By Ryan Golden

Exciting changes are happening in the ad space with marketers dedicating more budget and attention to mobile as one of the most effective means for connecting businesses and consumers.

To be successful marketers need to get the right ad in front of the right audience at the right time and place. With more marketers turning to mobile campaigns, the success and results of those campaigns become paramount when deciding what worked and if money was well spent.

Campaigning for optimization
Today, the amount of data available to marketers is unprecedented, bringing a new level of mobile targeting and retargeting opportunities, not to mention a variety of options to test, track and refine campaigns that make it possible to affect the effectiveness of a campaign campaigns immediately.

This is important because at least 50 percent of global mobile Web users now use mobile as either their primary or exclusive means of going online, with 80 percent of the time spent inside mobile applications (source: Super Monitoring).

So looking at the time that consumers are spending on their devices, 2014 is the year that mobile marketing is quickly becoming a no-brainer and the next step is looking at optimization for mobile campaigns.

And by optimization we mean the ability to make changes to campaigns in real time based on how a campaign is performing in certain areas or locations.

When it comes to mobile optimization, the first question you may be asking, “Why am I not getting results and, more importantly, learning from the campaign?”

Even if your mobile campaign is performing successfully, there is always room for improvement.

Instead of wishing for or taking a chance at luck, let us look at three mobile optimization considerations:

Location segmentation
One of the most exciting opportunities for mobile marketers is the ability to target consumers based on their physical location and demographics.

Now you can break down your key performance indicators to small goals and then match to specific locations to present new insights and capabilities to a campaign.

Splitting your location objectives can paint a picture of what is and what is not working.

For example, targeting Chicago with an ad and then seeing where in Chicago yielded the most lift can help influence how you conduct future campaigns and will ultimately save you money and wasted impressions.

The more relevant and geo-targeted your advertisement, the better your chances of engaging the right audience at the right time.

Art of speed
How fast and how often you optimize your campaign can be the difference that makes or breaks your results.

Optimization is more than just growing or shrinking a geo-fence around a targeted area. It is looking at the results for specific areas and focusing in on the locations that generate the best results.

Develop an optimization strategy that includes the ability to react and evolve in real-time to avoid burning out your target audience and gain the insight and results you desire.

Test and test again
There is no secret recipe for success in mobile, so testing enables you to perfect your approach.

Focus on goals by incorporating regular testing into mobile campaigns.

Tests should focus on variables such as call-to-action, creative A/B, frequency, time of day, locations and where within location for attaining your key performance indicators.

The slight change to a campaign can make a big difference. With mobile, your ability to test is easier than on other platforms.

THE EXPLOSION of mobile drives responsibility on marketers to close the gap between ad placement and performance, which means marketers must make real-time decisions to increase the ROI of every dollar spent on marketing.

Optimization and performance can be the foundation for that real-time decision making process and, in the end, yields the best results.

Ryan Golden is CEO of location engine Moasis Global, San Francisco. Reach him at [email protected].