Technology / January 09, 2014 / By Erin Martin

Predictions: 2014 Will Be the Death of Mobile Advertising

Originally posted on ADOTAS on January 8th, 2014

If 2013 was (finally) the year of mobile advertising, 2014 will be the death of it. Not because the importance of mobile will diminish. Rather, it will become so vital to marketers that the idea of planning mobile in a silo will quickly seem dated. Consumers already move freely between screens, one device complementing the next. Marketers need to think the same way, planning across screens, not in silos. Look no further than industry bellwethers like Google, Facebook and Twitter. All have moved away from selling mobile, instead selling across devices.

Key to success in any marketing effort is understanding what motivates our customers to purchase. On this front, mobile devices will drive a more complete view of attribution in 2014. The white whale of attribution has always been in-store visits. To what extent does a campaign drive people to stores? With location-based services, we’re starting to understand this in a much more complete way, and marketers will embrace this data in the New Year. They’ll do so with a clear acknowledgement that privacy needs to be at the forefront of these, and all other, digital marketing efforts.

In short, we need to rethink mobile marketing, acknowledging that the collective efforts of the industry have been completely insufficient. All too often, marketing lags woefully behind actual consumer behavior. To date, this has most certainly been the case in mobile. If this doesn’t change in 2014, marketers risk alienating their customers. The promise of advertising relevance will fall on deaf ears as marketers roll out 2010 tactics to a 2014 consumer.