Mobile display ads are the newest attraction in the B2B town and the early contender is Facebook that utilizes this aspect of mobiles and go on to become a leader in mobile display ads within a year, leaving behind giants like Google and Apple. Its no less than a wonder that what represented zero percent of Facebook’s ad revenues a year ago is on track to create multi-billion dollar market in U.S. alone. To what can we attribute this success to?
Facebook Mobile Success story:
Facebook broadly launched its first mobile ad product just weeks after its IPO, just fast forward three months and mobile represented 14% of their business. Facebook blasted market with innovative mobile ads that grew to represent 23% of Facebook ad’s business. And today the number has grown to almost 30%.
How?
Well Facebook and its Preferred Marketing Developer ecosystem are believed to solve real time challenges on behalf of marketers centering on three core pillars of any successful ad campaign:
- Targeting
- Creative
- Optimization
Combining these forces have resulted in advertisers achieving 15-20 times higher click-through rates on Facebook mobile as compared to desktops even revealing the true return on investment of mobile ad investments.
Targeting
Facebook draws 750 million person audience to mobile who spends 25% of their time in mobile apps in Facebook. What’s more interesting for marketers is that these audiences of Facebook has ranging demographics and psychographics to affinities and behaviors, creating a huge database of targeting data and combinations to leverage with Facebook mobile.
Creative
Facebook redefined the way mobile ads are interpreted. The social network brought ads to mobile that take up the entire screen with strong calls to action, providing the huge canvas and seamless conversion funnel the mobile marketing industry has been craving for years. Even Facebook mobile app install ads are great example that allows advertisers with large, creative, strong install now calls to action and social context.
Optimization
It’s been reincarnated Facebook is no more social marketing, its performance marketing. Advertisers no longer have to depend upon proxy metrics like views or clicks or immediate actions. A brief summary of the evolution of mobile media buying is below:
- CPM (cost per impression): cost to deliver one thousand ad views.
- CPC (cost per click): cost to generate a click on an ad.
- CPA (cost per action): cost to drive an immediate action, like an app install.
- LTV (lifetime value): value you earn off a customer over time.
- ROI (return on investment): how much greater your LTV is than your CPA.
The transition has helped further to accurately understand the true return generated from mobile investment the purchase revenue generated from people the advertiser reaches with mobile ads.
Drivers of Change
There is no doubt that there has been a huge change in mobile advertising committed within a very short period of time. Creativity is no longer limited to tiny banner ads; instead marketers have the opportunity to leverage large, engaging creative that acts just like content.
