Consumers have shifted their online attention from desktop to mobile over the past few years and as expected, digital advertisers’ budgets have followed suit. With mobile usage skyrocketing and transforming our daily lives, it’s only fitting that the theme for Mobile World Congress 2016 is “Mobile is Everything.” And as such, the mobile advertising ecosystem continues to expand with new companies entering the space – offering everything from “end-to-end” solutions to standalone features and capabilities, including better user tracking and targeting or interactive creative.
Mobile World Congress will, in essence, be a microcosm of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Every attending vendor and platform will have their pitch honed as to why their offering is the silver bullet, but anyone claiming to have the be-all-end-all solution in this still-nascent market definitely does not. MWC will bring together the best data and technology companies in mobile, but you will have to cut through the noise to find those that will help your business the most.
With such a fractured ecosystem of vendors attending the conference in Barcelona from February 22-25, and with 100k+ attendees expected, we are excited to be involved with Mobile World Congress for the second time and see it as a great opportunity to kick-start conversations about one-to-one marketing, networking with peers, meeting with clients about driving measurable outcomes and answering any questions – no matter how big or small – on all things programmatic. Whether it be kick-starting conversations with a promising vendor or re-engaging current partners on new opportunities, our goals for MWC fall directly in line with some of the overall industry trends and our goals of 2016:
- Contextualising Location – One of the hot-button topics in mobile advertising is real-time, hyperlocal targeting, which involves targeting a consumer while they are in a specific geographic location – whether it be inside a specific brick-and-mortar store or a concert hall. Adding context to this capability involves knowing why a consumer is at that location and what their intentions are (for example, are they window shopping or purchasing?) and mobile advertising will become vastly more valuable once location data can be contextualised at scale.
- Understanding Mobile Behavior – Tracking and segmenting users based on their behavior on mobile in the same way as desktop has brought mobile advertisers modest success, but there is still much to be learned about what consumers actually use their mobile phones for and what they want to use them for. If we know that a subset of consumers isn’t likely to convert on their mobile device, then does it make sense to serve them direct response ads? A consumer’s mobile phone behavior may be very different than their behavior on the desktop web, such as in the case where some consumers don’t yet feel comfortable transacting on their mobile devices, so they bookmark the e-commerce store from their phone to make a purchase later on their desktop.
- Cross-device Targeting and Attribution – Consumers are more connected than ever and in a multi-device world, it becomes increasingly important to develop a deterministic unifying identifier, tracking a user’s engagement across all platforms – whether it’s through their smartphones, tablets or laptops. From frequency capping campaign exposures at the individual level to attributing conversions from different devices to the same individual, accurate cross device data and technologies have the ability to drastically reduce wasted ad spend and more accurately attribute conversion events on a truly one-to-one basis.
We at MediaMath are expecting great things from MWC and are excited to learn more about the industry’s future from up and coming technology companies, while also seizing the opportunity to show the industry how to take a programmatic approach to mobile and omni-channel advertising.
MediaMath at Mobile World Congress 2016
If you’re attending, head down to stand G20 in App Planet Hall 8.1 to speak to a programmatic expert.
We are also pleased to announce that our partners will be presenting at our stand – be sure not to miss it:
Tuesday 23 February
- 9D (11am) “Physical World Behavior Meets Mobile Programmatic” by Michael Miner – VP, Business Development
- Visual DNA (3pm) “Next Gen Mobile Data: Targeting by Personality” by Raj Dhanda – VP, Global Supply
Wednesday 24 February
- Lotome (11am) “Mobile Audience Targeting with Lotame” by Ryan Rolf – Director, Data Sales
- Axonix (3pm) “Where advertisers reach first party mobile audiences in real time – An introduction to Axonix” by Simon Bailey – CEO and Zee Ahmad – Director of Programmatic
Thursday 25 February
- xAd (11am) “Location Based Marketing, Without the Guesswork” by Dorothee Bergin – VP Programmatic
- InMobi (3pm) “Understanding In App Mobile Data Signals & Creative” by Anne Frisbie, SVP, Global Alliances
Learn more about what we’re up to at Mobile World Congress 2016