Lab Cave Introduces Mediator Tool For App Publishers

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Mobile growth company Lab Cave (Tap Knights, Dream Hospital) launched a Mediation tool for app developers that offers impartial, side-by-side advertising networks mediation. Offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS), the Mediation tool allows developers to configure, optimize and analyze ad performance alongside user behavior.

Lab Cave debuted the tool during Mobile World Congress 2019 (MWC), showing its features alongside the mobile growth company’s App Store Optimization (ASO) services and products.

Newzoo estimates that 2.4 billion people will play mobile games in 2019 and in a recent study found that half of mobile game users feel positive about advertisements.

Global app installs are on the rise as consumers discover and explore new content. According to SensorTower, first-time installs exceeded 105.3 million in 2018. This growth offers marketers—and developers—a vast array of real estate on which to posts their ads, from banners to rewarded ads and playable demos.

For developers that want to fill ad space within their apps, however, comparing ad networks and CPM pricing can be a challenge. According to a December 2018 survey by DeltaDNA, 59 percent of free-to-play (F2P) mobile game developers source ads from between two and five sources.

Advertising mediators allow an app developer to compare ad performance between ad sources and choose the network that pays the highest CPM. The majority of mediators are often associated with a proprietary advertising network, and therefore, those networks are given priority.

“This generates a conflict of interest because by delivering their own advertiser campaigns, the impressions that they chose are not always going to be the ones that pay you, as a developer, better,” Pedro Miranda, product owner at Lab Cave told AList. “This happens because the mediator is interested in positioning itself in a better place than the rest of the networks to ultimately make its service profitable. This causes a lack of transparency, not enough control over the ads that are currently displayed in the app and an increased cost of opportunity.”

Lab Cave’s new Mediator tool is not associated with and therefore does not prioritize any one ad network over others. This impartiality gives developers the freedom to choose which option is best for maximizing app revenue and effectively managing in-app inventory.

“As developers, we know what you need to monetize your traffic in a straightforward, unbiased way,” said Esteban Vargas, mediation development team lead at Lab Cave. “We feel your pain because we have been there. We are currently managing 300 of our own apps through our mediation and we have already addressed and solved issues that you may currently be facing with other mediators.”

The Mediator tool also offers a single, generic implementation to all networks, eliminating the need to access and learn each one individually. The developer can then choose a single advertising network or use a mediation service to achieve the best pricing for a specific country. In addition, the time and effort normally required to implement different Software Development Kits (SDKs) for each advertising network is saved.

When speaking to fellow app developers, Lab Cave likens using Mediator to how you might plan a trip. You can take a risk by choosing one brand over the others or use a comparison tool to get the best price. A mediator works in much the same way, except that developers get the best ads that pay the most.

Mediator users have the option to customize their waterfall graphs and prioritize networks. In addition to ad statistics, the new tool offers insights into developer and user behavior. Additional analysis tools are in development and will be released in the near future.

“It is not enough to just generate income through advertising, it is also very important to optimize and maximize the profitability of said source of income,” added Miranda. “For this reason, we don’t just offer metrics related to advertising performance, we also offer other metrics that lead the developer to make decisions that improve the revenue generated on their application.”

One example, Miranda stated, is the ability to see how many users are using the app and what percentage of them has seen an ad. Developers can modify and optimize the flow and placement of ads based on this data. The mediator tool also lets developers see if a competitor’s ad is being shown and if so, block it.

“All of this, together with a deep understanding of users’ needs, inspired us to create our Mediation tool,” said Miranda.

SuperData: Mobile AR Will Fetch $3.4B In 2019, Opportunity Looms For Brands

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Branded mobile AR apps should offer utility and delight if they are to reach consumers in this $3.4 billion industry, says SuperData. Led by social media and retail, the mobile AR industry is poised to increase its revenue by more than double in the next two years.

SuperData, a Nielsen Company, and Friends with Holograms partnered to create a whitepaper called “What Brands Need to Know About Mobile AR.” The report covers augmented reality users, revenue predictions and trends that today’s brands should be aware of.

Mobile AR already has access to over a billion smartphone users and will generate $3.4 billion by the end of 2019, SuperData predicts. This figure is expected to reach $9.6 billion by 2020.

At 84 percent, social media apps are the most popular type of AR apps used by US consumers as December 2018. Online shopping apps come in second with 41 percent, followed by AR games like Pokémon GO.

Whitepaper co-author Stephanie Llamas is the vice president of research and strategy, as well as head of VR/AR at SuperData. She told AList that social media apps are the most popular among mobile AR users, largely because the implementation meets consumers where they already are.

When launching a branded AR app or activation, it’s important to not only meet consumers in this way but to offer them the opportunity to have a unique, emotional response.

“It’s not using [AR] for the sake of using it, but using it in a meaningful, emotional way,” Llamas said. “It’s about really understanding how you can access an audience easily. If an application isn’t something that consumers would download already like a retail app, you want to be really thoughtful about how you introduce your brand through AR to customers.”

The whitepaper identifies two main requirements of a successful AR brand strategy—utility and delight. While “delight” seems pretty straight-forward, the “utility” part may not be. Llamas explains:

“You don’t want to have a cumbersome app that people are going to have to download for a consumer packaged good (CPG) or something like that,” she said, adding, “You don’t want to ask for productivity on part of the consumer, [but] you want to access them through what they already do.”

Three in five mobile AR users are millennials, SuperData found, with users 18-35 skewing female. The average age of adult mobile AR users is 13 years younger than non-users (33 versus 46 years old), the report states, attributing this fact to the popularity of social media apps. On average, the mobile AR audience spends about a half hour using AR apps and capabilities and accesses them at least twice a week.

“[Mobile AR] is something that is definitely on the horizon,” said Llamas. “Not paying attention to this trend means that other competitors are going to get to consumers first through AR.”

Interested in mobile AR? Don’t procrastinate, Llamas added.

“Understand that the penetration is growing quickly. This isn’t like VR where it’s going to be much slower growth to general consumption. Everybody has this capability in their smartphone already so when a more interesting concept comes out, brands have more opportunities to seize creative new ways to access consumers.”

Marketing Innovation Is Being Driven By Just A Few Global CMOs

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The top 17 percent of global marketing leaders are driving innovation by adopting an agile, “living business” mindset, Accenture reports.

Way Beyond Marketing: The Rise of The Hyper-Relevant CMO explores the role CMOs play in driving a brand’s growth agenda. A survey of chief marketing officers and CEOs was conducted between March and May 2018 and was limited to companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues. Respondents included 935 chief marketing officers and 564 CEOs across 17 industry groups in 12 countries—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Accenture found that innovation and “transformation change” is being pioneered by a small group of CMOs among participating brands. These leaders are prioritizing changing customer needs by investing in better integration and collaboration.

This, Accenture asserts, will allow a brand to achieve a “living business” mindset. The company defines living businesses as those that unlock sustained growth by continuously adapting to evolving customer needs to achieve hyper-relevance.

“CMOs need to lead an effective, joined-up customer experience at all touch points, at pace and at scale, to drive growth,” said Mhairi McEwan, managing director and marketing practice lead for customer insight and growth at Accenture in the report.

The pioneering minority CMO group prioritizes transparency, innovation and hold their brand to higher standards—that is, standing for something bigger than a product or service. These CMOs look for disruption outside the usual channels, Accenture observed. For example, 56 percent of what Accenture refers to as “Pioneer CMOs” buy more through multichannel experiences than the conventional single channel, compared to other CMOs in the study at 33 percent.

In addition, they are 17 percent more likely than other CMOs to expand beyond traditional agency partners and 18 percent more likely to be “engaged with the possibilities of digital platforms.”

Two-out-of-three CEOs surveyed by Accenture were not confident in their CMO’s abilities. That being said, Accenture gives advice to CMOs on how to make their mark.

“In essence, there are four key actions they must take,” said McEwan, “using advanced customer insight and analytics to shape the future, building the marketing and sales capabilities of their people and organization, leveraging partnerships to create innovative new products, services and solutions and delivering cost-effective technological activation of personalized and scalable marketing programs.”

If that all sounds daunting, it’s important to note that the top 17 percent of CMOs in Accenture’s study are more likely to rely on professionals with the skillsets they desire. For example, 87 percent of “Pioneer CMOs” said they would rely on immersive experience designers, compared to 65 percent of others in the study. Other roles they would turn to include growth hackers, chief storytellers, marketing monitors, customer experience curators, futurologists, reality checkers, trust leaders, cause matchmakers, AI designers and consumer psychologists.

Ericsson’s Helena Norrman: “Trust Is Becoming A More Valuable Currency”

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Helena Norrman is the chief marketing officer at Ericsson, she’s been with the brand for 12 years and started with the company in communications and media relations. AList caught up with Norrman at MWC 2019 to speak with her about Ericsson’s core message this year and how she manages customers trust and being a publicly visible marketer, as a member of Ericsson’s C-suite. For what it’s worth, Norrman will be departing the company in June to become a partner at Kekst CNC and managing director at communications consultancy JKL. 

What is Ericsson’s core message is in 2019?

2019 is all about 5G becoming a reality.

Because, last year it really wasn’t a reality, yet.

The first commercial network was in October in the U.S., and that’s still the only commercial network that carries traffic that there is in the world, but 2019 will be the year when it actually when the commercial networks start, then, of course, it will pick up over quite some time.

What are some consumer applications?

If you look at how will this roll out, the very first use case is not so sexy, but it’s a very good one and it is the whole cost of delivering data. It’s a more efficient system. Which means the cost of delivering data [to consumers] goes up, which means that in densely populated areas where people consume a lot of data it will be more economic for operators to build 5G than 4G. It doesn’t necessarily change the applications [in the beginning], but it changes the economics.

As a chief marketing officer, how do you concentrate on the bigger picture? How do you avoid micromanaging?

First of all, you can’t control everything, I mean we work in 180 countries and our technology touches everything and everyone. So, that sheer volume means that it is impossible to control everything and that’s actually a really good starting point.

I don’t have that [issue with] control, I don’t have that in me. The important thing is to decide what you need, maybe not the control, but the commonality, what you need to do together and what you need to do to build a brand. It’s more about identifying what those things are and push[ing]. Because if you go out in the fringes there are an endless amount of things that are happening and lots of small activities in different countries with different customers, different use cases, and that’s good, that’s great, as long as you stick to some sort of fundamental principles.

In what areas of martech are you investing?

We’re doing a facelift on digital marketing, but it’s from quite the basic level, so we are nowhere near anything fancy. We’re doing the basic we’re doing the uplift on the CRM, marketing monetization, on the website and on mobile.

What do you think young CMOs should be most concerned about?

I think that they should just be most concerned about the trust element.

Customer trust?

Yes. It’s easy to lose in this world that we are going into. It’s becoming a more and more valuable currency. I think that you have to, there are lots of examples of how brands have betrayed customer trust and I think that is very dangerous. I think that you can have problems, I think that you have to be transparent, I think you have to accept responsibility for what you are responsible for and that is difficult.

It’s seemingly become normalized that you hear about a breach a year later. 

In companies, there is this tendency if possible, “maybe we don’t have to tell.” Where we’re trying very much to work the other way around. We’re trying to start from assuming transparency and sometimes for reasons of customer confidentiality, we can’t. Because maybe it’s not our thing to talk about, it’s someone else’s thing to talk about. But when it comes to us, and what’s within our control, our assumption is we should be transparent.

What about the accountability of chief marketing officers? Especially as we see some companies doing away with the position altogether in favor of chief revenue officer, etc… 

It’s the trust in the brand—not the logo or the type and how many times you can flash it but what it stands for. I think that is the key. I don’t think that a chief revenue officer- that’s sales and sales is great, but it’s not the same thing. If you don’t have the trust in the eyes of your customer, the trust in the eyes of your stakeholders then you don’t create foundations for making the sales. Many companies do recognize that and many companies do work with a mixed marketing/communications/brand/public affairs/community relations- doesn’t matter which words you use. It all comes back to: how do you create the trustworthiness of the brand so customers will want to engage with you?

Can you talk about being a public presence as CMO?

First of all, we all try to represent the company and we all try to be visible. That’s also important from the transparency point of view: that the company has faces, and we are people that represent it. Our kind of business is very much thought leadership and insights, and to be able to show and discuss where the industry is going. It’s very important to our customers. Because that’s how they make these big investment decisions and partners that we stay with for a long time. We want to make sure that they’re moving in the right direction and that means that to be out there and talk about the industry, to talk about insights, to talk about the development that’s something that we do jointly in the leadership team, because it’s important that our customers see that we do that. Then we have our different flavors.

Comcast Leans Into Subsidiary Ad Offerings As Cord-Cutting Pressure Intensifies

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Comcast Corp. is putting all those recent business acquisitions to good use by ramping up its ad offerings. Two Monday announcements were made just as TV Upfront season begins and streaming platforms continually threaten ad revenue.

European satellite broadcaster Sky was acquired by Comcast for $40 billion last fall. Now, amid of the biggest TV ad-selling season of the year, Sky has teamed up with fellow Comcast subsidiary NBCUniversal to offer marketers a new toolset called AdSmart.

Adsmart is a merging of Sky’s advertising tools and NBCUniversal’s Audience Studio targeting solution. Both Sky and NBCUniversal advertisers can optimize linear spend against consumer segments that include 50 million households across the US and UK. Once the desired audience is chosen, advertisers can target them through the delivery of long-form content, digital ads and contextual alignment such as timing an ad with a relevant scene on a TV show.

“The world is getting smaller, and the opportunity for international marketers to make an impact with consumers is getting bigger,” said Linda Yaccarino, chairman of advertising and partnerships for NBCUniversal in a prepared statement. “The industry has demanded a global premium video offering, and now, one will finally exist.”

Meanwhile, TV advertising platform NCC Media—owned by Comcast, Cox Communication and Charter Communications—launched new digital buying capabilities. The “all-screen” advertising solution enables the launch of coordinated campaigns to the same audiences watching TV and browsing online.

NCC’s new offerings apply to all TV inventory including linear, VOD and addressable, as well as all digital formats including video, display, social, audio, out-of-home and mobile.

“Digital advertising is an important component of our clients’ marketing mix,” said Nicolle Pangis, CEO of NCC Media in a press release. “Today’s launch supports our strategy of expanding the efficient platform NCC built for the TV world to handle more of our clients’ media comprehensively. The new capabilities bring increased precision to brand marketing while greatly simplifying the way advertisers manage and monitor consumer narratives across the entire consumer journey.”

Comcast’s video ad tech company FreeWheel made its first upfront pitch to advertisers on March 13, touting new attribution features and the launch of FreeWheel Media and the first DSP integration for its new product suite with Adobe.

It comes to show that even giants like Comcast aren’t immune to the growing threat of OTT ad spend. EMarketer predicted that OTT video service users in the US would reach 203 million in 2019, compared to 297 million TV viewers. The market research firm just increased its ad revenue predictions for Hulu, saying it would surpass $2 billion between 2019 and 2020.

Live Multiplayer Games Drove 2018 Mobile Revenues, Per App Annie

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Games might have been a minority among app downloads for 2018, but they accounted for nearly 75 percent of revenue, App Annie reports. Live multiplayer elements such as battle royale helped generate higher mobile game revenues than PC/Mac, console and handheld console games put together.

Battle Royale games like PUBG: Mobile and Free Fire are driving revenue growth in the mobile sector, according to a new report by App Annie and IDC. In the report, “Gaming Spotlight 2018 Review Report,” App Annie says three out of the top five games by consumer spend featured real-time multiplayer game elements. It is significant, App Annie notes, that game modes like PvP battle, co-op play and the MMORPG genre are steeped in PC-gaming heritage.

Seven out of 10 of the top revenue-generating mobile games were released by publishers with a PC or home console gaming background—Sony, Tencent, mixi, Activision Blizzard, NCSoft, Netease and Bandai Namco.

“The fact that mobile devices are powerful enough to run games of this magnitude and even work with people playing on PCs and consoles is astounding,” said App Annie’s director of market insights Amir Ghodrati in a statement. “EA’s already said that they’re interested in bringing APEX legends to mobile and are looking into cross-platform functionality, so it’s a trend we expect to continue in 2019.”

IDC conducted US gamer surveys in both 2015 and 2018 and asked if respondents played casual-leaning games, hardcore-leaning games or both. In a three-year span, the number of hardcore-leaning players grew 3.5 percent. Hardcore-leaning titles include battle royale, fighting, flight/air combat simulators, massive online battle arena (MOBA), racing, shooting or sports. The battle royale genre was not included as an option in the 2015 survey and flight/air combat simulators were not included in the 2018 version.

In 2018, direct spending on mobile games exceeded the combined spending total on home console, PC/Mac and handheld console games by nearly 20 percent, a 14 percent jump since 2016.

A majority of revenue (55 percent) from the top multiplayer games originated from Asia-Pacific, App Annie noted, despite China’s nine-month new game license freeze. The United States, Germany and the United Kingdom experienced rapid growth in 2018, giving mobile revenues an extra push.

Apple is rumored to be planning a game subscription service, added Ghodrati, saying, “it will be very interesting to see the impact this could have on the industry in 2019 and beyond.  

“Since well over 95 percent of gaming consumer spend come from in-app purchases on mobile, a steady subscription revenue could provide an opportunity for paid apps to generate more revenue (and on a consistent basis),” said Ghodrati.

IAB: Cross-Channel Efforts Top Budget Priority In 2019

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Marketers, publishers, marketing service providers and technology developers plan to spend more on data this year, according to IAB’s latest report.

“The Outlook for Data 2019: A Snapshot Into the Evolving Role of Audience Insight” asked digital marketing and digital practitioners where they are focusing their concerns and budgets in 2019. The survey was fielded in January 2019.

Respondents indicated a focus on harmonizing audience experiences across media. For this reason, cross-channel campaign measurement and attribution will be the top priority for 57.3 percent of those surveyed. Just over half—52.4 percent—will also prioritize cross-channel audience identification and matching.

“Cross-channel becomes more important as consumers engage with brands on different platforms and through different types of media,” Orchid Richardson, vice president and managing director of the IAB Data Center of Excellence told AList. “It’s about understanding where the consumer is in their journey, so the right message at the right time can be delivered.”

Over three-fourths (78.2 percent) of survey respondents planned an increased amount of spending on data and related services this year. Some 69.2 percent said that spending in this area increased in 2018, as well.

Last year, general audience analytics occupied most of the respondents’ time more than any other category listed. The top three time-consumers were general audience analytics (58 percent), cross-channel audience identification and matching (51.9 percent) and cross-channel measurement and attribution (42 percent).

This year, the top priority, according to 57.3 percent, will be cross-channel measurement and attribution.

With each new report, it seems that marketers invest more in data every year. Richardson said that marketers spend more because they are getting results.

“Data is making brands smarter about their consumers while helping them build direct connections with consumers too,” said Richardson.

Participating digital marketers were asked which factors they expected to be the most important in driving data-driven marketing initiatives in the year ahead. The top choice, as it has been for the last three years, was “demand/interest from our customers.”

The biggest challenge these professionals fear in 2019 is government regulation or the threat to regulate data. Beyond that “external” threat, panelists expressed a multitude of concerns about how their organizations are structured to use data. Siloed organizational structures and data as well as difficulty in proving ROI were among the top concerns shared by respondents.

Five Things Marketers Need To Know About The 5G Revolution

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Marketers know that relationships are built on meaningful connections, and 5G could help make them even faster. As a result, this emerging technology could very well change the way consumers expect media to be delivered, much like high-speed internet marked the (welcome) end of dial-up connections and that teeth-shattering modem sound.

You might have less time to plan than you think. Here are five facts you need to know in the meantime:

Look To Sporting Events For 5G Experiences

According to research by Ovum for Amdocs, consumers will likely experience 5G for the first time at stadiums. The Dallas Cowboy’s AT&T Stadium already uses the technology through its center-hung video board.

Over a third of network operators surveyed plan to own a sports team and invest in 5G during sporting events. In addition, around 63 percent of the world’s largest network operators intend to use augmented reality, virtual reality or a hybrid of them supported by 5G. Also, over 70 percent of operators say events such as the 2020 Olympics have a big impact on their 5G roll-out timelines. 

5G Could Push AR/VR Further Into The Mainstream

Regardless of industry or interests, the fifth generation of wireless technology and mobile connectivity or 5G will create opportunities that didn’t exist before. One such brand opportunity, GSMA pointed out in its 2018 Mobile Trends report, is AR/VR immersion. Current technology does not allow brands to embed AR/VR ads inside a mobile ad, but 5G would allow for more ambitious campaigns without fear of slowing down a site.

Get Ready For New Creative Formats

Nearly half—47 percent—of advertisers will use new or additional creative formats via 5G, according to a recent survey by Verizon Media. A third of advertisers surveyed indicated that they are already planning for 5G, predicting that mobile video and better video streaming will have the most significant impact.

Forty-nine percent of advertisers think 5G will help to better consumer experiences and 46 percent see the technology benefit advancements in real-time, location-based targeting.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is another technology that stands to benefit from faster connection speeds. Gartner estimates over 20.4B IoT units will be installed by 2020, while IoT-related spending will reach nearly $3 trillion. 

All Connected Industries Will Be Disrupted By 5G

Faster connection speeds are about more than fancy websites and ads. Analytics firm CB Insights predicts that 5G will have a massive impact on the healthcare, automotive, retail and entertainment industries, as well.

“The average autonomous car of the future could produce as much as 2 million gigabytes of data per week, and moving all of that data to the cloud or a regional server isn’t feasible today with Wi-Fi or 4G,” says CB Insights.

The healthcare industry will be able to utilize more devices such as fitness trackers, microscopic cameras and robotic surgery. Retailers will be able to use more sophisticated devices such as connected shelves, in-store analytics and allow consumers to “try on” products at a higher scale.

The Wave Of 5G Is More Like An Iceberg Than A Tsunami

If you’re not ready to launch 5G initiatives tomorrow, don’t worry. It will still probably be two or three more years before 5G becomes the norm.

As Engadget points out, it took about two to three years for 4G to reach most American cities. Even though Samsung launched the Galaxy S10 5G, the infrastructure isn’t there yet. When 5G becomes mainstream, consumers will be able to purchase reincarnations of the current devices. And your team can start having fun with the possibilities.

At MWC19, Brands Discuss Staying Relevant In A Digital Era

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MWC 2019 was awash with conversations about connectivity, the future of the connected computing world and of course, 5G. But, for brand marketers, the underlying message was how to stay relevant in a transforming digital ecosystem.

At the core of much of this conversation was how to keep ahead of the curve, maintain a strong sense of identity and give audiences what they want.

At Monday’s “Intelligent Future For All” keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave a nod to Daimler AG’s longevity in a conversation with the automobile manufacturer’s CEO Dieter Zetsche. In celebrating the rarity of “institutional strength that goes beyond human lifetimes,” Nadella noted the necessity for brand leaders to create a “core sense of purpose and identity.” But don’t accept the status quo. “At the same time, you have to question everything,” said Nadella.

“New capabilities are something that you always have to build, long before it’s conventional wisdom. Now, that capability is only going to happen if you have a culture that allows you to recognize the need for that ability.”

Nadella has a great deal of experience with status-quo defying transitions, notably the company’s shift in focus from selling software on DVD-ROMs to providing SaaS via subscriptions to Microsoft Office during his tenure.

Planning for the future needs of customers means taking a leap of faith, in a sense. Nadella insists that “the core of any transformation is: Are you in real touch with the unarticulated needs of your customers?”

Just days before the conference, the BMW Group and Daimler AG announced a new partnership, a collection of joint ventures and a clear indication of how the two legacy brands are confronting today’s digital transformation.

“By creating an intelligent network of joint ventures, we will be able to shape current and future urban mobility and draw maximum benefit from the opportunities opened up by digitalization, shared services and the increasing mobility needs of our customers.”

Zetsche, also the head of Mercedes-Benz, referred to Daimler AG’s transition as a contrast in how to think foundationally about production at the same keynote last Monday.

“Until yesterday, the most important part was to lock your engineering department so no one could copy anything. Today, when we’re talking about these new systems, we’re convinced we have to do it open source.”

When asked about what he’s learned from Nadella, Zetsche said, “Microsoft went through a phase where its base capabilities and base business model were in question,” he continued, “then you used your basic skills and turned it around into something very different.”

How 5G Will Impact Marketing

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The future of marketing will happen in 5G. That’s what’s been promised, but the question remains—when will the rise of 5G fully take place, and what will it look like? While tech advancements and achievements in digital marketing are indeed speeding up, a McKinsey study predicted that, considering the significant build-outs that will need to take place to foster 5G adaption, the industry shouldn’t expect 5G to gain traction on a large scale until at least the early 2020s.

With just a few years to go before 5G takes the stage, now is the time to examine just how 5G will impact marketing and how advertisers can prepare for what’s to come.

The 5G Impact

While 5G has not yet been fully rolled out, many marketing experts expect 5G will be transformative. The latest 5G technology will be able to process significantly higher amounts of data at far greater speeds than current 4G devices. In December, AT&T announced they’ll be introducing a 5G hotspot with speeds 10 to 100 times faster than current 4G technology.

As a result, more users will be able to access the internet on a greater number—and variety—of devices at once. Consumers will be able to download everything from movies, games and TV shows to virtual reality experiences from their smartphones as well as other devices, all at speeds that will greatly reduce loading times.

Susan Borst, VP of mobile at IAB, emphasizes just how broad of a reach 5G will have, and as a result, how broadly it will impact marketing.

“While it’s easy to think of 5G’s impact on mobile devices,” Borst said, “What makes 5G so exciting is its on impact everything from mobile to so much more, including desktop, IoT, OOH, wearables, drone delivery, manufacturing, analytics-driven retail experiences and smart cities infrastructure.”

As users can access content at a rapid-fire pace, marketers will have more opportunities to reach their target audiences.

Conor Mason, principal of Punchkick, predicts the introduction of 5G will also affect user experience, consumer demands and data collection.

“One of the biggest challenges with gathering data from mobile users today is network reliability—it’s tough to upload app data or analytics data reliably when the user might be experiencing subpar network conditions,” Mason said. “But 5G offers greater range, improvements to MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) for congested networks, and overall increased speeds to send more data quicker.”

Increasing Reach

While exciting, marketers are sure to face challenges when adjusting to 5G technology, including meeting increased consumer expectations and extending to one of today’s biggest marketing challenges—ad blockers.

The rise of 5G may present opportunities for advertisers to reach consumers who would otherwise use ad blockers. As pages load more quickly using 5G technology, marketers may have an opportunity to introduce content to consumers without those users becoming frustrated as ads slow down their browsers.

A 2017 report by AdBlock Plus and Global Web Index found that 40 percent of those surveyed had used an ad blocker within the last month, but of those respondents, just 22 percent utilized ad blockers on their mobile devices.

Respondents gave a variety of reasons why they use ad blockers—33 percent said they used those blockers to “speed up the time it takes for things to load on my device.” Approximately 37 percent of respondents said ads “take up too much screen space and get in the way,” while 40 percent said they found “online ads intrusive.”

As 5G is adopted and download times decrease, marketers may be able to find ways to reach users who are less inclined to use ad blockers as ads, as well as websites, take less time to load. Advertisers can also use this opportunity to develop innovative solutions in advertising. With VR, AR, business intelligence and improved data collection on the table, now is the time for the industry to focus on digital innovation.

“The marketing industry needs to think about 5G as an opportunity to reinvent their offerings in the mobile space,” Mason said. “Experiences that were once relegated to WiFi are now going to be possible everywhere—what kind of sophisticated mobile apps would make sense in those contexts?”

Borst anticipates significant improvements in live streaming, as well as more accurate geofencing and next-generation VR, in addition to overall improvements in download times.

“With enhanced data in real time, the winning trifecta of getting the right message to the right person at the right time will no longer be a pipe dream,” Borst said.

Even while preparing for the adoption of 5G and the opportunities it presents, advertisers should anticipate the rollout be a gradual one. This transitional period presents its own set of marketing challenges.

“The biggest challenge in embracing 5G will be understanding that we will be in a 4G/5G hybrid world for a long time,” said Seth Dobbs, VP of engineering at Bounteous. “…Any marketing effort that embraces 5G will still need to consider a deprecated experience for 4G users.”

To keep pace with 5G advancements, Borst recommends getting on board with the changes as soon as possible, as well as to prepare for shifting U.S. and international data collection regulations.

“If applicable, creative should be developed based on assets that can be mixed and matched to provide the most relevant messaging to consumers,” she said. “For marketers who have been slow on creating video assets, now is the time to ramp up efforts and make sure their infrastructures are ready. Finally, as is the case today, marketers must be cognizant of the evolving public policy landscape in the US and abroad and the impact of what this means on data collection and use.”

The marketing industry faces unique challenges with 5G, as well as unique opportunities for growth, innovation and creativity. It may not be here tomorrow, but 5G is on its way, and when it arrives, advertisers should be prepared to keep up with technology and ultimately, to keep up with consumers as their everyday online experiences evolve.