The rise in data collection and analytics is leading more and more marketers to target specific consumers, not just the devices they use.
Now that the market is shifting to mobile, the industry is working hard to advance the science and tech of cutting edge targeting and personalization of advertising campaigns.
So far, advertisers like what they see, but clamor for even more clarity, according to eMarketer’s new report, “Mobile Audience Targeting: Have Industry Advances Raised Advertisers’ Confidence Levels?”
“Last year, marketers studied by eMarketer gave mobile ad targeting average grades for effectiveness, and research showed that many advertisers were skeptical of the data used to target mobile display ads to specific audience segments on smartphones and tablets,” noted eMarketer analysts.
Things can’t be all that bad on the data front, however. Marketing professionals have gravitated to targeting via smartphones and tablets; in fact, in 2014, 75 percent of the digital media and marketing professionals surveyed by eXelate indicated they “targeted ads to specific audience segments on smartphones, and 73.1 percent did so on tablets” — up significantly from the year before.
Analysis of mobile ad campaigns by Opera Mediaworks’ ad platform showed the same growth. Its Q1 2015 stats indicate that in many global regions, 85 percent of advertisers are targeting to specified audiences.
“With ad dollars quickly shifting from desktop to mobile, interest in ad targeting is rising,” added eMarketer. “When the research firm (Econsultancy) asked a group of digital marketing and ecommerce professionals worldwide to name the digital marketing disciplines they were prioritizing in 2015, targeting and personalization topped the list, up from third place in 2014.”
Marketers want more and better technology to get the data they can use to personalize campaigns, but they’re already fully committed to mobile targeting.