Rob Blake, general manager EMEA at Pocketmath, asks whether advertisers are missing out on huge ROI potential by taking too narrow a view of mobile advertising.
The choices now available for mobile consumers and advertisers alike dwarf those that have ever faced the PC user. Devices now vary from dainty 4-inch smartphones to plus size 18-inch tablets, with a middle ground made up of increasingly popular phablets.
Despite this diversity, advertisers can fall into the trap of assuming mobile starts and finishes with the smartphone. The clue is in the data with the landscape smartphone advert (480×320) remaining by far the most popular format.
Our mobile ad analysis, based on more than 40 billion daily impressions, shows that phone size ads account for 50% of all mobile programmatic advertising. However, with 82% of marketers executing mobile adverts programmatically, one size fits all is losing its appeal, and its impact.
Another reason for avoiding focusing budget purely on smartphones is that this size simply doesn’t work as well as others. Despite its popularity among advertisers and the huge audiences that smartphone adverts reach, the full screen smartphone advert drives fewer clicks than other sizes.
One eye on the pavement
But perhaps this isn’t so surprising. Smartphones are popular, but savvy mobile advertisers know it’s more than just who owns one – it’s about understanding the role they play in our lives. Smartphones tend to see most of their activity on-the-go, with one eye on the pavement, while juggling other tasks. Meanwhile other devices, such as tablets, serve a more considered or recreational purpose.
Targeting buyers when they are free from distraction is important, as is catching their attention while they have the time to indulge a passing interest. When other metrics are introduced, such as the time of day and location, the ROI from larger screen formats quickly begins to pick up.
“For adverts that often have just one short chance to catch our complete attention, every square millimetre counts”
Our data reveals the landscape full screen tablet advert (1024×768) as the most effective at engaging with audiences and driving clicks. In fact, it is twice as effective as the smartphone, achieving an impressive 8.4% click-through rate. And yet, just 4% of mobile programmatic advertising campaigns in 2015 used a creative this size. Great news for those few pioneering campaigns that face a far less crowded market, but not so much for the other 96%.
The even better news for the 4% is that advertising on a bigger screen offers hugely improved potential for messaging and creativity. With the current war on ad-blockers getting the creative spot on has never been more important. For adverts that often have just one short chance to catch our complete attention, every square millimetre counts.
Anything but a single-platform game
So what’s the lesson here? It certainly isn’t to abandon smartphone advertising and go after the biggest tablet ads they can find. Mobile programmatic is anything but a single-platform game and getting it right can only come from a holistic approach. But there’s much to be gained from considering that different size adverts serve very different purposes, reach people in different environments and provide marketers with different opportunities for engagement.
More than anything creative variety is key. Constantly pushing the envelope is the only way to ensure that adverts have the best chance of standing out and securing that all important click-through. Better still, it ensures marketers are trying different approaches, which allows for campaigns to be optimised in real-time. Those who can measure different tactics to see which approach delivers ROI can focus all spend on the most effective creatives and ad formats, right from the start of a campaign.
For those hoping to realise the vast opportunities of the mobile revolution, the first step is to understand that it’s about far more than mobile phones. Getting it right is easier than it’s ever been, and guesswork is becoming a thing of the past. Not sure which creative to use where? In the space of five minutes you can try them all and find out.
