This last week has been anything sort of amazing for advertisers. In a series of articles on Nielsen Wire, Mashable, eMarketer and Retailer Daily, every one points to a very positive future for advertising. And it really shouldn’t be a shocker that mobile advertising is leading the way. What is shocking though, contrary to popular belief, is that TV advertising is reaching 85% of viewers daily. This equals up to an astonishing 73 minutes a day.
What is even greater is the willingness of smartphone users to accept and directly act on mobile ads. All the numbers suggest that mobile ads even out-perform online ads. And instead of repeating all the numbers and stats, I suggest you read the articles linked above. If and after you do read them, you’ll see why advertisers have a lot to smile about.
By splorp
The purpose of this article is meant to go deeper than simply the numbers. Numbers are great and the research is necessary. But you have to understand what’s happening beyond that. I’ve previously written about future insights into advertising and the emergence of lifestyle brand strategy, but here I will go further. Here I will write about what every advertiser and marketer dreams of: reaching every consumer, customer, buyer, individual possible.
Segmentation
Segmentation by no means is a new concept. But is it something we’ve hardly perfected. And it wasn’t something we couldn’t perfect because we didn’t understand the concept. Rather, it was something we couldn’t perfect simply because the means weren’t there before. The best we could do was clump categories and target certain audiences but even that hasn’t advanced our abilities as much as we would’ve have liked.
The problem has always been that a specific segment could only be reached by targeting the larger norm of that audience. TV, newspaper, radio and magazine ads have all-evolved significantly since their inception however not everyone watching, reading or listening was part of an ad’s consumer target or base. The broadcasting has always been too large. Online and more importantly, mobile ads have completely changed this.
Traditional vs. Post-Social Media Advertising
The greatest problem traditional advertising has had to face was customer engagement. There was no real way to tell how quickly people were reacting (unless there was an absolute boom in sales). And it was nothing that drove them immediately to jump into their cars to follow-up on that “great” deal they just saw or heard. The time of “action” to “reaction” (that’s even if there was a reaction) was quite frankly to far apart. And there were issues of how you would get people to remember and spread the message, etc.
In a post-social media environment, I would say things are drastically different. And I say post-social media as opposed to post-internet due to the fact that although the internet has advanced many aspects of advertising and our greater ability to make purchases, it faces similar issues that traditional media has faced. Social media is almost reinventing advertising.
Not only is social-media connecting directly with the consumer at the consumer’s will (though I must say Facebook is really messing this up with all it’s privacy shenanigans) but it’s engaging people immediately. The consumer response can potentially be quite powerful. With the overflow of apps and smartphones, it has never been easier to reach someone when they are in the purchasing process. And off the top of my head, I can of think a number of methods, systems and metrics that would satisfy all parties in the transaction.
It would be an understatement to say mobile advertising is taking us somewhere we’ve never been before. The reality of the situation is that it works. Customer engagement will be at an all-time high. Not only will this be a great time for consumers, it will be great for businesses. You can’t deny the fact that you wouldn’t love some kind of mobile ad giving you a great offer on something you were going to buy anyways. This will thrive with the Millennials. We love “exclusive” offers. And I don’t at all mind receiving the ads. Just don’t make the same mistakes email marketing has. No spam please, just the offer.
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