Audience targeting has already arrived in mobile and is one of the primary reasons why mobile advertising revenue in the U.S. is set to break more than $4bn in 2015 and outpace all other forms of advertising over the next few years. Considering the range of offerings, defining audience targeting is difficult for an advertiser. As someone who has been in the ad industry for over a decade, I usually tell marketers and agencies that there are five questions they should ask ad networks, publishers and others controlling mobile inventory before they make the leap into mobile advertising.
1) Can you target audience by other variables beyond just the context of the content (by carriers, devices, and even by their propensity to buy certain brands)?
2) What targeting do you have showing how different audiences behave in a mobile environment?
3) What type of unique ad format have you made in audience targeting from a technology standpoint?
If they can’t answer all of these questions, chances are they aren’t going to be able to target audience segments as deeply as is now possible.