A study by the Internet Advertising Bureau earlier this year found that 50% of marketers surveyed use programmatic for buying smartphone inventory. However, programmatic advertising on mobile is one of the least understood mobile topics, with 44% of respondents reporting having no or little knowledge of it. As Josefine Vinberg (pictured below), business area manager programmatic, Widespace explains in this piece, an evaluation of campaign goals and objectives ensures you approach mobile in the right way, to get the best return on your investment. 

This disconnect between the popularity of programmatic and the knowledge levels of how to use it successfully is naturally a cause for a concern. Especially since globally, mobile ad spend grew by 56.1% in the first half of this year. It now makes up 51% of digital display advertising and has overtaken desktop spend a full year earlier than many forecasters predicted. 

With this in mind, here are three essential pieces of advice for anyone who wants to succeed with programmatic mobile campaigns: 

1. Don’t view mobile as an extension of the desktop 

Josefine Vinberg, Business Area Manager Programmatic, Widespace

Desktop advertising peaked in 2014 and has been shrinking ever since. In contrast, mobile has experienced a meteoric rise. However, it’s an entirely different environment where marketers can make use of engaging ad formats that maximise the opportunity afforded by a phone’s unique features such as smart sensors, touchscreen, gyro, and VR format. Get it wrong, however, and you end up with static and boring ad formats, and buying strategies mimicked from your desktop campaigns.

The trick is also in capitalising on the fact that mobile is the only media channel that is with us all day, from the moment we wake until we go to bed at night. This may mean choosing to focus on smart mobile solutions above cross-device conversion tactics, as the shortcomings of cross device targeting technology puts the potential of mobile into pole position. 

2. Amplify your reach by extending your target group 

In today’s programmatic world, data is becoming more and more important. We no longer buy verticals or engage in site targeting; instead, we buy defined audience segments. However, the mobile advertising landscape is much more fragmented than desktop, and each mobile environment acts as a walled garden – so you will only be able to target an audience in the same environment as the data in which it was collected.

This leads to limited campaign reach, as low matching rates equal low delivery, with budget often shifted to desktop as a result. Campaigns also suffer from the exclusion of relevant users – simply because they can’t be matched with the users on which marketers have data. Mobile programmatic investment also ends up concentrated on Android mobile web or in native apps, as they are the environments where it’s easiest to track and identify unique users. Ironically, iOS mobile web is less overcrowded and represents the most affluent target groups, so shouldn’t be ignored. 

To combat this, lessen your focus on specific demographics or consumer groups, and instead look at the ad interests of individuals. Deliver your campaign to the users who you have data on and who you have identified as your key target group, and start collecting insights on their behaviour and how they interact with your message. Use these insights to find other users with a similar behavioural pattern. You will not only amplify your reach, but you might also identify new attractive sub-customer segments. 

3. Optimise your brand, building on relevance rather than clicks 

As marketers increasingly harness mobile as a powerful branding tool, a change in campaign optimisation and measurement is required. Building brands is about reaching out to users and engaging an audience, rather than purely driving clicks. 

A campaign optimised on CTR and will be delivered to users and ad placements with a high click frequency. We already know that extremely few people, less than 4%, ever click on ads. 

So, how can you make sure to hit your target audience? 

Really it’s more about relevance than about performance, meaning it relies on marketers having data and analytics that enable the full customer journey to be understood. In order to optimise mobile branding campaigns based on relevance and interest, therefore, you must work with a programmatic partner that has directly integrated publishers into their platform. What this means is having a partner that can follow the user between mobile environments, and that has enough data to identify patterns and find users likely to be interested in your messaging. 

Just as we shouldn’t optimise brand building campaigns on clicks, nor should we evaluate them on performance KPIs. Instead, start with campaign goals and find alternative KPIs. If the purpose of the campaign, for example, is to increase interest and awareness for a new product, then that is what should be measured and evaluated. This can be done by analysing how long users are spending viewing the ad, or by measuring whether the campaign has managed to shift the target group's attitudes and awareness.