Mobile apps have become a broadcast buzzword. With smart marketing and deployment, those apps can create more than buzz by boosting a radio station’s bottom line, now and in the future.
Paul Jacobs of Jacobs Media presented a session at a 2015 NAB Show Broadcast Management Conference on the monetizing of mobile apps, what’s possible now, and what’s ahead. His company, Jacapps, designs mobile apps. “When we think about apps, we not only think of them as really cool code and software put together, but how can we monetize them.”
As percentages of budgets shift from broadcast to digital advertising, stations will need to adapt their marketing to tap into the revenue. He gave the case of Ford dictating that their dealers spend 50% of their co-op advertising monies on digital. Jacobs’ challenge: “If you [a radio broadcaster] could come in with digital solutions for them [customers], you would have the opportunity to capture where these dollars are going.”
From a return on investment standpoint, which is where the evaluation of advertising expenditure is going, “digital provides that for them and mobile can provide that for them also. His take on radio’s place in future marketing plans: “A successful campaign is a cross-platform [radio , digital and mobile] campaign.”
