It's well documented that advertising investment in mobile lags far behind consumer mobile usage. How can advertisers effectively navigate this space? ExchangeWire speaks with Jess Beldner Maurer, business development director, Flashtalking, about the growing opportunities that exist in mobile and how advertisers can best take advantage of them.

ExchangeWire: How can advertisers be more informed of users' behaviour when cookies remain unavailable?

Jess Beldner Maurer: This is a very timely issue, particularly in mobile environments. Advertisers should be looking to partner with a provider that can overcome this hurdle and provide a mechanism for accounting for this technology gap.

Ninety-one percent of iOS devices do not have cookies enabled. Advertisers and agencies need better data and reporting methods to understand the impact of digital marketing on their mobile sales.

At Flashtalking, we've recently released an additional technology layer to address this by having a unique identifier that is not reliant on the user ID being set by cookies. Flashtalking Device Recognition will help bridge the gap between Apps and Mobile browsers without SDKs, cookies, or limited logged-in data, allowing for a more robust and comprehensive attribution in mobile.

This technology opens up retargeting, sequencing, and A/B targeting on mobile.

Why should brands start to look at out-of-the-box formats as opposed to the standard mobile banner?

Unfortunately, JIF and PNGs still dominate the mobile space – this makes little sense when there are so many more interesting and engaging formats in the market. It is important for advertisers to try and innovative units that take advantage of the unique environment, and interactivity to engage with a user.

Advertisers must take better advantage of the mobile environment and make use of interesting ad units, considering the dimensions, visuals and 'tapability' of messages to catch the user’s eye, but remain non-intrusive and informative so the number of users that have ad-blockers installed stays minimal.

Changes to the video ecosystem, such as VAST 4.0 and publishers adopting VPAID-enabled players for mobile and cross-screen, will make creating interactive video units a very compelling creative option.

How can advertisers use mobile better to capture consumer attention 'in the moment' that they are ready to covert?

Advertisers and agencies spend a lot of time, energy, and dollars focusing on how to reach the right person; but once you’ve got that opportunity, the final stretch is delivering the most relevant message for each individual consumer. Improving the quality of the ad is now a necessity, knowing what message will resonate at this moment to further engage them with your brand. Informing the creative message using dynamic and targeting data is essential to influence the user experience.

There are many mobile-focused opportunities available. One of my favourites is the Mobile Wallet Ad. This ad is highly actionable and very meaningful to the consumer in that 'moment'. It’s a way to drive footfall and be able to track that person’s path to conversion completely. Geo-location-aware creative and technologies are also a very exciting opportunity for mobile moment engagements.

What are some advances in tracking and measuring advertising engagement in the mobile environment?

I’ve mentioned using Flashtalking Device Recognition capabilities to overcome the cookie gap in mobile. Another way of achieving more robust attribution is taking a look at fractional attribution. This area represents an advancement in tracking a person’s true path to conversion.

Most advertising analytics, including ad servers, use models that focus entirely on last-touch attribution. This methodology ignores the importance of the entire advertising funnel, and the impact that advertising has when driving customers from awareness to interest, and eventual conversion.

To take it a step further, we have seen advertisers falsely optimise to last-touch metrics with negative results, further underscoring the need for attribution that considers the whole picture.

What is actually 'working' in the mobile environment? What are some best practices when considering a mobile campaign?

What we’ve seen is that the clients who put people first are winning with mobile strategy. These are teams that deeply consider a viewer’s environment, mindset, and capability to react to a mobile message.

One of the most important things to consider is where the ads will run and the best way they can captivate the consumer. It’s very important to know if ads will be running on in-app inventory, because there are a lot of considerations for those environments – knowing this ahead of time will help reduce complexity of implementation.

It’s also very important to keep in mind when and where the message will reach the consumer. If the ad delivers on a phone handset over cellular, what ad format execution would be the best in that moment? What makes the most sense and would be the most seamless experience that will have a positive impact in those scenarios?

How can agencies best guide their clients in establishing meaningful metrics for their mobile campaigns?

Just like desktop, key performance indicators will vary based on vertical, and also based on the goals for each client. For mobile, environment is also important to consider. How does a person use their phone or tablet? Are they looking at their tablet while watching TV? Are they watching TV on their tablet? Are they playing app games?

If you are trying to reach the person in their mobile moment, then the KPI could be something like redemption of a coupon or downloading your app. It can be a view through to your product page. It can be a product purchase or booking a hotel room. The action the person takes to engage with the brand should make sense and fit into the person’s use of the phone and daily activity.

How does a marketer make a shift to mobile advertising? If they want to increase, or even go mobile-led entirely, how should they set the stage? What's their to-do list?

It’s a great time to invest in mobile. The market has a lot more maturity and it continues to grow and evolve. Technological advances are making mobile more measurement friendly. Adoption of HTML5 as a format for advertising is making it far easier to use the same creative resources, even the same ad can work well cross-screen.

The mobile ecosystem itself is a lot more stable, thanks to the work done by the various IAB committees and working groups, namely, MRAID, the HTML5 development guidance, and the video guidance.

The first step is to really decide how each brand experience can fit into a mobile users' day-to-day activity in a creative and relevant way, not in an obtrusive or interruptive way. This is the mobile 'moment' we talk about so often.

Once you have identified the right kind of experience that makes sense for the brand, you set relevant KPIs that are achievable and measurable.

This includes a thoughtful consideration and strategy because of the uniqueness of the mobile ecosystem, particularly in-app opportunities.

Finding the right mobile partners throughout the supply chain that can provide the path to end-to-end execution at scale is vital.