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Social media is increasingly used as post-click campaign action in mobile: study

Advertisers across a number of verticals, particularly restaurants, consumer packaged goods, entertainment and dating, are taking advantage of the significant spike of consumers interacting with their mobile devices over the holidays, and see significant lifts in interaction rates as a result.

This was a key finding of Millennial Media?s October SMART Report. In advance of upcoming ?couch potato? holidays and events like Christmas, New Years Day and the Super Bowl, this month?s report includes a special section to showcase the mobile consumer interaction lifts Millennial saw from the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend last year.

?With a number of couch potato holidays upon us, we thought it would be interesting to highlight the consumer interaction lifts we saw on our network last year during the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend,? said Erin (Mack) McKelvey, senior vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore.

?The interaction lift was significant, particularly across a few key verticals,? she said. ?For example, advertisers in the entertainment vertical saw a 30 percent lift above their typical interaction rates ? which were already quite good. 

?The restaurants vertical saw an even larger lift ? 51 percent ? as restaurants reached out to hungry holiday shoppers who were out of their houses and using their mobile devices.?

Millennial Media?s mobile landscape
According to Nielsen, Millennial Media continues to reach more than eight out of 10 mobile Web users.

Impressions on the mobile ad network increased 34 percent month-over-month from September to October.

Android and RIM requests saw double-digit growth month-over-month, 65 percent and 43 percent, respectively, and iPad requests saw a triple-digit growth of 112 percent.

Engagement and targeting
Social media, as a post-click campaign action, represented 26 percent of the campaign actions in October.

The top advertisers on Millennial?s network from the finance, automotive, entertainment and retail verticals leveraged this platform to drive further brand engagement and lead generation.

Retail promotion and mobile commerce as post-click campaign actions experienced tremendous growth month-over-month with a 13 percent and 8 percent increase respectively. 

This increase is tied to brands in the CPG and retail verticals developing promotions to drive increased holiday sales through mobile. 

Audience takeover as a targeting method accounted for 7 percent of the Targeted Audience Mix in October. 

Brands in the entertainment and CPG verticals utilized this targeting method to achieve 100 percent share of voice for new movie releases and product launches. 

Automotive ad vertical
Advertisers in the automotive vertical, consistently in the Top 10 Mobile Advertising Verticals on the Millenial network, continue to leverage the unique attributes of mobile to drive consumer engagement.

More than 35 percent of automotive campaigns leveraged the targeted reach method Behavioral Audience in October.

Advertisers leveraged this high-engagement method to reach in-market intenders in specific categories, i.e., Luxury, SUV, Passenger and Truck.  

A joint study performed with comScore shows that automotive in-market intenders are accessing auto content on mobile to research their new car purchase one to three times per month.

These findings demonstrate that during the highly-researched car buying process, consumers are incorporating mobile into their research and purchase actions on a recurrent basis.    

 ?To take a deeper dive into the Automotive ad vertical, we recently partnered with comScore to explore what has been happening in the mobile automotive ad space in the past year,? Ms. McKelvey said. ?ComScore?s survey results show that the automotive industry?s mobile ad spend grew 169 percent year-over-over.

?We have seen similar rapid growth on our network in the auto vertical since the beginning of the year ? a 299 percent increase to be exact,? she said. ?We have seen auto advertisers use mobile to engage consumers at every level of the purchase funnel and for a variety of objectives ? from brand-building to vehicle launches to retail events and more.

?The frequency with which auto intenders are accessing auto content on their mobile devices is incredible and savvy advertisers are speaking to this highly-engaged mobile audience more and more each year.?

Final take
A speech given by Christina "CK" Kerley in October 2010 at Rutgers University focused on how building competencies across emerging technologies?most notably social and mobile media?gives today's companies a competitive advantage.

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