– – This week on The 414, the golden opportunity for brands to reach highly engaged mobile users in the least crowded online environment.

Hi, I’m James Rostance, and welcome to The 414. Each week with some of the greatest minds in marketing, and joining me today is a lady who’s a leading advocate of the massively untapped opportunity for brands to connect with highly engaged users with minimal competition from other advertisers. Welcome, Einav Dinur.

– Hi, James.

– So compared to traditional media, mobile advertising is highly targeted and arguably offers great value for money. But your focus is on a generally untapped opportunity for brand advertisers. Could you tell me about that?

– Sure. So, we all know that where users spend most of their time is in mobile, and ad budgets are definitely following. So, in 2018, in the UK alone, we’re expecting roughly 8.7 billion pounds to be spent in mobile, on ads, and that’s gonna account for 70% of digital ad spend. So, we definitely see budgets shifting from desktop to mobile, but here’s the catch, most brand advertisers spend most of their mobile budgets in mobile web when we know that 85% of time spent in mobile is actually spent in apps. So, there’s this huge opportunity that’s just being overlooked by brand advertisers.

– So, what do you consider to be the main advantages of in-app advertising?

– So, first and foremost it’s the state of mind of the users. So, most time spent in apps is actually spent on social apps or gaming apps. Users tend to be more engaged with the content. They want to be in that app. They’re usually in a good mood. So, they tend to be 25% more likely to engage with ads which is obviously something that’s great for advertisers. A second benefit has to do with targeting. So, apps actually offer more granular and efficient targeting, allowing advertisers to serve more relevant ads to the users, which in turn makes them twice as likely to engage with the ad. So again, very beneficial for advertisers.

– So why haven’t brands really advertised in gaming apps up until now, and have there been any recent developments that would likely change that?

– Yeah, so I think a lot of it is driven by a few myths that maybe it’s time that we debunk. The first being around the users who use gaming apps, and so I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about it either being only children that play games, or maybe it’s actually the other direction where it’s just hardcore gamers. People tend to think that it’s mainly males that use games, but it’s actually not true. Over 55% of gaming users are females. And so, when you think about the different casual games that are out there, like Candy Crush, or Angry Birds, or Clash Royale, these are games that everyone plays when you’re on the train or when you’re just passing time. And so, I definitely think advertisers can reach any segment that they want in gaming apps, and it’s maybe time to kinda let go of those past ways of thinking. Another misconception is around the inability to measure viewability in apps. So obviously, viewability is something that’s very important for brand advertisers, and it’s not so much that you can’t measure viewability in apps, it’s just that historically, because the campaigns were more performance campaigns, cost-per-installs, there wasn’t a need to measure viewability. But the tech support for measuring viewability is there, and it’s possible. So advertisers shouldn’t be afraid of this space from this perspective. So, I’d say the bottom line is that apps are not even just the future. They’re already the present, and I encourage brand advertisers to take advantage of this space, and reach their audience where they’re at, where they’re spending most of their time.

– Einav, thank you very much for joining me today.

– Thanks for having me.

– And if you’d like to learn more about in app advertising, visit the414.net to watch extended coverage in The 414 Extra. I’m James Rostance, thank you for watching.

– – Hi, I’m James Rostance and welcome to the 414 Extra. Now, this is where we get to deep dive into the content we’ve just covered in the main show. And joining me here still is Einav.

– Hi James.

– So Einav, I’d like to talk a bit more about the concerns that advertisers have, or would likely have, within app and in-game advertising. Could you tell me about that?

– Sure. So obviously it is still part of digital and one of the main concerns around digital is around fraud. And to be honest, this is something that an app has just like mobile web, just like desktop does. But you have the same players that are the same third party vendors that are tackling these fraud issues, also working in apps. So players like pixelate and white ops have anti-fraud solutions that are tailored for the in-app environment. So again, it’s something that is not perfect yet. But the industry is working towards making sure that that is a safe environment. Another thing is, around brand safety and where your ad is going to be shown. And actually in that sense, the app environment tends to be safer because when you think about it, an app has to go through the screening process of the Apple store or the Google Play store before it’s actually uploaded to the store and available for download. Which is something that mobile websites don’t have. It’s a process that they don’t have to go through. So in that sense there’s actually that check post for apps that mobile websites don’t have, which tend to make it a slightly safer environment from a brand prospective.

– And what is the issue of viewability for adverts in game and in app.

– Yeah, so like I mentioned before, it’s a bit of a myth. Because it’s not so much that you can’t measure with viewability, it’s more than there hasn’t been a need to measure viewability in apps in the past because it was a different type of campaigns that we’re running on there. There’s a format called VPAID that is a format that allows you to show interactive ads but also to measure viewability. It’s a format that is very, very prevalent and common when you think about desktop, when you think about mobile web. It’s actually something that is now being supported in apps, as well. So that is making brands more comfortable to run campaigns in this environment. Vendors like Moat, Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, they’re also working in the app space as well. So again, it is possible to measure viewability. It is something that is starting now just because the need only came now. But it’s definitely possible from a technical and support perspective.

– So what would be a good starting point for, say, brands and agencies to look into and get started with in app advertising.

– So here’s the great thing, it’s actually really easy. Because most of the agencies already work through the agency trading desks with a variety of DSPs, which are the demand site platforms that do the actual digital buying. And most of those DSPs have access to app inventory so it’s really just a matter of the agency asking the trading desk or the DSP to start buying app inventory. And so you don’t even have to do anything special. It’s just being more intensional about your mobile campaigns and how you want to spend your mobile budgets.

– Perfect. Einav thank you very much for joining me today.

– Thank you for having me.