Mobile Marketing! Within a span of a little more than a decade, mobile phones have transformed from being used as a communication device to being our main source of entertainment, work, and shopping; therefore, companies have also transitioned the way they engage clients to include marketing that occurs through mobile apps. The primary tool that enabled this transition is referred to as a mobile marketing platform.
In this blog, we will examine how mobile marketing platforms have evolved from its earlier days to the current mobile marketing platforms available today, and what the future of mobile marketing platforms looks like for mobile advertisers.
What Is a Mobile Marketing Platform?
Mobile marketing platforms are tools or software that are designed to assist businesses in promoting their apps, tracking installs, managing advertising campaigns, and measuring performance—all on mobile devices. In other words, it’s a one-stop shop for marketers looking to execute a successful campaign.
One great example of a mobile marketing platform is Apptrove, a contemporary mobile marketing platform that is also considered an MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner). Through Apptrove, app marketers can track where users are coming from, and which campaigns are performing best. Apptrove is able to optimize advertising spending, maximize return on investment, and keep fraud to a minimum—all with a user-friendly experience.
The Past: Simple Ads and Basic Tracking
Mobile marketing was basic in the early 2010s. Most apps relied on a few weak banners or pop-ups for the ad placements. The banners were usually poorly integrated into the app and appeared in random places. It was difficult to measure impact when there were almost no rules and much guesswork involved.
Most advertisers started running mobile ads in the ad networks—mobile ad networks where a lot of different advertisers and publishers were and many different apps. They helped provide some advertising placements on apps with consideration to advertisers and publishers but did not offer the best in deep tracking or reporting documentation. Most of the time, a marketer could not even tell if the user saw the ad, clicked it, or loaded the app from an install.
Most campaigns were run in “spray and pray mode” with ad placements being launched with the hope for some performance. But this became a quick timeframe as the volume of mobile traffic went above five hundred million users. The demand for smarter tools kept building.
The Present: Smarter, Safer, and More Personalized
Today, men and women of all ages rely on their smartphones and tablets to provide them with the information they need, and they won’t hesitate to download an app to do that. The modern mobile marketing platform is based on data.
Thanks to this data, today marketers can track a user’s entire engagement with their campaign/brand – click an ad, open the app, make a purchase, and uninstall. Mobile enables cutting-edge marketing.
Marketers can make informed tactical decisions about which ads work best, which app marketing platform works best, which ads convert, and user behaviour habits over time. Now that they have lots of competitive data, marketers can create personalized, targeted ads, and spend money more intelligently; no more wasted ad dollars.
One new stat in a recent article shows how impactful this has become. More than 70% of digital ad spending was on mobile, according to Statista, and we are only forecasting upwards! Mobile marketing is vital for brands and app developers now. Another level of improvement has been in fraud prevention.
The old mobile ad networks were rife with fake clicks and installs. Today’s mobile marketing platforms have used technology to create a foolproof system to prove clicks or installs between fingerprinting, SKAdNetwork data, and fraud filter tools to protect advertisers and accountability on their behalf.
The Rise of Privacy and Consent
The biggest change in mobile marketing came with privacy legislation or Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. Marketers can no longer follow all users freely; they can only follow users after they have asked permission.
This was a problem at first, but quickly mobile marketing firms like Apptrove were able to figure things out. Today’s marketers are focused on tracking aggregated data, employing probabilistic modelling, and using SKAdNetwork to measure performance while still respecting user privacy.
The privacy-first framework has made the industry innovate and be more responsible and ethical. It isn’t only about logging ever datapoint. It is about streaming for the correct data points, getting permission before collecting, and using information responsibly.
The Future: AI, Automation, and Cross-Platform Integration
As mobile marketing continues to mature, more and more of the capabilities of a modern mobile marketing platform will also mature. Here is what we can expect shortly:
1. More AI and Automation
Duckpond will leverage machine learning to help marketers predict user behavior, and opportunities to find the right audiences, build advertising creative, and complete segments of assignments that meet execution requirements. This will help take a lot of the manual work, leaving funky marketers with ample time to focus on strategy.
2. Cross-platform attribution
Apps were not made to solely live on mobile devices anymore. The user will move across a mobile, desktop, tablet, and smart tv. Future mobile marketing platforms will track the user accordingly, from every device, giving the marketing and company a full picture of the user journey.
3. Deeper App Store Integration
You can expect app stores to integrate deeply and quickly to app marketing platforms and as a result, empower the developer difference in listing updates that generate the change in downloads and conversions.
4. Real-time adjustments
By leveraging the amount of data provided mobile marketing platforms will provide real-time adjustments to performance campaigns – automatic adjustment of budget or running creative assets when campaigns are underperforming.
Why It Matters
If you’re a brand, game studio, or developer, you can’t afford to ignore mobile marketing. With people spending more than 4 hours a day globally on mobile apps, it is essential to reach your audience where they live. And with the right mobile marketing platform, you can reach them there, deliver a better experience for them, and grow your business smarter.
Whether you are using a mobile ad network to scale installs, or working through an app marketing platform to test creatives and measure KPIs, it is crucial to understand how these tools work together, and which ones are truly impactful.
Final Thoughts
The mobile marketing platform has come a very long way—with everything from a basic banner to powerful engines that drive billion-dollar app economies—and with new tech coming out, it will only get better.
If you want to grow your app, the mobile advertising marketplace is an efficient way to do so. Investing in a credible mobile marketing platform (like Apptrove) is powerful. The future of mobile advertising is here, are you ready?
