Tag: mobile ads

Mobile ads are seeing considerable tracking problems

| August 25, 2014

Online marketing on smartphones and tablets are facing serious issues with dirty data.

There are large problems developing in the use of mobile ads, in which marketers are regularly paying for impressions but where fraud is becoming increasingly commonplace when recording the data associated with the performance of a given advertisement.

There is little that mobile marketers can do to actually confirm that their ads are actually viewed by humans.

While there may be quite a bit of efficiency to the online advertising industry, it is also greatly flawed, and these issues are magnified when it comes to the growing number of channels that are being introduced through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. For this reason, the mobile ads industry is starting to take aim at the fraud problem from which it has been suffering and which is getting worse.

Industry organizations are now starting to set mobile ads standards and transparency is being demanded by media buyers.

Mobile Ads - Tracking IssuesSome mobile publishers have begun a trend of creating user location data that have estimates that they will then be capable of transmitting to advertisers. From the side of the publisher, when a user’s specific location cannot be determined, then it could be possible to turn the registration form’s zip code or country code into a broader data guess for which marketers will pay a considerable price.

Unfortunately, reports have been indicating that over half of all of the information that has been providing this user location data is not correct. The Dstillery chief executive, Tom Phillips, as well as an early online ad fraud whistleblower have stated that at the moment the fraudulent data that is being produced by the industry for mobile ads is posing a threat that is just as great to marketers as fake traffic is on the standard web.

Phillips explained this problem with mobile ads by saying that “The data quality problem in mobile advertising is probably as serious [as traffic fraud problem on desktop].” He also added that “A lot of that location data we find is useless. It’s a big number — somewhere in the 30% range. If a third of the information you’re getting is not useful, than as you blend that together into a location strategy, you have a lot of noise. That’s problematic.”

Mobile ads aren’t impressing women

| August 15, 2014

Recent research is showing that overall, female smartphone users are indifferent to advertising.

According to the results of a lengthy study that has been observing the responses that women are having to mobile ads, it has been determined that it is actually quite challenging to be able to consistently connect with female consumers.

The IAB, itself, has now released a statement that has said that this is actually a very difficult goal to achieve.

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is usually a strong proponent of virtually every kind of digital and mobile ads in their various technologies and formats, but it has stated that “it’s a challenge to find consistent mobile advertising success stories, when it comes to the women that they recently asked after a study that has been running for over half a year. It partnered with the Real Women Talking Community from the MXM (Meredith Xcelerated Marketing) agency near the end of 2013, in order to be able to better understand the responses that women have to smartphone advertising.

There were approximately 100 women who were asked about the responses that they had to mobile ads.

Mobile ads - Women are unimpressedThese women were asked their opinions about various types of advertising and were asked to provide a screenshot of the actual mobile advertisement that they were seeing. What was found was that a number of the smartphone ads were either not functioning properly or they were simply not connecting with the women who saw them.

Many of the women who participated in this research essentially stated that the only thing that they liked about banner ads that were displayed on their mobile devices was that it was easy to either ignore them or to simply get rid of them. One women pointed out one of the true struggles that are associated with the typical type of interruptive ads on smartphones and the way in which they differ from the PC banner experience. She said that “When I’m on my phone, I’m needing to do something quickly and [ads] can get in the way,” meaning that they are not only being ignored, but they’re being actively disliked.

Similarly, another woman pointed out that mobile ads are a technical failure on small device screens because they take up too much space and at the wrong times. She will then blame the advertiser for the inconvenience and builds a negative impression of that brand or product.