Hottest summer trends in mobile ad tech: A panel review

Glispa welcomed the Berlin mobile community to our sunny headquarters in Prenzlauer Berg for a panel around the must-have ad tech trends of the season. Hosted by Michelle Caglar and Thomas Velich from Glispa, three mobile experts shed the light on promising user acquisition channels, the real cost of transparency, and much more. Here are some of the key takeaways from our evening!

 

Podcasts as the new UA channels

For Sira Ruedeeniyomvut of Blinkist, an app summarizing audiobooks into 15 min reads, this year is all about advertising in the audio space in podcasts and with youtube influencers, at scale. Bringing back the style of audio ads required taking in a fresh perspective. “Even though they seem a bit like old-school, backed-in ads, with the podcaster announcing the company during an episode,” as Sira put it, “they do have an influential power.”

“The format has always been a mystery in terms of marketing because it didn’t allow for tracking the results 100%,” he said. So, Blinklist made YouTube and podcast channels work for performance marketing by enabling measurement and tracking. They created landing pages the podcast host would refer the audience to in his or her announcement. In addition, Blinklist started collaborating with more micro-influencers as opposed to big celebrities since 10% of the influencers they are working with contributing to 90% of Blinklists revenues.

 

Content on Facebook for acquiring quality users

Lorenzo Rossi of Free2Move –  the biggest car, bike, and scooter sharing aggregator in Europe – told us his best way to reach individuals in different cities is using Facebook to distribute content. With it, Free2Move tells the story of people’s lives in their particular city motivating them to use car sharing.

“Content is a way to target valuable users who are interested in your topics, by not just pushing for installs, but by telling users a story.”

 

Syncing offline and mobile

Running TV commercials have a long time been essential for certain verticals like banking or telecommunication. The question now is, if you’re running a branding campaign, would that drive traffic to your app and conversions? Ender Ozcan of adjust, a mobile app analytics company, said, “advertisers came to a certain maturity that they want to measure the impact of their offline initiatives, and they want to compare it with digital.”

Before TV had become measurable, advertisers would use that channel for branding campaigns. “Nowadays,” Ender said, “we have different tv monitoring solutions integrated with adjust, which create either an audio or video fingerprint from the video sent by the advertiser. Together with audio or video recognition system, these monitoring solutions can capture the timestamp of the airing of the tv ad. Everything runs quite automatically.”

 

Transparency for a better advertising ecosystem

Transparency is often a buzzword in the mobile advertising industry, but having access to full transparency comes at a higher cost. Our panelists agreed, all players should be willing to take this into account for the benefit of the entire ecosystem. “Advertisers should know what they are spending for their money, and see the leverage of their ads because this is converting more users, and resulting in profitable startups, bigger apps, and savvier advertisers,” Ender said, and concluded,

“Transparency helps to grow the business, and also helps a bigger ecosystem to provide transparency.”

It is important for every player in the market. “If we end up keeping data for ourselves, and not share it with the advertiser, we risk advertisers stopping their campaigns, and turn to TV ads only or pure Facebook.” He added, “advertisers should be the owners of the data. They should be in charge, and they should ask the other players in the market for transparency.”

 

Focus on ad fraud shifts towards solutions

Of course, fraud can’t be ignored. This time, the focus shifted towards the maturing ad fraud prevention solutions the industry is now implementing. Ender spoke on behalf of adjust declaring, “we came and took a strong stance on fraud, and we are now seeing more advertisers are using a variety of inventories. It is getting them to a position where they can leverage their own data. This will enable having better targeting.” Also, “advertisers are more comfortable in spending their budgets on these solutions, as they become savvier and know it’s working,” Ender said.

 

Post-panel fun in Glispa’s alley!

A trend that still holds up in Berlin? Transforming the industrial open space next to you into a hangout. We shared our very own secret spot with our friends after the panel, treating people with some refreshing drinks, pizza, and ice cream. Thanks to everyone who enjoyed the evening with us, especially to our panelists Sira, Lorenzo, and Ender. See all the pictures here.

You missed the talk? Don’t worry you can watch the full talk below and join us at our upcoming panel on Thursday, July 14th – when we explore the impact of creatives.

Any trend you are obsessed about this summer and haven’t seen list above? We’ve got to know, share it with us here.