How to Reach Consumers across Devices with Sequential Messages

  In a multidevice world, sequential ads delivered to the right screen at the right time can help lead consumers down the purchase funnel, says Yahoo’s Steve Schuler.

It sounds ridiculous now, but when I was in high school, having an Apple II at home made you an early adopter. Now even tweens have multiple devices running all at once, and I do this quite often too.

When my TV is tuned to a baseball game, I usually browse news on my tablet or check email on my phone.

That’s a lot of screens for advertisers to keep their eyes on. In my conversations with marketers, it’s clear that some have become lost in the wash of screens and device-hopping. Just when marketers think they know how to reach a consumer on a PC—poof!—the customer has jumped to mobile.

Marketers should keep two factors to keep in mind when trying to influence consumers across devices:

Mobile shopping extends the shopping process and adds convenience.

According to Yahoo’s Smart Mobile study:

 57% of mobile shoppers think of their smartphone as a very convenient way to research purchases
    
26% say they do more shopping overall because of their mobile device

Most consumers use their PCs in addition to their mobile and tablet devices.

Of those who shop on their mobile device, 88% report also using a PC to research the same purchase. They say that PCs deliver a fast and trustworthy user experience, while phones are great for their versatility and convenience.

It’s clear that consumers move seamlessly from mobile to PC and back again. This creates an interesting opportunity for advertisers—and we’ve found that the solution to reaching multidevice consumers is not necessarily found in buying more and more impressions on various platforms.

There are smart ways to target consumers by delivering messages to them in a logical sequence as they move among screens, so that the messages build upon each other and lead consumers down the purchase funnel to conversion.

Consider these three steps for effective cross-screen sequential messaging:

Create an audience segment around the users who have seen or interacted with your display campaigns on a PC.
    
Target these consumers on mobile devices.
    
Create copy with a sequential message, such as “Tap to call for more info” or “Touch here for directions to our store,” to move engaged consumers from awareness to action.

Yahoo!’s logged-in user data enables us to provide this unique targeting capability with extreme accuracy. This data in particular allows us to confirm with near certainty that the user who saw your ad earlier on a PC is now the same person browsing on his or her mobile phone.

Telling a brand story across several screens

Mobile compounds the power of PC marketing. By using intelligent, cross-screen retargeting, marketers can engage consumers on all devices and significantly enhance the PC-to-mobile (and oftentimes PC-to-mobile-to-tablet-and-back-again-to-PC) experience. Serving sequential ads across different devices that add up to a holistic advertising experience is a must in today’s multidevice world.

A powerful and interconnected cross-screen ad experience will resonate with people consumed with a multitude of devices. Something as simple as displaying a mobile-optimized ad that viewers already saw on a PC, but can interact with on their smartphones, can make the difference between an impression and a sale.

— Steve Schuler, Sr. Manager, Mobile Ad Products Marketing, Yahoo!

This article was originally run in the ANA Magazine’s recent issue of on mobile strategy, which includes more tips and insights from Mondeleze, Dunkin’ Brands, Yahoo!, and more.

Courtesy of Yahoo Insights