Mobile publishers have a massive opportunity to better capitalize and monetize their data. Josh Speyer, CEO at AerServ, discusses how combining brands’ first-party data with rich mobile data sets helps brands gain creative new ways to safely target and engage mobile consumers (and not just through advertising)

It’s official—mobile is dominating digital dollars. According to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), digital ad revenue grew to $72.5 billion in 2016, up 22 percent from the year before. And for the first time, mobile ads accounted for more than half of that spending at $36.6 billion.

What an exciting time to be a mobile publisher—brand advertisers are pouring money into the channel; they have a massive addressable market of more than 4.4. billion global users (near 60% of the world’s entire population); consumers in the U.S. now spend more than five hours a day on their mobile phones; and marketers are eager to fully leverage the data created by mobile usage to deliver entertaining and engaging consumer experiences. 

All these trends combined, mobile publishers will quickly ascend to a powerful position to not only set the agenda for future digital innovation, but also lead brand marketers into a mobile renaissance by unlocking and leveraging new, unique insights into mobile consumers. 

But today, mobile publishers simply aren’t getting enough credit for the data they possess across mobile and tablet devices. Instead, most of mobile publishers’ monetization strategies have revolved around ad placements and impression delivery which puts all of the risk on the publisher with no certain reward. Being able to leverage data as a monetization strategy poses limited risk for the publisher. 

Going forward, mobile publishers have a huge opportunity to better capitalize and monetize their treasure troves of registration, mobile app, video and location-based data. By combining brands’ first-party data with these rich mobile data sets, brands stand to gain creative new ways to safely target and engage mobile consumers (and not just through advertising).

Leverage registration to match consumers across channels 

Many times when a consumer signs up for a new app on their mobile phone or tablet, they are asked to provide basic information such as first/last name, address, email and password. While this is a relatively simple ask, the implications and possibilities cannot be lost on either mobile publishers and advertisers. Combining registration data with device ID information is a powerful combo that can potentially connect the “identity” dots for marketers. 

As a result, mobile publishers’ consumer registration data alone offers brands the ability to pinpoint and match individual consumers across channels at any given moment. Without this data, it would be impossible for brands to gain a complete picture of an individual consumer’s activities throughout the day—it would be like reading a journal that only records one part of the day. With mobile data we now understand a full view of the consumer. 

Marrying mobile publisher’s data with brands’ registration data from other marketing initiatives such as retail loyalty programs can significantly boost marketers’ view of their consumer and uncover surprising insights. 

Max out location-based possibilities

Mobile location data will become increasingly vital to brands seeking to close the loop and bridge the gap between offline and online channels. So far, location-based data has inspired enormously creative applications, from running proximity campaigns to drive foot traffic to nearby stores like Starbucks or Target to measuring the impact of media exposures on actual arrivals to specific destinations across the country.     

Innovate video metrics to drive consumer engagement standards

Video is on track as the fastest-growing category in mobile from 2016 through 2020. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon mobile publishers to not only innovate new types of video content for consumers and new video ad formats for advertisers; but also to explore new ways to capture and measure video engagement. 

To help brands navigate this shift and gain deeper insight into consumers, mobile publishers can offer video engagement measurement data that is unique to mobile. This could include interactivity, dynamic video by location, etc. Over time, these can become recognized as industry standards.

Combined with brands’ first-party CRM data, publisher’s location data can reveal powerful insights and trigger endless ideas for marketing opportunities. For example, knowing a user is away from home, at work, on vacation, etc. can lead to more targeted advertising choices.

By better packaging mobile data assets and exploring new ways to capture data, publishers put themselves in a prime position to increasingly provide valuable consumer insights to brands, open up new potential revenue streams outside of advertising, and blaze trails for the rest of the industry to follow.