App Only Strategy Will Fail To Deliver Advertising Success

I have been following the Indian ecommerce story for a while and now I am a part of it thanks to the acquisition of Reduce Data by Snapdeal.

The big difference that I saw when I came to India exactly after 3 years that almost everyone now owns a smartphone and the trend in services had heavily become mobile first.

Android, a slew of affordable handsets and the ability to purchase devices through monthly payments meant smartphone penetration had become high and was continuing to rise.

App only?

I kept reading that many ecommerce players were planning to go App only. My personal opinion (not my company’s) is that the trend towards app only is retrograde. Users that are app only is a myth, in a multi-screen and multi-device world.

It is a multi-channel, multi-screen world

Users tend to use more than one device in this list at any point of time and split time between Gaming consoles, TVs, Laptops, Tablets and Mobile phones.

And given that CPU / compute costs have been falling — it is not hard to imagine the prevalence of multiple devices everywhere in a user’s home (including smart TVs, soon) that will allow him/her to consume content & servives from these different channels.

The trends also indicate strong mobile dominance but not a mobile only future

Source: KPCB, Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report

Source: KPCB, Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report

So what does this mean for advertising?

In the context of advertising, the fact that that the user is going to be available on multiple devices and being able to target across more than one device is very important to drive results.

User fragmentation across devices, exists and Cross device identification of user; and is very important. This is because the intent of user from one device can be used to target him/her into another device. For example, if I browsed for certain products on my mobile phone in a taxi during my commute can be easily used to retarget on my PC when I return home.

The ability to target the user across multiple devices is an growing problem (and advertising opportunity) in key markets such as the U.S. where advertisers have been investing heavily in such advertising and attribution.

The results have been very encouraging so much so that the ability to target the users across multiple devices and cross device attribution is seen as a savior of digital advertising.

The impact of going App only in advertising

Going app only is ignoring the fact that the user mind share is fragmented across multiple devices and denies marketers to use a fantastic approach to retarget the users across multiple devices.

App only strategy also means that you’re limited to reaching the user on other channels and this will directly impact advertising ROI.

Therefore, I believe that going app only is a retrograde step especially in the context of advertising.

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