Editorial Articles

Those of us working in digital have been beating the mobile drum for a long time now and brands are starting to realise that it’s with good reason. That more and more people are browsing the internet on their mobiles is obvious; the statistics are everywhere and you only need a set of eyes to notice the growing number of people around at any one time that are glued to their smartphones. However, the figures show that spend on mobile advertising still lags behind that on other media. madvertise’s latest research shows why that shouldn’t be the case.

madvertise serves 1.4bn mobile impressions each month, making it one of the farthest-reaching networks in Europe. We decided to use these impressions to examine the times of day when people are browsing the internet on their phones. The general assumption is that mobile usage occurs when people are on the move, or away from a ‘better’ media access point, such as computers at work or televisions at home.

What we found instead was that many users are surfing the internet on their phones at all times of the day, but particularly at those times when they might be expected to be consuming media by some other method. Particularly striking are the levels of usage in the evening, from 6pm onwards, when people are likely to be at home and therefore with access to television or PCs. Instead of dropping, madvertise found that levels of mobile usage went up, and in fact the highest numbers of impressions were typically served between 8pm and 10.30pm.

So what does this tell us?
Well, to begin with, the analysis demonstrates that mobile browsing isn’t just a time-filler for people on the move. Brands and publishers have often targeted their advertising to audiences with that idea in mind, serving coffee ads in the morning,for example, with the aim of catching the attention of thirsty commuters. Instead, our research shows that mobile advertising can be used effectively at different times of the day to capture a much broader spectrum of people.

Moreover, we can see that mobile advertising is starting to compete directly with other advertising formats and in particular, those used to reach people in their homes, such as television. If people are surfing the internet on their phones in the evening, it shows that they are, at the very least, distracted from whatever they’re watching on the television; however, it’s also quite possible that they’re not watching it at all.

Whether users are tweeting whilst watching The Apprentice, or switching off the TV altogether in favour of mobile browsing, people are now surfing the internet on their phones at times when brands would traditionally be expecting to target them via their televisions. This means that by allocating the bulk of advertising spend to television or other traditional formats, as many brands currently are, they are missing out on a growing audience. Since mobile advertising is considerably more interactive than its television counterpart because of the options for game mechanics and social tools amalgamation, this also means that brands are missing out on an audience that is more engaged.

Add this to the greater measurability demonstrated by madvertise’s research and it becomes clear: mobile needs to be a real consideration for every brand.

Christian Henschel
Director of Partner Development & Marketing, madvertise