Mobile advertisers will soon be forced to have their adds show up in apps.
Mobile Apps Now Included
The ability to apply a blanket exclusion to mobile app adds will soon be coming to an end, as Google announced recently in a blog post that it will be removing the popular feature from its advertising platform.
As of next month, the “adsenseformobileapps.com” placement exclusion will be abolished and all mobile campaigns thereafter will start to receive traffic from apps whether advertisers want that traffic or not.
Preparation
Removing the blanket exclusion isn’t the only change happening; Google will also be consolidating its device targeting options, and advertisers will soon be given three categories of devices to target: mobile, tablet and computer.
This is quite a change from being able to leverage more granular approaches to the advertising platform, which currently presents marketers with the option to target mobile web, mobile apps, or mobile interstitials specifically.
Growth of the App Economy
It’s no major surprise that Google would want advertisers to be moving quicker into the app realm, as the global app economy broke records last year in terms of overall growth. The future of the app ad market looks incredibly bright as well, with an App Annie report suggesting that it’s poised to be a $201 billion industry by 2021.
Between these growth numbers, and Google making recent changes to its AdWords platform to reward app advertisers with additional utilities to leverage, it’s clear that the goal is to generate more ad revenue in the app space as opposed to just mobile web.
Mixed Feelings
Despite the growth of the app economy, and the fact that more customers are being influenced by app ads than ever before, this change isn’t likely to be well received by everyone. Advertisers who have been having success with mobile web but not mobile apps are the biggest ones to take a hit from this update (and vice versa), or any advertiser who has been reluctant to venture into the app realm. There’s also a heightened risk for advertisers – now that their mobile campaigns are being combined to all mobile channels – that their ads could appear next to objectionable content.
Ultimately, it’s highly recommended that all advertisers running campaigns on Google’s display network review their audience targeting settings and make the necessary adjustments as these changes roll out.
Glass Half Full
With mobile ads expected to take up 31% of global expenditure by 2020, the mobile realm as a whole is looking very healthy, and although advertisers will want to keep a close eye on how their campaigns are performing and where their ads are appearing, there is certainly a very real opportunity to capitalize on new mobile traffic streams.
Proceed optimistically – change can be a very good thing!