Mobile advertising now drives over half of all campaign conversions

Marketers are losing their appetite for cookies that cannot accurately measure conversion journeys across browsers or devices, and that limit visibility and impact on mobile apps. As people increasingly switch from laptops and tablets to smartphones, the standard cookie measurement no longer accurately represents all the touchpoints in the path to conversion.

A 2017 report by Datalicious found that nearly 40% of all touchpoints are lost with cookie-only attribution. These may previously have been classified as non-converting and their impact disregarded in any attribution model. What's more, because people typically use a home laptop, work laptop and a mobile phone, each person has an average of three unique cookie identifiers. Simply put, this means that they're seen as three unique people through the lens of cookie-only measurement.¹

Measurement based on cookies or on the last click has a few shortcomings. It exaggerates the importance of the last touchpoint before the conversion, while overlooking touchpoints that happen earlier in the consumer journey. This method disregards early and mid-stage funnel touchpoints and gives marketers an incomplete picture of their campaign performance. Cookies force marketers to rely on guesswork to justify media investment and lead to wasted ad pounds.

So how do we tackle this complex reality? By understanding consumers as people rather than cookies.

In Australia & Southeast Asia, more than anywhere else in the world, people are living more of their lives on mobile devices, spending an average of nearly four hours on their favourite small screen.¹

The advent of the smartphone has changed the playing field for advertisers in many ways, and measurement efforts are merely catching up. In the study, over 72% of all the digital touchpoints missed by cookies involved a mobile device. Nearly one third (29%) were missing mobile-only touchpoints.

To help drive results and sustainable business growth, more accurate methods based on people insights can give marketers the ability to measure campaigns on and off Facebook, on both desktop and mobile devices. When looking at attribution and reach, this approach offers a more holistic look at the ad performance – something not possible before. People-based measurement more accurately associates touchpoints to people, identifying an average of 22 unique digital touchpoints per person, which is six more than that reported based on last click.³

At stake for advertisers are more opportunities for conversion and efficiency. In fact, with the integration of people-based measurement, the increased impact attributable to cross-device was as much as 45%. Combining that with 7% of conversions attributed to taking a mobile-only path, it means that more than half of all conversions were influenced by mobile advertising, on average.

As for efficiencies, traditional measurement tools have typically led to lower investments in mobile media channels – but the new study reveals that the average return on advertising spent in mobile was as high as 1.9 times.⁵

For years, measurement models have been inaccurately valuing touchpoints, leading marketers to inefficiently allocate budgets across channels and platforms.

Where the old model showed desktop as the dominant influence in each stage of the purchase funnel, the new multi-touch model suggests mobile advertising is key to coaxing consumers from a lack of awareness for the brand to an intent to purchase. None of this diminishes the role of desktop, which continues to be crucial in the final stages when consumers really do need a bigger screen to complete a purchase.

When it comes to channels, people-based attribution gives a dramatically different perspective than cookie-only models. With the inclusion of mobile touchpoints, display channels – especially Facebook, which has proved to be more influential than previously assumed – gains 14% in channel effectiveness.