Top Advertising Trends 2023 | Mobio Group

Don’t know what “eklmnrhutshrdp” is? Neither do we. But you’re already reading this article. And that means we’ve achieved our goal of capturing your attention. Every year the battle for user interest becomes more epic, marketers become more inventive, advertising becomes more creative, budgets become more ambitious. That’s why Mobio Group has picked up a few key trends in advertising today that can attract users to your app.

Surprise

Completely unusual things can help draw attention to your product. They may not even be directly associated with what you’re promoting. The language learning program Duolingo launched an advertising campaign in social networks, inviting users to post photos of themselves with tattoos and get their free translation from foreign languages, and a creative video attracted a new audience to the app. Ortobom and media conglomerate Globo achieved an influx of new users in 2019 after the Guinness Book of World Records’ record for the largest human domino (2019 employees) was shown in news feeds.

Baffle

Not a new trend in advertising, but one that remains effective is the strangeness, ridiculousness, or illogic in a commercial or banner. The term “oddvertising” exists for such advertising. The absurd video clips of Old Spice prove the productivity of this approach exactly because of the eccentricity of the advertising we remembered the product of this brand. And this particular product will be chosen considering all other things being equal.

Oddvertising can be so mysterious that it’s not always possible to understand what is being advertised. For example, when watching a commercial for the Norwegian brand Enklere Liv, we cannot understand what they want to offer us to buy (or watch or download). However, the curiosity aroused by the advertisement spurs the consumer to find this information on his or her own. Of course, oddvertising is mostly used by brands that are confident that their brand name or trademark is already firmly associated with a particular product or service.

Visualize

According to Facebook, 80% of people actually react negatively to mobile ads that play loud sound when they’re not expecting it. The same statistics show that video ads with subtitles are viewed on average 12% longer than ads without subtitles.

What can we do to improve our advertising based on this data?

• Rely more on visuals, showing rather than telling, and conveying information with images. Acommercial for Thai Life Insurance Company got more than 111 million views even though not a word was spoken during the three-minute video.
• You can try to create a completely silent commercial, as Ben & Jerry’s did. If you place apromotional silent video, for example, in a music app (which is often used in the background), the silence is guaranteed to draw the user’s attention to the screen of the device. At least out of fear that something has happened to the gadget. And to retain attention or just remember will help competent video.

Nostalgia

The trend of nostalgia is impossible to ignore. Moreover, the past is in fashion today, not only for millennials, but also for Generation Z. We are happy to “age” new photos on Instagram, adding artificial grainy filters, styling photos in the manner of 80s posters. And even Facebook today reminds us where we were and what we were doing 5 or 10 years ago. Vintage is relevant. Examples are the vintage style video of the Paytm payment app (more than 15mln reviews on Google), the Christmas ad 2022 T.J. Maxx. Maxx, an atmospheric advertising video of Macallan whiskey in a retro style.

Engage Influencers

Not every ad campaign has the budget for international stars in its commercials (George Clooney or Danny Devito in Nespresso commercials — the fees are in the tens of millions of dollars). A strategy involving local stars or influencers also works — a Burger King commercial featuring Chase Hudson garnered three times more views than regular commercial videos.

Reviews or ads from bloggers have become an effective format for promoting mobile apps. A significant bonus of such advertising is the ability to choose a blogger according to the interests of the target audience. Choosing the right blogger can give an increase in organic traffic, even if it is not celebrity. This is due to the high level of audience engagement with microinfluencers (usually up to 20k subscribers). The ads look more natural and authentic.

Create Your Own Advertising Personas

Often the budget or concept of an advertising campaign does not allow for an influencer or brand ambassadors. A good move is to create your own “face” for the campaign. It can be a colorful, memorable personality type or an animated character (the funniest M&M’s). Users like fictional characters more (38%) than celebrities (22%) or sports stars (18%). The use of memes as a marketing tool is also trending. Successful memes don’t have an immediate impact on app conversions, but in the long run, they provide product recognition and enable easy communication with the audience.

Take Advantage of Podcasts and Streamers

Both audio and video podcasts really keep user engagement high, and audiences are huge and loyal. First place among podcasts on Spotify in 2021 is “The Joe Rogan Experience,” with about 11m listeners per episode, and 13.6m subscribers on Youtube. The main formats for integrating ads into podcasts are pre-roll, branding, and affiliate release. Many companies use podcasts not only as an alternative platform to advertise their product, but also record podcasts themselves to promote their application. For the most part, apps in the health and fitness, business, and education categories consolidate “app+podcasts” successfully.

The situation with streaming apps is similar. According to statistics, gaming streams and Just Chatting are in the lead. It is possible to expand your audience or attract new segments with any advertising campaign budget. The cost of embedded advertising, personal broadcast and native advertising depends on the popularity of the streamer — the highest fees are paid by Markiplier (34 million subscribers on Youtube), Jake Paul (20.6 million), MrBeast (122 million). You can try to promote your application by launching your own streams — interesting and creative people will always find their audience. The main platforms for this are Twitch, YouTube, Trovo, Discord, Smashcast, Afreeca, and GoodGame.

Sticking to the main trends when promoting your app is a good strategy, but it absolutely does not mean that there are any specific rules. It is possible to make a complex, expensive commercial using optical deception of vision and tricks with human perception of space. And make the user watch this commercial several times. You can run a simple black and white commercial without any special effects. And collect 5 million views in a couple of days. After all, regardless of advertising trends, the app itself can dictate the terms of its advertising campaign. To use “surprise”, “puzzlement” or a recording of a commercial stream in the promotion of MyObits death announcement app is not very smart. But for advertising the funeral simulation game Happy Grave, humorous oddvertising would be a better tool.

There is no typical standard cliché for promoting an app. Every advertising campaign is unique. And for every campaign you have to create and test many different hypotheses. And it is better to do this with a team of professionals. Contact us at Mobio Group and we’ll help you make the kind of advertising campaign that your app needs.