Brands have dedicated time and energy into creating great app experiences, and many advertisers have also invested resources to drive downloads and initial adoption. What’s next for these brands though?

With our App Engagement Program, advertisers can use mobile display ads to reengage the users who have downloaded their apps and drive sustained adoption.

When using the new solution, advertisers can run campaigns that will only serve ads to consumers who have already downloaded their app. From within their creative—advertisers can directly link a user back inside the app, and they can choose to send the consumer to any section they want (i.e. the search page, checkout, etc.).

As users are sent back into the app, advertisers can also insert new messaging where they can promote specific offers or time sensitive messages.

One of the leaders in mobile today, Paul Gelb, the VP and Mobile Practice Lead at Razorfish, recently summed up the new solution by saying:

“Millennial Media has once again demonstrated its ability to both identify a major unmet need for mobile marketers and create a sound client-ready solution. Improvements to retention and usage exponentially increase the value of an application and each new user.  Advancement in this area opens up new opportunities for brands to generate unprecedented ROI from their investment in applications.”

For brands or developers that are interested in finding out more information on the App Engagement Program or how other brands are succeeding in mobile, visit http://www.millennialmedia.com/advertise/targeting/.

With this consolidated approach to inventory monetization, developers can:

• Manage and monetize in-app and mobile web inventory seamlessly through a single interface
• Easily incorporate mobile display ads within their site content
• Manage ad placements for each site
• View reporting and inventory performance

Developers can learn more and find out how to start monetizing their applications and mobile websites here.

During key shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, advertisers turned to mCommerce to drive consumers to purchase directly on their mobile devices, and as a Post-Click action, we saw mCommerce grow 68 percent in November. We also saw a significant increase in campaigns that utilized a Store Locator, as advertisers used mobile to drive people into stores.

In this month’s report, we also included a deep-dive into how the Telecom industry is using mobile advertising. Here are some highlights:

Telecom Spotlight

• mCommerce was utilized as a Post-Click action in 68 percent of all Telecom campaigns.
• The top three Post-Click actions used by Telecom advertisers were “Place Call,” “Store Locator” and “View Map,” showing the strong focus these advertisers placed on driving consumers into retail locations.
• For Telecom advertisers, promoting a new product launch/release (i.e. new phones/tablets) was the top goal in 68 percent of all campaigns. Across all verticals, this was the top campaign goal in only 16 percent of campaigns.

Click here to download the free full report including Advertiser Trends, Targeting Trends and more.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future reports, please send them our way.

Since the Kindle Fire launched less than two months ago, we’ve seen impressions grow at an average daily rate of 19 percent, with a monthly run rate of hundreds of millions of impressions.

As millions of consumers are expected to unwrap new tablets and other mobile devices during the holidays, we’re excited to see what the first quarter of 2012 holds for these devices.

Here are a few additional highlights from the November Mobile Mix:

• The iPhone remained the top individual phone on our platform; growing 8 percent month-over-month.
• iOS (including all iOS devices) grew 7 percent month-over-month, in our breakdown of the smartphone and connected device OS share.
• Impressions via a Wi-Fi network grew 11 percent month-over-month and accounted for 39 percent of our total impressions. Of these Wi-Fi impressions, 62 percent came from smartphones; 38 percent from connected devices (i.e. tablets, e-readers, MP3 players, etc.).
• Samsung reclaimed the number two position in the list of top manufacturers, and had 4 of the Top 20 Phones on our platform.
• The Kindle Fire has slightly outpaced the impression numbers from the launch of the iPad in early 2010.

Download the free full report including the Top 20 Mobile Phones, Connected Device & Smartphone OS Mix and more.

Mobile Mix complements our monthly mobile advertiser-focused Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART)™ report.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future reports, please send them our way.

The campaign utilized rich media and advertised six different VeeV cocktails across all major smartphone operating systems. When consumers clicked on the image of a particular cocktail, the creative displayed a recipe with instructions on how to make the drink. Consumers could then save the recipe to their mobile device and engage with it at their own convenience. The campaign also encouraged word-of-mouth sharing, and enabled consumers to email the recipes to friends or share the details via social networking sites.

The campaign clearly resonated with consumers and clickthrough rates were more than double industry averages.

Carter Reum, the Co-Founder of VeeV, said “mobile provided us an entirely new medium to reach and engage with our connected, on-the-go consumers.”

We are thrilled that VeeV has experienced early success in mobile advertising, and our August S.M.A.R.T report, shows that it’s not just Veev that is embracing mobile. In the report we highlighted the CPG category and found that Alcohol advertisers were the leading subset of the CPG vertical, making up 42 percent of all campaigns. CPG advertisers also encouraged consumers to take a social media action (like a brand on Facebook, provide product feedback, share a recipe like VeeV, etc.) on 78 percent of campaigns.

We were thrilled to help VeeV discover mobile advertising, and look forward to continuing our work with VeeV and helping many brands succeed in mobile in 2012.

In their section on the top ten “Mobile Moments” of the year, they featured data from one of our Mobile Mix reports to highlight the exact month when Android overtook iOS to become the leading driver of mobile impressions on our platform.

We have always put out our monthly research to help provide a snapshot of the current mobile landscape, so it was exciting to see Ad Age use our data as a way to highlight a key industry moment.

What we were really excited about though, was an opportunity to recognize some of the great brands we worked with over the past year.

In the spirit of the “Book of Tens,” we decided to take out an advertisement to highlight ten of the most innovative and successful campaigns that ran on the Millennial network over the last year. The campaigns ranged from Fox Home Entertainment’s stunning Black Swan ad, to Hyundai’s targeted app download campaign.

We love showcasing the great work of our advertising partners, and the only downside was that we were limited to just listing ten.

We were happy to see so many brands succeed in mobile in 2011 and can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

• Ulla McGee, VP, Mobile Products at PC World
• Jamie Wells, Senior Director, Global Product Marketing at Microsoft
• Thomas Gellger, CEO, Icon Mobile
• Michael Linton, National Director, Direct Sales at NetBiscuits

The first topic we discussed was tablets, and the huge impact that connected devices have made on advertisers, publishers and developers.

The rise of tablets and connected devices is definitely something that has impacted our business on a day-to-day basis, and I was able to share some examples of tablet campaigns we’ve run that have effectively used rich media. A larger tablet canvas gives advertisers so much more real estate to flex their creative muscles, and we’ve seen brands take advantage to create stunning mobile experiences, such as Fox Home Entertainment’s Black Swan campaign that ran with us earlier this year.

Ulla at PC World spoke on IDG’s tablet strategy, and said they have launched numerous iPad apps that are for “more than just news reading.” Ulla expanding on this by saying tablets provide “the immersive and rich experience of a print magazine, with the immediacy and interactivity of a website.”

At this point, the conversation shifted onto the topic of mobile spending.

As we were discussing why so many brands are shifting spend to mobile, an overarching theme was that mobile has begun to replace more traditional forms of advertising. Our Mobile Circular unit is a great example of mobile transcending print medium, as the retail FSI market shifts away from newspapers, and on to mobile devices. If retailers want to compete in this day and age, they must use mobile advertising as weaponry before it is wielded against them. That means they need to control m-commerce and capitalize on location based services to compete. And more importantly, retailers need to avoid the similar decline that took place in the late 90′s where an onslaught of digital commerce cratered the bricks and mortar retailer.

The other interesting point we touched on was the impact location is having on mobile monetization. We currently see 40-50 percent of our campaigns utilize local—and advertisers are using it to deliver true ROI. Jamie Wells followed on to this point and put out a challenge to the developer community, telling them that if they can provide information like consumer location, they can enhance their monetization.

All in all, what every panelist agreed upon was that the opportunities are plentiful for developers to create rich engagements and benefit monetarily from mobile advertising. Advertisers are eager to engage with mobile content that is compelling and simplistically creative. With mobile device technology that continually stretches the imagination consumers continue to interact with applications and mobile web sites that tastefully and tactfully deliver unique and memorable engagements . This is wonderful news for both developers and advertisers as rich media catapults this great industry we call mobile advertising forward into 2012 and beyond.

When we first started reporting mobile ad verticals in Q2 of 2009, entertainment was the leading vertical on our network, and since then, the industry has remained a leader in the space. In our report this month, we broke out the vertical in more detail and found that Studio Motion Picture Releases, TV and DVD releases were the top three subcategories driving spend.

Here are some other highlights from the October S.M.A.R.T.™:

Entertainment Spotlight

• Promoting a product launch/release was the top goal for entertainment advertisers, making up 50 percent of all campaigns. Advertisers most frequently promoted releases of new movies, TV shows, and DVDs.
• Over 50 percent of entertainment campaigns gave consumers the opportunity to watch a video. This was more than double the overall average for all verticals.
• 23 percent of entertainment campaigns included mCommerce as an option. This was used to allow consumers to purchase movie tickets, DVDs, etc., directly from their devices.

Additional SMART Highlights

• Campaigns that directed consumers to an app download page (as opposed to a website or landing page) increased 33 percent month-over-month and made up 29 percent of the total campaigns on our platform.
• Campaigns with a “Store Locator” grew 5 percent month-over-month and made up 23 percent of our total campaigns. Retail advertisers in particular used this to help drive store traffic.
• Sustained In-Market Presence remained the top campaign goal on our platform and represented 37 percent of all campaigns.

Click here to download the free full report including Advertiser Trends, Targeting Trends and more.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future reports, please send them our way.

Millennial contributed two articles to the magazine on creativity in mobile and future trends, and there was also a special spotlight on the Interactive Video campaign we ran with Patagonia. Among other features, the magazine also includes a Q&A with the Senior Director of Consumer Engagement at Coldwell Banker Real Estate, to get another perspective on mobile video advertising.

At Millennial we are seeing brands succeed in mobile with engaging video advertising, and expect this trend to continue. If you have any thoughts on the content (or wants to put in their own two cents on mobile video), feel free to shoot us a note. We’d love to hear from you!

The latest edition of ANA Magazine can be read in full here: http://www.ana-thoughtleadership.net/ana-thoughtleadership/201111.

To see additional examples of brands succeeding with interactive video, check out our campaign summary page at http://www.millennialmedia.com/brands.

Indeed, particularly over the past 18 months, several verticals have become extremely active in the mobile arena, finding great success there. Six industry verticals increased their mobile ad spend by over 100 percent in the last year (with the finance vertical alone growing by more than 1000 percent), showing that mobile is not only beyond the experimental stage; it has become a key component of today’s media plan.

The IAB “Marketer Perceptions of Mobile Advertising” survey, released in July 2011, provided a great perspective on mobile for a number of key verticals. There is clear common ground between the IAB findings on vertical markets, and what Millennial Media is seeing in the marketplace.

As a mobile ad platform, Millennial generates data and insights that cover the breadth of the mobile advertising marketplace. We share those insights via a number of Mobile Intelligence offerings, including our monthly Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART) and Mobile Mix: The Device Index reports.

In June, we added the Mobile Intel Series to the mix. This vertically-focused series is currently produced in conjunction with comScore to help brands navigate consumer behavior, targeting trends, etc. within key verticals. So far, this series has covered retail and automotive, and in a few weeks we’ll release a third report, on financial services.

The results of these reports, married with the campaign data pulled from our mobile ad platform, indicate key factors that all brands should consider when planning a campaign for their particular industry.

Know where to find your consumers

One of the misnomers in mobile is the idea that brands have to advertise in their own content vertical to reach consumers. For example, among mobile consumers who view auto content on their phone, sites like Edmunds.com or Car and Driver are certainly popular, but there are other places to reach these users too. Compared to the overall mobile audience, mobile auto consumers are heavy users in mobile content categories such as Tech News, Sports Info and Financial News & Stock Quotes.

In the Finance vertical, 80 percent of mobile financial users own a smartphone, which is more than double the overall mobile population; and the mobile finance audience is 76 percent more likely to own a tablet or e-reader, when compared to the mobile audience.

This shows that mobile finance consumers are looking to engage with content on next generation devices, and there is an opportunity for brands to reach consumers through apps or the mobile web. The stat about connected devices also shows that mobile plays a huge role in these consumer’s lives, as many mobile finance users have both a tablet and smartphone.

The best way to reach consumers outside of your brand’s vertical will differ depending on the industry, and the brands who can understand how their target audience is using mobile can gain a leg up on the competition.

Know where mobile consumers are in the purchase funnel

When planning a campaign, advertisers should think about where consumers are in the purchase funnel when they are potentially viewing the ad. In our retail study, for example, we found that 52 percent consumers turn to mobile to help determine if a product is needed, while 29 percent turn to mobile to comparison shop.

For auto advertisers—brands may want to alter their campaigns if they are reaching people who are not directly in the market for a car (i.e. instead of advertising a sale price on a new model, they can advertise their maintenance app). This is another area that can definitely vary depending on the industry.

Find the targeting and campaign goals that work for your vertical

Reaching local consumers is a top priority for many mobile advertising campaigns, and this is seen in the targeting and campaign goals listed out in our Mobile Intel Series reports. 43 percent of targeted audience campaigns in the automotive industry chose to target by local market, as auto advertisers narrowed in on specific locations to drive consumers into dealerships and promote regional deals.

In the retail industry, 29 percent of campaigns had the goal of increasing foot traffic, again showing the emphasis on reaching local consumers in a specific market.

In both cases, retail and auto advertisers understood how important these consumers were to their industry, and they were able to craft campaigns specifically designed to reach this group.

Millennial maintains that the mobile “triple play” is location plus relevancy plus immediacy. All three of these are underscored in the quick aforementioned vertical examples.

Real World examples

For examples at how various verticals are succeeding in mobile in the retail, auto, travel, entertainment verticals and more, feel free to look through Millennial’s campaign summary library. For example, you can check out how Patagonia and Buick both engaged consumers with mobile video, but in two completely different ways that were relevant to their respective campaign goals. The IAB Mobile Library also has some wonderful research on mobile internet consumers.

Every industry vertical has found a way to integrate mobile. Now is the time to understand how your target audience is using mobile, and reach your consumers where they already are. Before your competition does.