The following is a guest contributed post by Harald Kratel, VP of Global Marketing, Smaato

Mobile has fundamentally redefined the marketing landscape in a dramatically short time frame. For the most part, as consumer time spent has shifted to mobile devices, advertising dollars have shifted as well. However, while a great deal of attention has been paid to the gross reallocation of these dollars, not nearly as much attention has been paid to the strategic shift required by marketers in terms of how those mobile dollars are spent.

Mobile devices will account for 73 percent of global time spent online in 2018, up from 65 percent in 2016. Within that time spent, comScore’s latest data indicates apps are responsible for more than 80 percent of the time people spend using mobile devices, with this number rising as high as 95 percent in some regions.

The dominance of mobile in-app experiences is good news for marketers, as more data is available in-app than with any other media format. Since apps can collect first-party data on an opt-in basis, they are also able to pass along valuable targeting parameters such as gender and age, which allow advertisers to precisely reach their ideal audience. Within the in-app environment, advertisers can also harness geo-location data.

In short, marketers now have easy access to the long-coveted “right person, right place, right time” marketing utopia. But far too few marketers today are structuring their campaigns this way.

It’s time for marketers to start thinking in micro mobile moments. Here’s what that looks like:

Dayparting – and Then Some

The concept of dayparting is by no means a new one, but it’s newly relevant in the mobile world. As in the TV world, dividing the day into several distinct chunks and tailoring messaging appropriately during each chunk makes infinite sense in mobile marketing. But marketers need to take things further.

Enter the micro mobile moment. The general idea of “micro-moments” was popularized by Google a few years back as a succinct way of referring to the instances within the consumer journey when decisions are made and preferences are shaped. In the mobile world, these are the instances where people turn to their devices to find, do, or buy something, and it is within these moments that marketing messages are particularly resonant.

Micro-moments take on special importance in the mobile realm, where in-app time is highly fragmented. On average, users spend three hours per day in-app, but the average app session is only five minutes long. On average, users check their phones 47 times per day, and many of these sessions are intent-driven micro-moments where the right messaging could make all the difference in an ultimate purchase decision.

Identifying micro mobile moments, and understanding them in relation to the individual who owns the device, lays the foundation for a solid mobile advertising strategy. Every daypart has hundreds of micro mobile moments. For example:

• Searching for healthy recipes before dinner
• Playing a game at home
• Seeking product information while in a store
• Checking restaurant reviews on a Friday evening
• Listening to a podcast on the train

These are context-rich moments that, in combination with knowledge of the individual, lend themselves to targeted messaging from brands. The key is understanding where a given brand can add value and have influence on the consumer’s journey. By effectively dayparting a mobile campaign according to micro-moments, marketers can optimize campaign performance, enhance user targeting, improve cost-efficiency, and maximize user engagement. The three steps to doing this effectively are as follows:

1. Identify your target group
2. Analyze their mobile behaviors (or work with partners to do so), particularly as it relates to app usage
3. Identify the right mobile moments that align with your goals.

OK, so the above steps seem simple enough. But what does the result look like? It might be simpler than you think. Here are just a few micro mobile moments that would be a fit for well-known brands:

• KFC: 12:15 p.m., food court, fast food lovers
• Bacardi: 1:10 a.m., party area, students
• Dreyer’s ice cream: 2:45 p.m., parks, sunny weather

The above criteria are all easily targeted within in-app experiences. Customized programmatic deals are an effective way to ensure that your in-app advertising campaigns reach their target audience at the right mobile moment. Not only do they provide more transparency and control, but they are effective tools for optimizing campaigns, inventory, and pricing.

The shift from desktop to mobile advertising is well-established, but the opportunities surrounding proper dayparting in the mobile environment are only beginning to be explored. Is your brand ready to seize its moment?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harald Kratel

Vice President, Global Marketing, Smaato

With over 20 years of experience across the media and advertising industry, Harald (Harry) has proven himself as an innovative and effective marketing leader.

Harry has played a leading role in Germany’s digital advertising industry since 2000, when he became Managing Director of internet activities at G+J, one of Europe’s biggest magazine publishers. From 2005 to 2009, Harry served as the COO/CMO of Parship, Europe’s largest online dating service, where he was responsible for the company’s internationalization into 14 countries. Prior to joining Smaato, Harry was the Partner and Managing Director of mlv, a full-service advertising agency located in Hamburg.

Harry holds a degree (Dipl.-Kfm.) in Business Administration from the University of Münster.

The post A Marketer’s Guide to Harnessing Micro Mobile Moments appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The partnership will provide Smaato with advanced cyber security tools, including sophisticated evaluation of the legitimacy of ad impressions with precise data verification.

Smaato is taking these proactive, preventive measures for fraud protection, in order to safeguard its mobile in-app ad formats which are in high demand. The percentage of in-app ad spending on the Smaato platform has grown from 80% to 96% of the total in the last year, while in-app video ad requests have increased by a remarkable 14X. Advertisers like that in-app inventory experiences significantly less ad blocking than desktop and mobile web; however, without proper management it provides a new opportunity for fraud.

Over the past six months, Protected Media has seen in-app fraud, where fraudsters mask low-quality apps to look like premium publishers, rise to almost 10 times the previous rate across its installed base.

According to Forrester, while video accounts for 45% of total ad spend, it’s linked to 64% of all ad fraud, and also requires additional fraud prevention in-app. Protected Media’s innovative technology paired with Smaato’s rigorous standards for its publishers delivers the antidote to fraud.

“At Smaato, advertisers receive high-quality traffic for all of their mobile ad campaigns across our vast publisher base, and this partnership ensures that quality and value are maintained,” said Georg Fiegen, COO of Smaato. “With Protected Media, we can ensure that the traffic on our exchange is viewable, brand-safe, transparent and protected from fraud.”

The post Smaato, Protected Media Work to Ensure Quality of Online Advertising appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The results were published in Smaato’s Q4 2017 Global Trends in Mobile Advertising Report, which offers key insights into the worldwide mobile programmatic advertising landscape based on in-depth analysis of the quarter’s ad impressions on the Smaato platform.

“Mobile advertising is growing extremely fast worldwide, especially in high-value categories including video and targeted in-app content,” said Arndt Groth, President of Smaato. “Smaato as a platform has experienced a substantial increase in both volume and pricing, a trend we expect to continue as we expand into other markets and create innovative new products for buyers and sellers.”

The report also notes that Smaato delivered 87% ad spending growth in the Americas and 61% growth in EMEA, the two regions with the highest increases. In 2017, the company also observed several massive growth factors that have changed mobile advertising significantly in the past few years — namely, significant growth from mobile video and in-app advertising.

In-app advertising accounted for 96% of global ad spending. In-app advertising has taken over the mobile advertising market, growing from 80% of total ad spending on the Smaato platform in 2016 to 96% in 2017. In-app’s domination of mobile ad spending last year was a global phenomenon, with in-app holding at least an 87% share of ad spending in each of the top 20 mobile advertising markets worldwide. Compared to mobile web, in-app ads also boasted much higher eCPMs, more user engagement and increased advertiser demand in Q4 2017.
Mobile video advertising increased by 14X. Video, which can offer higher engagement advertising to a more captive audience, took off in popularity in 2017. Across all of the top 10 mobile advertising markets, mobile video ad spending has increased by at least 6X over the past year, with in-stream pre-roll showing the highest increase in demand. In addition to a huge volume increase, Smaato also measured a mobile video eCPM increase of 70% from 2016 to 2017.

Want to know more? Download the full report here.

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Smaato conducted an in-depth analysis of the 1.5+ trillion ad impressions delivered on its platform in the second quarter of 2017, and found new data to support the massive growth of video advertising globally, and particularly in-app, which is growing faster over mobile web as a share of digital ad dollars.

According to the official word emailed to MMW on Monday, publishers are doubling down on digital video – a trend characterized as the great “shift to video” – as consumers increasingly desire highly engaging and interactive content.

Led by especially strong momentum in mobile, video has absorbed a much larger share of total ad budgets. According to Smaato, video was the fastest-growing ad format during Q2, with spending on video ads more than doubling (142 percent).

“Smaato took a deeper dive into video and found that certain formats are growing more rapidly than others. While full-screen interstitials remain advertisers’ darlings today, accounting for almost two-thirds of total mobile video ad spending, rewarded video was the fastest-growing format,” the emailed statement reads. “In Q2 2017, rewarded video ad impressions almost doubled (96 percent), ad spending increased 153 percent and eCPMs grew 48 percent.”

Gaming apps in particular have quickly embraced rewarded video, as the positive user experience and high engagement rates keeps audiences hooked.

“In a recent IAB survey, advertisers suggested they plan to spend more than half of their ad budgets on video this year. We are seeing this become a reality across Smaato’s platform, as mobile video is the fastest-growing segment of our business,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato. “Based on what we are seeing, we expect mobile video to continue its high growth and become the dominant medium in the years ahead.”

To learn more or to check out the report in full, click here.

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In the company’s new Q1 2017 Global Trends in Mobile Advertising Report, Smaato analyzed data from 300 billion mobile ad impressions served on its exchange each month and found that mobile ad space is more valuable than ever before as global eCPMs grew almost 50 percent year-over-year.

Fueled by explosive growth in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, mobile ad spending on the Smaato platform overall climbed 14 percent over the last year. China – the world’s second biggest mobile advertising market – was the strongest Top 10 market performer on the Smaato platform and saw its first quarter ad spending nearly double (+90 percent) since the same quarter last year. China’s ad spending growth was also more than twice that of the next fastest-growing Top 10 market, Australia (+37 percent).

“The data across our global platform indicate that advertisers are catching on to how consumers increasingly spend their time in apps. When advertisers understand the value of the long-term tracking capabilities of in-app advertising, combined with rich audience data, we expect to see the eCPMs of in-app advertising to increase by 50 to 100 percent until 2019,” said Ragnar Kruse, co-founder and CEO of Smaato.

To check out the full report, click here.

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The launch, we’re told, is designed to transform how mobile advertisers are able to discover and target mobile advertising inventory from the Smaato exchange.

What used to be a manual process is now automated, giving the global, real-time mobile monetization platform’s 450+ demand partners increased access, more control and dramatically higher inventory and engagement potential.

The report notes that the new Inventory Discovery feature of the Smaato Demand Platform (SDX) automates the process of identifying mobile supply by giving control to the mobile buyer with a self-service interface.

Inventory Discovery offers granular, self-service controls designed to make mobile advertising spend as targeted and efficient as possible for programmatic buyers.

“We’re excited to unveil the Inventory Discovery feature of SDX as it provides new value to our demand partners, giving them power to seamlessly identify and target new publisher inventory for their campaigns,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato. “By enhancing our platform to give demand partners more control, Smaato continues to close the gap between the demand and supply sides, which makes our overall offering more robust and scalable.”

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In compiling the piece, Smaato analyzed data from billions of mobile ad impressions served on its exchange during the third quarter of 2016 and found the extent to which mobile advertising spend is now heavily weighted toward in-app versus the mobile web.

All told, the new report shows that in-app accounted for 81% of global mobile ad spend compared to mobile web, and rose 8 share points versus the same quarter last year.

Even at the country level, the dominance of in-app versus mobile web advertising is a worldwide phenomenon. In mature mobile markets, such as the US, France, Sweden, and Germany, in-app mobile ad spending represented 83%, 88%, 90% and 94%, respectively, of ad spend on Smaato’s platform in Q3 2016.

“Smaato credits the increase of in-app mobile advertising to increasing advertiser recognition that people are spending more and more time in their mobile apps and to the unique, superior and more reliable user tracking and targeting characteristics of the in-app mobile environment,” the company says. “On average, in-app eCPMs for publishers are more than two times higher than mobile web eCPMs on Smaato’s platform, a trend that has remained consistent. However, mobile advertising within web browsers is far from dying out, as it still accounts for 19% of all mobile ad spending on the Smaato platform and – while growing significantly more slowly than in-app ad spending – is nonetheless up almost 4% from the same quarter last year. Furthermore, mobile web eCPMs grew more than 10% on average in Q3 2016 versus Q3 2015.”

The post Where is Mobile Ad Spend Growing Fastest? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Launching today, the Smaato Demand Platform (SDX) empowers demand partners to optimize their mobile advertising traffic with a robust suite of traffic targeting tools providing precision, control and flexibility,” MAW reports. “SDX significantly reduces operational waste for demand partners across mobile advertising campaigns.”

Prior to the release of SDX, advertisers and demand-side partners seeking to effectively manage their mobile ad inventory lacked a solution to segment or optimize the mobile traffic at scale, the Smaato team says.

“Now, with the first phase of the SDX roll-out, demand partners can leverage powerful targeting and QPS (query per second) throttling tools that give them granular control over what kind of traffic they receive,” the firm says.

“With the introduction of SDX, Smaato can now proudly say we offer the industry’s most comprehensive, robust mobile advertising solutions for both the demand and supply side of the ecosystem,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato. “We carefully considered the pain points of our demand partners and believe that SDX is an important step toward giving our partners control over the traffic they receive to target the premium mobile inventory most relevant to their campaigns.”

To learn more about Smaato, click here.

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According to the report summary from MAW, mobile video ads are now clearly the most effective and best forming ad formats in the mobile ad business today.

That assessment is the result of Smaato’s analysis of data from billions of mobile ad impressions served on its exchange during the first quarter of this week.

“The report shows strong growth for mobile video advertisements, delivering 11 times higher eCPMs for publishers – a 1,042 percent uplift compared to any other ad format,” Smaato is quoted by MAW.

Additionally, we’re told that “there are certain contexts” in which mobile video ads drive higher performance.

Overall, data indicates that mobile video ads drive higher revenue when shown in-app versus in the mobile web, with iOS apps delivering almost 3x higher eCPMs over the mobile web.

To learn more, check out the full Smaato report here.

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Smaato is kicking off the new year with some tips for monetizing mobile apps and websites.

True, finding the right strategy can be complex and confusing.

“At Smaato, we’ve been helping mobile publishers and app developers monetize their mobile inventory worldwide since 2005,” the company said in a blog post. “Based on this experience, we’re uniquely able to recommend some best practices that can bring a significant impact to the revenues you can generate with your mobile property.”

The first tip is to “pick a monetization strategy.”

“There are dozens of ways to generate revenues with your app, however, mobile advertising is the easiest and fastest technique,” suggests Smaato. “Advertisers are now investing a substantial amount of their advertising budgets into mobile. This trend is driven by two valuable things your app or mobile website has: users and data.”

Other tips include advice on inventory pricing, understanding that user data is key to monetization, choosing the best integration platform for success, and optimizing for the highest eCPMs and fill rates possible.

“It usually takes about 4 weeks to get to the point where you’re truly set up and bringing in the revenues you should be,” notes Smaato. “You need to set up, go live, optimize, see results, make new decisions and optimize again.”

You can get much more detail about each tip here.

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