As much as the smartphone marketing sector is taking off, one study is showing it may be more noise than action.
S4M, a mobile ads firm, has just released the findings of a recent study that it conducted based on an analysis of smartphone advertising campaigns, which has shown that nearly half of all of the ad clicks are not actually reaching the planned destination.
The research involved an analysis of over 1 billion ad impression from American, European and Asian campaigns.
These were all mobile ad campaigns that ran during May 2014. What S4M determined was that among the clicks that were achieved, as few as 50 percent actually managed to reach their intended destination during that month. The news was slightly better when it came to tablets, as the clicks that were made over those devices failed to reach their destinations 35 percent of the time. That said, as high as that figure might sound, it was considerably better than was achieved over smartphones.
This lack of proper performance by mobile ads is understandably far lower than acceptable for most marketers.
The S4M CEO and founder, Christophe Collet, stated that this research reveals that “there is room for significant improvement in the deeper understanding of where the best campaign value lies.” The company also came up with three primary reasons that they believe that this poor performance is occurring in advertisements over these devices.
The first was in being able to create ads on a very limited screen size, which can lead to “fat finger syndrome”, in which the user merely clicks the ad in error, when the intention was to touch something else on the screen. The second was slow network speeds, which can lead to a dramatic increase in abandonment. And finally, automated bot clicks in fraud scams that will register that the click actually occurred, but not the actual arrival of a visitor.
Collet pointed out that when it comes to mobile ads, “Spending budget on clicks that never arrive is budget wasted.” He explained that each point in the journey of the consumer must be measured and analyzed in order to generate a much clearer picture of the performance of a given campaign, in order to “enable real optimization”.
The tech company has now hired a chief financial officer for the first time in its existence.
The growth of Fiksu, the mobile marketing technology company, is continuing to move forward at an astounding rate, as has been reflected in its latest new hire, which represents the first chief financial officer that the company has ever had.
Fiksu has now announced that its very first CFO will be Ken Goldman, who is experienced in the field.
Goldman was previously the Black Duck Software CFO and has now come to join the executive team from the mobile marketing firm based in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. The new Fiksu CFO is considered to be quite the seasoned technology industry veteran and has been a driving force behind a number of companies that have been successfully acquired and that have been brought through their initial public offerings (IPOs) over the last three decades.
Now, the most recent step in Goldman’s career is in joining with this rapidly growing mobile marketing technology company.
Goldman achieved a great deal of attention from 2006 through 2008 as he constructed the infrastructure and systems that were required to bring Salary.com to its IPO. The success of that effort was so great that the IPO ended up being eight times subscribed and was able to sell notably more shares than had been forecasted.
Beyond Salary.com, Goldman has also been a part of the teams of several other notable brands and businesses, including Student Advantage, Lodestar Corporation, MediaMap, Shoplink.com, and others.
Fiksu’s CEO, Micah Adler released a technology news statement that welcomed Goldman to the company, saying that “We’re thrilled to expand the strength of our executive team by bringing Ken on board.” He also added that the firm has every faith in his “impressive” and “proven track record in driving growth” for businesses in industries that are rapidly evolving.
The mobile marketing company’s announcement also stated that “We’re looking forward to leveraging his experience and expertise to help Fiksu evolve to the next level and realize its full potential.” The firm was founded in 2008 and has been rapidly growing as a result of its main investors of $16.7 million from Qualcomm Ventures and Charles River Ventures.
