Technology is needed to close the time spent and ad spend gap on mobile

Mobile is on its way to take over as the main channel for media consumption and social interactions. So far, the development has brought two winners: Facebook and Google, which are growing steady and have around 70% of the mobile advertising share. The solution for both hardly-pressed publishers and advertisers is to choose mobile focused tools which can enable reach and revenues of audiences.

So far those that have managed to benefit the most from mobile and it’s rapid rise are the big walled garden players. However, a big group of traditional publishers are struggling to earn money when time spent is moving towards mobile, says Emelie Löfdahl Product Director at Widespace, and points at the huge gap between Facebook and the rest of players in the Nordic market when it comes to generating revenues from mobile:

84% of the total time users spend on Facebook happens through mobile. A number that matches the company’s revenues from mobile advertising, which is also 84%.

For other publishers and commercial players, the proportion of mobile visitors is 60% but the revenues, according to Widespace calculations, are only 15%.

The main reasons for this increasing gap is that too many players in the industry are at the mercy of tools which are adapted for desktop, coupled with a market that is too fragmented. In the practice, this implies that advertisers will miss a big part of the users and that publishers will lose revenue from their inventory, says Emelie Löfdahl.

An example of how mobile-adapted solutions can increase the reach and revenue is Widespace’s new product, the Reach Amplifier, which is available via IO, Widespace programmatic platform, Summit, and via external DSPs for ads in Widespace inventory.

The Reach Amplifier solves one of the most difficult challenges in the market. Namely, the absence of a global cookie standard that has made iOS users largely unreachable for targeted campaigns. This implies that advertisers and publishers miss at least 50% of all impressions and will not reach these users with purchase power that spend more than all other mobile users, says Emelie Löfdahl.

Reach Amplifier basically builds on a new way to use Widespace Brand Algorithm that optimises campaigns in real time based on ad interest. By in real time identifying ad-interest twins to the target group chosen by the advertiser, the Reach Amplifier increases the range significantly and makes it possible to reach the valuable iOS users.

Based on eight different case studies, Widespace research found that the Reach Amplifier increases audience reach up to eight times compared to the initial scope of the predefined target group. Reach Amplifier contributes also to positive effects when it comes to both interaction and view time. People who were identified through Reach Amplifier and exposed to an ad have 40% higher interaction rates and 8% longer view times than those persons in the main target group.