Mobile Marketing Archives - MARKETECH APAC

Singapore – Top smartphone brand Xiaomi in Asia has partnered with Xapads Media, adtech platform based in India, for the management of all its media sales activities in its ad platform, Mi Ads. The tie-up is targeted at offering premium app inventory in Xiaomi for brands and marketers in the SEA region.

Xiaomi has been seeing incredible success in the global market and at present, aims to increase its penetration in the SEA region. The new partnership will assist brands in tapping the full power of on-device app recommendations within Xiaomi. Aside from offering advertisers exclusive access to Xiaomi’s premium app inventory, the partnership will be helping marketers with real-time insights, quality user acquisition, and premium ad placements while generating leads and giving product recommendations in a hygienic environment.

Nitin Gupta, Xapads CEO, commented, “We at Xapads are glad to be associated with Xiaomi and its inventory integrated with our award-winning proprietary AI / ML driven programmatic engine, [Xerxes.]. Advertisers will get easy and direct access to Xiaomi’s premium inventory along with better pricing and ad placement options.”

Gupta added, “I believe that with the combination of Xapads’s expertise and access to Xiaomi’s [inventory,] we will be able to offer our clients with the best programmatic solutions around OEMs. [Together,] we hope to redefine performance programmatically and help brands to better sustain themselves in the adtech landscape.”

Ramneek Chadha, COO of Xapads Media, also expressed his excitement about the development, “It’s great to work with a credible, trusted and leading OEM partner. The new branding and promotion opportunities would help marketers connect with hard-to-reach niche audiences and optimize their ad campaigns”.

Chan Liu, GM for International Internet Business Dept. at Xiaomi, also commented, “Xiaomi doesn’t only offer amazing hardware products, we’re also committed to creating a rich ecosystem of internet services based on MIUI. Our cooperation with Xapads will build a bridge for better communication between brands and Indonesian consumers and deliver value to everyone.”

Philippines – InMobi, a provider of content, marketing, and monetisation technologies, has partnered with iNQUiRO, a technology company under AdSpark and 917Ventures. This partnership aims to provide access to iNQUiRO‘s significant and in-depth insights on consumer’s purchase behaviour and interest, and the end-to-end marketing solutions of InMobi to help brands deliver contextual communications at scale.

In a recent study conducted by Forrester, 1 in 2 brands are increasingly concerned about the ability to drive efficient and effective marketing in the wake of identity deprecation, while at the same time ensuring consumer privacy compliance. This is where the strategic partnership comes in, as InMobi and iNQUiRO could solve the modern marketer’s need for data-driven decision-making with a privacy-by-design approach.

Rishi Bedi, InMobi’s managing director for APAC, shared that the Philippines stands as amongst the truly mobile-first markets in SEA with more than five hours of daily time on mobile and more than 60% of consumers shopping online.

“Through this partnership, brands will be able to reach iNQUiRO audiences programmatically on InMobi’s mobile Exchange via managed service with InMobi or their preferred DSP platform. Brands will be able to drive better reach, make use of innovative creative formats from our creative gallery, and improve end-to-end attribution using InMobi solutions.”

Meanwhile, Pancho Reyna, chief operating officer at iNQUiRO, commented that they are in a unique position to provide a unique understanding of customers at a deeper level by leveraging on insights from first-party data of millions of Filipino consumers, but more than that, they focus on being champions of data privacy and security for all their solutions and clients

“Enriching your audience’s understanding and sending the right message has never been easier. This is what makes our partnership with InMobi strategic and innovative,” he said.

In June 2022, InMobi also announced a direct integration of its InMobi Exchange supply-side side platform (SSP) into Yahoo’s demand-side platform (DSP), giving advertisers, brands, and media buyers across Yahoo’s extensive global portfolio of clients direct access to premium in-app supply and global user base, at scale.

There’s a mounting pile of evidence, highlighting what many of us already know – we’re inextricably obsessed with our mobiles. For marketers and brands, this obsession translates into endless opportunities, especially as the third-party cookie crumbles and relationship marketing emerges as king of the marketing paradigm.

Smaller than a wallet and thinner than a notebook, smartphones have changed our lives in big ways. They’re often the first thing people reach for when they wake up and the last thing they touch before going to bed. According to app monitoring firm data.ai (formerly App Annie), people devote a third of their waking hours to mobile apps and upwards of five hours a day on their mobile phones.

APAC marketers get this. In fact, 58% of APAC marketers are creating mobile-specific content as a strategy to improve engagement, and the majority of marketing professionals (84%) consider ad length and design for mobile when creating mobile content, according to a recent WARC report.

That’s because relevant and timely messaging, which SMS and apps so easily provide, is key to educating customers, minimising friction, building purchase consideration, and developing deeper relationships.

Compared to different channels, mobile is a compelling way to communicate with customers because brands can be confident their message will be read and acted upon in a short amount of time. There’s up to a 19% click-through rate for personalised links.

And where there’s a call to action, that percentage spikes to 45%. For a company that wants to send a message out to all of its customers using technology that’s just as familiar to a 14-year-old as it is to an 85-year-old, there’s little in terms of alternatives that can provide the same value that mobile does.

The challenge: Extracting value from mobile marketing

Despite mobile marketing emerging as the hottest trend in relationship marketing, some brands and organisations are still hesitant to latch on. It all comes down to the three key reasons, including the inability to know how to get started, indecision and ‘analysis paralysis’ and regulatory concerns.

In order to overcome these challenges here are four strategies to help kickstart your mobile marketing strategy:

1. Master the value exchange: Before any marketing can occur, you must gain consent to communicate with your audience and learn about their true interests. First, an organisation must identify its value proposition whereby a customer feels a compelling reason to access that value by enrolling in a program. This is not limited to promotions but could be for convenience, better service, information updates, exclusive access to content and the list goes on — this is called creating a ‘value exchange.’

Once the value has been set, it’s time for a brand to spread the word. This is where mobile plays a considerable role, as it builds customer awareness and enables sign-up beyond the laptop, casting the net further afield into any other environment. This could be adding a QR code or a short code on physical banners, TV, receipts, shop windows or on the hotel bedside table – directing customers to use their mobile to engage with the brand. Simply put, mobile offers boundless flexibility to provide a doorway to value in any environment.

2. Power real-time contextual engagement: In the digital marketing space, it’s about getting the right message to the right person at the right moment. Mobile is instrumental to achieving real-time, relevant and impactful customer engagement.

There is an increasing number of markets where mobile penetration is greater than 100%, and that provides an ecosystem where brands can be confident they can serve any of their customers at any moment in time. It is not just the ubiquitous nature and the ‘always o’ accessibility that distinguishes mobile, but the immediacy it can offer when compared to other channels.

This is why time and business-critical messages are sent using mobile channels. Within banking, this could be for two-factor authentication or fraud alerts; for a restaurant, this may be sending a reservation reminder; or for a retailer, this could include shipment delivery notifications — the list goes on. But the power of immediacy is what makes old technology like SMS continue to have double-digit growth year-on-year.

3. Eliminate silos: There’s a lot of talk about communication channels not residing in silos. And for good reason – customers’ circumstances may evolve when they have a change in geography, disposable income, relationship, preference or because they’re influenced by interactions with a competitor. Simply because a customer is enrolled in a loyalty program, it does not mean that he/she is an advocate, nor that your brand is his/her first choice. This is important to succeed in driving longer-lasting customer relationships.

With this in mind, it is important for enterprises to actively seek customer feedback, listen to their preferences and continue to check in with them. Mobile offers the ability to gain further insights, address all customers and drive real-time contextual engagements. We see brands leverage mobile apps as an impactful solution for driving customer loyalty and benefiting from the assets of this environment.

Customers who download an enterprise app and opt-in for communications have actively chosen to have a closer relationship with a brand; these are some of your most valuable customers. They should be nurtured and catered to, and a loyalty program is suited for just that.

4. Become a customer know-it-all: Marketers’ ability to effectively communicate with customers is highly dependent on having ready access to key data sources and the right tools to act on that data at scale.

With handcuffs increasingly being placed on former data assets through policy, regulation and a more data-conscious consumer, mobile apps can offer a unique environment from which brands can gain great insights into customer behaviours.

Mobile apps offer insights such as customer frequency, recency, pages visited, products clicked on and many others, which can help enterprises better understand their customers. This helps serve them in the best manner possible.

A customer’s duration in an app can help brands understand and cater to their customers’ needs. For a bank, a short duration may be desired to make a payment and if there is an observed delay then a communication may be triggered to provide help. For a sports team, a long duration in the app may be a success indicator, representing fan engagement and attention.

The future of mobile marketing is exciting

It’s not enough for a brand or organisation to have an SMS program with notifications, promotions and alerts set up. They have to personalise each message to ensure it is relevant to the consumer.

Enterprises that know their customers better, and can contextually serve them, according to insights will positively differentiate themselves. Mobile offers a wealth of assets, equipping brands to do exactly this. The insights gained from mobile can be applied across any form of customer engagement to deliver a more personalised and impactful relationship.

This article is written by Andy Gladwin, Head of Global Mobile GTM at Cheetah Digital.

Cheetah Digital is a cross-channel customer engagement solution provider for the modern marketer. The Cheetah Digital Customer Engagement Suite enables marketers to create personalised experiences, cross-channel messaging, and loyalty strategies, underpinned by an engagement data platform that can scale to meet the changing demands of today’s consumer.

California, USA – By analysing trends across four key app verticals, namely gaming, e-commerce, finance, and entertainment, playable ads have the most affordable cost-per-install (CPI) at $1.98, well below the average of $3.79 from all five ad formats for gaming, making them an attractive format for game marketers. This is according to the fourth annual Mobile Ad Creative Index report of Liftoff, a growth acceleration platform for the mobile industry.

With Apple eliminating access to IDFA and Google pledging to do similar privacy-first moves on Android, app marketers need better, more relevant creatives to reach and retain new audiences. Liftoff has analysed billions of data on impressions and clicks and has arrived at a conclusive option for mobile marketing.

Playable ads rise as the clear choice for mobile marketers. Through a ‘split-by-platform’ view, CPI on Android comes in at $1.41 compared to $3.66 on iOS. These interactive ads are also a clear boost to audience engagement, ultimately driving user acquisition. Not only do they cost twice as less on Android than on iOS, but playable ads, along with banners and interstitials, fall well below the most expensive native ad – which shows high costs on both Android, with $4.82, and iOS, at $7.38.

Throughout 2021, playable ads remained the most cost-effective ad format month-to-month, other than in September, where they tied with banner ads– and of course, the release of iOS 15. This makes playable ads, valued at $1.98, followed by banner ads at $2.82, an attractive format for mobile gaming marketers looking to unlock the full potential of the mobile experience without shelling out to accommodate high costs.

Playable ads have a lot to offer not just for gaming apps. Introducing an interactive element to an e-commerce ad drives real engagement without compromising the brand. Playable ads allow users to play before they buy. Those who view the ad can interact with it as a preview of what they could do in the app, and, according to Liftoff data, is the most cost-effective ad format.

Mark Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Liftoff, said, “Understanding what motivates your target audience is key for marketers to get ahead of the curve, and the data shows that playable ads are where it’s at. As mobile marketers look at the big picture this year, it’s important to factor in platform needs when it comes to engaging, interactive ads to pique the interest of your custom industry audience.”

Meanwhile, affirming year-over-year predictions in continuation from 2021, Android continues to win ad creative with cheaper costs and higher value across ad formats. In gaming, Android devices are less expensive across all ad formats.

The research notes that mobile marketers should continue to target Android to pique the interest of potential audiences for value. Additionally, CPI rates are higher across the board on iOS than on Android—but nearly every ad format saw a CPI increase within the year. Video ads nearly doubled from $3.44 to $6.09.

Bangalore, India — Mobile marketing analytics platform Adjust has launched Adjust Datascape, a new advanced analytics solution designed to deliver business-critical KPIs and performance metrics faster and easier. With the new solution, Adjust aims to provide mobile app marketers with unified data and expanded visual context in order to extract meaningful insights and make smarter strategic marketing decisions in real-time.

“Agility is more important than ever as app marketers are tasked with analyzing campaign data from an ever-increasing number of sources and acting on it immediately,” said the company.

Adjust believes that Datascape helps solve the said challenge by providing marketers with access to all of their data from network APIs, attributions, consented AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) installs and SKAdNetwork (SKAN) campaigns in one place — which it deems to be a unique approach among mobile measurement partners.

“A mobile app’s success in this dynamic industry depends on smart and fast decision-making,” said Simon ‘Bobby’ Dussart, the newly appointed CEO of Adjust.

“As an enterprise-ready solution, Datascape solves marketers’ needs to easily view and analyze what’s working, or what isn’t, across multiple campaigns. Having this overview of their business performance and this level of insights, all in one place, allows marketers to optimize their strategy and focus on growth,” adds Dussart.

Datascape enables marketers to customize dashboards and reports to visualize user growth and cohorts, summarize extensive data sets, and analyze SKAN data, and includes performance marketing metrics at a glance, compare and contrast filters to view results across all apps as well as a SKAdNetwork dashboard to learn which campaigns targeted to users acquired through Apple’s SKAN framework are driving the most installs.

The analytics solution also features side-by-side network, attribution, SKAN, and ATT data in different combinations in a single view as well as a monetization dashboard with full visibility of profit and revenue metrics through numerous partner integrations and data sources.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Independent marketing cloud company InMobi and Indonesian telecom provider Telkomsel have announced a partnership together to aid in improving the mobile marketing experience for brands in Indonesia. Said partnership brings together the big data capabilities from Telkomsel and the end-to-end marketing solutions of InMobi to help brands deliver personalized communications at scale.

Through the partnership, Telkomsel’s mobile-first audiences will be available for programmatic media buying on the InMobi Exchange. The partnership also gives brands the ability to run surveys on Telkomsel audiences and deepen their understanding of consumer perceptions and preferences. The insights will be powered by InMobi’s AI-driven mobile-first consumer intelligence platform Pulse.

Rishi Bedi, VP and GM for Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea at InMobi stated that brands can activate both branding and performance campaigns, while leveraging InMobi’s deep programmatic expertise, creative capabilities, and transparent technology to try to engage and acquire their customers.

“The third-party cookie deprecation is expected to bring about a fundamental change in the digital marketing ecosystem. And, despite the delay in the final enforcement, we are seeing marketers starting to focus on building sustainable consumer marketing strategies. Through this partnership, brands will be able to target pristine, always-on Telkomsel audiences programmatically on InMobi Exchange via their preferred DSP platform,” Bedi said.

He added, “As mobile continues to dominate in terms of media time spent and grow rapidly as the preferred channel for commerce, we are doubling down on our focus on helping brands enhance their mobile marketing maturity. This partnership is another step in our endeavour to ensure that brands find solutions for the new world and are able to transition seamlessly into the era of privacy-first marketing.”

Meanwhile, Rangga Gandina, GM for data solutions business and partnerships at Telkomsel, commented that they are excited to help brands unravel the potential of their own big data and enhance every brand’s consumer insight and mobile audience strategy. He added that while consumers are completely mobile-first today, brands are yet to get their audience strategy right for this medium.

“The Telco big data combines contextual consumer insights from Telkomsel’s owned and operated platforms and other services to power deterministic audiences behavior with customer-centricity insight, in a privacy-compliant manner according to Indonesian regulation,” Gandina said.

InMobi previously announced its partnership with Gojek, a mobile on-demand services and payments platform, to enhance advertising, consumer intelligence and identity resolution for brands in Southeast Asia.

Singapore – Global mobile marketing analytics platform Adjust has extended its current connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) service offering to include connected TV ad to its mobile measurement tool. The feature gives advertisers a complete view of the user journey from CTV ad view through to mobile app install, providing cross-device insights to help optimize campaigns and drive growth.

The addition of Adjust’s CTV to mobile measurement feature brings attribution data for mobile marketers into one place, enabling them to assess the performance of their marketing campaigns across all channels, including CTV and OTT. By leveraging Adjust’s multi-touch attribution, marketers can see the full impact of CTV advertising on their overall user acquisition strategy, helping prove return of investment (ROI).

The company’s latest feature complements its Connected TV App Measurement solution launched last year. Focused on helping marketers maximize the adoption of their OTT and CTV apps, CTV App Measurement includes integrations for all major CTV platforms including Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku.

Gijsbert Pols, lead product strategist at Adjust, said that the company remains committed to helping apps meet their users where they are, empowering them to serve engaging ads that can be confidently measured and attributed.

“As CTV grows, so does its influence as an advertising medium — transforming what’s broadly been thought of as an awareness tool into a key performance channel. It has become essential for marketers and developers to understand CTV’s role in the user journey,” Pols stated.

He added, “Historically, television has been an expensive advertising channel with ROI difficult to prove. However, with holistic CTV measurement, teams with leaner budgets can enter the space and spend efficiently, while also maximizing an innovative new channel.”

Singapore – To improve app marketing measurements and fraud prevention for their digital advertiser clients, app marketing platform Adjust has joined the Adobe Exchange Partner Program to utilize client-inclined strategies for performance marketing online, through Adobe’s Experience Cloud.

The Adobe Exchange Partner Program is an ongoing partner program designed for technology partners, which include software and data vendors to integrate third-party apps to companies looking to diversify and analyze their digital reach impact.

With this partnership, current and prospective mutual clients will be able to build a more complete view of the user journey across all channels — augmenting their customer experience stack analytics. This is done with a combination of mobile app data and data collected from other touchpoints.

Furthermore, the partnership entails a combination of solutions for marketing, analytics, advertising, and e-commerce, and the inclusion of a suite of measurement, fraud prevention, and automation products to provide data integration between Adjust and Adobe.

“As a driver in innovation in mobile marketing, we’re thrilled to become a premier level partner in the Adobe Exchange Partner Program, bringing actionable analytics and measurement, fraud prevention and automation to leading businesses globally — and with a single platform approach Adobe customers are used to. We are excited to see the business benefits both our current and future clients will see from this new relationship,” said Andrey Kazakov, VP Partnerships at Adjust.

Cody Crnkovich, head of platform partners and strategy at Adobe Experience Cloud commented, “As customer activity shifts along with the pandemic, advertisers are facing greater challenges connecting mobile marketing spend to app revenue and customer lifetime value. Adobe is delighted to have Adjust as a business partner, giving advertisers the capability to see mobile data across all available channels, automate campaign reporting and protect ad dollars from fraudsters in one place.”

Bengaluru, India – Local-based mobile marketing startup Whistle has announced the launch of its PIN code feature in its platform to target hyper-localized marketing strategies for locals.

The feature, which utilizes the country’s Postal Index Number (PIN), allows marketers to specifically target local audiences that may be interested in a marketing campaign using data sets catered to the endpoint PIN code.

This allows marketers to directly promote their campaign to consumers in the form of promotions like deals, discounts & Diwali bumper offers, introducing new goods & products, offering home delivery service, special opening hours during festivals & occasions, and many others.

“With most businesses being severely impacted by the pandemic across the country, small size firms, entrepreneurs and shop keepers are particularly struggling to stay afloat. Our aim is to empower these enterprises digitally through MarTech; help them overcome such obstacles and grow their businesses by making marketing technology tools available at an affordable cost,” Satya Kiran, CEO of Whistle said.

Launched in 2019, the company has since then ventured into providing martech solutions for its clients.

New Delhi, India – India-based data science-driven mobiletech MoMAGIC has entered a strategic partnership with Taiwan-based original design manufacturer (ODM) Qisda Group as it looks to unveil new feature for its AI SaaS platform, TrueInsight.

Via the platform, MoMAGIC will be offering consumer digital footprint and online monitoring of public opinions for the retail industry.

As a part of the partnership, TrueInsight will be able to provide advanced algorithms of ‘Intelligent POI (Point of Interest) Mapping & Intelligent Online Listening’, for the retail store chain.

This is said to enable critical capability to see through dynamic consumer footprint traffic and retail competition analysis, allowing businesses to process non-sensitive and anonymous consumer movement data.

Founder and CEO of MoMAGIC Technologies, Arun Gupta believes that the collaboration will help the company’s AI solutions to expand to other verticals.

“The strategic partnership with Qisda Group in Taiwan is a window to expand our AI Solution offerings into retail and other industry verticals,” Gupta said.

“With our advanced data science capability, we also hope to expand our AI solution application out of India. Looking forward to accelerating our offerings in AI business, to other Asian countries in 2021,” added Gupta.

Michael Lee, General Manager of Qisda’s Business Solutions Group agrees, and thinks that a viable expansion is on its way.

“We are looking forward to the strategic partnership with MoMAGIC, for AI SaaS solution applied in the retail sector and other similar industry. The cooperation can be extended from Taiwan, even to India and other Asian countries in the future,” said Lee.