We’ve all heard that this is the year of mobile. In fact, we’ve been hearing this for several years, and while this year it may be true, it’s also irrelevant. Why? Because while mobile does provide an incredibly unique opportunity to reach an individual on a device that is always on and always present, just utilizing mobile as an isolated silo or channel greatly reduces the impact of this information. The real value of mobile and, in turn, being a truly mobile-first company, is understanding that mobile—for the first time ever—provides us the opportunity to truly tell the entire story of an individual’s customer journey.
Mobile can tell the whole story
Mobile provides advertisers with unique location data that we can leverage to target users based on where they have been, or where they currently are. This location data is incredibly valuable, but also incomplete. Understanding location is great, but only as a small piece of the larger puzzle.
Mobile enables insights that desktop activity does not—most crucially, location and context. The beauty of this knowledge is that by leveraging data points found on mobile, we can make decisions that affect the entire consumer journey—but only if we can link a user across devices. The good news is that now we can. If you only leverage mobile as the implementation of a handheld device, you’re missing out. The true value in mobile lies in its ability to connect multiple devices, and layer that information with real-world context.
The impact of location
If we understand the role a certain location plays in a user’s life, we can begin to infer what a user may be doing as we look across multiple devices. In some cases, this allows us to understand their activities in the physical world (i.e. shopping, seeing a movie). However, in other cases, we can tie devices together across a user based on the same location data. In understanding the true impact of each touch point, be it a desktop, mobile phone, tablet, smart TV, etc., we can start to optimize delivery based not only on the device being used, but by the context in which it is used. This then allows advertisers to optimize to different devices based on real-time impact, as well as the desired result. And that is the true value of mobile. Using mobile as the central indicator of who, what, where and when enables the true omni-channel vision advertisers are striving to achieve.
The rise of omnichannel
One of the key components of omnichannel is mobile. Mobile allows other devices to be identified, and it allows us to tie behaviors previously only understood in the digital landscape to the physical world. It is incredibly powerful. But where the real benefit, the real game-changing tactics, will come from is through leveraging all touch points, across digital and physical spaces, to provide a cohesive advertising experience. So if you ask me, the year of mobile is here, and that’s great, but let’s look forward to next year, or the next few years, where we predict mobile will evolve to the Year(s) of Omnichannel.
Stay tuned for our next post on the marriage between data and mobile and how the Internet of Things will be a game-changer for this dynamic duo.