NEW YORK - The mobile medium is an effective tool to bring brands and their products alive when consumers are closest to the point of purchase, according to a Pandora executive.

That executive, along with representatives of ad agency R/GA and mobile billing and analytics company Bango, presented ?Three Go-to-Market Solutions for Mobile Marketing? at the Interactive Advertising Bureau?s Marketplace: Mobile conference. Sharon Knitter, Chicago-based senior director of consumer products at Classified Ventures LLC?s Cars.com and co-chair of the IAB Mobile Committee moderated.

?The impact of the mobile Internet is going to be really, really big?consumers will own more than 1 billion smartphones by 2013,? said Cheryl Lucanegro, senior vice president of advertising sales at Pandora, Oakland, CA. ?Mary Meeker has said that the impact of the mobile Internet will be bigger than that of PCs.

?Already the size of the mobile audience is bigger than online?50 percent or more of all listening on Pandora happens via mobile devices,? she said. ?The question for brands is ?Why aren?t you devoting more dollars to mobile??

?You can do branding, direct response, engagement and experiential?you can do it all on mobile, so don?t let size of the screen hold you back.?

Marketers should keep in mind that the mobile device is with consumers all day every day?it is a personal item that is attached to them. Most people take it with them wherever they go, and it never leaves their side.

Ms. Lucanegro provided a list of best practices for brands looking to get started in mobile marketing:

? Increase level of enticement to engage your consumer

? Remember the environment

? Make your ad creative stand out

? Use sight sound and motion

? Most importantly, target consumers precisely

?Targeting leads to engagement,? Ms. Lucanegro said. ?Think about where a person is experiencing your message?the context is key.

?With targeting you increase consumers? click-through action quite substantially just by demographic targeting, male or female and age, and location targeting.?

In addition to in-application audio commercials and banner ad units, Pandora has run campaigns focused on driving consumers to the point of sale.

Starbucks ran a campaign across Pandora?s mobile properties offering consumers coupons for a half-price Frappuccino. If they clicked on the ad, consumers would not only get a coupon but also access a store locator.

Ms. Lucanegro shared the following stat: 24 percent of female consumers feel very comfortable making CPG-related purchases via their mobile device.

In addition, mothers are 42 percent more likely to download mobile content.

?Moms use their phones to keep their daily life in order,? Ms. Lucanegro said. ?Consumers in general are purchasing on mobile.

?Mobile brings brands and their products alive when consumers are closest to the point of purchase,? she said.

What does a mobile campaign look like?
With multiple mobile operating systems competing for market share and a new mobile device coming out every week, how should brands go about developing compelling ad creative for multiple devices?

?There are a growing number of choices in the app world as well?there are a lot of platforms for brands and agencies to choose from,? said Richard Ting, vice president and executive creative director of mobile and emerging platforms group at R/GA, New York. ?Design towards the future?mobile phone screen sizes are skewing larger.

?We?re seeing less support for smaller devices, which will hopefully vanish from the face of the earth and be replaced by devices at least 320 pixels wide?some new devices are 600-plus pixels wide,? he said.

?Also, soon retina-like display will be available everywhere.?

In terms of the growing debate between downloadable native applications and Web applications based on HTML5, Mr. Ting is a believer in the latter, citing the fact that 11 percent of Web traffic is already coming from mobile.

?HTML5 will rise?Web apps are the future,? Mr. Ting said.

While reach is undoubtedly important, brands should not try to be all things to all people. They must know their audience well and what mobile devices are most prevalent among that target demographic.

?Don?t try to support every device or every platform all at once?that?s a recipe for disaster, and it?s cost-prohibitive,? Mr. Ting said. ?Fragmentation is real, so be as targeted as possible.

?If you want to create a fantastic brand experience, more than likely you?ll want to create an application, and we make sure to do a detailed target device analysis and offer our recommendation [for which platforms to support],? he said.

?Integrate, integrate, integrate.?

Is it working?
The final presenter discussed how to manage mobile metrics.

?There are many ways to market: SMS campaigns, banner and text ads, search marketing and in-app marketing,? said Elaine Bramley, senior vice president of customer service at Bango, Cambridge, Britain. ?People get exposed to a marketing campaign via viral effects, an app or a bookmark, and aside from click-throughs, how do you measure that result?

?There are 275 million mobile devices in the U.S., and brands should try to target the entire marketplace, not just iPhone,? she said.

Bango and companies like it can track not just user impressions but also user actions, the source, which devices consumers are coming from, which country and which carrier so brands can see which marketing message and which channel is most effective.

?We help brands analyze and understand their campaigns, and measure the source, whether consumers are coming from a banner ad, organic search, viral, an app or bookmark, so they can figure out which media is most prevalent for their service,? Ms. Bramley said.

Final Take

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