Is Measuring 'Consumer Annoyance' the Next Step in Online Ads?

Consumers are increasingly frustrated by bad mobile ad experiences. Advertisers must change their mobile tactics before ad blockers become the way of the web. From Ad Age:

“Marketers have been reluctant to funnel more money into mobile because they haven't yet found a winning ad format. Instead, they have jammed the mobile interface with every type of annoying ad possible, including the dreaded "hit X to close the ad" format, which enrages consumers. It's no wonder that as much as 60% of click-throughs on mobile are accidental.”

Level Insight:

• Without figuring out the most effective means to communicate to mobile device users, too many advertisers have become intrusive. They force engagement by filling the screen with unsolicited, unwanted advertising content that elicits a click because a user must tap the ad to minimize it. They disrupt the experience that consumers are trying to have, taking them out of the content they want — either by coercing a click or just being an obnoxious visual distraction.
• This comes back to what Google has been emphasizing across all mobile media from landing pages to ads: put the effort in to give consumers a better experience. This entails finding a better way to communicate within the media that takes into account the physical device constraints and the moment in which a consumer searches for content on a mobile device.
• Advertising works when it is effectively integrated into the content that your users are engaging with. It should stand out, but not to the point of annoyance. This is why Level’s mobile ads are focused on user engagement and relevance to our targeted audiences. We utilize eye-catching imagery and little copy because that is the format of the posts that users want to see in the medium. Marketers must start considering why the consumer is on a certain device, on a certain type of site, browsing a certain type of content at that moment to create non-intrusive ads that complement, not disrupt the user experience.

Without data, your marketing strategy won’t cut it in 2017

New year, new data. It should be every marketer’s resolution to understand and act on as much data as possible. From Marketing Land:

“As the shift toward content-based marketing builds momentum, marketers will find themselves under increasing pressure to measure the effectiveness of their publishing efforts. At the same time, marketers have more data available to them than they ever did in the past.”

Level Insight:

• As data continues to democratize, there is no excuse for not using it to guide decisions in advertising campaigns. The issue is how to make sense of it and how to interpret and act on it.
• The increase in the sheer amount of available data necessitates a solution beyond humans. Marketing automation tools are becoming more valuable to marketers to handle create actions based on consumer data. Level has embraced a variety of automation tools that are becoming more sophisticated in their means of segmenting audiences. These tools facilitate communication with customers throughout the lifecycle, personalized by specific actions that customer has taken. With the ability to collect and act on data from so many disparate sources, marketing automation will continue to be a major tool that Level will recommend in 2017.