Q&A at the Georgia IC Marketing Summit: Simpli.fi Chief Revenue Officer James Moore Discusses Mobile Engagement

Simpli.fi’s Chief Revenue Officer James Moore was one of this year’s speakers at the Georgia IC Marketing Summit, and participated in a panel discussion on mobile engagement. The Summit was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, GA on February 12th, where 250+ Georgia-based brands came together to share fresh ideas, solve problems and making meaningful connections. James spoke to a room full of CMOs, Chief Brand Officers, Advertising Strategies and more and drove home some compelling points for mobile engagement worth sharing. Check out his Q&A below to learn more about where mobile is today, where it’s is going, and why this matters for brands and advertisers.

Moderator: What makes you qualified to speak about mobile?

James Moore: Since 2011 I have served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Simpli.fi. Simpli.fi is a Demand Side Platform that specializes in working with unstructured GPS and behavioral data to make digital campaigns perform better with fewer impressions. Specifically, we are working with brands, agencies, and media partners using highly differentiated mobile geo-fencing capabilities including Addressable OTT/CTV at the individual household-level and foot traffic attribution. These are all tools that we have built, maintain, and continue to innovate upon.

Moderator: Where do you see the mobile connection with your customer today and in the future?

James Moore: It should not be shocking news to anyone that 85% of American adults own a smart phone and that the sale of smartphones outpaces desktop and laptop sales. In fact, I read a stat recently that the continued expansion of smart phone use outpaces the rate of population growth.

Today, mobile has revolutionized reach and frequency as we consume more content more often. Better phones, faster speed, and app-based content proliferation are a few reasons why more than 70% of time spent on the Internet is through a personal mobile device. Between Apple’s IOS and Android there are more than 1.5 million unique apps. The average consumer has 35+ apps on their phone and regularly uses up to 9.

The use of smartphones has fractured the distribution models of music, radio, newspaper, and magazines, and we are now seeing the same thing with TV viewership. More than 50 million Americans have cut the cord from cable, and at least half subscribe to one or more ad-supported streaming service. According to the most recent numbers for Q3 2018, this trend continues to accelerate. A significant audience of TV viewers is building across mobile devices, tablets, and Connected TVs. It is hard to imagine a digital marketing strategy in 2019 that is not a “mobile first” approach.

In the future, we will see continued disruption of traditional attribution methodologies, as mobile will enable real intelligence about the impact of advertising on behavior. We can already measure visitation rates and patterns for natural conversions vs. campaign conversions. This is only the beginning.

Moderator: How do you use data to better engage with consumers, and specifically on their mobile device?

James Moore: First, we use data to dramatically improve relevance of advertising. For instance, when it comes to location data it should be obvious to everyone that visibility and controls around the recency of mobile GPS data is fundamental to success and scale.

Ask any car dealer and they will tell you there is a magnitude of 1000x difference between someone known to be shopping for a car on the lot in the last 5 minutes vs 5 hours vs 5 days vs 5 weeks. By maintaining GPS data in unstructured form and with timestamps, our advertisers can adjust the creative or frequency of messaging based on recency of visitation and more. This is true for countless consumer brands, from jewelers to financial advisors.

Second, the mobilization of the web is leveling the playing field for eyeballs between companies of all types and sizes. In the past, exposure to audiences has often been a walled garden reserved only for those who can spend the most. For example, if you go to a professional sporting event you will see large sponsored signage inside the stadium both before, during, and after the game. The brands who typically buy this space spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to market to these fans for a few events a year for 2-4 hour blocks. Today, any small business can geo-fence any major sporting event and serve ads directly to people who attended the event within the following days or even weeks. All this can be done with investments that are a fraction of what event sponsorship costs.

These same small businesses can even measure how many of those event attendees visited their place of business after being served one of their ads vs. how many attendees visited the place of business organically.

Moderator: What’s next to increase connection with your customers?

James Moore: Mobile is going to change TV and cable and the race to addressability. Last year saw more than 5 million households cancel their cable service in favor of more flexible and cost-efficient streaming media providers. In fact, more than 1 million cut the cord in Q3 of 2018 alone.

The result is a new audience of 50 million+ streaming households, with 25 million+ using one or more ad-supported services or apps. The way cable TV does addressability is limited to households that have the provider’s hardware (a shrinking population). It is also highly reliant on the IP address which is increasingly under scrutiny for privacy legislation, and also commonly truncated (i.e. shortened) making household-level targeting in theory more like block-level targeting in practice. So you get the unique typhoon of diminishing reach with diminishing accuracy.

At Simpli.fi, we know that GPS data is increasingly accurate up to 4.9 meters (16 feet) under open sky. This mobile GPS data is streaming from the most persistently used devices in the home via the apps whose users are likely to opt-in to location disclosures. Leveraging both probabilistic and deterministic device matching, a household-level identity map is developed to include phone, tablets, laptops, and YES, large screen Connected TVs. Using GPS-enabled household addressability brings nearly the full population of ad-supported streaming households into reach. It also allows for foot traffic measurement in concert with advertising delivery on the TV screen.

These are just some of the ways we are helping brands, agencies, and media groups maintain a scalable and reliable connection with their desired audience.

Moderator: Any predictions for mobile in the near future?

James Moore: I believe mobile and GPS data are going to help solve attribution measurement between online and offline media types in ways that will be huge leaps forward.

I believe that when 5G speeds go mainstream that the cord cutting of 2018 will look like it was moving at snail speed compared to the cutting that will follow the release of 5G.

I believe that data legislation will come to a head and consumers will start to feel safe in how their data is used and what data is used. I believe consumers will start to find that as they share more, their content and advertising will get more innovative and on point. In short, data trust is going to lead to a creative renaissance.

I believe Augmented Reality as viewed through a mobile device will completely alter retail in ways that launch major brands and cause large shifts in company market share.

As the attendees at the Georgia Marketing Summit saw firsthand, Simpli.fi is the expert in all things mobile. Contact us at hi@simpli.fi to see how you can best incorporate mobile advertising into your programmatic campaigns.