What Comes Next for Mobile Ads?

The future doesn't have to be uncertain: Micro-targeted, hyper-local mobile and social media advertising at scale is now possible.

A recent headline read, “Insurers go all-out on mobile, but what comes next is elusive.” But what if the future doesn’t have to be elusive? The article shares some interesting statistics on Canadians’ use of mobile related to insurance purchases:
  • 74% begin their insurance research journey online.
  • 25% of those who begin their research online use a smartphone only.
  • 61% of this segment will immediately abandon a broker’s website if it is not considered mobile-friendly.
And it’s not just Canadians. A January 2018 Pew Research Center study of U.S. consumers found that as mobile devices have become more widespread:
  • 77% of Americans go online on a daily basis.
  • 43% go online several times a day.
  • 26% report they are online “almost constantly” (up from 21% in 2015).
As the article rightly points out, new findings on mobile behaviors like these require insurance and financial services companies to avoid assumptions and dig deeper into the various segments — considering demographics that include lifestyle, employment statistics, income and related buying preferences — in their marketing efforts. However, what’s next doesn’t have to be elusive. Highly effective targeting based on these characteristics can easily be achieved through social media advertising. As we shared in A Brief Guide to Mobile and Social Media Audience Targeting, social media platforms allow marketers to target ads based on consumers’ locations, demographics, interests and behaviors. See also: The Time to Adopt Mobile Was Yesterday   But that’s not all marketers can do through mobile and social media advertising. The Denim platform allows corporate marketers to achieve micro-targeted, hyper-localized ads at scale on behalf of any number of agents or advisers. Why? Because an ad presented from a local agent’s Facebook page consistently outperforms the same ad presented from a corporate brand’s Facebook page. Best of all, customers achieve better results at lower costs. This is apparent when you compare consumer engagement data on ads powered by Denim to Facebook advertising benchmarks for the insurance and financial services industry:
  • The average click-through rate (CTR) of finance and insurance ads placed on Facebook is 0.56%, while the average CTR of micro-targeted, hyper-local ads powered by Denim is 1.95%.
  • The average cost per click (CPC) on Facebook for finance and insurance is $3.77 — higher than any other industry. In comparison, the average CPC of ads powered by the Denim platform is $0.33.
See also: 4 Ways Social Media Can Win a Promotion   Perhaps a better headline would go something like, “Insurers go all-out on mobile; what comes next is micro-targeted, hyper-local mobile and social media advertising at scale.”

Gregory Bailey

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Gregory Bailey

Gregory Bailey is president and CPO at Denim Social. He was licensed to sell insurance at the age of 20, continued as an agent in the industry for the next nine years and then stepped into the corporate world of insurance.

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