Mobile Advertising: A big step forward

Google has been talking about integrating the various acquisitions like DoubleClick, AdMob and YouTube etc. One of the news last week (source: AdWeek) was that mobile Rich Media ads (expandable, interactive banners) can now be served via DoubleClick (Google's ad server) on AdMob media (Google's mobile ad network).

I feel this is a big step forward as we will be able to get consistent metrics from online (desktop based) and mobile advertising from the same system – DoubleClick, assuming DoubleClick is being used as the ad server for Desktop campaign as well.

One of the next things I would hope from Google is utilizing DoubleClick for the video ad (in-stream) across all their properties worldwide including on YouTube.

 

Launching an Mobile App and Keeping it alive

Most of the major marketers already have a mobile device app or are working on getting one live soon. The marketers should think very seriously on why they want to launch an application on the mobile devices. Does it fit the overall strategy of the campaign, brand. How will they be able to maintain it?

Most of the successful applications like Fandango, Facebook, Chipotle, and Amazon have provided a medium for users to utilize the mobile web in their day to day life. For example: Fandango, Chipotle and Amazon have made e-commerce easy. They have literally provided transactions on users fingertips. This shows how mobile devices are helping drive mobile commerce or mobile retailing. Facebook, as most of you know has exploded in terms of the user base with the mobile technology – revolution in social networking.

One more important point to think about before launching an application is how the application will survive in this world of new applications launching every day. Like any other marketing program – the mobile application also needs to be kept upto date, refreshed with new features, content etc. If the user is going to go through the exact same experience multiple times, the chances of the user re-visiting the application are slim. Even if it is a mobile commerce application, the user feedback needs to be addressed in a very pro-active fashion.

Mobile Analytics: iPhone

I just installed the latest iPhone update yesterday and I am so excited with the new application. There is a lot to measure about this new application, a few metrics that I can think of are:

1. How many iPhone users started the install and how many actually completed it (the update takes about 1.5 to 2 hours, so it would be great to measure the completion rate)
2. Drilling down the consumer flow, the next thing to track would be how many users installed the applications
a. Frequency (1-3, 2-6, 7-10, 10+ applications)
b. Paid applications
c. Free applications
d. Applications by category
3. There are some “Westin” ads specially within the NY Times application, so measuring the Click-through rate on these ads would be a good metric to track

This new application has just changed the use of this product and obviously the sales of this product should go up dramatically as there were a lot of applications missing like Games, Mobile Banking (Bank of America), Newspapers (NYT), Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace)

The engagement with each of the above application would also be a good measure of how consumers are interacting with these applications.