In the United States, digital marketers are spending more than $60 billion per year on online ad spend campaigns. Our team of Orlando marketing agency experts know those are your precious marketing dollars at work, which is why we encourage all of our clients to ask those tough questions when they work with us and with other agency partners. If your agency can’t answer the following questions, you’re probably wasting money on your online ad spend. 

QUESTION 1: HOW IS MOBILE TECHNOLOGY DRIVING ONLINE AD SPEND GROWTH?

Online ad spend across mobile channels increased 66% year over year when compared to last year’s ad spend. There are many reasons for this growth, including an increased emphasis on app usage and discovery (just click here to read why Apple is releasing new paid app advertising for more on that); more secure and streamlined mobile shopping experiences that drive 80% of digital consumers to indicate they will purchase something on their mobile device or tablet this year; and the ever increasing overlap between social media and our personal and professional lives. There is absolutely no doubt that mobile technology is one of the biggest drivers for online ad spend. When you ask the team at your local, Orlando marketing agency which trends are most important, or where you should invest now to support future mobile growth, we recommend:

• Responsive design: Despite the fact that mobile technology has been exponentially improving over the past decade, many company sites are still not mobile-friendly. Before you do anything else, update your site with responsive design technology that seamlessly adapts your site to any device and any size.

• Social ads: The prized millennial customer uses social media to find new brands, celebrate brands they love, and complain when brands let them down. Aside from search engine marketing, social media advertising is one of the most powerful ways to reach out to your target demographic. Social mobile apps such as Facebook, SnapChat, and Instagram lure users to their mobile devices hundreds of times per day, making this platform one of the most ubiquitous ways to reach your audience where they are already spending time.

• Paid app spends: If you have an app, it’s time to explore how paid advertising in Google Play or Apple’s App Store can deepen your customers’ engagement with your mobile app. Whether you want to encourage discovery for a new app, or drive use in your existing customer base, a paid online ad spend can bring much needed attention to your mobile app, putting you in a prime position to take advantage of the mobile boom.

QUESTION 2: HOW IS PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING IMPACTING YOUR ONLINE AD SPEND?

Don’t let anyone fool you. Programmatic advertising is impacting the online ad spend world in a big way. In fact, close to two thirds of US online ad spends will come from programmatic purchases this year, with mobile accounting for 60% of that spend. The trend is already here. This breakthrough allows robots and crawlers to do highly labor-intensive work that once led to human error and lag time between insights and actions. Instead of relying on media buyers to tag ads, comb through insertion orders, and tweak your spend, programmatic ad buying frees your agency to focus on driving your marketing strategy and fine-tuning your spend based on a wealth of hard, up-to-the-minute data. One of the most popular forms of programmatic ad buying is real-time bidding, which automates the term purchasing process by balancing ad inventory against audience data, and your resources and business goals.

Let our team introduce you to the power of programmatic advertising and how it can make your customer targeting sharper and generate interest in truly engaged, valuable customers. Give us a call for a deep dive into this revolutionary breakthrough and how it will change the way you think about your online ad spend.