Mobile is the new planning currency | M&M Global

Mobile is the new planning currency

Mobile is moving beyond being a standalone platform and becoming the insight tool that delivers greater effectiveness and efficiency across all media. Ben Phillips explains.

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Mobile is currently mid-pivot. It’s moving from being a standalone channel, albeit on we carry with us all the time, and a response channel into something even more powerful.

So let’s forget – temporarily – all the arguments about mobile’s share of spend versus share of media time, and celebrate mobile’s fundamental role as the glue that boosts our consumer understanding, aids our cross media targeting and enhances our planning across all channels.

Perhaps the biggest clue to this transformation is the fact that so many geolocation companies have changed their business model. They’ve moved on from ringfencing shopping centres and pushing out discount vouchers – although many will still do this – and evolved to become powerful sources of data and insight.

Companies such as Mobsta, BlisMedia, Factual and PlaceIQ are some of those enhancing the value of location data.

Recent research from BlisMedia in the UK demonstrates the point. It found that smartphone users are more engaged with mobile advertising while at home compared to when they are travelling, shopping or sitting in a café or bar.

Power of location

Knowing where consumers have been has become as powerful as where they are right now, because right now might not be the right or most effective time to target them. What location data is doing is transforming the way we deliver messaging and understand consumer behaviour for a number of our clients.

It’s boosting our understanding of the power of OOH, for example. In key regions of the world, we now use mobile heatmap data to understand dwell times and engagement levels around outdoor sites.

This helps planners and buyers select which outdoor sites, to understand where they have the most eyeballs and dwell time, helping them measure individual sites rather than making broad assumptions such as train stations are more effective than bus stops.

“The bottom line is that mobile data now drives most planning”

And for individual clients it has a powerful impact in multiple areas.

Shell, for example, is using this data to create motorist segments to understand consumers who have been to places like petrol stations, garages and other motoring related destinations.

Location data enables Shell to boost frequency by identifying consumers who have been exposed to OOH messages and then serving digital media as well.

For Sony Xperia, we have amplified the outdoor campaign in real time and also served to audiences we knew had been in proximity of the outdoor campaign but at a later date when they were at home on a residential IP address. By testing this strategy against people who hadn’t seen our outdoor, we found a 20% increase in engagement levels among the group exposed to the outdoor campaign.

Custom audience segments

Mobile data is helping build cross-channel campaigns by allowing us to create custom audience segments of users who are exposed to OOH placements and then retarget them with a mobile ad.

In each case, reaching then as soon after OOH exposure, whilst the message is still fresh had a positive impact on measurement, including driving footfall.

The bottom line is that mobile data now drives most planning. Contextual planning of the sort that involves simply putting a food brand in a food programme is history.

Our planners now rely on location data to identify the correct target audience to create an audience segment specific to a campaign’s and client’s requirements, and then deliver that message effectively and efficiently to them, whichever channel is most appropriate.

Mobile has moved beyond the channel silo and become the glue that links everything we do.

Ben Phillips

Global head of mobile, MediaCom

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