VB EVENT:

The mobile advertising ecosystem is massive, complex, and obscure … and can suck in up to 40 percent of your advertising budget on fees and commissions alone, if you’re not careful. It includes DMPs, DSPs, SSPs, DMPs, no less than three different kinds of ad networks (of which there are about 1,000 currently), plus multiple kinds of ad exchanges.

How’s a brand supposed to navigate this?

VB is holding a free event for brands at 4 Times Square — the NASDAQ offices — next week Tuesday in New York City, to provide a map. And not only a map, but we’ll be unveiling our newest research on mobile advertising and brands, highlighting the 12 key ways brands are succeeding in mobile advertising — generating 7X average engagement and 4X typical customer growth.

Above: The majority of consumers are engaging with mobile ads

The complexity of mobile advertising may be increasing, but the necessity to engage in it is increasing faster.

Smartphones have 80 percent penetration in the U.S. Majority share in China. 65 percent share in most of Western Europe. All those phones — and the ever-growing three hours/day that we spend staring at them — means that consumer attention is increasingly focused on mobile, not TV. In turn, that means that mobile advertising is skyrocketing, hitting $ 51 billion this year, and rising to $ 105 billion by 2019.

Join us in NYC for our Mobile Advertising Roadshow
June 16, 4PM, at 4 Times Square

Big brands are a big part of this, but it’s not all sugar and spice and everything nice.

Above: m-Commerce jumped 123% in the first quarter of 2015

Image Credit: VB

There can easily be 11 invisible steps between a mobile user opening an app and an ad materializing on his or her screen, in which an auction, multiple data lookups, multiple requests to multiple servers, verification and fraud checks all happen in literally milliseconds. Many of those steps can shave pennies, nickels, and dimes off of every ad dollar you’ve allocated, especially if the publishing inventory you eventually end up winning was re-sold a few times.

In spite of that complexity and challenge, however, big brands are taking big bets on mobile advertising. And some of those big brands are succeeding wildly above expectations, generating up to 80 percent engagement, 3X brand recall over TV ads, and 3.7X in-store visits.

Understanding the ecosystem helps. And so does knowing the 12 ways brands are winning at mobile advertising.

That’s exactly what we’re talking about in New York next week. And that’s exactly what brand marketers who are looking at expanding their efforts in mobile advertising need to know.

We’ll be meeting right inside NASDAQ’s office space off Times Square. We’ll start with some networking time, hors d’oeuvres, and drinks. Then I’ll be speaking about the findings of our just-published report Brands and mobile advertising: How to win. We’ll also have a panel discussion with marketing and advertising executives from AOL, the NY Times, MRY, Harman Kardon, and Verve Mobile in attendance. And finally we’ll have some more networking/eating/drinking time.

Get your free ticket here.

VentureBeat