Michael Bayle, senior director of global mobile advertising, Yahoo Connected Life, discusses a mobile campaign Yahoo Mobile executed with automaker Citroen for its C5 model in London.
Q: Why did Citroen want to use mobile to promote its new car?
A: There are a few reasons. We see that the largest advertising spend in mobile is in automotive, and Citroen wanted to stay competitive. In addition, it wanted to reach influencers and early adopters — people who are on the mobile Web. Motoring is very appealing to males.
Q: How did the campaign work?
A: Agency OMD developed a mobile site for Citroen with key features to attract a consumer that is on-the-go, including video of the car to tap into the emotional experience of the car. We launched with Vodaphone, the provider in the UK, which is great because we can gather demographic information based on a customer’s subscriber profile through this partnership.
Q: What specific types of ads did you leverage for the campaign?
A: The ads ran as full-page takeovers and roadblocks on Yahoo Motoring (known as Autos in the US), across a series of different pages. For the period of the campaign, they were the exclusive advertiser on these mobile pages. The campaign ran for a total of 30 days.
Q: How did consumers respond?
A: We did an impact campaign study alongside the Vodaphone portal while this was running through a banner ad to compare the impact that the ad had on brand awareness. We saw a 25% lift in mobile ad awareness for those who were exposed to the ad, as well as 44% lift in message association. In addition, there was an 18-point lift in brand favorability for those who saw the ad. We also saw a lift in the intent to purchase go from 7% for those who were not exposed to 15% for those who saw the ad.
Q: What are the key takeaways from this campaign?
A: It was a success just from a brand awareness point of view, as you can see from the lift in awareness and purchase intent. Also, I think the introduction of analytics across the board is important to help track what consumers are thinking about the ad. If there is a positive in the recession, it is that everyone is looking for more transparency in how marketers spend their money. I think that seeing the results can give a person a reason to shift spending to mobility from other channels, especially when budgets are tight.
