According to research, smartphones are our most used digital device. 80% of us use smartphones every day, and 41% of us say that their phones are changing the way they consume entertainment at home. Watching, streaming, listening, gaming, chatting, browsing, shopping… Almost everything has gone mobile.
However when it comes to ads, mobile advertising is as if it were a totally different entity, something that needs to be optimized for the screen and is highly clickable. In reality, mobile advertising has evolved to encompass a wide variety of opportunities that cannot be aggregated into a homogeneous format, accounting for 64% of all digital investments. From an advertising point of view, mobile should be seen as a medium that requires a specific approach based on creativity, involving contexts and moods.
Almost all daily activities are mobile. We do everything on our phones and channel all our different interests into our phones. So what does this mean for advertisers? First of all, brands need to adapt to people’s moods when engaging in these different activities. Mobile is no longer just about making sure an ad is optimized for the screen. Smartphones are at the center of everything we do, and we need to create a message about that mood and moment.
For mobile game ads, this means stepping onto the playground to respect the immersive environment and enhance the experience or offer rewards. For social media ads, we should take advantage of the facts that we can be easily distracted, have a curious mindset, and are open to seeking inspiration.
This means over-targeting or over-personalizing, which is a huge consequence for a more digital-savvy audience. In this case, reassessing the value of non-addressable data is an important first step.
So what does a successful mobile strategy mean in 2021? Applying a more nuanced perspective to the wide variety of opportunities that mobile covers. It’s about understanding the ways in which people might use their mobile phones and taking the time to think about advertising elements that will fit with that mood. It also means being willing to think differently about what mobile ads can achieve beyond performance metrics when it comes to storytelling and brand building.
