As mobile commerce expands, retailers’ ability to retarget consumers with mobile advertising campaigns is becoming increasingly critical to the bottom line.
Research conducted by myThings, a provider of data-driven advertising solutions, found that mobile retargeting drove an additional 18% of retargeting-generated sales. The study, titled: Mobile Retargeting Best Practices, also revealed that mobile retargeting produced a 46% higher click-through rate.
The myThings research examined mobile reach across iOS- and Android-based tablets and smartphones, in-app environments and the mobile web. The report concluded that maximizing mobile interactions across all devices was vital to the success of programmatic advertising campaigns — those automatically triggered by an event and deployed according to pre-set, algorithmic rules.
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“Programmatic advertising is the future ― that much is clear,” said Jake Engwerda, GM of the Americas at myThings, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “For marketers running programmatic campaigns across the sales funnel, retargeting will continue to play an important role in their marketing mix as the most effective and proven method to close sales.”
The study was released in conjunction with a new myThings mobile retargeting solution. The new offer is centered on maximizing reach by serving personalized dynamic creative ads on cookie-based (Android web) and cookie-less (iOS and in-app) inventory. In addition, myThings can sync campaigns across mobile web and in-app platforms within the same device.
Retail TouchPoints delved further into retargeting trends and developments during a Q&A with Engwerda:
RTP: What trends are you noting in the retargeting space?
Engwerda: The key industry trends we’re seeing in retargeting involve the growth of social and particularly mobile, which will lead to better omnichannel retargeting. We’re also noting greater transparency across all retargeting channels ― in separate or connected data pools. That’s the view from above.
On ground level, we’re seeing continued growth from commerce on mobile devices. According to eMarketer, m-Commerce will reach 25% of total digital sales ― $75 billion ― by 2015. Our customers are experiencing their mobile channels explode: Many report up to 20% of sales coming from mobile. Naturally, they’re eager to monetize the mobile opportunity with, among other things, mobile retargeting.
We’re also expecting significant growth in social retargeting with the continued success of The Facebook Exchange and Twitter’s new tailored audiences solution.
RTP: Which retargeting developments will take shape during 2014?
Engwerda: With mobile targeting much improved, we’re expecting some real advances this year in cross-device optimization. The ability to personally communicate with consumers via retargeting wherever they are, syncing the experience across all screens, is the holy grail of digital marketing.
There are several ways to make this happen: Either via CRM integrations using log-in data, or by using statistical matching or device recognition techniques to predict the odds that two devices are used by the same person and then matching them with a single ID.
Another key retargeting trend we believe will take shape in 2014 has to do with transparency and opening the retargeting black box. More and more advertisers, especially Tier 1 retailers, consider strong performance almost as a given. They want added value. As one CMO recently said to us, “I’ve been running retargeting for a few years now but I have learned practically nothing.”
Marketers want to understand how to navigate the digital marketing environment, which is becoming really complex, to see what’s working and what’s not and what they can learn from the behavior of their audiences that can be applied across all their marketing activities.
RTP: What key points should retail executives recognize about mobile retargeting?
Engwerda: Retail executives should know that their users are on mobile ― at scale. Consumers spend more time interacting with online retailers on mobile than desktop: 55% vs. 45%, according to comScore data from June 2013. If they don’t already have one, retailers should develop an app and, at the very least, make sure their sites are mobile-optimized.
With so much time spent on mobile, sales are also growing. Our study found that adding mobile to the retargeting mix increases retargeting-driven sales by 18%.
In addition, retailers should know that mobile complements desktop engagement. We found that the mobile consumer interacts with online retailers mainly during evenings and weekends, while desktop rules daytime and weekdays.
Another key fact to remember is that tablets and smartphones are equally important in a retargeting campaign. Even though smartphones outnumber tablets by nine to one, tablets are predicted to draw even this year in m-Commerce sales, according to Business Insider.
Our study found that smartphones generate mobile retargeting reach while tablets are strong closers. The bottom line was that conversions on smartphones were slightly higher than conversions on tablets ― 53% vs. 47% of post-click conversions.
Last but not least, mobile consumers act fast during the final decision-making process, closing a sale in less than an hour on average after their last visit to the advertiser’s site. This is in stark contrast to desktop, where we found that number to be several hours.
