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Condé Nast exec: Delivering same ad across multiple platforms misses the point

NEW YORK ? A Condé Nast executive at the 2013 IAB Mobile Marketplace last week said that as publishers get a better grasp on how to find users across multiple mediums, marketers need to deliver platform-specific advertising.

During ?The Publisher?s POV: Building Engaging Experiences for Mobile Devices? session, executives from Condé Nast and Yahoo spoke about the challenges and opportunities that publishers have with mobile and digital marketing. The session also presented a look at how marketers can track consumers across multiple screens with relevant content.

?I could fairly easily tell you ? certainly across the Condé Nast footprint ? how to find the exact same person in print, digital and mobile,? said Pat Connolly, vice president of marketing solutions at Condé Nast, New York.

?The question is if you?re delivering the exact same ad to them across all of those platforms, then you are completely missing the point,? he said.

Publish on mobile
According to Mr. Connolly, one of the publishing house?s biggest opportunities with digital is leveraging the amount of data that is available about print subscribers.

This gives the company a better idea of how readers consume content across multiple platforms.

Condé Nast has also developed a strategy built around publishing everywhere.

According to Mr. Connolly, Condé Nast is able to understand on a certain level when a print subscriber goes to a Web site to look at content, which is consumed differently than a print product.

Similarly, online and mobile behaviors can be matched up, which allows advertisers to make cross-platform media buys.

That has led to the publishing house learning what works and what does not work, which can help advertisers get a better grasp on their campaigns.

When it comes to what brands are looking for, the Condé Nast executive said that advertisers want more space and insights into campaigns.

It all boils down to understanding consumer behavior on mobile devices and using a smaller-sized screen to make a strong impact on consumers.

For example, consumers are buying less small consumer-packaged goods products and magazines while in line at grocery nowadays because they are glued to their mobile device.

Therefore, marketers need to reframe how they connect with consumers in-store by using mobile as a primary touch point.

Traditionally advertising brands have looked at their competition as other competing brands in their industry. For instance, Audi?s biggest competition may be BMW.

With mobile though, the bar is set higher with a brand?s competition, per Mr. Connolly.

?Once you create an app, your biggest competition is every other sort of experience in that space ? you are competing with everyone who has created a game or content,? Mr. Connolly said.

?It can?t just be better than BMW, it has to be better in some aspects than Angry Birds or The Weather Channel,? he said.

Mobile targeting
The ultimate goal of mobile advertising at a local level is to reach consumers at the right time and the right place.

However, there are two main challenges here for marketers ? scale and establishing a consumer need for these types of ads.

?The idea that I would make a quick left turn because my phone buzzed and told me to go buy a sandwich ? we shouldn?t expect for that consumer behavior to change that fast,? said Patrick Albano, vice president of sales for mobile, social and innovation at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA.

?What we really have been trying to help advertisers understand is, ?when does the consumer decision happen for your products??? he said.

Take retail, for example.

If a buying decision takes place five hours before a consumer goes to the store, there is a large opportunity to target the consumer before they go to a store instead of focusing on the last ten minutes before a shopper buys something.

When it comes to the differences between mobile sites and applications, marketers are increasingly looking to mobile Web to add more interactive elements to their experience.

Additionally, mobile Web advertising can be as rich as in-app units, per Mr. Albano.

Yahoo has built full-screen content Web sites into expandable ad units as a product for advertisers that is distributed throughout Yahoo?s network.

According to Mr. Albano, 80 percent of Yahoo?s users are logged into their accounts while browsing online and via mobile because they are using one of Yahoo?s products. This helps the company track users across multiple screens.

?We?ve been trying to explore what behaviors actually matter, so one of the things that we are looking at right now is search data and retargeting people based on what they are searching for,? Mr. Albano said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York