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Mars Chocolate, TruMoo pair instant-play video, purchase history for in-store impact

In a sign of how mobile video advertising is getting more precise, brands such as Mars Chocolate North America and TruMoo are delivering instant-play video ads in popular applications based on offline shopping behavior and measuring the incremental in-store sales lift. 

By leveraging offline purchase behavior data from Nielsen Catalina Solutions, consumer packaged goods brands hope to better target shoppers on Opera Mediaworks? mobile advertising platform who have a higher propensity to purchase their products. Additionally, these marketers can measure the in-store incremental sales lift driven by ads for a better understanding of the return on investment for mobile video. 

?Moms are consuming large amounts of short form video content on their mobile devices as they are always on the go,? said Alex Stone, director of digital at Horizon Media. ?Mobile video is a great way to reach moms that have purchased a brand?s product or a competitor?s product to deliver them a relevant message.

?CPG clients are more and more frequently asking us to solve for two objectives, increase brand/product awareness and show a lift in sales as a result of the advertising efforts,? he said. ?Through Opera's high impact mobile and rich creative and the closed loop NCS study, we are able to do both for our clients.?

Premium programmatic video
Horizon Media agency, which works with many CPG brands, is also among the first to take advantage of these new capabilities offered by Opera and NCS. 

NCS enables marketers to leverage loyalty card data from more than 90 million U.S. households via more than 18,000 major grocery and drugstore retailers. 

Opera Mediaworks? mobile advertising platform reaches 285 million U.S. mobile devices. 


In the fall, Opera Mediaworks launched a premium programmatic marketplace for Instant Play HD video 

The partnership with Opera Mediaworks marks the first time NCS? data is being paired with zero buffering, high definition, instant-play video. Brands can also marry the data with standard and rich media display. 

?The more steps we take to enable marketers to use the measurements they are already comfortable with, this will increase the flow of dollars to mobile,? said Mike Owen, executive vice president of sales for North America at Opera Mediaworks

?This is allowing the agencies to go and speak the same language that brands are already familiar with, rather then trying to sell them something new,? he said. ?When you have the ability to compare to other things they have done, you are getting closer to comparing apples to apples. 

?Before, mobile was kind of isolated because of the lack of cookies and user IDs.?

Bolstering mobile advertising
While mobile advertising is growing, marketers continue to struggle with directly connecting ad exposure to in-store purchase volume, something NCS and Opera are trying to address. 

Brands such as TruMoo have experienced strong growth in the importance of mobile and the ability to connect digital media to offline sales will enhance their mobile media strategy. 


The TruMoo campaign is appearing in apps such as Ibotta, a shopping platform. By reaching consumers when they are already thinking about CPG products, saving money and planning a trip to the store, this helps brands drive in-store conversions. 

Connecting mobile ads to actual purchase data is an important step forward.

Mobile ads have been getting more precise over time. A number of platforms are able to tell brands if someone who was served a mobile ad later visited their business. While this is helpful, for CPG brands it is not precise enough, as their potential customers are walking into grocery stores and drugstores where they would be purchasing any of thousands of products. 

?We did a lot of work with these guys to prove out that the match rates were going to be there,? Mr. Owen said. ?The match rates have been quite high.?

?This will further fuel the confidence of marketers to put more money in this channel.?