IN-DEPTH: Mack McKelvey, SVP of Marketing, Millennial Media on do’s and don’ts when it comes to mobile advertising

Published: 28 Mar 2011

IN-DEPTH: Mack McKelvey, SVP of Marketing, Millennial Media on do’s and don’ts when it comes to mobile advertising

By Ritesh Gupta

Millennial Media has indicated that going by the first three months of 2011, by all indications, brands are increasing their investments in mobile.

The company saw a shift in the way brands think about mobile from an optional to an essential component of their media strategies last year. This move was marked by the continued rapid growth of advertisers, publishers and developers leveraging mobile to reach their target consumers and monetise their sites and applications.

The mobile platform provides consumer engagement whenever, wherever – unlike the other traditional mediums. As brands continue to reach and exceed their advertising goals by leveraging mobile advertising, ad dollars will continue to shift from the more traditional channels to mobile. Brands are increasing their focus on mobile, and they are also investing heavily.

“In fact, we saw 346% growth in clients spending more than $100K on their mobile campaigns,” Mack McKelvey, SVP of Marketing, Millennial Media told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview.

Can you provide an insight into the latest trends as far as mobile advertising is concerned? Has there been any path-breaking development which the travel industry needs to sit and take notice?

We firmly believe that 2011 is the year of the mobile consumer. There are well over 100 million mobile web users in the US alone, according to comScore. From a pure reach perspective, the mobile audience is there, active and interacting with thousands of brands today.

The top three campaign goals in 2010 were ‘brand awareness’, drive traffic and join/download/purchase. This underscores that mobile campaigns can cover a broad array of campaign objectives regardless of where the target consumer is in the purchase funnel. And travel has been incredibly active in mobile, and will likely become even more invested in 2011 if current trends continue.

In fact, the travel vertical, which was number eight in our top ten mobile ad verticals in 2010, grew 249% in 2010 alone.

Can you list do’s and don’ts when it comes to mobile advertising? How should travel marketers approach mobile advertising at this stage?

Advertisers must start where every campaign starts—with clear goals.

Then, the advertiser should consider the audience they are trying to reach.

Finally, they should define the overall user experience they want their target consumer to have.

The right mobile partner will bring all of this together and create an end to end mobile experience in which an advertiser can reach, target and engage their consumers at scale.

It’s also important to note that mobile doesn’t just mean smartphone advertising. In February, more than one-third of the impressions on our network came from feature phones and connected devices. Since we serve approximately 21B monthly impressions, these non-smartphones are critical to broad-reach campaigns. In fact, 81% of campaigns on our network in 2010 were cross-platform (across smartphone operating systems like Apple, Android, BlackBerry; and/or across feature phones and connected devices).

Can you elaborate on Millennial Media’s demographic and content targeting capabilities? How it is lending a new dimension to mobile advertising?

Millennial Media operates the largest independent mobile ad network in the U.S. (Millennial Media’s network reaches 80% of mobile users in the U.S. across all platforms), and we offer both broad and audience-targeted campaigns for our clients. Nearly half of our campaigns leverage our extensive network reach, for broad mobile targeting, in order to cast as wide a net as possible.

The other half of our campaigns leverage our unique audience-targeting capabilities. These types of campaigns typically fall into four categories—geographic (which can include local market targeting), demographic, behavioural and takeover. The average growth of geo-targeted campaigns on our network last year grew 275%.

In fact, we continue to see increased growth in audience targeted campaigns as advertisers realise the opportunity to engage with very specific audiences in mobile. In behavioural, travel advertisers can reach business travellers, frequent fliers, and high-end vacationers.

What sort of benchmarks can one set for assessing the success of such initiatives at this stage?

Any measure of success in mobile, certainly depends on the advertiser’s initial campaign goals. But in short, we focus heavily on assessing reach, targeting and engagement.

Millennial Media has highlighted brands are shifting their local market investments to mobile; reaching consumers at the point of action. Can you elaborate on the efficacy of location aware mobile advertising in driving consumer engagement?

We’ve included a graphic that was in a 2010 special Travel feature in one of our Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART) reports. Travel advertisers certainly leveraged Place Call, an average of 50% of the time; and m-Commerce nearly one third of the time to incite immediate action from target consumers.

(The company has seen the percentage of campaigns utilising mobile offers grow 54% in 2010, with 41% of the top 250 Campaigns on its network leveraging this campaign action in November. While the mobile offer usage todate has been largely leveraged by the Retail vertical, it anticipates mobile offers to become the industry standard for this vertical and grow exponentially in other top verticals such as Travel, CPG and Telecommunications in 2011).

What do you think the industry needs to be wary of in order to ensure that location-based push marketing is effective and doesn’t seem too intrusive?

We believe that the mobile triple play is relevancy x immediacy x location.

Location cannot be intrusive. There must be an inherent elegance to location targeting that leverages consumer approval and opt-out capabilities.

(According to Millennial Media, the mobile triple play did happen in a big way last year, just not as fast as the industry predicted. That said, campaigns on its network have consistently driven these three imperatives via avariety of post-click campaign actions, including:

• Location: Site Search, Store Locator/View Map, Retail Promotion
• Immediacy: mCommerce, Place Call, Join/Subscribe
• Relevancy: Download App, Social Media – actions that are all about engagement

The company believes there will be continued explosive growth in this area in 2011).