SponsorPay: Why brands need mobile strategy now

Projjol Banerjea, Vice President of Marketing and Talent, SponsorPay: Combining effective mobile tactics to an overall cross-platform strategy will reap significant results since consumers will be engaged at every touching point. According to research from Videology, brand recall increases 70-300 percent when campaigns are run across multiple screens.

Kristina: How does the SponsorPay platform work?

Projjol: SponsorPay is the leading value-exchange advertising platform providing high-quality brand engagement for advertisers and driving user acquisition as well as content monetization for publishers.

Our innovative BrandEngage™ solution offers rich user-initiated experiences for premium brands including social video and engagement campaigns. Our platform also delivers industry-leading results on direct response campaigns for performance advertisers. Simultaneously, we enable publishers and developers of social, mobile and online games and apps to monetize non-paying customers as well as acquire loyal users in a cost-effective manner.

Kristina: What trends are you seeing in the mobile space?

Projjol: Because of the rapid adoption rate of tablets & smartphones, eCommerce will continue to grow on the mobile platform. The latest report from Mary Meeker finds smartphones & Tablets equaled 24% of online shopping on Black Friday, up 18% from 2012. We believe that this is far from reaching the whole potential. The percentage of mobile shoppers will only increase in the coming years. Juniper Research calculates the number of people making purchases with their mobile devices will expand from 398 million this year to 500 million by 2014.

People are already spending more time using Facebook from their mobile device than from the desktop. New studies also show that time spent with mobile apps in the US is starting to challenge time spent with television. Hence, mobile will continue its growth towards becoming the premiere engagement platform.

Kristina: Because so many consumers are engaging through mobile, what do brands need to do now to enter the space?

Projjol: It's all about providing something of substance to consumers. The mobile space is extremely personal so consumers don't want to be inundated with unsolicited advertisement that provides no value to them. That's why our value-exchange advertising model, which offers consumers access to premium online content in return for opt-in brand engagement, is quickly emerging on the mobile platform.

From our experience, a variety of brands across different industry verticals - from movie studios and cosmetics to consumer packaged goods and quick service restaurants (QSR) - have achieved success with value-exchange advertising.

For example, McDonald's did a "clicks to bricks" campaign with us that prompted users to watch a McDonald's ad and then receive a special coupon for offline use. Remarkably, 34% of those who interacted with the ad downloaded the coupon, driving both brand awareness as well as in-store sales.

When traditional pre-roll and banner ads have proven to be ineffective on mobile, value-exchange advertising delivers great results with the unique attributes of mobile devices providing possibilities for innovative campaigns.

Tags: mobile content, mobile marketing, mobile marketing tips, SponsorPay