Peggy Anne Salz, Lead Analyst and Founder at MobileGroove
Mobile equips brands and business marketers to deliver real-time marketing right now. But it’s contextually relevant marketing linked to a more holistic view of customers that will truly move the needle on your campaigns. This article, excerpted from Mobile: The Great Connector (Volume 2), a comprehensive eBook authored by Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and content strategist of MobileGroove, in collaboration with the MMA EMEA and member sponsors Inspired and Brainstorm, explores how quality data around context and location arms marketers to improve targeting and campaign performance.
Mobile is equipping brands and business marketers to deliver real-time marketing right now. The insights it provides into consumer context and behaviour is powering more accurate audience-centered segmentation and driving the use of mobile programmatic.
It’s why we’re witnessing a massive shift as more advertisers take advantage of better tools and platforms to target specific segments.
Clearly, the battle to win the customer will be fought with data — and lots of it. But, for marketers, more data could also be too much of a good thing.
“The problem for advertisers on mobile is that there are different data types— mobile, online, offline — and different data providers who have very different views into the consumer based on where they sit in the journey,” notes Tom Laband, CEO of adsquare, startup headquartered in Berlin with offices in London and Paris that helps advertisers segment, reach and target audiences based on what they do and where they are
To help advertisers “navigate the data deluge” adsquare is becoming what Laband calls a “data orchestrator”, bringing together data from a variety of quality data partners, CRM databases and other sources to enrich advertising and bridge the digital realm and the physical world. The outcome is one that will benefit players across the emerging mobile programmatic advertising ecosystem, paving the way for more quality data providers to enable more precise targeting and segmentation for advertisers and new revenue streams for data owners.
To this end adsquare has introduced its Audience Management Platform, a self-service platform to help advertisers combine data points from wide array of trusted data partners, create more precise audience segments, and then activate campaigns targeting these audiences via their preferred buying platforms.
It’s critical in building the capabilities to meet the requirements of advertisers for more control, and effort that adsquare notes is already paying dividends for all stakeholders. “Empowering advertisers to reach the right people in the right context increases precision, which improves the customer experience and the value of the advertising because it is genuinely relevant and useful,” Laband explains.
Brands and businesses may understand they must grasp the opportunities offered by audience data with both hands, but there is still a lack of education about the mobile programmatic space. To bridge this gap adsquare has stepped up to host Audiences In Motion, an event series bringing together mobile programmatic pioneers and practitioners from agencies, trading desks and advertisers. The series, organized by adsquare and partners from Acxiom, AppNexus, Telefónica and 42matters, kicked off in Düsseldorf, providing a forum for decision makers from agencies including MEC, MediaCom, Cadreon, Xaxis and VivaKi to discuss the how and why of leveraging mobile audience data for effective advertising campaigns. Next on the agenda are Audiences In Motion events in London and Paris.
As adsquare’s Laband writes in a recent column: “It’s all about finding ways to maximize the value of all of the data, including the ‘signals’ data people send via mobile on the move and the trail people create through their actions and interactions online, in-store and everywhere else.” Get it right, he concludes, “and the result is a tidal wave of data that can power more effective mobile programmatic advertising, thus enabling amazing, effective and ‘holistic’ audience targeting.”
Moving forward, data will come from a surprising number and range of sources.
At science-led global healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Khurram Hamid, Global Head eCommerce and Media Innovation, believes the day is nearing when sensory data, such as heartbeat and blood oxygen levels, become part of the great body of data driving more effective and efficient mobile programmatic.
Take an individual in an urban setting on a weekday in the early A.M. with low blood sugar levels and no history of diabetes. Since low blood sugar levels are also a signal that cells are starved for energy, this data enhances the holistic view of the customer. It also indicates the right time for real-time marketing (by a brand offering healthy food choices or energy drinks, for example) to present the individual with a relevant message or marketing.
Connect the dots, and mobile programmatic becomes “the megatrend,” one sure to impact every level of marketing and communications. Expect the days of planning six or eight months in advance or mapping out a 3-month campaign to disappear — fast.
“It’s about drawing real-time insights and analytics and using that data to power real-time planning and buying.” This, in turn, will ensure that GSK can achieve its goal to be a “problem solution brand” and “win at the digital shelf,” where mobile search is the trigger and mobile marketing must deliver immediate answers and assistance.
“When the consumer goes to that digital shelf with symptoms or problems we have to ensure we are delivering personally relevant and helpful content,” Hamid explains. “The consumer is at the digital shelf, looking for your product and you have to be there — in real-time — with the right marketing.”
The next article in our series looking at key takeaways in Mobile: The Great Connector (Volume 2)— a comprehensive eBook authored by Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and content strategist of MobileGroove, in collaboration with the MMA EMEA and member sponsors Inspired and Brainstorm — will look at how major brands are putting mobile at the heart of how they engage with customers in the digital and physical worlds.
Register here to download your free copy of this essential marketing resource.)
MMA UK Blog 
Great article! Excited where the future of marketing will take us.