As digital advertising spend continues to rise, changes in the advertising ecosystem have resulted in increased customer acquisition costs, leaving brands with much less “R” in their “ROI.”
Last year alone, marketers in the U.S. spent nearly $240 billion on digital advertising, according to eMarketer. But as customer acquisition becomes more expensive, marketers are increasingly focused on using ad spend efficiently. For years, spend on legacy ad tech has created massive waste in digital advertising.
But as mobile device usage continues to skyrocket, a better, more efficient option has emerged.
The strongest signal for user behavior and intent
During the pandemic, people spent a massive amount of time on their mobile devices, accelerating already rapid growth—in some cases by years. Time spent on mobile internet increased to more than four hours every day. And analysts expect that trend to continue, even beyond the pandemic.
Of the hours adults spend on their mobile devices each day, 90% of that time is within apps, which have come to play a huge role in our lives. The way we learn, shop and communicate have all been transformed by mobile applications.
This is great news for the post-cookie marketer and consumers alike.
Mobility data at work
Using mobility data, which identifies patterns in app ownership and usage, marketers can better understand and address consumer interests and intent—as signaled by the apps they own and use. While mobility data providers don’t have visibility to the actions people take within apps, they can provide impactful insights based simply on the types of apps people own and how frequently they use them.
Marketers can use this data to map audiences and create personas based on app ownership and engagement. Personas like coffee lovers who open the Starbucks app often or fitness enthusiasts who access the Strava and/or Peloton apps. These insightful personas tell us what people are interested in, based on what they’re actually engaging with.
For example, we all know that millions of people shop online through retail apps, like Amazon, Target and Walmart. With mobility data, we know that frequent users of these apps are highly likely to also use online banking apps, like Bank of America or Capital One. And we can also compare different user bases. Frequent users of the Amazon app are more likely to use food delivery apps like Door Dash than frequent users of the Target and Walmart apps.
Mobility data enables us to dig deeper into segments. While most people could guess that users of apps like American Eagle, Nike or Poshmark skew female and younger, with mobility data, we can obtain more interesting insights.
For example, these users are highly likely to use experience apps, like Airbnb, Kayak, Resy and Ticketmaster. These users are also more likely to use peer to peer payment apps, like Venmo or Cash App than they are to use online banking apps.
These insights can be highly valuable for advertising. And marketers get it.
New audiences and insights
In a recent survey, 90% of marketers said “access to wide-ranging mobile app ownership and active engagement data, including frequency and recency of app usage” would have a significant positive impact on their digital marketing efforts.
For marketers, mobility data unlocks a new world of audiences and insights. With Marketing Solutions, a division of T-Mobile USA, brands can leverage mobility data to create audience segments and launch campaigns that are more effective, more accurate and deliver better returns.
The world has gone mobile. It’s about time the world of advertising did, too.
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Mike Peralta is VP and GM at T-Mobile Advertising Solutions. He is responsible for driving T-Mobile’s targeted advertising, measurements and insights business, and has over 20 years of extensive domestic and international experience in technology and media.
