The indefatigable Jose Afonso Furtado pointed out an article on eMarketer today about mobile versus standard Web banners that cited a recent Media Mind study: “MediaMind found that the average CTR on mobile banners on their network was 0.61%. That was more than eight times as high as the CTR for standard online banners.” It’s worth noting that we have seen a similar range of performance in mobile versus Web banner campaigns for books. Does that mean every book should run mobile ads first and Web ads second? Not necessarily.
Because of format limitations, mobile ads work best for books that come with either a big name-brand author (“New from Patricia Cornwell!”) or a concept you can get in under eight words (“Could Hitler’s talking dogs have won the war?”). Mobile is not the platform to tout a host of stellar reviews or introduce a new author whose nuanced prose you’re hoping to develop over time. Mobile ads are also great team players: they perform very effectively as part of a larger campaign where they can reinforce a message that also appears in print, broadcast or online.