A few doubters in the world still believe that mobile advertising is not as effective as traditional keyword-based pay per click advertising, but with the continuing increase in device and smartphone usage, mobile advertising is poised to overtake other forms of digital advertising in the near term.
A recent complication of research from several sources republished on Forbes.com points out that:
- 82% of U.S. adults own a cellphone
- 25% of Americans use only a mobile device to access the Internet
- 9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action
- 70% of those actions occur within 1 hour, while desktop searches typically take a month
- 50% of mobile searches result in a sale
Consumers have spoken, and they are loudly proclaiming that they prefer using smartphones versus traditional PCs. It is also abundantly clear that smartphones result in more conversions and faster actions than desktop searches do.
Consumers have learned to ignore pay-per-click advertising when it appears in search results or on web pages they are visiting, but they notice and respond to advertising on mobile devices. Our Mobile Planet,a Google Research offering, tells us that users notice ads on mobile devices. Users report noticing ads while in an app 54 percent of the time. Additionally, 49 percent of smartphone users notice ads while on a website, and 42 percent notice them in search results.
Very high percentages of users report that they notice mobile ads some or all of the time.
When you consider that nearly 68 percent of smartphone users say that they frequently notice ads and that 42 percent of smartphone users notice ads while using a search engine, and that 50 percent of smartphone searches result in a sale, you can’t afford to ignore mobile marketing.
Regardless of the product or service you sell, the immediacy of pay per call advertising results in even higher responses than other forms of mobile marketing. Forbes also reports that 16 percent of smartphone users made a purchase because of a message they received on the device, and half of those used the smartphone to complete the purchase.
CMOs spend less than 1 percent of their advertising budgets on mobile, but consumers spend more than 10 percent of their total media time on mobile devices, which means a significant portion of ad budgets are spent without reaching the audience.
Pay per call marketing helps to address the gap between advertising budgets and the target audience, since 95 percent of smartphone users used their devices to look up local information, and 61 percent of those users called afterward.
Although Mark Twain might have once said “There are lies, damned lies and statistics,” the overwhelming evidence from research provided by respected sources such as Forbes, eMarketer, Google, Compuware, Prosper Mobile Insights and Mobilemarketer.com among others tells a consistent story. Consumers respond more positively to ads on their smartphones, and they take immediate action when they see something they like on their devices. Pay per call advertising is the fastest and most cost effective method to capture the user while they are interested and ready to buy.