Mobile marketing mystics: Unlocking the potential of in-app advertising

Imagine it’s the 1980s for a second. You, a crystal-gazing marketeer, explain to your CMO that the future of marketing lays in mobile telephones.

‘Mobile phones! Pfft. They’re a yuppie fad, we don’t advertise to bricks,’ might come the scowling response of this 80s stereotype.

The derision wouldn’t be misplaced. For the first four decades that mobile phones existed, they were just that: mobile (as in, portable); phones (as in, well, a...

6 September 2018 | Advertising

The $70bn WhatsApp business story nobody’s talking about

 When WhatsApp unveiled its new Business API last week, most tech reporters determined Facebook was getting serious about monetising the chat app it purchased for $19bn in 2014.

They’re probably right about the money, but wrong about where it’s most likely to come from.

The business model question 

4 September 2018 | Advertising Technology

WhatsApp launching pay-to-use tools for brand marketers

WhatsApp is launching a pay-to-use advertising service for brands looking to engage their customers directly on small screens.  

The move opens up a new revenue stream for the Facebook-owned messaging app since removing subscription fees in 2016 and allows businesses to send information or services updates, such as delivery information or tickets.

According to BBC news, the fee will be based on confirmed delivery, on which advertisers will pay between 0.5 cents to 9 cents...

3 August 2018 | Customer Experience

12% of UK Instagram influencers are still buying fake followers

Despite surging popularity in the emerging marketing channel, it seems a large chunk of influencers still refuse to play by the book in order to make a quick buck.

A study by independent campaign measurement firm CampaignDeus found 12% of UK influencers to have bought fake Instagram followers in the first six months of 2018. The findings were based on analysis of nearly 700,000 posts, identifying ‘bot-buyers’ by those with low UK followings, inexplicable jumps in follower...

1 August 2018 | Campaigns

5 ways to integrate video into your digital strategy on a shoestring budget

For years, mobile has been a key part of marketing dialogue and the industry-standard for many advertisements. However, innovation runs rampant in world of mobile and there are certain aspects of mobile that should get more attention by brands and advertisers. This year, the star of the show is clearly mobile video.

Time spent on mobile has continued to increase, and more than 75 percent of video viewing is mobile. But what does that mean for marketers?

It’s time to think...

26 July 2018 | Mobile Marketing

Instagram ad spend growth trounces Facebook in wake of privacy concerns

Instagram’s year-on-year ad spend grew 177 percent - four times that of Facebook - as its owner failed to live up to Wall Street expectations following its Q2 2018 earnings report.  

Excluding revenue from its hugely popular photo-sharing app, Facebook reported ad spend growth of 42 percent amounting to $13.23bn (£10.13bn) yesterday which, while on paper sounds reasonable, represented its slowest-growing quarter since it went public.

The report saw...

26 July 2018 | Advertising

Why advertisers must use next generation mobile technology responsibly

In advance of each iteration of a manufacturer’s smartphone, speculation is rife as to what new technology will be included and how this will enhance our lives.

What is clear from the range of smartphones that are currently available, along with predictions about future models, is that screen size is a critical way to gain a competitive advantage.

Big screens, small handsets

Apple’s most recent model, the iPhone X introduced features such as facial recognition to...

23 July 2018 | Advertising

How to enhance your UX design with micro interactions: A guide

User experience (UX) is the most important part of any app. If a user finds an app difficult to use then it doesn’t matter how well it’s built or how good it looks – they won’t use it.

There are many areas within user experience, but the one we will focus on is micro interactions, which closely link to motion design and to the user interface (UI). Micro interactions are sometimes overlooked or viewed as a ‘nice to have’, however more and more people...

2 July 2018 | Best Practice

Norwegian CMS startup Sanity wants to kick content creation out of the 90s

As a digital marketer, you’ve more than likely to have had a run-in with a content management system (CMS). If you’re lucky, you might even get to use one every day.

Whether it’s Wordpress, SilverStripe, Drupal or Django, tucked away in the backend, it’s easy to take these painfully functional workhorses for granted, but one Scandinavian startup thinks the status quo is well overdue for an overhaul.  

Sanity is the product of Norwegian digital...

20 June 2018 | Branding

Mobile advertising to win third of global budgets by 2020

Mobile advertising is on track to account for 30.5% of global spend by 2020 to total $187bn (£142bn), according to Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, published yesterday (June 19).

That figure is more than double the $88bn spend predicted on desktop advertising and just $5bn shy of television. By 2021, however, mobile advertising is expected to “comfortably” overtake TV.

This cosmic rise is a direct result of consumers switching out the desktop...

19 June 2018 | Advertising