Last year there was a lot of buzz surrounding the growth of digital advertising with most estimates stating it would top $100 billion by the end of the year. While the numbers didn’t get quite that high, they did reach $72 billion, a very respectable 22% increase. Most of that growth came from mobile advertising which reached $36.6 billion or 51% of all digital ad spending.
When it comes to the future of mobile advertising, the big thing on everyone’s mind is video. Last year video ad spending grew by 53% and it’s expected to continue that climb this year. For more on that and what else to expect in the years to come, we asked a group of industry experts…
What’s The Future Of Mobile Advertising?
Time to bust out the notepad marketers…
Steve Pritchard, Search Content Manager at giffgaff
“Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) will play a huge role in mobile advertising, moving forward. These trends have already started to emerge in advertising campaigns, and they will only become more common as time goes on.
Gamification is starting to seep through in advertising more and more, and AR is a great tool to take it to the next level. Gaming offers an immersive and entertaining experience which will resonate with many brands’ target audiences, allowing marketers to generate huge levels of user data.”
Scott Sampson, Chief Revenue Officer at NewVoiceMedia
“The days of winning over your customers’ hearts and minds based solely on the quality of your product or service are over. By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. And as mobile advertising grows, businesses need to make mobile customer experience their number one priority.
That’s why big name retailers such as Starbucks are investing in loyalty and messenger apps to provide customers with 24/7 support. Additionally, the rise of mobile technology means customers are more comfortable than ever making purchases without the help of a sales rep. With 90 percent of consumers expecting access to self-service customer service portals, failure to provide such capabilities means you risk losing them to a competitor that does.”
Ross Simmonds , Digital Strategist & Founder of Crate and Hustle & Grind
“The future of mobile advertising will be more closely connected to our location than ever before. As more autonomous vehicles hit the road, more mobile devices will be relied on for on-road entertainment & communication. These vehicles will also be connected to our mobile devices and while travelling we will be met with geographic based ads that will include push notifications asking us if we want to take the next exit to visit a restaurant that happens to be advertising on Google Maps. The geographic & consumer data associated with travel behavior will help brands better communicate with people in the real world than ever before.”
Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore
“Mobile will have completely different devices in 10 – 15 years. Smartphone displays will be via holograms, viewed from contact lenses or other direct visual apparatuses or via bio-augmentation. The mobile ads will be dramatically more targeted based on acute geo-location and purchase/browsing history.
Think of it as an Amazon recommendation engine following around you from site to site. The ads will recommend the closest restaurant or apparel store based on your purchase history. Advertising in 10 – 15 years will be viewed less negatively because the increased targeting will serve as a utility instead of a nuisance.
Is the Amazon recommendation widget viewed as a nuisance? Generally no, that’s because it actually makes useful recommendations. In 10 – 15 years mobile ads will serve a similar utility.”
Bob Bentz, President of Purplegator & Advanced Telecom Services
“Mobile advertising will only continue to grow as it delivers a Super Bowl sized audience every day. Third party big data is only going to increase in its importance as it becomes more and more knowledgeable about the consumer. While this may be frightening to consumers, as marketers, you should love it. And, consumers will also learn to love it, because they will be delivered native advertising on products and services that they are truly interested in now.”
Swapnil Bhagwat, Senior Manager – Design & Digital Media at Orchestrate
“Mobile advertising has to be more specific and personalized to grow, or it will come to an end. The audience do not like advertising and according to research about 309 million people globally use ad blocking technology on mobile web with the number steadily growing. For the mobile advertisement to be more personalized and relevant and to increase audience engagement a system has to be built that would keep an eye on user behavior. A lot of development is required to create a custom solution that would predict the user’s choices and preferences and suggest methods of advertising through mobile phones for individual users.
These personalized messages would be more effective making reliable and relevant suggestions to the audience for which new laws about the legitimacy of products have to be formulated. Whatever may be the changes in technology the fundamentals of advertising doesn’t seem to change.”
Sun Dahan , Business development at Spatially
“It is unlikely that we will carry our smartphones with us in 10-15 years. There will be no need for that. The mobile transmitters will be implemented in a different way – maybe even in us . In terms of the future of advertising in 10-15 years, wherever we’ll go, we will receive unique offerings and advertisements for us that are based on more than our location and our customer segmentat. The biggest difference will be in the level of analysis and its focus on individuals, not groups. It will use our digital DNA or set of preferences to send tailor ads specifically for us.
This data will be created in real-time and enabled using big-data across various platforms. I call this spatial advertising.”
Andrew Fischer, CEO & Co-founder of Choozle
“I’d wager that ‘mobile’ in the future will be defined by any/all media experience that is portable – and the advertising experiences that support the medium will be completely immersive, likely driven by advancements in virtual and/or augmented reality. It’s hard to predict the hardware that will be driving it – smartphones, watches, something we haven’t imagined? But the creative/messaging will be completely immersive, organic, and highly targeted.
If I’m an NBA fan, I can play 1-on-1 with Lebron James (or his heir) while being surrounded by Gatorade/Nike/State Farm messaging and imagery. Perhaps our 1-on-1 game is actually part of the filming of a Gatorade commercial that I can then share with friends? And because I’m controlling this mobile immersion experience, I even have a chance to beat King James…then celebrate my victory with a refreshing Gatorade.”
Katie Driggs, Director of Media for FerebeeLane
“My safe prediction is that location based advertising will shift from serving ads based on where the target audience is at that very moment to predicting where the target audience will be in the future. Being creatures of habit, we don’t veer off course very much. Most professionals have their calendars synced to their smartphones, their tasks, their contacts, etc. Therefore, we’ll be able to use this data to target ads and creative based on where people will be in an hour, in two days, next week, etc.
My crazy prediction is that mobile listening data will be used to further craft both dynamic audience targeting and creative messaging. Serve an ad that features crass language to an audience who won’t be offended. Serve a travel ad to someone who consistently calls the west coast to speak with close relatives. Dating sites can target those who’ve recently been dumped. All identifiable information stripped, of course…”
Madelyn Fitzpatrick, Head of International PR at Hylink North America
“Mobile advertising and the ability to monetize VR and AR environments will be the true challenge for developers in the coming years. If monetization of stories, games, and activations on mobile VR/AR cannot happen, then we face a crisis of whether or not VR and AR can remain add-ons to events and one-off stories that require a paid/subscription model.
Expect to see further compression of high quality video ads in-stream. This will lead to the ability, like in China, to watch up to 10 minutes of video in a native ad or sponsored ad feed. Sooner or later, expect the ability to watch full-length TV series within an ad-sponsored unit, delivering tremendous trackable value to advertisers.
Death of the filter economy – expect the video filter economy to fizzle away as ad revenues and returns for advertisers do not track as well.
Cross-cultural platform advertising. We’ll see more targeted advertising at travelers from advertisers in-market when tourists are traveling using apps they bring from home. E.g., Weibo and Sina feeds ads in North America by American advertisers on where to eat, where to visit, and where to play.”
Robert Richardson , Founder & President of Richardson Marketing
“Mobile advertising is the perfect platform for the coming generation, and it’s set to redefine the way brands market to their customers. We already see an enormous societal change taking place; where the consumer wants immediate solutions and gratification, rather than a long drawn out sales process. If you can’t immediately deliver answers, there is a good chance the coming generation will move on to a competitor who can.
Mobile allows you to tap into that expectation and deliver immediate results that are not only highly targeted but uses behavioral indicators, pinpoint locations, and large amounts of user data to immediately deliver what the client wants at an individual level.
As far as technology, I see Artificial Intelligence and personalization as the future of mobile advertising. Platforms like Apple’s Siri and Amazons Alexa will become the gold standard for doing business because people want instant answers and they don’t want to spend time endlessly searching for the products they want. If you can tap into that now, you will be on your way to being one of the leaders of the next generation.”
Keli Wells, Co-founder of Very Large Bits
“Imagine watching a video that’s unknowingly customized specifically for you while you’re watching your favorite Youtube star or TV show. With all the ad blockers and ad tech data around today, there is a growing need to create truly engaging, memorable, and shareable video advertisements that are not intrusive, inauthentic, or unnatural. This change is just beginning because it’s very hard to impress consumers with general purpose advertisements, yet personally engaging videos are very hard to break away from watching.
Dynamic video is a newly evolving industry that empowers advertisers to create millions of uniquely customized videos in real time, with personalized product placements and advertisements embedded directly into each video. During the next decade, advertisers simply won’t waste their money to reach semi-specific audiences – they have all the tools needed to directly target the consumers most interested in their products and services with uniquely compelling media that’s truly meaningful to each individual person.”
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