Telecom Lead Asia: Mobile advertising needs to find new rhythm as a Velti-Forrester survey said only 27 percent used push-based alerts and 25 percent used location-based advertising.

While many respondents cite customer acquisition as their number one marketing objective on mobile, the vast majority of brands’ spend for mobile has been focused on upper funnel tactics such as display ads.

According to the Forrester study, marketers rely on aggregate demographic data, or paradigms carried from non-mobile media, to target their audience rather than building profiles of individual consumers based on trust and offered utility.

Among the marketers surveyed, 78 percent use audience data, 71 percent use individual behavior information for targeting, while only 64 percent are leveraging profile information unique to mobile devices.

The main source for this flawed approach is that the majority of marketers are using metrics designed for the PC to gauge the success of mobile marketing and advertising initiatives, such as volume of website traffic & visitors (63 percent) and click through rates (58 percent).

The study shows that marketers need to look at the entire marketing funnel and realize that mobile is severely undervalued.

Krishna Subramanian, CMO of Velti, said: “There is huge potential to capitalize on the mobile platform, and, to be effective, marketers need to take a mobile-first approach instead of treating mobile as an extension of the desktop. The majority of mobile marketing spend today is on advertising to anonymous consumers, but with the intimacy and rich context offered by mobile, the true potential lies in conversion and engaging in conversations with existing customers.”

According to the study, many marketers are acting in a contradictory manner to achieving their stated primary objective. While most marketers are heavily investing on upper funnel tactics such as display ads, the majority cite lower funnel objectives, such as customer acquisition, as a primary driver of their mobile marketing and advertising strategy.

With consumers ingesting media across a growing number of screens, it will become crucial for marketers to not only understand how consumers use mobile devices, but also how they use them in parallel with other mediums. The study found that only 54 percent of marketing executives were leveraging data from multiple screens to build customer profiles.

Among the executives surveyed, 90 percent cite using mobile advertising tactics that drive awareness, while only 48 percent are using mobile marketing tactics that drive customer acquisition and engagement.

When asked to identify which mobile tactics they used, the majority focused on mobile advertising strategies:

66 percent cited social media mobile advertising
44 percent cited mobile display ads
37 percent cited mobile web landing pages with promotions
37 percent cited location targeted advertising

When asked to identify what objectives marketers are pursuing with mobile advertising and marketing initiatives today, experienced marketers identified the top objectives as:

90 percent— acquire new customers
83 percent— increase loyalty and retention
83 percent— increase brand awareness
76 percent— increase customer satisfaction

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