Making mobile work

Marketing and media websites are flooded with articles about the rise of mobile internet use. The latest Ericsson Mobility Report predicts that mobile subscriptions in APAC will reach 4.7 billion by 2019. So there’s little doubt that mobile advertising is an exciting opportunity for brands to engage with an active audience.The question challenging marketers is, “ What to do beyond banners and video?”While banners and video can certainly help meet an advertisers business objective, there are a number of other ways of communicating with an audience in mobile, some of them fundamentals which advertisers have yet to get right.Rewarding the gamer Latest research claims that one billion people spend at least one hour a day playing computer and videogames. King.com, the developers of Candy Crush Saga, claim that its mobile games rack up over 30 billion global plays each month. And it’s not just teens tapping away in a darkened room.  According to Candy Crush Saga’s creators, women aged between 25 and 55 are the most loyal demographic to the game. The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper ran a story claiming that British women have a £400,000 (SG$800,000) a day Candy Crush Saga habit.Asia’s mobile gaming community is just as active and engaged (as you’ll know if you’ve ever taken the MRT in Singapore).  One of the ways MediaCom recently found success introducing a brand to mobile gaming is through product placement and rewards in Real Racing 3.The racing app recently won Gold for Best Mobile Advertising Solution at the Mob-Ex Awards 2014.Real Racing 3 players had a limited period of time to unlock a special Gillette edition of the McLaren MP4-12C and try two Gillette racetracks. Players won access by watching Gillette TVCs embedded in the game.The Gillette promotional material inside the game received over 90 million mobile impressions and nine million Gillette Mach 3 races were completed. It’s a brilliant strategy for brands wanting to increase awareness, but “What’s the ROI?” – I can almost hear you thinking. Well, post campaign research found that nearly 50 per cent of users said they’d buy a Gillette razor.Social messagingWhile Whatsapp have shied away from advertising, social messaging app LINE has been working with L’Oreal’s Maybelline New York to create offers for young Thais. LINE users got access to an exclusive flash sale. When the campaign launched it lasted five minutes! All five hundred available Maybelline Lip Polish lipsticks were sold in five minutes.*4According to aCommerce, the e-commerce logistics firm that handled delivery, LINE has 20 million users in Thailand. Not a single publisher in Thailand can claim anywhere near the same reach with such high levels of engagement.Further proof that social messaging is a viable place for mobile advertising comes from a TechinAsia.com article which reports that Chinese messaging app WeChat was used by Xiaomi to sell 150,000 smartphones in less than 10 minutes.The most obvious opportunity is for food and beverage clients wanting to capture the lunchtime crowd with “at the time” deals without having to rely on the chalkboard outside. Reaching more than Gen YIt’s important that brands step away from traditional thoughts about mobile only being for early adopters and youth. A recent report by ComScore showed that mobile media consumption was more balanced across age segments in Japan compared to the U.S. and Europe. Japan has a well-documented aging population and a recent study found that 23.2 % of the country’s senior citizens own a smartphone. It went on to reveal that 80 % of those smartphone owners aged 60 and above frequently use the internet. Free apps for chatting with friends and family are the most popular, as well as weather applications, where there is a clear opportunity for brand advertisers to link their advertisement to the weather conditions of the day.Getting IndoorsSo far the bulk of location-based marketing has been around encouraging consumers to “check-in”. Apps such as Foursquare offer points and rewards for check-ins but with increasing improvements in indoor mapping, the emerging opportunity is for brands to be able to reach consumers in malls. Google are testing their indoor maps feature in Liang Court Mall in Singapore, while the shopper app Sprooki are also leading the charge in this area across Asia where their app triggers offers depending on where you are in the mall.How’s your mobile site?A recent piece by ComScore’s Lachlan Brahe said, “When consumers hold the storefront in their hand (in the form of an app) brands can also improve consumer loyalty. The comScore study found that 47% of Australia’s shoppers are less likely to comparison shop when they are using a mobile app.Optimising mobile sites, in particular for eCommerce, can also help drive sales. Michael Nadboy, vice president, online marketing and strategic development at FragranceNet.com said that prior to optimizing their site, mobile visitors were converting and spending less than desktop users. After the retailer streamlined the shopping process on mobile devices (condensing product pages and requiring fewer steps to checkout) visits rose 120 per cent year-on-year and the mobile conversion rate rose 50%.Smartphone owners want mobile friendly sites and not optimising your site is not only a missed opportunity, but 55% of consumers say a poor experience on a mobile site hurts their overall opinion of a brand.The writer is Andrew Newton, head of mobile APAC, MediaCom.