The latest smartphone statistics are showing that advertisers can’t use a one size fits all mentality.
Smartphones are rapidly becoming one of the best ways for brands to be able to communicate an interact with consumers in a relevant way, as mobile marketing techniques become better understood and employed, but marketers are discovering that there is no single solution to reaching everyone.
There are massive opportunities through smartphone advertising, but a cookie cutter strategy does not exist.
While promotions and ads over smartphones can be extremely effective in emerging markets, mobile marketing firms have come to note that when focusing on emerging markets, they must not only work on engaging consumers, but also in converting new customers. Among the emerging markets where the growth has been greatest are Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. In those markets, mobile ad revenues have risen by over 60 percent, year over year.
It is clear that these are very promising areas for mobile marketing, provided that it is done correctly.
The latest projections are that these markets will make up the majority of mobile connections within three years from now. Marketers are boosting their advertising budgets in order to focus on these customers and reach them through their smartphones. This is especially true in the areas in which there is a rapidly growing middle class. The reason is that it is building the number of people who have a disposable income.
In these emerging markets, the use of mobile devices is considerably greater than that of laptops and desktops. In fact, smartphones are used broadly over tablets. The reason is that they did not have the infrastructure or disposable income available for widespread computer use as developed nations saw those machines become ubiquitous. Therefore, targeting consumers over smartphones is essentially the only way to go when it comes to digital marketing in those regions.
The key is to avoid the belief that mobile marketing in the West and in these markets can be conducted in the same way. Duplicating campaigns leads to a direct failure in emerging markets, nearly every time.
As the search engine giant works to expand its smartphone and tablet based audience, its acquisitions continue.
Yahoo! has just revealed its most recent step in widening its audience of smartphone and tablet users in its purchase of the mobile marketing platform, Sparq.
This allows users to be able to more conveniently toggle among their smartphone apps.
This is far from the first of the acquisitions that Yahoo! has made recently in the mobile marketing area. In fact, this is only one of a growing number of small startups that are being absorbed by the search engine giant in its efforts to move into the smartphone friendly channel more effectively. The primary benefit of Sparq is that it allows its users to be able to switch from one app to another while using their smartphones. This could be highly appealing to marketers because this capability is believed to help to increase the app usage from the owners of mobile devices.
Sparq integration into Yahoo! could also help the company to use mobile marketing for monetization.
According to the founder of Sparq, Jesse Chor, who is also the company’s CEO, “We are uber passionate about mobile — we’ve been striving to build the best mobile platform possible, and are excited to continue upon that goal with Yahoo.” Chor went on to express that “Words cannot describe how ecstatic we are to be joining such an amazing team with such an inspiring mission. We see endless opportunity ahead.”
The earnings at Yahoo! haven’t been exceptionally good over the last while. During the last quarter of 2013, the company’s reports showed that its earnings had fallen by 91 percent when compared to the same time a year before. That said, one of the reasons that the earnings were as low as they were was that the company had spent a massive amount of money on the acquisition of startups. In fact, in the last quarter alone, there was $163 million spent by Yahoo! on purchasing other companies.
In December, the company took in a number of companies that could contribute to its mobile marketing strategy, including PeerCDN, a content-speeding startup, Evntlive, a startup for “virtual venues”, and SkyPhrase, a natural language software startup that has been compared to Siri.
