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Four mobile marketing strategies that are working right now

While the conversation around mobile marketing often centers on the future potential to reach consumers in a meaningful way, there are techniques that are working in mobile right now and providing significant results.

From social calls to action to full-page ads, savvy marketers are discovering they can engage mobile users with the right strategies. Findings from several mobile advertising companies highlight successful mobile marketing strategies and show that the time is now for marketers to consider how to incorporate mobile into their efforts.

?Mobile is a great activation channel that complements marketers? other social media efforts,? said Lisa Abramson, director of marketing at Rhythm NewMedia, New York. ?There is really a great synergy between mobile and social and great benefits to be had by doing these two things together.?

Here, in no particular order, are four mobile marketing techniques that are proving mobile?s strength as a marketing channel.

Social calls to action
Mobile ads that incorporate social connectivity options perform better than other ads, according to Rhythm NewMedia Inc.

The mobile rich media ad network found that including a social call to action with full page ads increases consumers interactivity with that ad by 57 percent. One of the company?s clients saw a 75 percent increase in engagement for banner ads by adding a social media component.

?We?ve seen huge boosts in engagement by using the social component in mobile,? Ms. Abramson said. ?We are already seeing a shift with more marketers making social a bigger component of their mobile strategies.?

Users can click to like Stoli on Facebook or to tweet

One reason for the success of this strategy is that mobile users, in general, are much more social than other consumers, according to Rhythm NewMedia?s research. In a recent survey, it found that 67.7 percent of mobile users use Facebook at least once daily compared with 54 percent of Facebook?s overall user base that uses it daily.

Full-page ads
Mobile ad network Greystripe found that bigger is better when it comes to monetizing mobile applications. The company found that its full-screen mobile ads earn developers and publishers five times more than banner ads.

Developers often use small banner ads to try to monetize their apps. However, Greystripe found that full-screen ads, delivered as interstitials, are a positive experience for users because they have an easy opt-in selection and are delivered at a natural transitioning point in the application that is not disruptive to play.

?Full-screen ads offer 100 percent on-screen share of voice, which greatly reduces the number of false clicks that small banners commonly generate,? said Kristina Hamilton, marketing manager for Greystripe, San Francisco. ?As a result, our full-screen ads increase campaign efficiency by an average of five times.?

The full-screen format also allows publishers to show fewer ads and does not take up valuable screen space with a banner.

Contextual ads
Because marketers cannot drop cookies in mobile, thereby hampering their ability to target ads, some are focusing on aligning ads so that they are relevant to the editorial content a user is viewing.

Contextual placement has been shown to drive an increase in click-through rates for online display ads. However, the increase is even greater when ads are delivered contextually in mobile, according to Kontera, New York.

The company found a five times higher click-through rate for mobile ads that were aligned with editorial content than the average click-through rate for mobile display ads.

Kontera?s findings are important as publishers? mobile use is growing.

Kontera, which works with 15,000 publishers, found that at beginning of 2011, just 3.5 percent of the page views consumed were consumed by mobile devices for publishers? mobile offerings. However, by the end of 2011, this number was over 13 percent.

Pre-click engagement
Typically, rich media in the mobile environment starts after a user taps on a banner and is presented with a video or some other content. However, consumers often ignore these banners ads or shy away because they do not know what they are going find once they click through.

Instead of a static banner ad, Goldspot Media delivers banners that feature animation, video and other rich media in the banner itself. Goldspot, Sunnyvale, CA, is seeing a 0.2 to 0.5 percent click-through rates for its rotating banner ads and is able to tell the advertiser exactly what type of content a user interacted with.

For example, a 3D banner ad rotates to show different panels, enabling marketers to tell a story even before a user clicks on the ad.

The idea is to engage users before the click in order to maximize impressions and tell a story without the need for a click

A 3D banner ad running in March for Chevy highlights a specific truck, the Silverado, on one panel and then some of the special offers available during Chevy?s Truck Month promotion on another panel. Users can also tap on one of the banners to see a video right in the ad and another, they can click to like Chevy on Facebook.