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Home Depot holiday mobile ads help consumers with gift giving

The Home Depot is running expandable ad units within The Weather Channel iPhone application as part of its Tool Gift Guide holiday initiative.

The ads ask consumers to click to ?take the guesswork out of gift-giving.? The banner is an expandable ad unit, so a user can touch the ad and it expands out to take up a majority of the screen on the device.

?Consumers require personal attention and the mobile device has transformed the way they seek information, compare prices and transact purchases,? said Paran Johar, chief marketing officer of Jumptap, New York. ?They want info fast and on the move so it?s essential to anticipate and respond rapidly.

?This holiday season, successful advertisers will deliver the right message to the right person at the right time ? and it will all be achieved through the convenience of their cell phones,? he said.

Jumptap is not serving the ads. Mr. Johar is a mobile expert and commented on this story to provide further insight into holiday mobile advertising trends.

Consumers that click on the banner ad are exposed to the expandable ad, which explains that the Tool Gift Guide is Home Depot?s way of making it easy to find the perfect tool for every do-it-yourselfer.

?Give the gift of more cutting, drilling, sawing and nailing,? the expanded ad says.

Consumers that click on the expanded ad are routed to a landing page where they can "send to friend" and find stores near them.

Additionally, consumers can use the Tool Gift Guide from the landing page. The guide is a list of tools and descriptions of the type of person who would benefit most from each.

"When holiday shoppers leave home or the office to go shopping they rarely have their agenda fully formulated," said Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mojiva, New York. "This means that retailers still have an opportunity to reach shoppers on the go. However, no TV, radio or Web ad is going to reach them as they spend hours in stores, making shoppers hard to reach via those mediums.

"With the growth of mobile Web usage and a rising number of consumers using their phones while shopping, marketers can be certain that their location-based ad campaigns are hitting the correct target," he said. "And providing click-to-call, special offers and coupons can assure these retailers move merchandise in the last hours of the holiday season."

The Tool Gift Guide does not include mobile coupons. However, Jumptap?s Mr. Johar suggested mobile coupons for retailers this holiday season.

According to a recent Harris Interactive study, consumers are increasingly defining their spending habits by whether or not retailers offer coupons.

Thirty percent of online adults will not make a purchase at an online store if they can?t find a coupon and 22 percent of online adults will go to a different store to make that purchase.

?Savvy retailers can use mobile coupons to drive on and offline purchases,? Mr. Johar said. ?A targeted ad with a mobile coupon with it is a click away from a purchase.

?Location-based advertising or creative interactive click-to-action campaigns enabling customers to locate their closest store can also drive traffic right to the store,? he said. ?By adding location into a mobile marketing campaign, advertisers can expect their conversion rate to be 10 times as high.?

According to Brennan Hayden, vice president of WDA, East Lansing, MI, one serious and urgent problem retailers face is the large and rapid decline in newspaper circulation, which dramatically reduces the store traffic numbers that can be stimulated with print advertising.

This decline is being noticed and mobile advertising can be deployed quickly and on a large scale as a direct attack on this problem.

"Retailers using mobile advertising to stimulate store traffic need to use their online store infrastructure to assist them," Mr. Hayden said. "A mobile-specific compact version of the offers presented in a store circular ought to be generated from their online store systems.

"This mobile circular can be presented to a mobile audience, post-click, geo-targeted, to counter the decline in what can be achieved through print amid the decline in newspaper circulation," he said.  

According to Millennial Media, mobile advertising for retailers makes perfect sense. 

A retailer can engage a consumer while they are out and about, and can use mobile advertising as a way to pull them into their doors. 

"This holiday season we are seeing more and more retailers leveraging mobile as a way to drive foot traffic to their stores," said Marcus Startzel, senior vice president of sales at Millennial Media, Baltimore.

A Universal McCann study found that 81 percent of mobile Web users browse while shopping. 

"When you combine a 64 million unique user audience (according to Nielsen), location and geographic targeting, and the effect of media recency, retailers have a compelling 'right person, right message, right time' opportunity," Mr. Sartzel said.

"With the new rich media formats, and engaging mobile sites, retailers have the equivalent of a 'mobile free standing insert' in the hands of a consumer who is shopping," he said.