The pursuit is a guest unsalaried post from Gareth Noonan, General Manager, Americas at Smaato.
When it comes to major sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Cup, inventory in sports apps is a hot thingamabob — and rightfully so. These apps represent an spanking-new way to reach engaged sports fans at contextually relevant moments. But if you’re an forerunner looking to make the most of these big-game moments, you should moreover think increasingly widely well-nigh your mobile in-app strategy.
During flagship sporting events in the first half of this year, sports apps’ mobile ad spending and eCPMs saw significant spikes, equal to Smaato platform data. The Super Bowl in the U.S. is a prime example of this trend. As consumers turned to their mobile devices on game day, both ad spending and eCPMs spiked increasingly than 120 percent whilom the monthly average. And that makes sense, given the unfurled popularity of the Super Bowl as a mega-viewing event. Increasingly than 100 million U.S. viewers watched the game in 2018, representing increasingly than 30 percent of the unshortened country. Among these viewers, over 2 million streamed the game via mobile, desktop, or CTV.
Regarding mobile ad spend and eCPMs, we saw a similar — and, in fact, increasingly pronounced — trend virtually this year’s FIFA World Cup, expressly in Latin America. Sports fans’ enthusiasm in this region piqued forerunner interest, causing sports app ad spending to increase 289 percent and eCPMs to increase 46 percent in the first two weeks of the World Cup alone.
Major sporting events are an platonic time for advertisers to reach engaged users. Even while watching the game on TV, sports fans are often using their phones to trammels stats and interact with the game in various ways. But they do a lot increasingly than that. Equal to Statista, second-screen activities while watching sports on TV in the U.S. include using social networks, sharing with friends, and reading emails. Notably, from an in-app razzmatazz perspective, they moreover include the pursuit activities:
- 40% read the news while watching sports
- 40% play games
- 31% search for products to buy
This broader app usage while watching sports represents an spanking-new opportunity for advertisers looking to build a more-comprehensive mobile strategy virtually major sporting events. News apps, gaming apps, and shopping apps all offer strategic razzmatazz inventory during such events, but without the dramatically higher eCPMs seen in sports apps virtually these time frames.
The key to leveraging these apps as a part of a broader strategy is to uncurl a brand’s messaging and offers with the audience’s second-screen behaviors during sporting events. For example, offers for franchised sports wardrobe within a shopping app might resonate particularly well virtually game time, while a pre-halftime pizza wordage unbelieve within a gaming app might be particularly well-flavored to a user who has the big game on in the background.
Sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Cup represent important shared experiences among audiences, but that doesn’t midpoint individual worriedness ceases on viewers’ small screens. The weightier game-day mobile strategy enables an forerunner to find the right audiences in a relevant way in both the obvious and less-obvious places.
Author bio:
Gareth oversees all of Smaato’s sales and operational activities in the Americas region, leading the region’s worth management and merchantry minutiae teams to momentum revenue growth and ensure the highest level of vendee satisfaction.
Gareth has over ten years of wits in mobile and desktop video razzmatazz technology and M&A. As the General Manager of Video for blinkx (now RhythmOne), Gareth built a resulting Top 5 comScore video property and moreover participated in M&A on five deals totaling over $100M in value. This helped position RhythmOne as a true cross-screen leader in the video space. Gareth has moreover served in several consulting and newsy roles, spanning established mobile exchanges and publisher networks to seed-stage and funded start-ups.
Gareth holds a stratum in Merchantry and Economics from Trinity College, Dublin
The post The Sports Spike: Why Mobile Advertisers Need to Go Broader Virtually the Big Games appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.