A recent IAB survey of marketers in the UK revealed that 50% use programmatic for buying mobile inventory. However, programmatic advertising on mobile is one of the least understood mobile topics, with almost 45% of respondents reporting having no or little knowledge of it. ExchangeWire talked exclusively to Jonathan Tom (pictured below), the recently appointed head of mobile programmatic for EMEA, RadiumOne, about the four things to bear in mind when developing a mobile programmatic strategy.

The disconnect between usage and knowledge isn’t uncommon as one moves into unchartered technology waters; but it is a reminder that you should really look down before you leap. Thus, to ensure you make the most of this new technique, or don’t waste valuable spend, or worse, actually damage your brand. Here are the key things to bear in mind before embarking on the mobile programmatic voyage.

The incredibly short shelf life of valuable mobile data

In other words, mobile data goes from valuable to useless in a matter of minutes. To be valuable, data needs to be collected, processed and acted upon as quickly as possible. Think of sending a discount code based on a user’s location and search activity (say wanting to find a restaurant). At the right time you’re a valuable resource adding value to the consumer experience. Do the same thing, even 20 minutes later – when the decision or purchase has already been committed to – and you’re an unwelcome intruder.

Mobile is the most effective channel to act accurately and quickly to capitalise on those first few minutes of consumer activity, but you need high-quality data and technology to make it work. These are critical ingredients, so its imperative marketers use the right tech partner to be able to seize the opportunity to reach and engage individuals at each moment of their digital journey. It’s about dramatically reducing the time and losses between data capture and activation. Can your provider collect, analyse, and activate user insights from mobile data immediately and efficiently?

Efficiency and creative can live together

People are slowly coming around to the idea that programmatic doesn’t mean efficiency and creative are mutually exclusive. Indeed, ‘programmatic creative’ will be one of online advertising’s big themes this year.

Yes, programmatic media is largely dominated by efficiencies, in both media targeting and delivery (media + data). However, programmatic achieves its utmost potential when it’s used to personalise the ad creative itself. That is, the technology is deployed so that a user will only see highly relevant messages at the right time and right place – instead of non-relevant and disruptive ads.

When it comes to mobile, marketers should be coming from the opposite direction of normal marketing practice. What I mean is, it’s about tapping into live intent signals and the emotional states of consumers as the catalyst for marketing activity, rather than the actual goal. In more simple terms, mobile isn’t about trying to generate emotional states from ads but, instead, simply acting on the states that currently exist.

The combination of native ad formats, dynamic creatives and location can all be fed into the programmatic machine to enhance the quality of data by delivering a better ad experience for users, which will result in greater engagement and ROI of paid media. It’s worth calling out the location element – in the IAB study, location-based advertising was seen as the most exciting mobile opportunity this year by two-thirds of marketers.

Programmatic improving creative also produces a wonderful by-product – more relevant and useful ads will help reduce the need for ad blocking; thereby addressing one of the industry’s biggest challenges.

Tying together various mobile marketing functions

Due to their interdependence, data, analytic tools and programmatic media functions are becoming more tightly integrated. Just as some advertisers and agencies have initiated a move towards a 'self-service' approach, another trend already taking shape is around the automation and customisation of analytic tools. The buy side are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of – and rewards from – gathering, analysing and utilising insights from high-quality data sources and analytic tools. This is spurring further interest in tightly integrating data assets, generating user insights and activating insights through paid media across devices.

Consequently, we’re seeing an appetite among clients for mobile audience solutions that can fuse various mobile app marketing functions, including analytics, geolocation and push notifications, into a single product.

They want these separate technologies that are typically spread out among multiple providers, being brought together and accessed via a single tool that can then be applied programmatically in real-time to campaigns. It’s about eliminating the tangle of multiple SDKs and data sets a marketer has to deal with.

Furthermore, both app creators and brand marketers want to capture in-app user engagement data and make use of it to identify and target high-value consumers both within apps and beyond. All this, becomes particularly powerful when it’s combined with cross-device ad platforms so campaigns can work as hard as possible across many screens, particularly factoring in location data.

Weaving in dark social data

The vast majority of online content shared among people happens in private communications such as emails, instant messages and texts which cannot be measured by web analytics. Thus, it’s often beyond the grasp of marketers – hence the term “dark social”.

In the UK, approximately 75% of all content is shared via dark social compared to just 20% shared via Facebook and Twitter. Brands are too pre-occupied with Facebook and Twitter, which are relatively ineffective, compared to dark social’s power in harnessing shared content to reach a wider audience. That’s because dark social represents content shared with one another based on an intimate knowledge of what matters most to those close to them. Being done on a one-to-one basis, it carries more emotional weight than the ‘blanket’ approach on social networks.

For example, The Jockey Club, the largest commercial group in British horse racing, used dark social to improve the effectiveness of its marketing activity and provide increased value to their sponsors. Analysing dark social sharing, they identified over 3.5 million people who’d interacted with their content in some way at least five times over the previous 90 days. They targeted this audience for the Cheltenham Festival and saw a 12-1 ROI on ticket sales. They also found out that when a sponsor and The Jockey Club were included in the same ad, effectiveness doubled.

Dark social represents a rich source and more holistic view of consumer behavioural data and insights. It becomes even more powerful when merged with mobile targeting capabilities and real-time media buying. Integrating these insights into a broader mobile campaign will make mobile efforts exponentially more targeted and impactful.

Bringing these four elements into your mobile strategy will go a long way towards ensuring a valuable return on investment – making sure you swim, not sink, when it comes to mobile programmatic.