ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Marketing Dive acquired Mobile Marketer in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates, may not have migrated over. Check out the new Marketing Dive site for the latest marketing news.

All categories of entertainment brands now active on mobile advertising: report

Mobile consumption of entertainment media is increasing exponentially, as all categories of entertainment brands are now active on mobile advertising, which until about a year ago was dominated by theatricals, according to a new report from Vdopia.

The findings were drawn from the Vdopia Mobile Insights (VMI) Series, which investigated brand and consumer behaviour within the mobile advertising ecosystem, with a focusing on how the entertainment industry is impacted by mobile growth. Key findings include that the number of people who engaged with entertainment content on their smartphone during a given month improved 28 percent to 109 million.

?Video ads are becoming more and more important every day with the 122 percent increase in 4G subscribers in the last 12 months,? said Saurabh Bhatia, co-founder, Chief Business Officer, Vdopia Inc., Freemont, CA.

?Even on post click audience behavior, they are driving engagements. Banners are losing their importance. Mobile advertising is driving transactions as consumers are increasingly using mobile devices for purchases.?

Promoting impressions
The report found that purchasing movie or event tickets via mobile went up 40 percent.

Mobile audiences were also two times more likely to click on entertainment ads than users on other platforms, and 45 percent more likely to recall seeing the ads compared to 24 percent of non-mobile entertainment audiences, signifying that advertising efforts have a significant impact on how consumers choose to interact.

During the first quarter of 2014, Vdopia recognized a shift by entertainment brands using its media network with a global reach of 330 million, towards targeted calls-to-action such as signing up for TV tune-in alerts and enticing music downloads.

Although awareness for theatrical and DVD release campaigns was the top advertised sub-category among entertainment brands in terms of total ad spend at 39 percent, when it came to actually clicking on an ad to respond to an action, 85 percent of consumers chose video content over any other channel medium, vastly surpassing Get Tune-in Alerts at 24 percent; Download From Store at 21 percent; and Provide Info/Register at15 percent.

Consequently, nearly 84 percent of total media ad spends by entertainment advertisers on the Vdopia network in Q1 were dedicated to video and rich media ads. Banner ads were less than one-third of total impressions and are constantly declining.

Best practices in mobile advertising
Vdopia has noted the trend in mobile video ads hold promising for the future, although marketers should be wary of their approach.

Using video in place of static banner ads is preferred, as there has been a massive increase in mobile subscribers who have access to higher and faster bandwidth delivery such as 4G. About 84 percent of entertainment campaigns are driven by videos which is a huge shift from two years when this number was less than 50 percent.

Because videos are now the number one post click engagement action by audience, beating out site visits and share across social media, long form or multiple videos are most effective. The key is for the brand to have "good video content" for their post-click engagement and get that exponential increase in user engagement.

Both apps and mobile web can benefit from a wide variety of video ads beyond traditional pre-roll, like auto play Max.Vdo from Vdopia or Facebook auto play video ads. Marketers should embrace these formats for wider audience reach and more effective campaigning.

Mobile advertising is driving transactions as consumers are increasingly using mobile devices for purchases, so tracking mobile ticket purchases is becoming imperative.

?The key is that video ads on mobile are ?filling seats? in theaters and mobile devices are being used more and more for buying tickets,? Mr. Bhatia said.

?The marketers who want to fill more seats or drive more downloads or viewing reminders will have to increase their mobile video spend as it is directly impacting their performance.?

Final Take:
Michelle is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York