At Facebook we get things wrong – but we take our safety role seriously

Monika Bickert, Head of Public Policy Management at Facebook

Last month, people shared several horrific videos on Facebook of Syrian children in the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack. The videos, which also appeared elsewhere on the internet, showed the children shaking, struggling to breathe and eventually dying.

 

The images were deeply shocking – so much so that we placed a warning screen in front of them and made sure they were only visible to adults. But the images also prompted international outrage and renewed attention on the plight of Syrians.

How Mobile App Success Rests on Where Your Users Spend Their Time

Paul Barnes, Territory Director Northern Europe and Middle East at App Annie

Apps have become one of the most influential devices in driving consumer behaviour, with over 900 billion hours spent in apps worldwide in 2016 and over 30 apps on average used per month. People now manage a myriad of different aspects of their lives with apps – a ubiquitous component to everyday life.

The reality is that, on a daily basis, the average consumer uses approximately 10 apps. By understanding how these apps are used, where consumers are spending their time and in which apps, mobile marketers gain a unique insights into behavioural trends of a highly influential audience.

Mobile Commerce Engagement Grows As User Acquisition Costs Drop

Dennis Mink, VP of Marketing, Liftoff

Earlier this week Liftoff released our annual Mobile Shopping Apps report, highlighting the latest trends in mobile user acquisition and app engagement. The good news for ecommerce marketers is that as mobile purchases are on the rise, the cost to acquire new mobile shoppers has declined over the past 12 months.

As we inch ever closer to the holiday shopping season, marketers should take note of several important mobile shopping trends. August and early September is an opportune time to focus on new user acquisition. With mobile ad inventory costs at near lows for the year, marketers can acquire new users cost effectively, just ahead of the holidays. This is also an excellent time to test and optimize ad creative, before inventory costs shoot up. If you wait until October, you’ve already missed the window of opportunity as more competition ramps up spending, driving up costs for everyone.

Bots Are Still A Work In Progress: 5 Lessons So Far

David Skerrett, Managing Partner at Nimbletank

The Bot landscape is being shaped by the four horseman of the tech world: Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Whilst the term bot has been around for decades it is only really in the last 2 years that the volume has been turned up with many predicting that bots will be the next app, and that app’s are dead. That is an oversimplification, of course, but given so many young people spend their time on their mobile messaging apps, and given the success of the WeChat “app of everything” in China it is natural agencies, brands and tech players in the mobile space pay close attention to the Bot trends already clearly evidenced.

Mobile marketing: Engaging Gen X,Y & Z

Written by Jane Ostler, Managing Director, Media & Digital, Kantar Millward Brown

Kantar Millward Brown’s AdReaction: engaging Gen X, Y and Z study reveals vital insights into how marketers should use mobile, explains Jane Ostler, Managing Director of their Media & Digital practice.

Marketing communications are undergoing a seismic shift. Brand messages are slowly but surely moving away from the ad break and deeper into consumers’ lives, with much of this driven by the combined influences of younger audiences and mobile device usage.

AdReaction reveals that 74% of Gen Z (16-19 year olds) globally spends more than an hour a day on mobile devices, more than any other generation.

In this world of declining ad receptivity, brands must find new ways to reach consumers beyond the confines of traditional advertising, and need to use mobile in more creative ways than ever before. 

Mobile Ad Fraud: Time to Clean the Space

Christophe Collet, CEO at S4M

Digital ad spending makes up more than 60% of total advertising investments in the UK. The mobile channel is well on its way to dominate all other media channels and will double the ad spending for desktop and TV by 2018. Naturally, with more budget at stake, more incentives rise for fraud in mobile ad campaigns. The good news for the ecosystem is that advertisers and vendors are well aware of what’s at stake and have heard the call from Marc Pritchard to clean up the mobile programmatic space.

A ton of innovation from the sell side – but who’s innovating on behalf of the buyer?

  Written by Jason Cooper, General Manager, Mobile at Integral Ad Science

Today we find ourselves in a market centered around the seller, rather than the buyer. Innovation is mainly being led from the sell side, be that from the walled gardens, the mobile SSPs or the DSPs. There are a limited number of options available for the agency and brand, outside of the ad servers and verification companies.

Weve, Axonix and Statiq – the next frontier of location marketing?

Tom Pearman, Managing Director at Weve

Last weeks’ announcement that Telefónica’s Axonix had purchased Statiq, the three year old mobile location targeting business, was exciting news not just for the Telefónica teams across Weve and Axonix, but also for the industry. Statiq have been creating waves since they launched, breaking the mould by detaching media from supply and giving buyers what they want – control of the data.

How retailers can use mobile data to help drive shopping behaviour

Warren Mills , Client Partner: Entertainment, Media, Retail & Technology at Telefonica

As an industry, we’re increasingly understanding the critical role mobile plays at at each stage of the consumer journey. While these journeys will undoubtedly change and fragment, the role of mobile is here to stay as mobile data plays an ever-important role in how we identify, target and measure retail behaviours.

Historically, we’ve always treated the retail journey as a linear process, with the key aim to move the customer through the funnel: building awareness, driving consideration and intent and, ultimately, encouraging purchase. The importance of loyalty and advocacy were only considered once the customer had been acquired, rather than considered as an integral part of an evolving process.

Lessons From Barcelona: A Data-Eye View for Marketers

Christophe Bize, vice-president of data & mobile analytics at Ogury

Love it or hate it, Mobile World Congress (MWC) never fails to turn heads in the marketing world. This year was no exception.

 

Despite a look back – in the form of Nokia’s nostalgic 3310 re-launch – stealing the show early on, the main headlines were all about looking forward. From IoT, VR and AI to driverless cars and 5G, marketers’ appetites were whetted by a future filled with endless new opportunities to turbocharge consumer engagement.