Mobile marketing issue 16 for issuu by Mobile Marketing Magazine

ISSUE 16 • MARCH 2014

NEWS | VIEWS | ANALYSIS

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS The very best work in the mobile marketing industry – revealed!

ACQUIRED TASTE What consolidation in the mobile ad space means for your business

ON LOCATION Expert tips for running smart location-based campaigns

GOING NATIVE How social media advertising is re-writing the rulebook

START-UP CITY Where are last year’s Barca Starta ﬁnalists now?

ENGAGEMENT

ENGINE

Dynmark CEO Paul Putman on how the Donky platform can turn your app into a CRM workhorse

PLUS: HOTELS.COM • MHEALTH START-UPS • EXPERT OPINION • STRATEGIC ADVICE

Results. Delivered. Millennial Media helps the world's top brands succeed in mobile. Our advertisers beneďŹ t from new and powerful ways to engage and connect with their target audiences, while delivering meaningful results.

MARCH 2014

CONTENTS

CONTENTS COVER STORY

18 Animal magic We talk to Paul Putman – Dynmark CEO – to ﬁnd out about the company’s Donky two-way mobile engagement platform

AWARDS SPECIAL – PAGE 21

And the winner is… Get the lowdown on our Effective Mobile Marketing Awards ceremony

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Viewpoint How mobile is changing the travel business, according to Hotels.com

14 Russell Buckley on… … the mHealth boom and how humans will soon live until we’re 200 years old

66 Off-deck Observations from Helen Keegan on how to nurture innovation in your business

REAL WORLD

Acquired taste We take a look at the consolidation that has shaken up mobile advertising

10 Standing still on location Learn how to make the most of the opportunity in location-based marketing

16 Snapping up start-ups Check out the little companies that major players have bought for big money

INNOVATION

44 Going native The big social media players are innovating with their own ad formats…

49 What to wear How wearable technology and curvy screens took over Vegas at this year’s CES

Plus: turn to page 60 for details of our MWC Barca Starta event

BUSINESS MODELS

38 Close control Discover IQzone’s ‘Postitial’ ad unit, which engages users as they close an app

41 Frictionless payments How Barclays Pingit has conquered P2P payments and is taking on mCommerce

42 3D dreams The tech behind Amobee’s 3D ad unit that lets consumers interact with a product

52 Mobile gaming grows up How Probability is facilitating branded gaming and gambling apps

54 Engaging Africa The men behind RAMP explain their mobile platform for developing markets

56 5BSHFUJOH BU TDBMF experts at nugg.ad

58 Keeping in contact Collstream looks into the CRM potential of mobile messaging solutions

64 This time we mean it Recruitment experts Digital Gurus on why there will be no more mobile false dawns

Editorial director: David Murphy – david.murphy@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0) 7976 927 062 Commercial director: John Owen – john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0) 7769 674 824 Business development manager: Richard Partridge – richard.partridge@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Event sales director: Shelley Dowsett – shelley.dowsett@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Business development manager: Nicola Velasco – nicola.velasco@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Sales executive: Lisa Slavin – lisa.slavin@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Editor: Andy Penfold – andy.penfold@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Designer: Drew Geary – drew.geary@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Online editor: Alex Spencer – alex.spencer@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Reporter: Kirsty Styles – kirtsty.styles@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Event content manager: Hannah Wallace – hannah.wallace@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Contributors: Yannick Barriol, Russell Buckley, Graham Jarvis, Helen Keegan Print: Advent Print Group info@advent-colour.co.uk Special thanks this issue to: Jo Murphy, Rowan Chambers, Rob Thurner For a paid subscription please email: subscriptions@mobilemarketingmagazine.com One Year Subscription Rates – UK: £30.00; ROW: £40.00 Mobile Marketing is published by Dot Media Ltd., 114-116 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AH www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

THINGS

HAPPEN WHEN YOU

text local Business Mobile Messaging

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MARCH 2014

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

VIEWPOINT Yannick Barriol, Hotels.com’s director of global mobile marketing, on how the company meets the traveller’s needs There is no better example of a mobile-centric shopper than the traveller. On the go, with time-based eCommerce needs, the traveller’s best friend is their mobile. At Hotels.com we realised this early and launched our fully optimised site in 2009 and the ﬁrst version of our app in 2011. Since then, our apps have been downloaded more than 25m times and 20 per cent of our bookings are now made on a mobile device. Mobile was a game changer in terms of the way our customers book hotel rooms, with 70 per cent of smartphone reservations being for the same day (and most of them are made after 5pm). This last-minute demand opens up a whole new opportunity in the industry. Responsive design is the starting block for mobile web products, but to take your mobile offering to the next level, we believe the concept of responsive can be applied to entire companies. It doesn’t make sense for every company to be ‘mobile ﬁrst’. Online travel agencies’ biggest share of business is still coming from desktop, but it makes sense for every company to be responsive. At Hotels.com, we try to apply responsive philosophy to every part of the company: product of course, but also marketing, business intelligence, retail, and hotel

Smartphone and tablet owners usually have no more than one app per category

inventory. Every team aims to think multi-screen for the projects they are running.

Web vs apps A lot of our customers choose to use web over apps for smartphones, and especially for tablets. I see a lot of brands developing great apps but leaving mobile web users with a poor desktop experience. Considering the increasing diversity of devices and behaviours, we think this is a mistake. We are seeing impressive growth coming from our mobile website because we put a lot of effort into building a great user experience for customers using our website on a smartphone or a tablet. From a marketing perspective though, we do tend to lean towards apps. We find that pushing customer acquisition through apps is bringing great long-term benefits for our marketing mix. The loyalty and attachment to the brand generated by our app is definitely worth the initial cost of acquisition. Customers acquired via apps tend to be more engaged, have a higher repeat-booking rate, and when they come back to us they do it most often via the app. This behaviour brings a great deal of efficiency to our marketing activities since we don’t have to pay expensive channels such as search engine or price comparison sites for the same customer again and again. We have also observed that apps are bringing the importance of the

brand back to the top of customer priorities, and in evolutionary terms it’s quite interesting to understand why this is happening. Before the internet, customers were going to their local travel agency to book their holidays. They chose one agent or brand, and, assuming they were happy, used the same to book their following holidays. The internet made it very easy to compare prices, especially with the rise of travel metasearch. Brands then started to take a back seat, as many customers focused mostly on prices and forgot which travel agent they were booking with. Now, surveys show that smartphone and tablet owners usually have no more than one app per category. They choose one and if they are satisﬁed they keep using it just like they did with their shopfront travel agent. In that regard, the moment of choice is even more important. Having a strong brand and name like Hotels.com is helping our mobile marketing efforts. That’s why we have developed mobile-speciﬁc TV creative to increase the awareness of our apps. Our mobile strategy has already paid off for the business and the future is exciting. Emerging technologies and cross-device capabilities bring the need to constantly innovate and evolve. Just as the traveller thirsts for new adventures and uncharted destinations, so do we – and we can help them on their journey. MM

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REAL WORLD

MARCH 2014

ACQUIRED TASTE

What’s behind the latest spate of acquisitions in the mobile advertising industry? Andy Penfold scrutinises the deals

In any new or ﬂedgling industry, consolidation tends to follow fragmentation, and that’s certainly the case in mobile advertising. The industry is still a messy web of big players and countless start-ups, but the recent ﬂurry of acquisitions shows that a consensus is arriving in terms of direction. Amid the relentless news of growth in mobile advertising, it’s easy to forget that the technology

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is still in a nascent stage. It’s also easy to forget that the more established players and start-ups alike are all striving to offer a technology that lets advertisers and publishers on mobile do what they’ve been able to do on desktop for some time – buy inventory programmatically, based on tightly-deﬁned targeting criteria. While Google and Apple dipped into the pool of mobile advertising talent a few years ago with the acquisitions of AdMob and Quattro Wireless respectively, the ﬂurry of deals late last year are all about offering the ability to target ads in the same way that’s possible on desktop.

The issue is that cookies – the ad tracking technology in use on desktop – don’t work in the same way on mobile devices, says Sian Rowlands, research analyst at Juniper Research. “This means that mobile ad networks and other players in the value chain are having to ﬁnd new ways to target and track users,” she says. “However, this is not necessarily a bad thing; one of the reasons mobile advertising has been classed as ‘ineffective’ by some is because advertisers have simply taken what’s worked on desktop and put it onto a mobile device. Now, the more innovative companies

MARCH 2014

REAL WORLD

2013’s deals at a glance

Mobile ad networks and other players are having to ﬁnd new ways to target and track users

8 January

13 August

8 January

28 August

Sian Rowlands, reseach analyst, Juniper Research in the mobile advertising industry are building new solutions that don’t rely on cookies, and standards are being shaped. So while the lack of standards has held back the mobile advertising industry to an extent, it’s also providing the impetus to innovate and provide better solutions.”

Fragmented landscape However, the industry is in the early stages of standardising its processes, and this makes for a fragmented landscape for now. Ed Owen, analyst at eMarketer, says the consolidation we’ve seen over the last year or so is just the start of a wider trend. “It’s good that consolidation is happening, but I suspect there’s a lot more to come,” he says. “The way around the absence of cookies makes mobile advertising very complicated. If you want to run a meaningful campaign you have to string together a number of different agencies and technologies. You can’t just do it through one agency. What we really need is more consolidation to make all these different ways of doing things much simpler, so you can book campaigns more easily.”

eMarketer’s research certainly shows the need to bring mobile advertising in line with desktop in terms of value. The research company’s study on the US digital ad market predicts that desktop ad spending will peak at $35.4bn (£21.6bn) in 2014, and fall back to 2012 levels by 2017. The company says both desktop banner and search advertising will fall or remain ﬂat in 2014. On the other side of the coin, mobile banner and search advertising is forecast to grow by 100 per cent and 76 per cent respectively. Mobile is, of course, starting from a much lower base – the same study has 2012 ﬁgures for desktop ad spending at $32.43bn and mobile at $4.36bn. However, the general direction of desktop versus mobile – even despite the limitations when it comes to metrics – helps to explain the clamour of the industry’s larger players to snap up companies with something to offer. “The problem is that when people invent things, it is necessarily proprietary,” says Owen. “So the IP that’s tied up to the invention – someone needs to buy it.”

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Are we doing a deal? We ask the people involved in the recent big mobile ad acquisitions what the deals bring to their business. We also asked Eleni Marouli, advertising analyst at research ﬁrm IHS, what the deals mean for the industry

QUITE A PERFORMANCE DEAL: Millennial Media acquires Jumptap DATE: 13 August, 2013 DETAILS: A mobile ad network with a pioneering approach to mining data and forging partnerships with data providers, Jumptap’s offering includes 100m unique user proﬁles, 44m of them multiscreen, and a portfolio of 55 patents and 50 more pending. The deal sees Jumptap’s shareholders receive around 24.6m shares in Millennial Media – a 22.5 per cent stake in the company. At the share price at the time of the sale, that stake was worth $209.1m. In return, Millennial gets to incorporate Jumptap’s technology into its own platform. THEY SAY: “We’ve been aware of Jumptap for a long time as they’ve had a strong presence in the industry, particularly in the US,

and were a respected player in the performance part of our business. Their expertise in performance marketing, programmatic buying and third-party data complements our strengths in brand advertising, ﬁrst party data and global scale. “Jumptap’s core capabilities ﬁt nicely within our own capabilities and the additions greatly accelerate and enhance our progress in areas such as programmatic and the recent EMEA roll-out of our MMX premium mobile exchange. So the acquisition enabled us to bring to market these things far quicker. They were already on our roadmap, but we’ve been able to accelerate that roadmap. Obviously in mobile this is vital. The pace of change is phenomenal, but the

Paying a premium

truth is it may never be this slow again. For a company like us to remain in our position, we need to be aware of that.” Zac Pinkham, interim MD, Millennial Media IHS SAYS: “Millennial Media specialises in brand advertising. The mobile medium is however primarily a performance-based advertising vehicle, with most of the growth in mobile display ad spend coming from non-brand campaigns. The acquisition of Jumptap will provide Millennial with better resources to capture the performance-based market. “The Jumptap purchase is the biggest of a series of datafocused acquisitions by Millennial following that of TapMetrics,

a mobile app analytics ﬁrm in February 2010; and Condaptive, a mobile location data start-up in May 2011. As programmatic buying becomes increasingly pervasive in mobile, it is essential that Millennial expands its portfolio to include this. “This is particularly important if Millennial wants to remain relevant in an ecosystem with powerhouses like Google, whose programmatic capabilities are very advanced across online and mobile. Millennial must strengthen its data targeting capabilities and offer effective performance-based campaigns. Partnering with over 20 thirdparty data providers in addition to its ﬁrst-party data, Jumptap offers just that.”

MARCH 2014

REAL WORLD

READY-MADE BOOST DEAL: Amobee buys Gradient X DATE: 5 September, 2013 DETAILS: Amobee was itself acquired by Singaporean operator SingTel for $321m in 2012, but made the news in September with an acquisition of its own. For a sum rumoured to be in the tens of millions of dollars, the mobile ad tech ﬁrm acquired LA-based startup Gradient X – a company whose RTB platform only came out of beta last summer. Nonetheless, the platform offers Amobee a ready-made RTB solution.

Despite all the hype around mobile display advertising, search accounts for the majority of mobile advertising revenues

THEY SAY: “When we met the founders and engineering team of Gradient X we knew they were technology rock stars, who

SOCIAL SHOPPING DEAL: Twitter buys MoPub DATE: 5 September, 2013 DETAILS: In the week when Apple held one of its highprofile launch events, Twitter’s purchase of MoPub – the world’s largest in-app ad exchange – was overshadowed by brightly coloured iPhones. But the stock transaction, valued at around $350m, could be massive in the mobile social advertising space. Combining Twitter’s mine of first-party data with ownership of a top-of-the-range mobile RTB ad exchange proved the final step before the company went public in November. THEY SAY: “The two major trends in the ad world right now are the rapid consumer shift toward mobile usage, and the industry

shift to programmatic buying. Twitter sits at the intersection of these, and we think by bringing MoPub’s technology to Twitter, we can further drive these trends for the beneﬁt of consumers, advertisers, and agencies. “The MoPub team has built a leading mobile ad exchange, and their focus on providing transparency to advertisers and publishers aligns with our values. We’ll continue to invest in and improve their core business. In particular, we think there is a key opportunity to extend many types of native advertising across the mobile ecosystem through the MoPub exchange.” Twitter blog post, announcing the acquisition

would be an excellent addition to the top team at Amobee. We share a common vision in how to use technology to ﬁnally make mobile the most effective marketing channel to reach the right customer, with the right offer, at the right time and place. Gradient X has created the most advanced bidding algorithms and audience targeting capabilities for mobile. Combining the Gradient X platform with Amobee’s platform will give our large brand advertisers the ability to bid on digital inventory programmatically, with a targeted audience, at an optimised price

IHS SAYS: “Twitter is a ‘mobileﬁrst’ company, so mobile is also its focus for advertising monetisation. The introduction of MoPub’s advertising automation will help Twitter improve the monetisation and scalability of its mobile ads. Twitter can expect efﬁciencies in international advertising sales as programmatic solutions don’t need a sales force on the ground in order to monetise a market. “This will also improve the lead-time in Twitter’s ad insertion process – increasingly important as Twitter continues to invest in social TV capabilities with its acquisition of social TV startup Trendrr in August 2013. The reason Twitter purchased MoPub ahead of other competitors is that it has the biggest base of publishers. They’re not premium publishers, but they number in the thousands rather the hundreds.” MM

in real time. Amobee now has the best data-driven programmatic buying platform in the market, which immediately translates into higher ROI for the CMO.” Trevor Healy, CEO, Amobee IHS SAYS: “Amobee already had quite advanced programmantic capabilities, so this acquisition is more about enhancing what it currently has. Amobee works mostly with brands, but mobile advertising is more effective as a direct sales channel, so the strategy here is to boost revenues from direct response advertising and call to action.”

Twitter is hoping its acquisition of MoPub will help drive advertising revenues on mobile and on the web.

@mmmagtweets

REAL WORLD

MARCH 2014

STANDING STILL ON LOCATION

Location-based mobile marketing is a genuine opportunity to segment audiences, but many marketers hold back from trying it out. Graham Jarvis asks why It’s easy to be sucked into cheesy, hypothetical examples of how mobile location-based marketing is going to change your promotional activity forever. You know the one – the consumer walks past your shop, and as they pass, a message sent to their phone lures them through the door, and before you know it, you’ve got a sale and a loyal customer for life. That story has been doing the rounds ever since Tom Cruise was identiﬁed via iris recognition and bombarded with offers when he entered his local shopping mall in the movie Minority Reportt, back in 2002 – well over a decade ago now.

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With phones rather than irises, this kind of thing is perfectly feasible today. But many marketers just aren’t trying it out. Jason Spero, Google’s director of global acquisitions, says that marketers are letting the “future be the enemy of the now” whenever they think about combining location, mobile and digital in their activity, because the magical example misses the point entirely. “Some very scalable things are available with regards to the targeting and optimisation of messages that many marketers look past,” he says. Speaking at the Ad Age Digital Conference last October, he said that many

Google customers – Fortune 500 companies as well as SMBs – aren’t taking advantage of location as a segmentation signal.” In other words, these companies aren’t thinking about the customer on this side of town versus the customer on the other side of a town, and how that differentiation affects their value as a target. Direct marketers have known about and exploited location for decades through post code targeting. Broadcasters have also used location demographics to deﬁne value for the beneﬁt of different audiences based on where they live. So Spero says the starting point for tentative marketers should be looking at

MARCH 2014

Location should be seen as data that empowers all forms of media – not as a platform in itself Asif Khan, president, Locationbased Marketing Association

the technology that’s available today to understand how to get started with segmentation and targeting. It might not be sexy but this approach leads to a material impact on the results that can be gained by following this approach, he says. For example, marketing agency DGS helped Comcast with its customer acquisition campaign to recognise that certain locations are more valuable than others, and that customers in different location segments respond to different marketing messages and calls to action. This insight required them to present a different value proposition and call to action to each segment, and this led

Comcast to reduce ITS costs per acquisition and increase its margins. Asif Khan, president and founder of the Location-Based Marketing Association (LBMA), says marketers are often reluctant to embrace the new in favour of what has been tried and tested, because they are afraid of losing the client or jeopardising their own jobs through poor returns. However, he says that seeing mobile location-based marketing as a new technology is only half of the story – it should be perceived as “data that empowers all forms of media – not [as a] platform itself”. After all, a billboard is a location-based advertisement that has been around for a long

REAL WORLD

time, and consequently many marketers don’t have a problem spending their advertising budgets on it. Mobile is also a location-sensitive activity – one which allows you to measure the outcomes of the activity better than in any billboard campaign.

Channel differentiation Joe Abraham, VP of marketing at DGS, thinks that marketers make the mistake of treating mobile customers as if they are actually desktop ones. “They assume that advertisements and content will make an identical transition, but the mobile user is unique,” he says. From his experience it should be about ease of use and the availability of the data.

Six location-based mobile marketing tips

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more complex campaigns. “[Marketers are] thinking about mobile and location to solve the challenges they are facing and to extend their engagement with an audience they haven’t been able to address with traditional media,” she says.

Privacy concerns

‘Some very scalable things are available with regards to the targeting and optimisation of messages that many marketers look past’ Jason Spero, director of global acquisitions, Google The gravest error committed by marketers in the design of location-based marketing campaigns is derived from the fact that too many of them leave out context, says Abraham. “The advertiser needs to be aware that the location of the searcher is not necessarily where the resulting service or business is needed, and so it may be worth experimenting if a business has multiple locations to have easy access to additional locations for their customer base,” he explains. Ginni Arnold, head of communications at Weve, says that marketers are still getting a handle on the context of the consumer at any given time. “Location and the ability to talk to a consumer directly on their mobile device based on a speciﬁc area at scale is still a relatively new concept,” she says. Half of Weve’s campaigns in 2013 contained some form of location element, according to Arnold. So in her view brands are testing out location and checking the results in order to develop and deploy larger and

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The LBMA’s Khan nevertheless thinks that there are many companies that aren’t using mobile location-based technologies as a segmentation signal because they fear that they will invade the privacy of their customers. However, he says these fears are usually unfounded, because customers in his experience are happy to accept location-based offers that are relevant to them in exchange for a loss of some of their privacy. “The other reason why marketers turn away from mobile location-based marketing technologies is about reach and frequency,” he says. This may be because he has found

that most of the location-based marketing platforms available today, including Foursquare, “don’t have enough users to justify moving dollars away from traditional media”. However, he believes that his work with DGS demonstrates the value of location as a segmentation tool and how customers should be valued differently based on where they live, work and play to determine brands’ marketing expenditure.

Click-to-call results The results also speak for themselves: a click-to-call mobile campaign, for example, for Comcast by Google achieved a 40 per cent increase in activity; the clickthrough rate was 9 per cent higher than when standard advertisements were used and the click-tovalue ratio (CVR) was 23 per cent higher than achieved with standard ads. Furthermore, the cost per call was reduced by 30 per cent, and Google Adwords formed the basis of Comcast’s

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mobile advertising campaign that used keywords to direct customers to the company’s mobile-optimised websites. These allowed customers to check service or product availability based on their location and used click-to-call to encourage them to engage with the ﬁrm. So marketers can deliver improved results if they can overcome the factors that are stopping them getting involved in location-based mobile marketing. It’s clear that they shouldn’t wait for the future to arrive before they take advantage of the beneﬁts of using mobile location-based marketing and advertising campaigns to boost their business. MM

REAL WORLD

Retail is ripe for location-based mobile marketing, but it’s vital as much context as possible is built into the campaign

Record company Decca rules the Proms

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

BUCKLEY ON… With a new venture taking him into the world of mHealth, Russell Buckley Qonders how mobile can help keep us well I was recently very flattered to be asked to be chairman of an up-and-coming MedTech company – Touch Surgery – which prompted me to devote this column to a quick look around the world of MedTech, mobile and especially if there are any marketing implications. But first, let’s look at the big picture. There are some big trends happening in medical technology, which is hopefully great news for the future of humanity. Firstly, there’s managing your health through data, the so-called ‘Quantified Self’ movement. Its current manifestation is through gadgets like FitBit and apps like Moves, which track activity such as exercise and sleep patterns, and can be used to record calories consumed and used. In a few years, these services will be much more comprehensive, tracking everything from your blood pressure to heart patterns, allowing you and your medical advisors to optimise your health and take preventative measures before a drastic intervention is needed. Then we have personalised drug treatment based on your very own DNA. The cost of analysing DNA has plummeted in recent years. For a mere $99, a company like 23andMe will sequence your DNA, compared to the original cost of $3bn back in

‘There are some big trends happening in med-tech, which is hopefully great news for the future of humanity’

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the 1970s. While 23andMe is currently battling the US FDA about the legitimacy of the health implications of its service, it can only be a matter of time before it is reinstated or a competitor is licensed to operate. When this happens, doctors will be able to see what disease their patients might be susceptible to and advise them to manage their health accordingly, but also to prescribe the right combination of drugs for their body chemistry to treat them when they do get sick. Finally, there’s a lot of work being undertaken by the life extension movement, which focuses on slowing down or even stopping the ageing process. In the words of the wonderfully hirsute gerontologist, Dr Aubrey de Grey: “Ageing is, unequivocally, the major cause of death in the industrialised world.” While it’s still fairly early days in this field, much progress is expected in the next decades. In the coming years, these megatrends will come together to ensure that not only will we live more healthy lives, less marred by periods of sickness, but that our lifespans are likely to improve dramatically – some of the more optimistic researchers believe that the first person to reach 200 has already been born! So where does this grandiose vision fit in with mobile marketing? Touch Surgery didn’t ask me to be chairman because of my medical qualifications – it was actually founded by four surgeons, so they

have plenty of expertise in that area – but because of my knowledge around mobile and advertising. Touch Surgery is an app (Android and iOS) that allows surgeons to practice forthcoming operations – essentially reminding themselves of what they have already been trained to do. They can do a prompted walkthough, then, practice without any guidance. Finally, they can see how they compare to their peers – and practice more if they’re not getting the best results. The app is free for surgeons to use (and surprisingly popular with patients too). The business model is sponsored – the idea is that companies that sell products that surgeons use, such as instruments, devices or joint replacements would sponsor the app. Touch Surgery aspires to change the way surgeons learn, train and are monitored. And this will improve surgical outcomes in the coming years – maybe that 200th birthday isn’t such a long shot after all.

“By embracing tablet capabilities, we deliver more regular content and even deeper engagement, promoting discovery and helping increase admissions and revenue” Head of Corporate Sales & Advertising, Vue Entertainment

AWARD-WINNING CONTENT MARKETING Some of our recent successes for a mobile operator include: Mobile Web Awards 2013

Best Magazine Mobile Application Best Telecoms Mobile Application

get release alerts and book films direct from the magazine app, quickly and with minimal effort. Plus, analytics provide insight into behaviour, paving the way for future segmentation and personalisation.

Vue magazine tablet app – a smarter content solution Publicis Blueprint delivers an engaging newsstand-quality, editorially rich magazine for Vue Cinemas that embodies the brand personality, promotes discovery and rewards Vue’s core audience of film fans and families, helping to deliver stand out and drive increased market share/revenues in this highly competitive marketplace.

Michael Kalli, Head of Corporate Sales and Advertising at Vue Entertainment: “The success of Vue magazine has been phenomenal, showing that there’s a big appetite from our customers for a quality title which both informs and entertains. By embracing tablet capabilities with the app, we deliver more regular content and even deeper engagement, promoting discovery while making booking tickets easy, helping to increase admissions and drive frequency of visit and average revenue per person.”

Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2013

Best Campaign from a Mobile Operator Highly Commended Best Tablet App

“A winning app that’s easy on the eye and easy on the finger” “Rich, useful content, engaging design, simple navigation and effective at cross-selling and upselling”

Just launched as an app for iPad and iPad mini bit.ly/vuemagiOS and Android tablets bit.ly/vuemagAndroid, the new app edition goes far beyond replicating print, combining quality content with tablet functionality and optimised UX to deliver an engaging interactive experience that adds value. Users can browse an interactive film calendar,

Judges’ comments, Effective Mobile Marketing Awards

Love Content. Love Brands Contact: Nicola Blair-Park

M: +44 (0)7958 511682

E: nicola.blair-park@publicis-blueprint.co.uk

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BUYING TIME The start of the year has seen a ﬂurry of acquisition activity from the biggest names in technology. Alex Spencer rounds up the key deals and analyses the rationale behind them

Google buys DeepMind 26th January 2014 How Much? More than $500m (£301m) Who are they? The London-based artificial intelligence company develops learning algorithms, which have seen their first commercial applications in areas ranging from eCommerce to simulations and gaming. Facebook was reportedly in talks to buy the company last year, but Google has beaten it to the punch. Why buy them? With Google’s offerings ranging from search to driverless cars – both of which could conceivably benefit from the

Yahoo! buys Sparq 21st January 2014 How Much? Undisclosed Who are they? Mobile marketing ﬁrm Sparq, which had previously raised a total $1.7m in funding, specialises in app deep-linking, enabling companies to connect directly to in-app content from a website or another app. Why buy them? Since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO

in July 2012, Yahoo has been on a buying spree – as well as 25-plus acquisitions last year, January also saw it buy mobile app management platform Aviate, as part of a wider reinvention of the company. Yahoo already offers a broad range of products, most of which have their own applications – and the Sparq acquisition could make it easier to link between these products.

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acquisition – and the range of applications for DeepMind’s tech, it’s difﬁcult to identify the exact motivation behind this buy. What’s most notable, though, is how it ﬁts alongside Google’s other recent acquisitions, including Nest and its rapidly-growing roster of robotics companies. In December alone, it announced seven acquisitions in this area, including Boston Dynamics, Redwood Robotics and Schaft.inc. The implications are scary enough that Google has already agreed to set up an ethics board as part of the deal, to make sure it doesn’t abuse DeepMind’s technology.

MARCH 2014

REAL WORLD

Facebook buys Branch Media 14th January 2014 How Much? Approximately $15m (reported)

Who are they? With investors including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Branch Media has launched two social products: Branch, a web platform which draws together groups to chat about speciﬁc topics or news stories; and social news aggregator Potluck, a news aggregator app that serves up bite-sized stories to share and discuss with friends.

Why buy them? It’s the chat aggregating product that Facebook seems most interested in. While Branch will continue to operate both its existing products, with the aim of building the company to ‘Facebook scale’, the acquisition will be used to form a new Conversations team at Facebook. This focus on real-time conversations, along with the introduction of hashtags last year, has been seen as a move towards Facebook building a more Twitter-like offering.

Google buys Nest 14th January 2014 How Much? $3.2bn Who are they? A connected home company founded in 2010, which sells smart alarms and thermostats.

Why buy them? Executive chairman Eric Schmidt has recently claimed that the acquisition will lead to the building of devices that are “inﬁnitely more intelligent”.

But it’s a remarkable amount – the biggest Google acquisition since Motorola back in 2011 – to pay for such a young company. There’s already been speculation that the search giant is making a play for Nest’s indepth user data, so it could, for example, serve relevant ads when someone is cold. But Nest was quick to point to its strict privacy policy and, with the internet of things market starting to boom, we’d expect Google to be wanting a slice of the connected home pie.

Facebook buys Little Eye Labs 8th January 2014 How Much? Undisclosed Who are they? A performance testing company, founded in India in 2012, which measures the power consumption, memory usage and background operations of apps on Android 2.2 and higher. Why buy them? Facebook’s applications are sometimes unreliable, particularly on the Android operating system – a fact that infamously led to the company implementing a ‘dogfooding’ policy in 2012

– the practice of forcing its employees to surrender their iPhones in favour of Android handsets. This acquisition, which will see the company move to Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, could help it improve in this area. Little Eye Labs is also Facebook’s ﬁrst Indian acquisition, something that could prove vital as the social network begins to target the remaining two thirds of the world’s population without widespread ﬁxed internet access, particularly in developing markets.

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BUSINESS MODELS

MARCH 2014

ANIMAL MAGIC

Dynmark CEO Paul Putman explains how the company’s Donky app-engagement platform opens up new opportunities for consumer engagement After the app rush that followed the launch of the Apple App Store, many marketers grew skeptical. Did apps really deliver any value to brands? How could you get your app noticed? And what’s the point if most apps are deleted or forgotten after just one use? Many marketers began to lean towards the mobile web to deliver engagement through mobile devices. But Paul Putman, CEO of mobile messaging company Dynmark, says his eyes were opened when he saw how powerful apps could be if done intelligently. “As I understood and saw people do apps well, I realised you could deliver value through apps that you can’t deliver through the web,” he says. “With web apps it’s just like online – you don’t necessarily know who you’re dealing with, in terms of the user. You lose the ability to inﬂuence.” Dynmark certainly has experience when it comes to inﬂuencing consumers. Since its inception in 2001, it has developed topof-the-line intelligent mobile marketing messaging services delivered through its cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) portal. And now the company is delivering the next step in its roadmap. “SMS is really good but it has limiting factors in terms of what people want to achieve with it,” says Putman. “The natural evolution for Dynmark was to understand the way people leverage SMS, collate what people were trying to achieve via apps, and bring that together with what we’d learnt through our services.”

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The result is Donky – the world’s ﬁrst twoway in-app engagement platform. According to Dynmark, Donky has the potential to turn your app into a workhorse when it comes to mining customer data, converting downloads into engagement, and ultimately converting engagement into business. The system allows brands to pin down the identity of the user. “It depends how good the business’s CRM system is, of course,” says Putman, “but Donky has three different ﬁelds to discover who that person is: an email address that links to an online account; a phone number; or a different ID, such as a username. When Donky is embedded into an app, part of the download or update asks for a piece of info to help the brand identify the user.”

Tapping into behaviour Putman says that while a lot of the focus in mobile marketing apps has been on the challenges of getting your app noticed and used, Donky is borne out of delivering on consumer behaviours that are speciﬁc to the mobile channel. He says that mobile can be split into three key components: the importance of social context; the concept of ‘infosnacking’; and immediacy. “How people behave with their mobile, what they are actually doing on their phone, is key to delivering engaging apps,” he says. “Mobile actions should be quick and responsive.” And this is where Donky comes in, says Putman. “We call Donky the missing link – technology that’s speciﬁcally targeted to

meet a consumer’s expectations of mobile as a channel.” Donky has three key features that are designed to work within the nuances of consumer behaviour on mobile. The first is a form of push messaging that leverages the Donky network, the second is the ability to deliver rich media content, and the third is two-way, real-time chat. Most smartphone users are familiar with push notifications – the alerts that are sent direct to apps over the air – but Donky’s push functionality is different. “Our push notifications are a by-product of the Donky network,” explains Putman. “Other push engagement is an interconnect between technology and the native push channels of the handset manufacturers. Donky uses push to wake up devices and then creates a hard-code connection between the device and the Donky network, so you can deliver content in both directions. That is the major step forward.”

Inbox functionality The other big win Donky brings to the table in terms of push messaging is the ability to deliver rich media content to the app screen, and alert the user that there is new content to view. Whether the consumer has opted in or out of push messaging, the app will still receive the content, and the user will see that there is new content to view via a badge on the app. “Simple push is nice, but plenty of people out there can do that. Not a lot of people can drop rich HTML content directly into the app,”

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says Putman. This is a key point in terms of the mobile advertising space, because it negates the need to use an ad network to deliver the rich media. Donky’s inbox functionality allows brands to drop rich media content directly onto the consumer’s phone. And this app-based communication is enhanced further with a new level of engagement, using Donky’s two-way chat feature. Through Donky, brands can implement a chat system to communicate with the user. This could allow consumers to contact customer support, access complaints channels, or engage in fan-style chat, all from within the app. Based on Dynmark’s experience with SMS, brands can also set up automated responses based on keywords. “This can be linked up via APIs directly into a customer support tool,” says Putman. “If you’re using Salesforce for your CRM, for

‘How people behave with their mobile, what they are actually doing on their phone, is key to delivering engaging apps. Mobile actions should be quick and responsive’ Paul Putman, CEO, Dynmark

example, you can use the APIs to have a twoway conversation into that CRM. We’ve also developed call centre tools that allow operators to talk to people via the app. That exchange can then be fed into the CRM system.” If you don’t have the resource to integrate the APIs into your CRM, you can simply use Dynmark’s automated FTP service, which requires minimal resource to set up, he adds. Donky even offers a social chat feature that allows consumers to interact with their personal contacts from within a brand’s app. In the same way that WhatsApp or Viber uses an inputted phone number to identify fellow users, Donky-enabled apps can facilitate conversations about the brand within social groups. This is a huge boon for marketers – as Putman says: “If you bring a social aspect into your app, people are less likely to opt out. So in terms of motivation and behaviour, it drives consumers to grant the brand access.”

Valuable insight

Donky allows marketers to deliver rich media HTML content directly onto a consumer’s handset

BUSINESS MODELS

Potential applications of the technology are many and varied. It could be put to use by TV networks for second-screen apps – perhaps for voting or interacting with fellow viewers. Brands that nurture fanbases – such as football clubs or music acts – could also put the technology to powerful use. Putman says gaming and betting apps could also beneﬁt from letting users invite their friends to join a poker table, for example. And the level of insight gained from this social engagement is incredibly valuable to marketers. “Donky’s social aspect helps marketers develop an understanding of the social trees that are being created, the social cohesion,”

says Putman. “It’s like a honeycomb of contacts and sharing and interaction. You can start to see social communities within engagements, then you can target speciﬁc marketing to these networks. It provides a level of visibility that hasn’t been there before.” Donky also solves the dual problems that marketers face – getting apps onto phones, and then driving dwell times up to a level where engagement is meaningful. “It’s about making sure the consumer lives within that app when they want to engage with a brand. By integrating Donky into your app you centralise your communication into one place, negating the requirement to leave the app to read offer emails, share content with friends or even talk to the brand itself,” says Putman. “The absolute goal is to provide apps with a unique set of communication tools and engagements that can only be experienced within the app, and that add real value to the user. It has to become an experience that online or other channels can’t deliver, with its own unique value.” Putman says the overarching issue is whether branded apps give people anything extra. “What is the thing that is going to drive the consumer’s fear of missing out?” he says. “That’s the classic social behaviour, and it’s driving behaviour in the mobile environment. We’ve tried to give marketers an out-of-the-box framework to solve some of these problems.” MM

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MARCH 2014

AWARDS SPECIAL

THE WINNERS ARE…

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

Welcome to our celebration of the winning campaigns and projects in the 2013 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. In the four years that we have been running the Awards, we have seen both the number and standard of entries increase dramatically. Last year, over 200 entries. This year, more than 230, from brands and agencies across the globe, with many mainstream digital agencies joining the mobile specialists who have been with us since day one. As for the standard of entries, every year it is becoming a reassuringly more difficult task to separate the finalists from the also-rans, and to then choose the winners from among the shortlisted campaigns. With this in mind, we must offer a huge word of thanks to our judging panel, who gave up their time, experience and insight

to help us choose the winners. Believe me, it was no easy undertaking. We should also thank every company that entered this year’s Awards, for treating us to such a feast of great work. Our winners this year come from four continents, with campaigns from the US, UK, India, Poland and two from Brazil among those taking the honours. What unites the winning campaigns is the focus on effectiveness that remains at the heart of our Awards programme. Though it may seem odd to the companies that got in early and are now well down the

road on their mobile journey, for many others, mobile is still a largely unproven medium. For these businesses, mobile stands or falls by its ability to deliver a positive return on investment, which is exactly what the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards programme was created to recognise. Congratulations to all our winners, great respect also to those campaigns that came very close and were Highly Commended, and thanks to all our finalists for making the judging process so insanely difficult. David Murphy, chair of judges

The 2013 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are sponsored by Digital Gurus, Celtra, Theorum and InMobi

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN FROM A MOBILE OPERATOR

Winner EE/Publicis Blueprint Orange Exchange Magazine App Publicis-Blueprint produces this beautiful, bi-monthly tablet magazine for iPads and larger Android tablets on behalf of Orange. It’s aimed at the operator’s business customers and is designed to keep them informed about EE and Orange products and services in a rich, interactive and engaging manner. It succeeds handsomely in doing this, through intuitive navigation and beautifully-presented, useful content.

The magazine is also used for reader surveys and polls to provide EE with customer insight. In a reader survey conducted earlier this year, 92 per cent of respondents took positive action as a result of reading the magazine. 55 per cent visited the business website, 32 per cent contacted EE about additional products or services, and 13 per cent changed their business tariff to a more suitable one. A great-looking tablet app, and a worthy winner.

Highly

Commended Velti - Vodafone Freebie Rewardz

FINALISTS Amobee – Telefonica Tu Me App Download Campaign EE/IMImobile – EE Personalised Mobile Site T-Mobile/IMImobile – Dancing Dads Campaign

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

Vodafone’s Freebee Rewardz loyalty programme, managed by Velti, engages over half a million of the network’s pay-as-you-go customers every month. It drives dynamic brand engagement through user interaction with a combination of instant rewards and point-saving initiatives. The programme builds rich

target profiles of individual customers through their choices, which helps Vodafone communicate with its customers in a more relevant manner. Since its launch in September 2011, Velti has delivered 100 per cent platform availability, as well as a reduction in churn and an increase in customer spend.

MARCH 2014

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

AWARDS SPECIAL

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE APPLICATION - b2c

Winner The Mothercare App The Mothercare iPhone app is designed as a smart, on-the-go companion for busy parents and mumsand-dads-to-be, designed to help them through one of the most important times of their life. The app enables users to shop the full mothercare. com range, view product videos, access their mothercare.com account, and create wishlists, checklists and ‘To Do’ lists. The app also features a store finder,

barcode scanner, advice-led videos from Mothercare TV, and a week-by-week pregnancy guide. So much for the content, what of the design? It looks great, and is easy to navigate. Add to this the fact that if offers a heap of useful advice to a target audience that really needs it, and some convincing stats supplied as evidence of the app’s effectiveness, and it’s not hard to see why it’s our winner.

Highly

Commended ASDA FINALISTS AccuWeather for Android British Gas App Durex – The Durexperiment App Hotels.com MX Data – Tube Map Sync Interactive – Pregnancy by Bounty TUI Travel/AKQA/Aditi Technologies/Creator – My Thomson App Turkiye Is Bankasi – IsCep WestȌeld/nFluence Ǟ 0\ :HVWȌHOG 3HUVRQDOLVHG $SS Wimbledon, The All England Lawn Tennis Club Ǟ :LPEOHGRQ 2IȌFLDO $SS

Asda’s app gave Mothercare a very good run for its money. It takes the pain out of grocery shopping with features like a barcode scanner, live petrol price checker and a ‘Did you forget?’ reminder for items the user regularly buys. It also looks great, and is easy to navigate when

you’re on the move. The app has been downloaded more than 2m times to date, making a major contribution to Asda’s success in the mCommerce arena; mobile now accounts for 25 per cent of all of Asda’s grocery home shopping sales, with 90 per cent of these coming from the app.

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE TRAVEL & TOURISM SOLUTION

Winner TUI Travel/AKQA/Creator/Aditi Technologies - MyThomson App Usually when you book a holiday, that’s the end of the relationship with the travel operator until you arrive at the airport. So the judges loved this app from TUI Travel, through which it engages with the holidaymaker, from the second they book their holiday until the moment it begins. The app offers information on the resort, hotel, flights, weather and excursions, plus a ‘days to your holiday’ countdown timer,

currency converter, and ‘To Do’ and ‘My Packing’ lists. It means the holidaymaker can get all the information they need to make the most of their holiday, without using third-party websites or apps. The download and usage stats, which were confidential and for judges’ eyes only, were impressive too. For its ability to maintain a relationship with the company’s customers, the MyThomson app is a worthy winner in this category.

Highly

Commended MX Data - Tube Map App

FINALISTS AirAsia Expedia and Somo – AirAsia Expedia App Promotion Hotels.com Netbiscuits – Hotels.info

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

The Tube Map app was first launched in 2009, and has undergone many iterations and improvements since. The app is free to download, earning revenues from in-app advertising, though an ad-free ‘Pro’ version is also available, priced at a reasonable 70p. Both versions provide a detailed underground map,

station information, live departure boards, line status updates, and intelligent route planning to help get around the tube network. The app has over 300,000 daily active users, and has been downloaded more than 10m times. It’s an invaluable companion for navigating the London Underground.

MARCH 2014

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

AWARDS SPECIAL

MOST EFFECTIVE TABLET APPLICATION

Winner Apptitude Media - British Journal of Photography iPad App The Tablet App category is always one of the most hard-fought, and this year was no exception. But the British Journal of Photography iPad app takes the honours in this category for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a beautiful piece of work, with, as you might expect, stunning photography and great design. It makes full use of the iPad’s tactile navigational tools and backlit display for a great reading experience.

But the judges were impressed too by the story behind the development of the app, the way in which the magazine, which launched in 1854, has reinvented itself for the mobile age. And with such success that there are now 140 per cent more subscribers to the iPad version of the magazine, than there are to the print version. The app’s design aesthetic and commercial success are a winning combination.

Highly

Commended EE/Publicis Blueprint - Orange Exchange

FINALISTS Accenture Outlook iPad App Audi and Somo - Audi A3 iPad App Auto trader iPad App Hotels.com iPad App Pocket App – Prostate Clinic Re:Systems - Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP Portfolio App Wimbledon, The All England Lawn Tennis Club Ǟ :LPEOHGRQ 2IȌFLDO L3DG App

Already a winner in the Most Effective Campaign From a Mobile Operator category, the Orange Exchange magazine app picks up a Highly Commended in the Tablet App category for its rich, engaging design, simple navigation and its effectiveness in cross-selling and up-selling Orange and

EE products and services to the networks’ business customer readership. The magazine is easy on the eye and on the finger - navigation is a breeze and has proved a useful business tool for EE and Orange. It gave the winning BJP app a very good run for its money.

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY CAMPAIGN/SOLUTION

Winner Nimbletank – Universal Music GRRR! Rolling Stones Album Launch Nimbletank set out to create the world’s first Augmented Reality album launch for the release of The Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary album, GRRR!. The result was uView, an app that allows Universal Music to create integrated campaigns that merge worlds instantly. More than 3,000 locations, including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Statue of Liberty were

‘tagged’ to release the virtual gorillas featured on the album artwork. When the user pointed their uViewequipped app at one of the buildings, he or she would see one of the Gorillas scaling the building. Grrregory (the gorilla) was seen over 200,000 times on buildings across the world, and there was a 28 per cent clickthrough rate to buy the album from the app. A grrreat campaign.

Highly

Commended Audi/Somo - Audi A3 iPad App

FINALISTS Audi and Somo – Audi Vision Fetch – eBay Living Augmented Reality Campaign: Three Lives of Household Objects Re:Systems – BT London Live App

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

This great-looking app is designed to enable users to learn about and interact with the A3, without leaving their house. The target market for the car is digital-focused 25-40 year olds, in the sweet spot of iPad users. The app enables potential Audi buyers to take a

virtual tour of the inside of the car and even see what it would look like parked on their drive at home. For Audi, the app’s main role is to encourage users to try out the car for themselves through a test drive, something it has been extremely successful in doing.

MARCH 2014

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

AWARDS SPECIAL

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE COUPONING/BARCODE CAMPAIGN

Winner Manning Gottlieb OMD – Specsavers Hyper-local Sales campaign for the clarity of thought behind it, the execution, and the impressive results it delivered. Specsavers and its agency recognised that buying a new pair of glasses is not front of mind for most people. The first step towards selling a pair of glasses is to convince a customer to take an eye test, so the campaign was designed to drive spontaneous foot-

fall for free eye tests in Specsavers’ branches, using mobile coupons for users to redeem in their local store, with a unique SKU code. When users tapped on an ad, they were taken to the offer page and encouraged to download their voucher to Passbook – non-Apple users could save the URL or take a screengrab of the voucher. Results are confidential, but hugely impressive.

Highly

Commended i-movo – Coors Light Cold Caller Campaign

FINALIST Millennial Media/Eagle Eye/Harvester – Mitchell & Butlers Harvester Passbook

This was a complex and supremely well-managed sampling campaign featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, in which consumers were sent a voucher for four free bottles or cans of Coors Light from one of 6,000 specially selected convenience stores. The voucher was delivered as a text message, con-

taining a unique URL that led to a mobile voucher and store finder. The voucher appeared as a barcode for scanning and immediate validation using the retailer’s PayPoint or Payzone terminal. Participating retailers were reimbursed within seven days. Results are confidential, but impressive.

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE SALES PROMOTION/DIRECT RESPONSE CAMPAIGN

Winner Upstream – Megabolada Brazil 2012 Megabolada is an ongoing mobile SMS marketing promotion operated by Upstream on behalf of four mobile network operators in Brazil: TIM, Claro, Oi, and Vivo. The aim of the campaign is to drive monetisation among the operators’ collective subscriber base in a market which, while in rude health, is almost completely saturated. The campaign uses freemium mechanics to engage subscribers on a scale

never before attempted, via a trivia quiz with prizes, including a weekly R$20,000 (£6,000) cash prize. Using its MINT platform, Upstream helps operators to segment their customers and share the insights captured from the responses that come in to the trivia questions. The results, while confidential, are little short of incredible, both in terms of participation and revenues generated. A very worthy winner indeed.

Highly

Commended Millennial Media/Eagle Eye/ Harvester – Mitchell & Butlers Harvester Passbook

FINALISTS Brandtone – Credit for Torcida Friends of the Earth and OpenFundraising – The Bees Need You i-movo – Coors-Light Cold Caller Manning Gottlieb OMD – Specsavers Hyper-local Sales Waitrose – Waitrose Passbook

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

While on a different scale to the Upstream promotion, this campaign, designed to drive footfall into Harvester restaurants, also delivered impressive results, and is notable too as the UK’s first redeemable Passbook campaign. Harvester worked with mobile ad platform, Millennial Media, and gift and re-

wards specialist, Eagle Eye, to deliver the campaign. The objective was to drive diners into Harvester restaurants by delivering a voucher for £5 off their bill when spending £30 or more. The campaign ran for two weeks, generating 16,000 downloads and an impressive conversion rate of 54 per cent.

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE APPLICATION – b2b

Winner Warburtons/Golden Gekko – Red Insights Golden Gekko developed this tablet app for the Retail Field team at Warburtons, to help them manage inventory across more than 20,000 stores all over the UK. The app mobilises the process of capturing in-store product data, equipping the team with real-time storecard details, access to marketing and promotion collateral, and an interactive product catalogue. Today, the company estimates it is saving an estimated 5,000 man-days on a yearly basis, by eliminating time that was previously spent inputting data. The app is hugely popular with the people who use it.

AWARDS SPECIAL

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE CHARITY CAMPAIGN/ SOLUTION

MOST EFFECTIVE TACTICAL MESSAGING CAMPAIGN

Winner

OpenMarket/Open Fundraising – Open Fundraising’s Mobilise Platform

Iris Mobile and Leo Burnett USA – George & Will Come to Life

Mobilise is an innovative and easyto-use platform, built on OpenMarket’s robust gateways, that makes it easy for people to make regular charitable donations via Premium SMS. It enables campaigns to be rapidly created and deployed. The platform enables donors to control their gifts and the charities they donate to, while also connecting charities with a younger audience. The Mobilise platform has processed over £1m of donations so far this year, with a further £700,000 expected before the end of 2013. A sign of the platform’s popularity and utility is that there are currently 15 charities using it, including UNICEF, RSPCA, Shelter and Merlin.

This brilliant campaign aimed to attract theatregoers to a production of the musical, Sunday in the Park with Georgee at Chicago’s Shakespeare Theatre, on a shoestring budget of less than $10,000 (£6,000). Leo Burnett USA went to the Art Institute of Chicago, the home of the painting that inspired the play, and created a fake painting with the main characters missing. While guests were completely confused… the “missing” characters came to life in front of their eyes. After the performance, the audience was encouraged to opt in to a mobile messaging campaign. Those who did, received a video trailer encouraging them to buy tickets to see the play. The campaign delivered the highest number of first-time guests in the theatre’s history, and extended the musical’s run by seven nights, at a time when sales were slumping.

FINALISTS

Auto Trader Dealer Portal EE/Publicis Blueprint – Orange Exchange Magazine App Honeywell/ The Purple Agency – Honeywell Installer Assistant It Suits IT – Apps4Fashion Rippll AppSplash – Boxpark App Myrio Interactive Shopping Window Pitcher CLM Tassell Design – ProLogis UK iPhone/iPad App Thomson Reuters Eikon

FINALISTS FINALISTS Friends of the Earth and OpenFundraising – The Bees Need You OpenMarket – DEC Syria Crisis Appeal Sociercise Virtual Charity Races The Marketing Arm – The Skyhook Challenge Velti – Comic Relief 2013

Amobee – Swarovski App Download and Footfall Campaign MEC – Colgate Kumbh Mela Manning Gottlieb OMD – 9LUJLQ :L Ȍ RQ WKH Underground Mindshare UK – Comfort Range, Weve Proximity Messaging the7 Stars – Virgin EMI, Avicii ‘Wake Me Up’ MobileȌUVW $ODUP

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE SOCIAL CAMPAIGN

Winner Initiative UK – Tesco Forget Me Not plan Christmas, there’s always something you forget, and you only realise you’ve forgotten it when it’s too late to do anything about it. In the run up to Christmas 2012, this brilliant campaign aimed to position Tesco as ‘Santa’s little helper’– the retailer that was open late, and understood its customers’ needs, including helping them to remember all those little things that make Christmas, Christmas. It used Facebook ads and Page posts to ask Tesco

shoppers what their most forgotten items were at Christmas, using Initiative’s bespoke social monitoring tool, Prophese. It then targeted customers with ‘most forgotten’ messaging when they were close to a Tesco store. Reminders were even incorporated into shoppers’ smartphone calendars. The campaign generated almost 6,000 comments, more than 26,000 clickthroughs to a mobile landing page, and increased Tesco’s pre-Christmas market share by 1.8 per cent.

Highly

Commended

Tapit – Halo ‘Capture the Poster’

FINALISTS Millennial Media and Maxus – Mercedes ‘You Drive the Story’ Millennial Media and MEC – Activision Call of Duty, Black Ops II’ Photo Shoot Campaign

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

This campaign to promote the launch of Halo 4 encouraged gaming fans to battle each other to capture one of 376 Halo 4 posters, signed by Halo 4 creative director, Josh Holmes. The first person to “tap” their smartphone on one of the 376 NFC-enabled outdoor sites “captured” that poster.

Anyone else who tapped a captured location got exclusive Halo 4 content. Tapit used Xbox’s 320,000 Facebook fans to create viral buzz, which generated 9,000 Facebook likes, and 1.2m earned Facebook impressions. The 376 poster sites were captured in four days.

MARCH 2014

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

AWARDS SPECIAL

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE SITE

Winner Nimbletank Mobile Site Nimbletank takes the Most Effective Mobile Site award for its bold vision of what a mobile site could be, and what it could look like. The best way to describe the site is to encourage you to look at it on your own handset. It’s unlike any mobile site we have ever seen before, and is designed to showcase the company’s abilities. It appears to have done this with some success, as the company has picked

up an impressive roster clients, including ASO Universal Music Group BBC and Random Hou Publishing off the back This is the first time have given an award fo Most Effective Mobile to a mobile firm for its project, rather than on a client. And despite th fact that it was up again some stiff competition totally justified. The ph mobile-first might hav been invented for it.

Highly

Commended Debenhams

FINALISTS AccuWeather Hotels.com Isobar – Toyota GT86 ‘The Real Deal’ Mothercare Movement – ADT 2012 The Share Centre/SDL Mobile – The Share Centre Velti – Walkers Homegrown

enhams’ mobile site sy on the eye, easy to gate, and perhaps most importantly, very easy to buy from. An image carousel on the homepage cycles every three seconds to promote the merchandise available, and you can also browse by department. There’s a bar-

code scanner, store finder and gift finder. The site performs well as a retail outlet – in the financial year 2012/13, it clocked up total sales of £11m, representing 5 per cent of Debenhams’ total direct sales, and year-onyear growth of 245 per cent. Impressive figures.

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

Winner OMD UK/Intel – Intel Inside Live: TV Star In 30 Seconds verse negative perceptions of the Intel brand among digital natives. It gave TV viewers the chance to star in Intel’s Christmas TV ad in the X Factorr Final, with the ad created during the programme by bringing together mobile, social and television. A 10-second ad near the start of the show invited the audience to star in the

ad using the Shazam app and their mobile to submit festive picture messages, which would be live-edited remotely and showcased in a final ad at the end of the show, making it the fastest edited and approved TV commercial ever shown in the UK. More than 17,000 people engaged with the campaign, and brand sentiment improved significantly.

Highly

Commended OMD UK/Channel 4 – Tonight on 4 TV Guide FINALISTS Cheil Worldwide and Mobile 5 – Samsung Galaxy S4 Global Launch Fetch – From eBay With Love InMobi – Nick Grimshaw Breakfast Show Manning Gottlieb OMD – John Lewis Click and Collect Manning Gottlieb OMD – Driving the Nissan N-Tec Manning Gottlieb OMD – Specsavers Hyper-local Sales Millennial Media/Eagle Eye/Harvester – Mitchell & Butlers Harvester Passbook Mindshare – Kleenex & Sneezeman: The Game OMD UK/Coty UK – Rimmel London Kate Matte Lip Ad Sync Somo and Probability – Lady Lucks Second Screen Unilever VO5 – VO5 & Shazam Waitrose – Waitrose Passbook YuMe – JustWink

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Channel 4 was looking for a way to keep viewing figures up after its acclaimed coverage of the 2012 London Paralympic Games. It partnered with TV listings app, TV Guide, inviting viewers to tune in ‘Tonight on 4’ immediately before programmes started each evening, via ads that appeared within the ‘load

screen’ of the app when it was opened. The ads also included an ‘add to calendar’ function. 40 per cent of users watched advertised shows as a direct result of the daily ads, with 32 per cent saying they then continued to watch other Channel 4 programmes. A hugely successful campaign.

MARCH 2014

AWARDS SPECIAL

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE CRM/ENTERPRISE MESSAGING CAMPAIGN

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE AFFILIATE/CAMPAIGN SOLUTION

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE LOCATION-BASED SERVICE/CAMPAIGN

Winner

Brandtone – Credit for Torcida Tradedoubler – Omnichannel $IȌOLDWH 3URJUDPPH IRU 7KH Street traders represent nearly 90 per cent of PepsiCo’s sales of TorciBody Shop da snacks in Brazil, but how do you engage with an estimated 200,000 informal traders and street vendors in a meaningful way? For Pepsico, mobile was the answer. Working with Brandtone, PepsiCo offered Torcida vendors free airtime via mobile shortcodes printed on product packaging, redeemed in return for answering questions about their business needs and priorities. The campaign drove significant sales uplift and ongoing engagement with the street trader community.

Mobile is at the heart of The Body Shop’s affiliate activity, driving significant sales growth. For 2012/13, The Body Shop provided Tradedoubler with four main objectives for its affiliate program: to grow sales by 40 per cent over the previous year; to expand the mobile and in-store strategy for affiliates; to mirror The Body Shop’s movement to an omnichannel brand; and to remain at the forefront of innovative solutions in the online space. Tradedoubler over-delivered against all targets, making it a worthy winner in this category.

FINALISTS Brandtone – Knorr Soup In Every Stew InȌnite Convergence Solutions – Enterprise Messaging Service Iris Mobile and Leo Burnett USA – George & Will Come to Life OpenMarket – Amdocs Mobile Engagement Platform Deployment WestȌeld/nFluence – 0\ :HVWȌHOG 3HUVRQDOLVHG App

MEC – Colgate Kumbh Mela This campaign targeted Hindu pilgrims attending the huge Kumbh Mela festival. The aim was to drive footfall to the Colgate stand, where the new Ayurvedic toothpaste was being sampled, and sold at a discount. Subscribers who came within a certain range of the Colgate stand were sent a 30-second voice message – voice was chosen in preference to text, owing to low levels of literacy – encouraging them to visit the stand. 175,000 subscribers were contacted over three days, increasing footfall to the Colgate stand by over 300 per cent. A hugely successful campaign.

FINALISTS FINALISTS AfȌliate Window Network Mac Presents – Rolling Stones App Sponsored by Citi Tradedoubler – 0RELOH $IȌOLDWH 6ROXWLRQ WestȌeld/nFluence Ǟ 0\ :HVWȌHOG 3HUVRQDOLVHG App

9xb - Eddisons Manning Gottlieb OMD – Specsavers Hyper-local Sales MX Data – Tube Map Telmap Navigator South Africa the7stars – Virgin EMI, Emeli Sande Valentine’s Day Proximity MMS

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AWARDS SPECIAL

EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING AWARDS

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE ADVERTISING PLATFORM/ NETWORK

Winner Fiksu Mobile App Marketing Platform Last year’s winner in this category takes the Award again. Quite simply, none of the other finalists this year did enough to convince us that Fiksu didn’t deserve to win again. The company offers a high-performance mobile app marketing platform that delivers quality users at scale. It combines centralised media buying from what the company claims is the world’s largest mobile

advertising inventory, using advanced optimisation technology to help app marketers deliver exceptional results. Fiksu says that its algorithm-based, real-time ad buying platform secures the lowest possible cost-per-install and targets high-quality, loyal users for an app. Developers and brands using the platform include Coca-Cola, Zynga, Rovio, and Disney.

Highly

Commended Qriously Opinion Targeting FINALISTS AdColony HD Instant-Play Airpush Amobee InMobi Leadbolt Mobile User Acquisition and Monetization Platform Smaato Mobile RTB Ad Exchange Tapjoy Mobile Advertising Platform Textlocal Messenger 2.0 Trademob Upstream MINT Vserv.mobi

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The judges felt it was too early in Qriously’s lifecycle for the company to take the ultimate accolade, but they did feel it merited recognition for its attempt to bring something different to the mobile advertising landscape. It’s by no means the only company attempting to do so, but among the

entrants to our awards, its ability to enable consumers to self-select, in effect, to see a given advertisement was seen as particularly innovative and disruptive. In a world where much mobile advertising is looking tired and stale, Qriously’s arrival on the scene is a welcome one.

Social Rich Media Bring immersive rich media ad experiences directly to social media feeds

www.celtra.com/social_rich_media *Celtraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mobile Advertising Championship in Engagement Study between Social Rich Media and Standard Rich Media. See infographic:Â www.celtra.com/infographic/social_rich_media

AWARDS SPECIAL

MARCH 2014

MOST EFFECTIVE mCOMMERCE SOLUTION

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE PUBLISHING SOLUTION

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE TICKETING SOLUTION

MOST EFFECTIVE MOBILE PAYMENT SOLUTION

Winner

Demandware – Mothercare

Velti – 5ml

Corethree – Brighton and Hove Buses Mobile Ticketing

PKO Bank Polski – IKO Mobile Banking App

Mothercare takes the honours in this category for its mobile site, which displays the full Mothercare range, with multiple product images, reviews, easy sort and refine options, and synchronised basket and browsing history between the PC and mobile sites. A shining example of mCommerce done properly.

5ml is a cloud-based, rich media authoring and publishing tool for multiple-channel, HTML5capable devices and media. It includes a free canvas editor tool, with over 40 built-in widgets. 5ml allows brands and publishers to produce mobile versions of their content in the most effective format and factor for smartphones and tablets. There are currently 4,000 active 5ml mobile projects, serving millions of user requests every month across the world.

The Brighton and Hove mobile ticketing service includes a powerful mPayment and mWallet solution, that enables users to pay for products and services on any major smartphone or tablet, on any network, using any payment provider. Since launch, the solution has generated over £1m in revenue from passengers using over 290 different devices on more than 130 mobile networks.

The IKO app combines mobile banking and payments. It enables users to make payments, enact cash machine withdrawals, and send person-to-person payments using just a mobile phone number. It also shows the current account balance and transaction history. The app launched in March and has seen transactions to the tune of tens of millions of Polish zloty – equivalent to several million pounds.

Refuel - a 5ml creation

FINALISTS Add Innovation – Zando 9xb – Hi-Tec Paythru & ParkREG – ParkREG Paythru, Shopamani and Mudo – Mudo Express Checkout The Share Centre/SDL Mobile – The Share Centre txtNation – Junglepay.com

FINALISTS FINALISTS DudaMobile It Suits IT – Apps4Fashion Pixelplant

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Movement – V Festival 2012: Our Garden Paythru and ParkREG – ParkREG Mobile Ticketing Chester Zoo Web Team supported by Code Computerlove – Chester Zoo’s Fast Track Sales Solution

FINALISTS Bango’s Payment Platform for App Stores Corethree – Brighton and Hove Buses Mobile Ticketing Kotak Mahindra Mobile Banking App Oxygen8 Group – Charge2Mobile PostFinance – iTunes Credit Top-up Turkiye Is Bankai – Iscep Parakod

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MARCH 2014

CLOSE CONTROL John Kuolt, co-founder of IQzone, explains how the company’s Postitial ad unit opens up the world of interstitial advertising to a whole new app developer audience Over the past 12 months, there has been a huge move towards using interstitials (full-screen advertising) to monetise mobile apps. Broadly speaking, interstitials have gained traction because they offer both advertisers and users a richer ad experience, while for publishers, they deliver more advertising dollars, due to higher engagement rates. The challenge for app developers, however, is determining where best to include interstitials in the app without having a negative impact on user experience. Typically, interstitial ads tend to be placed during natural breaks in the app experience. So, if the app in question is a game, the ad will most likely appear between levels, this being the most natural break when gaming on a mobile device. It’s debatable, however, how ‘natural’ this break is, given that the user has just finished one level of a game and is probably looking forward to playing the next one. For other types of apps, those with entertainment or utility at their core, the challenge is different. When an app is opened by a user to fulfil a specific task, such as checking the weather or booking a taxi, there is arguably no opportunity for a natural break. The user opens the app,

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Developers of these types of app have limited options for including interstitials. It’s this issue that IQzone has set out to address with its Postitial ad unit, which serves ads to mobile users when they end a session in any way (e.g. pressing the Home button or Back button). According to IQzone cofounder John Kuolt, Postitial ad units deliver clickthroughs and eCPMs for publishers that are three to ﬁve times those from traditional interstitial ad units.

Natural break “So for apps, such as games, where there are natural breaks between levels, it’s still not really the best time to try to engage with end users, who are focused on starting the next level,” says Kuolt. “And for utility- and entertainment-based apps, the only natural break comes when they’re ﬁnished using the app, which is where Postitial comes into play.” The key technology behind the Postitial ad unit properly recognises the intention of a user to end an app session such as when the user presses the Home button. Recognising when a mobile user has used the Home button to end the app enables IQzone to serve the Postitial ad units in the window between closing the app and moving on to the next activity. Kuolt is keen to point out that IQzone is not an ad network, but is instead integrated with most of the major ad exchanges and SSPs (Supply Side Platforms). So to start delivering Postitial ad units to its users when they exit an app, all a developer needs to do is to get the latest SDK from their mobile advertising partner. This solves the

‘Because developers are passionate about the user experience, very few of them like having a signiﬁcant amount of interstitials’ John Kuolt, co-founder, IQzone problem all mobile app developers fear of having too many SDKs. The creative is then delivered by ad networks and DSPs (Demand Supply Platforms) connected to the ad exchanges and SSPs. Postitial is controlled and conﬁgurable from the cloud, using probability logic and complex algorithms to maximise performance. The technology supports full-screen interstitials, including rich media imagery and video. When presented with a Postitial ad, the user can choose to click on it,

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model allows r to enjoy p uninterrupted, ves an ad when ed with the app ely to engage

but if they just want to get rid of it, they can hit the Back button, the Home button, or the larger than usual ‘x’ on the ad itself to close the unit, making it easier to skip than a traditional interstitial.

User journey Kuolt says that app developers who are wary of using interstitials for fear of “clobbering” the in-app experience have taken to Postitial with enthusiasm because of the respect it shows for the user journey. “Because developers are passionate about the user experience, very few of them like having any significant amount of interstitials, despite the fact that they drive significant revenue,” he says. Ad networks and advertisers have embraced interstitials due to the high performance of the ad unit and of course the revenue it generates from significantly higher eCPMs. Postitial is a logical way to bridge the need to maintain a great user experience, drive incremental revenue for developers and introduce new ad units that meet the demand

for interstitials – while giving advertisers a richer and more engaging mobile advertising experience to serve to consumers.

Android vs. iOS CPM Kuolt adds that Postitial is helping Android redress the in-app revenue balance with iOS. “There’s a whole industry piece at play here that recognises that rich media has not performed as well on Android as on iOS,” he says. “Most developers develop for both platforms, so our technology is helping them to increase their eCPMs on Android and raise the value of their blended eCPM.” Finally, he says, it’s helping to square a circle that sees developers striving for higher eCPMs by delivering higher engagement ads, but then ruining the engagement by serving interstitial ads at inappropriate times. He says: “Developers are between a rock and a hard place with the movement towards interstitials, because they make money by achieving high eCPMs, and to get high eCPMs they have to deliver high levels of engagement. But if you are delivering high

levels of engagement, you’re pulling the user away from your app, when they were still trying to use it. They might have gone on to make an in-app purchase for example. Postitial solves that problem by waiting to serve the ad for the most natural break of all – the moment when they stop using it and are ready to be engaged.” MM

Postitial supports all full screen ad types, including rich media and video ads

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BUSINESS MODELS

THE FUTURE IS FRICTIONLESS

“Frictionless payments” could be one answer to mCommerce conversion rates, says David Murphy after looking at Blippar and Barclays Pingit

With more than 50 per cent of adults in the UK now owning a smartphone, it’s no surprise that mCommerce is on the increase. Last September, IMRG and Capgemini revealed that, in Q2 2013, 23.2 per cent of UK online sales came from mobile devices, exactly double the proportion of a year earlier. And a March 2013 study conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Jumio found that almost 7 out of 10 (68 per cent) adult mobile and tablet owners in the US have tried to make a purchase on a tablet or mobile device. Less encouragingly, however, the same study found that two thirds abandoned the purchase due to issues with the payment platform.

Killer functionality Consumers are used to intuitive and simple experiences when using mobile phone apps to interact with the world around them, unfortunately this often isn’t the case when it comes to making mobile payments. In order to provoke genuine customer behaviour change, the ease of payment must be addressed, something Ambarish Mitra, CEO and founder of the innovative mobile image recognition platform Blippar is working hard on. “At Blippar, we are building a bridge between the physical and digital world, and frictionless payment is the last piece of the jigsaw,” he says. “It takes a fraction of a second to lose a consumer, so every additional step brands create in this process makes it harder to convert, unfortunately the typical mobile payment process currently requires way too much data entry, hence the high drop-off rates.” notes Mitra.

This is precisely the problem that one payment app is trying to address. Barclays Pingit started life as a peer-to-peer payment solution, enabling anyone with a bank account (with any UK bank) to instantly send money to anyone else. It has since evolved into a fully-fledged mobile payment offering, accepted by retailers, transport operators, utility companies, property companies and charities. The powerful dimension to the Barclays Pingit app is that it can be seamlessly incorporated into other apps, enabling users to make purchases from within them without having to drop-out to a website to make a card payment. Consumers simply enter their five-digit PIN, confirm their order and Pingit does the rest, including the provision of a pre-populated delivery address. The payment process is fully integrated into the user experience. With this level of “frictionless payment” integration, Barclays Pingit is set

to make a signiﬁcant difference to the commercial effectiveness of mobile marketing. “The Barclays Pingit functionality brings an extra dimension to in-app shopping because it offers a frictionless mobile payment,” says Darren Foulds, managing director, mobile banking and Pingit. “This is key to realising the commercial return on investing in mCommerce and mobile advertising because making the payment does not ruin the customer’s journey through the retailer’s app. What’s more, it is not just for Barclays customers.” Blippar’s Mitra is convinced that solutions like Pingit have a big part to play in helping mCommerce deliver on its promise. “If content is king, commerce is queen, so once you have the consumer’s attention how, do you persuade them to act and convert?” he asks. “Frictionless transactions, as offered by Barclays Pingit, become the seamless way to bring the mobile experience to commerce.” MM

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MARCH 2014

TOUCH IT, LOVE IT,

WANT IT 3D mobile ads will complete the evolutionary circle of advertising, says Amobee CEO Trevor Healy As the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine is frequently quoted: “History teaches everything, including the future.” Advertising’s primary purpose is to connect a buyer with a product. Technology has changed the means of delivering the message, but the basic need to create a relationship with customers remains unchanged. With big data and targeting, we can

deliver the right message to the right person, at the right time, anywhere in the world. Mobile is bringing the ad industry full circle. According to a recent study, mobile users check their phones every six-and-ahalf minutes. But have we lost the true 1:1 product experience by going digital? How can advertisers deliver a true product experience through a digital screen? A quick look at the history of advertising will give us some clues as to how 3D mobile ads will bring consumers closer to products, giving brands the 1:1, hands-on relationship with customers they desire.

A (brief) history of advertising

The Amobee 3D mobile ad format provides consumers with the opportunity to interact with a product in unprecedented ways

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Advertising originated from a market approach of directly targeting individuals, and eventually expanded over centuries to target a mass audience. The ﬁrst notable forms of advertising began in the 15th and 16th centuries as reading and printing became a necessity in society. Advertising was presented predominantly in the form of hand-bills. Individual advertisers marketed directly to potential customers, leading them to a demonstration of goods that they could touch and hold. In the 18th century, newspaper advertising was introduced, and in the 19th century, retail catalogues like the Sears Catalogue found their way into the mailboxes of millions. Print advertising catered to the masses, but did not provide an opportunity for brands to target individual consumers. And while photographs

and drawings represented the products beautifully, they didn’t allow the consumer to interact with products inside the ad. In the 1920s, radio stations began to offer sponsored segments and commercial breaks. When television was introduced, advertising quickly became a visual art catering to entire nations. Television broadened the creativity within advertising, and the importance of the creative process was heightened. In addition, ‘frequency’ was a key driver. Ad men on Madison Avenue clamored to secure advertising slots on news broadcasts, talk shows and TV series. In fact, episodic television was created to satisfy the frequency need of the advertising world, ‘a give more, sell more’ mentality. Reach and volume were the goals of this form of advertising, bringing the message of a brand to larger audiences. With the emergence of the internet, a glimmer of light emerged. Online advertising appeared to be far more personal, as targeting capabilities became possible. While advertisers ﬁxated on the click and impression phenomenon, creativity languished. Agencies and brands learned that they couldn’t simply transfer their skills from television to online. Targeting allowed advertisers to get closer to the 1:1 experience, but personal interactions with products and brands still proved elusive.

The evolution into mobile In the early 2000s, the mobile phone and advanced mobile data networks delivered

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apps and the mobile web into the hands of millions of consumers, enabling them to access and explore goods and services. Today, consumers are addicted to their mobile devices, using them to surf the web while watching TV, search and buy products, socialise with friends, and more. Never before has there existed such unprecedented and accurate access to consumers through a device that is portable and highly personal. Yet we are in the midst of another creative chasm. Technology has given advertisers the ability to reach consumers directly, yet most mobile ads are reformatted versions of their digital counterparts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; static banners that feel out of place. Consumers rightfully expect more from such a personal device.

New depth in advertising 3D is permeating our media consumption experience, from

movies to television, and digital out of home. As consumers become more familiar with these threedimensional experiences, the expectation of depth in advertising will increase. The next dimension in mobile is 3D. With 3D mobile ads, advertisers can successfully cross the creative chasm to attain the 1:1 relationship with consumers. By adding depth and the ability to manipulate products right on a mobile device, customers get an immersive experience that would otherwise only be possible in person. Combined with the targeting capabilities of mobile, 3D mobile ads not only reach the right consumer, but allow them to have a highly personal product experience enabled by touch. For example, BMW leveraged the Amobee 3D mobile ad platform to design an ad that would create desire

for a car that would not be available for several years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the new BMW i8. Only two of these vehicles existed in North America, but with this new type of 3D mobile ad, consumers were able to navigate every detail of the exterior and interior of the i8. Average engagement rates for this 3D mobile ad campaign far exceeded industry standards and successfully created desire for a product in development. This type of interactive digital ad gives the customer something they do not get from traditional advertising channels â&#x20AC;&#x201C; interaction and realtime personalisation. W With 3D, the ad experience has moved beyond simple advertising to become content consumers want to engage with, making the in-person, 1:1 relationship possible again.

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The BMW i8 3D campaign allowed consumers to play with a car before it was available, generating interest in the model

For more information about Amobee 3D mobile ads, visit www.amobee.com/3d

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INNOVATION

MARCH 2014

THE WRITINGS ON YOUR WALL

Are native formats the future of mobile advertising or little more than digital advertorials? Kirsty Styles asks the experts In March 2011, Buzzfeed CEO Jon Steinberg set the advertising world’s collective mind racing with his theory that ads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and his own platform work because people are happier with advertising or forms of revenue generation that “ﬁt into the context”. He was talking about so-called ‘native ads’. Fast forward two years and Yahoo! bought Instagram in an apparent native ad power buy; America’s Online Publishers’ Association forecast that by the start of 2014, 90 per cent of its members would have ‘gone native’; and AOL UK has predicted that 40

per cent of its revenues would come from these types of ads this year. Looking to address everything from banner blindness and fat ﬁngers to lousy mobile executions, native has become one of the most talked about topics for mobile marketers, publishers and brands. Piers North, strategy director of Yahoo! UK, says the combination of the arrival of mobile, plus more focus on ROI, data and biddable media is creating the perfect environment for a native advertising storm. “But digital people talking native is like economists talking about the economy – they’re not completely agreed about what is going on.”

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“Native is actually a tricky thing to completely define,” explains Alex Kozloff, head of mobile at the IAB. “If an ad is completely native, it will be a bit different for everyone.” Echoing this, Lee Baker, ex-head of the UK’s Association of Online Publishers, now at native advertising specialist Respond, adds: “All publishers will define native differently depending on what they’re offering, but when non-traditional publishers moved away from banners, that was a big flag to everyone else that there is another way of doing things.” While Google went native before the idea even had a name (via its paid search listings, which incidentally do disproportionally

MARCH 2014

INNOVATION

differences between digital ‘native’ and other forms of native advertising rest in the existence, or lack thereof, of industry-wide rules of engagement and in the varying levels of transparency with the consumer on the source of the content.” By transparency, Bidel is referring to ‘on behalf of’, ‘presented by’ and ‘in association with’, just three ways to describe the brand partnerships taking over your content feed. Everybody seems to agree that content needs to be clearly labelled, or risk losing credibility with the audience, but the whole advertising affair seems to be becoming more discreet. “Here we are witnessing a rather ironic twist,” says Matevž Klanjšek, founder and chief product ofﬁcer at Celtra. “Display ads were originally designed to stand out of the background, to be distinct from the environment where they are displayed. Their power was exactly in their prominence, aggressiveness, and their conﬂict with the host environment. Today we are redesigning them to be exactly the opposite – nice, quiet, shy ads that are rather ashamed to be ads.”

well on mobile), Facebook and Twitter are widely cited as the great publishing pioneers of the new wave of native. But there are some who say they aren’t the future. “It’s the disruptors that are showing what we could call ‘traditional premium publishers’ a view of the future, but I wouldn’t say Facebook is best of breed in native,” Baker says.

Native or premium? His colleague, Respond CMO Guy Cookson, agrees. “Facebook is difﬁcult to offer at a premium; as it’s user-generated content, the context is almost random.” Facebook and Twitter ads look just like the content

in which they sit, and the data they have access to ensures some degree of targeting But the question is whether the content can be truly relevant, given the nature of the spontaneous conversations happening on social platforms. While some see native as transformative, and constantly evolving, others see it as nothing new. Susan Bidel, senior analyst for marketing leadership professionals at Forrester Research, says that what makes native different is its lack of industry standards. “Other media have their own versions of native: advertorials in print; infomercials in broadcast,” she says. “The

Buzzfeed’s collaboration with Windows UK typiﬁes the company’s approach to content marketing for its clients

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MARCH 2014

content is in no way helpful for jobseekers, should they be using Buzzfeed for careers advice, but it also breaks Nativo’s golden rule by sending users out of the publisher site to view Microsoft’s sales video. Nevertheless, more than 60,000 people made it to the bottom of the piece to view the video, and Buzzfeed is a consistent top player in Sharethrough’s nativeadvertising.com leader board. Not only are some publishers and advertisers slightly missing the goal with native campaigns, they may not be native at all. “The deﬁnition has also been stretched since we got funding in an effort to leverage the buzz around native,” Choi says. “Some companies are using it to describe anything that leverages content and to describe any non-standard unit. We see the industry eventually differentiating between in-stream ads that look native but act more like banners, and ads that are truly native.” p , big names such as Forbes are trying native advertising out

Meaningful engagement Despite this strange status for native ads, the concept is clearly generating interest. At Nativo, the phones haven’t stopped ringing since the native ad server platform secured $3.5m (£2.1m) in funding back in April last year to develop its technology. “In the UK and the US, we started to see strong interest from agencies and brands in mid-Q3 2013,” says Justin Choi, Nativo’s president and CEO. “The questions in the marketplace have changed from ‘what?’ and ‘why?’ to ‘how?’” Choi says native ads should not be an interruptive experience. “It’s an opportunity for marketers to deliver a more meaningful engagement and an opportunity for publishers to deliver that engagement without driving users off of their sites. But many executions will send you out to another page, so the ads look native but the experience is not.” Cue Buzzfeed’s latest campaigns, including a native piece for the Microsoft Surface, somewhat shoehorning the computing giant’s ‘buy our tablets’ message into the viral site’s ‘tell every story with a gif’ idea, via a ‘12 creative ways to interpret a job description’ story. The

Journalistic ethics Much has been said about the editorial ethics of native – ads that don’t look like ads tend to make traditional publishers nervous – but a whole host of reputable publishers are now committed to native as part of the marketing mix, including The New Yorker, The New York D, the New Statesman, Gawker Times, WIRED and the BBC’s commercial arm. But try to track down those doing it on mobile and your choice becomes more limited. Looking at four mobile-optimised site offerings from The Atlantic, HuffPost.com, Forbess and Buzzfeed, and most have started and stopped at the possibility of in-stream, labelled editorialstyle content. Ask consumers what they think of native ads, and most will admit that they didn’t know they were enjoying, and enthusiastically sharing, advertising content. Perhaps what makes it highly shareable is the fact that it is unrelated to the brand. Take Pepsi’s widely shared ‘10 Beautiful Places in the World That Actually Exist’ on Buzzfeed. It’s so discreet, the reader doesn’t necessarily notice it’s anything other than standard Buzzfeed content – it’s unclear whether anyone will remember the Pepsi brand when they’re standing in the corner shop trying to decide what brand of ﬁzzy pop to buy.

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But brand advertising is one area that has struggled on mobile, and native formats do show potential for a softer approach to engagement. “As brands create more content and attention becomes the key performance indicator, we will see budgets quickly shifting away from other advertising into native to drive engagement with that content,” Nativo’s Choi says. “We see the industry standardising around engagement metrics – not only for native but for other advertising as well.” For those brands and publishers struggling to make the move onto mobile, and make it proﬁtable, native therefore offers another avenue to explore on the new and fast-evolving medium. “We shouldn’t simply write off standard ad formats,” says Celtra’s Klanjšek. “They can be great performers and exactly because of their standardisation they are also much more scalable. Therefore we like to look at native ads as one of the options – a very important one – that advertisers should have in their mobile advertising arsenal.” MM

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INNOVATION

VEGAS NIGHTS

Wearable tech, fitness devices and flexible screens dominated the 2014 CES in Las Vegas. Steve May rounds up the show’s big stories A polar vortex may have frozen most of America’s East Coast this January, but that didn’t stop more than 100,000 trade visitors sampling some exceptionally hot tech at January’s International CES in Las Vegas. In recent years the world’s most important tech expo has been more about evolution more than revolution, but this year saw some seismic developments in the connected ecosystem. Headline stories were all about pixels and personal tech. 4K resolution TVs were so commonplace that manufacturers felt compelled to bend them just to attract attention. Meanwhile, wearable gadgets finally

gained tangible traction. According to Juniper Research, smart wearable device shipments will reach a massive 70m units annually by 2017, driven by ﬁtness and well-being applications. Activity trackers were on the move. Sony announced the SmartBand and revealed Core, describing it as the smallest gadget the company has ever made. Core is a highly advanced yet tiny activity tracking device, which Sony plans to utilise in a family of personal health products. LG touted the similar Lifeband Touch along with a pair of heart-rate monitoring earphones. LG’s Andy Mackay said the brand didn’t rule out entering the smart watch category at some point either. Garmin also

jumped onto the bandwagon with the VivoFit, while Polar launched the V800, an activity tracking GPS watch. Such activity monitors currently dominate the wearable tech sector, with an average selling price of $162 per unit. GPS products run a close second, with an average ticket of $272. According to data compiled by Futuresource Consulting, smart watches, smart glasses and other wearables have yet to impact, although all are predicted to enjoy significant growth by 2015. A case of watch this space. Epson launched into every niche at CES. Its Pulsense wearables comprises smartwatch and fitness band, while its second-generation wi-fi-enabled BT-200 Moverio smart glasses

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MARCH 2014

clearly have an eye on Google Glass. The smart specs feature a mini projection system able to overlay digital content onto real world footage, and the device includes a gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetic compass sensors for hands-free navigation and gaming. A frontfacing camera allows the wearer to capture video footage and still images. Epson cites business, medical and leisure applications.

Phones and tablets Tablets, however, didn’t really attract much attention. Samsung introduced four new slates: an oversized 12.2-inch Galaxy Note Pro, a matching Galaxy Tab, plus a 10.2-inch and a 8.4-inch model. And, there was a slew of budget tablets on show, running various versions of Android, as the tablet moves away from a luxury purchase to a pretty ordinary thing to own. Sony formally announced the Xperia Z1 Compact smartphone, which retains pretty much all the functionality of the original Z1, including camera and quad-core chipset, but crams it into a smaller case. The show also provided a ﬁrst look at LG’s Flex smartphone. With a 6-inch curved OLED display, it sets out to challenge established form factors. LG suggests the curvature makes for a more comfortable user experience, although the jury’s still out on that claim. While a curved smartphone might not capture the imagination, when it comes to larger screens, curved seems to be the new ﬂat (or maybe it’s just the latest challenge among TV manufacturers).

INNOVATION

A flexible approach While mobile is taking over, TV is always a big deal at CES. LG was the only TV manufacturer touting consumer OLED TVs at the show. Samsung’s visual display business executive vice president HS Kim hinted at ongoing manufacturing challenges for the technology, saying that OLED tellies are still some years away from being a viable commercial proposition. Undeterred, LG showed curved OLED panels at 55-, 65- and 77-inch sizes. The company also rolled out the red carpet (literally) for a flexible 77-inch OLED prototype. Using a remote control, viewers can actually alter the curvature of the panel, using an ingenious hinged back panel. Quite why anyone would actually want to do this is a complete mystery. Samsung played the same flexible party trick, only this time with an LED backlit panel (which technically must have been far harder to achieve). However, all its promotional bluster was scuttled by Hollywood director Michael Bay. The Transformerss shotcaller was brought on stage at the brand’s over-subscribed press conference to eulogise Samsung’s fleet of curved 4K TVs; unfortunately the director fluffed his lines, causing his autocue to stutter. Thrown by the stumble and unable to improvise any kind of endorsement, Bay panicked and bolted from the stage. The incident flummoxed Samsung executives. YouTube clips of the gaffe quickly became a Vegas bar favourite.

Samsung’s curved 105-inch television drew crowds as manufacturers vied to produce bendy smart TVs

Sony’s stand was awash with smart watch offerings, as the product category starts to gain momentum

Use cases One interesting morphing of mobile techology came from LG, in the form of Web OS. Acquired from Hewlett Packard a year ago, Palm’s portable device OS has been transformed into a slick, simple smart TV portal. Highly graphical, it seamlessly integrates all content sources – traditional broadcast, internet streaming, local network – into the screen’s menu system. Used with the brand’s latest Magic Remote cursor controller, the system appears extremely intuitive. “The idea is to make smart TVs simple again,” said LG’s Mackay. The platform even has a mascot, the cartoon Bean Bird, which helps users set up their smart TVs. Mackay didn’t rule out Web OS appearing on other devices, from appliances to personals. Other news with huge long-term implications for everyone in the IPTV business came from Netflix. The streaming TV outfit confirmed that it would introduce a 4K Ultra HD service as early as this spring. The company has chosen the HEVC h.265 compression standard and will debut on new 4K screens with integrated h.256 decoders from Sony, LG, Samsung, and Visio. Joris Evers, director of corporate communications, told us that viewers would need fibre broadband to enjoy the service. Netflix 4K will use adaptive bitrate streaming, with two streams of 15.6mbps and 11mbps available – anything less and the service defaults to HD. “We are at the forefront of 4K. It’s a format for the internet,” boomed Evers. “This is the first time that the best video quality possible is only going to be available through the internet.” While he did concede that the content available in 3,840 x 2,160 resolution would be limited (so far the list comprises the upcoming second season of House of Cardss and a d), he said the service remastered Breaking Bad was now actively licensing 4K content. MM

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THE REAL MONEY

MOBILE GAMING BOOM

Real money mobile gaming is mainstream, says Michael Bryne, chief commercial officer at mobile entertainment gambling provider Probability Mobile entertainment gambling, real money mobile gaming – whatever you choose to call it, interest in mobile gaming and gambling continues to grow on a global scale. In the UK alone, over 70 per cent of the adult population regularly participates in some kind of gambling activity, from the National Lottery and bingo to the Grand National. In addition, almost half of online betting in the UK has switched to mobile devices and gambling operators are posting double-digit growth in revenues from slots, bingo and casino games, whilst desktop earnings have stagnated. Mobile entertainment gambling is an unstoppable force and is now very much a mainstream activity.

Entertain to gain As a leading specialist in the mobile entertainment gambling industry, Probability continues to bring the most popular forms of online entertainment gambling into the mobile era. Over the last 12-18 months, we’ve noticed a growing number of brands and companies, that have traditionally sat outside of the real money gaming space, come to recognise mobile

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entertainment gambling as a means to open new revenue streams and create added value. It’s all about providing an interactive, entertaining experience that players want to return to, over and over again. Probability works with media owners and hospitality brands such as Hearst Magazines UK and Sugar Hut, plus brands in other sectors, to launch branded ‘Mobile Games Arcades’. These Arcades open new revenue streams and engage new and existing customers, while at the same time increasing brand exposure by delivering fun, entertaining mobile games. The recipe is simple – players have the opportunity to play games to win real money, while the brand beneﬁts from a new revenue stream that they would otherwise not have been able to deliver. In return, Probability’s ‘White Label’ solution provides the brand with a host of services, from player security and regulatory compliance; to reporting, CRM and tier-one banking. This enables Probability’s ‘White Label’ partners to focus on marketing their new branded Mobile Games Arcade to customers via their proven channels and leaves the areas we do best to us. We ﬁrmly believe brands that entertain are the brands that will prosper.

The player is king In our game, gameplay is vital. That’s why new games, new themes, new bonus structures, bigger wins, new ways to deposit, and crisp HD graphics and sound are so important to us. At Probability, we do everything possible to give our players what they want, when they want it.

‘Our Mobile Gaming Arcades open new revenue streams and engage new and existing customers, while at the same time increasing brand exposure’ As the UK’s leading developer and operator of responsible, real money mobile gaming, Probability has over a million registered mobile gamblers in the UK who regularly play our games. Over the past 10 years, we’ve built up a vast amount of knowledge and insight. We understand everything from how player habits have changed and evolved over time, the male versus female split and age range, what devices they play on, the most popular times of day to play, how many times they play each week, and the top ﬁve regions for real money mobile gaming in the UK. MM

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RAMPING UP MOBILE

MEDIA IN AFRICA David Murphy talks to Raymond Buckle and Mike Laws, joint CEOs of RAMP (Real African Media Partners) about its mobile marketing solution that enables brands to reach 70m mobile subscribers in Africa For consumers in the developed world, mobile offers an alternative way of accessing online services, checking emails, catching up on the news, and sharing their own news and views on social networking sites. Look around a typical train carriage in the rush-hour commute and it’s hard to imagine what people used to do before mobiles and tablets became so ubiquitous. For consumers in emerging markets, however, it’s a very different story. In these countries, mobile does not offer an alternative way of accessing the web; for the vast majority, it’s

the only way. Google may have decided to style itself as a mobileﬁrst company a few years ago, but countries in Africa truly are mobile-ﬁrst, because for those consumers who want to access services at work, on the go or in the home, mobile is usually the only option. In fact, the vast majority do not have access to data or the mobile internet and rely on SMS, voice messaging, IVR applications and USSD apps to access information and services such as health, banking, money, news, and public service information – the domain of operators and aggregators, an area where Google doesn’t reach.

Mobile marketing channels that reach the growing middle class in many African countries are few and far between

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With a rising urban, youth and middle class able to buy smartphones and the data plans that drive them, mobile internet is emerging as a key channel to reach an increasingly afﬂuent populace – but to truly reach the entire audience the different types of phones and users need to be considered.

Emerging markets This ties in nicely with the efforts by many global brands to reach out to consumers in emerging markets using an array of mobile marketing channels, and not just ad serving on mobile browsers. “A report which came out in November last year looked at the top 100 brands in Africa, and found that Nike derives 13 per cent of its global revenues from the continent, showing that corporates are diversifying away from mature, saturated markets,” says Raymond Buckle, joint CEO of RAMP Africa (Real African Media Partners), a start-up aiming to connect brands with African consumers through a broad range of mobile marketing options. “While companies like Nike are deriving more than a tenth of their revenue from Africa, it’s highly unlikely that the brand spends 13 per cent of its marketing budget in Africa. A holistic mobile marketing strategy provides a great way to address this imbalance, because of the reach offered by the various mobile marketing channels to an African audience.” The partners in the venture are SilverstoneCIS, Integrat and Airvantage. Silverstone is a marketing service provider,

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Next is Voice, consisting of automated voice messages and sponsored ringback tones, with an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) reply path which can take the caller through to a call centre. In a continent with high levels of illiteracy, voice is likely to appeal to many advertisers. The third ad type is mobile web advertising, including standard banners and rich media display ads on operator portals and apps. Finally, RAMP will be building a permission marketing database, based on interest and proﬁle segments that advertisers can then target via SMS, voice, email and contextual ads. “This is in the early stages of rollout, but we already have opted-in communities attached to different products and groups in the operator’s 68m-strong subscriber base, and we will also build third-party advertising opt-in databases that leverage location, ARPU, demographic and other targeting parameters,” says Buckle.

Advertising at scale agency and development house of some 18 years’ standing. Integrat is a large aggregator, delivering Premium SMS and USSD services. Airvantage is a VAS (Value Added Services) and content company with local teams in a number of key markets. Buckle and his joint CEO, Michael Laws, ﬁrst worked together at Vodacom Mobile Advertising in 2007, where Vodacom commissioned Silverstone to build AdMe, a permission-based marketing platform that attracted 500,000 subscribers who agreed to receive a ﬁxed number of marketing messages per week in return for various incentives. It was Vodacom that introduced the hugely successful ‘Please Call Me’ ad unit which enabled a mobile user with no credit on their phone to send a sponsored ‘Please Call Me’ text message to another user they needed to contact. This ad unit is typically sold out three months in advance. RAMP has got off to a great start. The company has been appointed by Airtel Africa

as its mobile advertising partner to serve mobile ads to Airtel customers in 17 countries across the African continent. Initially in 2014, RAMP will be rolling out the service in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, and Zambia. “Rolling out across 17 countries is a big challenge when you consider that implementation and execution happens at a local level,” says Laws. “Building the footprint is key, which is where the group’s local representation and experience in Africa is so important. We’re launching trial campaigns in Kenya and Nigeria in Q1 and going live with commercial campaigns in these countries during February.”

Text tags, voice, internet, permission The offering to advertisers consists of four key products. The ﬁrst is Text Tags. These are advertising messages attached to the end of another message, including ‘Please call me’ messages, and end of call, balance and other service notiﬁcations.

So how is the offering likely to go down with African mobile consumers, and with advertisers and media agencies? Buckle is conﬁdent it will appeal. “In our conversations with global media agency groups and blue chip brands, the reception has been excellent,” he says. “Advertisers are looking to run campaigns at scale across multiple African countries – we offer a single point of access and the ability to embed call to action with the required mobile marketing enablers such as shortcodes, reply messaging, USSD and IVR apps as part of the media buy – a major headache when you imagine the alternative is integrating into multiple operators in different countries for these services.” RAMP Africa offers access to almost 70m subscribers and 80bn impressions across Africa. The bottom line is, nothing will get brands closer to their consumer than mobile, and nothing will get them closer to the consumer audience on mobile in Africa than RAMP.

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TARGET AT SCALE David Murphy talks to nugg.ad’s Richard Metcalf about the company’s audience modelling solution that brings reach and scale, as well as precise targeting, to mobile and online advertising campaigns For the past five years, it’s been impossible to ignore the hype around mobile advertising. On the one hand the market has been fuelled by overambitious forecasts of the amount of money that would be spent on the channel in the future. On the other hand bodies such as the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently reported the actual level of spending in the market. According to the report, which the IAB produced in partnership with PwC, the H1 2013 value of UK mobile ad spend was £429m, which is more than twice the figure for H1 2012, and not far short of 2012’s full-year total of £526m. Yet, despite all the hype and all the enthusiasm, the mobile advertising party is one for which many mainstream brands are still hesitant. Richard Metcalf, director of mobile solutions at Deutsche Post-owned audience targeting firm nugg.ad, thinks he knows the reason why.

Audience reach “For brand advertisers, the ability to reach audiences rather than individuals is key,” he says. “And right now, many brands believe that mobile is not the ideal platform for this aim. The other issue is that, perhaps because of the lack of big brands playing in the space, the mobile advertising industry’s

focus has been on in-the-moment, performance advertising. Big brands know that consumer buying decisions are made across a lifetime, rather than in the moment.” What brands want from mobile advertising is the ability to target consumers who have an afﬁnity towards, or propensity to buy, a certain product or brand, according to Metcalf. And they are only going to be convinced to spend more than trial budgets on it if they are able to identify what someone who buys the brand looks like, and then go out and target similar people with a bespoke brand message. For brands and media agencies buying print or TV it’s second nature, but unfortunately, the same cannot be said for those buying mobile media. Metcalf, however, is convinced that nugg.ad’s technology provides the ideal solution. “We think of ourselves as an audience layer,” he says. “We don’t buy or sell inventory, but rather, we provide a technical solution that enables media buyers to spend their money more effectively. It’s mediaand platform-agnostic and works just as well for programmatic as it does for any other ad-buying platform.”

Market research nugg.ad’s solutions rely on dataintensive market research to understand the audiences for

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individual brands, allowing the brand to ﬁnd its audience in more than the most obvious places. “We use complex, machinelearning algorithms that combine market research data for a portion of an audience with surﬁng behaviour,” says Metcalf. “So by looking at a portion of an audience that says they are interested in buying a car in the next six months, and then analysing how they interact with our publisher websites and apps, we can identify people with similar interests. “If you take a gaming site, for example, it may attract a certain type of (typically young) consumer that will be of interest to a certain

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type of brand,” says Metcalf. “Using nugg.ad’s technology, the publisher can reach out to that type of consumer outside of the gaming channel via other sites and apps in their inventory that they tend to frequent.” Looking at it from the brand’s perspective, the technology becomes even more compelling. If the brand knows

places a pixel on the publisher sites in order to extract the behavioural data, and then earns a revenue share from any campaigns the publisher sells that use the nugg.ad technology. Now, the company is reaching out to brands and their media agencies at the other end of the equation to educate and drive demand for audience targeting.

‘The ability to model and build an audience to target consumers on mobile with reach and scale, as brands do in print and on TV, is still largely lacking. But our tech not only makes it a possibility, but a reality’ that a given channel is a good fit for its target consumer, the nugg.ad audience layer can, in real time, use that as the basis to build a propensity model to identify where else the brand will find consumers they are not currently reaching, whose profile and behaviour match that of their target customer.

Deep market research “It’s this combination of user behaviour and deep market research data that enables us to target very precisely and in real time,” says Metcalf. “It also gives us incredible reach, because we are not waiting for one person to come along that matches a device ID; we are making a prediction for each click.” To date, the company has worked principally directly with publishers – it currently cooperates with 95 per cent of the top 100 publishers in Germany for example. nugg.ad

“Audience targeting is not widely available on mobile,” he says. “The ability to model and build an audience to target consumers on mobile with reach and scale, as brands do in print and on television, is still largely lacking. But our tech not only makes it a possibility, but a reality, as the brands currently using it – including Danone, Burger King, and Garnier – will testify. They are seeing great results from campaigns executed with our data. “nugg.ad’s solutions not only provide our clients with a three- to four-fold increase in the ability to ﬁnd their target audience; it also offers impressive results in terms of brand metrics such as awareness and likelihood to buy. For anyone who thinks mobile advertising is all about in-the-moment and performance, the time has ﬁnally come to think again.” MM

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De Cecco’s taste of mobile How nugg.ad delivered ROI by optimising results for a pasta brand

ugg.ad produced remarkable results for the De Cecco pasta brand in Denmark. De Cecco launched a new pasta product in the market in 2013, and decided to employ a digital-only campaign following disappointing results from previous offline efforts. The primary objective was increasing brand awareness; measured via a three-question survey asked before and after the seven-day campaign. nugg.ad’s involvement was in providing its Predictive Behavioural Targeting (PBT) and branding solutions tech to enable audience targeting; measure the brand engagement; and optimise the campaign. When the seven-day period was up, nugg.ad was able to build a profile of the users that responded favourably to the campaign. Using that profile, a target group was created, which consisted of users across the network whose profile very closely matched and who were therefore most likely to also respond positively to the campaign. For the remaining four weeks (phase 2) nugg.ad focused the campaign on this target group to maximise results. nugg.ad was also able to use variable ad frequency to calculate the optimum frequency for both purchase intent and brand affinity metrics. Before the campaign started, brand awareness was very low at 12.6 per cent. After five weeks this had rocketed by 148 per cent, and De Cecco reported a 200 per cent uplift in sales. With such stats, brands may well begin to consider the opportunities nugg.ad can create within the mobile advertising market.

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