Tarun Pahwa
For the past couple of years, marketers and web designers alike have been chanting the responsiveness mantra. Websites need to be responsive in order to accommodate viewership that accesses information across a variety of devices and screens.
Rule one of service delivery is to give clients what they’re looking for and provide solutions they didn’t they needed.
Rule two is that once critical mass is attained, marketers will capitalize.
And in this globally mobile, perennially consumptive and data-driven world of ours that thrives on mobile device usage, it’s only natural that marketers have followed suit to meet their diverse audiences where they are.
Mobile ads have a come a long way from boring creatives and usability that failed repeatedly.
The proof is in the pudding. And the pudding’s getting sweeter these days. Take a look at this in-app ad that showed up on my phone.
There’s some serious design and copy effort involved in creating that ad; which gives me hope for what could follow.
At the point of writing this article, the results are – quite frankly – pretty darn fantastic. I think it’s safe to say that it’s time for businesses who haven’t considered mobile advertising to wake up and smell the coffee. And then you get to brewing.
Here’s why I think we should all care about mobile search ads, especially at the cusp of the New Year.
- Matt Cutts says he “wouldn’t be surprised” to see mobile search queries surpass desktop. That’s straight from the horse’s mouth, people.
- eMarketer said that too.
- eMarketer also said that roughly 50% of all search spends in 2015 are poised to occur on mobile.
- (A whopping!) 30 percent of Internet activity comes from globally mobile traffic. (Explains all the airport check-ins on Facebook, eh?).
- Just in 2013, mobile advertising revenue grew to $ 19.3 billion – that’s up 92% from the $ 10 billion in 2012. And here we are, two years later, with no abating in sight.
- Social media and e-commerce are beginning to tango (e-commerce was responsible for $ 293 billion in sales in the past year!)– which means an expedient advent of mobile-optimized ads will be coming soon to a screen near you.
- Worried about intrusiveness and ad-blocking? Fair concern. But the good news is that there’s a growing percentage of users who feel that mobile ads were “helpful and informative” (up by 113% in 2014).
- Local search is beginning to take centre-stage. According to the Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study from Nielsen, xAd and Telmetrics, geo-fenced ads statistically increase in-store visits and purchases.
- Mobile users surveyed in the same study also said that location and geographic relevance of the ad viewed would increase their likelihood of a purchase.
- 88% of all people who took post-click action either made a purchase or planned a purchase for the immediate and near future.
- Bonus reason: Susan Wojcicki, YouTube’s CEO has officially reported that 50% of the site’s traffic is coming now from mobile devices.
As promised in the title, all of these reasons are decidedly compelling and seem to be promising harbingers of the future.
Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing the innovation and creativity that will come together (and come forth!) to make for a better experience for users across the world.
It’s good to step into a promising future.
What are your thoughts on mobile search growth for the coming year?
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