers than their mobile devices. Yet in 2017, the tables have turned. Today, U.S. adults are allocating 1.5 times more media time to their mobile devices than their desktops.
Moreover, when consumers are on their mobile devices, they are spending 90% of their time in-apps.
This is why media planners are buying up mobile video advertising, especially in-app. Over the last year, U.S. brand advertisers increased their mobile video advertising spends by 56%.
But if videos are not properly optimized for in-app play, media planners are wasting their advertising dollars.
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If you are looking to buy interactive video ads in-app, keep these guidelines in mind.
Make sure your video format matches mobile usage. Heed how your consumers are holding their phones: vertically. So design creatives in a vertical format, and don’t make users turn their phones to watch your video ad.
15 seconds is the new max. Opt to shorten your commercial spot and get to your message right up front — ideally, in 15 seconds or less. In fact, 70% of consumers will not watch an ad that is longer than 10 to 15 seconds.
Non-optimized assets are a waste of screen space. Make sure
21
August
Consumers are increasingly using their mobile
phones to work and play, and brands and retailers are responding to this
behavior with mobile advertisements.
According to eMarketer, in 2016,
mobile advertisers spent $46 billion on ads. More than half of that money, $24 billion, was allocated to
unseen browser ads. Consumers are spending 90% of their time on their mobile
devices in apps, which means that browser-based campaigns are going unnoticed.
In addition, mobile video has been proven to deliver more than 10 times the
engagement of banner ads.
To get the most return out of their mobile
video ad campaigns, retailers and brands should be adding "end cards"
into their video experiences that capture consumers’ attention and persuades
them to take action. The following are ideas for getting the most out of mobile
video ads with end cards.
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Why are end cards important?
End cards give the viewer something to do after
seeing an advertisement. From an advertiser’s perspective, end cards provide a templated
yet customizable rich-media experience for greater engagement. In fact,
according to InMobi data, interactive end cards following a 15-second video
drive up to 9x engagement over static banner ads. End cards are a way to
increase engagement and keep viewers attentive until the very last second.
If you’re considering using this advertising
method, the following are ideas for getting the most out of
15
August
Traditional television is quickly becoming an outdated medium thanks to the rise of mobile technologies.
According to Google, YouTube reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds in the United States than any cable network . More than half of the traffic is from mobile devices. The average number of video views per day on the site is one billion, and people watch videos for about 40 minutes during every viewing session.
Mobile is not only overtaking television. It is also catching up to desktop video viewing as well. According to Adobe, 36% of smartphone users watch long-form videos on their devices every single day, and 58% will watch short-term videos daily. Additionally, Google research revealed that mobile ad video viewability on smartphones was higher (83%) than on desktop (53%) or tablet devices (81%).
Mobile video and mobile video ads will only continue to grow as people become increasingly reliant on their on-the-go devices. If you have produced a TV commercial for your brand, it is wise to transform it into a mobile video advertisement as well.
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Tips for repurposing your TV commercial into a mobile video ad
It can be costly and time-consuming to make your TV commercial into a mobile video advertisement, but it is well worth it. You are going to reach more consumers as well as that key 18- to 49-year-old demographic that is going to purchase your goods and
11
August
According to a
recent North American Insights report by InMobi, mobile device usage has
exploded over the past few years. Consumers are using their smartphones,
tablets, smart watches and other on-the-go devices for everything from shopping
to watching media and connecting with family and friends. And as a result, many
mobile advertisers have pivoted to mobile-first advertising formats.
In 2012, U.S. adults
spent twice the amount of digital media time on desktop devices over mobile
ones, according to eMarketer. Now, in 2017, adults are spending 1.5 times more
media time on their mobile devices than desktops.
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Mobile usage, especially mobile video usage, will only
continue to grow as more consumers embrace the medium. It is estimated that
between 2016 and 2020, the number of digital video viewers will reach 235.9
million, which is a 10% increase, according to Statista.
Now is the time for brands and retailers to invest in mobile
video advertising to capture consumers’ attention and accurately target them
with products and services.
The rise of mobile
video advertising in the U.S.
U.S. based brands are heavily capitalizing on mobile video
advertising in an attempt to reach consumers. According to IAB, U.S. brand
advertisers increased mobile video advertising spends by 56% over last year. In
the first half of 2017, North America represented 52% of global mobile video ad
spend, which was a 50% increase from the first half of 2016, according to
Statista.
Measuring viewability
metrics
09
August
Updated June 28, 2019.
Absolutely! Retargeting is totally possible on mobile, but is probably more complex than retargeting users on desktop. For the uninitiated, retargeting is the ability to serve ads across the web or in apps based on past user behavior on a company’s online property such as desktop/mobile website or app.
Interested in setting up a mobile remarketing campaign using the world's first in-app programmatic buying platform that guarantees ROI and complete transparency? Reach out today to schedule a demo of InMobi DSP.
LEARN MORE
To better understand the complexity of retargeting on mobile, one should draw parallels between retargeting in the desktop and the mobile worlds. Let’s examine it using the below example:A user goes online with the intent of shopping and spends some time browsing through the latest collection of shirts, but leaves without making a purchase. This user action makes for a clear retargeting use case. So, how would retargeting work on both the desktop and mobile?Retargeting on Desktop vs Mobile
Whenever a new user visits a website on the desktop, a cookie is dropped to track the user’s activity across the browser and to follow them across the web. The user in this case hence is continuously served ads about the latest collection of shirts based on their footprint - wherever they go. This means that advertisers can “retarget” users by merely embedding a javascript on their website.
Sequence of
08
August
Back-to-school
time is just around the corner, which means that brands and retailers need to
start ramping up their advertising to parents. It is a period when a typical
family will spend hundreds of dollars on goods and companies are given a huge
opportunity to increase sales.
The scope of the back-to-school market
Shoppers are
opening up their wallets and spending big on back-to-school necessities in
2017. According to Statista, the average U.S. family plan to
allocate $687 for their items, which is the highest that
back-to-school spending has been since 2013. Families with children going to
college will earmark $970 for school supplies, according to National Retail
Federation. Overall, U.S. back-to-school retail sales are going to climb to
$857 billion, which is a 4% uptick from last year, according to eMarketer.
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If retailers and brands want to reach parents and students and encourage them to purchase,
they need to advertise to them through the relevant channels. It's not too late: In fact, 21% of back-to-school parents are planning on doing their shopping a week before school starts.
How do you reach them? This year, it’s
all about mobile.
Utilizing mobile advertising for
back-to-school
More than half
of retailers are going to change their marketing approach to parents this
back-to-school season by focusing on mobile. In addition, 89% of marketers plan
to boost their investment in mobile advertising, according to Retailmenot.com.
Though most
04
August
Dating app TrulyMadly has entered into an exclusive partnership with InMobi for ad monetization. The dating app, in partnership with InMobi, intends to help advertisers amplify their reach on mobile using a varied range of ad formats including native, interstitial and video. It enables advertisers to reach users using InMobi’s platform capabilities such as location-based targeting and engage them through formats such as video.Sharing her thoughts, Vasuta Agarwal, VP & GM, InMobi (India) said, “For advertisers who are constantly hunting for innovative ways to reach out to their users, TrulyMadly is the perfect app. With a huge urban active user base in the age group of 18–34 years across male and female audiences, TrulyMadly provides inroads for brands who aim to target mobile-first audiences such as millennials. Leveraging a combination of TrulyMadly’s highly engaged audience data and InMobi's powerful ad serving technology, advertisers can deliver high-performance creative to the right audiences.”Talking about the partnership, Rahul Kumar, Co-Founder, TrulyMadly said, “After evaluating multiple partners for monetization, we decided to go ahead with InMobi. While we were aware of the benefits that the InMobi SDK offers across ad experiences and yield optimization, we were also surprised at the ease and rapid go-live of the integration. As a mobile-first player for almost a decade, InMobi has always been at the forefront of delivering great ad experiences to users. InMobi continues to be a collaborative and strategic partner for TrulyMadly.”Explaining this
07
August
Consumers are increasingly relying on connected mobile devices in their everyday lives. And during the IAB Mobile Symposium last month, we learned that mobile video advertising viewability is crucial for advertisers in 2017.
In 2017, U.S. adults are expected to spend 1.5 times more media time on connected devices than on desktop computers, and on average, people are on their mobile phones
over four hours a day. During much of this time, consumers are interacting with mobile advertisements.
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But how can advertisers be sure that consumers are actually engaging? Follow these top takeaways to ensure that consumers are actually watching ads, and that marketing messages are getting through.
Invest in in-app advertising
About 90% of the time on smartphones is spent in-app, and in-app is the next phase of digital ad viewing. To ensure you’re doing right by the consumers, you need to use advertising technology designed specifically for apps. Too often, advertisers these days are relying on outdated desktop ad technology. Instead, they must switch to ad technologies that are compatible with the native viewing environment.
Hone in on visual content and queues
More and more advertising is image and video-based. In fact, 37% of marketers say that
visual marketing is the most critical form of content for their business.
Advertisers must figure out ways to identify content by using image recognition and artificial intelligence. If they
02
August
Part 1 of InMobi’s doing mobile video right vlog is now live, with InMobi’s Director of Programmatic Partnerships, Kayla Wilson, talking about the in-app latest trends and emerging standards, in mobile programmatic video.
Check out our latest vlog below:
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31
July
The advertising industry has seen an explosion of mobile video consumption in recent years.
In fact, mobile represents 93% of users’ time consuming media on connected devices — such as cell phones, smart TVs, and tablets — according to a 2016 eMarketer study. We’ve also seen major advancements in mobile advertising, from new formats to interactive capabilities and more.
However, measuring mobile viewability is still extremely limited. Many brand marketers wonder how to measure viewable impressions on mobile without sacrificing media performance.
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On one hand, you can utilize the Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) to host your videos, which lets you track information on your users’ behavior thanks to browser-based cookies. But then your load time is slow, as a user’s mobile phone must dredge up an advertisement from the user’s mobile browser.
(In fact, InMobi found in a study that VPAID browser-based ads have a load time of up to 2.6 seconds. Of course, most users will abandon the ad after two seconds.) With a slow load time, viewability and completion rates are both severely lessened.
On the other hand, you could use the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) to ensure a quick load time — since this method loads video using the device’s native video player. In fact, VAST ads load within 0.06 seconds, according to InMobi data. But, unfortunately, many advertisers feel limited by
29
June
InMobi recently teamed up with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to host a webinar titled
"The Brand Marketer’s Guide to Mobile Video Viewability". Facilitated by Jayesh Easwaramony and Vinay Uttamchandani of InMobi and moderated by Rohit Dadwal of MMA, the webinar drew hundreds of interested registrants from across the world, 57% of whom cited the lack of global standards and independent measurement as the biggest industry challenge affecting mobile video viewability today.
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While Jayesh touched upon the global mobile trends and challenges with mobile video, Vinay went on to do a deep dive into what mobile video viewability really means. The engaging and anecdotal conversation between the two facilitators drew active participation from the audience, with questions pouring in about how to identify the right partners to work with, how interactivity influences viewability and much more.
In addition to answering these questions, Jayesh and Vinay also gave the audience a few tips on how to think about mobile video viewability:
Include in-app video in your media mix to maximize your video opportunity
Adopt the VAST video standard in order to future-proof your investment
Invest in third-party measurement in order to ensure brand safety
With the issue of mobile video viewability being the most hotly-debated one in the advertising industry, what are you doing to ensure that users are able to see and engage with your
28
June
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, and webinars across the globe, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from InMobi’s participation in the 2017 IAB Mobile Symposium, where InMobi was the premier sponsor. Industry leaders and executives from the ecosystem came together to address how publishers and marketers should be building out their mobile strategies, measuring efficacy, and ensuring their mobile campaigns integrate well with the consumer experience. The sessions and town halls provided glimpses of the tools that modern marketers are utilizing to succeed in today’s mobile world.
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InMobi was proud to be the premier sponsor of this year's IAB Mobile Symposium. Amongst those who attended included leading agency holding groups, DSP partners and leaders from the mobile app marketing space. The intention was to discuss the latest trends in mobile and engage in a frank discussion on the path forward in mobile.
InMobi kicked off the first town hall of the day moderated by Anne Frisbie, Senior Vice President, Global Brand and Programmatic at InMobi and Chris Kuist, Senior Vice President of Research and Impact at IAB.
InMobi’s Anne Frisbie delivered an insightful speech about the need to improve industry standards. She also spoke about the increased
20
June
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from the InMobi-hosted event titled “Programmatic Trading in the Mobile World”.
InMobi, in partnership with Rubicon, recently hosted an event in our Sydney office to discuss programmatic trading in the real world. As part of the event, we invited 5 industry leading speakers to share their rich and diverse experience with the audience. From insightful research to impactful measurement, the speakers touched upon a broad range of topics that kept the audience deeply engaged.
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Here’s a quick video of the event!
As one attendee said, “What a fantastic evening at the Mobile Programmatic event in Sydney. We were privileged to have 5 industry leading speakers that delivered whole-heartedly on the promise of providing insight on the multiple functions of mobile advertising and how these work together, challenging the current status quo and opening up conversations to define the path to better programmatically-driven advertising, with a key focus on user experiences and data''.
Here’s a brief look at the key takeaways from each speaker:
Stuart Bartram, InMobi
Our very own Stuart Bartram took the stage to unveil InMobi’s specially curated mobile audiences available on
19
June
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from “K-Start: Let the Games Begin” an event organized by Kalaari Capital in Bangalore, India.
In this edition of the InMobi event diary, we cover our presence at the Kalaari Capital-hosted event “K-Start: Let the Games Begin.” As playground for a discussion on the disruption in mobile gaming and where the Indian gaming industry is headed, the event aimed to provide indie game developers and startups access to workshops, networking sessions and guest lectures. The Indian gaming ecosystem is likely to become the 3rd largest app economy riding on increased penetration of smartphones, reliable and fast internet connectivity, as well as enablement of micropayments. With over 250 startups in the indie gaming realm, there is headroom for disruption and enormous growth. Mobile Monetization: Keep The $$ Flowing Navin Madhavan, Head - Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, India at InMobi was the designated moderator for the first panel of the day on mobile monetization. The panelists included Manish Agarwal from Nazara Technologies, Rohit Bhat from 99 Games and Vaibhav Gupta from Octro Inc. The panel talked about the trends that are shaping mobile gaming in India. Jio and demonetization are catalyzing gaming adoption in IndiaThe panelists commented on the changing psyche and habits of
15
June
Available in 7 Indian languages namely Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Gujarati, Trainman is the highest rated train app for Indian Railways. Trainman is the fastest app for PNR status prediction and a one-stop shop for all information and intelligence about Indian Railways. Having reached a million installs, Trainman turned to InMobi to address their biggest challenge - monetization. InMobi worked closely with Trainman to understand the app flow and user experience and chalk out a monetization strategy.
Download Case Study
07
June
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from InMobi’s inaugural video soiree with Moat, an event series organized by InMobi where industry leaders come together to learn about the hottest issues in mobile and enjoy networking opportunities over customized craft cocktails at Apotheke in New York.
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InMobi proudly kicked off its Video Soiree event series with Moat as the first official partner of this year’s New York event on May 10th, 2017. Amongst those who attended included leading agency holding groups, DSP partners and leaders in the mobile app marketing space, to discuss the latest trends and metrics in mobile viewability today.
We were excited to hear from Moat’s Aaron Lombardi in regards to quality mobile metrics which marketers need to consider while evaluating their mobile ad spend.These parameters such as In-view time, AVOC- Audible and visible on completion, IVT- invalid traffic, video quality now constitute a new standard in industry measurement called the Moat Video score.
InMobi’s Anne Frisbie delivered an insightful speech addressing the need to improve industry standards and highlighting InMobi's approach to Doing Mobile Video Right. Anne talked about the importance of brands
17
May
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from MAU Vegas 2017, an event organized by Grow.co where over 1,000 leaders from top mobile brands gathered for two full days of learning and networking at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
InMobi was proud to be an official partner of this year’s
MAU Vegas event, organized by Grow.co, joining many of the world’s top minds in the mobile app marketing space to discuss the latest trends and technologies in the market today.
The InMobi team had a blast talking to various attendees at our InMobi booth during the Meet & Greet Happy Hour event on Day One of the two-day conference, including many existing customers and partners. Most people who came to the booth were curious to hear more about
InMobi’s User Acquisition and Remarketing solutions for performance advertising and also our solutions for publishers to monetize their app with the suite of InMobi Video Ads. However, ALL the people who visited the booth seemed interested in entering for a chance to win a free Nintendo Switch!
The evening of the second and final day of the conference, InMobi co-sponsored the MAU Vegas 2017 Official After-Party to support
Women in Wireless, a non-profit organization dedicated
26
April
LYKE is a great new fashion app for people to discover and shop for the latest trends and styles - combining 100,000’s of products from a huge array of the most popular e-commerce stores in Indonesia. Aiming to become the preferred fashion app among female shopping enthusiasts, LYKE partnered with InMobi to acquire high-quality users across Indonesia.
Download Case Study
19
April
As one of the largest online classifieds marketplace in India, OLX provides local communities in high-growth markets with vibrant online marketplaces: OLX connects local people to buy, sell or exchange used goods and services by making it fast and easy for anyone to post a listing through their mobile phone or on the web.
Deciding to aggressively double down on acquiring quality users and to grow its engaged user base in India, here is how OLX leveraged InMobi to acquire and activate high-quality users.
Download Case Study
17
April
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from “Primetime Sports on Primary Screens”, an event organized by WPP Stream Indonesia.WPP, Stream Indonesia, is one of the world's leading technology conferences that brings together 200 leaders to discuss and debate what sets Indonesia apart, why the conditions are so attractive for brand-building, and what the future holds for one of the world’s most rapidly advancing economies.InMobi’s Indonesia team had the opportunity to share our findings on mobile becoming a primary screen of choice, the rise of mobile video advertising, and best practices for creating mobile-first video ads. Here were the 4 key takeaways from the discussion:1. TV is slowly becoming obsoleteThe rise of video streaming players such as Netflix and Hotstar is changing the way people, especially millennials, are consuming video content. By empowering users to consume content on their own time in their own way, video streaming is slowly making TV redundant.2. Mobile is becoming the new TVIn Indonesia, one of the top 5 uses of smartphones is watching videos. Additionally, online video streaming, mainly accessed by millennials, contributes the biggest portion of mobile data usage.It is clear mobile devices are fast becoming the first screens of choice for millennials - mobile’s always-on capability
13
April
With the IPL season having just begun, there is intense competition among brand marketers to get user attention and drive meaningful engagement, especially, during the crucial match hours. On mobile, where primetime is perennial, the competition for the right users gets fiercer than ever. This is on account of the highly personalized and intimate nature of the mobile device - it elicits immediate user reactions and unlocks massive value for brands.
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While there can never be a one-size fit all approach to mobile, InMobi network data points to interesting universally-applicable insights into user behavior that will help drive increased ROI for brands.
Here are 3 ways brand marketers can plan their IPL mobile strategy better:
1. Embrace video
Across ad formats, while there is an increase in user engagement in May, it is video that emerges as a clear winner. Video ads drive a disproportionate lift in engagement, especially during IPL, delivering a whopping increase of 107%* when compared to pre-IPL and 43%* when compared to the first half of IPL.
Here’s an example of an award-winning mobile video ad.
2. Think beyond sports content
While it is a no-brainer that sports content would be a major draw for users, with all the on-field drama, celebrity attendance and intense emotions around matches, entertainment content pips sports to emerge as a winner in terms of user traffic, with sports
13
April
The human penchant for sight, sound, and motion has transcended the boundaries of TV. Likely so, video is gaining prominence as a primary mode of communication in the mobile world too. An average user is exposed to about 32.3 videos in a month
1. To ensure that the message stands out to achieve the desired outcome, marketers need to be cognizant of the medium and the environment of the user. The basic tenets of marketing: the right message, to the right user, at the right time and place have to be imbibed while devising campaigns.
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A mobile native video is a perfect combination served within the user’s context in her favorite medium on her preferred device. To drive the best results out of the mobile native video, the MMA native committee members inclusive of InMobi, Adxcel LLC, Electronic Arts Inc, Flipboard, Jun Group, Nativo, PubNative, Triad Retail Media, and VEVO have come together to craft native video best practices based on their past experiences of running similar campaigns.
To summarize, marketers should heed the following to improve the efficacy of their native video ad campaigns:
Grab user’s attention within the first 2-3 seconds of the video with a compelling narrative.
Become truly native to the user’s experience by making sound secondary. Tailor the video in a fashion that storytelling comes through even when
14
November
Having the right in-app strategy can deliver transformative results for any brand, across various campaign objectives. Today, when 60% of all online consumption is happening on mobile, users spend over 90% of their mobile device time in-app, with entertainment, gaming and productivity apps taking the lion’s share of that time. This trend signals a major shift in user behavior - mobiles are fast becoming the primary screen with apps having become the most frequented digital destinations for users across the world.
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What’s interesting about the rise of mobile app usage is that globally, users’ mobile consumption patterns are not consistent - they vary through the day based on factors such as time of day, app category, user demographic and much more. InMobi conducted a research study on how Australian users engage with their mobile devices throughout the day. This research study goes to show how crucial it is for marketers to build an adaptive in-app programmatic strategy, enabling them to tailor their brand messages to changing user moments throughout the day.
Download Infographic
07
April
Founded in the beginning of 2013, Red Rock Apps is a young emerging company engaged in developing and releasing mobile health and fitness applications. In this case study, we see how Red Rock Apps intended to grow a base of highly engaged, active users with key focus on female fitness enthusiasts for its app – “Running for Weight Loss,” the only running app designed for weight loss. Red Rock Apps partnered with InMobi to acquire, engage and retain high-quality users in North America.
Download Case Study
24
March
InMobi regularly participates in and contributes to a series of events, meetups, webinars, sharing best practices with partners and thought leaders, across the globe. In this edition of the InMobi Event Diary, we are looking at the highlights and developments from “Winning the Mobile Moments,” an event organized by TUNE on the eve of ad:tech in New Delhi, India.
Ad:Tech is undoubtedly amongst the biggest events that the Indian advertising ecosystem looks forward to every year. On the eve of ad:tech, TUNE, a leading mobile tracking and measurement platform, organized an interesting evening, titled Winning the Mobile Moments. The evening brought together the best in the mobile industry in India to share insights on leveraging data and to highlight the latest trends for winning every mobile moment. Vasuta Agarwal from InMobi joined a few other esteemed panelists - Arun Jayaraman from BigBasket, Daman Soni from Mobikwik, Sarchana from Wadi and Anant Patel from MakeMyTrip - to discuss and debate on ‘How to be mobile best.’ Below are the 3 big talking points from the panel discussion: Understanding mobile moments Mobile is an integral part of people’s daily lives and is creating various opportunities for businesses to engage their users with mobile moments. A mobile moment can be defined as delivering the right product/ service when the user needs it the most. For instance, frequent travellers can be prompted with a cab booking offer right when they step
22
March
During the summer of 2016, consumers in India were gearing up for the upcoming holiday travel season. To encourage affluent Indian travelers to visit Singapore, Mastercard, collaborated with the Singapore Tourism Board to offer exclusive “Mastercard offers” on a range of experiences, including shopping, hotel bookings and restaurants, that could be redeemed upon arriving in Singapore.
Mastercard’s challenge was to reach out to the right audience and effectively convey why Singapore was not only an exciting family destination but also how Mastercard could enrich their overall holiday experience!
With mobile devices fast becoming the first screens of choice for Indian users by virtue of their always-on’ capability, Mastercard wanted to use mobile as their primary marketing channel in order to instantly capture the attention of affluent Indian travelers and leverage the highly personalized environment offered by a mobile device.
Therefore, Mastercard decided to partner with InMobi, to leverage their superior audience technologies and personalized creative capabilities for mobile to drive Mastercard’s key business objective. By utilizing InMobi’s unique technological capabilities, Mastercard was certain that they would be able to ensure scale and deep user engagement.
A Sneak Peek into the Mastercard mobile creatives:
Find out how InMobi enabled Mastercard to reach the right set of users and engage them with contextual ads powered by InMobi’s rich data signals.
Download Case Study
23
February
With gaming apps driving a major share of the app downloads across the country in 2016, India is among the top 5 mobile gaming markets in the world. And yet, monetization remains a challenge for indie game developers. Game developers such as Nextwave Multimedia, however, have tackled this with a well thought out monetization strategy. With a clear objective to improve the game's monetization without compromising on the user experience, Nextwave Multimedia decided to partner with InMobi. Download the PDF About InMobi InMobi enables consumers to discover new products and services by providing contextual and personalized ad experiences on mobile devices. Through its revolutionary advertising and discovery platform, app developers, merchants and brands can engage mobile consumers globally. Recognized by Fast Company as one amongst the Most Innovative Companies in the world for 2016, InMobi reaches over 1.5+ billion unique mobile devices worldwide. About Nextwave Multimedia With blockbuster app store games such as World Cricket Championship 2 (WCC2) and Beach cricket under its belt, Nextwave Multimedia is one of the largest app developers in India. Winner of the Nasscom Gaming Forum Awards’ “People’s Choice Game of the Year” in 2015 for WCC2, Nextwave Multimedia develops games, digital content and digital creation tools.
16
February
Over the last 9 years, InMobi has been at the forefront of mobile advertising, building a strong technology platform that is well connected with app developers (a.k.a. publishers or owners of mobile inventory) and thus the end users. As a result, today, InMobi reaches over 1.5 Bn smartphone users every month globally.
Seize the moment
Leveraging the true power of mobile advertising via precise targeting and interactive ad formats is of significant benefit to anyone trying to amplify their brand message or app installs amongst users. With a large percentage of our undivided attention on mobile devices, advertisers can no longer continue to ignore this medium. But what we do realise is that not all advertisers have tapped into the benefits that the device has to offer. Clearly, the opportunity to bring them on board the mobile revolution is huge and wide open.
Ride the mobile wave. Together.
On this note, we would like to welcome marketing partners - who bring a high level of expertise and market knowledge - to work with us in our effort to grow the mobile advertising ecosystem across the globe.
If you are a digital marketing agency, marketing expert or a mobile solution provider who is looking for inventory to run some of your campaigns and acquire users OR seeking help to reach new users on various apps in a device (which contributes to 60% of the user mindshare in addition to the time spent
16
February
2016 was an eventful year for mobile in Asia Pacific especially in Indonesia, as more consumers are deserting desktops for mobile devices. Right from socialising, banking, planning their travel, to purchasing groceries mobile has become ingrained in a consumer’s life.
Mobile, in short, has become a catalyst for transformation in the way we live our lives.
As mobile technology and innovation continue to drive the way forward, here are the key mobile marketing research insights of 2017 in Indonesia based on InMobi’s network data.
Download the Infographic
10
February
Click here to download the infographic
27
January
2016 was a breathtaking year for the mobile advertising industry and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Mobile ad spend is up 430% since 2013, and with over 2 billion smartphone users worldwide, it’s becoming clear that the future of digital marketing is mobile. Globally, eMarketer predicts mobile will account for 71% of all digital spend (and 32% of all media) by 2020.
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As we move towards the end of the year with holiday campaigns in full swing, and financial planning for the next year underway, it’s time to think about how the industry is going to change in 2017 and how marketers can prepare accordingly. Here are some trends that marketers need to watch out for in 2017:
Mobile Video Capability Set To Increase And Will Be A Real Game Change
Mobile video, set to comprise two-thirds of all mobile traffic and more than half of online ad spend, is a highly valuable investment for advertisers. Besides increasing smartphone usage and adoption of 4G technology, wide distribution, booming consumption, continuous innovation, low entry barriers and standardization of video templates will continue to fuel the growth of mobile video. The mobile video market is expected to reach over $13 billion by 2020, primarily powered by programmatic video, projected to be more than 60% of total digital video spending in the U.S by 2019. Video ad formats such as vertical, 360 degree
04
January
We are delighted to share with you the first annual edition of the
InMobi Yearbook! This yearbook captures 2016’s key mobile advertising developments, changes in the industry and highlights how these changes will shape the coming year. Advertisers and publishers can now create a winning game plan for 2017, equipped with powerful trends gleaned from InMobi’s vast network, award-winning creatives and deep insights from industry leaders.
All in all, it was a year of revelations and here we highlight a few key themes :
The rise of mobile video advertising : 200% growth in video ad consumption
In 2016, video was the fastest growing ad format available to marketers, charting over 150% growth in ad spend and 200% increase in consumption. Additionally, marketers around the world allocated 24% of their digital ad spend to mobile video
[1], confirming that ad dollars follow user behaviour. By delivering unparalleled results - 4X higher user engagement and 2X higher conversions compared to static formats, it is not hard to see why video was the preferred choice amongst marketers.
Driving loyalty : Mobile remarketing adoption soars by 400%
The app ecosystem is reaching a ‘tipping point’, and app developers are considering user retention to be as important as acquisition. Nearly 50% of all app marketers across the world adopted app retargeting as a means of engaging users in 2016
[2], and many more intend to allocate budgets in the next 12 months. On the InMobi network alone, mobile remarketing adoption surged by 400% across the first 3 quarters of the
16
December
1. Tell a story - Draw users into your world Reaching beyond the surface, marketers can leverage this distinctly active audio-visual medium to tell their stories and value propositions in a clear and understandable manner. Advertiser Name - OLX: Buy and Sell near you Developer - OLX B.V. 2. Strike the right balance between User experience and storytelling - keep the length between 15-30sWhile rewarded videos intuitively seem to guarantee high completion rates, 30s is the ‘tipping point’ for videos to lose impact and pass into nothingness. Advertiser Name - 1010! Developer - GramGames 3. Engage the right audience - reach highly involved users A user is a 40% more likely to stick around when downloading an app after seeing a video ad than if they downloaded the game after seeing a non-video format ad. By incentivising for the view and not the click, rewarded videos naturally glean the high-quality users from the rest. Advertiser Name - Talking Tom Developer - Outfit7 4. Capture user intent - use end cards effectively to drive user action A clear call to action and important meta-data such as app rating, the number of downloads and publisher name are vital for driving user decisions. Advertiser Name - Township Developer - Playrix
07
December
I was one of the lucky few to attend WPP's invitation-only "Un-conference," Stream that took place in Ojai CA between November 16 th and 19th, 2016. Hosted by Sir Martin Sorrell and Yossi Vardi, the event attracted the best and brightest minds in advertising. Having traveled all the way from Bengaluru, India unsure of what to expect from an "un-conference," I was intrigued. Among the participating luminaries were Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, Imran Khan from SnapChat, Ben Silbermann from Pinterest, Adam Bain from Twitter, and Anne Wojcicki from 23andMe. Brand attendees included Nestle, Diageo, Nike, Bank of America, Unilever, and more.
The event was unique not just for the attendee-initiated discussion topics but also for additional activities such as yoga, meditation and a cooking contest in addition to offbeat activities such as powerpoint karaoke and VR tech garden. Added to this, an unexpected drop in temperatures prompted the purchase of Mexican ponchos readily procured by the resourceful organizers, resulting in a colorful gathering of attendees indeed! Used to the more temperate climate of India, I promptly donned a poncho, grateful for its warmth!
The discussions at Stream covered a spectrum of thought-provoking topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Parenting in the Digital Age, Why Hillary lost the Election, The Future of the Advertising Agency and Corporate Transparency. One prevalent theme was the importance of trust in advertising and the changing definition of what that means. How do brand advertisers trust that each of
24
November
There’s no doubt that mobile devices play a huge role in the way we consume sports. Brands are always finding unique ways to leverage sporting events to connect and engage with their target audience. One such brand that truly capitalized on the power of mobile was Samsung who successfully sealed their association with the Rugby World Cup through this campaign.
The success of the campaign was further cemented when it was
recently awarded a Gold and a Silver in the in the ‘Mobile Video’ and ‘Innovation’ categories respectively in the prestigious Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) UK and EMEA Smarties™Awards
A Sneak Peek into the Campaign
During the Rugby World Cup in the UK, with patriotism running ripe, Samsung found an opportune moment to evangelize their partnership with the England Rugby and stand out as a proud sponsor of the host nation team. Through this partnership, Samsung was looking to drive brand affinity, and in the long term brand love. The primary objective was to drive views of the ‘The Samsung School of Rugby video’, a series of football lessons presented in a light-hearted manner, amongst the “Big Eventers”.
Why Mobile?
Samsung hypothesized that mobile usage spikes during sports games because viewers tend to dip in and out of action. This meant that Big Eventers were likely to view their mobile devices during games. In addition, Samsung had fantastic video content and wanted to present this content through an
12
October
This post first appeared in ET Retail
Shopping is therapy. Many psychologists have written about the joy associated with discovering something new. Discovery raises the level of serotonin, the neurotransmitter chemical known as the happiness drug. We’ve all fallen victim to the addictive power of shopping. While reams have been written on the science of shopping for the physical world, the blueprints on digital are sparse. If I were to narrow it down for mobile, the literature is bleak and yet, mobile is the biggest contributor to online shopping.
Mary Meeker’s recent report on internet trends shows a 55% growth in smartphone usage in India. There has been a change in purchasing patterns among consumers mostly dominated by mobile phones over the last few years. Browsing on your mobile and shopping online post a hectic day is the usual routine most of us follow. For many of us, the season of festivity is not only a reason to shop for ourselves, but the thought of gifting our friends and families heightens the excitement. Seeing your loved ones happy doubles the level of serotonin in the body. A double shot of serotonin translates into double the chance of you shopping on your favourite app.
The period between September to November is an auspicious time for shopping in India. Consumers loosen their purse strings during this period, which include festivals such as Dhanteras, Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali. Businesses capitalize this
17
October
Research conducted by InMobi and Mindshare, in partnership with Unilever, indicates that brand campaigns deliver better results when delivered as integrated 'TV + Mobile' campaigns compared to 'TV only' campaigns. The multiscreen approach is seen to deliver significantly higher impact on stimulating purchase intent in consumers in addition to being more cost-effective as compared to 'TV only' campaigns. While TV delivers reach, it is not as effective in driving engagement with the brand especially on the experiential features of the product and on driving purchase intent, when compared to 'TV+Mobile' campaigns.
12
October
InMobi has featured as a Global Platinum Advertising Partner for the third year in a row in the 2016 edition of the Top 25 Global A dvertising Partners released by TUNE, the leading mobile analytics platform. Ranked No. 7, InMobi has been recognized as a high-performing partner that helps Advertisers reach the marketing goals by delivering on what marketers need the most - RESULTS. How TUNE identified the top partners Evaluating more than 1000 partners, the advertiser list ranks TUNE-integrated partners on the basis of the quality of users and Return on Investment (RoI) across brand and performance advertising campaigns. The advertising partners were evaluated across 8 different aspects: Adoption - market presence evaluated as the number of marketers deriving value out of each ad partner Reputation - Do marketers view the ad partner as transparent and trustworthy? TUNE Certification - ad partners certified under the TUNE certification program for adhering to best practices and complete visibility into results Scale - level of engagement measured in clicks that an ad partner drives User Acquisition - effectiveness of campaigns with the ad partners User Retention - measured as the number of active users across different user cohorts (Day 1, 2, 3, 7 and 14) from app install campaigns Return on Investment - the revenue per install that ad partners drive measured over 30 and 60 day windows InMobi - a strong ecosystem player In this constantly innovative and disruptive advertising landscape, InMobi is a strong ecosystem player and a preferred advertising partner for
03
October
Video consumption is rapidly shifting from 47 inches to 4.7 inches, and
communicating value propositions through mobile video is the next big gold
standard. Mobile video’s telling effect on key downstream metrics such as
click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates (CVR) and quality of users acquired
is
unparalleled. But, how can performance advertisers make the
most of the video phenomenon?
Here are 5 tips for performance advertisers on how to #WinWithVideo!
1. Leverage skippable and non-skippable videos
optimally
The best results can be achieved by optimally allocating budgets to both
skippable and non-skippable video. Performance advertisers today have the
option of choosing between the two ad formats. Non-skippable video guarantees
high completion rates due to highly informed clicks with a user opt-in, and
thereby also serves a supplementary marketing objective of branding for
performance advertisers. On the other hand, skippable video enables
interest-based targeting on the basis of completion rates at scale. Leveraging
video formats optimally can boost the performance of an already high-impact ad
format without compromising on user experience.
2. Invest in your mobile video asset
HD videos - The video experience on mobile is the key to engagement today
and building High-Definition (HD) creatives - a 1080p video mp4 file not
greater than 5 MB with a 16:9 aspect ratio - specifically for the mobile
platform is the first step for every advertiser.
Shorter video ads - Video ads on mobile can effectively capture the
user's attention with a length of 15-30s. Adapting
30
September
InMobi in partnership with Mindshare and Unilever was recognized at the MMA Indonesia Smarties for its work across Location Targeting, Innovation, and Product & Services Launch categories. Here’s a sneak peek into the winning campaigns: Rexona Streetview
Gold Award for Location-Based Campaign
Gold Award for Innovation Rexona, Unilever's top deodorant brand was launching a new and improved product, Rexona Antibacterial Defense in Jakarta, Indonesia. With an active anti-bacterial ingredient, this product provides instant protection against body odor. Rexona targeted 18 - 35 year old males at dusty crowded areas during the evening hours with the help of location, audience persona and time targeting to communicate with users that Rexona could help them feel refreshed after a long commute. A rich media ad unit incorporating augmented reality technology was created, giving users a complete 360-degree view of the bus stop they were approaching. Using advanced location targeting, Rexona was able to pull up 360-degree google images with the same lat-long as the user's current location. Through the 360-degree view, users could truly experience the moment and also understand the need for the Rexona Antibacterial Defense. This ad experience, nudged 13,000 users to download the coupon code and actually buy the newly launched product indicating that the campaign successfully grew top-of-mind awareness of the all new Rexona Antibacterial Defense. Ponds Acne Popcorn
Silver Award for Innovation
Silver Award for Product & Services Launch Ponds wanted to relaunch Ponds Acne 10-in-1 Solutions showcasing its superior product & breakthrough
28
September
This post first appeared in
EContent
In the march
towards automation, greater control and transparency, more advertisers are
opting for programmatic buying of digital impressions than ever before. Be it
banners or video campaigns, the ability to cherry pick which impressions matter
and bid on them has empowered the advertiser ecosystem, delivering better
results and greater efficiency. By 2017, U.S. mobile programmatic media buying
is expected to reach $21.22 billion, or 78 percent of overall mobile display ad
spending, according to eMarketer. The growth the programmatic marketplace is
experiencing is undeniable, as it becomes a mainstay of digital advertising. A
study by AdRoll found that 98% of marketers surveyed expect their programmatic
ad budgets to increase or stay the same in the coming year, while 87% of
marketers believe programmatic ads provide a greater return on investment (ROI)
than traditional media.
There is no doubt
that programmatic has revolutionized online media buying and that it offers
significant benefits, but this road to opportunity is ridden with obstacles
such as Viewability and traffic fraud. Mobile programmatic advertising can be
challenging in many ways but when done thoughtfully and strategically, the ROI
can outweigh the challenges.
Mobile Programmatic: The Three Biggest
Challenges
Any revolutionary
method or new technology brings challenges and it is no different for
programmatic advertising. There are three major challenges surrounding
programmatic advertising – Viewability, ad fraud, and ad blocking. While these
are disturbing, they are definitely not insurmountable.
The Battle for Viewability
Ad
28
September
This post first appeared in Modern Marketing Exchange
Sports has always evoked passion amongst fans. Whether it’s
baseball, tennis or soccer – watching a live sports game brings with it an
unparalleled experience, intensified only by the presence of smartphones.
There’s no doubt that mobile devices have changed the way we consume sports,
and brands have an opportunity to leverage each event to connect and engage
with their consumers.
Mobile, Sports and
Going for Gold
The beginning of 2016 witnessed an interesting trend on
mobile, particularly around national and global sporting events. In the run up
to the Super Bowl 50 in February, American smartphone users began downloading
NFL related gaming apps. These gaming apps witnessed over a 100 percent
increase in downloads, and by the last week of the Super Bowl, users consumed
150 percent more of their favorite sports app than usual.
Similarly, during the COPA America Centenario in June, users
from the 16 participating countries went on a downloading spree of gaming apps,
increasing app installs by more than 70 percent. Fans were constantly scouring
sports apps to check scores, game schedules, and to keep track of the latest
updates, results and commentary, which saw a 200 percent increase in content
consumption of sports apps on mobile devices. According to Accenture, 87
percent of consumers use a second screen device while watching TV. It’s not
surprising then that sports fans were glued to not just the TV, but they had their
mobile devices
19
September
Who is really watching TV when India is hurrying to get places?
India’s online video viewership stands at 81.7 million viewers and is only expected to rise. Video streaming is expected to account for over 60 percent of mobile data traffic in 2018, as consumers increase the number of videos they watch and upload[1].Not only has video consumption increased, but Indian users are also spending more than 2 hours on their mobile devices[2]. This nudged us to take a closer look at the video ad trends on our network. On taking a deeper look and analysing millions of video ad impressions delivered by our network, we extrapolated some actionable insights for our advertisers. Based on these insights, we present to you the infographic, “The Hurried Indian”.
You can download this infographic from here.
[1]Comscore Inc., 2016
[2] Ooyala, 2016
15
September
The InMobi Insights team is excited to release the Mobile Programmatic Insights from a buyer’s perspective.To better understand how brand marketers view the mobile programmatic space, we conducted an extensive survey, undertaken by a diverse group of over 180 digital marketers at brands, to track the usage and investment in mobile programmatic advertising. This report covers the benefits, opportunities and roadblocks in this dynamic and data-driven digital landscape.Find out what the 180+ digital marketers had to say about the latest trends in 2016.Learn more in our complete report.Download InfographicsInterested in connecting with our team to hear more about the data and how it could impact your business? Please reach out to our InMobi Insights team at insights@inmobi.com
21
September
In this series of articles, we discuss some of our learnings along with a few examples that illustrate the biggest challenges with location data and also offer insights on how important accuracy is for us at InMobi. Here is the first part -
Location Accuracy: Who can you Trust? Part 1/2, in case you missed it.
Detecting errors by comparing latitude/longitude country with IP country
A request that comes with a latitude/longitude (henceforth, also referred to as lat/long) value will also typically be associated with an IP address. Even in cases where the request is forwarded via multiple servers, the servers are expected to provide the IP address of the user’s device. If the IP address’ country does not match the lat/long's country value, one of the two signals might be wrong.
Detecting errors by comparing ad request volumes to population densities
Looking for anomalies in the geo-distribution of ad requests is one of the techniques we use to identify errors in location signals. The human population is not evenly distributed across the globe and there are several low-density regions. Anytime we see a large number of ad requests coming from regions of low user density, it is an anomaly that requires further investigation.
One common anomaly in geo-distribution is a large number of requests from latitude = 0 and longitude = 0. The location (0,0) is in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Ghana. This anomaly occurs
09
September
In a digital world ruled by the proliferation of personal screens, it is the end user that makes or breaks a digital business. And for a company focused on user privacy above all else, the new changes on iOS 10 are an epitome of a world ruled by the user’s preferences.The advertising industry is abuzz with the controversy created by the stricter implementation of the Limit Ad Tracking feature in iOS 10. With iOS 9, Limit Ad Tracking restricted the location and behavioral targeting features on iOS devices, resulting in poorly targeted ads. However, advertisers could still use the IDFA (iOS Advertising Identifier) for attribution and frequency capping. With iOS 10, the new operating system nullifies the IDFA for all devices where the user has opted in for Limit Ad Tracking, thereby enforcing complete anonymity of the user to advertisers. While it is a beacon of user privacy standards, this change will have both a positive and negative impact on the user experience. On the one hand, the user is secure in the knowledge that their privacy is maintained and no one can track their mobile usage behavior. However, on the other hand, it also implies that frequency cap checks and IDFA based attribution methods will all fail for devices where Limit Ad Tracking has been turned on, resulting in a repetitive and context-less ad experience.Different players in the advertising ecosystem are reacting to this change in various ways. Some have
09
September
Thanks to the widespread availability of low-cost GPS technology, many mobile devices have the ability to precisely geo-locate themselves. When users of these devices opt-in to make their location information available to applications and network services, a better, location-aware user experience is provided to them.
The location offers improved precision when targeting ads. Accurate location information, when combined with other data like user interest profiles and time of day can significantly improve the chances of ads being noticed by users, and being relevant to them. For instance, store discount coupons may be shown only to users within walking distance of a particular store.
In order to enable location targeting, the location of the device (i.e., its latitude and longitude) is included in the ad request that the device sends to a server. An ad matching service uses the location to find ads that are appropriate to the user’s location. The ad server may also forward the request to other downstream ad servers, ad networks, or ad exchanges that will use the latitude and longitude as part of their own ad matching services to find relevant ads.For location targeting to work correctly, it is important to ensure that the location of the device is captured correctly and transmitted without modification all the way to any of the matching services. The ad service that receives a request directly from a handset is known as a first-party service. First part
07
September
This post first appeared in AdAge India
"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."- Philip Pullman
Advertising is storytelling. From the Mad Men of the 1960's to now, the Don Drapers of the world want to tell us a story. And storytellers don't advertise products, as much as invoke heart-warming, magical connections between users and brands. By hammering out what a brand stands for, the product defines its emotional connect and shapes an identity for itself. India presents a unique opportunity in the storytelling narrative, because it is a mobile first country. And by virtue of that fact, the medium of narration is as important as its message. If mobile is a foregone conclusion, the power of video advertising is still at its evolutionary stages. And I want to delve into why we've transported a desktop experience to a country that has more mobiles than PCs.
So what makes India ripe for mobile video?
India is a truly mobile-first country. The majority of Indians accesses the internet through their mobile and not a desktop/laptop. More than 200 million Indians access the Internet via their mobile devices. India's 4G and 3G user base is expected to touch 300 million by March 2018, according to research by CLSA. The explosive increase in the country's smartphone penetration, underscored by price wars waged in a hyper-competitive smartphone market, has resulted in Indian consumers buying more smartphones each
07
September
After “Mobile is Eating our World” it’s time for “Video is the new HTML”, and building on these thoughts of Benedict Evans, we at InMobi are proud to introduce the
#WinWithVideo series which we kickstarted last week with a webinar (Download: Presentation, Video Recording) on the mobile video ads. This blog is part of the same series elaborating on types of video ad formats and creative trends prevalent in the industry.
Full-screen Video Ads
A full-screen video ad is a short, high-definition video which can be skippable or non-skippable, based on the publisher’s preference and occurs at natural breakpoints within an app, such as the end of a level in a game. A great user experience coupled with a buffer-free stream of the video guarantees better eCPMs for publishers and lower CPA for advertisers, demonstrating the true power of video.
This example is illustrative.
This video ad format is ideal for advertisers looking to acquire new users by driving app installs as we found that users acquired through a full-screen video ad were more valuable than users acquired through an interstitial ad; and the cherry on top - 50% lower cost per action, ensuring a better return on your investment! Ideal for gaming publishers, this ad format delivers double the eCPMs of interstitial ads - for the same slot.
Performance on InMobi as compared to Interstitial ads
Placement: Publishers can place this ad at logical breakpoints in their game
06
September
Online
video ad spend is estimated to grow at a rate of 25% year on year (YoY) to $9.6 billion in 2016. Brands have seen remarkable success in narrating their brand stories and captivating online audiences using video, with high engagement, increased dwell times and high completion rates. But what does this mean for performance advertisers? Does video deliver beyond awareness-generation? Can video steer consideration, and thereby influence conversions and the acquisition of high lifetime value (LTV) customers?
Video is eating the world
55% of all
content consumed on mobile in 2015 was video and this is expected to grow to 75% by 2020. Video is emerging as the preferred medium for advertisers because of genuine demand from users. Unlike traditional online ad formats, the immersive nature of video not only strengthens user intent by generating excitement but also drives users to transact or download.
Mobile video’s telling effect on key downstream metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates (CVR) and quality of users acquired is unparalleled. A recent
comScore study revealed a 90% uplift in performance campaigns that used video ads. Industry segments such as retail, gaming and housing are early benefactors of the video wave. While shoppers are 64% more likely to buy a product after watching a video, real estate companies with video ad listings have received 403% more inquiries than those without!
InMobi video insights
The performance of videos on the InMobi network tells a similar story. InMobi’s analysis of over 1 billion1 ads
02
September
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” said the famous management guru, Peter Drucker. Thankfully, the digital medium allows marketers to measure direct response metrics like views, engagement and user acquisition. Such direct response metrics are extremely useful for digital products such as apps and websites where a completed action is a sign of conversion.However, in the traditional world of consumer goods, retails and Quick Service Restaurants, a direct response is indicative of interest and nothing else. The success of a marketing campaign is triggered only through increased store footfalls and sales.InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile advertising and discovery platform, now has partnerships with Placed and NinthDecimal. The new strategic relationships give marketers the opportunity to measure offline attribution either through Placed's, panel app or NinthDecimal's impression based Location Conversion Index™, allowing them to measure down-the-funnel metrics including footfalls and the location conversion index.With these partnerships, advertisers can also get a true sense of how many footfalls are being driven to their specified store locations through the advertising campaigns on both the InMobi Network and the InMobi Exchange.“Mobile is an effective medium for driving people into the store through mobile dynamic creatives,” says Jeff Coon, Head of Global Alliances at InMobi. “Through these partnerships, InMobi is placing one more tool in the hands of the advertisers to prove the efficacy and measure the ROI of this medium.”Advertising seasonal sales,
While many users are willing to rotate their phones to landscape mode to watch a video, they’re unlikely to take the same action when viewing video ads. Brands have traditionally conceived, created and filmed their ad units horizontally, with TV and desktop in mind and mobile as an afterthought. Horizontal video ad units only fill 25 percent of a phone’s screen when held in portrait mode. It’s only recently, with the reported 10 billion daily vertical video views on Snapchat, that brands are being forced to change the way they plan, create and film the video for mobile. Why wouldn’t brands want to fill 100 percent of mobile screens without the user having to take any action? “Our hands are best suited to holding objects vertically, which is why phones, tablets and, in the predigital age, our books and other documents were usually oriented in portrait mode.” Source: The New York Times Don’t waste space: Vertical video offers 4X better visual effects Jump into the edge-to-edge experience Vertical Video delivers a highly engaging TV-like experience in the palm of users’ hands. It’s a true mobile-first experience, with the video filmed in portrait mode (9:16 or 1080x1920 resolution). When AdWeek published the article “Now that Vertical Video is finally legitimate, creatives need to rethink everything” in 2015, it described how some companies are offering tools to resize horizontal videos, to make them vertical. However, as a best practice, the vertical
30
August
As we gear up for yet another school year, parents and kids are shopping for books, backpacks, uniforms, and gadgets. Back-to-school is the second largest shopping season of the year with sales expected to total $828.81 billion in 2016, up 2.6 percent year-over-year, according to eMarketer.
Brands and retailers have a significant opportunity to influence the purchase decisions by learning from this consumer behavior.
If you're interested in knowing more about this topic, check out our blog on How to Ace Back-To-School Shopping Through Mobile Video!
22
August
Originally published on iMedia As we gear up for yet another school year, parents and kids are shopping for books, backpacks, uniforms, and gadgets. Back-to-school is the second largest shopping season of the year with sales expected to total $828.81 billion in 2016, up 2.6 percent year-over-year, according to eMarketer. Previously, this meant heading to a shopping mall. However, the digital age has changed the way we shop, and the adoption of mobile has introduced new ways to research, compare, and buy. It's important that advertisers reach these mobile shoppers to encourage mobile purchases or drive them in-store. Consumers expect engaging experiences irrespective of the medium they use to shop. eMarketer revealed that, unsurprisingly, smartphones are the device of choice for multitaskers with 146.9 million Americans simultaneously using their phone, while watching TV -- representing more than two-thirds of internet users. With this shift in consumption, it's clear that brands need to allocate marketing budgets towards mobile videos.Why mobile video? According to Strategy Analytics, worldwide revenue from mobile video will reach $25 billion by 2021, and mobile video viewers will reach 2 billion users by the end of 2022. Mobile video advertising is dynamic and eye-catching, especially when telling a story. It's fast becoming one of the most popular advertising channels among marketers due to:
Higher engagement: Data from DG Media Mind shows the average click-through-rate (CTR) for in-stream video ads was 1.11 percent -- much higher than mobile banner ads with a CTR of 0.88 percent. It's also
24
August
A successful performance marketing campaign comprises different elements, from building the right user insights and creatives to evaluating the appropriate network partners and ad spend. And to get all the elements of a campaign right, performance marketers rely on mobile measurement and attribution reports as the single source of truth. If missing a small piece of data could result in a poor campaign, cranking the right levers can drastically improve campaign performance. View-Through Attribution (VTA) is one such lever that can buoy campaign outlook from merely achieving targets to delivering beyond expectations. Attributing for both clicks and views indicates the true reach and influence of a campaign on mobile users.Impact of VTA across campaign stages1. Precision targeting for quality usersA deep understanding of user behavior that signals high lifetime value (LTV) is the holy grail for mobile marketers. And yet, performance marketers fail to account for the behavioral and engagement patterns of 85% of users who are non-clickers, which includes high-LTV users. With VTA, performance marketers can capture the behavior of high-LTV users outside of clickers i.e. among non-clickers as well. Thus, building holistic user insights for precise targeting.First recorded in a study by comScore, non-clickers are defined as users who do not click on display ads in a month. Many non-clickers deliberately refrain from clicking an ad despite being interested in the product being displayed. For example, instead of clicking on an ad to download a gaming
11
August
What should I do after the app is installed? How can I keep bringing users back to my app in a sustainable method? For businesses today, remarketing is key to ensuring that active users continue to engage and dormant users re-engage with their apps, eventually resulting in increased user LTV (lifetime value). The conversation has shifted from merely acquiring new users to learning how to retain them.On the 5th of August, InMobi, along with BHIVE, hosted an event to build on this theme. Titled “Retain and Re-engage your Mobile Users”, the event brought together app developers, app marketers and start-up enthusiasts to network and understand how best to use remarketing solutions for their businesses. InMobi Co-founder and Chief Revenue Office, Abhay Singhal, kicked off the session by highlighting the importance of remarketing at a time when app marketing has truly evolved from focusing on increasing transactions through new users to actually retaining existing users. This was followed by a presentation by Vasuta Agarwal, VP of India for InMobi, who delved into the crux of the issues pertaining to getting users to discover an app, download it, engage with it and eventually retain it. Moderated by Nivedita Bhattacharjee from Techinasia, the latter half of the evening centered around a panel discussion with InMobi’s VP and Global Head of Marketing - Arun Pattabhiraman, Director of Remarketing - Mansi Jain and Head of Marketing - Meera Iyer from Big Basket as
08
August
Over the past 6 months, InMobi has focused on building a retargeting solution that enables performance marketers across industries such as retail, transport, news and entertainment, and gaming, maximize in-app engagement and revenues. InMobi Remarketing is a comprehensive solution that enables advertisers to activate acquired users by nudging them to their first LifeTime Value (LTV) event, re-activate dormant users and retarget existing users to drive incremental revenues or engagement.InMobi Mobile Remarketing witnesses the coming together of:
Personalized recommendations based on user intentDynamic and impactful messaging using native or video creatives and,Seamless transaction fulfilment by deep-linking with the advertiser appEffective remarketing involves a 3 step process - Activation, Re-engagement and Retention.Activating new usersToday, only 23% of daily active users are retained within the first 3 days of an app install. A lack of relevant engagement or an unsatisfactory in-app experience can trigger user dormancy or even uninstallation. This makes engaging with a recently acquired user within the first few days highly critical. The InMobi remarketing platform drives users at an early stage to engage with the app and complete their first in-app LTV event. Here are some examples:
Sign Up: A recently acquired entertainment app user is exposed to a carousel of trending bestsellers, thereby increasing dwell time and nudging the customer to open the app and sign up.First Ride: A taxi app user is shown first-ride coupons during peak office hours with a ‘book’ button to order the much needed
05
August
Originally published on The Financial Express
Author and media theorist Steven Johnson got it right when he said,“Chance favours the connected mind.” And in this era of humankind, the internet is driving the connected mind. It stands as a testament to the great strides we have made and it has changed the world for the better. This level of connectivity has just deepened with the onset of the smartphone era. Rich content is accessible to everyone on the planet, no matter where they are—or is it?
The internet has more information than what one person can consume in a lifetime, even if one glosses over all the spam. The rich content from cyberspace has built massive economies, positively impacting the lives of people even in the remotest of villages. To achieve this, the internet has relied on allowing a vast number of information-rich websites to remain completely free.
Online content publishers depend on advertising revenues to keep their businesses afloat. Rich content attracts a large number of readers; which advertisers are keen to tap into. To achieve this, publishers can integrate ads into their web page and earn revenues. Similar to print publishers, websites can also employ a subscription based model to keep their content ad-free, but this model has met with limited success on the scale of the internet; where most content is free.
Initially, it was believed that the advertiser-publisher-reader synergy would work seamlessly, but misuse
25
July
InMobi and MMA recently hosted an Industry roundtable titled “Programmatic on Mobile: Ready, Wait or Rethink” in Singapore where a select group of 40 leaders across different sections of the advertising ecosystem were invited. Through insightful conversations, leaders from Rubicon, Mindshare, OMD and Standard Chartered reviewed the readiness of the APAC region to embrace programmatic. The broad consensus was that the industry is still evolving and only a handful of progressive advertisers have really embraced programmatic as the predominant mode of mobile media management. Even these progressive advertisers along with their agencies had an uphill climb in terms of technology partner selection to power their programmatic platforms and talent pool to operationalize it. If you want to start in Mobile Programmatic and don’t know where you stand, we recommend a 4 step program to conquer it. 1. Mobile Programmatic does not equal to buying cheaply Conversations on programmatic start with the wrong objective in mind - ‘can I get some cheap traffic’, ‘do you have xyz premium site on your exchange’. People incorrectly assume that cheaper media is equal to programmatic efficiency. Programmatic efficiency comes from creating a true program for end-to-end success. The cost efficiency in programmatic comes from the reduction in cycle time to: think of a campaign, brief the agency, create a media plan, create the mocks and then go live. This process can take over 4 months normally. For our most progressive partner, even during the peak season of
15
July
The mobile device is an indispensable screen in a consumer’s life. Its ubiquitous presence in almost every waking moment of our day has made us enthralled fans of this small powerhouse of information, entertainment and utility. Users reportedly spend approximately
240 minutes on their mobile device every day for a variety of purposes. It is no surprise then that mobile has become a core component of every media planners strategy. The virtues of the mobile device have been extolled endlessly - but the bottom line is that it allows marketers to push their brand messages in front of engaged users, at the right time and in the right context.
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While mobile advertising has become an integral part of media plans, there is still a dearth of execution excellence when it comes to mobile ads. Most mobile creatives are refitted versions of their desktop siblings and are not optimized to perform on mobile devices. As a mobile first company, InMobi has worked with several categories of advertisers to come up with the following best practices for building creatives that excel in the mobile environment:
Video - 2016 is the year of video advertising and marketers are leaving no stone unturned to leverage the different forms of video ads to get their message across. Users love consuming video, more so with the convenience of their mobile devices.
13
July
Millennials are becoming retailers’ largest demographic in both population size and market influence with significant buying power due to their constant access to technology. Over 85% of millennials own a smartphone compared to 71% of the total U.S. population, and their mobile-first experiences are set to reshape the economy and change the ways in which consumers trade. Already, a quarter of millennials recently surveyed report 100% of their online purchases were on smartphones — and marketers in retail are taking note, but in some cases, not fast enough. Are Retailers Prepared for the Millennial Effect? Shopping preferences of millennials are unique and often include a combination of both online and offline. So how can retailers win the hearts of millennials? There are many critical components but seven steps to success include: 1. Customer Journey It’s important to think about the holistic customer experience throughout the entire journey. Brands should focus on weaving in the journey, which integrates consumer touch points before, during and after the transaction has been completed. 2. Seamless Interactions It’s important to provide seamless online and in-store experiences. Millennials like to converse and interact with retailers across multiple platforms without disruption, and their expectations of in-store and online interactions are similar. Most millennials will research options online before heading into a store and they expect the various channels to complement each other with relevant and consistent communications, allowing them to easily execute their purchases. 3. Visual Effectiveness and GuidanceVisual effectiveness is
04
July
Reaching more than a billion mobile users across the globe, InMobi has a unique window into user behavior. Delving into how people shop on their mobile phones in India, the insights found are truly revealing. The data helps us understand when Indian’s like to shop, what their mobile shopping journey looks like and how they make purchasing decisions. We discover two crucial insights for retailers,
Seeing is Buying - shoppers are more likely to buy if they see things they like. It makes common sense. So the more a retailer can help their users discover relevant products, the more likely they are to go on to purchase them.
Remarketing wins shoppers back - retargeting shoppers who signaled their interest but then abandoned their carts or got distracted helps bring them back into the purchase journey and translates to higher sales. Here’s how the story unfolds:Click here to download this infographic in PDF format.
29
June
Over the years, advertisers have come to rely on InMobi’s performance solutions to unlock new avenues of growth. From gaming developers to large retailers, we work closely with our customers as their trusted partners to acquire quality users and scale their businesses locally and globally.But over the course of our travels in the past year, meeting with customers from San Francisco to Beijing, we’ve observed the conversation shift from focusing on acquiring users to worrying about retaining them. We’ve heard the lexicon shift from Reach to LTV (lifetime value) and DAUs (daily active users), and from CPIs (cost per install) to Cost per Action.Fundamental consumer behavior trends are driving this paradigm shift. Despite the investment in acquiring users, an average mobile app is retaining only 23% of DAUs within 3 days of it being installed. The 3-7 day period in an app’s post-install life has become critical in engaging users before they lose interest or uninstall. Yet, more than half of all users are turning off push notifications.Clearly, our customers today need smarter ways to engage users at multiple touch points along their journey. So earlier this year, we set out to meet this need through remarketing.We incubated this zero to one solution design separate from our core business, giving it the priority and focus it needed. Over the months, the team has worked closely with some of our strategic customers to unlock higher
16
May
More insights on Mobile Media Consumption in Vietnam is available in this report
03
May
Watch the Mob-Ex 2016 Award-winning Campaign
26
April
At InMobi, we deliver 200 Billion ad impressions a month. By processing and studying the data signals accompanying each impression over the last six months, we get a peek into the consumers at the other end of the 1.2 trillion impressions. Understanding the attributes of these consumers is paramount as it helps fine-tune your advertising messaging and investments. A case in point - the international traveler segment. In my earlier post, we analyzed the top international destinations of outbound US travelers and found them to be Mexico, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, France, and India. Now, we take this analysis further by evaluating the’ device platform, age and gender mix of these travelers. The Importance of Platforms There are several differences between Android users and iOS users that every marketer should keep in mind before planning and executing campaigns. According to a comScore report, the household income of iOS users is typically higher with 41 percent of iPhone owners falling in the $100,000+ income segment vs. 24 percent of Android owners. Some reports even position iOS users as spending as much as 4x Android users. This directly correlates with the finding that iOS users are more likely to engage in m-Commerce where smartphone users are more likely to make purchases on their devices on a regular basis. And when it comes to signalling brand loyalty - a major factor for marketers to determine long-term market share, iOS takes the cake. Around than 70%
05
April
Originally published on Internet Retailer. The combination of social media and mobile devices has become a way of life in China. A lesser-known ancient Chinese proverb translates as “Dig the well before you’re thirsty.” In many ways, this beautifully illustrates the secret behind the mind-boggling success of mobile commerce in China. China is the world’s largest smartphone and e-commerce market, and some believe that China is an entire decade ahead of the West when it comes to mobile commerce. So what are Chinese commerce businesses doing on mobile that the rest of the world simply isn’t, and should start to emulate now? View mobile not as a channel or tool, but as an integrated lifestyle For starters, many hugely successful Chinese apps are developed by established market players like Tencent and Alibaba, who demonstrate incredible foresight in perceiving mobile as a way of life, and integrating services to support it. Unlike other parts of the world, mobile payments are actively driven by major third-party Internet and e-commerce companies in China, who ensure that the payment experience is integrated and frictionless for end users. Rather than focusing on selling more devices with payment capacity added, as is the norm in North America, companies like Tencent and Alibaba in China weave payments seamlessly into services that consumers already use heavily, such as messaging apps, thereby powering immediate adoption. In addition, third-party payment providers in China are essentially escrow services
01
April
Originally published on Business Insider. "Creativity without strategy is called art. Creativity with strategy is called Advertising", said Professor Jef Richards. No one could possibly agree more than today's retail marketer. The dawn of the digital age has brought with it a vast array of ad format options - enough to throw any marketer's mind into a tizzy. As Indian consumers continue to spend nearly three hours on mobile each day, every retail marketer worth her salt possibly spends most of her week strategizing, planning, and optimizing media spend across digital channels, especially mobile. I've often witnessed the first resort of the direct marketer - multiple mobile campaigns with the same creative assets, all to determine the answer to one simple question - which advertising formats work best on mobile? So how can retail marketers effectively navigate the plethora of options and allocate media spend in synergy with their goals? Let's start by busting the only too pervasive myth that the "best" ad format exists. Every mobile format can be used for a specific marketing goal, and deliver results with the right targeting, spend, and optimization. But marketers beware - one size doesn't necessarily fit all. Some formats are better suited towards achieving certain marketing goals as compared to others. Matching the format to the goal is step one, and blitzkrieg-ing ad formats with the same creative is not going to get you optimal results. Tell your brand's story At
30
March
There has been a fundamental change in the way people consume media on their mobile devices. Mobile interaction can be broken up into thousands of fragmented moments i.e. checking the time, reading the news, texting friends, etc. And amongst these thousands of moments are what are called
“micro-moments”. According to the American Marketing Association, a micro-moment is a mobile moment that requires only a glance to identify and delivers quick information that you can either consume or act on immediately. These are moments where people buy on impulse or remind them that they are ought to take an action!
So let’s look at how the role of smartphones in the different stages of a trip-planning process has evolved.
A
TripAdvisor 2015 report defines the term “Connected Travelers” as those who have used a smartphone to plan or book a trip. It also found that
45% of Connected Travelers usually use their smartphones to book activities for a trip
72% use their smartphones to look for restaurants while on vacation and
34% of Connected Travelers want their accommodation to offer mobile check-in
These findings have been corroborated by an eMarketer Report, which projects that in 2016, 51.8% of travelers who book trips via digital means will do so using a mobile device, up from 43.8% last year. The report also highlights that travelers are increasingly researching trips on their mobile devices. In 2015, 62.6% of Americans researched their travel options digitally used a mobile device to do so,
03
March
Originally published on Fourth Source. In 2015, retailers continued to hit the mark with magnificent advertising campaigns, particularly towards the end of the year. But while many of us were on our fifteenth view of John Lewis’ heartwarming man on the moon, Mog’s adorable Christmas calamity for Sainsbury’s, and Harvey Nichols’ unmistakable #GiftFace, UK retailers have been busy prepping for the year ahead, with good reason. Mobile First In 2016, traditional retailers who haven’t embraced mobile could see their business start to erode and lose significance with UK shoppers. Last year, mobile accounted for 45% of overall e-commerce in the UK with a clear majority expected this year for online shopping. The Black Friday and Cyber Monday surge was dominated by mobile, which accounted for more than 60% of traffic, a 10% increase from 2014. Mobile accounted for a large share of the discounted purchases made online, and shoppers could avoid the in-store mayhem. The Centre for Retail Research warned that 62,000 shops could fold in the next five years as online shopping surges, prompting traditional retailers to adopt an online and mobile strategy. The way shoppers research, discover and transact will continue to evolve, and mobile will act as a companion app to inform users, grow loyalty and drive in store traffic in addition to being the end destination for a transaction. Physical stores will remain significant for final fulfilment, but will evolve and give users the opportunity to interact with different product
04
March
Originally published on Retail TouchPoints. Mobile is an integrated part of a consumer’s life, being the first thing you look at when you wake up, and the last thing you look at before you go to sleep. With this in mind, well-designed mobile shopping apps seem to be the way to a consumer’s mind, heart and wallet. Consumers now have powerful search engines and extensive mobile stores at their fingertips, with seemingly infinite selections of products. When a consumer wants to buy a new pair of headphones, or a limited-edition watch, the path to gratification couldn’t be easier. This type of search-shopping, based on intent, is powerful and caters to specific consumer needs by transforming a ‘want’ to a purchase right away. But do consumers always buy only things they think they need? What about the times consumers serendipitously come across items — while walking past exquisitely fashioned store windows, or while browsing within the retail store, discovering products that they end up wanting, or realizing that they now need? Shopping is a wonderful, complex, personal activity, and that makes it difficult to fully understand. But Shopping is not Buying. Buying is merely the purchase transaction, often a chore, typically meant to replenish the things we need in our lives. Shopping offers an endless choice of possibilities — to spend, or not to spend. When people go shopping, walk into malls, or lazily browse popular sites and apps, they
08
March
Originally published on Adweek. People see it. People buy it. The crux of the buy button’s mission on any platform—social, web or mobile app—seems like child’s play, but it is easier said than done. The buy button occupied center stage in 2015, however despite lackluster results and raised eyebrows, there is still hope for success.The promise of the buy button What’s the allure of the buy button? Many believe it will help relieve one of the biggest challenges of online shopping, shopping cart abandonment. Millions of products never made the transition from shopping cart to checkout in e-commerce this year. The drop-offs on mobile web are dire, owing primarily to multi-step checkouts. Shopping apps are a viable proposition, but with consumers spending only 5 percent of their time in-app, according to Forrester, the odds of completing a sale on a mobile device are lower than retailers imagine. Beyond the large retailers and e-tailers, smaller and more niche players struggle to finance and promote a shopping app. Buy buttons can unlock products from a retailer’s catalog, placing them directly on mobile apps, social platforms, mobile web and consumers’ devices themselves. The buttons challenge the notion of the app as a final destination and argue that any mobile real estate can now be “shoppable.” But there’s work to be done before buy buttons can truly become retail’s Holy Grail, as several pieces of the puzzle
01
March
Originally published on Mobile Marketer.
Mobile is now the gateway to consumer experiences in the real world. As consumers consciously integrate mobile into their lives, they are able to demand experiences and purchase any item, regardless of location, in a moment of need.
Forrester Research calls this the mobile mind shift. Retailers have responded to this reality with mobile applications and mobile Web sites that enable intent shopping, either through search that often leads to a filtered selection of products.
Can commerce be driven by intent alone?
Consumers often open shopping apps with a preconceived notion of what they are looking for. Their limited time on these apps is typically spent searching products using specific keywords, or using filters and categories to browse through endless options.
A recent Nielsen study shows that consumers use nearly 30 apps per month regularly. However, 60 percent of smartphone users have fewer than two shopping-specific apps, while 21 percent do not have any, according to Forrester.
To make things worse, consumers only spend 5 percent of their time on mobile using shopping apps, making it difficult for retailers to capture their attention with an app-only strategy.
With this data, shopping purely based on search is too limiting, while infinite choice can be overwhelming, leaving retailers unable to strike a balance between allowing users to easily find what they are looking for, and delighting them with options they might like – otherwise known as discovery commerce.
New way to enable
19
February
A man in his fifty’s usually carries 3
thick files of prospective partners and comes to your house. He’s called a
‘broker’ and he’s partly responsible for nearly 90% of ‘arranged’ marriages in
India. This phenomenon of marriages gradually moved online about 5 years ago,
but brokers are still alive and kicking. Then came the mobile revolution.People spend several hours each day with
their noses buried in their smartphones. We source rich content, information, entertainment
and even socialise through this device. And slowly, our biggest social venture
of finding a life-long partner is gradually moving online – specifically
mobile. TrulyMadly, one of the largest dating apps
in the country has witnessed 100% month-on-month growth (BusinessStandard).The
opportunity to break away from the limitations of geographic boundaries was
unprecedented. If there’s one perfect partner for you out there – what are the
chances he or she will bump into you? The odds of that are much higher online
rather than offline!The Internet’s
love bug bitesThe internet age in India might have come a
decade later than developed countries but now that it’s here, it’s taken the
country by storm. With no apprehensions based on past experience, India has
jumped onto the online dating bandwagon as soon as dating apps launched in the
country. Worldwide, people spend about 90 minutes in
a day browsing through dating apps (NY Times). That’s almost one-third of daily smartphone
usage! Rest of the
18
February
The Mobile Web vs Mobile App dilemma is perhaps one of the most common battles fought within the silent recesses of the mobile marketer’s mind. For marketers investing in mobile advertising, the decision between mobile web and mobile app is not just one of inventory but truly a choice between reach and engagement. If effectiveness of mobile advertising is the goal, then there are five prominent axes which need to be taken into account when making this decision.
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User Engagement:
Today, mobile content has evolved to snackable content to account for the shortened attention span of mobile users. Be it games, news or social updates, average session time rarely goes beyond a few minutes. While the app ecosystem has exploded with more than 20,000 apps being launched every month, users tend to download and retain only their most used apps. But for these apps, session lengths, user retention and frequency are very high. In comparison, almost
55% of mobile websites are visited via clicks on links in apps or recommendations, with the intention of returning back to the original app, resulting in low session times, weak attention span and increased accidental clicks.
It is no surprise then that comScore reports that 88% of smartphone usage is driven by apps.
Relevance:
Visits to mobile websites are generally the result of user initiated searches or clicks indicating the
13
January
Currently the third largest smartphone market in the world, 2015 proved to be a significant year of growth for India's mobile economy. InMobi and TUNE teamed up to help you make sense of what India's mobile consumers did in the past year.
05
January
In September 2015, Apple announced that
iOS 9 will feature content blocking, which allows users to block ads and give them more control over their experience with ads. Apple’s decision to allow content blocking on iOS 9 acknowledges a significant ongoing shift in how advertisers connect with consumers online, especially in the mobile marketing space.
Consumers now have the power to block traditional forms of online advertising—and sources of much-needed revenue—including pop-up and banner ads. Thus, as these traditional sources of advertising revenue dry up, native advertising is emerging as a powerful way for brands to connect with consumers.
In a nutshell, native advertising closely resembles or appears to be highly relevant to the platform on which it appears. It can come in a variety of forms such as online advertorials (which look like editorial content but are required to be marked as sponsored content), online videos, sponsored social media posts, and in-feed ads.
Native Advertising's Time Has Come
Native advertising is more effective in drawing consumers’ attention than intrusive display ads anyway. A recent study by
IPG Media Lab and Sharethrough found that consumers look at native ads 53 percent more often than they look at traditional display ads. And the use of native advertising will continue to grow. Business Insider predicted that spending on native ads would reach $7.9 billion in 2015 and grow to $21 billion in 2018, rising from just $4.7 billion in 2013.
As content blocking has driven a stake through the
02
December
Swipe right - the new age dating gesture, has permeated the mobile world. Today, users spend almost 90 minutes1 of their day sifting through myriad potential partners, in search of the "perfect fit". This is greater than the average time spent by a user on traditional social networking sites, creating an alternate social network that is distinctly different from its older cousin.
Global Web Index, Q1 2015, Clickz.com
With a young, increasingly busy, always-mobile audience, the allure of the dating app business is becoming extremely addictive.
Tinder is valued at $1 billion with 50 million monthly active users2 and in the east we have Momo with 78.1 million monthly active users, valued at $3 billion3. The intelligentsia might argue the emphasis on the valuations citing that the true value of a business lies in the unit economics i.e. when the user pay! But the trailblazer Tinder is at a serious advantage here as a quarter of its users are already paying for dating services.
Global Web Index
With the lowering of stigma attached to online dating, technological advancements and a growing target demographic, the industry looks like it will continue to grow for years to come. The dating industry is worth $2.2 billion, but most apps aren't turning a profit. Many haven't even introduced a plan to monetize their services. But there are a few who are leading the way. Here is how they are successfully making money:
Subscription
Like online dating sites, “Subscription” is
26
November
In today’s era of mobile convergence, the re-emergence of the user as the ultimate decision maker serves to affirm the adage that the customer is king. Whether it’s with regard to mobile ads, apps, devices or operating systems, the age of the user is truly here to stay.Empowered with choice like never before, mobile users look to their devices for personalization at every step and expect their devices to augment, rather than just supplement their lifestyles. And the only mantra for succeeding in gaining and keeping users’ trust and attention, in such an ecosystem, is fairly simple: manic user focus every step of the way. It’s about creating mobile experiences, powered by user-intent, that are demanded rather than force-fed. It is this fundamental paradigm shift that is critical to the evolution of the mobile advertising space as well. Today, the mobile experience comes packaged with intrusive ads that fail to excite emotion or be relevant. Advertising, thus, has become a source of annoyance for the user, rather than what it was originally intended for - a source of discovery, of new experiences, new wishes and new stories that coalesce to create magic! It’s time to bring that magic back. It’s time to rethink tradition and put the users back where they deserve to be, at the core of innovation. The only way to enable such user-centricity is to delve deep and understand what the
05
November
Attention,
brand marketers! It’s the Holiday season and we are excited to present to you a
way to spread the cheer with video ads your users will love.
Video viewing on the mobile phone is exploding globally
with estimates suggesting it will account for
50% of all mobiledata consumption by 2019. Likewise, mobile video advertising is growing and researchers expect it to
cross $6 billion by 2018.
While
video advertising has been great for the advertiser in terms of securing
consumer attention and spreading the brand message, concerns are often raised
around viewability and completion rates.
InMobi has long been moving
towards a consumer-first approach to mobile advertising that provides a more valuable
user experience and improved performance rates for brands. The InMobi Exchange
now enables this vision through
Opt-In
video ads
that allow users to discover great products based on their
consent. This ensures the marketing message is well received and provides
higher performance for the brand campaign
.
The equivalent of rewarded video ads, opt-in video enables advertisers to buy in-app video inventory with 90%+ completion rates and high user intent. A recent study by
Millward Brown, AdReaction Video, reports highest consumer favorability for opt-in videos amongst digital media. User opt-in video ads are most common in apps which feature virtual goods and IAP.
User
opt-in video ads are essentially 10-30-second ad spots that are seamlessly
woven into the app experience at relevant points in a consumer’s journey. For
example, an
23
October
In-App mobile video streaming is exploding as highlighted in the latest App Annie Q2 2015 Index report. According to comScore, over 87% of mobile media consumption takes place now in-app, as well as a majority of all digital time spent. In terms of view specifically, nearly half of mobile video viewers can only (or mostly only) be reached in-app, according to the IAB. And, the most recent cross media marketing mix study from MMA with Coca-Cola, Walmart & Mastercard showed that mobile video can outperform cable television.
Learn all about in-app mobile video in terms of how it differs from desktop video experiences, how vertical video represents a huge advance towards mobile-first video, where MRC in-app guidelines for viewability are today, and what is possible through interactive rich video capabilities.
18
September
Since time immemorial Indians have attributed great fascination and pride to "location.” As any real estate agent will tell you, “There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location.”
Ones “location” can help
others draw inferences about your preferences, needs and consumption behaviors.
In essence, the locations frequented by a user can help advertisers understand
their real world behaviors and therefore location becomes critical to help users
discover propositions that would interest them.
Until the recent
widespread adoption of smartphones, advertisers only had billboards as a medium if they wanted
to target consumers based on their location. While outdoor advertising has
tried to
innovate,
multiple challenges exist with billboard advertising. It is a broadcast
advertising medium, which tries to appeal to all audiences without any focused
targeting or feedback loop mechanisms. The messaging is largely static (unless
digital) and typically loses oomph after several viewings.
Hence, the smartphones
that we carry with us everywhere have interestingly become a powerful medium
for location targeting.
In the PC era, a mouse was
magical as its actions made changes on the desktop screen. Mobile, with
real-time location information has effectively become the cursor of the real world.
Today, with a few taps on your smartphone you can get a taxi to pick you up, or
find the closest Chinese restaurant, petrol pump or ATM machine. Interestingly,
all the new on-demand services such as cabs, grocery and food delivery have
existed for
31
August
This blog originally appeared on Appsflyer
A publisher’s
complex life reflects the ever evolving, but fragmented, advertising technology
space. Within
mobile itself, there are innumerable ad networks,
mediation partners, trading desks, and so on. In fact, the many choices have
only made it worse. A point argued aptly by Barry Schwatrz in his book ‘
Paradox of choice’.
Something
similar has spilled over to video, arguably the
most engaging ad experience on mobile. As a publisher, you have the option
to choose from multiple ad networks and a myriad of video specialists. Here,
performance and ad experience are the primary axes of selection. However, the
very marginal difference between these options has only added to the chaos. It
has, therefore, become imperative to look beyond the primary axes and pay close
attention to the details of each option.
What they Say and What they Mean
They say that
language is the soul of a civilization. And our industry is no exception. The
following are the set of common video jargon used by the partners. Deep-dive
into them to extract maximum potential from each video impression:
1.
Our video ads
have best in-class Instant-Play technology
We prebuffer ads by caching them on a device’s
external storage.
To enable prebuffering,
you must have access to the user-device’s external USB storage. However, note
that even with prebuffering, there will be some delay before the video actually
plays. The acceptable video load time
26
August
Every quarter we release the latest trends and insights on the app economies of the world. These are based on the analysis of millions of app downloads and impressions on the InMobi network. Today we release a set of six infographics along with detailed global and regional reports on The State of App Downloads and Monetization based on Q2 2015 data.Here’s a sneak peek for you.Leading App Destinations of the WorldIn Q2 2015, Indonesia continued to surpass USA and China as the leading app download capital of the world with an 18% share of the world’s app downloads. The younger generation is tech savvy and loves social media. With a growing middle class, millions of new consumers are added to the fray every year at a growth rate of 6-7% for each of the next five years. We are yet to see the best of it.Fastest Growing MarketsEmerging countries such as the India, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are witnessing growth in app installs as more users join the smartphone bandwagon every year. These markets with their low smartphone penetration boast of an eager audience willing to explore and download mobile apps. The market is flooded with a range of affordable smartphones to suit every whim and need. It has never been easier to own a smartphone, and coupled with a convenient data plans, is offering the world on a platter to new users. This combination is driving app
16
July
It’s been a tiring last few days, but I have finally had a chance to read all the reactions pouring in from all circles about our exciting Miip launch this week. Before anything else, thanks to everyone who joined us at our event in San Francisco.
I can’t deny the fact that I am extremely happy that most of you noticed exactly what we were trying to do--to put a face on advertising. I truly believe that this is something that is missing in today’s world.
Ads are omnipresent--be it on mobile, PC, billboards or television--people are exposed to ads almost every minute of their lives. So advertising cannot remain a disconnected stranger to the user anymore. It needs to become more personal, it needs to have a familiar, trusted face, something that can make it more friendly to the user. At least a little bit, I hope.
Taking inspiration from the real world, we at InMobi thought about the shape this face should take. How do you discover new things in the world in the absence of an ad that informs you about it? The industry term is “word of mouth”, but the simpler phrase is, “A friend told me about it.”
Very rarely do you discover anything new all by yourself. You often rely on friends to make suggestions about something you might love, find useful, or that will make your life easier. Don’t
16
July
Human behavior is shaped by how we access and discover information. With every evolutionary change, the paradigm of search changes: From manual search, to bibliographic cataloging, to page-rank based search in the digital world, and now to discovering information in an app-first world.Discovery on mobile is a problem that has not yet been solved. Since apps are not linked, searching and discovering information across apps is impossible today. As if searching were not hard enough, the problem is further complicated by the sheer explosion of apps across various app stores, products in e-commerce destinations and content (video, music and the like) within the mothership apps.How can we make discovery effective across ALL of these domains for the user?My team and I are proud to be working on a solution that addresses this larger-than-life problem in the world of apps, outside the “walled gardens”’ in something I like to refer as the “wild gardens.”Imagine a world where advertising works like this: You are browsing inside a fitness app when you are nudged to consider entering a “discovery zone” where you are offered fitness tips, or fitness-related clothing and accessories, or even proposed songs to accompany your workout. Everything looks beautiful, but more importantly, it is intuitive and useful. This timely, relevant information leads you on to consider each suggestion, and perhaps even shop for suggested products. That is the true power of advertising: relevant information provided at
14
July
There are moments in one’s life when a seemingly innocuous statement leads to something that shakes the very basis of one's worldview. "Is there a way to turn off these irritating ads on my phone? I don't know if anyone ever clicks on them. I wonder who spends time putting these ugly ads on my phone," my daughter asked me one day at dinner, oblivious of the business I was in.Do CTRs have to be in the low-single digits? Even if we increased CTRs for ads by 10%, no one really seems to like these ads. Do we need to live with this reality? What needs to change?That was my moment of epiphany. Advertising was always meant to be beautiful and useful. However, the advertising world had lost sight of the objectives along the way i.e. helping consumers make smarter choices and decisions. Even if we were to improve CTRs by 10%, it wouldn't have made a difference. Consumers were just not interested - advertising wasn't helping them; they had lost trust in advertising.We had to reimagine advertising. We had to change the way people looked at mobile advertising in the future. The path was unclear, but the destination was vividly clear; and the choice clearer. That was nearly 24 months ago.Today - 14th July, 2015 - is a historic day not only for us, but for the mobile advertising world at large; a monumental pit-stop in this
13
July
'Shopping'. This one word drives intense emotions in India. For many it is a way to earn their daily means employing around 40 million Indians (3.3% of Indian population) contributing nearly 15% of our GDP. For several Indians, shopping is therapeutic (I can imagine my wife nodding in agreement). And for many like me it is a weekly drudgery and dreaded task especially grocery shopping.
What really intrigues me though is for the last 25 years shopping has always been anchored on products/brands/category whether on the aisles of a physical store or even a virtual store (desktop or mobile). You go within a particular space in the store looking for say TV (Electronics-> Consumer Durables) or Chinos (Men Fashion -> Clothing- > Trousers ) to get what you want. Also Shopping is "Intent" & "Destination" led where consumers generally know what they are looking for and go to a certain place to buy that.
Looking at history of shopping in India over the past 2-3 decades, it has evolved every 4-5 years. In late 80's, shopping was all about haggling for prices in Sunday Bazaar. Organized retail hit India post the liberalisation in early 90's. The mall revolution married shopping with leisure and eclectic experience of movie watching, fine dine and social sports. Another channel of shopping through TV started from early 2000s. And as Internet revolution reached India in late 2010, shopping moved online. Thereafter, mobile began to play a more prominent
01
July
More Indians are getting on the Internet bandwagon over the next 15 years than any other country, including China. As per a recent Goldman Sachs report, it is forecasted the Indian e-commerce market is poised for a 15X growth, contributing to 2.5% of GDP, or $300bn by 2030.
Like the invention of steam engine or the California Gold Rush, the liberalization post 1991 we are at a time when the foundation for a new mobile economy is being laid. We are fortunate to be the architects of this economy and have to shoulder a very big responsibility. Mobile has truly democratized technology in India and many other emerging markets. Unlike mainframes sold to enterprises and PC / laptops to the middle class, mobile phone has penetrated to most rural & remote corners of this nation.
In fact the dependency on mobile increases as income falls. But as the shipment of smart phones grow; everyone will have a super computer in their pockets. There will be an explosion of on-demand / hyper local services across food, education, entertainment, logistics, travel, financial, banking among other key verticals. Due to our unique cultural, economic & geographic diversity, coupled with last mile connectivity challenges, unique business models that are combination of 'online + offline', India will emerge as the mobile-first country. Also Indian mobile consumer is very different from any other. Solutions for an Indian consumer need to be much more visual & vernacular with newer payment mechanisms. I'm super excited to work across
10
June
Through 2018, less than 1% of consumer apps will be considered financially successful by their developers. As competition intensifies over the years, the race to get your app to the top will be. As you plan your user acquisition and monetization strategy, it might be helpful to explore the latest trends in the mobile ecosystem. The latest set of infographics from InMobi on The State of App Download and Monetization, June 2015 offers some insights. Here are some key trends on the mobile app economies of the world based on analysis of millions of app downloads on the InMobi network for Q1 2015. Indonesia surpasses USA to become the top app download destination with a share of 17%. This growth is mainly driven by a intense demand for Game and Communication apps courtesy local smartphone manufacturers offering lower cost handsets, cheaper mobile internet charges and a technology hungry audience.As Philippines boasts of the highest per capita app downloads of 16 (16 downloads per 100 users). This is followed by Indonesia. UK : App downloads over Android phones cost app developers 13% more than an iOS download. This is contrary to the norm where downloads over iOS cost more than on Android.Gaming app installs have grown > 200% Y-o-Y given their global appeal and demand.mCommerce apps have seen great uptake in South Korea (39% share), Indonesia (14%), Saudi Arabia (16%) and China (12%)In the next four years, app stores revenues are likely to double. As apps become a way of life, a
05
June
The wave of programmatic buying on mobile is a bit like the giant Sequoia forest. It is fast growing, dense and always adding new branches. Everyone spending on mobile advertising today has a programmatic agenda. And yet, it is the story of The Blind Men and The Elephant - everyone understands and describes it a little differently from their neighbors.Amidst all the names and nicknames in the world of mobile programmatic, how do we create a sense of simplicity and decode the complexity? Following the earlier blog where we covered the differences between PMP and Programmatic Direct deals, here is a deeper look at various auction types. The fundamental differentiator is this simple aspect - Is the inventory being auctioned? If it is, then it belongs to the world of Real Time Bid or RTB. If no is the answer, then it is what we call Programmatic Direct; the automation of direct sales Now, the RTB world has preferences. It can either be an open-for-all auction; where all advertisers are welcome to bid. Or it can be exclusive, where only select advertisers get entry into the club. The nomenclature here is fairly straightforward - the former is called Open Exchange; and the Latter Private Marketplace (or PMP). Read more about this on our earlier blog here.That brings us to the world of Programmatic Direct, where inventory is not being auctioned, but sold under certain deal specifications. Deals or
05
June
Supply diversity, global scale, audience targeting and engaging formats. Plus the advantage of programmatic media buying. InMobi Exchange brings it all together.
We bring to you a current snapshot of our Video and Native supply specifically, in this edition. Furthering the commitment to bring Native and Programmatic together, InMobi Exchange today brings premium audiences on more than 7800 Native apps. Accounting for ~40% of the InMobi Exchange supply, Native ads are gaining importance, both on the supply as well as demand side. With 80 billion monthly ad requests, spread across the world, advertisers can leverage the unique opportunity of programmatic buying for Native ads, while providing consumers rich mobile experiences.
The other area of deep and rising interest is at the intersection of programmatic and Video ads. Increasingly, video ad dollars on mobile are shifting to the programmatic channel. InMobi Exchange brings more than 58 bn monthly ad requests, exclusively for video ads. With over 25% of the supply video being enabled for each region, IX presents the opportunity for any advertiser to execute a comprehensive video ad campaign, programmatically.
The world of rich mobile experiences is advancing fast; and InMobi Exchange is excited to bring quality supply for Video and Native ads at scale.
05
June
InMobi, the world’s most powerful mobile advertising platform, is advancing the world of mobile programmatic buying, by enabling video and native formats on the InMobi Exchange. This brings the world of rich, engaging and customer-centric advertising formats to programmatic channels; thereby creating the best blend of efficiency and engagement. The InMobi Exchange offers over 21,000 fully transparent apps; with over 7800 quality Native apps. Over 40% of total supply on InMobi Exchange is now powered by Native and Video enabled supply.With the industry now adopting Interactive Advertising Bureau's OpenRTB 2.3 standard for native ads and full screen VAST, programmatic buying of native and video inventory can now be done efficiently and at scale. This creates opportunities for advertisers as well as publishers, to offer mobile ads that is blended well into user context. Consumers too will benefit from mobile-friendly ads that are organic to, and seamlessly integrated with, their small-screen experience. In order to scale native and video ad campaigns on mobile, programmatic buying becomes a key ingredient. It ensures these advanced format campaigns can be traded easily; while enriching with data and insights. For more details and press coverage, click here
12
May
“[An artist is].... one who is building things. Some with a brush. Some with a shovel. Some choose a pen” - Jackson Pollock
... and some choose pixels and a 5” glass screen.
Mobile ads aren’t just art. They showcase the wonderful confluence of art and science; the marriage of scientifically-backed persuasion with artistic communication. Great mobile ads don’t just look pretty; they grab consumers’ attention and proceed to both inform and entertain.
Introducing InFocus by InMobi, a quarterly showcase for remarkable mobile brand creatives. We want to cast the spotlight on the virtuosos that produce aesthetic, thought-provoking, and engaging brand creatives that consistently delight consumers. Our top creative folk have put their heads together to showcase one outstanding creative, along with several other top units that have run in Europe on the InMobi network.
And so, without further ado, the winner of the very-first InFocus by InMobi is...
…
Zenith Optimedia UK, M&C Saatchi, and NatWest UK
Zenith, M&C Saatchi, and NatWest brought their A-game by creating an engaging and colourful multiple-choice quiz, using the InMobi platform. With the lovely Rachel Riley as quiz-host, the rich-media experience educated users about financial trivia in a fun, informative, and memorable way.
The other great brand creatives that our jury of creative directors picked were:
Initiative Media Warszawa and Orange Polska
Initiative Media Warszawa put on a cute-suit for NJU Mobile / Orange Polska with a beautiful labyrinth-based gamified ad. With the
06
May
In our
previous post, we spoke about the popular gaming concepts that rule the world. This time around we tackle the burgeoning non-gaming sector.
In the app world, user interests outside of gaming encompass a wide range of content including social networking, entertainment, productivity and many more.
At InMobi, we analyzed thousands of apps and millions of users across continents to identify app interests. Users who displayed a specific app interest were grouped into an Appographic Segment.
A deeper look at the data we analysed revealed interesting answers to some questions we posed, such as - Which is a more popular category? Instant Messaging or Photo & Video sharing? Is app interests similar across Smartphones and Tablets? Does no country deviate from the global trend on app interest? The answers were reflective of the cultural diversity.
The world in 10 concepts
In this age of selfies, instant sharing and updates and live stream video, it is no surprise that the top concepts around the world are reflective of that. As new users join the smartphone bandwagon everyday, there is an ever increasing need to connect and communicate with the world. Apps satisfying such a need either via video and audio calls, photo and video sharing or through good old instant messaging, top the charts.
Top App Interests across Markets
The trend continues across markets as users around the world consume and contribute via photos and video, chat and visual and audio calls.
23
April
Marketers, don't stay silent this Mother's Day! With the third-biggest shopping event of the year coming up, read on to learn how you can connect with customers and make mothers all over the world happy - the perfect win-win.The OpportunityWelcome to Anytown, Mystate. It’s the last week of April and many Anytownians - sons, daughters, and even husbands - have got Mother’s Day on their minds. Some already know what they’re getting their mums (they’ve been planning it since December), some head to their favourite e-commerce store, and the remaining surf the internet in search of the perfect gift. And all Anytownians have one thing in common: they love their mobile phones and tablets. In fact, 75% of them own at least one smartphone or tablet, and at least 60% plan to use their device to research or purchase something for mum. How the Marketers Reached the AudienceBrand marketers know these trends. They also know that last Mother’s Day saw a whopping 169% increase in shopping on smartphones and a 57% increase in tablet-based shopping. They note Anytownians’ increasing affinity towards mobile based shopping and create personas to precisely target them. And real Anytownians line up perfectly with the audience personas the marketers create. Targeting Female Young Adults who Love Gift Certificates
The Marketers target women between 18 and 25 years old who made less than $25,000 annually and have been known to buy gift certificates using e-commerce apps.Cathy, 21, works
16
April
New research from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) demonstrates the relative value of investing in mobile as a marketing channel by studying real brand campaigns. InMobi is pleased to help sponsor MMA’s Smart Mobile Cross Marketing Effectiveness Research, or SMoX for short. This research examines the effectiveness of cross channel marketing to present findings that point to an optimized level of mobile spend that is proven to increase campaign ROI without increasing overall marketing budgets.
As an example, MMA’s analysis of an AT&T marketing campaign for the Moto X is telling. The MMA reviewed AT&T’s media budget based on their goal to build brand awareness for the new device.
The research found that while an overwhelming majority of the media budget was allocated to TV, it was mobile, which consumed just 1% of the campaign budget, that delivered nearly twice the impact per dollar spent, beating both TV and online desktop budgets handily.
What’s more, the study found that the optimal allocation of budgets for mobile should have been 16%, based on impact, compared to the actual 1%.
While 16% may not sound extremely impressive, MMA’s analysis reveals that reallocating the budget with an eye towards mobile’s effectiveness would have changed the attitudes of an additional 2.5 million people - nearly the population of the city of Chicago - and raised awareness for the new Moto X by +12% - all for the same budget.
As a participant
13
April
The year of programmatic buying is here. And we are excited to share the news with you - InMobi Exchange (IX), the largest independent mobile exchange, is now live in Middle East and North Africa. IX brings the best of quality supply, that is not only premium but also contains local flavour and content. IX ensures transparency in buying, a wide array of supply categories and a comprehensive suite of all mobile ad formats.With InMobi Exchange, buyers can now reach their target audiences effectively and create choose a programmatic channel that suits them. Buyers can participate in Open Exchange auction as well as Private Deals.Reach out to us at programmatic@inmobi.com if you are interesting in taking your marketing strategy to the next level. And we will help you get onboard in no time!
13
April
InMobi Exchange (IX) is now truly global, with the recent launch in emerging markets and a strong presence in North America and Europe. IX, with its partner Rubicon Project, brings the best of supply and demand efficiency in programmatic buying.IX has ~1.3 bn daily ad requests, with 35% coming from NA. The supply represents premium publishers across key verticals such as News, Social, Sports, Entertainment; bringing supply diversity as well as global reach to advertisers. This suite of premium publishers are enabled for all mobile ad formats, with > 80% supporting video. Advertisers also have the advantage of knowing details of each ad placement, as 90% of IX supply is transparentAdditionally, publsihers on IX support both Open Exchange as well Private Deals(Deal IDs). A recent Rich Media Interstitial campaign that ran through Deal IDs saw a very healthy CTR of 24%. More publishers are being on-boarded to InMobi Exchange everyday, with a full additional potential of 1.5 Bn across Video and Native; and 1.3 Bn in APAC.To know more, please reach out to programmatic@inmobi.com
06
April
This article by InMobi was first seen on Emerging Spaces, the content hub of the Starcom Mediavest Group.
“Nobody reads advertising. People read what they want to read and sometimes, it is an ad” - Howard Luck Gossage, the ‘Advertising Socrates of San Francisco’, 1969.
This path-breaking line of thought surfaced as ‘native advertising’ last year, and evolved from an ad world catchphrase to establishing itself in every marketer’s agenda. Innovative native platforms now give publishers a seamless way to merge advertising with content, and several pieces of research have corroborated publishers’ confidence by detailing the effectiveness of native advertising. In short, the odds of native advertising at scale arriving soon look very good. However, there are many challenges that need to be overcome if native advertising on mobile is to deliver on its promise.
Shared Definition of Native on Mobile
A burning issue is the need for a clear shared definition of native advertising on mobile. Is native on mobile an ad unit that mimics the form and function of an app or the mobile web? Is it custom content that suits editorial content? Possibly, user-generated content? Should mobile native be based on content, context, or both?
InMobi research on the marketer perceptions of mobile native advertising in 2015 revealed what we had suspected all along - advertisers, along with publishers and ad platforms, are divided on the definition of mobile native.
While 36% of brand marketers surveyed use native, a
30
March
Native advertising is all the rage across the world. And in the land of the world’s highest smartphone penetration and the fastest average internet connection speed, native advertising has been adopted as the key monetization solution for South Korea’s number one social network, KakaoStory. KakaoStory is a photo sharing social networking service launched by KakaoTalk, the messenger app installed on 98% of the Korean population’s smartphones. KakaoStory remains the most popular SNS app among South Koreans with 55 million users, with a dominant user base of females in their teens to 40s. The native ad slot on this top ranking app is strategically positioned on the third, fourth or fifth feed and has been adopted by a wide range of advertisers with different goals from app download to brand engagement. We’re excited to announce the beginning of InMobi’s partnership with KakaoStory Performance Advertising. InMobi Native Ads, an innovative native advertising platform supercharged with numerous targeting capabilities, has been integrated with KakaoStory Performance Advertising effective March 1st, 2015. With this partnership, advertisers can now benefit from the powerful targeting technology only offered by InMobi when they choose to run campaigns on KakaoStory. From Audience Personas to Appographic targeting, InMobi enables brands and app developers to reach their target audience at maximum efficiency. And for the 55 million users of KakaoStory, this means being able to see ads that are more relevant to their interests and needs. While InMobi Native Ads
11
March
Over the last two years, we sought out and met hundreds of app developers across the world to ask them two simple questions - “How would you describe your app?” and “Who is this app designed for?”While the specifics vary, the responses’ structure was almost always a variant of the following sentences:
“Have you used app A? It’s kind of like that, but with X being a key differentiating concept”“It’s an app that lets users do XYZ”“The audience for this app is very similar to the audience of app A”“Users who play Game A and Game B will love my app”Very rarely have we heard an app developer describe their app in terms of app store categories, and almost never in terms of a demographic or a location. As humans, we tend to relate to new things in terms of something we already know, which helps us anchor new experiences. This translates to how people perceive apps, as well, where app definitions and potential audiences are referenced in terms of other apps, with a few key differentiators.This is where the core insight for Appographic Targeting™ emerges. Users and app developers have a common language of evaluating and developing new apps - the language of how apps are described in terms of key functional, design and interactive elements that appear in those apps and similar apps. This language, like any other language, has
11
March
Last week, the world of mobile was on show at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For a timely trend watch, the AD Club reached out to leaders and members for their views on the most important mobile trends in 2015. InMobi’s Head of Marketing in North America, Rick Jones (
@rickjonestweets) talked about the significant changes we can expect to see in mobile viewing behaviour and consumer engagement.
"We will undoubtedly see amazing new mobile capabilities introduced in 2015, but the bigger trends may be how mobile viewing behavior and using mobile devices as a portal for just about everything continue to change how consumers engage with the world. As advertisers, we will find that mobile native advertising – where the ad fits in naturally with the form and function of the surrounding user experience – becomes more standard and measurably increases engagement with our campaigns. And as native mobile becomes increasingly available for both direct as well as programmatic buys, marketers are likely to consider experimenting more broadly with this evolving ad format thus helping it to develop even faster.”
Advertisers must also keep an eye on snack-able mobile content, payments, performance, privacy, UX, and interconnectivity, as these trends are slated to hit every marketer's agenda in the coming months. Check out everyone’s views on this important topic
here.
26
February
Programmatic buying is now on every brand marketer’s agenda. However, the world of programmatic buying is ever evolving, dynamic, and complex. Brand marketers seek to clearly understand the nuances inherent in different types of programmatic channels. Buying could occur through auctions in a closed chamber, in an open field, or among various kinds of participants.Among various programmatic channels, the Open Exchange is perhaps the most straightforward. As the name suggests, it is an auction where ‘all advertisers are welcome’. In an open exchange, the advertiser with the highest bid wins the auction and thereby the ad placement.Then there are two other key programmatic channels - Private Marketplaces (PMP) and Programmatic Direct.PMP and Programmatic Direct are two very distinct channels though they are easily confused. In a nutshell, a PMP is like a walled garden that limits participation of demand and supply, whereas Programmatic Direct is an automation tool for direct sales. In a Private Marketplace, a publisher invites a shortlist of advertisers that are relevant for their app/ website. An auction is conducted between the select advertisers, for that publisher, and the advertiser with the highest bid wins the auction. In effect, a PMP is similar to Ferrari’s invite-only models; that are opened up to only a few (lucky) buyers. Programmatic Direct, on the other hand, automates the standard IO process thereby letting advertisers buy targeted supply through an exchange. The automation is done at
24
February
Reach the right user, with Bluekai segments on InMobi Exchange.
Spring is almost here, though it might not feel like it yet. With spring, comes much awaited March Madness - with office pools and brackets keeping interest sky-high. As our college teams put on their sporting gear, InMobi Exchange (IX) and BlueKai sport the right audience segments for brand advertisers.
InMobi Exchange offers well defined, curated, and customized audience segments, powered by BlueKai. These audience segments are adapted for all key calendar events, including March Madness. Our audience segments on IX offer a targeted path to reach consumers with intent and brand affinity; efficiently and at scale.
This March Madness, target specific audiences along with gamified ads that treat fans to their own mobile challenge.
Since we’ve enabled BlueKai audience segments on InMobi Exchange, we’ve witnessed strong interest from buyers. More than 50% of BlueKai audience segments have generated programmatic deals. With the coming of Spring and various events, BlueKai segments will continue to garner interest and show strong performance. In addition, InMobi can further customize BlueKai audience segments for specific campaign objectives.
Interested in truly scoring with your advertising this season? Reach us at programmatic@inmobi.com
16
February
Drum roll, please…. InMobi’s own Stephanie Sarofian has been appointed to the Mobile Marketing Association North American Board! At InMobi, we’re thrilled to have Stephanie represent us and raise the bar for women in mobile across the globe. Stephanie was selected for her stellar industry leadership and ability to accelerate and transform marketing through mobile. We at InMobi are especially stoked to work with the MMA and other board members from top brands and agencies to bring mobile to the forefront this year.In mobile, there are so many questions regarding how native on mobile can be offered at scale and how that makes sense for marketers. Advertisers also have tons of questions about dealing with issues related to sponsored content.MMA being a global leader in all things mobile, decided to create the Mobile Native Advertising Committee to answer these questions within the Mobile ecosystem. InMobi teams up with MMA to promote a common framework, educate marketers and publishers about the benefits and best practices, and grow the global market for this emerging display format.Join us for a webinar on February 18th, 2015 to review the current state of mobile native advertising with examples from the committee’s founding members including Yahoo, InMobi, Electronic Arts and Sharethrough. From there we’ll explore the challenges and multiple paths forward to bring mobile native advertising into the mainstream.
19
January
Personally speaking, one of
the only positives of the holiday season coming to an end is the countdown to
Super Bowl Sunday. While the tradition continues, this year will see some
critical differences. First, as per my New Year’s resolution, I will not be
noshing down carb-y snacks! The other change is that while we'll be clustered
around the television in my cousin's house like every other Super Bowl, this
year the device we're all going to be glued to will likely be our smartphone. Therein lies the huge difference in how content is being consumed
and where marketers should consider investing their advertising budgets.Super Bowl spending always
highlights the glitzy, big ad campaigns that are meant to be the trendsetters
for the year to come. Media reports suggest that a 30 second television spot during the
three-hour sporting bonanza is being sold for an eye-popping $4.5 million. However, the most effective
spenders are turning to mobile now in an attempt to complement the scarce and
high-valued TV spots. And here’s why:Not only are we
spending more minutes
each day with our phones versus the television but our television-watching
behavior is also getting replaced by dual-screen parallel processing. Additionally, research at InMobi shows us that sustained game play and
downloads are typically witnessed in the evenings between 6.00-8.00 PM - during
the classic television watching hours. Clearly, mobile is where consumers
are at. Consistent with the growing
presence
23
December
The Infiltration of Smart Wearables
Each day, smart technology is becoming more ingrained in our personal lives; smartphones and tablets are just the tip of the personal technology iceberg. Our need to “be connected” has become such an inherent part of our lives that devices now allow us to stay connected at all times. Personal technology has evolved from merely carrying portable devices to the state of actually wearing our devices. Among these advances are smart watches, smart glasses and wearable health/fitness monitors – and these are merely stepping stones into the personal technology revolution.
Not Just Early Adopters
International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that wearable technology is poised for explosive growth, projected at 483% worldwide by 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 78%
i. As use cases for wearable technology multiply and as devices become more personalized, this number may see even larger growth over the coming years.
Even with the influx of wearable devices currently available in the market, wearable device penetration remains relatively low, as compared to smartphones and tablets.
According to our research, only 11% of our mobile users currently own a wearable device. However, our research also suggests that the wearable trend is beginning to move mainstream; only one-third of wearable purchase intenders consider themselves early adopters. Instead, the “average” wearable shopper believes that wearables are the future of technology (53%) and is increasingly finding him-or-herself dependent on technology (48%).
Fragmented Market and Purchase Consideration
The wearable device market
02
December
This edition of InMobi’s State of App Monetization Series dives into in-app network insights for app developers and publishers. Through analysis of billions of impressions served each month, these reports showcase the latest trends within the mobile app ecosystem on our network.Android Apps Accrue Most Impressions; iOS Apps Dominate Ad PerformanceAds in iOS apps continued to dominate in-app Android ads with respect to both CTRs and eCPMs. In-app iOS ads yielded 21% higher CTRs and 51% higher eCPMs than in-app Android ads.In-app iOS ads earned higher eCPMs than both Android smartphones and tablets. Although Android tablet ads yielded 23% higher CTRs than iOS smartphone ads, they earned eCPMs 25% lower than iOS smartphone ads. This may be in part attributed to the common believe that iOS users spend more money for apps and within apps than Android users.Game and Entertainment Apps Remain Star PerformersGame and entertainment apps again led the charge; both categories accrued the most impressions, averaged the highest CTRs, and earned the best eCPMs. Also, during Q3, Social Networking ad impressions nearly doubled from Q2, accruing as many impressions as game apps.As we noted last quarter, health/ medical apps perform significantly well. Although accruing just shy of 1 billion ad impressions during Q3, medical/health apps earned an average eCPM 41% higher than the global average.Brand Ads Rake in the Money; Health & Fitness Ads Are High-PerformingIn general, non-standard ad content (not illustrated, <1% of ad impressions) earned app
24
November
Seize the moment is a series that captures mobile marketing strategies for brands to win consumer moments on mobileIs your Brand Marketing strategy truly “consumer first”?More than anything else, marketers have always wanted to reach and influence consumers at the golden moments that most impact their decisions. Various ‘Moment of Truth (MOT)’ models over the years, such as First (FMOT), Second (SMOT), and Zero Moments of Truth (ZMOT) have helped marketers with the when and where of product placements, and attempted to map those seemingly elusive Moments of Maximum Opportunity (MOMO). However, they are still far from ‘Marketing in the Moment’, the utopian state of complete consumer understanding. True Moment Marketing requires seamless access to many more consumer moments across online and offline channels in order to construct personalized dynamic consumer life maps of experiences and emotions. However, consumer understanding today is based on a few consumer interaction data points that are typically marketer-induced, and thus have inherent systemic bias. These Moments of Truth are constrained only to moments that have relevance for the marketer, and are not reflective of the complete consumer experience profile, presenting a huge gap in terms of consumer understanding. While this gap is a comprehensive topic in itself that isn’t the main focus of this piece, Moment Marketing is an unsolved problem that brands need to think about solving. Looking beyond existing models is a great way to start. Brands have always sought
20
November
The Kardashians are certainly keeping it up in the mobile gaming world. Earning $700K a day, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (KKH) runs on the classic social mechanic of role-playing. With virtual Kim guiding you at every step, you enter the game with an E-list status and a mandate to climb up the ladder of stardom and attain nirvana when you become an A-list celebrity. A minion like me (an E-lister) can only dream about being an A-list celebrity, but a few did have the courage (and money) to do so!There have been other successful role playing games like Campus Life from Pocket Gems and Glam Fever from Stardoll AB etc, but KKH’s meteoric rise to popularity and expeditious monetization is what has intrigued me deeply and made me ponder over its monetization strategy.Here are the top four monetization tips that KKH has to offer to all the developers:Tip 1: Thou Shalt Make In-App Purchases InnateIn the KKH world, you need a good mix of soft and hard currency to progress in the game.
There are two forms of currency that work: K stars and virtual cash. With soft currency, K stars, a gamer can buy dresses, make-up, accessories, bus rides, and so on. This currency can be accumulated by completing tasks, but in the course of the game it becomes more and more difficult to do so. This is where the in-app purchase (IAP) comes in handy. The
19
November
Not all games are created equal. Each game is based on one or more underlying concepts or themes - Pattern Matching
[1], Fantasy[2], Survival[3],Stunts[4] to name a few. An analysis by InMobi of more than 10,000 games on the network showed interesting trends around concepts and geographical variations.
Around the world in 10 concepts
Users around the world have a personal preference for certain types of games. Short Session
[5] games are the most popular amongst users the world over, with Pattern Matching being the second favorite. Fantasy themed games came a close third.
Popular gaming concepts ranked in order of user preference worldwide
Users in USA, UK, India and Indonesia show a preference for Short Session games, as do users in Japan. Users in Chinese and South Korean prefer Fantasy and Blood & Gore
[6] themed games.
Top gaming concepts by share of users across markets
Concepts and regional variations
Users in North America and Europe demonstrate similar gaming preferences with over 60% of games downloaded being short session games. More than 40% of all games downloaded in these markets had Pattern Matching concepts. While Europe preferred Resource Management
[7] themed games to Blood & Gore themed games, the pattern was reversed in the case of American users.
While the APAC region followed suit in the 1st two categories, that is where the similarity ends. Games in APAC show a clear inclination towards Blood & Gore and Fantasy themed games, with Resource Management rounding up the Top Five.
Popular
18
November
Seize the moment is a series that captures mobile marketing strategies for brands to win consumer moments on mobile. So far, Brands have relied on broad consumer archetypes to understand consumers and the way they can be influenced to purchase. This approach to consumers involved classifying them into cohorts based on mindsets - the collection of ideas that determine their outlook, attitudes, and presumably, their purchase behavior. However, the days of this generic approach are clearly numbered. Today’s ‘always-on’ consumer can’t be quickly stereotyped by a dipstick approach to consumer understanding. She makes decisions in far more complex ways as she experiences different moments in life. Why Moments?A consumer’s mindset inextricably changes from moment to moment. That ‘spendthrift fashionista’ might have recently started checking out gyms, reading health blogs, looking for healthy recipes, clicking on fitness related ads, and using expense apps. As she currently zips through the shopping mall, she might be looking for affordable gym shoes, and not a designer dress, in that moment. Her buyer persona needn’t always dictate her impulses. Mobile is the only common denominator that can cut through changing moments and moods, reach new audiences in unparalleled ways, and leverage new signals to truly begin to understand consumer moments.In the battle for consumer attention, consumers are moving targets through their own journeys. Consumer moments are up for grabs, and Brand marketers who tap these moments most successfully will
11
November
Happiness, hope and reflection are definitely a part of the
holiday season but do they all necessarily fit into your holiday season
business plans?
Mobile advertising is set to be a $50 billion industry within the
next decade according to
Gartner and other research firms.
However, up until now most mobile media networks only guaranteed set brand impression levels, leaving brands guessing as to whether those
impressions would translate into a tangible ROI.
But this holiday season, InMobi plans to disrupt the market
by changing all that. InMobi is offering brands and marketers the
opportunity to advertise on mobile with '
Guaranteed Outcomes'.So What Exactly Is Guaranteed Outcomes?
InMobi’s
Guaranteed Outcomes is a real-time decision engine for brands that guarantees the
intended outcome for mobile advertisers. This offering goes
beyond the traditional offerings like ad impressions, or click rates, and
guarantees advertisers that
a specific percentage of the
consumers targeted by an advertising campaign will ‘interact’ and ‘engage’ with
the brand.How Does It Work?
Advertiser and
InMobi agree on a pre-defined outcome floor (the lowest acceptable engagement
rate)
InMobi uses machine
learning and decision sciences to identify the audience micro-segments most
likely to take action
InMobi targets this
audience with an immersive creative experience
Unlike
typical performance-based campaigns Guaranteed Outcomes only serves an
impression if the decision engine knows that the intended recipient is a member
of the audience most-likely to take the desired action, thereby eliminating
wasted
10
November
Getting
users to download an app is a challenge faced by app developers the world
over. As advertisers worry about their user acquisition strategy, many
questions need to be answered. When do users download most? Which countries
are growing the fastest? Where are gaming apps most popular?
InMobi’s
latest report -
The State of Mobile App Downloads 2014 Q3 answers these and many more questions. Here we present insights and interesting patterns based on research conducted on the
InMobi network.
Are mobile users downloading apps?
Nearly
17,000 apps hit the app store
every week[1], bombarding users with an array of choices. Mobile app downloads measured
on the InMobi network witnessed a 32% growth in Q3 as compared to
13% in Q2. This could in-part be attributed to the growing smartphone penetration.
Where can I find mobile app users?
While USA
continues to lead the world of mobile app downloads, four of the top 5 app
downloading destinations are in Asia. Not only do they account for a
substantial share of downloads, they are also some of the fastest growing
nations.
With 69%
Q-on-Q growth, China leads the way, showcasing some promise as a major app
economy in the coming quarters. India and Indonesia aren’t far behind with over
60% growth. A majority of these countries are mobile first - mobile devices are
their primary source for internet access. This bodes well for advertisers and
developers.
How many apps do users download?
Along with
high share
05
November
App publishers often face the conundrum of how to monetize through ads without annoying their users. Compromising user experience does bring in those dollars in the short term, but they don’t keep coming in for much longer.
A user may be sticky to your app owing to the short game plays, the long hauls of strategy involved, or simply due to the app’s utility. However, if your user is forced to interact with an ad, eventually taking him away from the game, chances are that the stickiness will not last long. In our experience of working with many of the world’s most successful publishers; making money comes down to a short mantra - keep the user engaged and happy.
Mobile advertising has matured considerably from the era of just banners to recent innovations like native advertising, video ads, and rewarded ads. Even though each format engages users the best at different points of time in a game, a constant need to engage the users in his or her natural element is felt.
And what is the natural element of a gamer?
Why, playing a game, of course!
Introducing Playable Ads, an ad format that truly addresses the form-element question. These are 20 to 40 second interactive ads that allow gamers to test–drive a gaming app before downloading it. Playable Ads can be made even more effective in the monetization of your app, if coupled with the right placement
29
October
About
four desks away from me sits a quiet but friendly product manager working on ad
prototypes for wearables. His quest is simple – draw out the best use case
possible for advertising on wearables. It is still a bit like divining for
water since the devices – smartwatches, glasses, and headgear – haven’t really moved
past the early adopters. However, the diehard optimist in me believes that the
pace of innovation and adoption is shortening dramatically. For example,
tablets grew faster than PCs and likewise, smartphones faster than the tablet. So,
wearables becoming mainstream might be a matter of a short one or two years.The
good news for brands is that wearables are literally attached to their
consumers throughout the day. Wearables are also just as geo-location aware as
smartphones making them a great proposition for brands to reach the right consumers.
Likewise, as developers start creating apps for wearables, there will be the
all-important question of monetization.Might
it be fair to estimate that the preferred monetization model for wearables will
include advertising?Hyper-local, hyper real-time,
hyper-specific Every
wearable device gives a potential advertiser a different context. So smart watches
are a great way to understand activity patterns, health and fitness related
behaviors. It seems plausible that brands like sports goods, health foods,
vitamin and supplement labels and even the odd beverage company would find advertising
on these watches an interesting proposition. On the other hand, with smart
glasses,
17
October
It is that time of the year that Brands and shopaholics look forward to. This holiday season, more than any other, Brands can look forward to a powerful gift; for shopping is all set to be mobile-fueled.
eMarketer estimates that US mobile sales will grow by 37.3%, more than twice the rate of e-commerce overall.
Nearly 19% of digital sales and 1.2% of all retail sales in the US in 2014 will come from mobile devices.
eMarketer estimates that UK retail m-commerce sales grew by triple digits in 2013 and will post a further 65.6% jump this year.
Mobile commerce will account for a substantial share of total UK retail e-commerce in the coming years—27.0% this year, almost one-third by 2015 , and near 40% by 2018.
Mobile meshes together our personal and professional lives, providing endless opportunities for brands marketers. Mobile’s ubiquitous nature, coupled with smarter phones, better technology, and high bandwidth provides brands with a highly nuanced understanding of customer intent and insights around purchasing decision patterns.
Mobile usage is at an all-time high, and the shift to mobile is on. According to
InMobi’s Mobile Media Consumption Study, mobile phones and tablets together grab an ever-increasing share of time with all media—potentially at the expense of online media and TV. Globally, consumers now spend an average of almost 2.2 hours per day with mobiles and tablets, which together account for 37% of media time - ahead of television, computer usage, print, and radio.
Source: Global Mobile Media
16
October
InMobi and Rubicon Project conducted a Survey on Mobile Native Advertising and how brand and agencies are thinking about mobile native advertising. The results are in, and here are some of the key insights we found:
Most (44%) brands and agencies see native advertising as being about adapting to the content, followed by the segment that sees native as the reflection of the user's attributes (22%), and the smaller group that feels that native is an extension of the user's surroundings or the physical environment around him/her. Data suggests that even though most digital advertising buyers realise that native is going to be an increasingly bigger chunk of their spend in the coming months (70 % want to spend on native in 2015) there seems to be some inertia about moving to native ( 37% will spend in 2014 itself) which is most fuelled by lack of expertise or best practices. However it goes without saying that the inertia is fast wearing off and there is an exodus in digital ad buyers towards native (28% have already spent on it last year). When asked the modus operandi of mobile native, the vast majority (93%) is inclined towards automation of their native campaigns, which clearly stems from the lack of expertise and know how in the buying of mobile native ads.
The following chart highlights some of the trends, motivations and challenges that advertisers have while considering mobile native:
Download Report B
30
September
The numbers are in! InMobi’s State of App Monetization Series provides network insights for app developers and publishers. Through analysis of billions of impressions served each month, these reports showcase the latest trends within the mobile app ecosystem on our network.Mobile App vs. Mobile WebIn-app
ad impressions now comprise nearly three-quarters of all ad impressions on our
network. And according to our Q2 data, in-app ad impressions yielded CTRs 4x
that of mobile web ad impressions and earned eCPMs more than 3.5x those of
mobile web ads.
iOS Rules the Roost
Although Android apps accrued more ad impressions globally, iOS apps monetized just as well as Android apps. And despite averaging CTRs about 14% higher than Android CTRs, iOS apps earned eCPMs more than 40% higher than their Android counterparts.
Bigger Is Better – Tablets Take Over Smartphones
In general, ads in tablet apps outperformed ads in smartphone apps. In-app tablet ads yielded CTRs about 50% greater than in-app smartphone ads, and in-app tablet ads earned nearly 30% higher eCPMs. Increased screensize and difference in context can affect performance. For example, larger screensizes make enaging ad experiences possible. Also, many consumers are more likely to use their tablets for leisure activities and may be more open to interacting with ads.
In fact, when it came to ad sizes, we noticed that
Bigger Is Better. Full-screen ad sizes yielded higher CTRs than banner ads, and tablet ad sizes outperformed smartphone ad sizes. Similarly, larger
19
September
App
developers today face a challenging mobile app economy. With over 2
million apps available between Google and Apple’s app store, and
over 110 billion app downloads, competition for has never been more
fierce.We took a
close look at app download trends across the world to make sense of
how acute the problem is. Research on the InMobi network for apps
downloaded in Q2 2014, between 1st April and 30th June shows some
interesting patterns.App
crazy nationsUSA and
China top the charts at 18% and 10% respectively in terms of share of
app downloads. With its high smartphone penetration and a vibrant
developer community, US leads the pack. China, despite being a late
smartphone adopter is growing quickly fueled by its home-grown brands
of mobile phones and the iPhone. What’s
the cost of an app downloadFor an
app developer looking to acquire users, the cost of every app
download or Cost Per Install (CPI) can add up very quickly. While the
market determines CPIs, how much a developer is willing to pay
depends on the expected lifetime value (LTV) of the user. Higher the
LTV, higher will be the willingness of the develop to pay for a high
CPI.CPI
varies across countries and app categories. Indexed against the
average CPI on our network, France is the most expensive amongst the
top 10 app download nations with a CPI Index of 176. Malaysia and
Indonesia are the cheapest with a CPI index of 42.
16
September
Brands, at the core, can be thought of as being about three basic elements - visual appeal, identity and emotional proposition. The way a brand is perceived depends on its value or usage to the consumer. Translating this value onto a tiny mobile screen can be tricky, as one size doesn't fit all.Even though the most exciting brands today are increasingly mobile first (Uber), almost all of the existing ones are still developing their mobile strategies and trying to find their mobile identity.Here are some of the things to keep in mind while taking your brand to mobile:1. Be consistent with your brand's identity and purpose It is crucial that the core visual elements of your brand remain consistent with that of all other screens. That usually means that there is some level of adjustment that goes into creating the same experience (identity), yet maintaining all the elements of usability. Case in Point:The Nike App emulates its Brand’s visual elements perfectly on to the mobile screen while being usable and robust in its experience, but the kicker is the way it interacts with the user. The brand becomes a part of the user’s emotional journey to reach their goals, which is much stronger than just wearing their shoes.Think about the core tenets of your brand’s interaction with your user before you emulate it onto a smaller screen.2. Create an emotional proposition The emotional
12
September
Anyone who has been following InMobi has certainly heard our frequent discussions of native advertising. Since launching the Native Ads Platform at the beginning of 2014, we have seen brand advertisers, game developers, and publishers of all stripes move convincingly towards native.This should not be surprising as native advertising on mobile has now been shown to significantly increase engagement rates. In fact, research from campaigns run over the InMobi network indicates an eight-fold increase in engagement over standard mobile display ads. Additionally, viewership typically increases by as much as 150% over banner ads. Now as we get closer to Advertising Week in New York we’d love to know how advertisers are thinking about mobile native. We’re asking you to fill out this short survey so we can better understand what you currently make of the challenges and opportunities of mobile native advertising. We’ll look forward to sharing the results during Advertising Week!
09
September
As the world awaited the iOS 8 release with bated breath, we at InMobi did some gearing up of our own. We analysed the iOS 8 beta adoption amongst developers who have access to the beta version of the release to see how it fared against iOS 7 beta adoption. Our research shows that Chinese developers seem to be building upon their success with iOS 7 by adopting iOS 8 faster. China is the only country among the larger developer nations to have registered a higher iOS 8 beta adoption compared to iOS 7 beta.
An analysis of unique devices running iOS 8 beta on the InMobi network between July 1st and July 31st shows that the response to iOS 8 beta globally has been less enthusiastic compared to iOS 7 beta. This in turn is likely to reflect in fewer iOS 8 app releases on the app store in the first few weeks of general availability of iOS 8.
In
absolute terms, North America leads the way with 196K unique devices running
iOS 8 beta showing up on the InMobi network. Europe and APAC rank second and
third respectively. As a region, North America came closest to matching iOS 7 beta
adoption numbers - iOS 8 beta adoption numbers were close to 80% of iOS 7 beta
numbers.
Chinese developers spurred on by
iOS 7 success
Chinese
developers seem to be on a high, post their success with iOS 7 apps. China is
the largest iOS 8 beta adopter in Asia and the second largest around the world
with 3
02
September
Brands
are looking for the best ways to include mobile in their media mix this holiday
season, but smart marketers know that simply repurposing existing desktop
banners will not tap into the true power of mobile to drive holiday sales.
To
follow are six breakthrough creative ideas to that will amplify user engagement
with your mobile ad and maximize ROI on your mobile campaign.1. The
Virtual Mobile Catalog with Shoppable Video
For the brand interested in showcasing the latest styles in a
highly personalized and interactive way:
Combine
an immersive visual experience with highly personalized content to maximize
audience relevance and engagement with the Virtual Mobile Catalogue.
Users
can swipe through and view product imagery, descriptions and pricing customized
to the their profile and location. For
an even more immersive experience, brands can include “Shoppable Video” units, which
leverage interactive overlays to promote engagement with specific
products. Users can click through to a
mobile site or app to buy on-the-spot thereby driving immediate sales.
2. Advanced
Geo-Targeting
For the brand interested in driving store traffic to their
location (and away from their competitors):
Use
geo-location to target customers in close proximity to a your retail location
or that of your competitors and engage them with a holiday offer and directions
to the closest store.
3. Event
Countdown
For the brand seeking to promote a big online or retail sales event:
Create
a sense of urgency by counting down to a big sales
01
August
Brands are
shifting their holiday advertising budgets to mobile – with predictions showing
mobile growing to 25% of digital ad spend.*
Why such a focus on mobile for driving holiday sales? Because location based targeting is the best
way to drive retail foot traffic and it is unique to mobile. Drive
Traffic Into Your Store – And Away From CompetitorsAccording
to the Mobile Marketing Association, today nearly 70% of smartphone access is
spent out of the home or on-the-go, that means that mobile provides the best
opportunity to reach your target audience as they are actively holiday
shopping. You can use hyper local
targeting to engage prospects that are near your retail location or
geo-conquesting to intercept them when they are in or near your competitor’s
store. Target
Prospects Regardless of ProximityBut while
geo-fencing is a great way to drive impulse or lower funnel purchases, the fact
remains that 70% of purchases are planned, so marketers that rely only on
geo-fencing may be missing out on a significant holiday sales opportunity. Since shopping decisions can be better
impacted by reaching consumers in advance of going to a store (while they are
still in their research or consideration phase), so it is important that
marketers target people, not just places.
Location based audience personas enable mobile marketers, to target
custom audiences based on their activity in the physical world. For example, if a user is identified
frequently departing from and returning to a specific airport
18
July
Whether you are in
apparel or consumer electronics, if you are interested in influencing shoppers’
online or in-store behavior during the 2014 holiday season you are probably
considering mobile as part of the solution. If you’re not, you certainly should
be. According to the Ipsos Holiday Shopping Study, more than 75% of all
smartphone users will use their smartphone for holiday shopping and 1 in 4 will
make a purchase on their phone.* No matter what channel consumers use for
purchase, mobile advertising will have a big impact on the decision – bigger
than ads they see on TV or online.A bigger impact
than TV! How is this possible? Major advances in targeting, creative, and
attribution have put mobile advertising on top this holiday season.Start with AudienceAs brand marketers
know, the starting point of a successful campaign lies in defining the target
audience - and today mobile marketers can reach their optimal audience at scale
to steer almost every aspect of the holiday purchase decision. Brands
interested in driving consideration can target users based on their device
type, location, demographics, interest, and behavior, or combine multiple
dimensions to create user personas that match their target. Brands who want to
reach users further down the purchase funnel should consider location based
targeting.Geo fencing has
been used successfully in campaigns for a couple years now, but only now are
marketers realizing its full potential to drive retail traffic to their store
and away
02
July
Last
week, the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Marketing Association (SVAMA)
invited me to participate on their panel, Mobile
Marketing: Creating An Effective Mobile Experience for Your User. I
discussed mobile marketing strategy alongside marketing mavens Deborah Kelson,
former Senior Director of Mobile and Multichannel Marketing of Walmart
eCommerce, and Dave Lawson, Director of Mobile and Digital Unification of
Knotice, an IgnitionOne Company. Shannon Ryan, Founder & CEO of
ArchetypeDNA, moderated the panel. Key Takeaways 1.Marketers
need to account for the differences of mobile from other traditional media
channels, such as TV and online, yet still incorporate similar elements to
create a cohesive multi-channel ad experience. Oftentimes, marketers try to
force their traditional strategies into mobile. Although mobile complements
other channels, it is its own separate channel and should be treated as such.
Marketers most likely wouldn’t air the same exact TV commercial on the radio -
instead, they may emphasize individual media attributes, e.g. sound for radio
or video for television, but still incorporate many of the same elements, e.g.
characters, voice, product slogan, to develop a cohesive multi-channel experience.
The same goes for mobile. Examples of mobile properties to consider are
physical attributes, e.g. screen sizes or touchscreen capabilities; usage context,
e.g. while commuting or while at home; and connectivity. 2.Mobile
is highly personalized; customization is essential to designing an engaging
mobile experience. When crafting a
mobile strategy, marketers need to understand how
17
June
Football fans have been ‘second-screening’ in front of their televisions since the earliest laptops. But without understanding specifics of this behavior, marketers often have trouble taking targeted action.Four years ago in South Africa, The Beautiful Game saw breakthrough scale of its global mobile audience, and new data on their behavior.1. Mobile internet usage (and engagement with mobile advertising) increases while TV commercials are on during matches. Mobile engagement numbers saw spikes during ad breaks and half time. This is a great time to reach this audience.2. Momentum on mobile is high even before and after the match. In fact, engagement peaks after the end of the match. This indicates that consumers are looking beyond TV for content at these times. Do look at engaging users during these periods.3. Football fans are not restricting themselves to only sports content while second screening during a match. Mobile News & Entertainment saw 57% higher browsing activity. Targeting content verticals is not as important as targeting audiences and their context.4. As for the type of mobile advertising they’re most responsive to, 33% say they want to watch ads that are entertaining and creative. Only 17% say the relevancy of the advertising is important (source: ‘2014 World Cup: A Global Mobile Perspective’ by the IAB). So bring out all your creative firepower (and think outside football, too) to engage consumers with advertising that they like and are responsive to.Contact us, to learn more about how InMobi can
29
May
Desktop advertising has come a long way from the
first banner Ad in Oct 1994. As display advertising evolved and matured, there eventually arose the need to move away from segment-based buys to very-fine grained individual buys. Programmatic buying empowered marketers to achieve the efficiency desired, growing disproportionately with the rise of display advertising.
Interesting as it seems, mobile advertising adapted itself to the ways of the display advertising world. Consequently, early mobile users experienced banner ads retro-fitted to suit mobile devices. While the focus stayed on capitalizing from the App economy and monetizing users, the user herself was completely ignored, and solving for the problem of ad experience on mobile remained unexplored.
Banner Ads continued to grow for a while, and then it all started to fall apart. In fact it got to a stage that the term ‘
Banner Blindness’ was coined.
Given its ramifications, the advertising industry turned towards fixing the banner ad problem innovatively. Among the multiple innovations publicized, the one that really caught the attention of the advertising community was the
Native Ad format.
Unlike programmatic on desktop, which evolved after desktop matured, mobile programmatic grew rapidly right from the onset of mobile advertising. Unfortunately, mobile programmatic is built on a fallacy: banners that worked in display, will work in mobile. Mobile programmatic, like Mobile advertising had never been defined keeping the user in mind.
Today, we are proud to announce the launch of the
InMobi Exchange.
28
May
With the
summer concert season under way and the Tony Awards fast approaching, the
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), its
Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, InMobi and Decision Fuel (now YouGov) have released results from “Raising the Curtain on Mobile,” an in-depth study that shows that 89 percent of
live entertainment seekers conducted mobile activities in direct relation to
performances they have attended in the last six months. Further underscoring
how mobile plays a critical role in helping concert promoters, theater
producers and other performance marketers reach target audiences, the research
demonstrates that these mobile activities occur at all stages throughout the
live performance-going process – including pre-show planning and post-show
activities.Some key highlights of the study: · Mobile rivals TV as the preferred media channel for
getting information about live performances (60% mobile vs. 53% TV)· 41% purchase concert and show tickets directly through
mobile devices· Over three quarters (78%) use mobile to help plan trips to
shows· 89% of live entertainment seekers have used mobile in
relation to live shows they've attended in the past 6 months Read the full press release hereDownload the study hereTo
learn more about our research, contact insights@inmobi.comRelated:From the Bedroom to the Box Office: The Role of Mobile in the Moviegoing ExperienceInMobi Insights > Consumer Research
23
May
I
never knew much about cars. When I was a teen, I carelessly sped around in my
rice rocket, while Daddy changed the oil and rotated the tires. After high school, I eagerly traded my
driving days for New York City student life – with parking space as sparse as
desert diamonds (and priced accordingly!), car ownership was not an option. Now,
years later, with big city life behind me, a car purchase glistens on the
horizon.Last
month, InMobi released stats surrounding mobile consumers’ auto purchase behaviors.
Suffice it to say, I compared my shopping habits to those of other American
auto purchase intenders. Similar to 45% of American female auto shoppers, I am
most interested in purchasing a small or mid-sized car. And I am definitely
part of the 88% of small car shoppers who turn to their smartphones for more
information after seeing and hearing auto ads on other media channels. Now,
you too, can compare your auto shopping habits to other American auto shoppers.
InMobi’s design team just created a beautiful infographic that compares mobile
shopping habits for small cars, luxury cars and SUVs and illustrates mobile’s
influence throughout the path to auto purchase.Click or tap here to download the infographic (pdf) now!About
the study: InMobi’s Vertical Insights Research Series helps brand advertisers
understand how consumers are using mobile media to research and shop for
certain types of products and how mobile complements other
02
May
インモビジャパンの篠原です、今回からこのブログを通じてインモビのプロダクト紹介や、スマートフォン広告のグローバルトレンドなどお伝えしていこうと思っています。初回は、インモビが先般リリースしたネイティブ広告について、紹介していきたいと思います。1. ネイティブ広告について
ネイティブ広告という言葉自体は真新しいものではありませんが、昨年後半から今年にかけて、スマートフォンメディアの中でも話題に上るようになってきました。グローバルでもメディア自身が純広としてネイティブ広告を手掛け、通常バナー広告は掲載しないというメディアもあります。日本でも、ネイティブ広告を展開しているキュレーションアプリやニュースアプリが増えて来ています。ネイティブ広告は、コンテンツに合った広告フォーマットであり、ユーザビリティとマネタイズを実現する広告手法として、今後も飛躍的に伸びていくと考えています。
2. インモビのネイティブ広告プラットフォーム
そんな中、インモビは2014年2月にネイティブ広告プラットフォーム、InMobi Native Adsを発表しました。
メディアのコンテンツイメージやユーザビリティを損なうこと無く、より優れたユーザーエクスペリエンスとマネタイズの両方を同時に実現できる手法として、現在多くのデベロッパーの皆様にネイティブ広告を導入いただいています。タイムラインをもつSNSやメッセンジャー系アプリはもちろん、ゲームアプリのデベロッパーさまにも評価をいただいています。
インモビのネイティブ広告プラットフォームを導入いただく利点は、世界中のユーザーに対して、各地域の広告案件をネイティブという最適な形で配信できるところです。
従来の広告フォーマットに比べて、最適な位置、イメージで広告が配信され、またユーザーの操作性を損なうことが少ないため、広告パフォーマンスが高く、ユーザー獲得向上に、貢献できています。また、パブリッシャーさまの立場からみても、従来バナー広告よりもCTRが高く収益性の向上につながっています。
こちらのインモビが考えるネイティブ広告のコンセプトビデオも是非ご覧ください。
バナー広告への限界とネイティブがもたらすユーザー体験を表現しています。
3. 事例
直近の事例としては、米国SNSのTango社があります。Tangoは世界中に4億人のユーザーを抱える大きなメディアですが、ユーザーのタイムラインまたメッセージページに、インモビのネイティブ広告プラットフォームが導入されています。
Facebookでおなじみのタイムライン広告ですが、Tangoのように、多くの同様のアプリがネイティブ広告を今後導入していくと考えられます。日本でもニュースキュレーション系のアプリなどが独自に展開していますね。本来この純広ライクなネイティブ広告はメディア自身が手がけることが理想だと思います。ただ、ボーダレスに世界でユーザーがダウンロードしていくアプリの世界の中では、インモビのようなグローバル・ネットワークをご利用いただくことで、世界中で生まれるトラフィックを効率的にマネタイズしていただけると考えています。
4. リリースする新しいネイティブ広告プロダクトについて
昨日、インモビのネイティブ広告プラットフォームに新しいプロダクトが追加されました。http://japan.inmobi.com/ad-formats/native-ads/
全てのデベロッパー、パブリッシャーが、手間なく簡単にネイティブ広告にアクセスして頂けるように、インモビUI上でネイティブ広告の作成、配信設定が行えるプロダクトを開発いたしました。
インモビは、ネイティブ広告が今後スマートフォン広告のトレンドの中心になると確信しています。今回のプロダクトで多くの皆様にネイティブ広告をぜひ体験していただきたいと思います。ネイティブ広告についてご質問、ご不明点などあれば是非インモビジャパンへお問い合わせください。contact-jp@inmobi.com
次回は、今後導入頂くデベロッパーさまの事例紹介とUI上で行えるネイティブ広告体験について、実際の機能をご紹介します。
29
April
Over the last few years, one of the things that constantly bothered me was that we were powering an entire industry on the back of banner ads, which we never liked. InMobi has worked with more than 30,000+ app developers, fielded 4 billion+ ad requests per day, and helped them monetize their apps on the back of our best-in-class technology and global scale. However, along with helping developers monetize at scale, we also want to give users a great experience.So, early last year, we decided to disrupt the industry and change the way ads are viewed today. We took it upon ourselves to achieve one goal, which is to make ads beautiful and give the user a seamless, non-intrusive experience. We decided to break up with banners!However, this couldn’t be done in isolation. We want to empower every developer out there to monetize using native ads. That is our way of ensuring that we are truly causing disruption and a fundamental shift in the industry towards making ads beautiful and to accelerate the death of banner ads.At present, a large portion of native advertising is limited to just five big companies. We wanted to change this and democratize native ads and bring it to all developers. InMobi Native Ads platform will give the power to all developers in the world to monetize through native ads and giving users a great experience. We are absolutely thrilled to democratize native
23
April
When I was a young child, I would prance around the house in
my pink frilly play-gown and pretend to be a princess. I’d make ridiculous
demands of my poor younger brother, who played various roles in my fantasy
world, including court jester, humble servant and street beggar. I ruled my
pretend kingdom, knowing in my heart that one day, I’d have to replace my
scepter with tools of the common world.
However, these days, consumers really
are royalty. Maybe we
don’t all preside over entire countries, but we are masters of our individual
kingdoms. We have a myriad of services at our beck and call - with a simple tap
of a screen, we can hire couriers and chauffeurs, wedding planners or
housekeepers. And the existence of an
open and competitive marketplace means that consumers do rule. Although brands can adjust their products and
prices, it is we, the consumer, who ultimately dictate what and from whom we’re
willing to purchase. And the advent of the Internet has provided us with an
often overwhelming amount of information from which we can make educated
decisions – from product reviews to brand comparisons – it’s all there.
With so many options and so much information at our
fingertips, it can be hard for brands and products to differentiate themselves.
InMobi’s Vertical Insights research series illustrates how mobile can complement
other media channels to help stores and brands
02
April
Each
year the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) organizes Re:Think, a 3-day
conference that gathers the best and brightest minds in advertising, marketing
and research. Attendees have the opportunity to hear inspiring talks from
industry leaders and experts who have helped shape the research and marketing
landscape of today. Attendees can also gain valuable insight from a number of
specialized tracks, which covered a range of interesting topics. This
year, InMobi was selected to present our insights surrounding mobile shopping
behaviors and ad performance. Our presentation “Using Mobile Shopping Behavior
to Design Exceptional Ad Performance” discussed:How consumers are using mobile media in every
day lifeHow mobile fits in with other channels
throughout the path to purchaseHow creative can impact the overall success of a
campaignFor
this particular discussion, we looked at American auto purchase intenders on mobile. We
discussed how mobile users who are shopping for vehicles use their mobile
devices to help them shop. We used insights from both our Mobile Media Consumption and Vertical Insights research series and highlights from Land Rover’s mobile rich media campaign case
study. Key insights from our presentation include:Mobile use is everywhere and anywhere, and mobile devices are the most personalized devices in our lives. Mobile creatives need to be designed with both the unique capabilities of mobile devices in mind, as well as the personal tastes of mobile users.Mobile is the preferred media channel for auto information consumption,
17
March
These following recommendations are from InMobi's Mobile Gaming Cross-Market Analysis report:Develop and market games specific to gamers of their target country: Mobile developers must understand the typical gaming consumers specific to each country. For example, Chinese and Korean gamers prefer RPG and adventure games, whereas Americans prefer puzzle games. In addition, gamers who prefer the same game genres share similar reasons for gameplay (e.g. strategy gamers play because they enjoy the challenge and casino gamers play primarily to kill time). Understand app discovery/ distribution specific to each target country: Each country has varying app distribution ecosystems; nevertheless, developers should take a multi-channel distribution approach, leveraging both organic app store and word of mouth downloads, as well as utilizing mobile, online, and social marketing. In particular, since China has a particularly fragmented ecosystem, developers must partner with established developers and large app platforms in addition to being featured in app stores and running ads. In Korea, the Kakao platform acts as a primary app download discovery epicenter. In fact, developers should monitor the emergence of chat applications as mobile gaming platforms and may even want to incorporate them into their distribution strategies. Utilize the free-to-play game model: Mobile game developers looking to break into East Asian mobile game markets should create free-to-play game models with in-game purchases. The threat of software piracy continues to deter many developers from producing single-player of localized games. Also, charging for a download usually
17
March
My
name is Emily, and I’m addicted to mobile gaming. What started as an innocent
time killer rapidly spiraled into an insatiable obsession. I found myself
actually making time to play games,
crafting creative ways to extend gameplay when I ran out of lives, begging
friends I hadn’t seen since high school
for special game boosters, and at times, spending real money on intangible in-game purchases. Even so, I never
realized the extent of my addiction until I compared my gaming habits to those
of other mobile gamers in the U.S.InMobi
conducted a study of American mobile gamers to identify game segmentation
trends and analyze game consumer thought and behavior. According to this study,
I am an archetype of what our newly released Mobile Gaming Playbook dubs the “ever-gamer,” a gamer who plays
everywhere, all the time, across multiple genres. In fact, our research indicates that not only do traditional mid-core gamers frequent game apps and play long game sessions, but casual gamers also play games multiple times per day and for long periods of time. According to our study:60% of American mobile gamers play mobile games multiple times per dayAmerican mobile gamers average 31 minutes per game sessionIn addition
to game segmentation and consumer analysis, our playbook provides
insight on how developers can utilize gamer metrics to construct successful app
acquisition and monetization strategies in the U.S. market. Download our Mobile Gaming Playbook now to
06
March
Like many young schoolgirls,
I grew up thinking boys were icky. Many
of us grew up chanting the 19th century nursery rhyme, “What Are
Little Boys Made Of”. Variations of the
poem included combinations of, “slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails,” but
whatever the concoction, the point was clear – boys were gross.Contrary to my childhood
beliefs, I’ve found that many men are not the boy-monsters I once imagined them
to be. An informal poll of my guy friends showed that all of them used some
sort of personal care product (e.g. toothbrush or deodorant) and that many of
them had entire grooming regimens. Just when did my mud-covered friends mature
into groomed gentleman? More importantly, how are men, in general, making their
grooming product purchase decisions?InMobi partnered with Decision Fuel
to answer the latter question. This particular vertical insights study, How Chief Household Officers Use Mobile,
examines how consumers who purchase personal care and grooming products in the
US are using mobile media and how advertisers can best communicate with them. As it turns out, 86% of men on our network
are shopping for personal care and grooming products within the next 90 days,
and more than 90% of men use mobile to help them shop. Other key takeaways from the
study are:· Men are
highly receptive to mobile ads. 81% of male personal care shoppers expect
mobile ads to introduce them to new products and 72% believe mobile ads
influence
06
March
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C Clarke. For people who aren’t aware of the inner workings of an ad network, user targeting can seem like magic. User targeting refers to advertisements being placed in such a manner that they reach appropriate consumers based on various traits such as demographics, location, interests etc.Understanding user behaviour is instrumental in delivering an enhanced consumer ad experience. Consumer attention to ads, especially on the mobile platform, rises if it relatesdirectly to their interests. User targeting is an essential tool to help advertisers reach their desired segment of audience. This tailored approach yields greater user-engagement and interaction, providing advertisers with better ad campaign results.For example, a travel app might be told by a network that their ads will be shown to users who are travelers or potential travelers. But, how does an ad network identify travelers and how does the brand ensure its targeting is effective?This blog addresses the top five questions you should ask your ad network so that you know exactly what you are signing up for.Question 1: How do you uniquely identify users?For most of the targeting to work correctly, you will need to identify unique users first. If this user identification is not accurate, then this could potentially derail all your campaign setup and targeting.Without user de-duplication,(a technique for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data) you could end up with
05
March
The
market for mobile app analytics is crowded yet fragmented. Despite
there being several different tools to help app developers capture
key metrics and analyze user behavior, many solutions only focus on a
single problem. The result is that many app developers are forced to
install multiple SDKs to achieve one overarching purpose: understand
user behavior and respond with appropriate action.Here’s
how it often plays out. An app developer installs one SDK for ad
campaign tracking, another to capture user behavior in the app, and
one more for crash and error reporting. This is just to gather data.
Then they need to act based on this data. In goes another SDK to send
push notifications and manage house ads. Add in half a dozen ad
network SDKs to monetize users, and suddenly the developer is faced
with several MBs of additional weight, increasing the CPI they need
to pay for user acquisition.Not
only that, but most of these systems don’t talk to each other. The
data sitting in their campaign tracking dashboard cannot easily be
consumed by their dashboard with retention stats. The non-paying user
segment they created with their in-app analytics tool likely does not
sync up with the ad calls placed to their mediator.Thankfully
the app analytics market seems to be consolidating. The recent merger
of Kontagent and PlayHaven is evidence of this. Although it is still
early days, more tools are becoming
28
February
With the Oscars just around the corner, the office is abuzz with
movie chatter. We’ve partnered with the
IAB Mobile Center and Decision Fuel to examine just how mobile helps moviegoers
learn about movies, purchase tickets and plan trips to the theater.In its new Mobile in
the Movies article, the IAB writes, “If there was an Oscar for Best
Supporting Technology for Moviegoers, mobile phones would have a lock on it.” It’s true.
Our new research shows that smartphones play an important role for
moviegoers, from movie discovery and research to ticket purchase and movie trip
planning. Our key takeaways from the study are:· 87% of
moviegoers turn to mobile after seeing ads for movies on other channels. Film and multiplex marketers should leverage
mobile as part of a comprehensive mixed media strategy. · Moviegoers
use mobile at all stages throughout the movie trip process – during
pre-show activities such as planning and purchasing, while at the theater to
“check-in”, and after the show to go to other events. Marketers should use mobile to reach these
consumers at all times. · 1 out of
3 moviegoers purchases movie tickets directly through mobile devices. Box office, online and mobile are now all
major sources of ticket sales. The full report is available to download via IAB's website: http://www.iab.net/mobilemoviegoingTo read the article
published by the IAB, visit: Mobile and the Movies: Phones Play a Starring Role in Selection and Ticket Purchase
26
February
In the first post of this series, we discussed the framework and
elements which can help evaluate the native ad solutions available in
the market today. Once you have finalized on a partner to power your
native ad needs, you get to the next most important step -
identifying what ad concepts can work for your property.
The beauty of native ads is that they blend seamlessly with the
content. This presents a unique opportunity to present the most
relevant advertisements to a user, depending on the content he is
consuming. Lets consider a news app. Most news publishers have
multiple pages in their apps - national coverage, international
coverage, entertainment, local happenings, etc. Each ad placement on
these individual pages will carry additional value and relevance when
targeted right. Advertisers for electronic products like Samsung can
be assured that their mobile advertising money is being spent right,
if their ad appears amongst the different tiles in the technology
page. Similarly, other brand advertisers for consumer products can
get meaningful impressions when their ad is featured in the lifestyle
pages. While these targeting capabilities have been available
traditionally, with native ads the impact is further amplified -
unlike sticky banners at the top/bottom of the screen, native ads
cannot be ignored. They are a part of the content being consumed.
The following images show a few native ad concepts for news
publishers - a small subset of the whole
13
February
Last
week, we announced the launch of our Native Ads Platform. While
native advertising is the latest buzzword in the industry, critics
are holding their verdict on whether they are here to stay. If you
are a part of the booming mobile internet industry and your
livelihood depends on the popularity of your mobile business (app or
website), you are most probably on the other side of the fence and
are thankful for the innovations focused on enhancing the user
experience and monetization opportunity.So
far, mobile developers have had to rely on traditional ad formats for
monetizing their non-paying user base. Native ads are definitely an
improvement over existing solutions and are intended to offer an
in-context experience to the user by allowing publishers to adapt the
ads to the form, function, and content of their property. This means
that the native ad matches the visual appeal and interactive elements
of the property. If the native look of the property is a tiled
format, the ad will also be in a tile. If the native behavior of the
property is flipping tiles (think Flipboard), the native ad tile will
also flip. Native ads are so deeply integrated into the mobile
property that as you scroll the screen up or down, the native ad also
moves along with the rest of the content. In other words, it becomes
pseudo content. This is completely different from traditional ad
formats like banners,
29
January
It’s hard to miss the recent media buzz about
NYT debuting native ads. While the public outcry has started to die down slowly, mobile advertising and native ads are clearly here to stay.
After the hysteria in the media about irritating mobile ads and publishers like NYT selling their soul, my view in fact is, quite the opposite!
I love native ads and am extremely proud of the InMobi Native Ads platform my team has created. Let me tell you why….
We have looked at native ads holistically. The
InMobi Native Ads platform can customize ads to suit the look and feel of your app down to the last pixel. Not just that, we go beyond just focusing on “how the ad looks”. In doing so, we believe, we are redefining how mobile advertising should be – non intrusive, engaging and non-distracting from an app’s primary experience.
In a distinct hand-me-down legacy from the digital world, mobile advertising started out as banner ads. Thereafter, advertisers and publishers moved to interstitials. While they were better than banners in terms of user experience, developers have begun demanding a better ad experience as the app economy has evolved much more since then. One of them recently told me, "If I spend so much time and effort in building, what I believe, is the coolest app ever then why am I forced to carry ads that suck all the fun out of my
09
January
Targeting has been synonymous with advertising since the advent of advertising. Whether it is the broad guess-based targeting utilized by traditional modes such as TV and billboards, or the precise and trackable targeting used by mobile and digital advertising, targeting is the core of a successful advertising strategy. Today, with the capabilities offered by mediums like mobile, the old “spray and pray” techniques are a thing of the past.
Some of the amazing targeting features that mobile makes possible are shown in the image below:
However, you likely already knew this and have probably used these features in the past. So, as an app developer, what else can you do to take your campaign that extra mile?
Below are the top three targeting functionalities designed specifically for app developers interested in user acquisition.User Retargeting
With user retargeting, app developers can find interested users and retarget them with ads that might convince the user to make a successful conversion (app download).
Clicker Retargeting: In general, users tend to click an ad a few times before they actually go ahead and download the app. So, advertisers can target those users who have already clicked the ad but not yet downloaded the app.
Downloader Retargeting: Let’s take the example of the app from Zynga called War Of The Fallen, a collectible card game. Zynga can make a list of other collectible card games such as I Am MT, Order and Chaos
19
November
中国无线营销联盟2013会员大会于11月18日下午在上海明天万豪酒店顺利召开。会上对MMA中国各个委员会在过去一年的工作进行了回顾，并由现场出席的71家会员单位投票选举产生了新一届的董事会。
MMA中国过去一年在各个委员会的推动下，先后推出四大移动广告标准白皮书，
建立了智囊讲师团，完成了多场专业移动营销培训的课程，联手业界领先的广告网络平台、第三方调研机构以及品牌客户推动移动广告标准的制定，受到会员单位以
及广大移动领域专家们的正面肯定。今天的选举同时也产生了 4个委员会的正副会长。
InMobi中国区总经理杨娟女士，本次代表InMobi当选MMA中国市场教育委员会会长，将与新当选的副会长－邑智中国CEO张垒一起，携手MMA中国会员单位，共同推动未来两年MMA中国市场教育委员会的工作，服务MMA中国的会员单位并推动中国无线营销事业发展。
22
October
How much money did I really make by showing ads to my users? Am I leaving money on the table? Are ads on my app leading to more churn? These are burning questions for a mobile publisher whose livelihood depends on the revenue his mobile app business makes.
At InMobi, we are leading the charge of technology innovation in the mobile ad space and work towards resolving some of these pertinent issues for app developers. The learnings from the desktop world give strong indications for the need of maintaining the fine balance between user experience and the quest for monetization. With this in mind, InMobi today announced the launch of 2 new ad formats – InMobi Custom Ads and InMobi App Galleries – a small preview of the Ad Innovation happening at InMobi and a step closer to creating a delightful user experience.
InMobi Custom Ads are an enhancement over run of the mill interstitials, and add that extra zing to regular full-page ads by using visual elements from the publisher’s app. The custom template can be as simple as a frame, or as complex as an animated entry, with virtual characters from the app introducing the ad unit. With absolutely no integration hassles, InMobi Custom Ads is the perfect solution to intrigue and delight your end users and improve monetization (by up to 50%!) at the same time. Click here to learn how InMobi Custom Ads can improve the ad experience in
Seungyeon Kim, General Manager of InMobi Korea, commented on the mobile marketing trend and was quoted in DBR (Dong-A Business Review) magazine, published on August 2nd.
Future Mobile Marketing Trend: 4 Keywords
Korea has gone all mobile during the last three years. It reached more than a +50% smartphone penetration with +20% connected to 4G LTE. Korea is the 2nd largest mobile market in Asia, outside of Japan. Everyone is convinced that mobile will be the next big thing, but no one is able to discuss exactly how it will be different. Here, I aim to explain this using four big keywords that will cover four corners of mobile media.
(1) Mobile Rich Media - Reinventing your consumer’s brand experience
Rich media is developed to contain a wide range of content, filled with rich information. One of the unique strong points of rich media is that it can be expanded on the same page with videos, sound, and pictures. Users can be allowed to transform creative forms and images. For example, if a user touches the screen of their smartphone, a product in the ad can be changed to a dynamic 3D image with multimedia effects. This effect can give users a dramatic experience, without being direct to another page. Users can go back to the web page or the app where they were in the first place. Samsung Electronics executed a 3D mobile rich media advertisement during a global
The Insights team at InMobi is excited to share the results of the recently conducted Movie Goers study in Korea. This research was conducted to better understand the role of mobile among moviegoers in Korea. This focuses on how mobile devices are used when finding and sharing information about movies, role of mobile ads in movie decision process, and ways in which mobile is used when picking a movie to see, and where and how to see it. Korean moviegoers - young and old; frequent and infrequent, consider their mobile phone as a tool that connects them to the world of information. The survey results are quite interesting as they reveal a growing trend of mobile users in Korea who use their mobile phones to research a movie before going to the theatre. The results are as given below:-Mobile is the preferred source of information for exploring movies among Korean smartphone users.-Getting movie times and locations is the most common movie planning activity.- 61% of them have downloaded a movie related app, making apps an important channel to reach moviegoers. Marketers should use multiple calls to action to reach audiences on mobile, including trailers, ads, and social media.- CGV App, Portal (naver, daum) & Lotte Cinema App are the top three preferred apps for getting movie information.- Video Ads, Banner Ads and In-App Ads are the most influential/preferred mobile ad formats when selecting a movie.-
All signs point to mobile technology contributing to the evolving ways in which people interact with the television viewing experience, both in terms of programming and ads. Increasingly, TV viewers are engaging with visual content across a variety of screens such as smartphones and tablets, leading to the phenomenon of the multi-screen viewing experience. The main reasons for the growth in multi-screen viewing are due to:The explosive growth in mobile usageIncrease in dual-screen activity and multitaskingIncreasing acceptance of mobile advertising and purchasingIn short, to succeed in the multi-screen arena, marketers must develop a multi-layered approach to content distribution that enables interactive engagement across devices and makes it a relevant and easily accessible experience.It is all about winning with Mobile in a Multi-Screen World.InMobi has released a white paper, which describes these reasons, and how marketers can exploit the full potential of multi-screen viewing experience. As always, tweets, comments and readership are welcome. We look forward to hearing your feedback. The whitepaper can be found at http://www.inmobi.com/insights/whitepapers/. InMobi will also be conducting a webinar discussing the results. Register for this FREE webinar at:June 5th at 10am IST: http://inmo.bi/10MrsOPJune 6th at 10am PDT: http://inmo.bi/1a7Spl4
17
May
As an app developer, you want to acquire users efficiently by optimizing marketing spends across different channels. This becomes even more important at the time of an app launch when the lifetime value of a new user is still unknown. It's too early to determine an agreeable CPI to drive installs and thereby justify the marketing budget needed for user acquisition. Given that early users of the app are the most valuable, it is imperative that you optimize your marketing mix appropriately to maximize organic downloads. As you may have already guessed, there is indeed no silver bullet to resolve this challenge and there never will be. Appstore dynamics change every day and the right approach is somewhere in the middle. Using the right mix of paid marketing channels, social marketing, direct mailers, SEO and PR all contribute towards a successful launch. While there are a few developers such as WeChat that opted for the traditional media route to launch their app successfully, it is often an expensive and risky approach to adopt at the time of launch. For most app developers, it's advisable to test the waters first and launch the app on the big screen only after stress testing it for a few weeks!So, how should app developers measure the success of their launch marketing strategy? The most important metric is indeed the appstore rank. As an app marketer, you should measure the efficacy of each marketing
It is common knowledge that Tablets provide a much higher and superior monetizing opportunity when compared to smartphones. Since Tablets have more premium and high value users, if done right, Tablet-optimized apps can make 3-4x more money for the developer. But ironically, due to simple and basic mistakes, Tablet apps at times make half the money that a Smartphone app makes through ads. Half the monetization when these apps should be making more than double! So, what's wrong with this picture? From InMobi large Publisher base, here are the top 3 usual suspects that result in a decreased monetization for Tablet app developers.
Missing Slot Size: When sending an ad request to an ad network, developers are given the flexibility to not mention a slot size. The ad network will simply provide a default ad based on the type of device. While this is a convenience in case of smartphones, it can spell disaster for a Tablet experience. The below example shows how a 320x50 ad would look on a Tablet app. The user experience is poor resulting in low CTR and low monetization.
[caption id="attachment_6047" align="alignnone" width="544" caption="Figure 3: The experience of a 320x50 ad vs 728x90 ad in an iPad application."]
The immediate question would be, why not serve a 728x90 ad instead of 320x50 by default? In some cases, the 728x90 ad could get cut off in a 320x50 slot size resulting in a worse
18
April
The auto industry has traditionally relied on conventional marketing means such as TV advertisements, bill boards and print media to drive sales. But over the last couple of years there has been a tremendous shift towards the Internet, social media and mobile. This was bound to happen with the coming of the Internet and the mobile and the way media has changed over the last few years. People have moved to online, more so to mobile and social media, where they look for vehicle pricing, model information, photo galleries, vehicle reviews, ratings, ownership reviews, and vehicle comparisons.Why this shift to mobile?Mobile devices have completely changed the way consumers shop, and search for information and looking for a new or pre-owned vehicle is no exception. Current mobile statistics reveal that there are over 1 billion mobile web users worldwide with more than 90% of smartphone users being mobile Internet users. According to a new mobile focused study by J.D. Power and Associates almost 60% of auto intenders in the US are looking at their smartphone while they are on a dealers lot. Briabes Auto Shopping On-the-Go with Mobile: A Study of How Consumers Are Using Mobile Devices in Auto survey in US found that:Three out of five respondents have noticed an auto ad on their mobile phone or tabletMore than one-third (37 percent) have clicked on auto ads for more informationUsers are most interested in research (85 percent) and / or price comparison (86
Eileen McKay, InMobi's Regional Sales Manager in the Pacific Northwest sounds off on the trends she sees developing as we close Q1:Could it be that 2013 is finally going to be the year for brands to finally take the plunge and deeply embrace mobile marketing? Smartphone penetration has now crossed the majority threshold in the US. As of September 2012, 51% of US mobile subscribers own a smartphone (comScore mobile lens, Sept, 12), Consider also, that is the national statistic. Look amongst your own peers and the penetration seems even greater: our advertising community is likely 95% smartphone carrying and even among the broader consumer market in large cities, smartphone adoption seems higher than half the population as proven with a quick look around a restaurant, bar or on a bus or Bart train in San Francisco! Consumers are spending more media time on mobile web and apps and less time on more traditional mediums. The gap is wide and many feel we have reached the tipping point. Where 2012 was the year of mobile adoption, marketers are finally revisiting the media spend vs consumption imbalance in mobile. Brands have to embrace mobile, it is critical that mobile become a significant part of the dialogue throughout the purchase funnel. There has been a lot of coverage of late about the retail industry in particular. Retailers are concerned about "show-rooming", where consumers shop in stores and then bargain shop for these products online. A new Cisco
In the first blog of this series, we saw how it is important to get your paid advertising strategy right to ensure that the organic downloads keep flowing in. I also suggested the Top 5 essentials to keep in mind while planning your advertising campaign. Let's take a deeper look into the second of the five Ad Content. The ad unit is the users first exposure to your app and hence needs to make an impact on the user. It needs to perk the users interest in a way that the user would want to click on the ad and finally download and use your application. The big difference between how a brand advertiser and app advertiser creates the ad content lies in the intent of the advertiser i.e. a brand advertiser wants the user to engage with the ad and have brand recall, whereas, an app advertiser requires the user to actually download and install the application. Here are some suggestions that could help increase the chances of a user clicking on your ad and finally installing your application
Tile image A tile image is by default associated with a mobile application by most users. In situations where you do not have the budget for a fancy ad unit and would like to keep the banner ad simple and minimalistic, it helps to add the tile image of your application in the ad. You are
Mobile is rapidly evolving into one of the most influential technology for the marketer and there is no denial that mobile is seen as the preferred channel of choice for engaging device dependent customer. Yet despite the excitement, marketers are looking to understand, leverage and measure mobile advertising and also look to integrate online and offline customer acquisition and relationship building. It is important to address the complexity of the mobile landscape and develop best practices or case studies that demonstrate results across the mobile relationship. Most of the marketers are facing this question. "Is mobile the channel of the future?" To answer this, the CMO Council, in partnership with InMobi, has identified a collection of brand leaders in its latest whitepaper entitled "MRM Year in Review: Mobile Advertising Bright Spots in 2012". The whitepaper also includes media consumption insights gathered by InMobi, OnDevice Research and Decision Fuel Some of the issues addressed in this white paper include:Consumer reactions and sentiments to mobile advertisingPreferences and expectations of mobile experiencesLeading brands connecting web to mobile engagementsAdoption of rich media as a key mobile engagement strategyAs always, tweets, comments and readership are welcome. We look forward to hearing your feedback. To download the whitepaper, please click here.
Yes, you have a great app, but are you sure users are seeing it? With the number of active apps crossing 760,000 on App Store and 675,000 on Google Play, every new app is facing severe competition to be discovered. With an average of 921 new apps being launched per day, an app stores is an ocean of apps that is growing larger by the day and the threat of being lost amidst the crowd is very real.
So, how do you stand out? How do you get discovered? The three main ways for you to get more installs would be to
Increases the chances of your app being found on the app store and hence increase your organic installs
If you have other apps, then cross promote the new app on the other real estate you own on the other apps
Paid advertising methods such as Display Advertising, Incentivized Advertising etc. Obviously, your strategy will need to take into account all three ways to get the best impact.
However, it is important to understand the confluence of the organic and paid installs. While initially you will start with more paid installs than organic installs, there will be a time when you reap the benefits of the paid advertising by seeing a spike in the organic install rate. The number of organic installs should overtake the number of paid installs and you can begin reducing the amount spent on paid advertising. However, to
Today a companys most valuable asset is its customers, and while products and services are ripped off and duplicated in no time at all, a company with loyal and long term customers is less vulnerable to competition. But how does one measure the value of a customer? Through Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or LTV). LTV helps companies understand what a customer is really worth to its business. Broadly, LTV is a marketing formula based on the idea that sacrificing initial profits and spending money up front can help to gain loyal customers whose increased business and references will allow the company to reap profits in the long run. The best example of this is the freemium model (where gamers can play for free but can customize or improve game play by purchasing virtual goods) or by using the pay-per-download model, where gamers can lap up apps/games from any of the growing number of app stores. Zynga, GREE, Glu Mobile and GameLoft are four examples of mobile app developers who use LTV to grow and acquire new customers while retaining older ones. Gaming companies have long understood the importance of LTV, and used this principle to measure everything from cost of customer acquisition to mining of existing customers. Today, with mobile tech and mobile apps being launched by every well known consumer brand, it is not surprising that some forward thinking brands who are publishing their own apps are beginning
One of the perks of being in the mobile advertising industry is that the ecosystem is by nature local and at the same time global (clichd? Yes! But, absolutely true). A publisher in Antwerp can monetize his content in Shanghai as easily as he can monetize his content in Buenos Aires. An advertiser in San Francisco can spread his message in Abu Dhabi and Addis Ababa with equal ease. For most part of the year one geo-region or the other is in festive mood & this rings festive bells in the mobile marketers minds-- the holiday season across the globe is extremely diversified and gives us ample opportunities to market throughout the year. This beautiful infographic (thanks to www.cloud9living.com) shows us the gift giving traditions from across the world. We can benefit from the generous sprinkling of holidays across the globe and plan in advance to counter the traditional post-holiday season lull.Once again, Happy New Year Holidays 😊
InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari's guest post on VentureBeat looks at the advantages of Indian entrepreneurs who look east to India's Silicon Valley - Bangalore - as they start a new business venture:
East-to-West strategy makes most sense for businesses centered on new technologies the Internet, mobile, and cloud being the obvious examples. The rationale is simple: New technologies are adopted almost uniformly across Western and Eastern markets and even if the market characteristics and sophistication levels differ, the East is still a viable option to base the business. This is because Asian countries, especially India, have abundant and affordable technical talent, making it easy to create a solid technology-centered offering. The East has also historically been a place where mobile technology and adoption has developed at an accelerated rate compared to the West, so basing your operations there, especially if your business has a healthy mobile component, helps to ensure that you'll be ahead of the curve compared to your western counterparts.
Read the full post on VentureBeat: How Indian entrepreneurs can succeed by looking East before West
There is no doubt that there has been a radical shift in 2012 with regards to mobile. In Australia, mobile consumption usage has reached a tipping point, with the rising penetration of smartphones and publishers and brands realising that in order to deliver an optimal digital user experience, they need to evolve their screen strategy to meet ever demanding user expectations. The Australian Online General and Mobile Advertising Market report, released by Frost and Sullivan in October, predicts a strong growth in the Australian mobile advertising market over the next five years. In the June 2012 IAB Online Advertising Expenditure report also showed healthy increases in mobile advertising spend, growing 212% vs 2011. This presents a great outlook for the industry but what does this really mean for Australian marketers now? According to our latest Australian media consumption research, there is a huge amount of opportunity for marketers to invest in mobile as consumers become more mobile savvy and if you want to get a good head start, now is the time. This year, mobile consumption overtook the internet with mobile web users spending more time consuming media on their smartphones than on their computer. Of the 7.5 hours of media time each day, mobile makes up 100 minutes - significantly more than the 93 minutes spent on a computer. Two out of five Australians also now identify mobile as their primary or exclusive means of going online. With mobiles becoming more easy to use, having more
Considering that Geo Targeting is one of the advantages of mobile advertising over other forms of advertising, there is a lot of hype around the feature, and rightly so. If you did a search on Geo Targeting on Mobile, my bet is that the top 5 results will talk about all the niche offerings of Geo Targeting such as hyper local targeting, geo-fencing, location based services etc. But let's take a step back and look at the some of the basic features of geo targeting “ state and city targeting. The question now would be Why look at the basic features while there are so many advanced features in Geo Targeting? The answer is two fold. The first lies in the campaign performance data around city targeting and the second is objective of the advertising campaign. I have tried to cover both these aspects in this blog. So, let's look at some data on city targeting. City level targeting usually costs less (CPC/CPM) than the more advanced geo targeting features, hence providing more impressions for the same cost. The high scale that you achieve helps you reach out to interested users scattered across the city/state. The Click Through Rates (CTR) of these ads have also proven to be fairly high varying from 0.7% to 1%. As an example, if I assume a CPC of $0.6 and a budget of $10K, you will able to generate awareness in the order of 1.6 Million impressions
The Financial Services sector is one of the largest digital media buyers Worldwide; digital media has given them the ability to run highly targeted campaigns, and only incur a cost when a prospect clicks on the banner. Being the Financial industry, models that can show return on investment like this are extremely attractive. This sector only has a requirement to generate leads, often the creative is bland with strong call to actions, and there are few clicks on the ad. Many of the clicks though are from hot leads that result in a closed deal. In research InMobi recently conducted in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa on the impact of Mobile in the Financial Services sector, on average over 90% of respondents said they would engage with a Financial Services ad if the content were interesting. By purely focusing on lead generation in ads, are these brands then missing out on a large potential market that they could be building brand affinity with? If they built brand affinity, when a consumer was ready to buy insurance, a life policy, a home loan or switch banks, that consumer would be likely to sign up with that brand. Mobile advertising in the Financial sector has the potential to drive consumers to content they would find valuable and interesting, such as articles on home improvements, or reviews of new cars. With the interest of the consumer defined, using marketing automation and lead nurturing software,
Many countries around the World have imposed regulations on Alcohol marketing in an attempt to foster more responsible drinking within their communities. It is for this reason that the Alcohol industry is one to watch for upcoming marketing trends, as the responsible Marketing and Brand managers, and their Agencies tend to embrace new concepts first, before authorities regulate them. From a mobile perspective, the Alcohol industry have certainly embraced Mobile Advertising, and Rich Media in particular running cutting edge Gamification campaigns to campaigns that fully integrate creative with phone functions. InMobi has been conducting research on how people use their mobile devices leading up to, and after purchasing Alcohol, as well as while they are drinking, in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. Kenyan and South African consumers had fairly similar preferences when it came to the Mobile Value Proposition; both markets sighted Discounts and Mobile Coupons as the proposition that would add most value to them from Alcohol brands. Nigeria was different though, the most important proposition that could be delivered to the Nigeria consumer on their mobile device was an invite to a VIP event, this clearly illustrates the how important the social scene is in Nigeria. The second most important proposition for Nigerians was free downloads of games or Apps, also showcasing how important a mobile device is to the population. Ads that get the most attention Worldwide tend to be ads that incorporate comedy well, the less
In the early 90s many analysts predicted the demise of newspapers and magazines due to the Internet, but this never happened; and luckily for publishers as the majority provided their content at no cost. Many people consume print media while relaxing and in between other commitments, so there was still a place for this type of media. With the advent of mobile media though, it is easy for people to consume media on their mobile device, while relaxing, anywhere. And whats more, mobile media is interactive and can therefore be more engaging. One of the major marketing trends at the moment is content; brands need to be producing content that is relevant and interesting to their target markets in order to build emotional relationships with their markets. Brands essentially become Editors, and the mobile device is the paper their content is printed on. When it comes to digital advertising, to often the success of a campaign is based on pure lead generation click throughs and conversions. However brands should consider using digital advertising as a method of distributing content, and building emotional connections with their target market, for a more long term and meaningful return on investment. The most notorious lead generation digital advertisers are insurance and home loan companies, much of the creative from these players just requires the user to enter their contact details to get a quote. These purchases though are infrequent, so although there are many
It is amazing how many Brand and Marketing Managers have had QR Codes placed on their collateral, sales tools and adverts, but have never actually used a QR code themselves. As part of a study conducted on consumers in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, InMobi asked the respondents whether they have used a QR code before, and in some countries up to 70% of the respondents did not even know what a QR code is yet agencies and marketers still insist on using them. For those readers, who fall into the 70% category, QR codes are those square œbarcode-looking blocks that you aim your mobile devices camera at, once you have downloaded a specific App for your device. The problem being, that some Apps dont work with certain QR codes, and all this action does is redirect the user to a URL. After being in market for several years, one could say that QR codes have failed to take off, and now some innovative brands are adopting mobile augmented reality to drive consumer engagement instead. For example, IKEA, the international furniture and retailer launched its 2013 Catalog and integrated its App with augmented reality functionality. Check out the really cool YouTube clip explaining the concept here: http://youtu.be/QQ8HNXtl7jQ There is yet to be an augmented reality campaign in Africa, the first should come out of South Africa that has the highest penetration of Smartphones on the continent.
Many Marketing and Brand Managers, and their Advertising and Media agencies will be planning marketing campaigns for seasonal activities that take place towards the end of the year or early next year. Mobile, is a medium of ever increasing importance, so much so that some agencies are designing for Mobile first, and then seeing how the campaign can be converted to the more traditional mediums such as TV and Print advertising. Here are some ideas to inspire campaigns for Ramadan, Christmas and the Back to School periods. Ramadan is the 29 to 30 day period within which Muslim people fast, it is the holiest of all periods. During the fast Muslims practice and exercise self-restraint, and humility. Food is eaten only after dark and before sunrise, and so it needs to be highly nutritional for prolonged sustainability. There is a great opportunity for Food retailers to assist their Muslim consumers with suggested recipes, pre-packaged meal plans and promotions. From a financial services point of view, money is often given to children on Eid; astute organisations could offer their Muslim consumers special savings and investment plans, in order to provide a longer lasting gift for family and friends to give on Eid. For Christmas, most brands are experienced at developing campaigns to increase sales as Christians buy gifts for family and friends and celebrate over meals. More shoppers are using their mobiles while shopping, and this means that brands and shopping malls have
A debate on what industry is most important to sustained growth in Africa can easily be won when you bring up Travel and Tourism. Africa may be rich in oil in some parts, and minerals in others, but it is rich in beauty in all places and is increasingly attracting domestic and international tourists. It has been mentioned many times that in Africa the majority of the population access the Internet using their mobile phones as there is a huge lack of fixed line Internet connectivity and reliable electricity sources. In most first World countries, accessing the Internet via a mobile device has overtaken accessing it via a Desktop computer, in addition most of these market are using Smartphones and are very comfortable using Mobile Apps. These are some of the reasons why mobile has dramatically altered travel, whether it is pre-trip planning or location aware information. Mobile has transformed every phase of the travel process and as a result has created new marketing opportunities for astute travel and tourism organisations. If you walk around your village, or city, you see tourists taking pictures with their mobile devices all the time. They then share the picture, influencing friends, and then maybe they search for a place to have lunch, or an activity to do for the afternoon. This creates a touch point for marketers, and opens up avenues for incremental revenue after the big elements of a trip are booked.
Netflix offers me the film Lethal Weapon because I like 48 Hours, and recommends the TV program Burn Notice because I like Mad Men and Arrested Development. The predictions are sometimes pretty close to the mark, sometimes seriously off-target, but usually entertaining. [caption id="attachment_3169" align="alignleft" width="320" caption="Rush"] [/caption] In contrast, MOG thinks, "Since you love Rush, I bet you'd like to hear some Blue Oyster Cult." Nope. I wouldn't. Sometimes apps miss. And that's okay. Netflix and MOG are among an emerging class of applications that are working to understand our unique tastes by uncovering the delicate influences that determine why we want what we want. These apps are supposed to get to know us; bluntly customizing to our tastes is how the app proves its value.Ads have to play it cool, or risk being creepy.The shock of seeing a personalized offer in an advertisement, without understanding how the magic trick was done, can make people nervous. Consumers are correctly wary of advertisers taking notes and collecting data behind their back. However, there are a number of things advertisers can do, to personalize ads without crossing the line.The key to personalizing without being creepy is to be up-front about where the data is coming from.Don't hide anything. Advertisers new to personalization are sometimes tempted to make it seem like a magic trick. This is a bad idea. The payoff just isn't there. It's possible
If you're new to advertising with InMobi, these tips from our campaign team, will help improve your campaign performance and prevent your from making costly mistakes. Start With Handset Targeting InMobi's handset targeting is the best place to start with, when considering how to set up your campaign. Targeting users of every handset is costly and unnecessary. Think first about what type of audience you want to target and what devices they are using, For example, if you're targeting a premium audience, iPhone and iPad devices will work well for your campaign. If you're targeting a more general audience, consider targeting lower-end devices.Consider Targeting Specific CarriersSelect carriers that fit the size and type of target audience you'd like to reach. Besides the large national operators, there are lots of smaller, regional operators who cater to specific market segments. With a large operator, you will get more impressions and the more premium the operator's profile, the more premium the audience but you also face more competition and higher prices.Segment Your Campaigns With Ad GroupsWe often see accounts target all of their customers with one ad group. This is a big mistake, because all customers aren't like. It makes sense to treat different customers differently. By segmenting your campaign with multiple ad-groups and optimizing each one separately, it's possible to dramatically improve the performance of your campaigns. Here's an example. Before we optimized the account, there was a single campaign
I want to thank Robert from W3i for quoting me in an article that ran today. His piece provides performance marketers number of tips on how they can take advantage of mobile advertising."For performance advertisers, mobile can be an excellent alternative to SEM and PC Web display. Mobile advertising's low cost, when combined with mobile specific advertising strategies, like click-to-call campaigns, can create superior value proposition that is hard for good marketers to ignore," comments Gregory Kennedy, director global marketing, InMobi.You can read the full article here: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2074951/innovative-pays-mobile-advertising
The latest buzzwords in the Indian telecom industry are clearly MNP and 3G. While both technologies have been available in other markets around the globe for a while now, they are now just entering the Indian market and already promise to show spectacular results. A recent survey by Aegis Consult- ing and Research shows that Indians have been waiting for this feature and have much to gain with the launch of MNP. This whitepaper covers MNP or Mobile Number Portability and what this means to the operator market in terms of advertising opportunities. While there are other whitepapers covering the technical aspects of MNP, this whitepaper is focused on the advertising aspect that MNP brings into the picture. Topics covered in this whitepaper areWhat is MNPLife before and after the launch of MNPMNP in IndiaOperator mobile advertising strategies with MNPA few tips on how to utilize the mobile channel to leverage MNP advertisingTo read all this, download our whitepaper http://www.inmobi.com/research/whitepapers/ Also keep a lookout for more whitepapers from InMobi covering various topics across the realm of mobile advertising.
Helping advertisers achieve their goals is at the heart of what we do at InMobi. With that in mind, we assembled a team of some of our best people several months ago. This team was asked to dive deep into the advertiser experience, understand their needs and put together a program that would directly address advertisers. During the research phase it quickly became apparent that big changes in our product were necessary. For example our campaign management system didn't properly address the needs of advertisers. While advertisers found work-arounds to fill their needs, this was not the ideal user experience. It was with this understanding that we approached this product upgrade. We spent hours conducting data analysis and doing user testing. Going back and forth, making improvements, trying to really build something that addressed a diverse array of markets and customers with varying and at times even conflicting goals. Now those efforts have come to fruition. We are excited to announce the release of a host of new features, which will vastly improve the advertiser experience, making it more efficient, effective and easier to use. New product features for advertisers include:
Manage all your campaigns from one account. In the past multiple accounts were required for different campaigns, objectives, budgets, regions, and even different creative. Now this is no longer the case.
With the new campaign management system, conducting trials and test campaigns is easy. Test new ideas and optimize
We are happy to announce that our new sizzle reel is now available for viewing on YouTube. It features groundbreaking creative examples of mobile advertising and demonstrates just some of the unique capabilities advertisers can take advantage of. Enjoy.
Hello World. Today is the inaugural release of InMob's quarterly research report, A Global View of Mobile Advertising, providing researchers, analysts, and media planners with an in depth look at mobile advertising from around the globe. You can download this six region, 14 country report at www.inmobi.com/research. We will provide additional analysis and commentary via YouTube and Twitter frequently, so keep an eye out for more. For example, here is a breakdown of global OS share.
Top manufacturers based on ad impressions.
Device OS share by region.
Collaboration is a major emphasis of this effort. For the inaugural report, eight executives from the InMobi team were interviewed to provide regional insights into mobile advertising. Through our open collaboration efforts, we want to increase both the number and representation of industry spokespeople contributing. Please contact us at research@inmobi.com for full partner access and to participate in the discussion.
This is one of two major research reports coming from InMobi. Our next research report is global survey of 20,000 consumers, conducted on mobile devices in 14 different countries. This report contains a full analysis and reveals in depth their perspective on mobile advertising.
If you have additional questions, email us at: research@inmobi.com
Simpaddico is a mobile app developer who has created numerous apps for both the iTunes App Store and Android Market. A number of their apps have reached the top of the app store rankings including Air Horn (Free!), their most popular app. Air Horn is an app that turns any iOS device into a virtual air horn and saw a huge number of downloads during this year's World Cup. Simpaddico's apps have been downloaded over 8 million times in the past two years. Their apps generate over 10 million ad requests per month and Simpaddico is a great partner for InMobi.
1. When did you start Simpaddico? My business partner Adam Lewis and I started Simpaddico in February 2009.
2. What inspired you to get started? We were inspired to get started after I created a simple Rubik's Cube app one weekend. We posted it to the App Store and were pleasantly surprised at the sales numbers. After that, we realized we had to take advantage of the opportunities in the App Store.
3. Are you self funded? Yes, we are 100% self-funded and profitable.
4. What is your design / development strategy? How do you pick projects to work on? We analyze the market for ideas that seem to show demand and then we improve upon those ideas.
5. What are your future plans? We will continue to grow our product line. We're currently in the planning stages, with some more in-depth projects. We want to take full advantage
James Lamberti our VP of Global Research and Marketing will have a fire side chat with Michael Arrington at this Friday's CrunchUp, where he will debunk the value of mobile advertising. Here are the details:
TechCrunch Social Currency CrunchUp and 5th Annual Summer Party at August Capital, July 30, 2010 1:45 2:00 pm The Truth: Consumer Feedback About Mobile Advertising Michael Arrington speaks with James Lamberti ,
VP, Global Research and Marketing, InMobi http://techcrunch.com/social-currency-crunchup-and-summer-party-at-august-capital/
