Mobile marketing is more than just about building apps to accompany campaigns, and advertisers need to start thinking about alternative ways to reach their audience.

Rohit Dadwal, Asia-Pacific managing director for Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), is urging brands in the region to look at various tools to engage consumers and come up with different strategies for both mobile apps as well as mobile browsers.

In this interview with ExchangeWire, Dadwal also highlights what marketers will need to improve ad relevancy and address ongoing concerns about ad blockers.

Exchangewire: How would you sum up 2015 in terms of mobile ad development?

Rohit Dadwal: This year, there was an attitude change towards the mobile ad segment. Mobile became real, and big players realised mobile no longer is a standalone expense, but a part of the larger media budget. Facebook's mobile ad segment is its largest income driver, fuelling its revenue growth, while InMobi, one of the largest mobile advertising players, has grown to be the largest advertising platform in China. In September, the latter entered into a partnership with China's APUS Group, which is the world's biggest Android user system that enables users to customise their android screens. This will give InMobi access to approximately 500 million new users in China.

We also learned, among other things, that unwrapping mobile micro-moments created opportunities for the medium to be optimised as an outreach platform. These moments consist of real-time, insight-driven points in the consumer purchase funnel, offering brands more opportunities to extract and utilise consumer data to target mobile ads. As such, the adoption of programmatic has steadily risen this year, with 9-in-10 programmatic users in Asia-Pacific now using programmatic for mobile advertising.

Rohit Dadwal

This growth mirrors a better user experience, not only for consumers and advertisers, but also for publishers; which have more clarity over the aggregate behaviour and demographics of users on their apps or mobile sites. As publishers customise the experience of ad-driven monetisation, this year marks the gradual shift of mobile ads to becoming, finally, pertinent to consumers.

Which markets in the region saw significant growth in mobile-driven campaigns this year?

As a whole, countries in Asia-Pacific have made a lot of progress in terms of producing engaging mobile-driven campaigns. We've seen a rise in successful campaigns this year, driven by the ubiquity of smartphones in developed countries and surging mobile penetration in developing countries. Specifically, the growth in India has been significant and has been pegged to be greater than radio and outdoor. Other countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam also have made great strides.

Which markets do you expect to see strong mobile ad growth in 2016? At the same time, what barriers will these markets face next year?

As we enter the new year, countries like India, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia are likely to continue experiencing strong mobile ad growth.

One of the fast-growing mobile markets, India, has a national population of 1.268 billion, of whom 243 million are active internet users, and 124 million are active social media users. Mobile ad spend in the country has also grown substantially in tandem with the increased consumer adoption of mobile devices. But it has a long way to go before mobile becomes an integrated part of everyday life. There is wide inequality in terms of internet and mobile penetration between the rural and urban areas, and this will continue to remain a challenge next year. The internet penetration amongst the rural population is only 7%.

What are some key challenges faced by advertisers, agencies, and publishers when managing mobile campaigns?


One key challenge is the standardisation of measurement metrics across digital platforms, especially since each platform has its own currency of measurement. Recently, however, Nielsen launched its digital advertising measurement system, called Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings, in India, which provides a common ground for the evaluation of campaigns on mobile platforms as well as the internet.

What are ad tech vendors still not getting right with regards to mobile?

In mid-2015, a number of ad tech vendors announced plans to target consumers across devices more efficiently by forming partnerships and rolling out new tech features aimed at tackling visibility, improving data insights, and tying desktop clicks and conversions to mobile activity. However, these happened during the rise of ad blocking, casting doubts on how working with numerous ad tech vendors can slow down the speed of webpage loading on mobile browsers. With the rise of ad blocking, in particular, ad tech vendors need to ensure the ads they deliver do not degrade the functionality of the mobile web.

How big a concern do you expect ad blockers to be for mobile advertisers next year, particularly in Asia-Pacific where mobile adoption is significantly high?

Now that we're at the tail end of 2015, you can scroll through industry news and easily come across a story on ad blocking –an issue that has unleashed anxiety across the advertising industry. It is not surprising that consumers are embracing ad-blocking software to avoid interruptions while browsing the internet, as well as to reduce unnecessary data consumption and preserve battery life. For many users, closing a pop-up ad has almost become instinctive.

We foresee ad blockers to continue being the purported scourge of mobile advertisers in 2016. Ad-blocking software stops ads from being viewed, limiting CPMs. Within Asia-Pacific, ad blockers are a continual threat, especially with browsers that have built-in ad-blocking tools such as UC Browser and Maxathon, which are gaining popularity in China and India. Although most ad blocking occurs on desktops, Safari's content blocking capabilities on iOS9 allow programmers to build apps for filtering out content from the Apple mobile browser; and this will further compromise the growth of the mobile advertising market. Although it will be a while before we can determine the percentage of users who will tap this functionality, this can potentially restrict advertisers' access to more than one billion iOS devices worldwide.

That said, if mobile advertisers produce relevant, helpful content for consumers, ad blocking isn't the end of the world, and mobile advertisers will grow to be immune to ad blockers.

How should marketers work to resolve this?

Marketers need to recognise that to engage more meaningfully with consumers, they can no longer act in isolation, picking and choosing platforms and technological tools that only serve their own metrics. The currency of context has never been more vital with ad blocking on the rise, and marketers need to learn to embrace alternatives, such as native advertising and real-time, location-based targeting, or continue inundating audiences with the wrong content at the wrong time.

In that vein, marketers can deploy precise location as a tool in their audience segmentation mix. Today, IP address is used as a standard source of location data within the ad tech industry. However, by getting a more accurate user location, marketers will be able to increase relevance of their ads and gain better understanding of where users actually are.

Ad tech firm BlisMedia, for instance, already has plans to unveil new technology that uses air pressure data taken from the barometric sensors found in most new smartphones and wearable technologies, allowing advertisers to construct a three dimensional view of where their customers are based on the latter's altitude.

What are some misconceptions Asia-Pacific advertisers have about mobile that need to be addressed?

That mobile marketing is all about mobile app development. The mobile landscape is changing rapidly, and mobile marketing goes far beyond the reach and engagement offered by mobile apps. Apps are but only one tool users access when they're on their devices. They access the mobile web as well. Advertisers have been focused on introducing new mobile apps to accompany a product launch or a promotional campaign, instead of investing in in-app features that drive engagement.

Marketers need to have differentiated strategies for their mobile app and mobile website.

Can you discuss MMA's key focus areas and plans for the region next year?

Key to the future of mobile marketing is innovation and education, and our priorities for next year will revolve around these two fronts. As we move towards focusing on what consumers need, and how to best engage them with the immediacy of mobile, we are looking for more extensive collaborations with industry partners, agencies, and other stakeholders in the marketing ecosystem – be it to spur innovative practices, or develop robust case studies to educate more brands and marketers about the different technologies and possibilities of mobile.