A Simple Simple Short Shot
The rise of mobile advertising and social media marketing!
As website and app technology becomes more mobile, so too does our advertising and marketing opportunities.
Apps like Yik Yak, Tinder, and Whisper live purely on a mobile phone, adding to the exclusivity of the social aspect. There’s even an app designed to help you find your new job; dubbed ‘the Tinder of job searching’ Switch connects you with employers and allows you to chat in real time. And as more of our online time creeps into apps, so too does our advertising. Shareable content is on of the new crown jewels of marketing, like sponsored content and native advertising.
Sponsorship and native advertising are not new concepts, in fact television sitcoms used to incorporate commercials right into their scripts – Mrs Cleaver baked with a specific kind of flour when she made cookies for her family and Alka-Seltzer and One-A-Day Vitamins sponsored shows like The Rifleman in the 50s. These days, product placement is sneakier – Red Vines seem to always be in the lunchroom of Kaan & Associates in “House of Lies” and sponsorship ballooned to include entire buildings, like the Scotiabank Saddledome.
Online, sponsorship looks like page takeovers and sponsored listicles from viral websites like Buzzfeed. Native advertising is crammed into pages of Bon Appetit shot on an iPhone or found on Wired in an article about Tesla’s garbage trucks. It’s the type of article or site that is often shared between co-workers, friends and family on social media, all from a mobile phone. The emphasis is on shareable content, in a format easily digested on a small screen, and if you expect it to be shared, it better be fantastic.
Advertising for mobile consumption is about knowing your audience, and getting your name into articles they’re reading or by creating content that can’t help but be broadcast a little further by each user who sees it. Viral videos, curated Instagram accounts or informative Facebook pages are just a few of the ways to go big on the tiny screens of mobile phones – but there’s no doubt that (clever) mobile advertising is where brands need to find their voice in the digital world, and that brands can masquerade in social environments like they’ve never been able to before in more traditional media buys. Conversion rates are still higher for e-comm shopping on desktop, but it’s only a matter of time until the internet is ruled by mobile…well, that is until wearables learn to take over.
