Americans no longer live in an “either/or” society — today it’s “both/and.”
That’s why they don’t have to choose between their smartphones, their tablets, and the television. Often, they’re paying attention to all of them – all at once.
Moving forward, nothing is poised to chase the consequences of this reality faster than commercials.
In fact, it has led to development of a promising new, “hyper-targeted, hyper-measurable, and hyper-ROI driven opportunity” for marketers: the mobile commercial.
That rejoinder to the multi-screen marketplace was recently featured during an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE) webinar — “Beyond the 30-Second Commercial: Marketing to a Consumer Gone Mobile” — sponsored by Facebook.
The webinar was hosted by Stephen Quinn, AFE chairman and executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Walmart. He was joined by David Lawenda, Facebook’s head of U.S. global marketing solutions, and Eva Press, Facebook’s U.S. global marketing solutions group lead for CPG and health.
Participants explored how to utilize mobile ads to leverage consumers’ use of mobile devices, their increasing consumption of television content, and their growing use of both simultaneously to support and amplify the impact of TV commercials.
“We know that today’s consumers are not shifting their television viewing behavior away from the television set, rather they’re shifting their habits to enjoy content simultaneously on multiple screens,” Quinn noted during the webinar. “Fully understanding this scenario helps us effectively serve our customers and improve marketing effectiveness.”
Lawenda assured advertisers that Facebook’s own analysis indicates that “mobile ads, combined with TV shows that are family appropriate, can be more effective than TV advertising alone.”
Yes, people are watching TV — and their phones.
“Each evening, about one hundred million people use their mobile devices during primetime TV hours,” Lawenda explained. “If we move the idea of a commercial to this mobile device and target it to a consumer in ways never before possible but available on Facebook — by interest, location, multicultural attributes, and expressed sentiment — we see TV plus mobile campaigns that are effective and reach many more people than TV alone.”
