Mobile Marketing

3 biggest emerging trends in mobile marketing as told by experts during Postback ’16

Becky Doles

trends-in-mobile-marketing

You’ve already heard TUNE CEO Peter Hamilton’s predictions for the top trends to watch in mobile marketing, but how do his ideas stack up to other marketers in the space? Mobile experts from the New York Times, Staples, Match, Ketchapp, Fetch, and Schoold shared their three picks for emerging mobile marketing trends at Postback ‘16. Here’s what they had to say:

What are the top three emerging mobile marketing trends?

“The three biggest trends I’ve seen emerging in mobile marketing, gosh, I think the rise of wearables, that’s definitely one, and trying to understand as wearables, you know, do you make an app for the watch just because, to be there, because Apple likes you more if you do that, or is it a really utility benefit for your customers…

“I think Snapchat is one. I really didn’t see it coming from being such – you know, I don’t think anyone could have predicted that the Wall Street Journal would be developing content for Snapchat over the past year. So that’s an exciting one.

“And then three, I think it’s really the industry recognizing that there are so many disparate systems out there and players and all of us talking about how we can really come together to build a strong ecosystem.”

     — Gwen Murray, Mobile Marketing Lead at Staples

“I think the convergence of web and app. So I think we’re seeing more with universal linking and attribution and just overall that the way that the app ecosystem is starting to merge a little bit. It’s just like kind of mobile and desktop. Eventually, there’s just going to be digital consumption. And I think we’re not going to look at apps in particular as something isolated from the web at one point. So I think that’s one of the big trends.

“I think the second biggest trend is figuring out ways to optimize conversion on that mobile web front. We’re seeing that Apple is coming out with Apple Pay for mobile web; Google is coming out with something later this year. Figuring out ways that you can bring the best of the app world into the actual mobile web with the one-click purchase is going to be a game-changer.

“And then the third trend really is personnel… making sure that companies are hiring dedicated mobile experts. We see a lot of people out there who are migrating from the web world, or you have people and companies that are putting web-focused marketers into mobile roles and they don’t understand the nuances there. To me, as a senior person at a large brand, I would rather hire someone who has a couple years of mobile experience as opposed to someone with five, six, seven years of just dedicated web experience. There are nuances. The technology is different. The way that you do things, there are so many different challenges that you just don’t understand unless you immerse into the mobile world every day.  And so, I think we’re going to start to see this cycle of people who have been in mobile first roles start to progress into more senior roles in that companies and that’s when a lot of things are going to start to take off.”

     — Scott Stanchak, Managing Director of Mobile Marketing Strategy, Beta and Off-Platform at The New York Times

“Number one is probably the proliferation of data and targeting in the space. I think traditional ad networks are really going to have to evolve to really compete against a lot of the new solutions out there.

“Number two… I think networks and tracking providers are going to kind of start to work together to battle against fraud. I think it’s such a big issue and it’s becoming a larger component of space and so much money is spent on it that it’s kind of something that’s on top of our minds right now.  So I think there’s definitely going to be a lot of effort focused on fighting that.

“And third, I think that there’s going to be continued consolidation in the space. I think that you’ll see a lot of the ad networks that haven’t been able to keep up really just start to disappear. Once they haven’t offered any innovative solutions or targeting, just you won’t see these names around anymore. So I think you’ll see a lot more household names.”

     James Peng, Head of Mobile Acquisition at Match Group

“I think the three biggest trends I see emerging in mobile marketing… the spend per user is increasing. As mobile spend, more advertising dollars are coming into mobile.  That number is growing faster and the amount of spend is growing faster than the amount of users growing on mobile. So what we’re seeing is increasing, obviously, CPMs to the advertising side, people are seeing increasing cost per install and also increasing CPMs that they’re paying for to advertise. And this is changing the supply and demand and economics within our waterfall. So that combined with the increased technology that allows us to scale better as a six-person company, a lot of these things coming together are trending in ways that I think are making it easier for marketers.”

     Christian Calderon, Chief Revenue Officer at Ketchapp

“The three biggest trends I see in mobile marketing, one is fraud, unfortunately. But fortunately, we are doing something about it as an industry and as a company and partnering with TUNE, we know we’re looking to combat fraud.

“Another thing for me would be an evolution from going from mobile-only to mobile-first

“And a third thing will be: I think we’re seeing more traditional advertisers, more traditional marketers look at mobile marketing as an effective channel to communicate with their audience.”

     James Connelly, Chief Executive Officer at Fetch

“So number one is a consolidation going on between the ad networks… And the second thing is the use of data.  Marketers have become smarter and smarter, and understand that data. And the third thing is automation. Marketers don’t want to spend so much time crunching data on a day-to-day basis anymore. They want everything in one place and everything presented to them, so they can make a smarter decision.”

     Mai Ho, Head of Growth at Schoold

Get ahead of the trends in 2017

As you’re building your strategy for the coming year, make sure you’re not leaving any emerging trends in mobile marketing trends off your list. Download the e-book, “Marketing’s New Frontier: The Convergence of Mobile Web and App,” to stay ahead of the curve.

What are your predictions for emerging mobile marketing trends?

Author
Becky Doles

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she led a variety of marketing and communications projects at San Francisco startups. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After living nearly a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned to her home of Charleston, SC, where you can find her enjoying the sun and salt water with her family.

Leave a Reply