According to eMarketer,
smartphone and tablet usage in Canada have increased 47% and 21% respectively
since 2012, which is no surprise. What
is of concern, though, is that despite the usage growth, Canadian companies are
being stingy when it comes to mobile advertising budgets because the big, bad
finance departments want proof of results before forking over the cash: Canada's
mobile ad spend is 40% less than the US and UK ($20/mobile phone Internet user
vs. $49).
Many of the issues are due to growing pains, such as ads not
loading properly or adapting to the device.
Another is effectiveness metrics, like the recent
news that 30% of display ads are never seen by the target audiences (gasp!)
yet the client is still charged for the impression (Oh Noes!). To solve this, marketers want to use
client-side counting, where an ad is counted only when it has been successfully
delivered to the device, instead of server-side counting, which counts an
impression as soon as it's delivered.
Then there is the biggie:
Banner ads. With results that look
more like rounding errors than response rates, some marketers are now looking to old
school TV for solutions. No conversations, engagement, or other immeasurable bullshit. It is simply knowing that if you're going to interrupt people with an ad the least you should do make it interesting
and entertaining.
There is no doubt that Mobile are an important platform, but
it will only succeed if marketers learn from past mistakes, ignore the hype
from the digital experts, and stick with proven methods. The technologies may change but how people
view and respond to advertising has not.
What I find most delightful in all this is that the
Digiratti will use methods from a form of advertising they declared dead and
buried years ago.
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