While mobile is hardly new, it was not until last year that the advertising industry was officially required to adopt a brand new marketing medium – Mobile Advertising. It barreled onto the scene, took center stage, and quickly cemented itself as the marketing medium of the future. The mobile industry had plenty to celebrate in 2012 as the fabled “Year of Mobile” had finally arrived but its arrival also caused disruption, particularly for online publishers.
During a period when online publishers were already improvising monetization efforts to compensate for the rise of programmatic buying, mobile introduced yet another variable that would further complicate the situation, forcing a shift in focus. Already squeezing every last cent out of online CPM’s, mobile traffic immediately made its presence felt as online audiences were no longer restricted to a computer screen as a means of accessing their favorite digital content. As a result, mobile traffic began cannibalizing impressions from the desktop impressions, further impacting an already depleting bottom line. Digital publishers reliant on online advertising revenue were suddenly dealt with a brand new form of supply to figure out and monetize immediately, or face a slow death at the expense of mobile's rapid growth.
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Tagged 'mobile site' 
Which Came First – The Mobile Site or the Mobile Customer
The fact of the matter is, mobile web browsing is here, like it or not. However, a full mobile site can be an expensive undertaking. And for some companies it seems that a mobile site falls under the "chicken or the egg" dilemma - which comes first, the mobile site or the mobile customer. It can be difficult to justify the costs of building a mobile site when there isn't a lot of mobile traffic coming to your site currently. With the rapid growth rates seen in the past year from web activity on mobile devices, its time that companies start looking at their existing mobile traffic - how conversion rates differ and determine a threshold for the percentage of total site traffic coming from a mobile device that you need before justifying those costs. Especially when you consider that more often than not, a standard website on a mobile phone is not a positive user experience.
Last week I was traveling and came across two websites in desperate need of a better mobile presence:
Alaska Airlines - My flight was delayed going home, so I had some time to kill, but wanted to keep an eye on my new departure time.... Read more
Mobile is MVP in latest Porche campaign
"In just a 4-month-long pilot run, mobile outperformed Porsche's wider campaign to convince buyers it wasn't just an unaffordable icon," reports AdAge.
Mobile accounted for 20 percent of the digital spend, but drove 22 percent of the total campaign's traffic. Also, mobile ads earned six-times the clickthroughs of traditional banners, mobile generated three-times the call center volume and double the dealer look ups.
I know you're sick of hearing, "could this be the year for mobile?" So I won't (directly) say it. But numbers like these from the Porche campaign have to make you mobile skeptics think again, and you mobile fanatics ought to be passing these numbers around like candy.
Porche used Yahoo!'s behavioral tools to drop ads on users whose surfing behavior indicated they were in the market for coups, SUVs, convertibles or luxury cars.
