A recent study showed that certain demographics are highly engaged by smartphone advertising.
Over two million phone calls were analyzed using the Marchex Call Analytics platform when customers clicked on mobile ads or conducted searches on their smartphones and tablets, for banks, lenders, or life or auto insurance.
Marchex found that there is a great deal of potential in reaching certain consumers over mobile advertising.
Among the key findings was that mobile ads can be particularly effective for insurance and financial services companies when they are being sent to Millennial consumers as well as those within the Spanish speaking population. Even Generation X consumers responded positively to mobile marketing, though not to the extent of Millennials. Those groups all clicked ads and conducted searches over smartphones that led them to call the companies based on the results that they received.
The research showed that the appeal of mobile ads could mean that companies should reevaluate their marketing strategies.
According to the senior vice president of consumer insights at Marchex, John Busby, who is also a co-author of that company’s report, “Our data shows that insurance and financial services brands are already experiencing profound changes related to the broader online-to-offline trend: that it is now typical for a consumer to search on their mobile phone for an insurance provider or bank and make a phone call or an in-person visit based directly on that search result.”
Busby went on to explain that Millennials are starting to become an exceptionally important group within the trend of offline purchases that have been influenced as a result of what was seen over mobile devices. He predicted that they will become the largest consumer group in terms of spending over these gadgets, and that their spending will be “twenty times larger than m-commerce.”
This is a strong indicator that insurance and financial companies should look into mobile ads when they are seeking to connect with consumers in the Millennials age group. When done properly – provided that calling wait times are left to a minimum – this has the potential to bring about far more positive results from marketing campaigns.
I would love to see the parsed data to review what types of mobile ads were most effective. Did this take into account native mobile ad content? Granted, there isn’t much of that going around yet. Facebook is doing it and others are in position to — Admob, etc. Do banners still resonate with Millennials? I would think the more attractive and well targeted offerings (Abstract Banners from Airpush for example) would do a lot more to engage than typical nondescript banners. It would also be fascinating to see a breakdown of engagement between iOS and Android users. This study is only satisfying to a limited degree. It raises more questions than it answers.