Mobile Demand Will Rocket with Improved People-Based Targeting

Whether you have been a long-time cross-channel marketer or have focused your efforts on more emerging platforms such as mobile, you’ve at one time or another, over the past 5 years, experienced the limitations of tracking and targeting.

For those of us working across channels, the limitation has been that our legacy option of cookie data is insufficient in the mobile landscape. We have the need for more (and improved) options.

I have some good news and… some more good news. We now know that cookie alternatives have arrived, thanks to new audience-based or people targeting methods, as I’ve discussed in recent columns.

Also, as if mobile got to outright skip a phase and jump right into the future, audience targeting is making its way into mobile. This is thanks to progress in that part of industry, as data science catches up and predictive modeling based on content, time of day, location and device approaches the new normal.

This is good news for the cross-channel marketer; as we head into 2014, we are seeing more technology that enables us to track the entire purchase path, following mobile ad exposure — even onward and into the brick and mortar location.

We have known for some time that mobile was not a cookie-friendly environment, so other targeting intelligence would need to be employed. It’s welcome news that such intelligence is starting to arrive.

The Consumer is Ready and Expectant

Given the amount of time and engagement on mobile devices, the consumer has already voted with their eyeballs and wallets, with mobile playing a very active part in their m-commerce and socially networked lives.

All marketers need to explore the options becoming available for audience targeted mobile marketing, as those in the business of mobile ad tech and data analytics introduce them. Why not also explore opportunities to integrate CRM data with other data sources?

There is no substitute for the advertiser’s own marketing intelligence, found in their CRM database, already at their fingertips.

The Power of Reaching People on Mobile

We are now able to use data for audience targeted mobile advertising across all kinds of mobile devices, achieving greater mobile reach of eyeballs and wallets — reaching people, not pixels, as was the case in the cookie-driven world.

Mobile advertising campaign performance data is captured by mobile ad networks, technology companies, and the premium publishers, who keep track of which kind of devices are interacting with each ad. We are potentially reaching consumers at their most decisive moments, in store, armed with mobile, when we market this way.

The combination of privacy-permissible, targeting intelligence from the marketers’ own database, matched (accurately and at scale) is what brings mobile finally into the core of the marketing operation. These undeniable enhancements are making the advertising spend in mobile rational and defensible in a way that was previously impossible. Mobile is now central to — often even leading — the marketing mix, as it is usable for audience-based methods.

For the first time, mobile is working in concert with all the other targeted advertising channels, making control over the multichannel marketing experience a reality for the advertiser.

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