How Your Company Can Stop Shooting In The Dark With Mobile Ads

As a company trying to grow your business, you’ve probably done what most companies have done--you’ve used mobile ads to boost and retain your user/client base. You followed your instinct to be where your customers are. At the end of the day you look at the data, the spikes and dips in install or LTV activity and you optimize.

The thing is, in the beginning marketers were optimizing with no notion of which media source, meaning display ads, Facebook, etc, was responsible for the different trends. It was akin to shooting in the dark. There was no way for them to know how to optimize their campaigns. Was it their campaign on AdMob? Or maybe, it was a campaign they ran with Twitter? Now of course it’s a thing of the past and the industry has learned to demand the attribution for all campaigns. Better data and attribution has prompted more companies to allocate their marketing budgets for mobile ads, according to eMarketer.

However, companies are turning a new page because they understand mobile campaigns aren’t enough to bring the quality users they want. The marketers of the second screen have come to realize that they have to turn the original screen—television.

You probably just thought to yourself, “You’ve got to be kidding me?” It’s true. Mobile ads just aren’t enough. Television immediately gives you access to 285 million users in the US. The numbers are simply mind-blowing.

The trend we’re seeing right now, is the industry is looking for new ways to grow their user base, one than can be monetized. For instance, King would want to identify more users who would be willing to buy more lives on Candy Crush, a free to play app. Recently Supercell made a big commotion because of their star-studded Clash of the Clans Super Bowl commercial which continues to command attention on YouTube. The fact is video programming spills over to mobile devices and the web, which is viewed on mobile devices. All the lines have completely blurred. Broadband TV News recently reported that YouTube will be integrated into the German television rating system to give a fuller picture of media consumption. Digital advertising campaigns have been easier to track than TV campaigns.

However, TV commercials present a challenge similar to that at the inception of mobile advertising. How the heck do you attribute and measure the ROI of a commercial on mobile installs? How would marketers know if the commercial was worth it? How would they know how to optimize it?

That has just changed thanks to the recent release of AppsFlyer’s TV attribution feature. It was developed because of the many requests we had from clients. They now recognize that TV is the medium of all mediums. As a recent article put it, television still provides brand credibility for the masses. It also is successful in creating a positive “halo effect.”

The other important factor to take into consideration is that the general public is watching TV while using their mobile device. It’s a bigger population than you may think; Nielsen reports that about 84% of viewers are doing it. That means app developers have access to an audience who can immediately take action upon viewing a commercial. Viewers can download an app following a tv ad. Or, if they already have the app installed, they can be incentivized to make an in-app purchase or open a new session to try out a new feature.

Our clients are lining up to use our new TV Attribution feature so they can evangelize the masses about their app. They are thrilled to have the ability to measure these campaigns as well as attribute them for the first time.

This is just the beginning. As more and more advertisers take to the airwaves, they will realize that they need X or Y data points. Measurement tools will be right by their side empowering them to measure it all. This is the end of advertising campaigns in the dark...