Mobile's Number Nightmare

If we believe anything as media professionals it should be that money follows audience While specific business objectives can influence how dollars are allocated the most rational approach is to invest ad dollars in the places we39ll actually find consumersAs digital advertising spend increases it39s encouraging to see mobile taking a more prominent role but are we doing everything we can to responsibly promote mobile to clientsWhile mobile advertising is expected to exceed 50 of digital spend by 2016 and around 22 of overall global ad spend by 2018 we could be doing so much more to support this evolutionTo be honest what mobile lacks right now are the numbers to demonstrate that it can deliver and this measurement crisis is the root cause of clients39 reluctance to invest in the medium My conversations with clients tend to focus on three issues viewability attribution and crossdevice measurement Until we as an industry can provide the reassurance marketers expect in these areas consumer mobile minutes will run far ahead of advertising revenueViewability is high on everyone39s agenda No one wants to buy an impression that a human cannot see Back in December the ANA said global advertisers could lose 63 billion this year in wasted ads due to this painful problemAt least desktop has an IAB definition In mobile we don39t even have a standard definition of viewability so comparisons often so helpful to clients are useless If Wanamaker39s challenge still holds and we can39t even tell a client which of their mobile ads are seen how can we sell themIf we could eliminate unseen ads or at least stop our clients from paying for them mobile engagement rates would doubleAttribution is another core issue What we often want to know is which of our mobile web ads have actually persuaded consumers to download an appThe problem is that standard metrics often don39t cover the link between the ad and the app download We know how many times the app has been downloaded but can39t identify what actually persuaded consumers to do soWhile WPP39s purchase of MediaLets helps us solve this challenge we also need to ensure attribution modeling integrates new technologies such as iBeacons along with tracking all the way through to store visitation liftamp160Techniques such as tag management which have become standard on desktop could also be applied to mobile with greater rigor as could new buying metrics like Cost Per Installationamp160 Ultimately we need to be able to capture the lifetime value of a mobile customer and that39s what39s missing for a lot of advertisersCrossdevice ad management is the final frontier No one wants to serve the same ad to the same consumer on a tablet and phone or even multiple times on the same device just because we don39t know any betterThis is where Facebook and Google are cleaning up today because they can use unique IDs to produce frequency caps for example It39s much harder to get a brand to sign on to other networks and platforms even when we can make a strong case that they39re more effectiveAlternatives such as Drawbridge and Conversant provide a probabilistic solution which helps Nielsen recently found that Drawbridge39s connected consumer graph was 973 accurateIn the future a unique ID will be able to track and measure all of a consumer39s activities and engagement both step by step and in total from the connected car to the wearable to mobile to desktop and back again This will go a long way toward addressing our three key issues That39ll be a great moment but amp160as things stand today amp160what39s holding mobile back isn39t the lack of audience engagement or amazing experiences it39s the data advertisers need to know their money is well spent and to understand how to improve the next time aroundThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecom management or associated bloggers

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Mobile's Number Nightmare

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Ben Phillips

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Mobile's Number Nightmare

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