Mobile marketing – effective channel during a crisis

According to the eMarketer research, the mobile advertising spending in Russia will almost double ($776 million) in 2016 in comparison with 2015. This positive dynamic will continue during the following years, and in 2018 the advertising spending will grow to $1.4 billion. It is almost a 100% year of year over year growth. In spite of the difficult financial situation in the world and in Russian specifically such optimistic forecasts are not unusual: mobile advertising is and continues to be one of the most effective marketing channels.

Development of the programmatic techniques and the ability to capture and analyze large data makes it possible to effectively segment audience on a wide number of parameters helping advertiser to a successful campaign. The advantage of mobile advertising is that all the results can be easily measured and assessed in real time, it is possible to optimize campaigns and redirect budgets at a single user impression level.

The data presented by eMarketer also aligns with the WapStart internal statistics. In 2015 WapStart, the largest independent mobile AdTech platform in Russia, has conducted 1067 advertising campaigns for it’s clients. This was in increase of 44 % as compared to 2014. Furthermore, the revenue from the new advertisers has increased by 73% during the same period which correlates with the general market data and eMarketer forecasts. The growing interest in mobile campaigns allows to say confidently, that the 2016 year will see further acceleration in growth, the volume of budgets and technological capabilities of our services.

Thus, during the optimization of the advertising budgets, the major focus should be on those channels that are guaranteed to help in achieving the goals of the advertisers and have low cost at the same time. The results of such campaigns should be clear and transparent. Mobile advertising, due to the active development of technology and the influx of the advertising money has become a reliable and effective channel. According to our latest research, which was conducted across 875 respondents, a quarter of users will make purchases after watching an Ad at some point. The study has found that 14,5% of the users «will find information about product and buy it later» if interested in the product. The main reasons to delay for this group were the lack of time, speed of the internet or concerns over providing billing information online. Another 11% of the users will not look for a product specifically after seeing an Ad, but will buy it if they accidentally meet it in the future in a more convenient setting. The mobile user will often not make the required action after clicking on the advertising message, but research shows that the ads are getting noticed and users are ready to act on it in the future.

Marina Vladykina
Head of Marketing Department of LLC “Mobile Active”:

“Major brands understand that they can’t cover a B2C audience without using mobile well. Statistics show, that 18% of users surf the Internet only with mobile phones so, there are some of the audience which is impossible to reach without the mobile. Representatives of regional campaigns are also more likely to include mobile ads in their media plans. Many of them start with a small test but, after seeing good results while working with WapStart, the usage of mobile ads becomes regular.”

Today, mobile advertising possibilities are virtually endless (and still rapidly evolving), from the creation of advertising messages of any complexity and entertainment, to use of audience segments and remarketing technology for subsequent post-click or view interaction with the user. Mobile ads are viewed on the user’s most personal device, which is “always at hand”. Western companies experience shows that the share of the budgets in the media plan shifts toward digital and mobile offerings. Gradually, this trend is also arriving to the Russian market.