Mobile is Messy – Part 1 … You Might Be Better Off Burning Your Budget Instead

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A Programmatic Marketplace Fraught with Land Mines 

Yep, programmatic is changing everything because there are many ways to play the Mobile market.  If your agency is not focused on it … you are probably losing about 50-80% of your budget

Mobile Waste Land ➟ Trends Affecting Your Mobile Effectiveness
  • A shift to self-serve DSP platforms for visibility
    • Given that trading desks like to hide their true costs and arbitrage up to 30 extra points, clients are now demanding all Mobile (and Desktop) buys be placed on transparent self-service platform.  Better start asking a lot of questions now!
  • Desktop DSP’s are botching Mobile big time
    • Agencies/buying services are placing millions of Mobile along with their Desktop Display buys … oops the majority of DSP’s still run Mobile on cookies and IP.  They are not running the Lat/Long/IFA structure of Mobile. So your Mobile budget placed on a DSP is not reaching audiences correctly and wait for it … cookies don’t work in Mobile!  Might as well burn your budget in the front lobby or at the least give it to a good charity.
  • Big agencies invest their resources in TV, Desktop Display, Search … not Mobile
    • Large TV and Digital agencies are not geared to understand the Mobile their buying … they don’t have the time or manpower to find out what works and doesn’t work.  Buying services don’t watch the back-end of sites continuously and rely solely on brand safety software to prevent bots/click farming/impression stacking … dubious strategy at best.  When you watch the back-end everyday you know who performs and who to cancel
  • Know your ad tech partners inside and out
    • Understanding Mobile means knowing who runs and backs the DSP’s, networks and other marketplaces.  Where does the inventory come from, is their algorithm worth anything, are they strictly CPM, not CPC and CPA players?  We have found many Mobile sellers will tell you anything you want to hear … regardless of whether it’s true
  • Are you still buying blind with no site visibility?
    • Can you see your sites?  Do you have the ability to optimize them instantly, kill the poor performers and find incremental high potential Mobile audiences?  Are you still buying Mobile on a CPM basis.  Why?  

 

Straight Up  ⇒ If your agency/buying service buys more TV, Search and Desktop Display than Mobile … take your budget to the lobby right now!

  • Determine how your Mobile budget is being spent in relation to the above trends
  • If the answers aren’t acceptable, find an agency that gets their revenue from Mobile … they’ll know the good from the bad and save your Mobile budgets from disaster

 

Zig is a Social/Mobile/Video specialist that maximizes marketing assets by driving performance at the lowest cost.  You can see our work by clicking on the link ⇒ http://www.zigmarketing.com.

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