It's been the "year of mobile" for years, but there has been major strides to making it a reality in 2017. And there's a lot more on the horizon for mobile in 2018. In a series of features reflecting on the past year, and looking ahead to what we can expect in 2018, ExchangeWire invites over 100 thought leaders from across the industry to share their views. In the latest installment of the series, experts deliver their opinions on the evolution and future of mobile.
Focus will shift to smartphone bounce rate
In 2018, we will finally start talking about smartphone bounce rate metrics. Almost every digital screen today tracks the bounce rate – EXCEPT our smartphones, which are the screens people interact with more than any other! Websites and apps have tailored their landing experience based on consumers interests and behaviors to decrease the bounce rate. However, smartphones haven’t – when you unlock your phone you simply find the last app you used – no customisation or personalisation, and that poor experience hasn’t changed since the smartphone was invented. Our smartphones already know what apps we typically use during the day, where we are and more. Understanding all of this should allow the smartphone to know what we want on any given unlock. As a result, in the year ahead we will see a sharp rise in the focus on measuring and reducing the smartphone bounce rate.
Greg Wester, SVP Marketing & Business Development, Mobile Posse
Online to offline attribution will improve
Galia Reichenstein, General Manager US, Taptica
Augmented Reality is ready for the mainstream
Augmented Reality (AR) is finally ready for its close-up. After years of fits and starts, AR is finally ready to hit the mainstream, thanks to Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore enabling developers to incorporate AR directly into their applications. In the past, much of the focus and excitement have been directed towards VR, but the relatively tepid response to Oculus Rift does not bode particularly well for the widespread adoption of the technology. AR, on the other hand, is beginning to emerge from the shadow of its much-hyped cousin, and holds great potential for consumers and brands alike.
Josh Ong, Director of Marketing Communications, Cheetah Mobile
Brands will focus on location intelligence
2017 saw the emergence of a powerful new marketing metric: Cost-per-Visit (CPV). With this model, brands pay for an ad only when a consumer that’s been exposed to it visits a specific location. Using the CPV model not only helps brands increase foot traffic and boost sales, but also helps foster a more trusting relationship between brands, agencies and vendors. In 2018, CPV will continue to gain momentum as the metric of choice. Tech partners will need to abandon click-based measurement schemes and work towards building transparent relationships with advertisers to compete. Additionally, brands will place greater emphasis on location intelligence. Previously, brands focused mostly on proximity advertising but now we’re seeing advertisers turn to more sophisticated uses of location data to inform their campaign. By analyzing historical location data and detailed behavioral patterns, brands gain comprehensive insights into consumer preferences and habits which can be used for hyper-targeted campaigns.
Jamie Crespi, VP Marketing, Americas, Blis
Marketers will focus on mobile video
Toby Benjamin, VP, Platform Partnerships, Viant
True multichannel attribution will become reality
With 2018, mobile’s saturation will only continue to increase beyond 70%. Advertisers are beginning to realize that with mobile’s ‘always on’ connection to consumers, they no longer have to settle for ‘black box’ metrics in measurement and attribution. By using IP, location and device matching, marketers can leverage mobile to execute deterministic attribution with 70%-90% coverage matching across all channels and platforms - both online and offline. With the right tools, mobile directly connects the purchase, impression and the store visit. There is no more modeled results or guessing at attribution. Within the next year, we will achieve true multichannel attribution as a standard piece of all digital advertising campaigns.
Ray Kingman, CEO, Semcasting
Transparency will be demanded from buyers
Thomas Walle, CEO and co-founder, Unacast
Automation and machine learning will be more widely leveraged
Julian Smith, Head of Strategy and Innovation, Fetch
Mobile will help video grown in tandem
As the internet becomes increasingly mobile-first, the importance of video will grow in tandem. The development of more sophisticated mobile devices will allow for far better sound and picture quality, improved processing, and even virtual and augmented reality in video ads. The limitations of the small screen will dwindle, allowing marketers to reach audiences more effectively with compelling mobile video content. The preference for accessing the internet on mobile will also increase the level of data available about users, and consequently improve consumer experience by allowing the optimum message and content to be delivered to the audience.
Adam Singolda, Founder & CEO, Taboola
Location-based marketing will rebuild trust
Ian James, GM International, Verve
The Lifetime Value (LTV) metric will change mobile
It’s still some way off, but one metric that will revolutionise mobile advertising in the future is Lifetime Value (LTV). LTV stands for the predicted net profit of the entire future relationship between an individual consumer and a brand. It’s not a new metric – it’s very much on the marketing industry’s agenda, or should be – we just don’t currently hold enough data on consumers to calculate LTV with complete accuracy. However, when we consider that smartphone adoption has increased 33% over the last five years among UK adults, and with it the data the ad industry holds on individual customers, it’s easy to get a sense of how much more data we expect to glean by 2025, when LTV is really set to take off. The upshot for marketers is that once they have this data at their fingertips, analytics models will be able to calculate the worth of profiles with such precision that marketers will be able to make much bolder and better investments.
Max Pepe, VP Marketing, Mozoo