Category: Mobile Marketing

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.”

Social media marketing reporting available over multiple devices through Facebook

| August 21, 2014

The company has now announced that advertisers will be able to track conversions from desktop through mobile.

Facebook has now announced that its social media marketing ads will allow advertisers to be able to track their conversion rates over both traditional desktop channels as well as over mobile, such as smartphones and tablets.

This data tracking uses a “conversion pixel” worked into the marketer’s website, along with the Facebook SDK.

It has now been added to the existing cross channel targeting over various forms of devices from Facebook, as well as to its measurement functionality for delivery and conversions. This type of attribution increases in its importance along with the rise of the number of devices being utilized by each individual user. A statement released by Facebook about this social media marketing has pointed out that while smartphone and tablet based ads are not very likely to drive a purchase that will occur right away and on that device, they do have the potential to influence one made on another device at a later time.

This means that it will be easier to track social media marketing viewed over mobile that leads to a sale on a PC.

social media marketing - facebookTests on this mobile marketing tracking technology were carried out this year from May through July. They indicated that among the individuals who had shown interest in an ad that they saw over Facebook mobile, there was a conversion rate of 32 percent on the desktop computers of those individuals at some point during the 28 days that followed.

Until now, it has been impossible for marketers to be able to track the impact that their ads have had when a user changed devices in order to take action on Facebook advertisements that they had seen. This feature is changing that so that when a user switches from one device to another, it is still possible to track their behaviors.

The Facebook blog illustrated the social media marketing point by saying “Imagine seeing an ad for a product on your mobile phone while in line at the bank. Do you immediately make a purchase on your phone?,” and adding “Probably not. But perhaps you go back to your office later that day and buy on your desktop computer.”