I Clicked on a Mobile Ad Today and For The First Time It Wasn’t an Accident

One of the best parts of being in advertising and marketing is that the ads I am exposed to while going about my daily life are always more targeted than other industries.

This is because marketers typically test their strategies on their own sites first before selling it to clients. I know I do.

More importantly though, many of the best marketers are primarily promoting premium content to other marketers and entrepreneurs, so as a marketer with a very obvious online footprint showing an affinity for advertising and marketing, I start paying attention when I see something new.

Like you, I have ad blindness as well.

Most of the ads I see are not relevant. Especially on my smart phone and even more so when I am playing a game like Trivia Crack. I blindly click the X and move on to the next screen.

One of the better trends in advertising is the move towards native ads. I am not referring to advertorials and other native content. I am talking about advertisements that are native to the experience I am engaged with.

“The Best Ads Don’t Feel Like Ads. They Feel Like They Are Part of The Natural Experience.”

So, while I might get more targeted ads, I almost never click on them for the simple reason that their delivery annoys me.

For example, if I am in middle of a game, and I lose, and get hit with an ad…usually for another game, I am super annoyed, I just want to get back to my game.

This is less about the ad being relevant, as I already established that ads that target marketers in general are more targeted than other industries…but rather because it interrupts me.

When Your Ad Interrupts me, I ignore it.

Maybe ads are called ads because they should be adding value.
We all know how important mobile marketing and advertising is. There are companies popping up everywhere claiming they are Mobile First. Even Facebook says they are Mobile First.

This means they manufacture their experience based on what is native to the mobile phone experience and usability best practices.

For the first time ever, I was hit with ad units that were not only relevant, but somehow didn’t interrupt my experience, and was a flawless experience.

Interestingly enough, The ad was from Jon Loomer, a facebook advertising expert, promoting his pubcast on stitcher with Andrew Foxwell, a fellow Facebook ads expert.

I saw this post on Jon Loomers Facebook page. This is the ad I saw. What you dont see from this is the perfect mobile experience of the stitcher landing page.

Amazingly enough, Jon Loomer posted a blog post talking about exactly the ad I was exposed to, clicked on, and watched. https://www.jonloomer.com/2015/01/25/facebook-ads-promote-podcast/

Here’s my takeaway.

Back in 2005, when I decided to learn SEO, my main motivator was the knowledge that I didn’t want to fall more behind. Sure, some people will be ahead of me, but let me be ahead of the rest of the world.

I have been lucky enough to have lots of client experience with Facebook ads and Mobile app download promotion…but I have to confess, most of my strategy involved using native content units (i.e. newsfeed) or adapting desktop ads for mobile.

Now I know there is an advertising experience on mobile that is not distracting, annoying and ineffective…and considering how dominant mobile is becoming… You and I have no choice but to pursue these latest mobile strategies aggressively, so we dont fall too far behind everyone else.

I know I am sold. Thanks Jon Loomer and Andrew Foxwell.

The other ad was for ExifUtility, which I was researching a couple of days ago. It was just a pleasant mobile experience after clicking the ad, and the ad itself was clean, unobstrusive, responsive, and while it wasn’t focused to my mindset, and the final call to action was a desktop download (it should have been an email capture, like I discussed about micro conversions on mobile… something like, “we’ll email you a download link for later.”)

This second ad was probably a random affiliate because it was a JVZoo offering.