In 2016, the global mobile advertising market is predicted to exceed $100 billion and swallow up more than 50 percent of the total U.S. digital ad spend.
Mobile search surpassed desktop for the first time last year.
This year, a downpour of marketing dollars is being funneled into the mobile trend.
Following the money trail does not always end on a positive note – but it’s a sweet destination when it leads to increased ROI.
Many marketers and businesses are realizing the lucrative potential of the mobile advertising sphere. But the best example of mobile success should probably be handed to the blue social media giant.
Advertising is the chief source of revenue for Facebook – And about 78% of that revenue is streaming in from mobile ads.
In Q3 of 2015, Facebook reported 4.5 billion in revenue, and 3.4 billion of the total sum was generated through mobile advertising.
The revenue from mobile advertising is 73 percent higher than Q3 of 2014.
Facebook currently serves 1.55 billion active monthly users and 727 million only use mobile devices to access the social platform. And every single one of those mobile users represents a potential phone call.
Last year, Facebook gave consumers the option to contact business directly from an ad with a new “call” button feature. These “Local Awareness Ads” allow marketers to target prospective customers in specific neighborhoods and generate phone calls to their business.
This means that the 2 million advertisers on their platform have begun to take advantage of what is possibly the ultimate lead source:
Phone Calls.
The nature of mobile devices makes phone calls one of the most likely follow-up actions after viewing an advertisement. And trust us, you want your prospects to tap that call button.
So what is it that makes phone calls such a desirable lead source? We’ll dig into a few of the reasons in this next section.
Sometimes the contrarian is right. And at Convirza, we have the data to back it up.
Until the last couple years, phone calls were viewed as an antiquated lead source by many digital marketers. Clicks and form-fills represented the holy grail of marketing excellence.
This is no longer true. Calls offer a lead source that is often far superior. We have hosted several webinars discussing this topic and also created an infographic that you can view here.
According to a recent post on the Conversion Sciences blog, Generating Phone Leads From The Web, phone calls are worth 7 to 10 times more than a form-fill for their clients.
Phone calls have a higher probability of moving a prospect closer to a purchase and also involve high-dollar and high-consideration products. Customers that spend money — big money — make phone calls.
The rapid rise of mobile search and advertising is producing an explosion of phone calls to businesses. A recent BIA/Kelsey report projected that calls from smartphones to businesses will reach a whopping 162 billion by 2019. Imagine not tracking these calls to measure and optimize for performance.
So, what do digital marketers need to do to take advantage of this shift?
The answer lies in call tracking and optimization.
Extracting the data from mobile search, advertising and phone calls has become incredibly simple.
With call tracking and analytics, marketers can pinpoint the keywords, ads and channels that are generating phone calls AND collect critical metrics from the phone calls that are coming in. This data makes it possible to optimize your mobile campaigns to produce the highest number of quality leads for the lowest cost.
But this data is only useful if it is followed up with action.
There are the obvious manual optimization possibilities that take place after determining the true revenue generators. Then there are the incredibly effective options made available through bid management integration and marketing automation platforms.
How are you going to use this data to tap into the $100 billion mobile advertising market?
