WeChat, Chinese mobile “super app” by Asia most valuable company Tencent, is perfectly positioned to consolidate and strengthen its dominance over China’s mobile marketing landscape in 2018. Having reached one billion active users in 2017, the app is used by practically everyone in China as the primary social media channel as well as shopping and entertainment outlet. When it comes to mobile marketing, whatever direction Tencent takes will determine its development.

Based on what we have seen so far and the technological innovation already introduced, here are our top four mobile marketing predictions for China in 2018:

#1 Accurate location based triggers for serving mobile ads

One of the most underutilized mobile marketing potential capabilities is location based targeting. Thanks to WeChat’s popularity with users in China and the fact that it is only used on mobile phones, the app always “knows” the current location of its users. Therefore, it is possible serving highly targeted ads based on users’ real-time location. In such scenario, when a user is in the proximity of a point of sale of a specific product, he/she would get a special offer like a discount coupon or another incentive to visit a store.

Moreover, more shopping outlets and even individual stores can now track visitors with extremely high precision via apps or mobile floor guides. For example, many modern shopping malls in China encourage users to connect to a floor guide via WeChat allowing them to track those users throughout the mall. Serving them the most relevant ads based on the accurate location and time holds a huge potential for businesses.

So far, WeChat hasn’t taken full advantage of this possibility, although it is certainly within Tencent’s technical capabilities to implement. Location based triggers advertising adds another dimension to mobile marketing and it is likely that Tencent is working on ways to capitalize on such technology in near future.

#2 AI based big data processing

Tracking users online generates enormous amounts of data for marketers. In case of mobile, adding a location dimension creates even more information that can be extremely useful. The challenge lies primarily in analyzing huge amounts of data and automating the whole process. AI holds a lot of promise in meeting those challenges. Big industry players have been heavily investing in AI, driving the field’s rapid development in the last couple of years. Once again, Chinese companies like Baidu and Tencent, with the government support, have been on the forefront of innovation in AI.

Being able to efficiently process vast amounts of data generated by mobile devices will further advance targeting capabilities of mobile marketing and this is what AI is very likely to be able to accomplish for those companies in the next year going forward.

#3 Individual user targeting

Marketing efficiency is, essentially, all about targeting accuracy and market segmentation is the way to make such targeting more precise. Creating a persona representing each segment allows marketers to design a specific approach that would be most suited for the members of each group. The smaller the segment – the better it can be defined.

Unfortunately, it also makes marketing much more complex, and, in many cases, unmanageable. This is all about to change with the introduction of AI based data processing and analysis when segmentation can potentially become even more granular, all the way down to individual level. This would potentially allow marketers to tailor the message targeting each individual rather than a segment. When this become possible, mobile devices will be a natural channel to reach users on that level.

Our next mobile marketing prediction: we are going to see more of such highly personalized marketing in 2018.

#4 Facial recognition

Facial recognition is another maturing technology that is likely to get widely adopted by marketers in 2018. Although not without a controversy, facial recognition adds new level to personalized marketing that can be delivered via mobile. The advantage of facial recognition vs. other tracking and identification methods lies in its non-intrusive nature because it can be done without close physical contact with users. For better or worse, facial tracking doesn’t require users’ consent (at least not now), so people can be tracked remotely and even matched with their public social media profiles.

For example, when a visitor to a physical store expresses interest in a product but, ultimately, decides to pass on a purchase, facial recognition would allow finding out who that person is, and then retarget them via other channels by offering a similar product or a discount on the original one.

It is very likely that regulators and consumers groups will start campaigning against such methods, citing privacy concerns, however, it is reasonable to assume that the technology is here to stay regardless. When it develops further, perhaps it will even become possible to identify and record shopper’s facial expressions to figure out the overall sentiment towards a brand or a product. This would represent the next frontier in mobile marketing.

The post Looking Ahead: Top China Mobile Marketing Predictions for 2018 first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Looking Ahead: Top China Mobile Marketing Predictions for 2018 appeared first on Sampi.co.

Overall, digital advertising spending has already surpassed TV in China. In fact, TV ads are gradually falling out of favor with the advertisers, mostly due to huge costs, limited targeting options and complete lack of interactivity. TV ads may still be effective for blanket advertising for products that benefit from maximum reach. Unfortunately, whenever more granular approach is required, they lack flexibility.

Digital advertising, on the other hand, has none of those problems – it can be fine tuned to a specific demographics and made to target people with relevant interests.On top of that, digital advertising almost always comes with robust analytics allowing endless analyzing and tweaking the delivery to maximize efficiency.

Main factors driving China mobile ads market

Mobile adverting promises to ad another dimension to digital ads – ability to reach consumers anytime, anywhere and on their most intimate gadget.

In addition, distrust for traditional media, such as TV and print, is still quite common in China – this could be another factor behind the growth of China mobile ads.

Mobile penetration in China continues to increase, although it is still behind some other developed markets. This means that the growth of China mobile ads market will be further stimulated by more mobile phones in the hands of consumers and continually improving mobile infrastructure.

Smartphones are still the primary device for connecting to the internet for majority of Chinese. This is another factor why China mobile ads are growing fast.

High efficiency of China mobile ads is also attributed to the fact that Chinese do spend money on mobile, mainly with Taobao and other mobile based internet stores. Alipay, primary Chinese payment system that is integrated with the largest stores (except WeChat) provides the required “lubricant” to make shopping with smartphones an easy and safe experience.

It is still remains to be seen whether developers of China mobile ads platform can avoid some of the problems common in digital ads, particularly fraud.

One of the most powerful features of mobile advertising is its capability to target consumers based on their location. Knowing where your customers are can allow advertisers to deliver the most relevant message and maximize the chances of conversion. Without a doubt, it is going to be the future of digital adverting.

Emarketer’s research concludes that by 2019, digital ads will account for almost 60% of the total advertising spend in China with about three quarters of which will be entirely mobile. TV ads will account for about 20% by then with the rest split between print, outdoor and radio.

It is still remains to be seen whether developers of China mobile ads platform can avoid some of the problems common in digital ads, particularly fraud. I’ve discussed the problem with China digital adverting in one of the earlier posts.

The post China Mobile Ads Explosive Growth first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post China Mobile Ads Explosive Growth appeared first on Sampi.co.

In fact, playing games is the second most favorite activity after chatting on a phone in China. Chinese gamers already outnumber the American ones by 1.6 to 1 and are estimated to have reached 450 million already.

This also shows that games provide a lucrative business opportunity for foreign game makers, although the market is still dominated by local companies. Tencent, the company behind WeChat and QQ is dominating the market with 7 out of 10 top games developed by them.

Another fact that we can learn from the data is that over 40% of Chinese would only play free games. However, despite this fact, an average revenue per per paying user at $32.46 is still higher in China vs. $26.72 in US.

Here is the infographic:

The post Mobile Gaming in China, Infographic first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Mobile Gaming in China, Infographic appeared first on Sampi.co.

Popular mobile apps from ecommerce giants like Taobao, Alibaba and Jingdong have made shopping directly from phones a fast, safe and convenient experience. Not surprisingly, mobile advertising has been highly effective to reach tens of millions of those users and the new infographic from Go-Globe backs up those notions with some great visuals.

Besides the obvious facts concerning the size and the reach of this market, I’d like to point out a few figures that I find particularly illuminating:

• Video and mobile coupons are, by far, the most popular advertising formats. This could be explained by the fact that videos tend to be the most popular digital content in general that is also easily consumed. On the other hand, the popularity of coupons is probably due to their high practical value and ease of use;
• 78% of Chinese users are more likely to click on a mobile ad vs. only 33% of UK and 29% of US users. What it basically means is that mobile advertising is more effective in China than in those countries by more than twice;
• Only 7% of users is China prefer not to be targeted by mobile ads vs. over 50% in both UK and US who would rather not see them.

Here is the full infographic:

The post Infographic: Mobile Advertising in China first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Infographic: Mobile Advertising in China appeared first on Sampi.co.