Top 8 Mobile App Advertising Benefits

For brands, there are many top mobile app advertising benefits. In comparison to just about any other marketing strategy option, mobile advertising within apps has a number of unique advantages for mobile marketers - or even general managers of advertising more generally.

Here are the top eight perks of mobile in-app advertising that make it the best mobile strategy.

1) Target Consumers Without Cookies

Within mobile web advertising or any other browser-based marketing effort, most data available to marketers and advertisers has traditionally come from cookies. That may be fine for Cookie Monster, but it won’t cut it for savvy marketers today.

There are a few core problems with cookies:

• Cookies miss close to two-thirds of all mobile devices, since they’re only available with browsers and not apps.
• They have a short shelf life. Some cookies only last until a user’s session is over, failing to capture historical trends. Also, many people set up their browsers to automatically clear even persistent cookies.
• They are specific to devices, so they don’t account for people who use multiple devices. For example, let’s say a target customer looks at a website on a desktop and then later looks at the same site on a laptop later in the day. Cookies would track this as two separate people coming to the site, not one person coming from separate devices.
• It doesn’t capture identifying information like email addresses, meaning that it typically won’t tell you very much about who came to the site and how they can be reached.

2) Mobile Device IDs

Every mobile device has a unique identification number, kind of like its own UPN code or Social Security number. This number is agnostic to specific apps or websites, unlike cookies. For advertisers, having device ID data can be enormously helpful, as this data can help provide deeper insights on how someone uses their phone across all of their apps. For instance, if someone was on one app and then clicked on an ad to go to another app, the device ID would provide information on that total journey across the different apps.

3) Reach Mobile Users Across a Wide Range of Properties with Deterministic Data

Digital marketing has long been based on single action points, which is in part why last-click attribution became the default standard. While the final ad may have caused someone to finally pull the trigger and convert, likely that person took a lot of key steps before they elected to click.

But how do you know what precisely they were doing, viewing and seeing before that final action? With most datasets, you just don’t know for certain.

This is where deterministic data comes into play. By providing a more holistic look at a person’s actions and habits across apps, websites and devices, brands gain a deeper understanding of the overall customer journey.

For example, let’s say someone saw an ad for a pair or shoes on their laptop in the morning, conducted research on their smartphone in the afternoon and ultimately purchased the brand on their tablet in the event. Without deterministic data, it would just look like a direct site visit led to the purchase, without taking into account all of the crucial previous steps.

4) Target Audiences with a High Degree of Precision

Thanks to GPS signals and other factors coming from mobile devices, it’s possible to determine where someone is located. For advertisers with access to these kinds of insights, having location data can be enormously useful.

Consider these scenarios:

• Advertisers that specifically target business travelers can run ads to only people located in or near airports and convention centers during the work week, to better guarantee that its target audience received the ads.
• Brands hoping to reach sports fans could aim to have its ads run only on mobile devices located at stadiums and sports bars on game days.
• Publishers can be sure that their users only receive ads from brands that actually do business in their geography.
• Ad creatives can include maps, which help to highlight a company’s nearest physical storefront to the app end user.

The mantra of real estate is location, location, location. In advertising, location can be just as impactful as well.

5) Total Share of Voice Within Mobile Apps

Go open a newspaper or web page, and count how many ads you see. Chances are, there will be multiple creatives vying for your attention. As an advertiser, how do you cut through this clutter and ensure your ad is actually seen?

This is where in-app advertising can prove enormously useful. Regardless of whether an advertiser is running 300x250 banners or fullscreen videos, there is almost always only one ad on screen at any one time. This way, brand messaging and positioning is not competing against any other ads for the end user’s attention and awareness.

6) No Blocking of In-App Ads

Whether you run display ads, banners, video ads or any other creative, you don’t have to worry as much about it not showing up in front of our target audience. That’s because within apps, there are no ad blockers. Considering that over 75 percent of people in North America now engage in some level of ad blocking, being able to ensure viewability is hugely beneficial.

7) Get Ideal Click-Through Rates with High Impact Creatives

Thanks to the wide variety of creative options available on mobile (including video ads with interactive end cards, playable ads, 360-degree ads, etc.), getting targeted individuals to visit your site, check out your social media profiles, download your app or make a purchase is easier than it would be on a mobile site or other browser-based environment.

8) Great Video Completion Rates with In-App Advertising

Overall, the click-through rate for all display ad formats within browser environments is 0.05 percent, and it’s only 0.1 percent for rich media advertising. And, not only are 60 percent of banner ad clicks accidental, but less than 10 percent of all digital advertising is viewed for longer than a second.

Contrast this with in-app video advertising. One study found that around 64 percent of all video ads were viewed from beginning to end on mobile devices. Thanks to the many benefits that come with in-app advertising, these kinds of ads are often more viewable and thus more effective than just about any other form of paid digital outreach and acquisition available today.

Interested in learning more about the benefits of mobile in-app advertising? Be sure to check out our other blogs on the topic.