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Best Practices for Holiday Media Buying in Mobile

Posted by Marcus Startzel on December 8th, 2011 at 8:40 am

Holiday buys can begin as early as August, but it’s not too late to reach consumers during the crucial holiday season.
When planning a holiday campaign, many of the general best practices in mobile will still apply:

Think about running cross platform to reach as many consumers as possible
Implement targeting parameters to reach your core audience
Identify clear campaign goals
Etc.

With that said—there are a few specific things to think about that can make a difference when running a campaign during the holiday season.
Mobile is not just a DR channel
mCommerce has been getting a lot of attention lately, and deservedly so. Retail advertisers in particular are finding that consumers are responding positively to mCommerce, and it can be a great way to boost sales.
mCommerce should not be thought of as the only option though. Mobile can be an effective branding tool, and as consumers are turning to their phones to research potential gifts, brand awareness campaigns can still often lead to sales (even if it happens in the store, and not directly on the phone).
Identify the big days
Black Friday and Cyber Monday may be over, but there are still a few huge holiday buying days left that advertisers should be planning for. For many... Read more

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Simplifying Mobile Creative – A Path to ROI

Posted by Marcus Startzel on November 18th, 2011 at 12:02 pm

Scott Montgomery, the Executive Creative Director at Bradley and Montgomery, recently wrote an article for Ad Age focusing on the importance of moving quickly in the advertising world. At the heart of Montgomery’s argument is the idea that when a brand or agency has a creative plan—they simply need to execute. Delaying can lead to second guessing, changing market conditions, and numerous other issues.
This is true in mobile as well. Brands and agencies often come up with innovative ideas and unique campaign goals, and it is a major focus for us to create unique tools that will help them achieve these goals without jumping through hoops or waiting months to execute.
Mobile is a unique marketing channel, and advertisers can hit certain campaign objectives that simply aren’t possible in any other medium (i.e. Reaching an auto intender while they are on the lot!). Once a brand has determined campaign objectives though—it’s time to execute. Whether it’s an expandable banner—or a “next generation ad,” like a fully branded interactive game—building mobile creative shouldn’t be thought of as a constraint to achieving results. Brands should find the process that works best for them, and in most cases, it will be the one that... Read more

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Advertising Week 2011 – Bringing Mobile to the Main Stage

Posted by Marcus Startzel on October 11th, 2011 at 11:23 am

Last Thursday was the final day of Advertising Week 2011, and we did our part to close the show with a bang by bringing a mobile panel to the main stage. I was joined by Paul Gelb, Vice President and Mobile Lead at Razorfish, and Jason Newport, SVP of Mobile Strategy at Carat, and the three of us had a great discussion on how brands are currently succeeding in the space.
A large part of the discussion was focused on different verticals, and how various industries are all finding their own creative ways to leverage the mobile channel. Paul Gelb said that “every vertical has found a way to use mobile,” and he then went on to give a few different examples from clients of his.
Coors beer for example, is a brand that Paul said was ramping up quickly, largely because they have seen that mobile is a great way to reach their core audience. Paul also spoke about some of the work Razorfish has done with Disney, who often turns to mobile to promote new movie releases. Paul mentioned that this past summer, studies have shown... Read more

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Advertising Week 2011: “The Shift – Is Mobile attracting traditional dollars the way digital has not?”

Posted by Marcus Startzel on October 5th, 2011 at 11:47 am

Yesterday, I was happy to moderate a mobile panel at Advertising Week 2011 with an impressive group of industry luminaries, including:

Craig Atkinson, President, Chief Digital Officer, PHD
Colleen Soriano, SVP, US Director of Digital Communications, UM
Sean Finnegan, Partner, DMR Partners
Amanda Richman, EVP, Managing Director of Digital, MediaVest
Joel Lunenfeld, Director of Global Brand Strategy, Twitter

The discussion was wide-ranging, and the panelists all spoke on the key mobile trends that are affecting their day-to-day business.
When comparing mobile to digital advertising, one of the key themes to emerge was the depth of opportunities in mobile. Craig Atkinson said that “Mobile excites me like digital did in 1995. People are walking around with the digital world in their pocket, and the potential is unbelievable.”
Amanda Richman also had an interesting viewpoint, and said that mobile will allow us to look at some of the mistakes we made in digital. While Amanda said that mobile may end up making some mistakes too, we’ve learned so much, that in 1-2 years of mobile, we are accomplishing what took 10 years in digital.
Another trend that we touched on was how mobile has emerged as a great channel to reach local consumers. Sean Finnegan mentioned that while “people try to... Read more

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The Mobile Era 5 years in: What happened to our phones?

Posted by Marcus Startzel on June 22nd, 2011 at 9:05 am

I had the opportunity to speak last week at the MMA Forum in New York, and had some great discussions with industry insiders about what is going on in mobile. The venue was the prestigious Waldorf Astoria Ballroom, and the room was packed with hundreds of people, which is a sign of the “mobile times.”
While many of the panels and presentations at the event focused on very specific topics in the space, I decided to go a different route in my talk and take a big picture look at how mobile has evolved in the last 5 years, and how we can use that info to examine the key trends today and potentially predict the coming years.
While 2006 may not sound like that long ago, in “mobile years,” it was ages ago. Consumers used their mobile devices (which were predominantly flip phones and BlackBerry’s) nearly 100% for voice/email/text, and mobile advertising was talked about in mostly hypothetical terms (i.e. “imagine you are walking by a Starbucks”). Sure, people were running WAP banners and building early applications, but it was primitive.
2007-2009 brought about the iPhone, the introduction of the mobile app store, and the rise of Android, and last year in... Read more

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