Happy New Year! (well, almost)
I hope you’ve been having success with all of your advertising campaigns so far this holiday season and are looking forward to a successful new year ahead.
2019 is almost at a close and we wanted to ensure that we ended the year with exciting news leading into 2020. This month, together with our partners inMarket, we successfully launched our new offering “Interactive Moments” in Canada. This new product enables us to offer brands with a unique opportunity to connect with consumers as they navigate in-store ready to make a purchase. Interactive Moments also allows us to further define ourselves as an industry leader in the Canadian market for mobile advertising.
From a marketing perspective, I am overall very happy with the continued rate of increased adoption for in-app advertising in 2019 by many Canadian brands, and I’m excited for the future of mobile advertising in Canada. Thinking back on 2019 has me thinking about what the new year will hold for the mobile advertising industry and what we can expect in 2020.
Thoughts and predictions for 2020:
The customer experience begins on mobile
Mobile will be the driver of business transformation. Customers live in the moment, and the power to drive context and deliver relevant and contextual messaging when it matters most is a key factor for brands looking to win on customer experience in the age of the customer. Businesses in financial services and insurance have invested large amounts of money into the customer experience and being customer-centric; hiring and creating positions like Chief Experience Officers and Chief Marketing Officers to close the gap of unhappy customers that churn. These roles have been working hard at getting the customer experience right, and these efforts will greatly accelerate in 2020 with a shift and focus on mobile experiences.
The rise of Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) will finally start taking off in 2020. Think about all the apps already using AR: Google Maps, Pokemon Go, Snapchat, Instagram, among many others. These are all apps that require users to have phones with AR capabilities, and the users with phones like these are in the billions. Creative teams can now help brands reach more than 1 billion users to create new integrated experiences. AR will truly turn advertising into an experience, enabling brands to reach out to consumers in totally new ways. Imagine being able to see what the car of your dreams looks like in your driveway, or what that new dress looks like on you before ordering it online. For now AR ads are not widely used, however they’ll become more widely seen once the number of AR users increases. Statista has forecast the global AR market size increasing to more than 198 billion users in 2025.
Rewarded video is the way to go
Let’s face it, ads are everywhere, and users dislike interruptions to their in-app experience from ads that are irrelevant, out of place, and intrusive. The majority of mobile users, both in-app and browser, believe that ads in general are annoying. To combat this sentiment, brands are returning value in exchange for a user’s time. The use of rewarded video has been met with success, resulting in a whopping 68% of users having a positive attitude towards these types of ads. The use of rewarded video will increase in 2020 as brands that are looking for engagement, higher completion rates, and click throughs, start putting more money behind rewarded video.
The gamification boom
Gamification or playable ads are interactive ad units that use various forms of haptics to gain the users attention, while educating and enticing further action. Users can swipe, flip, tap, and turn while playing a game that provides some sort of reward to them. Want an extra life? Watch…er.. play this ad and get one in return for your time. Think rewarded video but with more engagement. Gamification is not new, in fact brands have been working with us at APEX for a while now on creating custom game units for their campaigns. The change in 2020 will be that more industries will begin to adopt this new form of advertising for its ability to provide an opt-in experience, that gives the user a sense of choice and desire to participate in the ad experience.
The continued evolution of In-app advertising
In-app advertising has come a long way and still has a way to go. Recent advancements in technology provide a larger amount of opportunity for in-app mobile ads. New technology like 5G and the capabilities of new smartphone devices, like dual screen smartphones, are both exciting reasons for marketers to start experimenting with new in-app ad formats now in preparation for the inevitable nation-wide adoption of the latest tech by consumers in Canada.
The year ahead looks great!
At APEX we’re excited to go into 2020 ready to continue providing premium in-app mobile advertising solutions to all of our clients and brands in Canada while also delivering exceptional account management services.
See you in 2020!
Comments