Welcome to the dynamic world of mobile advertising trends, where businesses can harness the power of cutting-edge technologies to engage their target audience like never before.
In this post, we’ll explore the latest trends, such as voice search optimization, visual search growth and augmented reality shopping, that are shaping the future of mobile marketing.
Get ready to discover how you can stay ahead of the curve, captivate your audience and boost your ROI!
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The Power of Mobile Marketing
With 5.48 billion unique mobile phone customers, businesses can no longer afford to overlook the importance of a well-planned mobile marketing strategy (or mcommerce).
The remarkable potential of mobile marketing is highlighted by the fact that mobile users now spend more time on their devices than watching TV. Not only that, but:
- 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months.
- 50% of all e-commerce purchases last holiday season were made on a smartphone.
- Mobile spending has increased to $143 billion with a whopping 20% increase YoY.
To harness this potential, marketers must focus on three key areas: mobile device dominance, mobile commerce, and mobile advertising formats. By understanding and leveraging these aspects, businesses can create a seamless and personalized experience for their audience, ultimately driving increased engagement and ROI.
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Mobile Device Dominance
The phenomenon of mobile device dominance has led to an explosion in mobile activities such as shopping, streaming and gaming. This growing trend emphasizes the importance of SMS marketing, a personal and direct form of communication with a high open and response rate.
In fact, mobile game consumer spending has reached an astounding $116 billion, demonstrating the massive potential of mobile gaming as a marketing channel for businesses:
Mobile streaming is also becoming increasingly popular, with the global video streaming market expected to reach $223.98 billion by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 21% from 2021 to 2028.
As the number of individuals using streaming services reaches record highs, particularly in countries like China, Turkey and Korea, businesses cannot afford to ignore the potential of mobile streaming to captivate their target audience.
The Importance of Mobile Commerce
Mobile commerce, or m-commerce (and mcommerce), is the segment of e-commerce that involves shopping through mobile devices and has become essential these days.
With over 57% of consumers visiting a mobile retail app to obtain additional information about a product or service in 2019, the growing importance of mobile shopping cannot be overstated.
It’s vital for businesses to provide a seamless shopping experience for mobile customers, who prioritize speed and personalization. By offering location-specific data on their websites or apps, brands can cater to 90% of smartphone customers who are uncertain of the brand they wish to purchase when researching online.
Although the cart abandonment rate is 97% on mobile sites (and 68% on desktop), it’s just 20% on mobile apps:
The reason is simple: E-commerce mobile apps let customers store their info on their user profile rather than make them enter it every time.
As mobile commerce continues to grow, businesses must adapt their strategies to stay ahead of the curve.
Mobile Advertising Formats
To effectively engage with their target audience, businesses must choose the right mobile advertising formats for their campaigns. Banner ads, interstitial ads, native ads, video ads, and rewarded ads are some of the available formats that can yield varying click-through rates, depending on the ad’s content.
By understanding the advantages and limitations of each format, marketers can create captivating ads and maximize their ROI in the evolving world of mobile advertising.
Learn more about which mobile advertising formats are best in which contexts here.
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Emerging Mobile Marketing Trends
There are several emerging trends that businesses should keep an eye on. Voice search optimization, visual search growth and augmented reality shopping are transforming the mobile landscape, offering innovative ways to create engaging and personalized experiences for customers.
Let’s delve deeper into each of these trends.
Voice Search Optimization
Voice search optimization (or VSEO) is the process of tailoring content to cater to voice search queries, such as optimizing content for natural language processing, utilizing keywords and delivering concise answers to questions.
71% of consumers choosing voice technology over typing when searching online.
Because of this, you need to optimize your content for the rank zero snippet (or featured snippet), which is essentially the one and only answer that voice assistants will give when responding to user questions:
By optimizing content for voice search, businesses can give their current and potential customers what they want and stay ahead in the competitive mobile marketing landscape.
Dive Deeper: 5 Steps to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search
Visual Search Growth
Visual search refers to a type of search engine function where users can look for information using real-world images rather than through text-based inputs. Visual search engines use artificial intelligence to understand the content and context of these images and return a list of results.
For instance, a user could take a photo of a type of plant they encountered during a hike. Using visual search, the search engine can analyze the photo, identify the plant, and provide the user with information about it. This kind of search can be especially useful in e-commerce, where customers might want to find similar products based on an image.
Keep in mind that 36% of online shoppers have used visual search and images are showing up in the SERPs for about one third of all queries:
Combining visual search with voice search optimization offers customers the opportunity to easily locate the products they desire, further enhancing the overall user experience.
Augmented Reality Shopping
Augmented reality (AR) shopping is also revolutionizing the way customers interact with products and brands.
In fact, 40% of consumers said they would be willing to pay more for a product if they could experience it with AR:
By incorporating AR technology into mobile applications, businesses can create a more immersive shopping experience that allows customers to virtually try on products and see how they would look in their own homes or on themselves in real-time.
Sephora’s Virtual Artist app allows users to virtually try on different shades of lipstick, eyeliner and other makeup products. This is an great example of how you can use AR shopping technology to improve customer interaction with your products:
Despite the challenges associated with AR shopping, such as development and maintenance costs and privacy concerns, the potential benefits of increased customer engagement and improved customer experience cannot be ignored.
Social Media and Mobile Marketing
Social media platforms have become an integral part of mobile marketing – specifically shoppable posts and influencer marketing.
Shoppable Posts on Social Media
Shoppable posts on social media platforms have become increasingly popular among mobile users and businesses alike. These posts allow customers to seamlessly purchase products directly from the platform, leading to increased traffic and sales for businesses.
Instagram is the leader in social selling since this platform offers many tools for e-commerce brands, such as shoppable posts, where you can tag products in posts. Live shopping takes this a step further, where brands can not only sell products, but interact with customers in real time.
With 76% of people acquiring items they have viewed on social media, shoppable posts offer a powerful tool for businesses to enhance customer engagement, while simultaneously gathering valuable insights into customer preferences:
Influencer Marketing for Mobile
Influencer marketing for mobile is an effective way for brands to reach potential customers by making use of the strong relationships between influencers and their followers.
60% of people would purchase a product or download your mobile app when recommended by a popular influencer or famous person.
By choosing the right influencer and creating engaging campaigns, businesses can tap into the power of influencer marketing to boost brand awareness, drive customer engagement, and increase sales.
You can launch your mobile app influencer campaign before the launch, right at launch or even create post-launch promotions. A pre-launch promotion influencer marketing campaign can help build a lot of buzz around your app or game:
With platforms like TikTok gaining popularity among younger audiences, brands have the opportunity to reach a wider audience and create innovative, user-centric advertising campaigns.
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User Experience and Personalization
In the world of mobile marketing, user experience and personalization are key components of successful campaigns. By focusing on these two areas, businesses can not only meet customer expectations but also stand out in the crowded mobile marketing space.
Let’s explore how contextual targeting and personalization techniques can help businesses achieve this goal.
Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting refers to a strategy in mobile advertising where ads are delivered based on the context or content of a web page or app, rather than relying on user-specific data or third-party cookies.
With the increasing emphasis on privacy and the phasing out of third-party cookies, which are used to track user behavior across websites, contextual targeting has gained importance. It offers a privacy-friendly alternative that respects user data and preferences.
Let’s say you’re browsing a mobile app that focuses on fitness and healthy living. As you scroll through an article about running shoes, you notice an ad appearing on the page. Instead of showing an ad based on your personal information or browsing history, the ad is contextually targeted to align with the content you’re currently engaged with.
That means the technology analyzes the text, keywords and overall theme of the running shoe article in real-time. It recognizes that the content is related to fitness and running and, subsequently, delivers an ad for a new line of running shoes or sports apparel.
Contextual targeting has many benefits, including:
By utilizing contextual targeting, the ad is relevant to your immediate interests and the context of the app you’re using. This approach allows advertisers to deliver tailored ads while respecting user privacy.
Personalization Techniques
Personalization techniques, such as using customer data to tailor marketing messages and create targeted campaigns, can significantly reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 30%.
Techniques like SMS marketing, push notifications, and email marketing can enhance user engagement. In fact:
98% of SMS messages are opened within minutes of being received, and have a response rate of 45%.
By leveraging these personalization techniques, businesses can create more engaging and relevant experiences for their customers while maximizing their return on investment.
Dive Deeper: How to Design the UX of a Website or App to Increase Conversions
The Future of Mobile Advertising with 5G Technology
As we enter the era of 5G technology, the future of mobile advertising is poised for a significant shift.
Let’s take a closer look at how 5G technology will shape the future of mobile advertising and explore the potential benefits and challenges it presents for businesses and customers alike.
Faster and Uninterrupted Experiences
The introduction of 5G technology will enable near-instantaneous ad content delivery and more advanced ad formats, creating highly immersive, engaging and interactive experiences for customers.
5G networks are up to 100X faster than current 4G networks, and with faster loading speeds, enhanced streaming capabilities and more reliable connections, mobile devices will become even more appealing to users, driving increased mobile device usage and providing more possibilities for mobile advertising.
As businesses adopt 5G technology, they will be able to develop more innovative ad formats, such as augmented reality and virtual reality, further captivating their target audience and setting the stage for a new era of mobile advertising.
Walmart created a fully immersive “in-store” VR shopping experience. Virtual shoppers can enter the store, pick up products from racks, check full product details, and put them in their cart:
There will be a few challenges for advertisers, however, such as:
- 5G networks are not available everywhere, so advertisers won’t be able to reach a large section of the population.
- Faster speeds means the ability to deliver ads much more quickly, which will only increase competition among advertisers.
- There will be a rise in privacy concerns, so advertisers have to be extra careful that their campaigns are compliant with data privacy regulations, such as GDPR.
Location-Based Marketing
Location-based marketing is a form of mobile marketing that allows businesses to target potential customers based on their current geographical location.
As 5G technology becomes more prevalent, it opens up new possibilities for location-based marketing in mobile advertising. This technology enables businesses to leverage precise geolocation data to deliver highly personalized and relevant experiences to their customers.
Here’s an example to illustrate this concept.
Imagine that you’re walking through a shopping district and you have a shopping app installed on your smartphone that uses 5G technology to access your precise location data in real-time. As you pass by a clothing store, the app recognizes your proximity to the store and delivers a targeted notification or ad for a special promotion or discount directly to your device.
The futuristic movie Minority Report includes such a scene:
This technology can be applied in various scenarios, such as targeting users with restaurant recommendations when they’re in a new city or delivering promotional offers for nearby entertainment venues during a festival or event.
By utilizing location-based marketing, businesses can enhance their mobile advertising strategies, create more meaningful interactions, and drive foot traffic to physical locations.
Last Word on Mobile Advertising Trends
As we’ve seen throughout this exploration of mobile advertising trends, the future holds immense potential for businesses to engage their target audience in new and innovative ways.
By harnessing the power of mobile marketing, staying ahead of emerging trends like voice search optimization, visual search growth, and augmented reality shopping, and embracing the opportunities presented by 5G technology, businesses can create captivating, personalized experiences that resonate with their customers and drive desired outcomes.
The world of mobile advertising is evolving at a rapid pace, and those who dare to stay ahead of the curve will undoubtedly reap the rewards.
If you’re ready to grow your business with mobile ads, Single Grain’s paid ads experts can help!👇
Mobile Advertising Trends FAQs
What is the mobile marketing trend in 2023?
The mobile marketing trend in 2023 will focus heavily on interactivity, as well as personalized content and creative solutions to drive greater customer engagement. Live content and social commerce will be essential for staying competitive, while augmented reality and voice search marketing will continue to become even more prevalent.
Why is mobile advertising becoming more popular?
As mobile usage is increasing, mobile advertising campaigns are becoming increasingly popular due to this shift in consumption. More and more consumers are using their mobile devices to access the internet or for a wide variety of other activities. This has prompted businesses to utilize mobile advertising as a way to reach potential customers.
As a result, mobile advertising spend reached a record of $327.1 billion USD worldwide and is projected to hit $399.6 billion by 2024.
What are 4 mobile marketing strategies?
Four of the most effective mobile marketing strategies are SMS marketing, social media marketing, location-based marketing, and in-app marketing.
These strategies help businesses reach consumers directly on their mobile devices and deliver content tailored to them in a timely fashion.
In addition, proximity marketing is used to create engaging experiences with customers and drive awareness about products or services. By utilizing these mobile marketing strategies, businesses can more effectively engage their target audiences.
