Mobile Engagement. Is It Happy Ever After Or Death Do Us Part?

Cigar Dave Live from Las Vegas

The advertising world is abuzz with some key words when it comes to mobile users.  How many times have we heard the term 'immersive',  'engaging' and 'sticky'?  Bottom line is great content drives engagement.  The biggest challenge is how do we as marketers keep the content consistent with what the user expects (relevancy) and deliver that message without becoming annoying.

It's pretty hard to argue the facts:

"Mobile marketing's awesome potential in 2017 is reinforced with reports like this one: research firm BIA/Kelsey predicts that U.S. mobile-ad spend will exceed $40 billion -- and the industry can expect that number to pass $65 billion by 2020. Last year, mobile digital ad-spend fueled mobile-side growth on a path to outpace desktop ad-spend. Meanwhile, smartphones and tablet devices account for 51.3% of Internet use. By year's end, 75% of online content consumption will be mobile, media buying agency Zenith forecast late last year."

The value of video experiences continues to grow and when done in combination with programmatic and behavioral targeting campaign performance continues to prove its value.

The report later continues:

"New ways of approaching the mobile ad unit will drive a focus on key ideas, such as non-intrusive mobile experiences, dynamically animated and adhesive banners, and ad delivery that dovetails even further with consumers' locations and activities. Mobile video ad-spend is projected to exceed $6 billion by the end of 2017, meaning 2017 will be a prime moment for mobile marketing to capture its share of resulting media allocations."

Recently one of our clients "The Cigar Dave Show" took advantage of our in-app live video capabilities to help expose their clients at the Las Vegas International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers trade show  The goal was simply to give fans a behind the scenes look at some of the best new cigars and products.  Through a combination of push notifications and publishing a broadcast schedule in his app and email, nearly 600 fans turned on the live broadcast to watch Dave talk to his clients.

How well did it do in driving fan engagement?  How about a CTR over 3.2%?  Why did it work so well?  When fans can gain access to exclusive content that is timely and meaningful their curiosity gets the best of them and they become 'engaged'.  What's even more intriguing is that the broadcast was concurrently shown on YouTube and and still drew a significant number of fans to the mobile app. 

While most brands are fascinated with Facebook video, the only company that monetizes that activity is Facebook.  AirKast believe being in the path of the fan at all times is important but we shouldn't do it at the expense of brand control.  

How is your brand using mobile and video to drive engagement, relevancy and stickiness?