Opinion
Consumers' trust is the key to mobile marketing success
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Firms that will use innovative techniques to incentivise consumers to share more of their data while simultaneously gaining consumer trust are going to be the winners in the mobile economy.
By Anindya Ghose
The simple economics of advertising dictates that advertisers gravitate to media where consumers spend most of their time. As of 2016, consumers were spending an average of 25 per cent of their daily time on mobile devices, but advertisers were pumping in only 12 per cent of their ad dollars in the mobile economy. It does not take a rocket scientist to realise that there is a disconnect here. This level of inefficiency begs the question: why are advertisers not investing adequately to tap the monetisation potential of the mobile economy?
Firms will typically give two reasons. One, they claim that people do not respond favourably to mobile advertising and that they do not engage sufficiently with their messages. Two, they claim that even if some people engage, investments in mobile platforms do not generate commensurate returns, such as triggering product sales. Both these claims are incomplete characterisations of reality at best and factually wrong at worst. To harness the potential of a $3 trillion plus mobile economy globally, both these issues can be addressed.
First, let’s take the issue of inadequate consumer engagement with marketing campaigns on the mobile channel. Consumers generally find advertising on mobile devices annoying. They dislike ads that ruin their browsing or content-consumption experience because they are either redundant or irrelevant. The reason is simple. Even in today’s data-intensive world, the majority of firms don’t have contextually relevant information about the preferences of their consumers.
Read the full article as published in Economic Times.
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Anindya Ghose is a Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences, Professor of Marketing, NEC Faculty Fellow, Stern Faculty Scholar and Director of the Masters of Science in Business Analytics.
Firms will typically give two reasons. One, they claim that people do not respond favourably to mobile advertising and that they do not engage sufficiently with their messages. Two, they claim that even if some people engage, investments in mobile platforms do not generate commensurate returns, such as triggering product sales. Both these claims are incomplete characterisations of reality at best and factually wrong at worst. To harness the potential of a $3 trillion plus mobile economy globally, both these issues can be addressed.
First, let’s take the issue of inadequate consumer engagement with marketing campaigns on the mobile channel. Consumers generally find advertising on mobile devices annoying. They dislike ads that ruin their browsing or content-consumption experience because they are either redundant or irrelevant. The reason is simple. Even in today’s data-intensive world, the majority of firms don’t have contextually relevant information about the preferences of their consumers.
Read the full article as published in Economic Times.
___
Anindya Ghose is a Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences, Professor of Marketing, NEC Faculty Fellow, Stern Faculty Scholar and Director of the Masters of Science in Business Analytics.