5 ADJUST MOBILE MARKETING PREDICTIONS FOR 2022

Mobile moves fast, and 2021 was no exception. While the industry continued to grapple with the larger changes and acceleration of trends beginning with the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, it also faced new shifts within the industry, particularly with the long-awaited release of iOS 14.5 in April.

With 2022 just around the corner, what new changes and trends await us in this ever-evolving space? We spoke with our experts here at Adjust to discover what key industry themes and developments they see coming in the year ahead.

#1) Podcasts will see huge growth in mobile ad spend in 2022

Katie Madding, Chief Product Officer of Adjust

“Despite being around for the better part of the past two decades, podcasts have finally entered the mainstream in the past two years in an 'audio renaissance’ that we only expect to continue. The growth and conversion activity happening will present huge opportunities for monetization and advertising, especially in the US and Southeast Asia, with eMarketer projecting $1.74 billion in U.S. podcast ad spend in 2022.”

“Along with advertising, influencer marketing will follow the growth and popularity of podcasts, particularly when it comes to Generation Z — a demographic in which over 70% of people are more likely to purchase a product when it’s recommended to them by the host of their favorite podcast. Over the course of the next few years, we expect podcasts — and their hosts in particular — to play a critical role in targeting younger listeners.”

#2) CTV/OTT subscription overload will create opportunities for more free channels, inviting a lot more advertising

Gijsbert Pols, Ph.D., Lead Product Strategist at Adjust, as told to Street Fight magazine in their 2022 Martech Predictions on Retail Media, CTV/OTT, and Messaging

“The difference from 2021 to 2022 in CTV and OTT streaming is that we're going to see a lot more options for free channels that are ad-supported — and so a lot more advertising inventory will surface that hadn’t before. There is a limit to the number of subscriptions people are willing to take on for streaming services. To get their content, people are moving to AVOD. A recent Hub Research surveyalready shows that 41% of respondents prefer to watch free content with ads in every show. We expect to see this increase next year.”

“This additional inventory will not only give advertisers more opportunities to advertise on CTV, it will also have a profound effect on how they relate to advertising. The ‘C’ in CTV is allowing TV advertising to shift from branding into a key performance marketing channel. The analytics that advertisers are now being offered through — for example, OneView with Roku — are going to allow them to have a much different level of insight and bend their campaigns from brand awareness to brand experience and increasingly also direct response.”

Learn more about how your app can measure the

impact of CTV campaigns with Adjust.

#3) E-commerce is going to see a huge shift from digital to mobile

Andrey Kazakov, Chief Operations Officer at Adjust

“Where e-commerce used to be heavily digital, the change in consumer behaviors driven by the pandemic put pressure on a lot of brick and mortar companies to spend more on their mobile apps. Brands like Sephora, as a great example, actually changed their internal budgeting and planning so that a ton of the brand’s investment from brick and mortar is now on the mobile team. To navigate this increasingly competitive space, app marketers and developers will need to focus on creating convenient and seamless cross-device experiences, and on successfully incentivizing and retaining their users.”

#4) The future of measurement will leverage aggregated data driven by machine learning, built on transparency and trust

Paul H. Müller, Co-founder and CTO, Adjust

"Privacy is the way of the future, and as innovation progresses, so do user privacy issues. Scrutiny and regulation will only continue.

Adjust has always placed trust and transparency at the forefront. This is why we've invested in new methodologies and strategies to deliver the most value with aggregated (vs. user-level) data that is safe to leverage for insights. Namely, predictive KPIs — leading with predictive LTV (pLTV) — will help anticipate growth opportunities within aggregated collections of SKAdNetwork and consented user data.

With advanced machine learning algorithms, our modeling experts work closely with our clients in beta testing to build fully customized models driven by the unique needs of the industry or business. The data is still going to be bespoke and can enable marketers and developers to build fully customized conversion models driven by the unique needs of the app’s industry vertical or business. The accuracy of pLTV will allow advertisers to make sense of where these users are coming from and how much value they're adding."

Read more of Paul’s thoughts on the year ahead in his

recent interview with AdExchanger.

#5) The move from banking apps to banking lifestyle or “super apps”

Gijsbert Pols, Ph.D., Lead Product Strategist at Adjust

“Starting in APAC, but now in the U.S. and EMEA, as well as Latin America and Africa, a lot of your banking apps — PayPal being a notable example in the U.S. — have become much more like your financial lifestyle apps. This has created another interesting opportunity for your bank to play a much larger role in your day-to-day activities.

Take financial planning. Now, many banks are building that into their apps themselves. So there's a huge opportunity for banks to own many different segments of a consumer’s financial planning outside of just being their regular bank. Your banker that makes it the easiest to transfer across any system and to get information from any system will become the new age, modern bank that everyone uses.”