Making The Most Of In-App Advertising During Festive Season

Alok Pandey Sep 02, 2022

The festive season means togetherness and brightness all around and when India’s biggest festive season is about to commence, how can we forget the charm of purchasing, shopping and gifting presents for our near & dear ones? With the beginning of such time, people start making their celebration plans in advance focusing on what presents to buy from an online marketplace; which is why this time of the year means making huge online spending. I understand the importance of an effective marketing plan and how important it becomes for a marketer to tap into the right audience. This is where in-app advertising comes into the picture and can actually boost sales and set your brand apart from your competitors.

Tapping the right target audience through in-app advertising

In-app advertising provides marketers with a magnitude of opportunities to showcase adverts and make their brand's presence stronger through different ad placements. In 2021, a report by RedSeer stated that India witnessed the biggest sales of ₹ 65,000 crore, clocking a GMV of $9.2 billion through online channels and also due to the pandemic's after effects. This will continue to grow in upcoming years since we live in the mobile-first era where users are smartphone-friendly and brands have started embracing mobile adtech efficiently.

During the festive time, tapping into the mobile-first population can be an enormous chance for marketers as users use apps for all their tasks and needs wherein, in-app advertising helps in establishing an affinity between advertisers and audiences. This can be done through various strategies such as:

· Remarketing: This is most effective in creating good brand recognition as it ensures the success of the campaign by engaging loyal users. It encourages users to keep returning for more personalised offerings and drives better ROAS.

· OEM Advertising: Advertising on OEM is one of the most prominent ways of app promotion because it provides opportunities for effective placements at the most engaging touch points inside its inventory. Marketers can make the best use of OEM to make their brand presence in a fraud-free environment with complete control of ad spends.

· Rewarded Video Ads: These ads provide users with a clear value exchange! Marketers can engage the audience via such ads since it delivers the entire message in 15-30 seconds video and gives users some rewards. This is truly an effective app monetisation strategy that results in high-quality impressions and boosts in-app engagement.

· Gaming Vertical: In-game advertising provides marketers with the highest eCPMs and is an effective source of generating engagement rates and in-app purchases. This is because ads inside a game are non-interruptive & non-skippable and appear during the natural pauses which don’t hamper users' in-game experience. In-game adverts encourage users to respond which helps in increasing brands visibility with more brand familiarity and recall value.

Benefits for the brands

· Wider Reach: The traffic from the in-app advertisements has surpassed the traffic from the web and browsers due to the surge in mobile apps and their content consumption. This caters to marketers with a quality audience pool and they can better showcase their offerings to the respective users. For example, if the user is a music lover then the marketer can show him the music-centric recurring campaigns on a timely basis which will let him know about the new podcast and associated content. This practice helps marketers in expanding their reach across different locations with effective brand awareness.

· Emotional Appeal: Consumers during the festive season become super excited and emotional wherein, In-app adverts enable marketers to give users' sentiments an extra edge. In-app ads deliver personalised content via story-telling creative that renders an emotional appeal and fulfils the users' personal needs. In this way, users feel a little pampered since their expectations get matched with the brand's offerings which leads to good outcomes.

· Better Conversion: In-app ads are action based; the stronger it acts, the better the user reacts to them. However, all it requires is a powerful CTA and a storytelling creative that connects brands with users' needs. Every app has different goals and KPIs and its success depends on user interaction with an app. In-app ads provide users with easy navigation and experience via which they tend to spend more time exploring the offerings and make the desired actions that result in good conversion rates.

· Quality Monetisation: The surge in online consumerism due to users being mobile-first is effectively revolutionising the marketers’ strategies of branding and promotion. The quest for online content among users has encouraged brands to always showcase something new and innovative wherein, whereas in-app ad strategies have become an integral part of their advertising practice. This enables advertisers to upsell and cross-sell the adverts to specific cohorts which helps in increasing engagement and monetisation.

In the adtech space, mobile in-app advertisement is carving its own pace and helps marketers in determining the user’s preferences and expectations of a brand. During the festive season, incorporating in-app ads in marketing strategies can be the right choice for advertisers to create an exceptional brand recall, user experience and better ROI. As the festive season approaches, I wish brands warmth and success!

*The author is Alok Pandey, Vice President - Sales & Marketing at Xapads Media