Executive White Paper Series

Measuring Mobile Advertising ROI Using BlueCava Device Identification

Inside
Executive Summary.................................................................................................. 2 The Challenges of Mobile Marketing ROI Measurement ........................................... 2 The Mobile Imperative .............................................................................................. 3 Flood of Mobile Apps Opens Doors for Proactive Advertisers ................................... 4 Mobile Device? No Cookies? No Problem! ............................................................... 5 Multi-Channel Solutions Enable Campaign Success Management ........................... 6

Copyright 2011, BlueCava, Inc.

www.BlueCava.com
All Rights Reserved

Executive Summary
Users of mobile devices represent a huge market opportunity for interactive advertisers. The USA is the second largest national market after Japan, in mobile advertising expenditures. The total mobile ad spend in the USA during 2011 is forecast to be $1.24 billion, rising to $5.04 billion in 2015, according to industry researchers at mobileSQUARED. There are more than 300 million active mobile users in the USA, and because of this impressive scale, the average U.S. mobile advertising campaign budget now falls between $75,000 and $100,000, a significantly higher number than in other countries.
Source: mobileSQUARED Research

This paper is intended for media buyers and advertising professionals currently engaged in mobile advertising or considering such campaigns in the near term, and who have identified a strong need to accurately measure the value of those campaigns and determine their true return on investment.

The Challenges of Mobile Marketing ROI Measurement

The rapid growth of mobile marketing has been driven by a number of factors, including the explosion in the number of smartphones and other Web-capable devices, along with the rapid adoption of a wide range of compelling interactive content sources including social networks that have proven highly attractive to tens of millions of mobile device users. In a 2011 report, digital market intelligence firm comScore, sized it up like this: 2010 was a game-changing year for the mobile industry. Smartphone adoption, 3G penetration and unlimited data plans drove a surge of mobile media consumption across geographies and deepened the integration of mobile devices into everyday life. As the mobile ecosystem continues to develop, including progress in mobile advertising and commerce, it's clear that mobile is destined to become an increasingly important platform for digital marketers across all industries."

Mobile advertising is a natural and anticipated extension of Internet marketing, but the rate of growth of this newer modality has exceeded all expectations. For many advertisers, the need to understand how to get the most for the mobile advertising dollar has become a critical driving issue in their technology purchasing plans.

The Mobile Imperative

Whether the geometric growth of mobile marketing is a result of the declining influence of traditional print media or the cause of it is open to debate. What has become clear is that most advertisers now understand they should start investing a more sizable portion of their advertising budgets in mobile marketing. Every advertiser needs to monitor and measure the results of every campaign to justify the advertising expenditure and secure more funds for future campaigns. This is especially true in the world of mobile advertising, since its a newer medium and one that is still a mystery to many traditional print and online marketers. There are numerous measurements that can be made on Internet display ads viewed on notebook and desktop computers, such as when and how often a consumer clicks on a particular ad. To some degree, advertisers can also monitor a persons path down the conversion funnel and track their related online purchases. In the mobile environment, however, very few consumers actually click on mobile ads and make purchases directly on their mobile device, due in part to the small size of mobile screens and in part to the nature of mobility. And mobile aps dont use tracking cookies. All of this makes it difficult to measure the influence of viewed mobile ads on later purchase behavior.

Flood of Mobile Apps Opens Doors for Proactive Advertisers

According to Mobile Tech Today, mobile users are rapidly dialing in to to a huge selection of apps ranging from virtual whoopee cushions to highly refined video games. One of these popular mobile apps is The Weather Channel Max for iPhone, that delivers animated forecast radar images, severe weather alerts localized to a neighborhood as well as worldwide video forecasts from The Weather Channels meteorologists. The Weather Channel Max is just one of many mobile aps where advertisers can leverage BlueCava technology to serve up appropriate advertisements to users that are relevant to their current interests and their immediate environment. As an example, a homeward bound commuter might check the local weather on his iPhone and spot a mobile ad for a cool new Honda car then, an hour later migrates to a notebook computer in his or her household, opens his browser to the Honda Web site and views rich color images and more detailed information on that vehicle. That notebook-based visit might later result in the purchase of the new family car, trackable back to that buyers history and the original mobile advertising impression that influenced the decision. This allows the advertiser to measure the success of that specific mobile campaign and refine the targeting strategy for future investments. This precise multi-channel household tracking and mobile campaign ROI measurement is made possible by BlueCavas device identification and physical device fingerprinting technology, which has the ability to identify not only individual devices but also that relationships between devices exist.
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Mobile Device? No Cookies? No Problem!

On smartphones, people use browsers for basic searches, street navigation and to locate restaurants and shopping. But, a lions share of mobile activity involves standalone applications that dont use cookies. That means that advertisers cant rely on cookies to determine when a user is accessing a particular mobile app into which they want to insert a context-relevant mobile advertisement. The BlueCava Platform easily solves this no cookie mobile targeting issue because it doesnt depend on tracking cookies to identify and track customer behavior. BlueCava instead creates a persistent and seamless electronic fingerprint based on the unique characteristics of any connected device, and then supplements targeting data based on that device and any browsers or aps in use. This process is enabled by BlueCavas device identification technology, which then relies on that fingerprint (not a cookie) as a means of continuing identification.

The BlueCava device identification platform helps advertisers understand multi-channel associations between two different devices and correlate a specific activity on one device with an activity on another device in the same household. Once a device is identified, the BlueCava platform can also provide demographic and behavioral targeting data for those devices. The mobile user does not have to click through on an ad to be identified. The advertiser can identify the mobile device by the fact that an ad was served to it by a particular app, and from there its possible to correlate that a notebook computer user in the same household later visited the Honda.com Web site and browsed through the specifications of the same car that was featured in the mobile ad.

Multi-Channel Solutions Enable Campaign Success Management

In mobile advertising, device identification produces significant value. ROI analysis using the BlueCava device identification platform allows mobile advertisers to track how well campaigns have performed and demonstrate the added value of the mobile campaign within an overall multi-channel media strategy. This may include an assessment of how a mobile campaign influenced short-term consumer behavior and how many people were driven to the point of purchase. When revenue generation is compared to campaign costs, pure ROI can be calculated and shown. Improved brand exposure and brand awareness are enabled when more precise targeting takes place due to deeper demographic intelligence acquired through device identification. Mobile advertisers gain the ability to access new and more granular target audiences and demographic pools that would be difficult or impossible to reach using traditional Internet advertising methods. Using device identification, advertisers can realize a lift of fifty percent or more in mobile targeting.

More refined segmentation also becomes possible when targeting is done based on specific mobile characteristics of the potential customer, as discovered through device identification. While personal privacy is always a top priority, precise device fingerprinting and identification gives mobile advertisers the option to target safe and anonymous messages based on the users general location, such as a particular zip code or a venue such as a sports stadium. This greater precision allows for more precise demographic targeting to the level of high-impact, micro-local advertising, a feat that is usually not achievable with typical Internet advertising. BlueCava and Privacy
Privacy is a fundamental consideration for BlueCava with regard to personal data for online and mobile ad targeting. BlueCava a does not capture names, social security numbers, email addresses or personal data. BlueCava focuses on devices, not people. BlueCava determines device identities, then records what devices do on sites that use BlueCava technology. All personal information is stripped out. The BlueCava Platform uses the same information available online for Web advertising, but uses this data to identify a device uniquely for the purpose of ad targeting. BlueCava is a vehement advocate or personal privacy. For a full description of the BlueCava Privacy Policy, please visit:

www.bluecava.com/privacy-policy

The new mobile society is quite possibly the fastest growing market opportunity for interactive marketers. Mobile advertising becomes even more effective when campaigns are implemented using next-generation multi-channel marketing solutions from BlueCava. Device identification represents a brand new methodology for monitoring campaign success that extends far beyond the capabilities of tracking cookies to enable specific ROI calculation and a granular identification of the influences that drive conversions. Brand advertisers are beginning to demand more financial proof that their mobile ad campaigns are performing and creating real value. With device identification, its now possible, for the first time, to measure and demonstrate concrete returns on investment.